Not Enough Time for Practical Jokes

Work has been stressful for me lately. Shorthanded and constantly understaffed. It is starting to take its toll on me.



I'm having trouble motivating my staff. Last Saturday night was the worst. I just wanted to go home. I was working the last few hours of my 57 hour work week and was tired and feeling highly unmotivated. As manager it is my job to motivate my staff, but on Saturday, it was the other way around! My staff was trying to motivate me with some positive encouragement. We can do it Sue! We can do it! I just kept saying "I want to go home! I want to go home!" LOL



I have a good staff. Not enough staff, but good staff. On Sunday my staff decided to play a practical joke on my assistant manager. My AM can really ride people at times and push them to work hard. It is a good quality to have in an AM, but sometimes we wonder if she just needs to chill?!! LOL



She will be going on medical leave here soon and won't be around for April Fool's Day so we decided to play the practical joke today. She always gets on to people for leaving the understock cabinets open. These are the cabinets underneath the browsers, or bins, where the CD's are displayed. She'll say "THIS ISN'T A GARAGE SALE!" and demand that the cabinets be closed. So, as a joke, we put a sign on the grill at the front of the store that said "Garage Sale Today" and opened every single cabinet in the store! LOL That is what she walked into today, and also the labrynth of register tape strewn about the store!



We also strategically placed some of the standees in the storefront in the backroom so as to startle her when she entered. It worked. She said she came into the backroom upset about the "joke" and then swung open the backdoor to see "someone" standing there in the darkened backroom! LOLOL I wish I could have seen that, she startles so easy! LOLOL



All the while we were planning this I was wondering about taking the time to do it and also the time it would take to get the store back in order. We are always so far behind in our work that we really need to be working toward the goal of catching up at all times. Then, sometimes we just need to cut loose and have some fun! I decided that we needed the fun more than the price change done! Maybe I'm not a good manager because I didn't work my employees until time ran out, but I do work them very hard and they do a great job for me. Every now and then I think we need to break from the "norm" and enjoy ourselves. We may have "wasted" some time, but we made a memory! Are things like this important to help keep morale up? I know I needed something to help me keep MY morale up!



Well, back to the grindstone tomorrow. *sigh*



I do get Wednesday (Opening Day for the Passion of the Christ), thanks to my hardworking AM who volunteered to work an "iron woman" shift, which is open to close. She's doing it just so I can have a day off. It will be my first day off since...ummmmmm....what month is this? Oh...Let's see, I was off Wednesday the 4th!