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libraford · 7 years

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The Glue Famine of 2017

On February 6th, 2017, I ranted colorfully about a constant depletion of glue from retail stores due to a growing trend of children making glue slime. (To the many of you asking, ‘what the fuck is glue slime,’ here is a video of an excitable man showing you how to make it. A mixture of glue and borax.) The rant has become absurdly popular and just as absurdly long.

I’m sure that people are just as tired of seeing it clog up their dashboards as I am of listening to angry parents use me as a receptacle for their repressed rage. So I have decided to perform a condensed recap in order to deliver the updates on my diminishing tolerance for humans in a much more digestible size.

If you have been following along thus far, you may skip to the bolding below. For the rest... this is an exercise in foreshadowing.

It was December 18th when we noticed that the glue was all gone. “Perhaps they’re using it all for Christmas projects,” offered one worker. “Perhaps they have a lot of crafting to do,” said another.

But then came the phone calls: “Do you have any glue?” “Do you have any styrofoam pellets?” “Do you have any borax?”

Borax. Borax- of course!

They’re making slime! Someone must have taught it in a science class, I thought. And now they want to show their friends! Kids are so cute.

But then the phone calls became more frequent, urgent: “Glue?” “Clear glue?” “Borax?” “Shaving cream, contact lens solution, glue?” “Glue glue glue?” “Where is the glue?” “Why don’t you have any glue?” “WHY DOESN’T ANYONE HAVE ANY GLUE?!”

I did what I always do when unreasonable quantities of singular items have suddenly reached an apex of ridiculous popularity: I ask the Internet. An article lands in my lap (literally, because my only computer is a laptop) about how glue slime has become popular. Thousands of videos of people playing with slime. At least a hundred tutorials. A lot of people use it to stim. Cool!

The other part is about how kids who make it are selling it. There is an entire market in the 7-17 demographics bracket based around the buy, sell, and trade of non-newtonian fluids. People are selling by the ounce.

And just like any other thing that happens in this town, the parents have gone completely bonkers that their children jumped on the trend a day late and start blaming us. Because it is entirely our fault that this trend blindsided everyone. People begin showing us just how little they know about working in retail by asking why we ‘don’t just order more glue?’ They feel that it is an affront, a personal insult to them, that we are refusing to do this specifically because of their requests and we are clearly anarchists bent on dismantling this oppressive system.

But I digress. Ah yes- the glue.

Just as we were beginning to give up, thinking that the glue famine was going to mark the abrupt end of the trend, I am tasked with setting up an endcap specifically for glue slime.

With all the bottles of glue we don’t have.

The glue slime display posed empty and yearning for two weeks before suddenly, miraculously, we were given a huge shipment of glue. Huge! Almost enough to fill the endcap! Yes! Finally, we could give the people what they want!

This was on President’s Day Weekend. It was empty by Monday.

We played this tug-of-war between supply and demand for weeks and weeks until we finally started getting enough in per week to keep the endcap full. We began carrying it by the gallons! Gallons of glue were selling out by the end of the week, filling again on Thursday, only to be voraciously depleted by Saturday morning. People were still angry. We had become used to the angry. Boisterous shouts had become the rhythmic breath of the store- rising each weekend and falling to inhale by Monday.

But we had reached an equilibrium. I could see an end to the madness.

And this brings us to April.

I was promoted to shipping operations. The glue slime endcap was likewise promoted to drive aisle.

As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I take the monthly event calendar with me as reading material. They have me manage the classes and family events and it helps to prepare.

I flip to the final page and what do I see?

And which poor soul is scheduled to lead this class?

This is the moment where I realized that I was doomed to a sticky mess regardless of what position I held in this company. At least this time it wasn’t going to be a biological hazard. Probably.

But here’s the kicker:

Because we don’t sell baking soda, borax, shaving cream, or contact lens solution, we technically can’t have the kids make the slime themselves.

We have to make it and then bring it in for them to customize as they please.

Our manager leaves in the middle of the day to get supplies to do a test run because she has never made glue slime before and wants to test the recipe that the Company gave us. She comes back to the break room as I am coming back from lunch.

Over the headset, I hear: “Oh my god, it’s sticky!”

