The Note War

Here's a Shur Fine update: After Jeff, the former night manager, got fired for calling these two cashiers "fucking stupid" (or something to that effect), they moved Joe to all night shifts and Don works mornings. Their schedules never overlap, so they have to leave notes to each other to communicate. These are usually scrawled on a scrap piece of paper and hung on a nail sticking out of the wall. So if Joe has a problem with something someone did, the only for him to tell Don about it is to leave him this note, which of course all the rest of us can see. It's a pretty bad system, but what are you gonna do?

Anyway, the note system recently took a turn for the worse. Joe left one of his usual notes, something like, "I don't know who restocked the paper last time, but they forgot to put up X, and that's really irritating." Maybe it's a little harsh, but no big deal. Today I came in and Don had posted a reply: "Like how Pete didn't pull the Special K from the cereal restock." I can think of at least 3 things that are inappropriate here. 1) Why should Joe care? All restocking is done during the day, so there's no reason for him to even know about it. 2) #1 leads me to believe that the note was not intended for Joe at all, but as a humiliating public correction. 3) I don't know what the hell the note means.

So I left my own note in return. Here's how it went, as closely as I can remember: "Point taken. While we're all writing notes, I'd like to point out that there are more discreet ways of correcting employees. General notices are understandable, but having mistakes pointed out to everyone is unnecessary and irritating." Let's see if I get fired tomorrow...