I don’t mind my job. My boss can be a little trying at times, but on the whole I get to work pretty much solo, listen to BBC radio all day long, make friends with the old people, be creative and design cool things, and even the occasional photography field trip. I don’t call in sick – I’ve finished my shift having thrown up on the job, I’ve dragged myself in with man flu and even showed up with a broken arm before being sent to the hospital. But there’s been an issue recently that’s made it pretty much – no, absolutely – unbearable to work.

The Lady That Smells Bad.

This isn’t a regular case of B.O. we’re talking about here. She looks like a homeless person, and comes in off the streets with numerous bags housing goodness only knows what (open cans of 6-month-old tuna is what I’ve settled on). She’s dressed in a tilly hat covered in poppies pinned on from the last fifty years, an oversized man’s coat, a pair of glasses that look like they belong to Trevor Horn, and accompanied by the worst smell I’ve ever had the misfortune of encountering. I can’t even describe it. I seriously doubt she’s had a bath in the last twenty years, and her clothes are stuffy and musty and just outright dirty. My boss’s husband stands by me on this and last time he was in, he opened the back door, despite it being minus 20 degrees outside.

She sits in here for hours at a time, cutting and pasting together little posters for church events that happened 2 months ago so she can make photocopies and put them up again. She was in here yesterday for two and a half hours – the latter half hour of which I could no longer stand, and after coughing and involuntarily gagging several times, I begged my boss if I could work in her office until she left. This morning she and I had a talk about how we’re going to deal with this. I looked up on a few sites as to whether or not you can actually ban someone from your store for smelling bad. Concensus was that if it’s your store, and you’re not discriminating based on age, race, religion or whatever, and it’s actually disruptive to your workplace – you can kick them out.

But the boss told me it’s my job to do it.

She came in again this morning. I was in the middle of helping someone and so I asked my boss if she could help her. Seeing who it was, she said to her “Emily will have to help you, she’ll just be a minute.” Thanks boss. Thankfully she was in and out today in 5 minutes so I didn’t have to bring it up. But who knows the next time she’s going to spend the afternoon here? Sweet suggested writing a note and handing it to her so I don’t embarrass her out loud, which I thought was a pretty good idea. I’ve also had suggestions of blatantly spraying air freshener when she comes in, or even bringing my own gas mask to work. Seriously though – how do I politely and tactfully tell someone they can’t be here because they smell so bad I can’t work? It’s pretty much the rudest thing you could say to somebody. And I have absolutely no idea how to do it.

So on Tuesday I quit Best Buy and got my soul back. Huzzah! The bitchy manager who was giving me shit in the first place just took my resignation letter and smiled and said “okay! thanks!” Unfortunately the general manager was in Calgary so I didn’t get to give it to him in person. I gave no two weeks (so no vacation pay ) but this place wanted me to start right away, and I wanted to leave Best Buy right away, so that worked out nicely. I did myself a favour and took 2 days off in between and I had my first day today at the new place.

Okay. This is brilliant.

1. NO STUPID UNIFORM. On my way home dressed in my heels and black trousers and glasses I felt so much more respectable than before, trying to hide my stupid ugly flat black shoes, beige ankle-swingers and bright blue best buy shirt. So that’s good.

2. I work across from a Tim Horton’s. AND I’M ALLOWED TO TAKE WALKS.

3. I get my own desk, my own business card, and I’m taking over for the OFFICE MANAGER. Holy crap.

4. My boss said I won’t need to spend $10,000 at Red River because I’m going to BECOME a graphic designer there and get all the experience I need.

5. I didn’t wake up at five this morning!

I’m watching American Idol at the moment so forgive me if I drift off in places, but I REALLY have to write. I’m still wonderfully happy and feeling so very lucky with where I am right now but, my god, WORK. I don’t understand how this is happening, how it all changed so drastically. I went from being employee of the month, everybody’s favourite smiley british girl, to being Talked To by managers and bitchy supervisors, lied about and given warnings. Last week was just awful.

