Notes From Work: Getting Called In

This is sort of a “not what you might think” topic.

It's not so much that I mind getting called in to work. It's just that it oftentimes seems like I get called in for dumb or less than legitimate reasons as it is for good ones.

Most often, it's because somebody is sick for one reason or another. Given my line of work, it's at least as likely, if not more likely, that this “sickness” came in a bottle as it is that it came from a virus or bacteria. But I go all the same.

I got called in a week or two ago because there was a corporate inspection that suddenly got moved up by a day. Even though it was probably not meant to do me personally any favors, I suspect that the whole point was for the inspector to see someone other than me doing what I do.

Now, granted, I get that we're supposed to do as well as we can on these things, and that depends as much on the people as anything. But at the same time, I'm not the only one who does what I do where I work, and if I was doing inspections, I'd probably want to see different people in some positions from time to time.

Given my perhaps limited knowledge of what goes on behind the scenes where I work, I have some suspicions as to why I got called in for this inspection. Part of it has to do with what I said before about doing as well as possible for these inspections. I suppose it's something of a compliment to say that I'm the best person for the job at what I do where I work.

But there's another reason, too, and it treads into dark territory, I'm afraid. It's the kind of thing I may very well live to regret talking about. But I guess I'll be brave and not let that stop me.

See, my suspicion is that I wasn't just called in to help bump up the store's inspection score a little bit. I have a feeling I was also called in to help them avoid a potentially sticky situation. The thing is, the guy I was covering for is the sort of fellow who might have gotten himself fired for not doing the job right if the inspector had seen him. This could very easily gotten sticky because this other guy is black, which could very easily have brought out the whole race card thing.

Basically, instead of letting a potential problem be solved, my employers have dodged a bullet for the time being in favor of continuing with something that may very well be a problem down the line.

Now, am I saying that this guy's bad at the job? Well, no, not really, because I'm the one who does that position when I'm there, so I don't ever really get to see first hand how he does when he's there.

The thing that bothers me the most about this is that when I agreed to go in to work, I didn't just stop what I was doing and go. I also had to interrupt somebody else's fun for that. Bad enough that I went into work to help cover a little lieing and cheating. That I had to interrupt somebody else's fun to do so only makes it worse.

Really, though, if we've got these people who really are that much of a liability that things like this have to happen, maybe things need to change where I work. That's what this is all about, in the end.

So here's to hoping I don't wind up regretting this before too long. See you in the near future, folks.