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Project Insomnia

Project Insomnia is many things, but in this context it is simply a "braindump" of whatever I happen to be thinking/reading/watching/doing at the moment. Parental guidance suggested.

Saturday, November 12, 2005

Surely you can't be serious

Last night (Friday) may have been my final shift at Barnes & Noble. I'll know tomorrow. The mandatory all-hands holiday meeting is tomorrow (Sunday) at six in the morning, and I won't be there. I let three management team members know and none of them had any comment.

I think I'm being very reasonable. I fill out a form every month stating my available hours of work for B&N, and they're always the same: Sunday noon to 10:30, weeknights 7 to 10:30 and no more than two nights a week. Nowhere in that does it say 6:00 AM Sunday (or any other day). I'm simply not available to B&N at that hour.

However, I have this feeling that not coming to the holiday meeting may be grounds for termination. I've never been disciplined, I'm the best cashier they have and I've been number 1 in the store in membership sales since the day I started, two years ago. If not going to a 6:00 AM Sunday morning meeting means they'll fire me then that's fine; things have turned around financially at home and the extra hundred bucks a week is no longer needed. I'll miss it, to be sure; I like the people I work with, I like the interaction with customers (most of them), I love working with books, and of course the 30% employee discount is very welcome.

But at the end it's not my choice. Actually I suppose it is: if I choose to go to the 6:00 AM Sunday morning meeting, there's no problem. The part that isn't my decision is what happens when I don't go. And for that, I'll have to wait to find out until I go in for my scheduled shift tomorrow afternoon.

By the way, last year's holiday meeting was held three times, at 7:00 in the evening on three successive weeknights, so that everyone could make it.
|| Andrew, 7:20 PM || ||

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