Resignation, craziness, and more craziness!

So... the trainer whose classes I covered last week resigned yesterday. With no advance notice. So I came into work expecting to be doing customer service, cash register, and trying to sell classes and stuff and ended up having to teach class again. But before that I spent almost 3 hours on the computer just trying to fix the schedule. I had to try and cancel some of K's classes and switch the name of which trainer was teaching it for others... and I wanted to reorganize the calendar so the classes were in order by time of day. What I mean is, our monthly calendar has spaces for a class to go- 8 per day and 16 on Saturdays and Sundays. What would make sense is for all the classes to be in order on each day. Like have 5:00 be first, 6:00 be second, and 7:00 be third. That's the way I was trained to do it and that's the way our store's other trainer, S has been doing it. K, however, would just pick a slot that wasn't already taken- so the calendar would read 10:00, 4:00, 12:00, 5:00, 2:00, etc. It was one big jumbled mess that I found very confusing to read- and very hard to read quickly. So if I just had to glance down to see what time my next engagement was it was impossible to do! I couldn't just glance at it, I had to study it for a minute to make sure I wasn't skipping something!

So that was part of the craziness. Then, as I was rescheduling stuff, I noticed that K had left me a note telling me what time all the classes I needed to cover this week start. There was a week 1 puppy class she said started at 6:00. The master calendar said it started at 7:00 and the computer said it started at 7:00 but her attendance log also said 6:00, so I didn't know if she'd changed the time... Then, some of the enrollment forms (forms the customer fills out saying what class and time etc) said 7:00 and two of them said 6:00! So I had to talk to the manager and figure out what to do... and then I had to call the two pet parents whose forms said 6:00 and see if they could come in at 7:00. One said no, so I put her in a Sunday 10:00am class. The other one wanted to be put into a different class anyway, so I put her and her 3 puppies (!) into the Sunday class as well. So instead of the 7:00 class having 6 dogs in it, it had 2. And only one showed up. It was totally awkward to give my big long "day one" speech to one person. I told her she could switch into a different class if she wanted but unfortunately that's the only time that works for her. I felt bad because she was looking forward to the social aspect of the class - for her dog - and having only one other dog in it is kind of not that great. So, I have to call that pet parent to see when he wants to schedule a makeup and if he's going to make it to the rest of the classes etc.

Which reminds me, there was a man that called the other day to apologize for missing S's class that morning so she told me to schedule a makeup for him and there was another class covering the same material a couple days later- at 8:00pm - so I told him about it. And he thought I meant 8:00 am because apparently that's when he showed up and he was very unhappy and apparently talked to the store manager for like 45 minutes. The manager just confirmed my impression of him - he thinks very highly of himself (only told me over the phone that he was a doctor about 8 times) and thinks that other people are stupid and that anything that goes wrong is someone else's fault. So the manager basically told me that he now thinks I'm a complete idiot and that it was all my fault- he wouldn't give up until the manager pretty much told him that she was going to have a long talk with me about it and "take care of it." Man, people are weird. I know I am. Hahaha.

Oh, remembered another crazy thing... as I was doing scheduling, I discovered that we have 5 intermediate classes starting over the period of about 7 days. And we should have one starting every other week. And unfortunately I couldn't just cancel some of them because there's someone signed up for almost all of them! Which is weird because it's so far in advance. So I have to let S handle that one because I think one of those classes is hers and she'd be the one taking K's Intermediate students since I'm not comfortable with that material yet. But man that was a shocker to find!

So this week I'm now working Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday... which sucks because my husband is off Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday for Labor Day weekend. And since I don't work Monday at all or Tuesday during the day- it would've been nice to have a couple days with him in a row! I'm not supposed to work Saturdays- I told the managers many times that I want one day on the weekend to have off since he works weekdays and goes to bed early. And since I work weeknights and weekends, I would hardly ever see him if I didn't have one weekend day off. So my schedule was supposed to be Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday. And once Harley and Ace graduate, then it can be Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Sunday.

But that reminds me that I'm still not done scheduling. I came home tonight and found some I need to fix. Somehow with this craziness, I ended up scheduling myself to work 6 days a week in October.

