Tag Archives: quitting my job

Mar30

Update, COVID-19 Edition

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Photo by CDC on Unsplash

I don’t feel like writing.

I don’t feel like doing much of anything.

Don’t worry. I’m not sick. As far as I know, I’m totally healthy. I don’t have any symptoms of COVID-19 and no risk factors other than going to town (The Hot Zone, The Man calls it) last Tuesday to pick up Jerico’s dog food and drop some postcards into the mail slot.

The Man is fine too, as is Jerico. We’re all in good health.

I quit my job a week ago. The hand washing facilities where I worked were inadequate. In the three months I worked there, I never once saw the woman I assisted wash her hands. Another frustrating problem was that she did not believe COVID-19 was a big deal. If they’d quit calling it a pandemic, people wouldn’t be so frantic, she said on more than one occasion. She certainly was not practicing social distancing, so I was exposed–directly or indirectly–to everyone who came over to visit her, everyone she hugged, everyone who touched something in her house. I was also expected to take her to a friend’s home to shower once a week, so I was exposed to her friend, her friend’s husband, the hired hand, and anyone else who happened to be there on a Friday afternoon.

This is from the frequently asked questions from my state’s unemployment website.

The state I work in won’t pay unemployment to anyone who quits a job due to “a medical concern.” In the eyes of the state, I was supposed to keep working until either I got sick or my client did. Hell, I might have been expected to continue to care for my client had she gotten sick even though I had no protective gear or even a place to wash my hands other than a sink that drained into a bucket that I had to dump outside when full.

While I received emails from my credit union, the gas station and supermarket to whose rewards clubs I belong, and every fast food restaurant and craft store with whom I’ve ever shared my email address explaining how each business was working to keep both customers and employees safe in the time of COVID-19 and telling me how to keep myself safe, the company I worked for didn’t so much as text me to remind me to wash my hands. I heard nothing from my employer. Nothing. Not a peep. The silence did not instill confidence in me. In fact, the silence underscored the reality that my employer did not give a damn about me.

At first I was excited about the prospect of not going to work.

I’ll get some writing done, I thought. I’ll work on my blog. I’ll let people know about the postcards I have for sale. I’ll get so much done!

Instead, I’ve been dragging my ass for a week.

The Man and I decided to stay home and take social distancing and flattening the curve seriously. The Man is talking about totally staying home for two months, maybe three. Is he overreacting or saving our lives? I guess we’ll never really know.

The Man and I have enough food for for a month, maybe six weeks, if we eat two conservative meals a day. We started out with about 15 pounds of dried pinto beans, along with a few more pounds of dried black beans, lentils, white beans and Lima beans. We’ve been eating oatmeal for breakfast so we can save the eggs for baking. I’ve been working hard to vary our dinners so we don’t burn out on beans early on. There may come a day when we’re eating all pintos all the time, but I want to delay that day for as long as possible.

Jerico is set with food for now. Last Tuesday we picked up a 35 pound sack of food we’d had shipped from Chewy.com. That much food will last him at least a month, probably six weeks. He’ll be out of medication too, sometime in the next couple of months. We order that online too.

Unlike most people in the United States, we don’t get home delivery of mail. No one in this part of the state does. Folks either get a box at a post office or at a private company like the UPS Store. So while most of you can order online and have groceries or dog food or medicine or craft supplies delivered to your home, we don’t enjoy that convenience. Our mailbox is 20 miles away, in The Hot Zone.

The nearest outgoing mailbox is at least 12 miles from our home, and The Man really doesn’t want me driving there to mail letters and postcards. He fears the virus is going to be concentrated anywhere that people live. He fears I might breathe in the virus and bring it home. Again, is he over cautious or just cautious enough?

What did I decide to do after considering my prospects of neither incoming nor outgoing mail for a month or more? I decided to make postcards, of course. Something about cutting paper and gluing it down in new ways is comforting to me in times of stress. The actions give me a feeling of control, I suppose.

These are some of the 38 postcards I made. I took this photo too.

Two days and 38 postcards later, I ran out of the decoupage glue I like to use for all my collage work. I won’t be getting any more of it any time soon, so I guess my postcard creating is on hiatus.

This past Saturday, I tried to file my taxes online. It turned into a fiasco because I don’t know last year’s Adjusted Gross Income. I had to give up after a couple of hours of struggle until my sibling (whose mail is delivered to the front porch) receives some documentation and calls me with the information.

