Just When Things Were Looking Up

When I originally turned my computer on this was the post I was coming to write.
Then I got distracted by JT88  and his post about Bacon or whatever.
Then while opening all the blogs I wanted to read for the morning I found out that another random poker player out there has added me to his reading circle and became my 48th follower - Hot damn.
Most of my followers are poker players or interested in poker and I absolutely never talk about poker, weird shit :)

However - What I brought you all to talk about today is that ugly thing we all call work.
Specifically retail work, you know, since I work in a retail environment and all.

Things were finally looking up at work - they really were.
I supposedly manage two departments and both of those departments finally got to the point where they were fully and properly staffed so that I could actually manage instead of just also being a grunt with more responsibilities.
The slower of the two departments, Electrical, was up to 2 full time employees and 2 part time employees.  There was coverage for every shift and was even going to be some times where I might have more than one person working for a few hours.
The busier of the two departments, Plumbing, was up to 3 full time guys and a part time guy, Plus myself (since it's the busiest it is the schedule I am thrown onto).

For the last two weeks I have actually had about 50-60% of my own shifts where someone else was working and I was free to finish up some tasks and do my paperwork and whatnot.  It felt marvelous.

However, this is retail.
One part time guy in Electrical quit because the lifting was too much for his arthritis.  He thought he was going to be able to just help customers and not touch product.
The other part time Electrical guy has been sick for a week but assures me that he has doctors notes and documentation and all that happy horse shit so that he can retain his job - Looking forward to getting him back.
My full time CSA whom I had been working with to help get into a Department Manager role just got promoted (not to a manager position) and moved to the Millwork (doors and windows) department.

Neither of my two loses are going to be replaced.

So, in Electrical I have just enough coverage to fill the available shifts which means no overlap and no one actually gets to work together (which is a crappy way to be a worker if you are by yourself 90+% of the time).
In Plumbing I'm now back to being coverage at least 80% of the time I am working because the part time guy will be scheduled mostly to help out on freight days.

This is the wonderful world of retail, especially for a slower store.
The biggest issue is that the plumbing guy that I just lost is the one who was helping me out with most of my paperwork for his training - so I lost my right hand man.  A lot of that help is now going to have to be divided amongst the other 3 - two of them who are Brand Spanking New to the company and will take some time to get up to speed on everything.  One is an old curmudgeon who really just wants to do things his way until it's time to retire and fade away.

I got promoted and started working this store in October.  I started with 5 Employees and am down to 2 of the originals as I've had the other 3 promoted into other area's of the store.
So good for them but bad for me.

I have another week (I think) with good coverage in Plumbing to take advantage of but after that everyone is going to have to pick up the slack left by us losing 40 hours per week.

Oh, and corporate decided to block Google Drive access at work which really really sucks.
They are going to be rolling out that shitty Microsoft version of Office 365 or whatever it's called and they finally decided to block Drive which I used pretty much every single day.
I've got a lot of documents on there that I edit and print to help with my daily routines.
Now I'm forced to print them from home but can only edit them when I'm not working if I see changes that need to be done.
Two days ago I was just in there using them, yesterday it no longer worked as it was banned for being "Online storage device."
And we do not currently have access to the Office version.
Screw You Hippies.