the end of an era.

i am unsure how many if any, read this blog. but i would like to announce that i was fired from circuit city today. i have been working there for over 2 years and feel as though i was wrongfully terminated or made an example of. first i will tell my story as to why i got fired.
so about 2 months ago there was a discrepancy in a cycle count (inventory count) of one xbox 360. this 360 was supposed to be in the entertainment department. me being semi lazy, did not physically count it. but put it in without seeing it. now i was not the only one who did this, and admitting that i did ultimately got me partially fired. they gave me a corrective stepping over a coaching. now today i was called into the head honcho's office, and was told that there was another discrepancy this time witha laptop. this is how the story goes as they told me. there were two separate sales. all 3 of them had the same laptop on them. one had 2. so what i did was grabbed two of them and went to release them. it just so happened that i scanned the same barcode twice because one laptop was missing the upc. i then scanned both individually for the serial number. on one of the laptops i scanned by accident the shipping label instead of the serial number. and it turned out that i gave the person the wrong laptop. they brought that laptop back at a later date. secondly, with the other laptop i scanned it as usual but again scanned the shipping label instead of the serial number. they said that when the person brought the laptop back, that we were missing a laptop. they said we had done a cycle count that morning and everything was there so between like 10-1 we lost a laptop. now they did not say who did the cycle count, and thinking back the person may have falsified the count that day. that may be an odd coincidence. they then said that because i had been talked about this previously that they called human resources or loss prevention and they "recommended" termination. i feel that a recommendation is just that and not what has to happen, however after the fact talking to my operations manager about this, he said a recommendation from HR is not really that, but something that had to be done.

now it just so happened that another associate got fired too. she was a horrible worker and what not and it took them months to fire her. but way less to fire me.

what really bothers me is a few different things that i will now explain;
1. other associates do not get fired for things like lateness, professionalism, or shady transactions such as raising or lowering prices to obtain a sale, stealing pop and candy, and other things as well.
2. my ops manager has saved a fellow associate several times from being fired. at least two that i know of. and i want to know why i was not granted this as well.
3. was i made an example of? did they fire me just to show that people can get fired for not doing their job correctly?
4. was it deeper than just that? i am in no way a model associate. i often would rebel against management if something was not right or supervisors as well. however, almost always showed up on time, if not on time than before the management would be there. i would do as i was asked most of the time unless it was something i didn't feel was right. i feel i went above and beyond my work at times, and that i was a better associate than most people would think. a sub heading of things i felt were wrong with the store and or the way it was run.
-management and supervisors were not held accountable for the same things as regular associates. what i mean by this is if we were late we got talked to, but if management was late nothing would happen.
-processes were not consistent. they implemented the headset rule so that everyone would wear headsets, however rarely if ever do i remember anyone wearing one consistently unless u were a pft member or csa.
-anything to get the sale done. no matter how shady it was most people would do anything to get a sale. some examples include, dropping prices on firedog or software to be able to sell to the costumer, lying to the costumer saying this would be done but it would not be. other things like that as well like moving things from netsale to open box in order to sell it. lastly, also releasing stuff early so that numbers would look better.

i also have another example of something along the lines of what i did, and the manager still works there....
recently i was going on a delivery with a fellow associate. we had a staging area in the front of the warehouse where televisions and deliveries were released. one tv was already released along with a home theatre system. things never should be released before they go out as to avoid giving the wrong tv and other things. the receipt was tapped to the tv and the home theatre on top. i pulled up the ticket to realize that it was previously released on sunday and it was now monday. i then manually opened the door, we loaded everything in the truck and went to the house about 40 minutes away. we unloaded the tv and put it on the stand, hooked everything up then realized it was the wrong tv. it was about an $800 difference in tvs. now i blame myself for not looking over the tv before we left, however a broken process took place in which the person grabbed the wrong tv then released it. now i have no idea if anyone was blamed for this because the store manager was on vacation and doubtfully was notified of this.

now my personal opinion: circuit city is a shit hole. very few managers are good, and or respected. my only manager that i liked was the operations manager. he refused to stagger away from s.o.p. unlike others. supervisors were not always horrible, however some were incompetent and had no idea how to actually manage people. the associates were often lazy and my fellow associates in pft were blamed for almost everything regardless of what it was. we were the bitches of the store asked to do everything and anything. associates would show up late out of uniform and refusing to help customers. i was often there before sun up to get the store ready for work. and for what? to be bitched at consistently for not doing my job correctly, even though it was correct. we in pft were never able to get the appreciation that we deserved. everyone would bust their ass off and for what? a horrible paying job? i didnt get paid horribly because i was in sales previously. even supervisor's got paid horribly. my direct supervisor made less than one of his associates. this tends to baffle me because a supervisor should be paid decent especially if he is part of pft.
my final words for this job are: i will miss the people i worked with, i will miss the fun i occassionally had and i will miss the family environment that i had encountered over the years i worked there. however, i will not miss the bitching the horribly run store that is ann arbor, the incompetence of associates and the non credit i would get for a job well done. finally circuit city, i wish u the worst i hope u go under and are forced to close as long as the associates find other jobs. fuck off, and i hope u go bankrupt.

-12:10