Am I crazy? What would you do?

[TinysMom]

First of all - two pieces to the "backstory"...

• I was brought up that if something isn't done right or someone isn't happy - you do all you can to make things right - even if it costs you something....that "relationships" are oftentimes more important than money or time or whatever.
• I am a merchandiser - this means I go into a number of different stores on a regular basis to do work for various companies. There are some situations where I'm doing a one-time project for a company - other situations where I'm doing projects in a store every week or bi-weekly.

I had a situation come up today in one of my "regular" stores. It is a Dollar General store - I'm in there once a month to service the reading eyeglasses and the jewelry, every two weeks to service the greeting cards, plus I have other work in the store on a somewhat regular basis. We used to do the magazines in the store on a monthly basis - that ended last month.

When I went to do the magazines in the store last month (my first month with this company) - we could not find them for a couple of reasons - plus the manager was on vacation. I was told by my district manager to put it down as "magazines not available" and that the store could process their own magazines since they will be doing that starting in July.

Today when I was in the store, the manager came up to me and stated that she needed to have the magazines done TODAY - that her district manager told her to get it done. I explained (briefly) that we don't have that account anymore and she stated, "yes...but these are from when you had the account..".

Now - I knew I had two options for sure - maybe more. I could stand there and argue with her....or I could just go ahead and do the magazines and "eat" the time (not get paid for it). My company won't pay me - because we no longer have that contract....and they would need to have someone to bill to pay me.

I decided to just go ahead and get the magazines done - it took me about 90 minutes - I had over 350 magazines to process (pull off the covers and then discard the magazines and count the covers to process the credit slip).

I wound up not getting my second store done today - which is ok - I have all week to get it done and it will just make tomorrow a bit more hectic - but I can handle that. Really - this week was going to be a somewhat light week anyway.

Anyway - part of me is kicking myself that I did this and didn't get to my second store (Art & I were sharing the car today and he needed it for part of the day)....and yet part of me is going, "It's worth $13.50 (90 minutes at $9 per hour) to have peace with the store manager and be on her good side..".

As I was getting done, I mentioned to her that some of the magazines were from way back in April and May and she said, "That girl who used to do this before you was horrible. She wouldn't stay even one minute extra to get stuff done and she did a bad job."

So I'm hoping that I did the right thing - even though most folks would say, "Why work if you won't get paid??"

I guess I'd like some input - in case stuff like this happens again. I'd especially like it if you work in retail and have any input since you may have experienced stuff like this before...

I guess I want the store to be happy to see me walk in the door - and I don't want to dread future visits lest the manager be upset....

 

[slavetoabunny]

I would have done the same thing. I would let your manager know, though. Even if you don't get paid for it, at least you may get and "atta-boy".

 

[TinysMom]

Actually.....I did email my manager after I got home and let him know what I had done. I explained in the email that I knew we didn't have it as a project - but that I felt like 'good relations' with the store is what he would prefer. I also let him know just in case my store's district manager were to call him about this - that way he knows it has been done (even though we no longer have the account).

Honestly? I'm glad we don't have the account anymore - I did this in another store last month and was thanking God that we wouldn't be doing magazines any more...

And to think - when I got into merchandising years ago - I did do magazines...and almost looked for a magazine job when I started back to work this time....