welcome to the longest week in jane's life...

My week started off with lay offs at work. Our store manager called in each manager one by one and let them go. I spent 7 hours at work crying and wondering, Hey am I next? Am I unemployed? I am employed. They eliminated layers of management and condensed three managers positions into one and instead of offering it to one of the three managers whose positions were essentially eliminated, it was offered to me. I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing. But I do know I hate my job.

And I feel guilty. Guilty that three people lost their jobs so I could keep one and even more guilty that I have this job and I hate it and I'm going to quit the first opportunity I get. It sucks. It sucks because I don't want this position and I'm going to leave and yet someone lost their job. I feel ungrateful and foolish. But I absolutely 100% hate the job I was signed up to do.

And on a related note, Ron Johnson the CEO of jcpenney is an asshole. This multimillionaire "job creator" just cost an undisclosed number of people their jobs. Dear Ron Johnson, you want to cut 900 million dollars in 2 years? How about you and your apple buddies taking a fucking pay cut?

While I agree that there was too many levels of management and probably needed to be trimmed down, Mr. Johnson got a little scissor happy. And what's worse is all the management has an absurd level of responsibility yet the company didn't think it warranted a merit increase. Heads up Mr. Johnson, if you expect managers (I'm sorry, Service Lead Experts, yes take away any fictional authority we had in our names, thanks) to work themselves to the bone, you should probably compensate them for it. Especially when everything is thrown at us with sometimes only a couple hours warning. Retail shouldn't be a war zone Mr. Johnson, so why do I feel like I'm in combat every day.

Did you think about the effects of your actions by this, what I'm assuming is an insanely large number since it's been a week and it is being refused to be disclosed, massive exodus? Did you think about the associates who felt blindsided and now know that their "Service Lead Experts" are mere puppets in your own little Extreme Makeover: Retail edition? That they are now forced to have people that have no idea what they are doing over them just so you can cut money. Did you think about the customers, the few that we have, that have become accustomed to having associates help them or at least be at the register to ring them out? I can't even start to train in my position because my entire shift is consumed by associates needing help in their quads ringing out because they are short staffed and covering breaks because we are running on the very bare minimum of associates. So that means all the slack falls back on the Service Lead bullshit to carry it all, yet again, not being compensated for it.

This to me is a prime example of everything that is wrong with our country. Rich white men use their corporations (who are people) as a game of RISK. They gamble with people's livelihood, 401ks, and entire world and if they drop the ball, nothing happens to them. They sit at their million dollar mansion in Silicon Valley and contemplate their next venture. Meanwhile, the collateral damage, aka Middle America, is left seeping through the wreckage trying to understand how it came to this and where to go next. And that's the beauty of capitalism, right?!

I hope with all of my heart that Mr. Johnson's endeavor is in fact successful, that he re energizes the way we view retail and completely warps the retail store and becomes the front runner of all that great and awesome. Yeah. And it will be awesome to stick around and be apart of that if it does happen. But what if it doesn't? What if the American people never take to Mr. Johnson's idea of the retail store and it fails? Well I'm not willing to take that chance with my life. Some people may say you have to take a chance or you'll never really live. I get that, I do. I will put myself out there and tell someone I love them even if I don't know what they will say in response, I will take travel the world with no plans and only a bag on my back and see what happens. But when it comes to my career, my life, I'm not willing to see if some dude hundreds of miles away was right. It's a gamble, and part of gambling is losing. I'm not willing to lose this.

I'm sure that if someone from work reads this or even Mr. Johnson himself, I will be out of a job. (No one likes a naysayer.) My hopes is by the time someone sees this I will already be out of that job. I will gamble my job with the expression of my first amendment right of free speech. Because I'm an American lower middle class woman and that is what I'm entitled to do.