I stopped in the store again the other night, mostly to troll for something else to turn into a kind of funny, kind of concerning rant that documents the Tom and Jerry-like relationship between a retail customer and the counter clerk to entertain you, when a familiar voice greeted me. One of the guys I worked with, who had been there before I got hired on and had left to work for his father a month or so before I left, was back behind the counter. Imagine my surprise…this guy has always done pretty well for himself. He’s smart, knows his stuff, is personable, can handle the upper-crust types who never touch their car to the rednecks who seem to be speaking a second language, and isn’t afraid to start wrenching on a car in a parking lot. Working with this guy was great…one of a very, very small handful of people I suffered with at the store that made the job bearable. When he moved on, we all felt the loss but wished him well.

I won’t go into the reasons why he’s back. What I will go on about is what another guy behind the counter that night (the guy who effectively replaced me) let slip: In the year that guy has worked there, the store has turned over nearly fifty people. That’s four to five people a month, every month, for a solid year. And I know that in the six months I worked at the store, we turned over at least ten people, with only three leaving on decent terms. I’ve often lamented the quality of new hires at a “McParts Store” like O’Reilly’s, AutoZone, Advanced, or even some NAPA locations, but with that kind of turnover ratio, maybe the fault lies with someone else. And two elements come to mind that need a moment in the spotlight.

“That’s the fourth cake this week!”

First off is the Store Manager. The one in charge of scheduling, task management, and general day-to-day operations. One of the biggest issues that our store faced came in the form of scheduling. Officially, as a part-timer, you laid out for an agreed-upon time frame that you were available to work that constituted about 35 hours a week, had two weekdays off, and were required to put in days off two weeks in advance with approval. Doesn’t sound bad, does it? Emergencies aside, two weeks notice for a few days off sounds reasonable. It gives the manager the ability to schedule around your absence. Now, imagine that your manager starts to make unofficial changes to that schedule. You suddenly are pushing forty, forty-five hours a week, maybe even more, on part time. You start to lose your days off because of absences, no-notice quitting, or because of something drastic, like a store inventory. How would you take it, getting a phone call at six in the morning on your day off telling you that you have to come in and open the store because there was an inventory and we need the extra hands? Shouldn’t that have been planned for? If I’m gonna lose a day off for an inventory, couldn’t that have been foreseen so that I’d have warning? Yes. I’d be a touch less pissed off IF I had been told that I’d lose a day to help with the store inventory…but I’d be even less pissed if the Store Manager could get his shit together so that the schedule was more predictable and followed the official layout.

“WTF? Christmas is on Friday!”

Now let’s look at the other position that tends to make life hell for the counter clerks: Regional. Normally, Regional shouldn’t be an issue for a counter-clerk except for when they haunt the store all day. Regional is supposed to be dealing with Store Manager. But if your store is problematic in their eyes, Regional becomes a gigantic thorn in your ass. For example: our store had a problem with loss where it concerned headlight bulbs. We’d be hit by a pack of guys while we were absolutely slammed, and short of being able to attack them with a baseball bat before they would leave the store, our hands were bound. If they were past the threshold of the door, there was nothing we could do except get a vehicle description and license plate, call store manager, and call the police. If they were in the store, we were not to outright confront them. We were to ask them to return merchandise and, above all else, do not accuse, because heaven forbid we offend a customer. But when the numbers came back at the end of the month showing a loss in the deep hundreds regarding headlights, Regional got a visit from a friend I thought I left behind when I left the Army: the Good Idea Fairy. That evil wench took her magic wand and beat Regional about the head and shoulders in a violent manner. The result: We will zip-tie the headlight bulb packages to the display! And if we are down to two people in the store, we are discouraged from coming out from behind the counter, so that we can keep track of merchandise better!

Right…so the one thing we do that almost always creates a positive interaction between clerk and customer (hands-on help) is scrapped because company policy prevents me from treating a thief like a thief. Due to a policy created by a guy who visits the store once a month or so who berates my boss whenever things aren’t going right. Who is preparing to start adding in hours since people are quitting and Regional is on his ass about payroll, and is expecting his workers to come in for under ten dollars an hour on their day off and like it. And they wonder why employee attrition is the way it is. Maybe if these companies took a look at the upper end of the chain of responsibility instead of blaming the base components, maybe then progress could be made.

I miss working with people like that guy. I miss helping customers who genuinely need my help. But between the leadership and the customers and fellow employees, I can’t see myself going back, no matter how many times Store Manager asks me. He can send his begging to the following address:

…pfft. Like I’d give him the address to here.