I find an amusing sort of symmetry in the fact that this is the same manager whose response to the aforementioned biological hazard was “oh my god, it’s chunky!”

This is that ‘foreshadowing’ thing I mentioned earlier.

The days leading up to this event have filled everyone involved with it with dread and meticulous preparation. An entire gallon of slime has been made prior to the event and portioned into Easter eggs to ration each child’s daily allotment of slime. Little cups of glitter, beads, sequins, plastic animals, googly eyes, and (enigmatically) pom poms have been filled and set onto a table covered in paper for easy cleanup.

We have been chanting to ourselves: “It’s only two hours, it’s only two hours, it’s only two hours.” This has become the heartbeat, a chant between raucous breaths of angry parents.

We have played out every possible scenario that could happen and built a contingency plan around every problem. Our armor is on. We have backup.

We are ready for battle.

And now, submitted for your approval, I bring you to to today- April 8th.

Which is, by some weird coincidence and because the fates like a good laugh, also my girlfriend’s birthday.

I am told at the beginning of my shift that I need to change my shirt because I smell like sweat and my manager is concerned that the parents will find it offensive for me to smell like a human being who has been trying to work out the tail end of a fever for three weeks.

Despite the fact that I’m going to be the one heading this thing, it is the managers who are the most nervous about its outcome. I’m the one preparing to drive myself deeper into my own madness. But sure- you can be the one worried about a vaguely salty scent in a room full of slime progeny.

There is another class that I have to teach before I do the SLIME BAR and it’s just some silly little Easter craft object of little significance. I get to the end of the class and I start having dangerous thoughts.

What if no one shows up?

This does not come from nowhere. In the sixty classes that I’ve been asked to teach since my title change, I have had people attend a grand total of ten. There are at least five easter egg hunts in the area, several pre-easter celebrations, and some kind of... soccer thing that are all happening at the same time as the SLIME BAR.

Maybe no one will show up.

As the word ‘up’ dies away in mental echoes, a woman pops her head into my classroom.

“Is this the slime thing?”

I severely underestimated the siren call of the slime bar.

“This is where we’re having it, but it doesn’t start until 1.”

She grumbles and disappears.

If I do not eat lunch now, I will likely faint headfirst into a puddle of glitter. I leave for lunch. I return from lunch at 12:30 and there is already a line forming at the door of the classroom.

“Is this the slime thing?” It’s not the same woman as before, but a near-identical woman with the exact same poultry-esque haircut.

“It doesn’t start until one, ma’am.”

She folds her arms at her chest. “I can wait,” she says in a tone that indicates that no she certainly will not wait.

I quickly begin setting out the individually-portioned cups of glitter and other inclusions, the slime-filled eggs, the parchment paper. I hear a murmur outside, getting louder and louder and louder... more agitated.

The door opens and a co-worker comes in. “There’s a line of like... twenty people out there,” she says. The room is built to house, at most, twelve.

“Please tell me you’re here to help.”

“I have been... encouraged to help.”

“Extra hours?”

“Extra hours.”

The people of the retail world all speak the same language. It is a tired language.

It becomes one-o-clock and they all file in. All twenty four, standing around the table because they apparently didn’t understand me when I said ‘come in, have a seat.’ I call a framer to get us some extra chairs, which I suppose made that a little easier.

Immediately, a little girl starts crying because she was under the impression that we were going to have them make the slime instead of customizing it and this has thrown a wrench in her entire day. She is not the only one who is upset over this development because apparently all anyone ever saw in the flier was ‘MAKE’ and ‘SLIME’ and all the other parts were decidedly unimportant details. Eight of the kids are upset, three are crying. Oh good- they’re learning disappointment early.

Each of the kids grabs an egg and they start smooshing whatever particulate they can find into brightly-colored semi-solids and the crying uplifts to joyous discovery as they learn all the ridiculous things they can do with slime. Despite all the various things we have provided for them, they only want to work with glitter.

A tiny human poured the entire contents of a bowl of glitter into her hand and looked me square in the eye.

“What would happen,” she pondered. “If I...” She mimed the action of throwing glitter in the air.

“I would prefer it if you didn’t.”

