Nightly Chaos

 It's funny, sometimes how clueless my managers can be about the state of my department.

Apparently, last night, Head Manager got a taste of the 'chaos' that is the closing shift.

It's not surprising that the night shift isn't well done.
Because a) I haven't been able to properly train my newest coworkers.
They've just kinda been thrown in and trained by whoever is on duty.

Which means they pick up the habits of the people already closing.
Chaos begets Chaos.

And with basically like all of the closers now being greenies with hardly three months under their belts....It's not surprising things are difficult.

In any case.
The Head Manager apparently had trouble keeping my coworkers in the dept and have them helping customers.

One was focused on the task of feeding the snakes -as that is a night task.
The other one would wander away.

So apparently HM had to spend most of the shift wrangling my two closers to keep them in their spots.

*shakes head*

This isn't surprising at all.
I know that newbies have a hard time multitasking. They get focused on one thing. I had that struggle when I first started work. Get focused on one task, forget about the fact that I needed to help customers. So I understand that. It's something that can be adjusted with time so long as there is somebody there to correct them. The longer it goes uncorrected, the more likely it is to become a habit that you can't break.

The fact that my coworkers wander away from the dept also isn't new. I currently have three wanderers on the night shifts. Those who just disappear to elsewhere in the store.
They don't realize that they need to stick around, and if a customer takes them from the dept they need to go right back to the dept.

In any case.
This whole realization process resulted in this sort of conversation:

Head Manager: We can't have the closers feeding the snakes anymore. They get too focused on that task and forget to help the customers. So can you feed the snakes in the mornings?
Me: No, policy says to feed them at night. Plus we don't really have time to do it.
Head Manager: But what does it take? Like two minutes to feed the snakes?
Me: Something like that.
Head Manager: The night people don't know how to multitask like the morning people do.
Me: *thinking* Because you don't give them the opportunity to learn how to do tasks and help customers at the same time. Me: It's because they're new.
Head Manager: Well, it's already too late to relearn it, they can't be feeding snakes and expected to help customers.
Me: But policy says to feed them at night because they shouldn't be handled after they're fed. So you'd basically be taking them off the floor for the entire day.
Head Manager: Fine... Well they can't feed the snakes until after we close then!!
Me: *thinking* Great....then they're never going to get fed.

Honestly.
The easiest solution to this problem would be to have me work a few evening shifts with everyone to make sure that they're doing tasks correctly, staying in the dept, and helping customers. They need a guiding force that isn't being given to them because none of the other managers care about my dept unless something goes majorly wrong. *shakes head*
The easy solution would be to have a meeting for everyone and go over the expected tasks, but the Head Manager shut that thought down. Saying that we should do "more one on ones" ....like we have time for that. >.< *shakes head* Ugh.

There's also talk of switching to feeding all the snakes on one day. Sunday when it's slow.
Which originally, was how we were doing it.
But we stopped doing it because Special Coworker wasn't doing well on feeding the snakes, as he was focusing on that task more than the customers. So we switched to doing a couple every night.

*shakes head*

What I really need is a one on one with the managers and go over what is expected and what we can handle.
As we had no problems feeding the snakes before closing...until we hired the new people. It's a matter of proper training. Teaching them. Not just letting them loose in order to see how the pieces fall into place.

Guess we'll see how that all turns out....

-Sarnic Dirchi