First, some background. For those of you who don�t know, I work for a small chain of adult video stores. I have been the manager of one of them for a little over a year now. I have to say that the owner and his right hand man are really two of the greatest guys I have EVER worked for. That being said, nothing is perfect.
I worked for this company at two other locations as a clerk before becoming the manager of the store I am currently at. And things were going good for the company, except for the store I am at now. Of course, I wasn�t there then, so I don�t know completely what the problem was. I can say though, with some degree of certainty, that it wasn�t the majority of the people working there. No, all the problems seemed to stem from the top.
So the company hired a private investigator to find out what the problem was. Actually, they already KNEW what the problem was. This guy was hired to gather evidence so the problem could be eliminated. This is very important. Keep in mind that this was the ONLY reason this guy was hired.
So a week or two after this guy is hired, my manager at the other store comes to talk to me about whether I would be interested in taking a management position at the store I am at now. He said to think about it for a while because there would be a lot more work involved, and the drive would be a lot further. Anyone who knows me knows I am NOT afraid of hard work. In fact, I am much more uncomfortable NOT working than I am with long hours and not a lot of free time. Other than this site and work, I pretty much HAVE no life, so what do I care about some work, right?
So I tell him, yes, I AM interested in the job, and he sets up a meeting with the two gentlemen I mentioned earlier. I go and talk to them, and they ask me questions, I ask them questions, we get everything squared away, and the job is mine.
Now at first, I was supposed to be running the store WITH this other guy, the previous manager, but it didn�t turn out that way. The day I was supposed to come down here to start, I get a call to go to the main office and I learn that the old guy is out completely, and that I will be meeting the security guy at the store and he will turn everything over to me. So I�m going in cold. No one knows me, and I know no one. Sure, I had a little help that first day from my old manager and the security guy, as well as the owner, but for the most part I was on my own.
And to be honest, like I said these people didn�t know a thing about me, so I could definitely understand some trepidation. Especially when two weeks into it I had to cut almost everyone�s hours. Yeah, great way for ME to start, huh? Luckily my winning personality helped me through. (And again, anyone who knows me understands that that was sarcasm right there.) For better or for worse I was now the boss, and everyone had to deal with it. Luckily there were some good people at the store, and we all found out quickly that cutting off the head really did pretty much solve the problem. Yeah, there was some tweaking left to do, but for the most part things started to improve rather quickly, which I think is a credit to the people who stayed on.
Okay, that should be enough background. The old manager was gone, the security guy had done his job and now it was time for him to go away. Only he didn�t. Instead, his job expanded until he was now doing spot-checks at all the stores. For what, we still don�t know. It will quickly become apparent that this guy was more of a burden than anything else.
When it became obvious that he wasn�t going away anytime soon, myself and the other store managers thought that we would be working WITH this guy to make sure all the stores were running �properly.� Although with each location having to cater to a different clientele, this could prove somewhat problematic with this guy wandering in and out. Especially once we figured out that he was working AGAINST us instead of WITH us.
At this point, we are all holding our tongues. At one point or another I believe all the managers of this company tried talking to our bosses about this guy, and the problems he was causing. But we only each mentioned it once, because it wasn�t doing any good, at least not right away.
So when I talked to my boss and let him know my concerns about this guy, I promised I would try to work with him. Cooperate with him and be at least polite when he showed up. After all, he had a job to do just like the rest of us. Unlike the rest of us however, his job was completely and totally unnecessary. And we also found out that he sucked at it. Big time.
Several times I caught him in lies. Sometimes lying TO me, and other times lying ABOUT me. Neither one made me very happy I can tell you, but there was nothing to be done about it at the time. Just give the big fat sack of useless enough rope and eventually he will hang himself.
Although this did become difficult at times when he would wait until I wasn�t there to come in and harass the clerks. He would literally sit somewhere that he could watch the store, and wait until I left to show up. More than once I learned the next day that he was there not ten minutes after I left. And I know he wasn't just going by the schedule because I almost never leave at the same time twice, and never when I am scheduled to leave. That and he was actually SEEN twice, sitting on a side road watching the store through binoculars � once by myself and once that a clerk told me about.
What was kinda funny was a couple of times after I got my new car, he showed up when he thought I was gone because he didn�t see the car he knew. The look of surprise on his face was priceless when I came out of my office while he was trying to hassle my clerks. Watching him deflate that quickly was one of the greatest things I have ever seen, and knowing I was the cause of it was one of the greatest feelings I have ever known.
Just in case it isn�t becoming apparent yet, I LOATHE this motherfucker. I wish him nothing but ill fortune and pain and suffering for the rest of his miserable existence. And normally I�m a nice guy. Just ask the three or four people who don�t hate ME.
