The Art of the Hustle

  ***

  It had been over a week into the job and Isaac still had not shown his face much on the sales floor. It was fine with me. He could stay in the back all he wanted and let me continue to command my squadron.

  I poked my head into the backroom on some down time and asked how everything was going. He was noticeably busy on the computer and had paper work everywhere.

  “Are you making some adjustments to the schedule?” I asked.

  “You’ll find out soon enough,” he said in a condescending tone.

  Screw you too, I thought. “Okay, just let me know if you need any help. I’ve been doing the schedule for the past few months and have memorized everyone’s shift preferences and availability.”

  Isaac said nothing.

  The following morning, I came in at 10:00 a.m.

  “Hey, man, what’s up?” I said to Carlos.

  “Hey, why did you cut my hours!” he demanded, ignoring the civil pleasantries.

  “I wasn’t aware your hours had been cut, Carlos.”

  “Yeah, well they are. Everyone’s hours were cut.”

  “Okay, let me see what’s going on.”

  When I went to the back, I saw Isaac at the computer again. He didn’t say anything to me or even look at me. I walked up to where the schedule was posted and looked for my name under the ‘manager trainee’ slot. It wasn’t there. What the heck. I scanned down the list and saw my name listed alphabetically with the others. Okay, no big deal. I glanced across to my hours for the upcoming week, it read ‘20’.

  “Hey, Isaac, did you make this schedule?”

  “What’s that?” he said, trying his best to ignore me.

  “The schedule? Did you make this schedule?” I asked, trying to conceal my anger.

  “Yes.”

  Okay, now this guy was really starting to piss me off. First he ignored me, now he was trying to play coy with me as if he didn’t know he just demoted me without cause and cut my hours in half.

  “Is there any reason why my name is no longer under the ‘manager trainee’ column and why my hours have been reduced?”

  “Just doing a little bit of house cleaning. Don’t worry, you’ll be manager trainee again.”

  “House cleaning?”

  “We just need to take one step back in order to take two steps forward.”

  “In case you don’t know, I’m the number one sales associate in the country; you can’t just cut my hours.”

  “I’m sure you are.”

  “It’s not an opinion, it’s a fact. Look it up.”

  “I don’t have to. Things are going to be run a little differently around here from now on.”

  “Whatever,” I said under my breath. I walked onto the sales floor noticeably pissed off. I had worked really hard to get to where I was at, and then some pompous jerk came in and undid it all almost overnight.