Dropped Coverage

Last year I was working at Best Buy as a mobile specialist. There’s a pretty reasonable learning curve to working mobile, what with plans, devices, and specialized systems of the different phone carriers. It’s also worth mentioning that mobile is one of the more profitable areas of the store. So much so that Best Buy once had standalone mobile stores in malls.

The store was clamping down on hours and got on your a** if you went over your prescribed shift. Also, if you went into overtime without telling your manager so they could remove you from the schedule, you were written up.

Anyway, Mobile had been short-handed during the holidays, and that day I had only been scheduled until 6 PM. No coverage had come in for the remaining four hours of the night, and no manager had asked me to stay.

Mobile had been pretty busy the whole day with just me at the helm. I was running two and even three activations at the same time. Well, with people still in the waiting queue to be seen, the clock struck 6 PM. I got into the punch clock program, clocked out, and walked out as scheduled. I was almost giddy.

I KNEW I left a time bomb of soon-to-be angry customers in my wake. That managers would have to deal with them, and NO ONE in the store would be able to assist.

But the store managers would write you up if you were over your hours without permission, and I wasn’t in the mood to find one to petition and explain mobile had no coverage, especially since they were being stingy with my hours that week, which was my livelihood.

The next day they tried wagging their finger at me for leaving without coverage.

I just brought up how the general manager and the other higher managers had clamped down on hours, and how I wasn’t allowed to go over. They sort of went quiet and didn’t say anything more.

I learned from coworkers just how screwed they were the previous night.

Apparently, mobile got slammed less than an hour after I left, in addition to the waiting customers. I was simply delighted to hear that. Let’s face it, they had to schedule; they had the power to see that there was no coverage and could have asked me to stay on their own.

Eventually, when there were schedule gaps, they put the gaps in the morning or the mid-afternoon, and not prime-time evening.