#oh yeah we’re supposed to have official training and a mandatory team meeting that hasn’t happened yet 👍🏻

[vlovann]

Clothing stores don’t give a damn about what their product looks like anymore.

If you do, you’re doing too much which automatically makes you suck at your job somehow. They hate you now. You’re gonna be fired directly or silently in the end.

This is a lot because it happens too often and I need to let it out somewhere I can’t be fired from.

TL;DR at the bottom. You’re welcome.

Here’s a new one: The manager isn’t always right.

How many of you have been told that something you know is important…isn’t. That it’s “not a priority”? That you’re “overthinking it”?

🙋🏻‍♀️

That’s their favorite phrase isn’t it?

How many of you wake up and can’t get back to sleep on your off day because your brain wants to argue with your boss about something as simple as ORGANIZING?

🙋🏻‍♀️🙋🏻‍♀️

How many of you have been left to feel like you can’t do anything right because you can’t do it by one specific person’s standards that doesn’t even understand the task at hand but controls whether or not you can afford to live?

🙋🏻‍♀️🙋🏻‍♀️🙋🏻‍♀️

Yeah…this is what I’m dealing with. Here’s my rant:

⭐️ Keep in mind, I am an artist (specifically character design) and an aspiring fashion designer. I want to open my own physical shop one day. Sooo…color, visualizing and making outfits is kiiiinda in my blood. It’s very much a passion.

🤦🏻‍♀️

I’ll start off with this…*ahem* VISUAL MERCHANDISING IS NOT JUST ABOUT “TEEHEE SIGNS AND MANNEQUINS.” It is about making your store look visually appealing to customers. I love dressing mannequins. It’s my favorite part of it, but…it’s just that. A part of it. I can understand that.

More than one place has treated it like that, shamelessly, I’ll say my past jobs at Forever21 and Nordstrom. Fuck them. I currently work at a fashion liquidation store. Somewhere that doesn’t even have a directive to follow and I was told to basically make shit up.

My current boss has claimed he fought the district manager to hire me because they needed somebody to help with visualizing. I’m starting to think this was a bold faced lie and somebody else they wanted to hire declined.

Because…

Well…then I started visualizing. I started colorizing the product, buttoning, tying, lacing, zipping, etc. Apparently, that’s not visualizing?

I have talked to all of our employees and my fellow management. You know what they told me?

They don’t care. They don’t like doing it so they don’t.

That’s whatever. I’m here now. I’ll help and I have the power to at least teach them how to.

You know what else? This really pissed me off internally.

It’s because they let the customers who come in and disrespect the product dictate whether or not they organize the fucking store and uphold the image of the company. The customers that put their entire stack of stuff in the wrong colors, the wrong size, or the wrong product all together. When the go-back rack is RIGHT THERE. They have submitted to the customers that don’t care about customer service workers and don’t care about making their jobs harder.

So no. It’s not about prioritizing other things. It’s about not wanting to put in or make time for the effort.

Gods this feels so similar to my experiences dating men 🤦🏻‍♀️

Do we listen to the person who actually cares? The one who comes in almost every day in a unique and coherent outfit instead of sweatpants (unless you schedule her to work 8 days in a row, closing almost every day while you and the other assistant get 4 days off)? The one who literally finds organizing stores calming?

NOPE

We listen to the ones that don’t care!

Riddle me this, Batman…

If you could hire somebody for any amount of time to organize your closet, would you rather:

A. The organizer take the time to “overthink” the details, but everything has a place and it’s easier for you to maintain without them?

Or

B. The organizer pick everything up off the floor and hang it up in a random spot and leave?

Can’t put text under a poll so please comment on/reblog this with your answer and optionally additional input. Or just think about it.

Let me tell you why organizing is important…in case you genuinely don’t know.

If you made it this far, you’re listening more than the people that are supposed to. You’re probably in the same boat. I’m sorry, dude. Here’s some rations to stay adrift 🍱🥗🍟🍿🍉🍎🍓 Don’t eat me, we’ll eat the rich corporations when we get to dry land 🏴‍☠️

1. When somebody is in a hurry, they can’t take the time to scavenge the racks to find what they’re looking for before they have say an interview, a first day on the job, a first date. They will walk through the racks looking for an ounce of organized product to look through. If they don’t find it, they leave to look somewhere else.

Congratulations, you lost a sale because you refuse to take the time to organize.

