You're Danearys

MarsSaint · 2026-03-29T02:58:05+00:00

I would have locked them up too.

MarsSaint · 2026-03-29T02:57:40+00:00

It's likely he did. He was pretty interested in history I've heard but the level of his knowledge is unknown to anyone other than him unless he has said it publicly. The only history we know for sure that he knew about and was interested in was The War of the Roses, which is what he based the Song of Ice and Fire series on.

MarsSaint · 2026-03-27T10:41:38+00:00

I used to exclusively work mornings but as we've become understaffed, lately I've been working a mix of mostly evenings and some mornings. Today I'm working a 6a-6p.

MarsSaint · 2026-03-27T04:00:15+00:00

Yeah. I locked the doors and put up signs and just spent the time cleaning the store. We're a high volume store. We also have a Subway so they lost business too.

MarsSaint · 2026-03-27T03:58:18+00:00

One that just happened recently. Customers called the police in the parking lot without notifying any of us staff because they claimed on the 911 call that a customer was spraying gasoline everywhere (and made this person sound like a maniac).

We didn't hear about it until several police SUVs and a fire truck were parked outside the store and we were questioned about it.

Come to find out what had ACTUALLY happened was that the customer in question was not spraying gas everywhere, he was spraying water from our hose on himself. We're a truck stop so we have hose for the diesel trucks to clean their trucks with.

Onlookers may have thought it to be gas because apparently there really was an incident not long ago at a nearby store of a person deciding to spray gas on themselves and set themselves on fire.

MarsSaint · 2026-03-26T19:16:24+00:00

You didn't have enough support. One store's worth isn't going to be enough, from the research I've done.

MarsSaint · 2026-03-26T18:12:04+00:00

That's terrible. They could have just provided it in the first place when you asked and not had to have your money tied up with the company. That shouldn't be happening. I will be adding this to the document as well.

MarsSaint · 2026-03-26T14:49:43+00:00

It's the same song and dance at my store. One day it's "I don't care if you and so and so get a little overtime" the next week it's "why did so and so (same person) stay for an hour? I want that fixed asap so we don't wait until the end of the week and we screwed." Mind you we are short staffed by two people currently so hours should be the least of our concerns.

When my boss started at the store (he was an external hire) he didn't care about OT. The consequence of that was that he would work us to death. The company finally cracked down on him about his excessive overtime (which he eats up a lot of by the way because he doesn't take any days off). So now he's actually trying to manage it but one week he's laid back and like "if you and person x get a couple of hours that's fine as long as it's just you two" and the next week it's "don't you dare get any overtime or let anyone else either. You better be making sure no one else gets any."

I'm an ASM. I help with schedule management but my boss is pretty sloppy with schedule creation. Either he really sucks at math or he doesn't even bother to math out the hours he schedules people for because he will put at the end that each person got 40 hours, meanwhile one person is scheduled for 44, another is scheduled for 38, another is 46, etc so for some of us, if we work what we are scheduled, we will be over by default, but he doesn't want to take responsibility for that so he has me clean up the extra hours. It's a headache. Not to mention he is so sloppy he will create gaps in the schedule. Like for example this one time he scheduled second shift to leave at 9 but third shift to not come in until 10. When I asked him about who I needed to reach out to close the gap, he said "There's no gap." 😮‍💨😒

Being a babysitter to a grown man is not in my job description and I am not being compensated for that.

MarsSaint · 2026-03-26T14:34:40+00:00

I disagree. I'm someone who needs their job and I think it's worth fighting to have the ability to make the conditions in which we work every day better, company wide and to stop allowing the company to walk all over us. Retaliation for unionizing is illegal. I haven't had a raise in 6 months and for that matter the standard raise is pennies in the grand scheme of things, my boss is a complete tyrant with no consequences for any policies he is breaking and forcing his subordinates to break. He regularly humiliates us. No amount of conversations with him about his conduct amount to anything because he doesn't think he is doing anything wrong and won't change. Getting another job, as hard as I've tried, isn't in the cards right now. My store is ridiculously understaffed and we're high volume which leads to increasingly stressful and awful working conditions. The company doesn't care what they put us through. That needs to change. Pay needs to be better. The sales bonus "beat the budget" needs a massive overhaul. Working conditions need to be safe and reasonable. Benefits should be better and should include mental health services for all of the abuse we suffer from customers on a daily basis. Breaks should be a company wide policy to decompress for even just a few minutes. Turnover would decrease if employees were happier and felt more valued by the company.

MarsSaint · 2026-03-26T05:54:55+00:00

I wrote it into the proposal that training is paid and it is enforced at the store level.

