Workplace negotiations

First of all identify the weakest link in the rest of the management chain and offer up the hope that you'll be her friend (and laugh at her unfunny jokes), then dig your stubby little toes in. Pout and insist that you won't do any more holiday cover until you're given approval of your chosen holiday dates. Then sit back and wait. In the time it takes for the coffee maker to overflow and send fresh coffee tumbling in aromatic rivulets down the front of the box-safe you'll have her back with not just a confirmation of your holiday dates, but an offer to re-jig things so that you don't take the bank holiday as a Monday, and she'll pay you for it anyway because its one of the days you're contracted to work.

I'll settle for that for the moment.

I didn't get poked in the shoulder by any repellent customers yesterday, which in some ways constitutes a victory.

We had our fair share of muppets though. Including the woman who couldn't read the shelf talker promoting soap powder offer. Including the couple of kids who picked up two random packets of bacon and then complained when they didn't go through on the TwoFor offer we currently promoting on a completely different range. The chicken satays still don't scan. One product from the ice-cream TwoFor offer still isn't keyed into the offer: quite why every single customer buying from the offer range is picking up this particular product is mystifying. I guess without such screw ups the check out supervisor would be out of a job.

Some fool wandered in with a couple of boxes to deliver. He wandered in through the front door and spent an unhappy 15 minutes touring the aisles before anyone pointed out to him that the service entrance would be a more appropriate place for deliveries. Our yardman spent a happy half our in the afternoon inside the chicken ovens. He's that sort of odd-ball.

The GM fucked off during the middle part of the day to take delivery of his new gazebo. He's spent a fortune on his garden this summer. The mood lightened appreciably. For a shot time everyone was able to get on with his or her job, without his particular form of micro-management to send everyone climbing the walls.

The stock take apparently went well and the figures were well within tolerances. Not only that but our trading figures are coming out top of the regional league table.

We're all feeling rather smug. An insubstantial post, I admit, but it is rather warm already and it is my day off.

I'm off shopping.