Another time, he came to my store while I wasn�t there, (naturally,) and the clerks had taken a CD player out of my office and were listening to it on the counter. He wanted to write them both up for it, and I don�t want to sound like I�m tooting my own horn here, but I played it perfectly. One of the two clerks, whom I knew was leaving that week for another job, admitted to being the one who got the radio, and the one who supplied the CD. The other clerk had nothing to do with it, other than being there at the same time. So when the Captain Useless showed up and asked me if I had written them up, I told him the one guy admitted to being the one responsible, and the other guy did nothing wrong. He was forced to admit it wouldn�t be right to give a write-up to someone who did absolutely nothing to warrant one. This alone irritated the ass-monkey, since he really was searching for any excuse to (figuratively) screw this guy, because his girlfriend, who also worked for me, was hot, and he wanted to screw her too, (literally.)
So he was already getting pouty about not being able to write up the one guy, and he asked about writing up the other guy. This was the moment I had been waiting for. When I got to let him know that the other guy had officially quit about three hours before Mr. Security stopped by. I showed him the signed resignation, and he looked like I had just kicked his puppy or something. In five minutes he went from being the happiest guy alive because he was going to get to ruin someone else�s job, to seriously depressed because he got to do nothing at all. It was fucking great.
Recently things took a more serious downturn with this shitstain. He went to one of our other stores on the day the manager wasn�t there, (you see a pattern developing here?) and rifled through his office and changed his security cameras on him. One of the cameras was pointed at the door, so if there was a problem with any customer there was a clear video record of this person. But this big hairy nutsac wasn�t concerned about that. No, he wanted that camera to watch the clerks to make sure THEY weren�t stealing from the company, even though there already WAS a camera watching them. Like he told one of my clerks months ago when asked about the security cameras, �They aren�t really here to protect you. They�re here to protect the store FROM you.� If I was told this, I would have fucking quit on the spot, and made the fucking security guy stay there until someone else could have come in. And since the person he would have had to call is me, he would have been waiting a while, that�s for sure. He is convinced that every single person working for the company is a thief, even though the only one stealing from the owner is�MR. SECURITY GUY!
So he went to this other store, made all sorts of changes without discussing it with the manager, or even without the manager�s knowledge. And the same guy has been running that place for SEVEN FUCKING YEARS! What does this retarded bozo think he�s going to improve? So the manager quit. He was pissed, as I would have been too. And they needed someone to go down there. They asked me if I was interested in the job, which I wasn�t. I have already turned one store around, and now I believe it�s my turn to just sit back for a while and enjoy things running relatively smoothly. Like I have mentioned before, I think I have a good crew at my store, and I don�t want to have to start all over again.
But I did say I would help out temporarily, so I went down there for what was supposed to be no more than 30 days. Turned out to be less than that, thank God, but the point is I put my entire life on hold to go down there and help, while still running my own store. And this other place was 200 miles away to boot. Not a lot of fun, lemme tell you.
This is important to understanding just how pissed I got with what happened next. The manager from that store called and talked to the owner, and they apparently worked some stuff out because he got his job back, and everything was to go back to the way it was before I got there. I got to come home, which made me happy. I spent a few days working at my store, and then at long last I had a day off. It had been a while since I had had one of those, so I had been looking forward to sleeping in. Too bad that didn�t happen.
I got a call from the store about quarter to ten, saying this needledick had just been there, and was bitching and whining about how �filthy� the arcade area was. This was a Sunday morning, and they had just been thoroughly cleaned Saturday afternoon. Of course, we had a snowstorm Saturday night, but he didn�t want to acknowledge that. When he told the clerk to clean them, the clerk told HIM that it wasn�t his job, which it ISN�T. So the dickhead calls the owner at 9:30 on a Sunday morning, at home. Then I get another call about it, and I go down there. The trouser stain has already left, because he knows he will get an earful if he is still hanging around when I get there, especially after all I have done for the company, and then to be treated this way. I take pictures of the entire area, to show that he LIED and it wasn�t really dirty at all. Then I check the security tape and see that he barely looked at the area anyway, so how the fuck would he know if it was dirty anyway?
I was livid with this, screaming into the internet camera that I know he uses to watch the store. I invited him to come back while I was still there, which he apparently declined. Well, perhaps �invited� isn�t quite the word. Maybe �dared him to come back� is more of what I am looking for.
Then over the next couple of days I talked about this with the two gentlemen I work for, explaining to them exactly WHY I was so pissed about this, and that I don�t believe I have done anything to be treated like this. Y�see, this guy asked me to bring a few things back for him from the other store I was at, which I did. He said he would be there the night I returned to pick them up. But he didn�t show that night, or the next, or the next, or even the next, until the day he knew I had off. And then when he came in, he was pissed because things didn�t go the way HE wanted them to at the other store, and he needed to impose his authority on someone. Too bad for him that he picked the wrong person to fuck with, as no one at any of the stores has seen him since then. But if and when he does show up again, I�ll be there waiting for him. And it will NOT be pretty.
You�ve been warned, motherfucker.