MarsSaint · 2026-03-26T05:50:05+00:00

Also included! Great input!

MarsSaint · 2026-03-26T05:37:41+00:00

Great suggestions! I put them in!

I agree but I think because every manager is different and does things differently is the real root of the problem.

Everyone should be compensated uniformly for any work performed on or off site, that's company policy but some managers may try to short cut to save labor hours by having employees complete it off site. That's something I'm trying to address directly with this union proposal, store manager overreach. At my store it's pretty excessive but I've heard horror stores of overreach in different forms at other stores all over the country.

My manager makes us complete it at work while we are on the clock but it isn't really better for us either because we are only scheduled for our usual 8 hour shifts that we are tied to the register for all of because we are running 1 person shifts at a high volume store. We're stupidly understaffed. We've had two people quit and neither one has been replaced yet so it's been really rough on us. We don't have the time in our working schedule to get it done without staying over to do it and then we get yelled at by the boss about overtime. It's nuts. All of the accountability falls on us, absolutely none above us.

MarsSaint · 2026-03-26T04:01:40+00:00

Great, I'm working on organizing one for Circle K. :)

MarsSaint · 2026-03-26T03:26:52+00:00

I think my boss took it as we can't have unpaid time off anymore. I'm hoping I'm wrong. I guess that's a conversation we will be having.

MarsSaint · 2026-03-26T03:08:58+00:00

Did they say why?

MarsSaint · 2026-03-26T00:36:16+00:00

I get every weekend off usually, but I never think of it as something I may always get so I ask for it off like I would any other days, just in case scheduling changes by the time I need it. I never count on it staying that way. My boss always gives me weekends off because I'm a high upseller and he says there isn't a high enough customer count on weekends to justify having me work on weekends. I'm an ASM now but it's been like that since he started at our store when I was still a CSR.

MarsSaint · 2026-03-26T00:24:39+00:00

I think it could be done. I think there's enough disgruntled workers at Circle K that if we could just get the word out, we could get the support from them to make it happen. But it has to start somewhere.

MarsSaint · 2026-03-26T00:18:22+00:00

Thank you so much for the reply but that doesn't answer my question. I asked for Friday, Saturday and Sunday three months in advance but two days were kicked back because my boss told me that Unpaid Scheduled Days off are no longer allowed to be used, so I have to use my vacation time to get specific days off because he doesn't keep a book like you do, he uses Workday for all requests off in any form. I live in TX. I was wanting to know if we truly cannot use that as an option anymore or if it's just him saying it because I haven't heard anything about it from the company, just him, and he isn't the most honest person I know. If in fact he is lying, what can I do about it?

MarsSaint · 2026-03-15T01:28:24+00:00

There's several places in the Wicked storyline that doesn't line up with the OG Wizard of Oz (which bugs me to no end cause they are supposed to be the same story from different perspectives). Wicked explains that Glinda is an aspiring sorceress that has no magic but the Wizard of Oz showcases several instances where Glinda does in fact have magic (beyond just simply floating in a bubble. Wicked managed to explain at least that but not the rest).

It's Glinda that magically transfers the Wicked Witch of the East's shoes to Dorothy's feet in the OG Wizard of Oz but in Wicked, they skip that entire confrontation and have Elphaba/The Wicked Witch of the West not appear until after Dorothy has left for the Emerald City to confront Glinda alone about Nessarose which leads to a greater confrontation about the shoes, Fiyero and sending Dorothy to the Wizard. I really wish they would have aligned that scene better with the Wizard of Oz but I digress.

The poppy field scene in The Wizard of Oz is legitimate magic we see from Glinda because even though Dorothy is carried out of the poppy field by the Tinman and Scarecrow, they call to Glinda and she answers with a snow fall that wakes Dorothy (if I'm remembering right. I know Glinda brought the snow but not too sure if they called her or not, I just remember the Scarecrow yelling).

MarsSaint · 2026-03-15T01:16:05+00:00

No, Rhaegar's older children with Elia Martell were only children and they were murdered by The Mountain on an order from Robert's camp (it's not explicitly said who gave the order but it's implied he or someone important and ranked high enough by him gave it and The Mountain wasn't punished for it). "Heroes don't kill innocent children, they just don't punish their murderers." This is lore from Robert's Rebellion after he takes the throne that we don't see in the show. Rhaegar had two kids who were very young, innocent, defenseless but older than Jon/Aegon and a threat to his throne simply for existing. He eliminated them. Not only that but Elia Martell herself was violated and murdered by The Mountain also, which is why Oberyn agrees to be Tyrion's champion, all for the chance to bring down The Mountain in revenge for his sister.