2. Someone is looking for a specific dress. Let’s say a champagne strapless lace up dress. You definitely have it. You go looking for it in the sleeveless section, knowing it’s supposed to be there, but it’s not. It takes like 5 minutes too long. Your customer is getting impatient. Says she’ll do it herself because obviously you must just be incompetent. She can’t even find it, scolds you, and leaves. Bonus point when you’re walking by the next day and you find that it’s been shoved in with the long sleeves in the middle of the navy blue section. You could’ve avoided that whole interaction.

Congratulations, you lost a sale because you refuse to take the time organize.

3. You’re the manager of a shop at a mall or plaza. You have competition. People look in your store as they walk by see that your shop is unorganized, your employees are being forced or applauded not to care where they put things because it’s not important, while other customers are walking all over you, leaving clothes draping over racks, not even taking 3 seconds to hang it back up. They keep walking, heading over to the store across from you.

This store has a team of people making sure their product always looks nice while someone who would rather stay at the register does so to make sure customers are still being taken care of. Their racks are color coded, sized, buttoned, zipped, tied, etc. Their mannequins look stylish. This store is easier to shop from.

Congratulations! You lost hundreds of sales because you refuse to take the time to organize.

Double Congratulations! The only customers you’re attracting are the ones who have never once worked in retail or have sympathy for those that do! You’ve made a reputation amongst Thieves and Karens for easy pickin’s!

Four, the new hire who wants to organize to make things easier on herself and others, poor thing, but you won’t let her, is “taking forever” to do the go-backs. You go over there to professionally tell her she sucks at her job, she’s an idiot, and tell her she needs to get better or else. She explains that she doesn’t know where to put anything because it’s all out of order and it’s stressing her out. You basically tell her “that’s a you problem”. The next day, she hands you her two weeks notice, saying she found a better opportunity.

This is the same employee who customers appreciate the fact that she takes the time to fold their clothes as she rings them out instead of throwing them lazily in a bag.

It’s very obvious she cares. Just too much for you. In reality, it’s just that she cares more than you and you feel threatened, so you want to push her out so she can’t take your job which she doesn’t even want to do. She just wants to work somewhere for someone that will value her input and skills.

Congratulations! You lost a valuable employee who could’ve helped fix your brand’s reputation for being a “dirty store”.

😤😤😤

I just…DON’T UNDERSTAND!?!?!

How can organizing NOT be one of the top priorities? Their logic doesn’t make any sense and it’s fucking maddening 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

What’s funny is that my SM has told me he wants to be a traveling merchandiser for the brand and yet he treats me like this over THE SIMPLEST visual task. If you ask me, I don’t think he’s cut out for it unless he can comprehend these basics.

What’s also funny is that when I worked at Forever21 the direct managers also treated me like shit over wanting to make the store look good which was a heavy task if you’ve ever seen an overstocked Forever21. The district and specialized, overhead managers came in and vocally appreciated me in the middle of talking to the store manager when I was organizing the racks. I thanked them loudly. I felt so pettily and insanely happy. I couldn’t hide my smirk.

We made it! 🏙️ Now go feast on the flesh made of little green pieces of paper.

Please share your stories like this! I’m curious to see where else this could be happening and what your experiences are.

TL;DR - Make store wook pwetty? Customers find things! They will like shop! They buy from shop! They come back and gib you more mo-nies, yeah?! What will they do? Incwease sales?! Yes, that’s wight! Wisten to empwoyee concewns? What will dat do? *GASP* You get to keep them! YAYYY! You’re such a smart, bwainwashed corpwate swave! Yes, you are! Good job! Now go! Be fwee!

[amonets-writing]

Imperfect

"Just imagine for a second, that you're not perfect. You're just a regular guy, okay? And now just imagine you're living with someone who is perfect. The pinnacle of human evolution." Tony laughs nervously. "And that person, he expects everyone to be just as perfect as himself. Not consciously, but-" Tony stops. "Okay, you don't get it, do you?"

Tony has Issues-with-an-capital-I and Steve is hopelessly pining, but hey at least they're both equally bad at communication.

Relationship: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark

Rating: General Audiences 

Read it over at Ao3 or under the cut. 

"We're all a little weird, and life's a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love."

    -Dr. Seuss

Steve knows that, sometimes, he is wrong. It doesn't happen often, but it happens. And when it happens, Steve tries to fix it. That's why, when Tony sits down at the breakfast table one morning, Steve says: "You know I didn't mean what I said on the helicarrier, right?"

Tony stares at him, seemingly completely perplexed and only half awake. He hasn't had his coffee yet, obviously. "What?"

