"HEY! DOES NOEL KNOW THIS IS GOING ON??"

Warning......May have been previously thawed.......in anger....

     Lena attempted to walk away from the locksmith just after she opened door #1 to the safe, and leave the locksmith to crack open door #2, where are tips lay in waiting to be rescued.  

     Our safe had been broken for approximately 2 weeks. 

     The front of the safe held all the money, coin, coupons, deposits, and anything cash-related to the functioning of the store.  Then, there was a second door (the safe inside the safe) which held our tips.  Shift supervisors were to drop special plastic bags filled with the cash, which they put a time and date on--into the slot for the the second door.  Today, the locksmith had come for the second time, this time with the right tools to drill it out.
     Tips were divided up according to the hours you worked from the week prior. And, with it being broken for several weeks, were were very excited to be getting some serious cash.

      Behind door #1, there were many money bags.  To which he said to her—"you will have to remove all the money before I can begin work.:  She stared at him, as the weight of the financial responsibilities of a Shift Manager were becoming too great a burden.

      In trying to prod her into the comfort of knowing that she was not alone in having to complete this task--that the locksmith was here ONCE BEFORE --A FEW DAYS AGO-TRYING TO SOLVE THIS SAME PROBLEM-- I said, "Lena, Katz just took all of the money bags in back."  I was urging her get started for the locksmith to begin working--

     She began to say…"but……" and then she just bent over and started getting them out from the floor of the safe.  She dumped all of the money bags on Noel's desk, with no attempt to secure the money in a safe place, such as a drawer--then, turned around and left. Without saying a word-- she was out the door.  Literally, she left the building.

     A new shift manager arrived!—Chris, from Venice.  Apparently we were running out of people that liked working at our store and we were importing them from other stores.  Chris was very easy going and took matters into his own hands.  He was loaded with common sense not seen in this store, and I, for one, was grateful.

     Panties in a bunch was trying to tell Chris what to do and I let him.  I was happy it was a new manager and that Katz was somewhere in Miami at a music festival to give Mat Zo a kiss in person.

     After everything I hear about Miami, I just hoped she wouldn’t get killed.
  

      Kevin and I were relatively new, so Panties was guiding Chris through the evening shift duties-
he also let him know to expect a 160-box delivery, to which Chris stopped in his tracks and stared at him.  

     The duties of overseeing the locksmith's drilling-- with a ton of money bags all strewn out on a desk in the back, had me wondering why Noel wasn't there to take care of the safe.  I mean--here we were, trying to do our jobs, while 2 local locksmiths were kneeling in the middle of our front counter area- (because the safe was located between the two registers)-- prying open the safe at the green apron--and essentially--no one was in charge??
     I asked if anyone had called her to let her know the locksmiths were here--and Panties replied that he had called her personally, and that she wasn't coming in.

     Heck no, I thought to myself.  She could have cared less what went on at that store.  When she left at 1pm---she was done--and I mean done for the day.

     Panties helped him deal with the massive amounts of tips that were shoved into the newly drilled out safe by bringing all the plastic bags of tips to the desk in the back to accompany the money bags.  Even though the safe was broken, tips were still being deposited into the safe because "there was no where else to put them."  At some point in time in the past week I had mentioned to a co-worker that perhaps the safe was broken due to the weight of the coin straining the locking mechanism --and that adding more tips to it was just aggravating the situation.  She shrugged. 

     Panties instructed me to start dishes, and I was happy to get out of his sight.

     It was somewhere between the locksmith breaking free the tip area of the safe, then, DunGuard armored vehicle taking the rest of the money and the 160-box store delivery of supplies, that Chris had his brilliant idea.  I was so pleased with it, I couldn’t believe it.   After the order was delivered to the store, Chris brought Panties in the back, where I was doing the dishes.
     He handed Panties the inventory sheet and said “I know you are familiar with all of these things and where they all belong.  So, I am going to have you go ahead and start checking it in and putting it away."  Chris walked back up to the front of the store and left Panties standing there. 
     I quickly looked down and continued to wash dishes.

     I decided it was time to take my half-hour dinner. So, prior to leaving, I waltzed up to Panties, who was slowly prodding through the delivery boxes, and in a sing-song way asked him... “He’s going to come back here and help you... isn’t he?” 

     “No,” Panties replied, then continued, "And if he thinks I’m going to put it all away—he is completely mistaken."

     I shook my head, because I knew that Panties would not even try to put it away.  

     Panties left for the evening as soon as I got back from dinner.  Upon my return, I discovered he didn’t put the boxes of frozen breakfast sandwiches away at all.  They had been left out for at least an hour.  I notified Chris of my discovery, and doing his best to remain diplomatic, said, "Well, I'm sure he didn’t mean too…." and then put them in the freezer.  

     I myself, would have wrote Panties up for complete disregard for product safety.  Or, something like that.  It was purposeful, and again, passive-aggressive.  Yet, no one ever reprimanded him for it.

     The next day Katz came back from her trip to Miami and demoted herself.  As it turns out, whenever Katz had asked for a day off, Noel would purposefully schedule her.  It had become a game to Noel to make sure Katz had no life.  She worked every weekend evening shift and would only give her evenings during the week.  No days.  Noel knew that Katz was trying to save money for school, and figured she wouldn't quit, so she abused her.
     Being a shift Supervisor under Noel was giving Katz nothing but grief and she knew she would go no further in the system.  So, she decided to keep her sanity by not licking Noel's boots anymore as a Shift Supervisor and just be a common Barista.  At least she couldn't get yelled at when things went wrong.  I thought it was a shame because Katz was the only Shift Supervisor of this coffee shop that bothered to teach me about coffee.