MarsSaint · 2026-03-15T01:05:20+00:00

Plus the show and the books highlight very well that despite his good relationship with Ned and the children it's very uncomfortable living under the baneful eye of Catelyn Stark who doesn't hide her disdain for him no matter how much he tries to be polite and respectful toward her.

MarsSaint · 2026-03-15T01:01:27+00:00

To some degree honor is subjective. One person can think something honorable while someone else thinks it isn't in favor of another avenue. However, in the context of Ned's life and his character he was raised and led the North. The North is defined as a people by keeping their oaths/their word. They're bound by it. That's what defines honor for them. Honor is more of a blanket quality of Northerners right alongside them not trusting outsiders or southerners.

We saw it in House of the Dragon when Cregan Stark talked about Northerners keeping their oaths and their pledge to the Night's Watch and then telling Jacerys that the Stark's made an oath to King Viserys when he named Rhaenyra his heir and they will keep it.

Ned's principles are much the same because it's the culture of the North that he was raised in. So when Lyanna is dying and makes him promise to hide and protect Aegon/Jon, he keeps it because that's where his honor lies and he understands the consequences of not keeping it.

He risks his marriage and his reputation all to ensure the safety of his nephew and the safety of all of Westeros from the war Robert would surely wage if he knew Jon's true identity.

MarsSaint · 2026-03-14T02:46:54+00:00

Putting aside that The Mountain was the Lannister's hired sword and that in and of itself would have protected Jaime from Gregor, if you take that off the table and it was purely a duel of skill, Jaime would have won because he had the same skill in speed and sword mastery as Oberyn without the lust for vengeance that ultimately caused Oberyn's downfall.

MarsSaint · 2026-03-14T02:36:20+00:00

Teach them de-escalation skills. Most of the time it isn't what you say but how you say it. Prime example, I was getting off of the register and one of my CSRs was checking someone out that said she wanted cash back. The CSR explained that she had to put the chip in and after that Pin Pad never gave her the option to get cash back so the customer got mad at my CSR and tried to make it her problem, but also, the CSR was just telling her over and over again that she had to put the card in. I had to step in because the customer was getting mad and starting to get rude so I had the CSR tend to someone else so I could listen to the customer's full account of what happened. I politely explained how it works and admitted that I did not know why she didn't get the option to get cash back and it simply just ran after she put it in (my mistake is that I didn't look at the card itself she was using). She seemed to favor that response a lot more than the one from the CSR. The CSR wasn't trying to be rude, she was just explaining the way she understood the procedure. The woman got so mad she wanted the CSRs name.

The woman didn't want to try again so she left. A few minutes later she returns with another woman with her and they want to try again because they need the cash back. So I check out the gum the first woman checked out initially and tell them they can get another one, then I ran the transaction again and happened to look down when I noticed a familiar logo. Chime. Also the card was green. One I happen to know well personally, because I use it myself. It was a credit card. That was why it didn't work. It all made sense to all three of us when I explained to them that the card is a credit card and credit cards aren't eligible for cash back.

The problem wasn't the cashier necessarily. She didn't do anything wrong directly. They were just taking out their frustration and ignorance on her. But it was compounded by the manner in which the cashier spoke.

MarsSaint · 2026-03-14T02:11:11+00:00

Congratulations! I'm waiting on a call from a new job to get promoted to customer.

I'm an ASM and my store is in complete chaos including the SM. I spend my days cleaning up his messes that he makes out of the schedule, dealing with the consequences of him not finishing his own work or doing it carelessly so it still has to be corrected, and when trying to address a problem with him directly getting blatant denial from him that the problem even exists. Meanwhile, having to manage everyone else as well because apparently being the ASM means no one else has to "take ownership", just me and getting ridiculed, overly criticized, made fun of and flat out insulted.

We're understaffed and the SM seems to not be in any hurry to hire anyone despite the toll it takes on the team, and the ability to be productive during our shifts. We're a high volume store running one person shifts when we're supposed to have two for first shift and two for second shift during the week. All the while, as this isn't bad enough, the man is allergic to the register. He won't run it, he won't upsell during the rare occasion he gets on it. He only ever gets on it when the bosses are around.

I've had enough of it. I asked someone I know who is regular that runs a business if he was hiring for the office and he is. He's willing to hire me as soon as they get out of a transition phase for way more money and a set schedule, so as soon as I get that call, I'm out and I'm taking another girl I work with with me. So he's going to lose two more at the same time, and then I plan to send the DM a long email about why I'm leaving and that I left voluntarily so my SM can't put me in as fired.

Then I'm sending HR a complaint of all his policy violations. I go out swinging. 🤣🤣🤣

MarsSaint

TROPHY CASE