Ask Lemmy

TL;DR I worked for a department store as someone who fetched large/heavy objects for customers. Coworkers smoked together outside multiple times on shift. I did not smoke. I took "smoke breaks" in the back break room whenever this happened and a newer middle manager tried to make me work while they smoked. This same manager would later get flustered when I offered to buy an old unsellable item for 10 cents USD and he agreed. I was serious, he was not!

In 2004, I worked for the moderately sized department store, K's Merchandise, before they went under. A few months before I quit, we got a new mid-level manager. He was a young guy with clear aspirations to move higher in the near future.

I worked as what they called a 600. I don't remember why it was called that, but my job, along with a couple other 600s per shift, were to bring up large couches, non-assembled furniture, and anything that was too heavy or bulky to exist on the floor. These items were stored in the back warehouse. I got a lot of daily steps in with this job for all the walking we did. When a customer bought one of the large warehouse items, we would grab an appropriate cart and bring it to the front to load for the customer. We would carry walkie-talkies and floor salespeople would call for us to come get a ticket with the item(s) to be pulled.

All of my coworkers at the time smoked and were permitted to take smoke breaks periodically. I didn't smoke, so any time they took smoke breaks, and they'd do it as a group with some others in the store, I'd be the only 600 available.

One day, my coworkers went to smoke with others, leaving me alone again. So, with my walkie still with me, I sat in the back and drank a small drink item from a vending machine in the staff break room. As I sat there drinking my...chocolate milk, I think, the newer middle management comes in from the back warehouse and asks me why I'm sitting down when I should be in the back sweeping the warehouse and other such stuff while business is slow.

I told him I was on a smoke break while the others were also on a smoke break. When he brought up how I was not smoking and needed to get back to work, I refused on principal as I felt I was being punished for not smoking. He wasn't pleased but just told me to keep the walkie close. I got to take little breaks like this whenever I was working with those other guys that smoked.

This was also the same manager that casually complained about some large mirror, with corkboard, set in a wooden frame that wasn't selling. I offered to buy it for $0.10. He laughed it off like I was joking and said sure. So I brought the item up front a little while later to ring it up. Told the cashier that the manager said I could get it for 10 cents. She congratulated me on my purchase.

As I was coming back inside after loading it into my FORD AEROSTAR van, the manager asked me if I had really purchased that thing for 10 cents and when I confirmed he said he never said that I could. I corrected him and brought up how others were there when he said I could. He had no choice but to let me keep it.

That mirror still has a place in my house, 20-years later!