And then she fucking does. Tiny fistfuls of sparkly particulate go shooting into the windless air, arching artfully over the table before scattering into everyone’s personal space. People are mad.

She knew full well what would happen. I can see it in her shit-eating grin full of tiny, perfectly square teeth.

I predicted this. I saw the future and the words ‘glitter’ and ‘sticky’ came up in my crystal ball. Mind you, I’m getting paid just above minimum wage here- so the crystal ball is more like... an overturned fishbowl.

I look at my watch. It has been twelve minutes.

As the first wave of families starts to take their oozing babies away to hopefully cleaner activities, a man comes in with his twelve-year-old daughter.

“We’ll have you sign in,” I told him. “Name and phone number in case of an emergency.” The girl joins the rest of the glitter monsters while I speak with her dad.

“This thing ends at 3:00, right?”

“We are holding the event until 3, but the activity itself takes about fifteen minutes.”

“I’ll come back in an hour just to be sure.”

“It’s only fifteen minutes.”

“Yeah, an hour.”

He turns around and leaves.

The girl is done in less than fifteen minutes and begins asking where her dad is. “I’m sure he’s in the store.”

The girl does not seem impressed or convinced by this answer. At the half-hour mark, she’s getting tired of waiting for him and my co-worker escorts her out into the store to see if he’s anywhere. Nowhere to be found. 45 minutes, still missing. They call him.

Now, there is a sign prominently displayed in the room saying that we are happy to keep an eye on any children left in our care, but we kindly ask that any parents or guardians stay on the premises in case of emergency.

Where is he?

At home with his feet up. He finally arrives at 2:15 to get her and if that went on any longer, I was going to call Child Protective Services because holy shit, you just dropped your kid off in the care of complete strangers juggling two dozen children at any given time.

According to the girl, he always does this. Including one time where he made her wait three hours to pick her up from school because he was watching television.

I don’t make it a habit of judging a person’s child-rearing techniques because I don’t intend on having them myself but HOLY FUCKING SHITBALLS.

WHY?

But that’s done. It’s done.

It is now 2:30 and the influx of children has slowed to a trickle. The initial urgency to do the slime glue thing has waned and there are now only a few people in the room. We can breathe.

I do a final count on the roster. Fifty-two.

Fifty-two. Four dozen excited slime children have come and gone in two hours. This is a lot of things to happen in a short amount of time. But it is almost over now. It’s almost done.

A small child toddles up to me and hands me an egg.

“I made this for you because I love you.”

And that was the last of them.

There are four messages on my phone, all from my girlfriend asking me when I was supposed to be out of work, that her parents were here and that they were all going to dinner.

So I clean up as fast as I possibly can, wipe down everything, sweep, throw out the rejected slime experiments, put things away, scan the used items out of our inventory and I am out of the classroom as fast as I can be.

But on my way back to the break room to clock out, the framer catches my attention and has a customer ask me: “How do you make glue slime?”

My cells are vibrating with urgency and anger. JUST. GOOGLE. IT. Just fucking google it. You have all the information in the world available to you in the form of an overheated black rectangle in the palm of your hand.

“Glue. Water. Borax.” These are the ingredients chosen to create the perfect little mess.

BYE.

Flying out the door now because my girlfriend is urgently asking where I am, she’s worried. They’re tired of waiting for me and want to move on.

I arrive at the pizza parlor thirty minutes late and covered in a fine layer of glitter. There is a googly eye stuck to my butt.

Her parents know me well enough to know that this is not unusual.

And the upsetting part is...

.... I know that this is not where the story ends.

#retail hell #The glue famine of 2017 #long post

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mrsteveecook · 6 years

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I don’t invite my boss to our parties but she keeps showing up, students who mix up their interview times, and more

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. I don’t invite my boss to our work parties but she keeps showing up

My team likes to throw parties: once a month we have a sit-down lunch, once a quarter we have a big birthday celebration, and then big holidays. These are not mandatory and are funded by the people who attend. Our team is 20 people of a 60-80 person group (depending on season). My group lead is generally not invited to these. When she shows up, what is usually an hour of talking and leaving work behind turns into 20 minutes of her making thinly veiled comments while we shovel food into our mouths (if we come at all).

