Adventures In Retail: I'm not as much of an idiot as you think I am

I know I'm relatively new; I've been working here for almost two months. I know I'm relatively young; I'm turning 20 in almost five months. I know I've been gone for three weeks because I had surgery. But this isn't my first job in retail. I know enough about customer service to know what I'm doing to a certain extent. Another thing I know is the fact that our manager just left, and now we're manager-less, and we're severely understaffed. I KNOW ALL THIS.

These things are not an excuse to change everything about protocol. They're not an excuse to take the frustration that we don't have our shit together in the least out on the new kid. The other new kid, who was literally hired the day before me, but just so happens to be ten years older and maybe has some more experience than I do but regardless has a different position than I do, is not picked on.

"I'm not picking on you, these are just things that need to get done." Uh huh. That's why I'm the only one, who gets one thought away from crying because of other asshat customers who got mad at me and went crying to the acting manager when their $10-off coupon didn't work on their purchase of $9.98 which becomes $10.89 after tax and they already paid $11 and I gave them their change and now suddenly they're mad that I scammed them out of their money, I'M the one who gets scolded. I'm the only one who's doing it wrong when the protocol changed two minutes ago. I'm the only one who's doing it wrong when I'm taking my lunch at the scheduled time because I "need to check the daily planner" -- which I did -- before taking my lunch when other people are taking theirs when they weren't scheduled to (which, I come to find out via fly-on-the-wall eavesdropping, three out of the five people working are taking at the same time to discuss plans for changing the inner workings of the establishment completely unbeknownst to me, but possibly not others).

At my last job, the cashiers were in charge of go-backs (putting returned items back on their designated respective shelves) and were not to leave the register out of sight without somebody else watching. At my current job, the cashiers are also in charge of go-backs and are not to leave the register out of sight without somebody else watching. I was twenty feet away, the register in plain sight, no customers around, returning one item whose location I knew immediately off the top of my head. I'm constantly told to work on go-backs when I'm at the register and there's no customers. I'm constantly told to work on go-backs when I'm at the register and there are customers. I'm constantly told that my method of one item at a time which helps with focus is a waste of time. And yet, I'm bombarded by, "WHO'S WATCHING THE REGISTER?! YOU COULD GET FIRED!!!!!111!!!1! and, "Uuuummmmm, no. Never EVER leave the register."

Where I work, we sell farm supplies, which includes bales of various types of hay, and large 50-pound bags of feed and sundry. There are people in a back lot who use forklifts and are qualified to load those objects into customers' trucks/trailers/etc., which said customers pay for at the register, which is entirely out of sight of the back lot. So how in the Good Lord Jesus' name does everybody know except me when we're out of something?

When I was trained, every time somebody paid for a large item, I was taught to call the order over the loudspeaker. Suddenly, that's absolutely not okay because it invades the customers' privacy. I'm told to start calling the orders via phone. I do. For a while. And then nobody's at the back lot to answer the phone. I tell somebody that I'm not getting an answer. They tell me to call over the loudspeaker because nobody's designated to work the back lot. Okay. Sure. Here I go doing it. Nope. Not okay. Call this other phone instead. Nope. The person on the other end can't work the back lot right now and tells me to call it over the loudspeaker so that somebody else can do it. But then I'm supposed to call on the phone because they can't hear the loudspeaker because everybody else is somewhere else. And if nobody hears me at any point, whether nobody answered their phones which I was told to call or nobody can hear the loudspeaker which I'm told to use but am also not supposed to use, I screwed up because I "didn't call the order", and there was a customer waiting.

Somehow it always happens that I'm in the wrong. It was always me, the new kid, that screwed up, because I'm the new kid, I'm young, I'm inexperienced, I'm a ditzy girl from the city who's not accustomed to farm life, why-is-she-working-here, obviously-because-we're-so-desperately-understaffed-we'll-hire-any-idiot-who-doesn't-know-what-they're-doing. Last night at closing I didn't do this right. Last night at closing I didn't have enough time to sweep the floors, take out the garbage, fix the shelves, clean the register area, AND ALSO put back all the returned items to locations I have to scout out because I have no idea what they're for because they're tractor parts and I've never even seen a tractor up close in real life, before my shift ended, and I'm not going to be able to get overtime because that needs to be pre-determined in the schedule, and everybody's waiting for me at the door when I haven't even clocked out yet, and because of all that, I'm in trouble because I left a thing and didn't put it back. I didn't get rid of a sticky note. I didn't put away an unused ink tag. Somehow, in some way, I screwed up. I should be fired. I'm the idiot who didn't go to college because I couldn't afford it. I'm the dumbass who took the test and got my G.E.D. with honors a year before I was due to graduate and who applied and was accepted into the National Society of High School Scholars. I'm the all-around disappointment whose work was used as a reference to grade other students' papers while I was in school. I'm the failure who passed the test to become a transcriptionist which 10% of people pass, and whose friends with office experience all failed.

To all the asshats at my work, I'm not the idiot. You're the exclusionary idiot who doesn't understand why I can't follow your ever-changing rules. I know I don't belong. I hate country music, and I don't know shit about lawnmowers. I would quit in a heartbeat if I could afford it.

Oh, and to top it all off, that customer with the coupon from before? You know what she told me?

"No no, it's okay, I'll find somebody who knows what they're doing. Just make sure that in the future, you remember that it's called customer service for a reason."

Fuck.

You.