After I was unable to achieve my big goal for the day, I fell into despair. It was tool cold and windy to go for the walk The Man suggested. I didn’t feel like writing. I didn’t feel like talking or watching a movie. After I cooked dinner and washed the dishes, the rest of my life stretched before me, long and boring.

The Man and I ended up watching some King of the Hill on Hulu. (Thank goodness for free trials from streaming services.) That cheered me up a little, but all I really wanted to do was play the matching game I put on my phone. I don’t have to think too hard about it, so it doesn’t tax my brain, but I have to pay close enough attention to it that unwanted thoughts are kept away. It’s an unproductive activity, but after hours of reading news sources and thinking about COVID-19 and people refusing to isolate and the lack of ventilators and all the horribleness that’s coming down the pike, my brain enjoys being blank.

I don’t know what to do with this blog right now. Should I carry on as if nothing is amiss and our whole world isn’t crumbling? Should I go all COVID-19 all the time? To be honest with you, I don’t have it in me to go all COVID-19 all the time. But if no one cares anymore about a free camping spot in Colorado or stories from my past or photos of my first Little Free Food Pantry, I’m not going to bother. However, if my blog helps you feel a little more normal, I’m all for continuing with it.

Please, let me know what you think. If you’re reading these words, please, please leave a comment (as short or as long as you like) letting me know what you want to see here in the coming days. Your input will help me make some decisions.

In the meantime, please keep yourself safe. Stay home as much as possible. Work from home if you can. Stay away from people outside your immediate family. Wash your hands. Be kind. Above all, please be kind.

Aug13

Why I Quit My Job (Blog Post Bonus)

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Today is my last day as a clerk in a fuel center! By this evening, I will be a free woman!

Photo of Car on Gas Station

I started working in the fuel center (aka gas station) at a supermarket in mid-June of 2019. It was the only job offer I’d gotten after a half-assed job search, so I took it. I immediately disliked the job, although I did find some good aspects of it. Reason after reason to hate the job piled up as the weeks went by; here are 13 reasons why I quit.

#1 Working the opening shift. The worst days on the job were the ones where I had to open the fuel center at 5:45am. I lived about 40 minutes from where I worked, so I had to leave around five o’clock to get there on time. I move super slow in the morning, so I had to get out of bed no later than 4:15 in order to leave the house on time.

I’m typically an early riser. I wake up around the time the sun rises, anywhere from 5:30 to 7:00 (if I sleep in), but getting out of bed in the dark is difficult for me. Also difficult? Making a 40 minute drive in the dark. There were many mornings I knew I was falling asleep at the wheel, but I kept driving.

To be fair, once I arrived at work and got into the swing of things, I was ok, especially if I had a cup of coffee on my way in. However, at the end of the day I was physically and mentally demolished, especially since I never got to bed early enough on the nights before opening shifts.

#2 Having to deal with fuel and the chemicals used to clean it.  I had to clean up fuel spills nearly every day. To clean up spilled fuel, I sprayed another chemical on top of it, scrubbed the chemical soup with a long-handled brush, then used super absorbent pads to soak up the whole mess. What kind of chemical neutralizes fuel? I have no idea. Is that chemical safe for long-term exposure to humans? I have no idea. I’m pretty sure gasoline fumes and car exhaust are no good for human people, even if the chemical used to clean the spills is harmless.

#3 Lack of hand-washing facilities. There was no sink and no soap in the

Person Wash Hands

fuel center kiosk. We were supplied with vinyl gloves and hand sanitizing gel, but those things are not as good as using soap and water (in my opinion). There was a water spigot at the far edge of the fuel center, and I suppose I could have brought my own soap, but such a hand-washing situation was inconvenient at best.

#4 Limited breaks.  If I worked less than 8 hours, I was allowed one 20 minute break. In that 20 minutes I had to walk across the parking lot and into the store to get to the break room, wash my (filthy) hands, use the restroom, wash my hands again, eat my lunch, then walk back through the store and across the parking lot. If someone was in the only employee restroom when I got there or if I had to heat my food in the microwave, I lost precious minutes.

If I worked an 8 hour shift, I got two 15 minute breaks. Two breaks are better than one, but getting everything done in 15 minutes was an even bigger challenge.

