“That’s a nice headset,” he puffed, "you get it here?”
“Yeah, paid for it.”
“Yeah, paid for it.”
“Who sold it to you?”
“Listen, Mr. Bombay, if it’s a problem, I’ll return it.”
“Just tell me who gave it to you.”
“I bought it.”
“Okay, brother, who did you buy it from.”
“I bought it from John and I have my receipt. If it’s a problem, I’ll return it.”
“No, it’s no problem.” He stomped out his cigarette and walked directly to his cage.
Within four days, Jerry had been relocated and John had been brought into the office. John was told that he should be extra careful about transactions of this type and that this should be considered his verbal warning. John expressly asked if he was getting written up and was assured nothing would happen at the time. It didn’t stop Cock Bombay from laying into him.
“How long you been working here, John?”
“Four years.”
“Do you like your job?”
“Yes,” he promptly lied. If this was just a verbal warning, it should be done by now. This additional harassment was unnecessary.
“How much did you make last year?”
“What? I don’t know, 40?”
“I do know, John. I have numbers here. You made $38,000 dollars in the last year. Not too bad. Do you know what Humberto made?”
“I don’t think I should know.”
“$50,000.”
“Okay. Why are you telling me this?”
“I’m telling you this because I want to give you the best example. You can make money if you work hard. It’s my job to be your manager. Do you know what a manager is? It’s a compound word. Two words together, ‘Man’ and ‘Ager.’ First you must be a man. I am a man. That is the first part of being a manager.”
Cock Bombay never went on to explain what an “Ager” was. We all have our theories. To me, he’s so frustrating that I think he “ages” me every time he talks. In response to him being a man, I must protest. A man does not transfer a security guard because that's the only muscle he can flex where there’s no Union to stop him. A man does not jump to uninformed conclusions that meet his desired end. A man does not disclose an employee’s salary as a means of threatening another. A man does not, when given pressure from the Bobble Head to clean house, go back on his word and terminate an employee for an offense that was said to end in a verbal warning.
John has just been handed his final paycheck. Cock Bombay has been store manager for too long without advancement. He has been failing. Feeling the weight of the acrylic piling up around him, he knows he is stagnating--even if he doesn’t know what the word means. He has only one card left to play. After 10 straight months of declining customer satisfaction numbers, team morale failing and the executives looking for an answer, Cock Bombay and the Bobble Head have developed a plan. They have decided to blame the recent shortcomings on a comfortable, experienced veteran staff. If only to buy themselves some time, they have asked permission to start over with fresh faces.
Since the executives are so sure that it is the system, not those employed by it, that is the secret to success, they have agreed. Those of us with 4-10 years of experience are on the chopping block. Our expertise in phones, special circumstances and problem-solving are worthless. In other industries, I get this. In some cases, you can pay three newcomers the same salary as one veteran and possibly get your money’s worth. But we are union! That means I can't even get a raise. In my tenth year of selling cell phones, I am making exactly the same hourly money as someone in their second year. I am your money’s worth! Instead, I have now started working twice as hard because I am answering questions from brand new coworkers every 10 minutes.
I’m not lying when I say this job took me over a year to grasp. And I don’t consider myself a slow learner. There are variables you can never plan for. It takes at least a year to learn all the avenues, the extra-company resources you need to use to expedite, the secrets, the passages. Two weeks of training are thrown right out the window when you meet your first “these options are not acceptable!” Training classes on customer service cannot prepare you for the customer who has been “paying thousands of dollars a month for 20 years and would simply like to be compensated for [their] loyalty!!” No amount of role-playing will give you the tools required to handle the nervous breakdowns, the tears, the crying out of “you don’t understand, everything I have is in that phone. My life is in that phone!!!"
