Diary of An Edinbugh Sales Assistant

I have just finished filling out an application form to be a "Health Care Assistant" (a nurse that doesn't have a degree LOL). I fit the criteria, perfectly. The only thing I can see that they might not like so much is my availability. It is quite limited due to school. But not to worry, my friend is giving me the number for NHS Lothian tomorrow, they will take anybody and availability doesn't matter as they have a very very very big bank of Care Assistants!!

Woohoo!!!! This is my ticket out of the hell hole I call work!!!!!

xx

OK, so I was at work yesterday and it was Suzanne in and she was lovely as usual. I felt pretty much OK for the whole day, I was on the till for a quite a lot of the day, the kids department was fairly quiet.

So we get to the end of the day, and one of my friends, J had mentioned that he'd had his salary raised. He now gets £5.75 an hour. All the other staff who've been with the store have had this raise and I have not. Firstly I would like to know why they feel I do not deserve this raise and secondly I just found out that one of the new girls is earning £5.70 an hour!!!! Now I know it is only an extra 25p an hour...but over a year that gives me £78 extra!! Not huge, but for a student definitely significant!!

It's also just the principle of it, I'm not a bad worker. I'm really really not. I'm not lazy, I don't skive, I've never ever had a duvet day and I've always volunteered to do more hours if they need me and things like that. I am an extremely hard worker and all my work goes unnoticed!! I mean, as shoppers you probably don't realise how much work sales assistants have to do...at least at my workplace we have to work our butts off!! We are constantly under pressure to approach customers, keep selling them accessories and add ons, yet all at the same time keeping the store tidy, keeping our conversion rates high and "using our own initiative and treating the store like our own business and wanting it to succeed." Now, I don't need to be the manger's favourite worker or anything like that. But having the work you do acknowledged is the minimum they can give me. LOL I know I sound like such a cry baby but this did bring me to tears yesterday. I just feel that the managers really push me down and keep me down every step of the way. As my boyfriend put it yesterday It's like everybody else is getting goodies and you're not, but on top of that they're beating you up as well. (To put a very childish playground analogy on it).

TBH, there will be plenty of other jobs I have to do where I'll be treated like crap...for example....as a junior doctor....(lol i am very dedicated to being a doctor, can you tell?) But at least everybody will be treated like crap.

I've come to the conclusion that I'm gonna go find a new job. My exams end on Tuesday, I'll go out and distribute CVs and things after that I'm totally sick of this place. I don't want to have to cry like that every single week. I am worth something and I do not deserve to feel this badly about myself!!

Hey, sorry I haven't posted for a while. I've been busy...what with it being my mum's birthday and my exams starting!!

Things at work are now looking suprisingly good. Over the next couple of weeks it will only be Suzanne in on a Sunday, so thats good for me!! I mean the favouritism is still very evident and I still don't like it, but I've got the more important thing, being treated better and with some respect!!!

Lemme tell you a (kind of) funny story. Two weeks ago (14th Jan) I was at work, lunch time, I go to reach for a glass to get a drink of water. Only there aren't any glasses I can reach (I'm really short....only 5"1!!). So, I climb up on a chair to reach one higher up. The chairs we have in the staff room are all pretty cheap and nasty...ykno the ones you get from Ikea or something. The back of the chair is basically to pieces of metal held together in the middle by several more pieces of metal, spray painted to a nice silver colour. Well anyways, as I'm stepping down off my chair I slip and manage to fall onto one of the bits of ,metal sticking up at the top of the chair....ha ha. One more inch to the right and it would have been a rectal exam I would never forget ha ha. So, my entire body weight on the chair...ouchies. LOL. I had to be sent home from work (thank god it was Suzanne in that day, she was so lovely to me.) and my bum has been bruised for two weeks. In the first week I couldn't even sit on the toilet properly LOL. On the plus side, I got to show my ass to a hot guy at work.....that wasn't really much fun...

LOL don't laugh too hard at me...it was actually a very painful experience. But hope that brightened your day a little bit. My friends are all still peeing themselves laughing at me.

Love lots xx

Let me confide in you something that Suzanne told me...

"Yes, Glinda does have a problem with you, I personally don't know what it is. I think you work very hard, but yeah she has mentioned it once or twice. I think it might be because you work so few hours a week. She doesn't think you're committed enough to the store; she was fine with you when you worked full time in the summer wasn't she and the problems started when you went back to school..."

Now if this is true, then I am really very angry, since she is not meant to be looking at how many hours I am working, but the quality of my work. However, over the Christmas break I have been working extra shifts and things to earn a bit extra basically. She has been really lovely towards me, treating me like everybody else and like I would expect to be. This really adds credibility to what Suzanne has told me. However, I found out recently that St Andrew's University are offering me an unconditional offer to study there. So, perhaps Glinda is in a better mood because she knows if I were to accept the offer I would only be with them a max. of 6 more months?

Another theory I have, is that, of course, Glinda has been under a lot of pressure recently, this being the store's first Christmas; so we are expected to do very well. However, should she not be professional despite that? You would think she wants to keep experienced members of staff at a busy time of year!! But she was really worried her boyfriend would leave her due to her working long hours at the shop (shows how secure she is and how much she really trusts him eh??) anyway, he actually proposed!! From what I hear he's a lovely guy and I'm very happy for her, so maybe this has been a big relief for her? So she is just more cheerful in general?