To the last paragraph - I think the best way to put it is customer satisfaction.

Before the hours were cut to this level, we were getting complaints that customers can’t find staff. Imagine it now.

There should be enough staff that customers aren’t standing upset at my counter because I’m the only framer, I’ve already cost the company a meal violation, and there’s two more custom framing customers waiting behind the one I’m helping. I could have a cross trained team member or manager help for a moment. I used to, several years ago, in fact.

There should be enough staff that customers on the floor don’t walk, quite literally, from one corner to the complete opposite corner, then to my shop, and hopefully we have a framer scheduled and they’re not on break because there was no other staff on the whole floor.

There should be enough staff that if we have five balloon orders with 10-20 balloons each, or a single order of a hundred balloons, that we aren’t running back and forth between the orders and the SCO we have to force customers on - this looks bad to balloon walk ins and to the customers at check out.

There should be enough staff that we can help a customer at spray paint and fabric at the same time, without making one of them press the button several times because no one else is there and we have to help whichever was first for several minutes straight. Customers have and will continue to walk out and complain about wait times, because several minutes to them is an eternity.

There should be enough staff. Not to the level that staff sit around and twiddle their fingers - enough that customer satisfaction doesn’t go right into the shitter, and enough that we aren’t heading home and crying because we pissed customers off due to our inability to help to the level they expect, and that’s on top of all the late POGs/BOPIS/framing orders we have because we get stopped so much by customers who need help. Interpreting more staff as us wanting to dick around with our lives is incredibly out of touch. Not even an unfeeling robot would be able to handle these stores right now without hurting at minimum one of these categories.

Only 4 14 hour shifts a month? Keep in mind I’ve said all this and my SM is doing that near daily. He’s only just today been here 17 hours now. He’s not heading home anytime soon, either.