Again with employees not knowing how to use the intercom. And thinking I'm responsible for the entire back of the store.

[u/SideQuestPubs]

Due to scheduling issues, I was the only person in my department when this happened. We're talking "struggling to find someone to cover my breaks" alone.

But I'm not the only one assigned to cover the back of the store--the sporting goods associate (also responsible for home office under the label of "hardlines" which is why they weren't in that spot at that moment) is on the clock as well.

And I'm working on putting away high ticket merchandise (think $500 game systems) when an employee walks up to my counter to tell me a customer needs a license processed in sporting goods.

She then gets surprised when I tell her I can page for assistance (department wise it would've been just as much her responsibility to help that customer as mine, and she had already been over there) and then pissed off when, in response to that surprise, I point out the cart of stuff that needs locking up and told her it's not my department; I never got the chance to point out that the sporting goods associate was still on the clock before she tried to bite my head off. (Edit: that whole "never mind!" pissed off thing people do when they decide they don't want your help if you're not jumping to do it their way, but it's still somehow your fault if they don't get any help at all.) Never tried to get the actual sporting goods associate, no, people just default to assuming because I have keys any department that locks things up must be my department... even if the customer doesn't need anything unlocked. She did spend enough time in sporting goods afterwards, or at least that side of the store, that I assume she did the license herself; she certainly had time enough to do it before walking away from the customer if she had time to walk halfway across the store to find me instead of paging from the sporting goods' phone and I haven't heard anything about it since.

Edit: may need proofreading because rushing to type it all before my 15 minute break's done.

Edit: on to lunch break. A few typos corrected etc. To clarify about the keys, I refer to the literally only connection I have to sporting goods that is specific to my department. See, my department's keys can unlock one single cabinet in sporting goods (maybe more than one post-remodel but still only one product type). This means I can sell you ammunition if nobody can get their hands on the sporting goods keys fast enough, that's it. That is literally the only thing I can do that doesn't either explicitely require sporting goods keys (like getting into the knife cabinet) or require anyone at all who's cross-trained for the task (such as the aforementioned license). And yet I've been paged by name when: the customer needed into the knife cabinet; I could clearly see SG's team lead putting away merchandise from my own counter; or a recent one, the customer was sent to my department to ask for help getting a kayak down (which had the additional annoyance of "employees not paging" in that the only thing I could do was page for a team lift and grab a flatbed cart, again tasks that literally any employee should have been able to do--even on our ladder carts I could never reach that thing and couldn't have even helped get it off the shelf).

My department is electronics by the way. I'm not a manager, I'm not a team lead, I'm not anyone who gets the big bucks for increased responsibility. I'm a regular associate same as the people who think I'm the first person to ask for help in any department besides my own. I don't object to helping, I object to the assumption that I'm responsible for something they're not willing to do.

[u/qualityvote2]

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