Current Events > I'm currently struggling with my job, CE. Can I vent to you?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Got this promotion about 3 months ago. Love the paychecks, but the job itself has had somewhat of a wear and tear on my self esteem.

The job is retail. But I'm a "sales specialist" in a hardware store's flooring department. What I feel is the main part of my job is to relay information from customers who want their floor installed, to our installer. A good portion of that is similar to how I imagine data entry would be if I had a cozy office job. Except I'm not in a cozy office. I'm smack dab in the middle of my store's sales floor where any asshole off the street can walk in and interrupt me at any time. As often as not, these interruptions are things such as "Hey, will you stand beside me for 20 minutes and watch me pick out which color carpet I like best?" It feels to me like these interruptions happen as soon as or before I can get one point of data entered into our system. By the time I get to sit back down and start my tasks again, I have sort of lost track of what I was doing before I was interrupted.

Before the day is over, my direct supervisor is showing concern about how far behind I am on the "data entry" part of my job. I'm trying. I really am. If I'm lucky, I MIGHT get to take one of my 15-minute breaks throughout the day. Yesterday, I worked my full 9 hour shift with no lunch break, and still didn't get finished. I'm going to hear something about that when I return to work this Thursday, and I'm also going to be in trouble for not taking my lunch break (go figure), and the department was left in a mess. This skipping of my lunch break is a regular occurrence.

I've vented multiple times to managers that hiring a little more help for the department that I work in sure would be a big help. I know it's not directly their decision; corporate only gives them so many hours they can schedule in a department per week. Still I don't think it hurts to show my frustration about the little help that I have, and inquire about a possibility of getting me some help. Last time I did this, I was just told "You're going to have to get past that. All the other departments are going through the same thing." Well, I took what he said to heart. I haven't complained any more about my lack of help. That doesn't change that I'm still not getting stuff done that needs to be done, due to almost always being the only person scheduled in my department for 6 hours or longer.

I just hope I don't end up getting demoted from all of this. I could possibly feasibly get it all done if I were allowed to work a few more hours per week. But nope. We also get spoken to if we work one minute over 39 hours per week. So that's out of the question.