Good point, restoman. As usual, I fail to look at the silver lining which in this case is that my boss has faith in me to make things happen. Thank you for that.
The funny thing is, we had our nationally-acclaimed "Tech Expo" this past weekend, which our franchise chain invented and presents every year, and I came back feeling pretty positive about my gig (more on that in an upcoming thread)... but I still feel that if I have to staff and schedule two stores, there needs to be some kind of compensation increase--and a considerable one. Is that not fair?
Also, the stress level that had subsided started to go back up today when I was informed that one of my potential hires--a good kid, reminiscent of Lance from Esky who went from part-time driver to store manager in about 17 months--cannot be hired because his driving record is outside the acceptable standards. This kid's been begging for a job for over a year, now has his automotive technician's associate degree, and has proven himself exceptionally bright. I finally get an opportunity to put him on the payroll, and he has one too many tickets right now. :doh: I'm keeping his application at the front of the stack, and when I get clearance, he's got a job. It broke my heart to tell him we couldn't hire him, both for him and I. The kid's got real potential. Now I have to find someone else to take that job. It's frustrating. The bright spot is that the guy I can hire has several years behind a counter, so he's only really got to adapt to our computer system and he'll be good to go. Great personality, friendly, and knowledgeable.
Here's the entire story: Corporate bought a privately-owned store, expecting that the manager would stay on. She didn't. They had no Plan B, so they took one of my countermen--the one that's my best worker. Monday, my other counterman quit; he gave me a week's notice. I'm happy for him and am glad he feels he's bettering himself, but he left me in a bit of a bind with the short notice. He didn't have a choice, though, and I don't hold anything against him personally. One of my drivers (Sarah) left on vacation for 8 days today and the other (Cathy-Lee) has a limited schedule in my store because she works another job. That would have left me alone in the store after 1PM Monday, all day Tuesday, and after 3PM Wednesday and Thursday of next week. So, I call my boss and tell him, "You need to figure out something for Norway." I told him the situation, and his response was, "I suggest you start making phone calls and working out a schedule that will staff both stores." Wait a minute--it's the district manager's job to make sure the store has a manager, and that manager's job to adequately staff it. It's not as if I didn't already have my hands full trying to re-staff my own store with interviews, driver's-license checks, background checks, scheduling drug tests and physicals--he has to whine to me about how thin he's spread? I am doing all of this on top of the day-to-day running of the store, for Pete's sake. On top of that, since corporate had no Plan B for the store they just acquired, I'm supposed to re-staff that one as well, out of my own store?! Only because restoman pointed it out, I appreciate the faith he has in me... but come on. This is relatively insane. I barely have time to provide the customer service on which I pride myself. I must say, I'm a tad irate at corporate for not having an alternate game plan on this newly-acquired location, and I'm even less impressed that I'm supposed to work it out on a week-to-week basis.
From the looks of it, I'll be doing all the managerial legwork for the store for the foreseeable future since they still don't have a manager. They knew they were buying that store possibly as far back as October, and as of today they still have no plan in place as to how they're gonna staff it... so it falls on me.
And people wonder why I drink?!