Breathing a little easier

My back started hurting again the other day. I first thought kidney stones again?! But I think it's more of a muscle strain. I know I'm beyond stressed because of work and being overworked is not helping me physically or mentally.

But I try to breathe and relax when I can. I walked into work today and it was already falling apart.

First, the store manager was having a meeting with all the department managers at the front of the store. At 7 am! I knew that wasn't good. He hasn't had a meeting before 9 am since like May. He'd gather every employee before the store opened to give any news and be encouraging, as best as he could anyway. I kind of miss those meetings - I knew where things stood and there was no communication breakdown.

But I walked the opposite direction of the meeting and found out from my coworker that we already had a call off. We were already going to be short handed, so this was just awesome. I decided to still grab the items that I hadn't stocked yet - they came in on Sunday's truck and I still hadn't stocked it. I also grabbed my sales tags to put up this morning.

I came back and had a talk with my department manager. She trusts me more than she probably should have, so she tells me everything:

Our coworker called off and we are a bit screwed today. Also, another department needed help today and I would have to help them. Okay, but what about my tasks? They keep being pushed aside because of that other department or it's too busy and we're short handed. And we have a walk tomorrow.

Nope, the walk was cancelled. Seriously?!? All this work and cramming in extra tasks and corporate is not coming? When will this end? Well, I'm not supposed to know that there's no walk, as my store manager doesn't want to frustrate everyone now. But he was apparently to give hell to corporate because they're "stressing out his crew" for a month about these walks that haven't happened. I know he's frustrated about it as well, he actually told me that he's "pissed as well" and I don't think I had ever heard him curse before then.

So I went about my day. Do as I'm told until I'm told something different. I actually felt relief that there wouldn't be a walk. We still have inventory on Thursday and I've done little to nothing to help that.

When I wasn't helping out the other department, I tried to finish my tasks. I got a coworker to help me with some of it, thankfully. I was like a pinball today. Never in the same spot, just running back and forth. I got the tasks done, right before I left. I still have work to do tomorrow, but at least I was about to finish what I had to do today. Can't anything slow me down, even the store manager telling me about other things to do. I pointed out that this stuff had sat for 2 days, it has to get done. That cooled his jets, he hates when things sit around and the shelves are empty.