I organize these things by putting them on the team calendar and posting a sign-up, nothing more. If people want to invite others, it’s up to them. I honestly would rather just have the current team attend than having a reunion every month. But it seems any major holiday I get on someone’s shit list by “forgetting” them.

I’m of the opinion that one of the downsides of being a manager is that you’re separated from employees and don’t get to be “chummy” with them. But how do I say that to a manager that’s trying to pretend that the gulf between us doesn’t exist?

It’s true that managers can’t be friends with the people they manage, but it’s not typically true that that means they’re not invited to office celebrations that are occurring in the office, and frankly, she may assume she needs to show up at these in order to seem part of the team. In fact, typically managers would go to gatherings like this, if they’re in the office and during work hours.

So I don’t think you can really exclude her from these … unless there’s someone who has good rapport with her who can say, “Hey, the team wants to be able to have some get-togethers without management there — maybe just pop in briefly to the birthday and holiday celebrations but leave them to do the quarterly lunches on their own?”

2. When student applicants mix up their interview dates

I supervise a small team of student assistants at an academic college, and I’m currently in the hiring process for a few more. Each year as students graduate we need to hire to replace them. However, I’ve run into the issue where each year, at least one or two students mixes up their interview time or date, and either comes in on the wrong date, or very early or late. For instance, this year one candidate showed up on Tuesday instead of Thursday, and another arrived thinking that their interview was at 11 a.m., rather than 2 p.m.

When this happens, I ask them to come back at their true interview time and date, but there’s always some level of disbelief, annoyance, or attitude. Does this happen often outside of the academic world? Should I chalk this up as just being indicative of the college crowd, or because it’s only a student position? Also, should this be a disqualifying trait? If the student comes back at the correct time, I tend to give them a “re-do” in my mind as much as I can, but sometimes it’s hard when you’ve seen that annoyed attitude.

Oh, students. I’d be inclined to cut them a little slack (not a lot, but a little) on mixing up the time if they otherwise seem really strong, because they’re students — but if they seem annoyed or otherwise have an attitude about it, then no. Having an attitude about their own mistake is a bad sign and indicates you’re likely to have other professionalism problems with them, and it also means they don’t meet the “if they otherwise seem really strong” caveat above. So I’d say the initial mistake itself need not be disqualifying, but the poor handling of it is.

It would be interesting to know what kind of data you’ve gathered on this in the past. Have you ever hired any of the students who got the appointment time wrong, and if so, how common is it that they turn out to great once hired? What about the ones who had the bad attitude? My worry with the first group would be that they’d mix up their work schedules or otherwise be less attentive to detail than you want, but it would be interesting to test that against actual data since we’re dealing with students, whose work habits aren’t so fixed yet. And my worry with the second group would be that they wouldn’t have even the baseline of professionalism that you should be able to expect from students, that they wouldn’t take accountability for their own actions, and that they’d be a pain in the ass to manage. On top of that, though, I’d argue that you don’t want to teach those students that rude behavior will be overlooked by their interviewers — and it’s useful for them to learn that now when the stakes are lower than they’ll be post-graduation.

3. Is our Secret Santa too expensive?

Am I overreacting or is $30 way too much for a secret Santa at work? People are creating wishlists of jewelry, candles, clothes, Alexa-compatible add-ons, and make-up. I work in an office where most staff makes about $12 an hour with a few upper-middle folks who don’t fall into that category (I am one of those). I feel uncomfortable accepting anything beyond a $10-$15 price tag from most of the staff, but since were all pressured to participate, I asked for a donation to be made in my name to a (non-political and non-inflammatory) charity I support. Ugh. Happy freakin holidays.

$30 is too much for an office where most people make $12/hour. That’s asking people to donate two and a half hours of their work — 6% of their pay for that week — to the cause of Secret Santa. Maybe you can discreetly ask around and see how people felt about it, with the goal of proposing a lower limit for next year (or just do that on your own without the research first — it’s enough to say “you know, most people here earn about $12/hour, let’s make this more affordable”).

