this work week's been rough lads

edit: wow this became longer than i thought. if anyone actually reads to the end, youre a kind soul.

my manager L, who is also one of my best friends, has been giving me more responsibilities at work, because she trusts and believes in me. i'm the senior employee besides her and the assistant manager, B. i have six years of experience and am reliable. but boy am i not confident in my abilities with doing the produce order, for example. and this past week, B has been out on paternity leave, which means L has had to leave some of her responsibilities to me so she doesn't have to work more than 40 hrs. this past saturday, our delivery truck was 4 hours late, which is a huge problem if youre a small mom and pop grocery store. L also told me that she ordered down for that day, because she knew i would be unloading the truck by myself. 

it was probably one of the biggest produce orders ive seen in awhile.

it took me two hours to unload the main order (4 pallets, which is rare for a normal weekend where i work. for those of you that work at large grocery stores, im so sorry). There was also an Amish delivery and a local farm delivery (those were on time thankfully, but with the main order being so late, the normal chain of events was so thrown off that that didn't matter). 

our store is small. every square inch of space is in use. i will admit that it is a hazard to move around and carry heavy shit in the receiving area because of the literal climbing over stuff and around ppl i have to do to get around. i can lift 50 lbs, but it aint easy at all (not to mention ive been dealing with chronic back and neck pain my entire post-pubescent life). but thats besides the point. the point is, L told me she ordered light, and she absolutely did not. like not even a little bit. 80% of what i received couldn't just be immediately put away - shit had to be tetrised and moved around and finagled, and all of the apple and pear boxes (6 or 7 total) had to be left out of the walk-in all day. that isn't ideal, obviously. not to mention a very annoying and useless coworker, we'll call him S, came in at noon, and promptly got in my way. he has no autonomy, and i kept having to stop what i was doing to find SOMEthing for him to do. he is......... physically unable to help me with the truck unloading (that is NOT why he is useless as a coworker - it is his attidude and morals) so he just kept standing there asking me what to do. he's been with us for 2 years and should be fully capable of figuring that out. 

at my store, our standards are very high in terms of the quality of fresh produce on the shelf. we are located in an upper middle class to lower upper class area, and our customers are very entitled. so every day we have to quality check certain items (all packaged salads, and all berries). S cannot do this either, because he has proven more than once that he doesn't see what we see when it comes to quality - he has been trained multiple times but still fails at this task. it was very difficult finding things for him to do that weren't completely pointless but also kept him out of my way. and he actually copped an attitude with me too, multiple times. but i digress.

after talking to L about her huge order, she admitted that she screwed up. L is not the kind of person to do something like this on purpose - not even slightly. but she IS the kind of person to let her menstrual cycle, her exhaustion and burn-out, and her stress and urgency affect her performance. to put it nicely, she could've utilized that day's inventory better when she submitted the saturday order.

that sunday and monday, i was supposed to be the solo mid-shift again. she was already well over 40 hours. but She. Came. In. Anyway. sunday i can see coming in because she felt so bad about that saturday and wanted to help clean up some of the (her) mess. but monday i was supposed to let her know if she needed to come in again. I told her no multiple times, but she showed up and was like "oh i just now got your text, i was already in the car lol hehe whoopsies" and like. i was infuriated. L herself will admit that she has control issues, so i have no problem saying those issues came out to play. i know she wanted to help, but it was completely unnecessary, as she did quite a lot of damage control sunday. i felt bad for being so angry, but i couldnt help it. and she made it clear that while she was there, i was still to do the order (if youre going to come in to help, why not just do the fucking order yourself, L???? fuck!! you know i fucking hate doing it!!!)

sigh. idk. part of me knows that she only meant to help, but the other part is like "she still couldn't leave you alone to handle monday, even after saying four different times on sunday how much she hoped she wouldnt have to come in." and it kind of felt like she saw how saturday went and somehow saw my performance then as inadequate, so she felt like she had to come in to babysit for a couple hours.

tomorrow is the start of my work week, and it will be another weekend of me covering for L. REALLY hoping it goes better this time.