Work Is Hell

We're a cafe in a Barnes & Noble so we're cordoned off from the rest of the store to some extent. If we're going to drink coffee or water the only place we can put it is at a table directly adjacent to the FOH cafe area on the other side of a waist-height half-wall. This table was directly sanctioned by our asst store manager for us to keep our water and coffee a year ago. We can't keep keep drinks behind the bar or BOH for cross-contamination reasons, which is fine. But for the past week she's had a bug up her butt about everything, and now having personal drinks right next to the café "looks bad", so we can't have anything there. Including coffee and water, unless we're on our break. So it's not even a punishment, just sticklerism. It's just kinda ridiculous, and it's a shame because she's always been a people-first manager, and the best boss I've had, but I'm starting to lose respect. It's not out of self-bias when I say that we're the fastest-paced, hardest-working department of the store, and having the coffee that we otherwise pour down the drain once an hour is one of the very few things to look forward to during the work day.

If I'm feeling calm cool collect I'll talk to her about it, because it's one of those small things that just deflates entire teams. I've been applying to jobs nonstop over the past several months, and this is doing nothing but encouraging me to keep at it.

A coworker was just out of work for two weeks sick and came back today.

She had Legionnaires. 😐

One of my minions is on vacation next week. He gave the same response to the question. He better not be messing with me.

Also, hiring people is awful especially when people have friends that they expect to get interviews. Most of my Wednesday and Thursday this week will be interviews, and I'm already over it.

Before this job I literally didn't even know it was possible for someone to walk through a space and have their cologne *strongly* linger for a long time after they leave. How much is even required to make that happen? 1 bottle a day??

My MAGA coworker tried to be a smart ass and got shaded today. We have a "question of the week" on the wall at work and last week's was about recycling and renewable energy. So Mr. Fox News sends an email to the person that organizes the QOTW suggesting a future question about how much a town's electric bill went up when they switched to exclusively wind/solar energy. So this week's question is about climate change. I asked the person the writes them and yes it was deliberate.

5 interviews done yesterday. 3 more await today. I actually enjoyed it so far. This may have been affected by the last candidate yesterday being positive and easily the best of the day.

Good news: got my boss to agree to let us have our coffee again.

Bad news: This is the single busiest of the year for us, and I hired two new employees last month to help us manage. One of them got unexpectedly got a full-time job offer two weeks later, and while she's still able to work, she can no longer do the mornings that I specifically hired her for. The other employee, scheduled for 32 ours this week, quit at the beginning of the week by completely ghosting us. I've had to cover those missing shifts, so I've been working multiple 15-hr shifts with barely any breaks and I'm completely exhausted.

And because I pissed off the gods at some point or another, an hour ago one of my two full-time employees put in her two weeks notice. I'm happy for her because she was able to snag a job in her preferred industry, but I'm beyond fucked for the foreseeable future.

And the fucking Lumineers are on the radio.

Drink more coffee.

Finished up interviews yesterday. One on the last day was a favor interview. It went well enough but confirmed why we weren't going to interview him. The second was one that caught us off guard being much better than expected. The last one was a candidate that is currently doing the exact same job in another state whose supervisor is someone my boss and I know professionally. We were honestly very leery going in because it's a very small lane that we live in work wise and getting applicants with direct experience almost never happens. Our minds immediately went to there had to be something wrong with her. The interview was actually really fantastic. She really knows her stuff and appears very close in line with our workplace vibe which is a bigger deal than the qualifications for us really. As she was doing the written portion of the interview, we were discussing and quickly realized that, regardless of how much we liked any other candidate, she was the obvious choice. Decision was made to offer her the job then and there because everyone on the interview team was in perfect agreement on it. Right now, the only thing that is standing in the way is a little bit of salary negotiation which seems like it won't be much of a hurdle. This is all extra cool because we were short staffed even before the person she is replacing left, so her training time being significantly less than standard is going to be so beneficial to the office.

