This week at work has seriously been the week from hell! Sorry for the language, but no other word fits what I have been through this week! My manager announced that she was quitting, without even a week's notice. I am pretty sad about this because this is the first manager that I have had that has not totally driven me to insanity. She is respectful of us, knows how to do her job, and keep the studio running efficiently. She also cares about us, which is a definite first! And then I find out that every other employee is quitting too! Every singe one! .... Everyone that is, except me. I am so sad because my co-workers is the only reason I even like my job at all! I feel like I am losing a ton of friends! Its also going to be very stressful to be the only one there who knows what they are doing. Getting so many new people, with a new manager, is going to be a very hard change indeed! So I know that all of this stress is coming as I start the week off. I try to gear up for it, get myself ready, but there was no way I could have ever been prepared for what was about to happen!
First off, let me explain how scheduling at the studio goes. For every appointment we have in an hour, that's how many employees have to be there. We have a lot of on call shifts when our schedules are written, because we don't know how many appointments we will have that day. A lot of times only one person is needed, so the rest get called off. This schedule can sometimes be inconvenient, because you never know when you are actually going to work. Well, my manager was scheduled every single day last week, but every day she would come to the studio, look at our appointments, see that someone would need to be called off, and then call herself off since it was her last week anyway. That was fine and all, except I was picking up most of her slack. I opened and closed for her. I covered her shifts. I handled the call off schedules. Basically, I was playing manager. It was super stressful... until Thursday.
Thursday was supposed to be my one and only day off. However, one of my co-workers wanted to go snowboarding so I told her I would cover her shift for her, wanting the extra hours. Thursday was also supposed to be my managers last day, but once again, she called herself off and asked me to open instead. When I got there I saw that we had two appointments an hour and that the night shift had already done the call offs for that day. I was glad to see that I would be working with Haley. She is one of our top photographers and one of my favorite people to work with. I was also kind of relieved because I knew that with her there I would most likely not be in the camera room, but be on enhancing and sales. I like being the photographer, don't get me wrong, but day after day with no day off, it can get pretty tiring. So I was pretty excited to get a break. Well Haley calls me and tells me that she is way sick and is not able to come in that day. I tell her that I can't handle it by myself so she needs to get her shift covered. She ends up coming in anyway. She works for a little while, but is just too sick. She is fortunate enough to find someone to come in right away so that she can leave. I thought that would be fine because we had enough people to handle the appointments. However, Haley was supposed to work the entire day, and she only got her morning shift covered. The morning shift is there from 10 to 2 and then we close the studio down for an hour, and the next shift comes in at three. Well, I realized that Haley had not gotten her whole shift covered, so call her and leave a message that she needs to come back in at three. We have three appointments in that hour, but Jessica won't be here until 3:30 because she has class. Wayne will be there at three, but he is not trained in photography, so it is pretty vital that Haley be there.
So anyway, I go home at two when my shift is over and just hope that Haley got the message. I figure that if she hasn't Wayne will just give me a call and I will run back down there and cover for Haley until Jessica can come in at 3:30 and handle things from there. Well, I didn't get a call so I figure everything went alright. That night Heidi called me and told me that she had to run to Salt Lake City the next day or else she was going to fail her class. I tell her that we have about five appointments the next day, and without her help only four people to do them. I tell her to try to find someone to cover her shift, but if she can't then we will just have to make it work. The next morning I wake up to a text from Haley saying she is too sick again to work and asked if I would go open for her. I tell her about how Heidi is not coming in, so that leaves us two short, but apparently she was throwing up all night so there was nothing she could do about it. I am sorry she is sick, but was seriously getting worried about how we would survive that day being so shorthanded. I get to the studio earlier than usual, just to try to make a game plan for how to handle things. As soon as I walk through the doors I am instantly bombarded by a J C Penney's manager. She informs me that NO ONE showed up for the Thursday night shift. Not Haley. Not Wayne. Not even Jessica. The studio was never re-opened after lunch, and we had six appointments show up to a dark and deserted studio. The J C Penney's managers got all of our complaints, and none of them are happy with us. This particular manager starts yelling at me.... as if it were my fault?!... but I just listen and take it and apologize that she was inconvenienced. I then make my way to the studio and look up our appointments for that day.... and literally start to freak out. There are SEVEN appointments in the first hour, not five like I thought. And without Haley and Heidi, there are only two of us working, not three like I thought. I seriously start panicking! We have two appointments at 10:00. One at 10:10. One at 10:20. Two at 10:30. And one at 10:40. I started a calling frenzy. First I called a manager and asked her what to do. All she said was that Haley would be written up and to just do the best I can. It didn't really help. I start calling every single employee, trying to find someone to come in and help us out. Three people are out of town. Two people are sick. I finally get a hold of Ashley P. and Megan and they are willing to rush down and help us out, even though neither of them were even scheduled that day. They literally saved our butts, I don't know how we would have done it. Ashley M. and I are the photographers that day, so we take turns in the camera room, we were a little behind schedule, but all things considered I think we were surviving fairly well. However, that day I had three J C Penney's managers come and yell at me for Thursday night and Angela the district leader call and yell at me too. I don't really understand why everyone thinks this was my fault or responsibility, but I was pretty close to breaking point with everyone talking to me like that.
