Wal-mart: Your one stop mom and pop shop

After seven days of work, I finally made it to my days off.  My first day off went well, did some much needed resting and not much else.  Tomorrow will be much busier with having to grocery shop and having to run errands around town since I get paid.  So what news is there to talk about?

For one, my job has decided to start cutting hours again.  I've gone a pretty long while without having my hours drastically cut besides the usual time during a holiday where they don't want to pay us for an extra day of work so they end up giving people a third day off during the week.  This time though they have started cutting hours during a non holiday week.  It makes no sense why they need to cut hours.  They are probably the largest retail company in the world and make billions a year and yet they act like they are hurting for money constantly to the point the have to make sure that no one is getting over time and that they can't afford to pay us extra for a holiday.  Make any excuse you want but as a company that makes as much as they do, they should be able to afford paying their employees more then they do and provide better for them.

Speaking of the pay, that is another stupid thing they have decided to do recently.  Their decision to raise employee wages has turned out to be another crock of shit.  So they raise everyone who is under nine dollars up to nine dollars and anyone over that gets a two percent raise.  Next year they are supposed to bring everyone up to ten dollars an hour.  That means that since I've been there for three years, not counting the other five or six years of experience I have in retail, I'll be making as much as someone they just hired after six months.  That is just plan stupid and makes me madder then it should.  I feel bad for the people who have capped wages there at this point.  They didn't get any kind of raise and even people who aren't at cap but are making much more then the minimum didn't get anything.  Department managers at my store have it worse.  They were supposed to go up to thirteen and fifteen dollars an hour depending on their area of work and how many employees they might have but instead they are going up to eleven and thirteen dollars an hour.  I guess the notice they gave us about the changes to pay and scheduling was more of a guideline then an actual set in stone thing.

My solution to all this would be this.  Raise everyone up to at least ten dollars an hour.  After that, for every year you have been with the company, you get a dollar raise per year.  That would put me up to thirteen dollars an hour and I'd be fine with that.  You might be thinking, what if they raise minimum wage across the country?  That would raise everyone up even further.  That's if Wal-mart doesn't find a way to keep us from getting paid a fifteen dollar an hour minimum wage by only giving it to new employees and not compensating the rest of us.  You may think that it wouldn't be possible but look how shady the country has been operating when it comes to employee costs and benefits.  It's disgraceful.

To change the subject, have you ever had an ex that you haven't spoke to in several years that decides to randomly message you?  I mean you haven't talked to them for a really good reason, like they did something terrible enough to you that you never want to hear from them again.  Well that happened to me the other night.  My most recent ex decided to message me, in World of Warcraft even, and ask me how I was doing.  I sat there looking at the message almost bewildered.  Why would she even want to talk to me after how much I've told her that I hate her and never want to hear from her again?  I was debating on responding to the message but decided to just block her new character and saved myself the stress of the situation.  I don't need her talking to me again.  The only reason she would be that I can think of is that she is in some kind of trouble and is looking for a way out.  That's how its always been with her.  Her current boyfriend has probably wised up to her game and realizes that he got himself in a worse situation then he could imagine.  With a child no doubt.  All I can say is that if she leaves him, I hope he does his best to keep the child from her because the kid deserves a better life then what she'll provide.  I'd tell the story about how she left me but it's honestly not worth my time.  She is a worthless person in no need of attention.

On a lighter note, Fall is coming into swing as Halloween and Fall decorations have started popping up in retail everywhere.  Along with that comes all the pumpkin flavored things.  So far we have yogurt, cookies, peanuts, ice cream, coffee creamer, and spice rolls.  I've decided to try and document as many things as I can this year and see what kind of crazy stuff they come out with.  My girlfriend doesn't like pumpkin but I do.  I may try out some of this stuff while I'm at it.  

Nothing of note on my book at the moment.  I've taken a little break from it and have continued to look up information about how to improve my story and edit my chapters.  The only new things I've done is touch up some of my character information but other then that it has remained in standby.  I feel like this may be another hurdle I'll have to overcome because right now it is requiring me to do research to continue and while I've been at home lately I've been preoccupied with other things.  I feel like a little break will help me to keep going though and hope to start it back up in another week or so.  If not then I'll definitely be reporting it on here.

That's all I have for now but thanks again to everyone who is reading, if you're out there, and I hope to see you all in the future.