Daniel Arnett

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Hang-up, Credit Cards, Snakes and Willie

June 26 2006

I think for the first time I am going to cover everything that I put in the title in a single post.  For clarification the stories you are about to read (or just quickly scroll through, but you stopped here you might as well read and get a good laugh) all occured in a 4-hour period as my last night at the Wal-Mart on Old Fort Pkwy in Murfreesboro, TN.



I'm going to attempt to keep these in chronological order so here we go...



I clocked in at 7pm on 6/23/06 and found out that my other closing CSM was going to cover the Layaway lunch and then take his (i.e. 2 hours on the front end by myself which i have really gotten used to).  Within 15 minutes I am running like crazy trying to take care of everything.  The I get called out to the garden center.  While out there one of the wonderful members of management pages me to call him.  Upon doing so, he requests that I send him one of my cartpushers to help unload the truck. My response (remember this is my last night) "I am in the garden center taking care of a situation, I have 5 or 6 cashiers that need something right now, so I will add your request to my list and get around to it in about 15-20 minutes." and then hung-up.  Side note: I never got around to it.



Next, I start getting lines (big shock at wal-mart).  So i page management so that I can get my cashiers who were pulled to work the truck could come back up front, which my request was denied, I was told to get the floor associates to do it.  So at this point, I make the page and so that management hears me pretending to do my job and only used 1 of them that came up.  The lines are not my problem, when the complaint calls come, i won't be there.  Well on top of that I have a cashier who needed to use the restroom which I approved but they didn't understand that to mean shut off your light and go as soon as your line is down (I will come back to this point).



Let's back up, I'm already out of order so let me just throw this tidbit of information out here to cover another point in the title...Willie Nelson came and shopped at this store that night.



About 10 minutes after I requested my cashiers back and was denied, Management calls me and asks if they can have a cashier to run electronics.  I responded, "I have lines, no one to spare, not my problem." and hung-up (are we seeing the pattern when i talk to management yet).



Then I get paged to the service desk where I hear the words that I don't want to hear..."You are going to have fun with this one." Apparently a cart pusher had seen a snake under someone's car in the parking lot and sent a customer in to tell me.  So I go out to the parking lot to assess the situation.  As i'm going to the parking lot I tell the cashier who needed to restroom break to shut off her light and go.  Out in the parking lot, the snake is on the move (very slowly i might add).  Now I don't know anything about snakes, but it was 3-4 ft. long and black.  So I go to my car to see if I had a box that I could put this thing in.  I didn't.  So I go back to where everyone was and asked "where's the snake?"  The response, it just climbed into this car.  So I take down the license plate to page the customer.  Luckily there was a pest control specialist walking through the lot and said he could take care of it if he could get in the car.  So I said I would take care of that. 



I walk back into the store (while outside, I kept getting change requests that I was ignoring because despite the wal-mart belief, I can't be everywhere at the same time). I get a page from management.  apparently my cashier who didn't get the hint that she could go to bathroom was complaining to customers who in turn called and complained to management saying i wouldn't give someone a bathroom break (because apparently 2 15-minute breaks and an hour lunch are not enough time to go to the bathroom).  I told him that if they don't understand what approved means, not my problem and i have bigger situations to deal with such as a snake in a customer's car.  He questions me on this and says I am over-worked, stressed and probably hallucinating.  My response (and excuse the language) "I watched the damn thing go in myself, not i have to page this person" and hung-up.  Made the page and the phone started ringing, i told the cashier to answer it for me and i started on change requests.  after delivering one of them, the cashier stops me and says the phone is for me.  Yet another member of management telling me that he is coming up there for the snake situation and sending someone else to help me (i was shocked).  So he meets the lady with the snake in her car and the other manager asks what i needed him to do, i told him to go to every register and ask people what they needed in the past 20 minutes.  The snake got killed, the lady was happy. (Quick side note...all this above was in the first 2 hours of being there).



Final story is not as good, but I spent about 30-minutes trying to get a credit card approved by a bank because she had requested a new card due to marriage, but they hadn't sent it, but put a flag on her old card.  Finally got that taken care of.



Needless to say, i am a lot happier at Charlotte Pike, and plus I can be more open about my relationship with Lacey since we don't work at the same store anymore.  Sorry for the long post, but I hope that you had a good laugh.