Work, work, work

Lately, it seems, all I do is work....not a bad thing, necessarily, just an observation.

I did finally put Rita the Manager in her place.  I was okay about it, didn't slam her (verbally) against the wall, but I let her know how I felt.  One of her friends (did I mention she lives in a low income housing project in the next town??) came in one night last week to have her little guy's hair cut...Tina and I were finishing up on two colors, which were taking some considerable time (mine has POROUS hair which was taking forever to dry), and being 8:40 in the evening (we close at 9), we both turned down the hair cut, however emphasizing that we're open 9-9 Mon - Sat, Sun 10-6.  Here comes the "fun" part:

Now it's Tuesday, and I'm cutting the little guy's hair...Rita comes in with her friend...didn't think a whole lot of it, at the time.  Then, I was off on Wednesday, came back on Thursday.  Rita approaches me in the break room with a cockamamie story about the whole approach about cutting the little boy's hair on Monday night.  Something about how the customer (mom) felt Tina was being snotty to me (what happened is I was blow drying my client's hair and didn't hear Tina speak to me, so she raised her voice (which she shouldn't have done, she should have walked over to me) and that's when I heard her), and copped an attitude herself.  So, Rita took it upon herself to "deal" with the "issue" which wasn't there in the first place.  During the course of her "discussing" it with me (I was on my lunch break, mind you)  I wound up just shutting her down by reminding her that there were clients to take care of and I was on my lunch.  Her reply was "Well, you think about it and get back to me"...WHAT??

After I got done with my lunch, I was stewing about the whole thing.  Who, exactly, does Rita think she is to handle something like that??  No one, and I mean NO ONE is the manager in that place.  The closest thing we have to a manager is Becky, who is only available by voice mail.  I eventually took the deposit to the bank because I needed to get OUT of there before I said something I was definitely going to regret.

Right before I left for the day, home office called, wanting to guide someone through fixing some of the problems we've been having with the computer.  So, since I was leaving, I passed the phone to Rita, stating to her, "Since you're on tonight, and you want to be manager so bad, go ahead and handle this installation" .  She said "I don't want to be manager...you do this...you're good at it"  "Rita, I have to go home now...and if you don't want to be manager, don't act like you are one."  To which she back pedaled and said "I didn't mean to come across like that" , hollering it across the salon.

Was my reaction to her done in a professional manner??  Nope.  It was a better response than what I was originally thinking about doing, but still not the right thing to do.  She made me angry and she knew it.  From when she "spoke" to me about her friend until I left for the day, she was trying hard to suck up to me because she knew she'd stepped on my toes.  And the whole rest of the week, she was pussy-footing it around me, because she knew she'd messed up.  It was mildly entertaining to experience.

What is really happening with Rita is her personal life is falling apart and it's spilling over into her job.  Her boyfriend is being a jerk, and the ensuing drama is entering the salon.  I had to fix two of her haircuts this past week, as well as take a phone call from a very angry client who referred to Rita as a "butcher" in no uncertain terms.  I wound up taking his name and number and passing it along to Becky to handle.  Who happened to call yesterday , and I answered the phone, so I got to talk (or listen, really) to her about it.  She did handle it personally, but also directed me to the 1-800 complaint number to give to clients when that happens.  I forget that number is there and have a slight panic when I get phone calls like that.  It's all in the learning, I guess....

 I also talked to Tina about the whole "thing" that was perceived between the two of us.  She was pretty irked with the way Rita chose to handle it, too.  So, the rest of us (now I get to tell both Rita and Stella) have agreed that when we see something like that, or a client mentions that they witnessed something like that, we are to call Becky and let her handle it as she sees fit, since none of us are managers.  Can't wait to see how that goes over with Rita..Stella should be fine.