Always Low Expectations. Always.

I'm currently working for the largest private employer in America. I used to wonder why it is that people hate the company I work for so damn much. My current theory is that they actually hate themselves for not being able to stop themselves from giving me my paycheck.

The complaints that amuse me the most are the ones where people say that they're "forced" to shop at my store because they have no choice, that prices are so low that they can't afford to shop anywhere else. Such hypocracy really should be illegal. People, will you please have the courage of your own convictions? Nobody's holding a gun to your head and demanding that you make a mad dash downtown and gobble up that DVD player for $27.63 or else they'll splatter your brains all over the dashboard. I'm not the one who's single handedly driving the Mom n' Pop stores out of business. You are.

I spent some time a couple of days ago perusing a web site that includes former employees speaking out against the company with sob stories like:

"My supervisor asked me to cut some meat for a customer, but instead of telling him that I didn't have the training to safely operate the equipment, I tried to figure out how to work the meat saw on my own. Not only did I lose part of my hand, but I literally gave that customer a knuckle sandwich! It's all their fault!"

"I had so many tasks to accomplish that I decided to start taking my work home with me. I filled out supply orders while I watched TV and wrote my schedules during bathroom breaks. Since I never told my manager I was working off the clock, I never got paid for the overtime! Waaaah! It's all their fault!"

"I was working in the store overnight doing inventory when I hurt myself on the job. I was so angry at the managers for locking the front door and trapping me inside that I somehow completely failed to notice the 47 emergency exits located throughout the building! I had to sit around for six hours in horrible pain until the store opened the next morning, and it's all their fault!"

Just to be fair, I've got my fair share of gripes. In fact, when it comes to my job, I'm such a chronic complainer, both at work and at home, that even I'm sick of listening to myself whine. If I accomplish 28 tasks a day, my supervisors complain that I didn't get task #29 finished. I'm held to impossibly high expectations when it comes to keeping my merchandise in stock. I'm actually graded based on percentages, calculated to the decimal point, and so my daily thoughts are occupied not by being friendly or helping customers, but by maintaining my percentage each week. Just today, I was asked to come to work at four in the morning for the express purpose of checking my department for missing products, and not a single manager acknowledged the effort I made. Meanwhile, while the overnight stockers who actually receive and put away the freight have yet to be reprimanded for their inability to put my merchandise in the right area of the store, let alone on the right shelf in front of the right price tag. I bust my butt to do the best job I'm capable of doing, but I continue to be rated during my performance evaluations as merely "meeting expectations" because of one or two trivial ways in which I've failed to exceed. Nothing I do ever seems to be quite good enough, and lately my dreams have been plagued with visions of Godzilla-sized monsters or polar bears, insurmountable monsters who threaten both myself and my loved ones, clearly representative of the forboding, overwhelming odds I'm struggling with on a daily basis.

Maybe my perspective is different because I'm too busy doggy-paddling through a veritable tidal wave of anxious back-to-school shoppers who seem to blame me, personally, for their decision to wait until class has been in session for two weeks until they started venturing forth into the world for school supplies, and can't seem to understand how we could possibly have run out of 10-cent notebooks or 25-cent boxes of crayons. I don't have the luxury of propping my feet up on my desk at the office and pontificating about how multi-billion dollar corporations are responsible for low income levels and the steady decline of health care. To be perfectly honest, I usually don't think that big. (You could tell me that the planet Neptune exploded yesterday, and I seriously doubt it would affect my day-to-day life. I'll still have price changes to finish tomorrow and comparison-shopping that's due on Wednesday.)

I guess what I'm saying here is that despite my dissatisfaction, ultimately I'm thankful to have a job that pays reasonably well and gives me a mostly-predictable work schedule. I have time to spend with my girlfriend, get weekends off so I can see my kids, and have enough money to occasionally get silly trinkets off eBay.

Yes, there are a lot of things wrong with the world. Terrorists crashing planes into buildings. Hurricanes destroying people's homes. Children who grow up thinking their parents don't love them.

The fact that you can drive down the street at midnight and get a gallon-jar of pickles for three bucks? I really don't think that's one of them.