When I worked the morning shift, a cashier from the supermarket would come out to give me a break right around 9am. When I worked afternoons, I was supposed to get a break around 3pm, but good luck with that! A customer service manager (CSM) told me early in my fuel center career that I was out of sight/out of mind, and if I wanted a break, I’d have to remind the person in charge of scheduling. After I was given this bit of info, every afternoon I worked, I paged the CSM on duty to remind them about my break.

The CSM on duty might not have been prompt about giving me a break, but I sure as hell needed to be prompt about leaving and returning in my allotted amount of time.

U.s. Dollar Banknote Lot

One morning just as my relief showed up, the cash register prompted me to make a safe drop. I said I’d do it when I got back. My relief (a veteran cashier) pulled a long face and said the prompt would keep popping up the whole time I was gone. I knew he was right, so I stuck around for a few minutes to complete the safe drop. Then one of the big bosses arrived, and I had a couple of things to tell her. I was maybe five minutes late leaving.

When I returned to the kiosk, the person who had relieved me left immediately. I hadn’t been back two minutes when the phone rang. It was the CSM in charge of scheduling breaks calling to find out if her cashier had left. I said he had. She wanted to know why he was late returning to the supermarket. I explained I was late leaving because of the cash drop and having to talk to the store manager. She told me if I was late getting back from my break, it threw off the schedule of all the breaks that came after mine. She said if I was late leaving for a break, I’d have to take a shorter break so her schedule wasn’t messed up. I understood where she was coming from but her pissy attitude did not endear her to me.

I simply told her, I understand (which actually, I did) and made up my mind

Fireman Illustration

that I’d never be late leaving for a break again, no matter what was going on. Safe drop needed? Sorry. I’ll have to do it after my break. Irate customer? Sorry relief person, you’ll have to handle it because I have to go on my break. The fuel center is on fire? Could you go ahead and call the fire department and the management team because I have to take my break now?

The worst part about having only one break in a shift was that I only got to use the restroom once in 6 or 7 hours. I learned quickly that I needed to visit the restroom immediately before I started work, but some days I was desperate to see the toilet when my break rolled around.

One day I mentioned to one of the (female) store managers that three hours is a long time to go without a bathroom break. She said to just ask if I needed to visit the restroom during my shift, and they would get someone to the fuel center to cover for me. I appreciated her support but was skeptical of how asking for an extra break would work out. I could imagine the pissy CSM fussing at me for messing up her break schedule by having a bathroom emergency.

#5 Not knowing when my breaks would be. If I had known what time I was supposed to get my break, I’d have spent less time worrying I wasn’t going to get a break. I also wouldn’t have had to call the CSM to remind them I still needed a break. However, such a level of organization and communication was much too high of an expectation when dealing with the company I worked for.

#6 Being required to stand during my whole shift. Why do corporations think excellent customer service can only be provided while standing? I think I would have given better customer service if my feet and legs hadn’t hurt from standing for 6 or more hours. I guess the rule against sitting is part of the if you have time to lean, you have time to clean mentality, but I think morale would improve if cashiers were allowed to sit while ringing up sales.

#7 Having my availability ignored. When I applied for the job online, I had to provide my availability. I said I was available any time other than Tuesday mornings. When I was interviewed for the job, I told the assistant manager conducting the interview that I was not available on Tuesday mornings. The first several weeks I worked, I wasn’t scheduled to work before noon on Tuesdays (and often I got the entire day off), but suddenly I was scheduled to open on a Tuesday. No one asked me to do it as a special favor. No one apologized for scheduling during a time I said I couldn’t work. I strongly suspected that if I stayed at the job, I’d find myself scheduled on Tuesdays more and more often.

#8 I was working too much. When I was offered the job, I was told it was a part-time position. The assistant manager who hired me said the job offered no set number of hours. He said one week I might work 16 hours; the next, 23; another week I might work 35 hours. Since I was hired in June, I was consistently scheduled to work at least 32 hours each week. In reality, I never got out of there when I was scheduled to. I was lucky if I only worked 15 or 20 minutes extra at the end of a shift. Of course, I got paid for every extra minute I worked, but I’d rather have the time than the money.

Three shifts a week would have been ok, but five were too many.

#9 No sick leave with pay. When I was hired, the human resources person

Clinician Writing Medical Report

told me nothing about vacation time or sick leave. I found out later from a veteran worker in the supermarket that the state we worked in doesn’t require employers to provide sick pay. Guess what? Because they’re not required by the state to provide it, the company didn’t offer sick pay. This means anyone who is too sick to come into work doesn’t get paid for the shift.

