#ac rants

I love that I am writing dialogue, internal and external, and I am trying to keep it informal because it's the dialogue of a 23-year-old who is not being grammatically correct in her head or in casual conversation with her peers, but Grammarly and spell check is telling me I am wrong.

I want to be wrong it's important to show the humanity in your characters, they have flaws, they mess up when speaking, they have random thoughts pop into their heads, and most importantly they speak colloquially. They are not grammar teachers or people who have PhDs in English or anything like that and I feel like this is something that people forget about.

I want my character to be a person who is in no way perfect so why should the way they think or perceive things be that way. When writing a story from the characters point of view, it is important that the perspective is unique and spellcheck is a constant reminder that I am doing that and it is technically wrong, but I refuse to change that part of my writing, especially at the part of the story for the character.

Being grammatically correct isn't the top of my MC's priority list so she is gonna say random crap that doesn't always makes sense but that makes her a character that can be related to. Anyways I can keep going but I have to get back to writing. This was just a little rant because the squiggles under my writing is distracting me.

So, let me tell you all what exactly happened today that drove me into tears for two hours straight at work.  

I was doing my job, it’s a Friday, so yes, I understand it’s busy.  I’m the only one working in the Money Center while one coworker was at her lunch and the other was out on a register.

I don’t have a really long line and I’m flying through it with a smile and confidence especially since I would have been off in about 2 and half hours.  I get a lady who interrupts the gentleman I’m helping.  I keep quiet as the man tells me how rude she was for doing that.

The very next customer is the lady and let me tell you I had no idea what kind of hell she was gonna put me through.  She wanted to pay a bill, okay cool.  I pulled up everything on my end and waited for her to show me her ID so I could verify the information I needed to.  She shows it to me and we start processing stuff when she starts handing me money (100s and 20s in random order) and tells me to count it all in front of her.

I do so, taking my time with counting just to be sure of the amount she handed me.  She keeps belittling me while doing so, calling me stupid and deaf.  Her daughter tells her that she should have counted before making me doing all this work, but she tells her daughter to shut up.

How this is my job and if I know what’s go for me I would do it right.  Okay, at this point, I’m paging for help from anyone.  She does things to make me nervous and I’m not comfortable anymore.  She keeps having me recount the money over and over and 25 minutes into this, I now have a huge line of people who are all agitated and angry. 

The lady has gotten louder in her insults and I can see people stepping out of the line flagging people down who are my coworkers who simply walk away from them.  At this point, this lady has de-humanized me to the point that I’m near a panic attack trying to stay together.

35 minutes into this, she wants to add 8 dollars onto the transaction which I have to abort the current transaction to start over.  She is angry and keeps hurling insults my way.  At this point, I’m almost in tears, I’m shaking, and I’m obviously stressed about this whole thing.

Finally I get the transaction completed just how she wanted and she steps to the side to allow the next gentleman to come up to the counter. I start the transaction with a small smile and then I realize I am crying.  The man tells me how I should keep my chin up and take a moment to calm myself down.

He comments loud enough for the lady to hear that some people are just cruel bitches who enjoy making people’s days horrible.  She huffs and stands outside the Money Center for an additional 20 minutes hurling more insults at me.

The people in the line are clearly upset by this and start shooing her to go away while complimenting me and I even got a few job offers.  Two hours later I am able to leave my register and I go to my manager and simply look at her, with tears in my eyes asking why did no one come to help me.

She takes me to the office and hugs me.  My manager had been on lunch when this whole thing had gone down and the person left in charge had blatantly ignored my cries for help.  16 people have complained to my managers for the lack of response to my situation.

I have been asking the same question all day since it happened, “What the hell did I do to make someone so upset at me that they had to degrade me and humiliate like that until I began to cry?”

And I realize it’s not me. It’s the customer, that single person.  Those of us who work in Customer Service or Retail struggle through something like several times in our careers because people think we don’t know what we are doing.

I’ve never been so upset at something like to the point that I dread going to work now because this has affected me negatively.  I shake when I count money now. I’m scared to answer the phone in fear of being yelled at.  I’m afraid to page for help because I don’t think anyone is gonna  help me.

And by God, if you’re reading this, please don’t ever treat Retail workers or Customer Services workers like this.  DON’T TREAT ANYONE LIKE THIS.  This does damage to people.  They have feelings just like you. They have enough to worry about, making them cry or quit won’t make anything better.

Remember, Be Kind. Be Nice, Be Polite.  If You Can’t Do Any Of That, Stay Inside Where We Don’t Have To Worry About Your Negativity.

I noticed that the last few I reported and blocked had usernames that weren't a jumble of letters and numbers, like they'd actually been made by a real person.

Story Time!!

So, my wonderful job decided that it does not care to actually verify anything and prefers to throw its employees to the nearest cliff.  So, currently, I’m making a move to transfer to another location.

Because hey, I guess they don’t have to do anything by the rules until someone gets higher management involved that could literally destroy them.

So, I ended up getting a two day suspension from work because the CSMs (Customer Service Managers which are just glorified higher cashiers) that were on duty decided that doing their jobs were too much work.

Why the two day suspension? They decided after one customer complained (btw this lady was absolutely horrible, her husband was a sweetheart) that I had shorted her a 100.  Instead of counting my draw and checking one of the 4 cameras that were there, they faulted me immediately.  They took the customer’s information and took 100 out of my draw shortening me and getting me into serious trouble.

I was then locked out of my register and sent home, only to be called back because they were short staffed.  I couldn’t do anything so I refused to go back in.  Instead, I reached out to Corporate and they sent someone out immediately to fix this.  

So, let alone was my check was messed with I had almost been fired for something I never did.  So, I was pretty done.  

So, Saturday comes around and I go into work, head held high because I’m either leaving with my job or I’m leaving without one because I wasn’t getting fired for something like that.  The sight I got to see was so sweet that I almost felt bad.

The three CSMs, Two Managers, and Coporate were there.  Two of the CSMs were in tears, and the Coporate manager was not happy.  She was standing with a folder and a clipboard.  Her arms were crossed and she actually brightened up seeing me and I was surprised to hear that the two CSMs who had given me the two day suspension actually had no right to suspend from work.

I was informed that they were being fired and I was issued a formal apology on behalf of my job.  They will be fixing my pay check which I wasn’t even aware was a problem until they told me.  I was also approved for my transfer and will be transfering to a new location in about two months once the remodel on the other store is fixed.

But a formal apology won’t fix the damage done to me. Done to my hard working reputation that I’ve slaved myself over.  I had once been proud of the work I did, the achievements I did.  The smiles I recieved from customers.

Now?  I’m so bitter that this was so abruptly taken away from me.  I worked so hard for my reputation as a hard working employee who had respect and was honest.  That’s gone, shattered by lies and jealously that ruined it.

Once I transfer, I’m never looking back because this was horrible.  I lost so many hours of sleep. The nightmares of losing my job so overwhelming.

I stressed so much over this whole situation I made myself sick.  And what did I get for this whole thing? A formal apology, a fucked up paycheck, and the satifaction of having two people fired for their fuck ups.