Okay, I’ll start where it all really started. This girl at work April was one of the seniors in our department, and she got promoted to supervisor when our supervisor left. I’ve never liked her, she’s such a bitch and she cuts you down and bosses you around, and she’s always on a real power trip. Anyone in the department will tell you the same thing. So when she got promoted it got TEN times worse. She was always nitpicking but now it was RIDICULOUS. Anyway I got my new position in administration and one day last week I was up at the front being cashier because our only daytime cashier called in sick. (We only have one because they fired everybody) I usually spend 7am-1pm doing admin stuff, it takes hours to get every freaking receipt organised chronologically and by type and to check each and every one. Anyway, David had called in sick so I had to go up front. Luckily this other girl Michelle was in at 12 so I figured I’d go up there for the morning, and rush through the admin stuff 12-3, big deal. Only when she got in, April sent her up to the front with me and made me STAY there with her. Okay…. usually there’s only ONE person up front anyway and thats David, and now Michelle was in, WHY couldn’t I go do what I needed to? “Because when people call in sick, we have to pick up the slack, think of the floor coverage”. But that doesn’t make any SENSE. There is always one person up front, and now someone was in, why couldn’t I catch up on all the admin I hadn’t done? I told her it didn’t make any sense and she kept repeating herself and saying “yes it does”. Anyway I was pissed off ’cause it meant I had to do twice as much the next day, when the time I spent STANDING AROUND at the front was pretty much wasted. Anyway she complained to the manager, saying “admin is her first priority” and how I’m being defiant and giving attitude, as she does.

This whole time I’ve been trying to transfer into the media department. Movies, games, CDs, I’d LOVE it! And I love the guys in that department, and the supervisor over there has asked me a couple of times in the past to “run the department” while he’s away. Both he and the senior in that department have been trying to get me moved over there too; they have a problem with some of their staff being, well, lazy, and they said they’d love to have me over there. So they met with another manager, who said he’d see what he could do, and I went to talk to him about it. He asked me first, why do I want to leave operations? He needed a reason to give to the general manager. So I told him I’d always wanted to be in media from the start, and now there was a fulltime position open I’d really like to be moved there, and the seniors in the department really want me over there too. Plus I was having problems with April in my department.

Ray, my senior, had told me “Emily, honestly April doesn’t want you in the department anymore, she thinks you have an attitude problem and you’re only here for the money”. Which made me MAD, and I told that manager what I’d heard. He asked me where I’d heard it from (god this is getting gossippy) and I said Ray. The next thing I knew, Glenn (the operations manager), April, Candace (a bitchy sales manager) and Ray pulled me into the conference room where they sat me down and asked me what was going on. I said I was hoping to get transferred to media. And Glenn starts jumping in with “Emily, do you get what’s going on here or not?” And I said no.. not really, and he says “You’re causing too many problems for yourself. What is your problem?” and I said I was a little upset that I’d been hearing rumours of people saying things behind my back. And he asked “like what”, and I tell him exactly what Ray had told me April had said, word for word. And he shoots over to Ray and said “Ray can you confirm this?” and Ray just looks him square in the eye and says “I would never say that about April, Emily if you misinterpreted me I’m sorry but I would never say anything like that”. WHAT A LIAR! And Glenn goes over to me and says “Well? We can’t confirm that” and April harps in saying “I’m shocked and embarrassed… yes embarrassed is a good word for how I feel right now”. And Candace, the blonde bitch says “There’s no way you’re moving to media”. Glenn says “Kent and Les might say they want you in that department, but they don’t.” So I ask, why would they say to me that they wanted me in media, why would they BOTH go to the effort of meeting with a manager to try and get me moved in there to improve their department?” and Glenn says “I don’t know. I don’t know why they would lie to you but trust me, they don’t want you.” And Candace says “Yeah Emily, based on what I see of you I wouldn’t want you in my department either”. Then they start saying “You have to take responsibility for yourself that YOU are causing these problems. We’ve offered to help you, we know you called in sick a few times but you’re WAY too guarded. We offer to help you and you refuse to take that branch. So YOU have to take responsibility for causing this situation. DO YOU ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY?”

OH my god. I couldn’t believe the way they were just STABBING these remarks at me, and the way Ray just LIED blatantly. I was so mad and upset, when I finally left I just spent the last 10 minutes of my shift crying in the bathroom. Ryan was there after and I talked to him and he was just shocked, he didn’t understand why they were doing this. Then Joel came to get me and he made everything better, he bought me dinner and my favourite pudding, and we came home and spent the rest of the evening together, and everything was okay again. I got to see Alex Gunn too and we watched the Brits, and some South Park and Jay Leno’s headlines and laughing made me feel so much better.

But I decided I HAVE to get another job now. I talked to Kent (the media supervisor) today and asked him if it was true, and he was like “WHAT? Of COURSE I want you in this department, I can’t believe they said that… it’s not true at all, I’ll see if I can get to the bottom of this for you” and Les was just like “ANYTHING to get their way, eh? I would’ve quit on the spot if they did that to me”. I was lucky none of them were working today, and the last two days I’ve been looking for other jobs non-stop. So let me know if you know of anything.

Sorry that was a HUGE ramble. But I’m mad at work right now.