Here's the kicker though. My boss and I were curious about why she was leaving her current job, but that's a question that's touchy if not impossible to ask. Upper manager phoning in to the interview either didn't agree or didn't care because he asked direct but nicely with an option for her to decline to answer why she had applied for the job. It was wild because it was the first question he asked of her after introductions. She answered that she had reconnected with her high school sweetheart twenty years later and that they had been dating a little over a year. The issue is that he lives about 45 minutes south of Knoxville while she lives just south of Atlanta. They had talked about how both were ready to move things to next level, ie marriage, but that couldn't work living in two different states. She told us how she had already bought a dress and everything. Given his situation, he can't move, so she had decided to figure out a way to get a job here. It just so happened we listed the job right after she decided to hunt. Us giving her the job is allowing her to make the move up and get married to this guy. As a not so closet romantic, it really made me feel the feels about the decision.

Random thoughts re interviewing
1) I've been involved in interviews before, but this is the first time I've been one of the main people making the decision. All the interviews I've gone on in my life that seemed to go great, but I never got a call on makes way more sense now. We interviewed eight people, and I'd say all eight had positive feelings on their chances afterward.
2) Generational differences are real, y'all. One of our interviews was a guy who graduated in May. You could tell he was smart but obviously had not done many professional interviews. My boss and i are around the same age. The other two people interviewing him are late 50s or early 60s. When discussing him, they completely trashed him for a bunch of things that my boss and I barely remarked on. We had to argue a little to keep him from being ranked last despite another candidate saying some borderline racist stuff.
3) So many emotions. We would have loved to have hired our number two choice. So much so that we wouldn't be totally crushed if salary negotiations fell through with our number one. We just couldn't hire him over someone who also interviewed well but had years of experience. It's gonna suck to tell him if he reaches out that there was nothing he could have done better.
4) The power of first impressions is real. The interviews lasted 60-90 minutes each. For most, I had made a decision within the first 10. The remainder of the interview would move the needle some but it never strayed far off the original direction.
5) Preparation helps. Before we even looked at applications, my boss and I had a long discussion on who we wanted to hire including professional and personal traits. Having that discussion benefited us so much during the interview because we kept a united front in all discussions. This came in extra handy because this was the first time either of us had worked with this upper manger on a work project since he took the role, so this was very much us interviewing with him as well. He commended us for our work on it at the end of the process which makes us feel we're doing okay in his eyes now.

Some speech pattern things. He had a placeholder he used while thinking that irked them. He wore a jacket but no tie with the top button undone. His shoes were nice but not dress shoes exactly. With his work history being short, he struggled to find examples for some questions. We asked about failure. He told a story from where he worked at a plant nursery early this year where he didn't know what he was doing so he made stuff up to customers for a couple weeks before summoning courage to ask the expert employee. Not a great story but not the end of the world. Lastly, his entire work history so far has been highly outdoor work. We're outside a ton but not a vast majority like his previous job. He was asked how he felt about that. He answered something along the lines of, "I guess that I'll have to work with it. I can't do only field work forever." Again, not a great answer but it was a much bigger deal for them.

I work in a shared space with two co-workers, one of whom has an extreme sensitivity to smells/fragrances. I haven't changed anything about my routine/grooming/etc in months, but for the last week she's been sneezing and coughing the second I get to the office.

I feel bad, but what can I even do at this point!? I'm at a loss. Any ideas?

*edit* okay so she talked to me about it and said it's just something she needs to get over, but I still feel bad. Luckily she's retiring soonish.

One of the higher ups in the office sent out a building wide email telling everyone that we are not allowed to have anything pumpkin (natural or artificial) in the office due to an employee’s allergy.

There may or may not be a low-key witch hunt going on.

Allergic to pumpkin so no one can have it? What's this person do? Run around taking sips of rando's pumpkin spice lattes? Does getting within close proximity to pumpkin trigger some weird allergic reaction?

Seems a bit extreme.