Anyway, that's enough for now.
Nighty night y'all.
<3 L

Saturday's surprise classes, kids' activities, and oblivious people

So yesterday was much crazier than I anticipated. I thought the trainer whose classes I'd covered Tuesday and Thursday would be back but when I got into work the other trainer began telling me what time K's classes were. Very confused, I asked her if K was coming in. To make a long story a bit shorter, the manager was under the impression that I knew I was covering her classes on Saturday when in fact, I was not... so I had scheduled a makeup session for one of K's students for 10:00 and K also had a class that I was supposed to cover at 10:00. And one of the students in the class had missed the two previous weeks so they were behind the rest of the class... So thank goodness S was there to cover the class while I handled the makeup - I had the student from the class who'd missed the two weeks come to the makeup with me and I taught both pet parents the curriculum they'd missed. And though makeups are only supposed to be about 15 minutes long, because there were two of them and because one of them had missed two weeks, it ended up being almost an hour. Then I just spent the rest of the day trying to sell classes, rescheduling classes and waiting to see if anyone would show up for the new dog orientation. But the manager was incredibly grateful that I stepped up to the plate and covered the other trainer's classes even though it was spur of the moment. I was fine with doing it. I love teaching classes- I can't wait for my own to start! Though I have to admit, I wish I was getting part of the commission for it... :P

Well to steal my area trainer's idea, I plan to print out some coloring pages for kids to do if they get antsy when they're in class. So I looked up dog-related coloring pages and found a couple okay ones, and then I found activity pages from the AKC about dog agility, safety, training, etc. Like crossword puzzles, find the hidden picture pages, fill in the blanks, etc. I bought two boxes of crayons (24 each) to take to work with me when I go in on Tuesday.

http://www.akc.org/pdfs/public_education/agility_matching.pdf
http://www.akc.org/pdfs/public_education/bailey_goes_home.pdf
http://www.akc.org/pdfs/public_education/CanineCrossword.pdf
http://www.akc.org/pdfs/public_education/canine_words.pdf
http://www.akc.org/pdfs/public_education/grooming_crossword.pdf
http://www.akc.org/pdfs/public_education/hidden_picture.pdf
http://www.akc.org/pdfs/public_education/safety_scramble.pdf
http://www.akc.org/pdfs/public_education/tail_tales.pdf
http://www.akc.org/pdfs/public_education/where_breed_come_from.pdf


I just remembered something that happened when I was training with the area trainer. I was with her and the other trainer (which was strange that the three of us would be at the same place at a time) talking to a man looking at dog food, I believe. I'm not sure how he got onto the topic, but somehow he strayed from talking about dog nutrition or whatever to bashing us and our coworkers. To make a long story short (again), he rambled on and on and on basically about how we were not going to make anything of ourselves or become successful working there and we should quit and go to school to get a degree because he is getting his MBA and is very wealthy and successful, blah blah blah... He mostly was talking to the area trainer the entire time - well, she was the only one interjecting and answering him - but oh how I wanted to interrupt to tell him that I do have a degree, and in Psychology no less, and I plan to get another degree (or two!) somewhere in the near future. I kind of have to have money first though. Well he was just completely oblivious to our reactions and terrible at reading body language- the area trainer tried to tell him she needed to go about a thousand times (gross overstatement of course, but you get the idea) and he kept saying "but one more thing!" and I'm pretty sure the three of us were showing how offended we were in not so subtle ways.  Not in rude ways... but generally I think it is very hard for a person to completely hide when they are hurt, or offended, upset, or angry and so though we did not intend it, I'm sure we showed it.

I just finished watching Julie & Julia which is what inspired me to write a blog in the first place. So it's taken me about two hours to write this post because I basically have only written during the commercials. Haha.

Oh just remembered that today I went to Borders- they're having the 50-70% off closing sale. So sad that they're going out of business, but it's great on my wallet. I bought two more books for my dog-related library. I got From Baghdad With Love and AKC's Citizen Canine. As well as a bunch of other books that I'll read in a year... when I have free time. Lol. Certainly don't have very much now.

Well... unless I think of something else to add to this post in the next minute, this concludes this post. :)
Until tomorrow - Harley starts class tomorrow night!