The Blog of Spencer Roach

My old boss had a problem. It was July of last year, and even though I had no knowledge of the promotion two of my coworkers and I would soon receive, she desperately was trying to find adequate replacements for us. Her solution was an odd one: in the next round of hires, bring in three mentally handicapped workers in addition to the plethora of ones that already exist. The rationale was that although they would not bring in as many carts as we normal-ish people, they would be more consistent which would mean more productivity in the long run.

Her strategy was doomed from the start, though. We already had our fair share of these people, and they (despite still being employed) are generally not good workers. One is the midget girl who has worked there for years (her twin works in fashions). She is lazy, as the evening utility workers complain that they have to do her job, and constantly brown-noses almost every manager in the store, perhaps to keep her job. Another, an extremely obese person, is that not handicapped, but I’ve been told that he is slightly autistic and qualifies under special needs. He tries (sometimes), but he could not push carts very well obviously because of his size. Another one only pushes in three or four carts at a time and is very limited in her intellectual functioning.

There is actually one who is worth keeping, but he is obsessed with D-Squared (my coworker w/ DDs), and one out of four is not a very good statistic.

In this round, my old boss hires five new people, three of them being mentally handicapped, one being Alicia (for readers from my HS graduating class), and the other being a friend of mine. Two of them have been fired. The first got caught stealing. He was also nerdy-looking and cornered one of my female coworkers in the utility closet and wouldn’t let her out. The second was a horrendous cart-pusher as he would only push in 2-5 carts at a time and was often panicy out on the lot.

The third, who still works here, does well for someone who has such a limited potential, but sometimes when I see him on the lot, I worry about him. When he is pushing in eight or more carts, he often has trouble and blocks traffic, which sucks on a Super Saturday in the afternoon. In addition, he is infatuated with one of our coworkers, and it creeps her out.

(On a side note, the coworker in both cases is the same girl, who has a nice body but not a pretty face. She joked today that she should be the retard magnet, so I told her to suffocate herself not to death but to cause brain damage to become “one of them.” She was very angry and offended.)

Overall, the strategy was not successful, and now it is just one more thing I can use against her whenever I get bored and walk down to her office on the clock.

Work update: yesterday and today I’ve put out every single item from the garden center in the backroom, putting it basically anywhere room exists. One example is the 120 grill lighters, all exactly the same. I asked my store director about this, and he said just to put it all out, even though maybe half will sell before the end of the season if we are lucky. Just another example of short-term thinking at work.