More catching up in Hello.

I realise that a lot of my readers aren't aware that I've changed jobs. To be honest, I was sick of working at the Edinburgh Woollen Mill, but didn't really want to bitch about it too much online. Now that I've gone, I can reveal that I really didn't like my boss ONE BIT. She was a two faced cow and lied A LOT. She 'accidentally' told the new assistant manager that one of my colleagues was an alcoholic and asked her to ask us to be aware of the situation. Once the AM had done this, she then retracted and said that she'd never told her say anything. I know this is a crock of lies, because I am still friends with the old AM. She told me that they knew from the start that colleague was an alcoholic and were watching her themselves. Old AM started working at EWM before the new manager, and she had told her that colleague had a drink problem. I had known she was an alcoholic from week one, because my friend used to go out with her son and she told me "she had a drink problem". As far as I was aware, it had no bearing on how she did her job. She was always on time, did her job effectively and went home. Her addiction was no business of mine. Other little lies by my manager, things of no consequence, but once you find out she's a liar, the trust quickly goes, doesn't it? Other things I didn't like. My CEO chopped down an ancient woodland to make room for a golf course on his land. Another CEO's wife used to regularly come into our shop, then report bullshit about us back to head office. Why lie? What does it get you? And you're MARRIED to a member of staff....why does this give you special dispensation? I hated the fact that we had to JUMP on everyone who came into the shop. We had something called a conversion rate....we had to make around 20% of the people who came into the shop BUY something, otherwise we'd get it in the ear. We had a 'customer service window' (between 11 and 3) where we weren't allowed to do any tasks. We literally had to stand there twiddling our thumbs if there were no customers to jump on. I could go on and on. I'm so glad I got a job working in a charity shop. I'm a paid member of staff, this means I can do tasks that volunteers can't, basically anything that's deemed as dangerous, like climbing ladders, steaming clothes, that kind of thing. I wont say it was easy to begin. My new manager is a perfectionist...she likes stuff to be done to her standards, so it was a bit of baptism of fire when she basically showed us All The Things in about a fortnight, then expected us to do it right straight away! I like her, she's lovely though. There's no pretence, she tells us how she feels. She'll tell us if we're doing something wrong, if we're doing a good job (and consequently THANKS us for it! This is Novel and New!) and we have quarterly appraisals. I had one today, (I've been there over 3 months already!) and she's happy with how I'm progressing. I'm still trying to be brave enough to tell a lot of ladies who are older than me, have been there years and know the job better than me, that I'd quite like it if they did this job for me, please. But I am getting there. This entry is worded really badly, but I can't really be bothered to go back and change it. I have got myself another little job working from home as well. I'm making cross stitch kits. It's not difficult work, I can do it while I'm watching telly. I might as well get paid to do what I do most evenings! The frame I use to wind the cotton is large and cumbersome though, so I can only really do it while I'm home alone, like when John's at work. I'm hoping to use the money I make from that to get driving lessons. I had two offers of voluntary positions the other week, one to be a young ranger leader (taking groups of kids out to do conservation work) and the other to be a guided walk leader. Both of them required me to drive though, so I decided to get lessons. I need to go to the shop before it closes, so I'll leave this entry here.