Go Down Moses

Just want to mention the new ‘contest’ at the gift store- the flair smiley face became LIA, so my manager came up with a NEW EXICITING contest. He would hide a game piece- called the Pharaoh, somewhere in the store… We are then to FIND the Pharaoh and clean up that section. Yeah, not enough to FIND, we MUST clean up a section that they have deemed the messiest. IF we do this we get a coupon good for an EXTRA FIVE minutes on our 15 min. break- i.e. 5 min. of slack time for however long it took us to clean that section…
Before I go on- I should mention that Pharaoh has gone MIA himself for a couple of times. The first when the manager felt one of the assistants hid him TOO well, thus perhaps they’ve learned the object is NOT for them to hide Pharaoh but for us to be able to easily find him so that we can CLEAN the section. Yesterday, after doing a full scan of the store, I asked the manager IF he had hid the Pharaoh Wednesday night as I couldn’t find Pharaoh and was informed- nope, it wasn’t hidden.
So Pharaoh isn’t a smash success with the managers as they hide it too well or forget to hide it. Likewise it doesn’t seem to be a hit with us worker drones, though one person seems to like finding Pharaoh and cleaning as he’s done it four times. I’ve found ‘found’ it 3 times and cleaned around him twice. I put found in ‘’s because the second time- a co-worker who REFUSES to be a part of the contest found Pharaoh and refused to clean around it. She told me where the Pharaoh was- and I figured I was bored and I’d rather get the extra 5 min. break then be yelled at for doing nothing and have them find me ‘busy work’ to do. The third time I found it- I asked the manager to clarify as I found it in the break area- and wasn’t sure if it wasn’t hidden the night before or if he was trying to get me to clean the break area. He was trying to get someone to clean up the break area… and I decided F*** NO! So I left the Pharaoh where it was. See, I’m pretty clean when I’m at work; and as I blogged my last straw at Staples was when I was ORDERED for the umpteenth time to clean up after the cow and keep the copy center clean and orderly. When I eat lunch in the break area- I make sure to bus my tray and clean up after myself and I didn’t think it was worth a 5 min. of break time to clean up after these punks… esp. as I then see this as enabling- because it reinforces the idea that if they don’t clean up, someone ELSE will. My manager then told one of his flunkies….. I mean Assistant Managers, in my ear shot, that I had found the Pharaoh but hadn’t cleaned up the break area. I ‘defended’ myself by point out that it wasn’t MY mess… The Assistant Manager, of course, tried to pick apart my argument; which, of course, has made me cool off even more about cleaning the store….
In fact the same Assistant Manager, Lm , that looked down his nose at me because I wouldn’t clean up the break room recently remarked to me that the Pharaoh hadn’t been ‘claimed’ in a few days so either a) it was MIA AGAIN or b) people were choosing NOT to find it and clean. I smirked but didn’t say anything. I don’t mind working for my pay but 1) I really get peeved at cleaning up after my co workers- I mean it is bad enough I gotta throw out all the crap the customers leave in the store. 2) I find it funny that at least one of my co-workers feel that the carrot management is dangling is NOT worth it.
Oh and no, I did NOT out the person who told me where the Pharaoh was and let me clean up the section. I THOUGHT about it to defend myself from Lm’s derision by pointing out that another person also opted out of cleaning up after Pharaoh but decided since I didn’t like Lm and sorta liked my other co worker… so I kept my mouth shut.