I suspect workers who can’t afford to miss a day’s pay go to work no matter how sick they are. Most of the company’s employees work in a supermarket. Think about that for a moment. Those sick people are touching food. Even if they don’t touch the food directly, they’re putting their germy hands all over the packages containing food. Yuck! Now I understand why it sometimes seems like an illness is hitting everyone in town: germs are probably being spread through the supermarket.

#10 Selling tobacco products was a drag. From the day I started working

Close-up Photo of Red Cigarette Butt Lot

in the fuel center, I hated selling cigarettes, chew, and cheap cigars. I think using tobacco products is a bad idea, and I don’t like participating in people’s addictions in order to line someone’s pocket.(Every time I sold a pack of cigarettes, I ended the transaction by saying have a nice day, but I was thinking good luck with your lung cancer.)

I hated the hassle of checking IDs and entering birth dates in my POS (point-of-sale) system, but I hated even more the fear of getting busted for selling tobacco products to some underage kid. There just wasn’t enough time to do a thorough check of an ID when I had a line of customers, and I was worried someone was going to slip a fake one past me.

Selling tobacco products really slowed down my process. Although I’d learned the most popular brands and their varieties by the time I quit, searching for what the customer wanted took time. Then, unless the customer was obviously older than I was, I felt compelled to check the ID. All the while, the line behind the tobacco buyer grew.

I’ll be glad if I never have to sell a tobacco product again.

#11 Having too much responsibility. Not only did I feel responsible for not selling tobacco products to minors, I felt a huge amount of responsibility to make sure the fuel center did not go up in flames. The smallest fuel spill had me rushing outside to clean it up ASAP. I was constantly on the lookout for anyone smoking or doing any other stupid things that might lead to a fire.

Of course, I felt responsible for making correct change, helping each customer promptly, and being as polite as possible, but keeping the place from turning into the towering inferno was more than I had bargained for when looking for a summer job.

#12 The damned intercom system was driving everyone crazy. The intercom system was old and didn’t function very well. Often I’d press the button that was supposed to allow the person on the other side of the bulletproof glass to hear me speak, but something would go wrong with the system and the customer heard nothing. Sometimes the person on the other side of the glass spoke to me but no sound came through. Sometimes the sound that came through was garbled or crackly. Even on a good day, the poorly functioning intercom system was enough to irritate a saint. My customers and I were mere mortals and the misunderstandings caused by the crappy intercom system often led to frayed nerves and sharp tongues.

While I worked in the fuel center, a young man came out to repair the malfunctioning diesel pumps. (Spoiler alert: the diesel pumps were not repaired when he left.) When he was finished not fixing the diesel pumps, he worked on the intercom system.

He took a plate off the back of the intercom box and wiggled the wires hidden behind the plate. He said the intercom worked better now. Maybe it did, but not for long. I’m sure those wires wiggled right back out.

He said we could wiggle the wires back in ourselves if the intercom malfunctioned. Huh. I had neither a screwdriver to remove the plate, nor the time to remove it and futz around with wires. When people were in line to buy gas, they wanted to buy gas, not wait around for the clerk to repair the communication system.

I’m not surprised the company I worked for didn’t want to spend the money to get a modern, functioning intercom system in the fuel center. Why should the big bosses care if customers and workers alike are pissed off because communication is difficult? The big bosses don’t have to deal with it, and they’d rather save money instead of spend it to make the lives of workers easier.

#13 Dealing with grumpy people.  Oh lord. Grumpy customers. Grumpy coworkers. So many unhappy people, and they all seemed to want to bring me down to their level of agitation and dissatisfaction. I tried to be pleasant to everyone, but after being spoken to sharply several times in one shift, I was ready to pack it in. I will not miss the folks who wanted to take their troubles out on me.

Can you understand now why I quit the job? What would you have done? Would you have quit too or tried to stick it out until winter? Let me know what you think by leaving a comment below.

Images courtesy of https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-car-on-gas-station-2440998/, https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-wash-hands-1327213/, https://www.pexels.com/photo/abundance-bank-banking-banknotes-259027/, https://www.pexels.com/photo/accident-action-danger-emergency-260367/, https://www.pexels.com/photo/clinician-writing-medical-report-1919236/, and https://www.pexels.com/photo/dirty-addiction-cigarette-unhealthy-46183/.