ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

Our transfer girl still thinks my boss doesn’t know she is stripping as a second job. This is funny to me, because she doesn’t bother to hide it when she’s talking on the phone in front of everyone. Hah. Including the customers.

Today I asked my boss about something that’s been bothering me for a little while now, which is the potential threat of ever having to promote the transfer girl to assistant manager if I become the branch manager here, since she would have seniority if someone new came in. Thankfully, though, he assured me that I don’t have to worry about that because he and his boss would never make me promote someone I felt was incompetent. He also pointed out that someone who can’t work full days could not feasibly be the assistant manager because the assistant manager has to be able to open and close the branch in the absence of the manager.

I think her performance is becoming a problem. “Attention to detail is not exactly her forte if you hadn’t noticed,” my boss said dryly. She is fairly disorganized and leaves customer papers all about, which makes me nervous because we’re dealing with people’s personal financial information, and while it only pertains to payday loans, it’s poor form to keep them badly organized because it increases the chance that errors or mixups can occur.

One of my old lady customers freaked out at me big time today. She wanted to know the 30 day due date before she gave me her name, but I couldn’t look up the date for her until I had her name. She refused flat out to give me her name until I gave her the date, which I couldn’t get without her name. It was one of the most retarded things I’ve ever seen a customer do. She kept shaking her head and tsking at me and saying how she couldn’t believe this kind of service and how bad young folks were these days. She kept saying, “Young lady, I don’t know why you want to make it so hard for me today, I don’t know why you couldn’t just tell me the date,” even after I’d processed her loan, and every time I tried to explain that I have to check whether 30 days falls on a day that we’re closed, she interrupted me to say, “No, that’s not what I asked, I want to know why you wouldn’t tell me the date,” which irritated me immensely because HOW THE HELL COULD SHE KNOW WHAT I WAS EXPLAINING WHEN SHE KEPT TALKING OVER ME. Finally I let my boss just take over the transaction because I was starting to smoke at the ears, and finally since she wouldn’t shut up about how I was offensive and rude because I couldn’t tell her the date off the top of my head, he asked her, “Okay, then. Off the top of your head, what day of the week is it, thirty days from this coming Wednesday?” She said she didn’t know. He tried to use that to illustrate to her that for similar reasons this is why I couldn’t tell her the correct due date immediately, but we don’t think she took his point in the end. “Ugh,” he said after she left. It was the weirdest thing. She has always been nice in the past.

I’ve been thinking pretty hard about the issue with our transfer girl over the past week or so, and after talking to my boss last night I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that my style of management just does not work with her, because she would rather take advantage of my discomfort with taking a firm stand and making people do stuff. It works okay with people like my head teller, who simply do what is requested the first time and don’t have to be asked more than once. But she has reached this point where she is comfortable coming in an hour late, changing her schedule at the drop of a hat, and sitting on the phone while other people help customers. Since I’m not really the branch manager, I’m not really comfortable acting like one, plus I don’t want to sit there with her sulking all day. I think she is kind of a spoiled princess who really does believe she deserves to coast through life and let other people take care of her responsibilities.

I don’t know what it will take to turn her into a good employee. I don’t even know if it is possible.

For one thing, I have almost lost all patience for her laziness after her behavior last Friday. If I’m going to wind up doing her job and mine at the same time because she refuses to get off the phone and help customers, I’d rather she just close her till and go home so the cost of her “labor” won’t shrink my bonus check. I think that as assistant manager, I technically do have the authority to send people home, but I don’t know if I’m comfortable exercising it, or what the correct circumstances are for doing something like that.

It would be nice if she had no phone privileges. She and her friends don’t seem to understand that she is supposed to be at work, and that although she hasn’t acknowledged them, she does have responsibilities more important than the newest white trash gossip they have to share. She makes mistakes constantly because she’s either on the phone or has a friend on hold while she is (rarely) helping customers. But if one person’s phone privileges were taken away, to be fair, we’d probably have to revoke everyone’s. And sometimes I need to make calls at work. So I don’t really want that.

The other problem is all her last minute schedule changes. My boss and the head teller and I make a schedule and that is what we work. We don’t do any of this “Can I come in an hour late?” or “Can I leave an hour early?” or “I’m going to come in for an hour and a half on Saturday to make up some hours” garbage that she does. I think my boss has already pretty much decided this because yesterday he told me that if she came in today I should send her home because she wasn’t scheduled to work today.

My boss is frustrated too. He said he is afraid he is on the verge of “exploding at her”. I am worried too, because in two months the new legislation will come into effect and we will be handling a lot more cash. We can’t afford to have someone this irresponsible working a drawer then.

On the upside of all this, my head teller and I look just great by comparison.