Being happy at work depends on a lot of factors. One of those is, for sure, having coworkers who try to make everyone’s life as easy as possible.
When they don’t, nothing ever turns out all that well.
OP worked in a retail environment that was a well-oiled machine.
A bit of backstory: This was during my time I was working in retail, everyday, my department would get pallets of merchandise that needed to be stocked, usually after my coworkers and I would leave for the day, just before closing (I would work closing one week, opening shift the following week, weekends off).
During that time, we would have several groups of overnight coworkers, assigned to different departments to stock merchandise brought in on the delivery tucks, and then put any overstock in the back, clean up the cardboard boxes.
The opening shift would take care of any overstock pallets the overnights didn’t have time to get to. Every week, each group of overnight employees would be rotated to different departments.
Unfortunately there was one group of overnight employees that had a bit of a reputation for being lazy, and those guys where assigned to my department for the week.
At the time when this happened, I was working my opening shift (years before COVID).
The wrongs being done during the week wasn’t so much being done to just me, it was being done to my other coworkers in my entire department.(so this was pretty much a group effort)
At least is was as long as the night shift did what they were supposed to do instead of leaving it for day shift.
On with the story: my coworkers and I, get to our department, to find 4 pallets of merchandise, saran wrapped, labeled as overstock.
We double checked the pallets, and the shelves, and find out that it needed to be worked. We were angry.
By that time, the department manager, and supervisor found out, and they were absolutely livid.
When they slacked off one too many times, OP had an idea.
So we ended up working the merchandise, putting them on the shelves.
I was getting ready to start breaking down the boxes, when I got this wicked idea.
My idea was to stack all of the empty boxes, like they where full, wrap them up, and label them as overstock, but I wanted to get the approval from my supervisor first.
When I talked to my supervisor, I mentioned what I wanted to do, my supervisor chuckled at the idea, approved it, and explained what had happened to him last year.
Apparently a year before, the overnight employees played a prank on him, on April 1st. They had left 2 pallets of “merchandise” wrapped up and labeled as overstock. He said he double checked, only to find out that all of the boxes on the pallets were empty.
He gathered all of us in the department, explained what we were doing, and we got to work.
They kept it up, with management’s blessing, and the night shift cracked.
The supervisor explained that if it should happen again, we should inform him, work the merchandise, restock the empty boxes as if they are full, wrap them, label them as overstock, and leave the pallets for the overnighters.
Unfortunately, my opening coworkers and I, were done for the day, we were at 2 pallets.
Fortunately, our closing coworkers were there, when the supervisor explained what he wanted done.
The next day, we walk in, more pallets of overstock merchandise, supervisor was informed, basically, rinse and repeat for the rest of the week.
And lost their jobs.
The last day of the week however, we walk in, to our surprise, there was only one pallet, it had 7 pallets stacked on top of it, with a handwritten “go **** yourselves” label on it.
We informed the supervisor, he informed us that the overnight group assigned to our department, were terminated by the store manager.
Reddit must love this streamlined response!
That’s a lot of leftover work.
Some people were a little confused by the story.
I guess they must have had a big building.
Mostly everyone was glad they didn’t have to work retail.
Good for them!
Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were travelling for business.