So anyway, we get our early morning shift appointments taken care of and send Ashley P. and Megan home, thanking them profusely as they leave. We think we have everything under control, and are starting to breath easy again. Little did we know.....
One of our appointments shows up 15 minutes late.... that is a HUGE problem at the studio because it really, really puts us behind. I rush her into the camera room, but am kind of worried because we are starting to get backed up and Devil Woman (that's what I call her) has six kids under the age of twelve. She wants individuals of all of her kids. Then she wants to change everyone's outfits and do the girls together, and then the boys together. I already know it was going to take forever even before we started, and Devil Woman is so agitated and ornery that I know I am in for a real treat. So I start taking the boys individual pictures, everything is going pretty smoothly. We then start taking the one year old's pictures. Devil Woman brought in some flowers to be in the pictures for the babies, but one of the flowers had popped off its stem and she started looking for it frantically. We can't find it anywhere, after searching FOREVER, so I say we just need to move it along because we are getting really behind now and it was cute with the flowers she did have. That really set Devil Woman off. She gets mad at her oldest son because she thinks it's his fault that the flower is missing. She grabs him by the shoulders and starts shaking him and calls him a stupid idiot. She then tells her four year old to stop being such a dumb ass. I was shocked at how she was talking to her kids. It was so uncalled for. Tensions are running pretty high, and I am doing the best I can to move things along because we have two appointments already out waiting for their turn. Devil Woman changes everyone's clothes and we start on the group shots. We get the boys done and start on the girls. Then the oldest boy finds the missing flower, and Devil Woman says she wants to change the babies clothes back so we can re-do the pictures we have already taken. I nicely, put my foot down and tell her that we just don't have time to do what we have already done again. She then throws, and I mean literally throws her baby to the ground, a drop of about five feet. The babies teeth jam up into her upper lip and she starts spurting blood everywhere and is screaming her head off. Devil Woman yells at the baby to "shut the hell up", then yells at her other kids for being no help, and by then I had had it with her! I tell her that she does not need to take her frustrations out on her kids, it made me so angry that she just abused her kids, and felt no remorse for it. She then runs to me, puts her face an inch from mine, and says as loudly as she can "Don't tell me how to raise my kids, you bitch!" I was appalled! She had NO right to talk to me like that or to abuse her kids! I was furious. I started enhancing her pictures, and Ashley came in to set up for the next sitting, when she saw my face she asked if I was ok. I started bawling. I couldn't take it anymore. I had had enough. That was the final straw to the worst day at work I have ever had. I spent the next twenty minutes going in and out of the bathroom, trying to gain some control, but I was literally having an emotional breakdown. I was hyper ventilating and crying and shaking so bad I couldn't even hold a pen. Ashley finally just told me to go home and she would handle things. I had no choice. I had no control, and had to leave. I don't know what came over me or why I couldn't handle that. I seriously lost it. I made the biggest fool of myself that day, I am so embarassed. But enough was enough, and I had enough!
I am going to re-pay Ashley for being so sweet to me that day. I don't know what I would have done if I was forced to stay. I am still pretty upset with all of my other co-workers for being so irresponsible about their shifts because the people who actually show up to work are the one's who suffer. What makes me even angrier is that there won't be any consequences to deal with for them. They are all quitting their jobs anyways, so pretty much couldn't care less. My job just keeps getting more and more stressful every single day. I am at the point where I dread going to work. I dread the customers, the appointments, working with people I am so angry with. I am stressed. I am tired. I wish I was done too, but I unfortunately need the money. I have been frantically looking for another job, but so far nothing has come from anything. I wish with all of my heart that I could quit. I have never wanted anything more. Life at the studio is hell.... always!
