How Stores Save Money On Signage

This is from my friend Spritzy who blogs on Retail Hell Underground. I'm re-posting her rant here because this story is an excellent example of how companies take advantage of employees and make them do ridiculous things:

I swear, this company has lederhosen wearing monkeys cranking out the ideas for this place

So the other day our store was doing inventory, and we all know how time-consuming that nightmare is, and then management receives a e-mail.

Corporate had just notified our store of a sale that started the next day...the NEXT DAMN DAY!

They tell us about this "urgently important" sale that's starting the next day that we have to prepare for immediately...in the midst of FUCKING INVENTORY!

One of the parts of prep for this sale was to make a big sandwich board sign proclaiming the vast wonders of this sale.

We have to make this sign...by hand...with our own supplies.

Let it be known that no more than a couple months ago our company announced that they were gonna spend several million on new signage in the next year or so and yet they can't send us a fucking sandwich board?

Now this can't be just any old higgldy-piggldy thrown together sign. It's gotta look "professional" and "perfect" Oh yes! And it has to be made in three hours with some bent up craft board and six half dead permanent markers. Riiiiiiight.

They had another associate start with the sign because they didn't know I was there. And as the token artist of the establishment they sent me to asisst as soon as they saw me. The poor girl was working as fast as she could stenciling out letters and trying to manage the repeated pages she was getting for her dept.

I was filling in the letters with the dried up markers and a manager came in to berate us both for such poor quality work and for taking too long and "wasting valuable man-hours."

Well if corporate could get their shit together and give us more than 12 hours notice for a sale and actually use some of that fucking multi-millions to send us a sign instead of expecting us to throw one together with sub-par supplies then we wouldn't be in this situation now would we?

They even had the gall to tell the poor girl she'd have to take the sign home and work on it in her own time if she didn't finish it. Not only is that highly illegal but it's unreasonable and unfair.

We got it done with me staying late to help but if we hadn't and they made her take it home I woulda reported them like a old lady reports a wild party.

And to make things even better, Corporate's intention for the sign was to put it outside in front of the store...great so we're doing all this work only to have it blow away in ten minutes if it doesn't fall apart from the rain or run over by a car.

Stupid fuckers...AUGH!

 

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[Regan]

*sigh*