4. I don’t want to circulate a former coworker’s resume

I am a few months into my new job. It’s going really well, and I’m very happy there. Recently a former colleague who I barely worked with asked me to circulate her resume for an open position in my organization. I’m concerned on two levels. One, on the merits, I don’t think she has the right qualifications (think teapot maker vs teapot marketer). Two, she’s a perfectly nice person, but I only worked with her briefly on minor matters and even still, I didn’t feel like she was a great resource, and my understanding is that others felt the same way. So I really don’t want to send her resume to anyone – especially because the hiring manager is not someone I even know very well or have worked with at all – given that that will be an implied recommendation. I know she’s been searching for a long time, and I have a lot of empathy for that, but I’m really not sure how to handle this.

Yeah, if you circulate her resume, you’ll be seen as recommending her. You have a few options. One is to say something to her like, “I don’t know the hiring manager well and am still new here, so I’m not really in a position where I can help — but I know they’re looking at all applications and the best thing would be to apply directly.” Another is to say, “I know they’re looking for people with more marketing experience so this might not be the right match.” And still another is to tell her to apply directly (saying they prefer all applications come in through their system, which is probably true) but agree to flag her application for the hiring manager — and then do so in a very honest way, saying something like, “My former coworker, Jane Smith, asked me to flag her application for you. To be candid, I don’t think she’s who you’re looking for, but I can tell you more about my experience working with her if you’d like me to.”

5. Talking to my boss about a potential move for my partner’s job

A couple of weeks ago you ran a question about a direct report whose partner was getting a PhD. (#3 at this link). What advice do you have for the other side?

I have been in my current position for about three years now. We moved to this city so my partner could pursue his PhD, and I have been very open about that since the beginning. When my boss, the CEO, called and made me the offer, he brought up my partner’s PhD and how, if things went well, we could discuss working remotely in the future. Well, the future is almost here; my partner is on the job market and there is an 85% chance we will be moving to another state in early summer of 2019. The likelihood that we will move to a place where I will have a wide variety of local job prospects is pretty slim (though I have a ton of transferable skills and a strong background/resume), but besides that, I enjoy my job and the company and would like to stay in my current, relatively senior role.

I haven’t brought this up with my boss. One of my coworkers and I talk about it regularly; we’re friends and I trust her, and she believes pretty strongly that my boss wouldn’t want to lose me. I believe I am valuable to the organization, and while I have no reason not to hold my boss to his initial mention of remote work, I am aware that “we can talk about it when the time comes” is not a guarantee that I can take this job with me when we move. (I do have three coworkers who are located in different states and we have an office of four people in another state, so working outside of this city is not unprecedented in my company; however, none of them work as closely with the CEO as I do.) Add to this that there are a ton of unknowns, like if we’ll move, where we’ll move, or even if I’ll go with my partner (if, for instance, he accepts a one-year post doc, I would probably stay here). With that in mind, I’m not planning on saying anything until our plans are set.

But I worry that I won’t have that luxury. End-of-year reviews are coming up, and for my boss, that usually means, “Let’s go out to lunch and talk.” I wouldn’t be surprised if he brings up our plans, even just casually, and while I know I don’t have to be completely open with my boss, I don’t want to be dishonest in the name of deflection. I’m okay with saying that there are a ton of unknowns and I’ll bring it up when I have a more concrete idea, but is that enough? Would I be taking a big risk asking about remote work now rather than later? On a more personal note, if my boss says that he doesn’t think being remote will work, then I’ll have to deal with job hunting stress on top of moving stress, and frankly, I don’t want to face that for a second longer than I have to (this is completely contrary to my normal MO– I’m a planner and I don’t like surprises!). Or worse, there’s always a chance that he’ll decide to let me go sooner rather than later (that’s pretty unlikely, but the stress talks loudly). What would you recommend?

Go with saying that there are a ton of unknowns and you’ll bring it up when you know something more concrete, but then add, “If it does turn out at some point that Cecil is leaving the area, would you be open to me working remotely? You’d mentioned that when I first started, but I didn’t know what you were thinking about it now.”

That way you’re not committing to anything and you’re not telling him anything he doesn’t already know, but you’re hopefully gathering more information about what his thinking will be when you’re ready to say something more definite.