"On the helicarrier, when I said the stuff about you and the suit, back when we met," Steve says. "I didn't mean any of it. You're a good man and it wasn't right for me to say anything at all because I didn't know you back then. I know that you know that, I just wanted to have said it."

"Okay," Tony says very slowly and looks at Steve like Steve's a bit mad. Maybe Steve is.

When Steve hands him hands him the plate with the pancakes he takes it though and actually eats some, so Steve counts the mission a success, even though neither of them talks for the remainder of their shared breakfast.

Everything is okay afterwards, for a while. Nothing big happens, there are no attacks, no mandatory team meetings and Steve spends a lot of time at SHIELD or on missions, which is probably the reason it takes him so long to notice that Tony is avoiding him.

He is never in a room that Steve is in, not because he leaves, but because they just don't ever seem to even be on the same floor at the same time and when Steve tries to go and find Tony, he has suddenly mysteriously disappeared from wherever he was supposed to be because of urgent Stark Industries business. It's not that doesn't do his job as a team member anymore, he still shows up to the training exercises, but he's Iron Man there and it's not really the same. He still makes them weapons as well, even Steve, but somehow the fittings and testing that had been so important before weren't needed anymore. Not for Steve, at least because he knows that Tony still sees plenty of the other Avengers. It's not fair. Steve misses him.

Steve considers letting it go and just waiting for it to stop, but he had a conversation with Hill the other day about making Iron Man his co-leader and she had asked him whether Tony would like that and Steve realised that he actually has no clue. Letting it go is not an option if it's disrupting the team dynamics. And since getting a hold of Tony has turned out to be impossible, Steve resorted to calling him in for an official Avengers meeting. It's not really fair, but he really needs to talk to Tony. It’s not just because he misses him. It’s not.

"Hey," Tony says as he opens the door to the meeting room. "I'm sorry I'm late guys, but Stark Industries doesn't…" He trails off and for a moment he just stares at Steve, his expression uncertain. Steve does his best to smile encouragingly. He can basically see Tony's face fall, but he only takes one second to collect himself.

"So, it's just me I guess. Great." He doesn't sound like he thinks it is the least bit great. "Let's make this quick, I have a lot to do and this should all be fairly obvious. We both know that SHIELD can't have the suit. It's mine and I'm not handing it over to anyone. If you kick me off the team, Iron Man is off too."

"Tony," Steve interrupts, but Tony goes on like Steve hasn't said anything.

"-I mean the tower technically belongs to the Avengers, so as long as you don't change the name, that's yours in the divorce. See, you get the house and the kids, I don't think that's a bad deal-"

"Tony," Steve says, this time louder.

"- like realistically speaking. You also get to keep all the gear and the jet, you just have to be careful not to break it, because I'm a very busy person and sadly I'll have more important things to do than clean up your-"

"Tony!" Steve shouts and that finally gets Tony's attention. "No one's kicking you off the team. That's not what this is about." Like I would let them kick you off the team, Steve thinks.

"Oh," Tony says. "Good. But then why…"

"You've been avoiding me. I wanted to talk to you." Steve says and it sounds a bit silly now that he says it out loud. Tony and he don't always get to spend a lot of time together. It's normal for them not see each other for a few days when they both have too much to do. Maybe Tony had just been very busy these past few weeks. No reason to call him in and upset him like this, just because Steve misses him.

Tony doesn't answer immediately and for a few seconds, the only sound is the whirring of a printer in the distance and Steve takes a moment to just wholeheartedly hate SHIELD and their paper-thin walls.

"I just can't sometimes, Steve. Okay?" Tony finally says, looking miserable. One look at him and Steve knows that Tony doesn't want him to ask questions but he doesn't understand what Tony is saying. God, he never does.

"I think you need to explain that to me."

"Okay," Tony says slowly and then he looks directly into Steve's eyes for the first time since he entered the room. "Just imagine for a second, that you're not perfect. You're just a regular guy, okay? And now just imagine you're living with someone who is perfect. The pinnacle of human evolution." Tony laughs nervously. "And that person, he expects everyone to be just as perfect as himself. Not consciously, but-" Tony stops. "Okay, you don't get it, do you?"

Steve really doesn’t.

"Just- Imagine someone is better than you at everything you do together. At everything. Always." Tony looks at him expectantly and Steve nods, more a reflex than an actual acknowledgement of Tony's words. "Okay. And- he always expects you to be just as good as himself. And you never are. Just imagine what that feels like."

"I don't understand," Steve says and he knows his face is one big question mark. "You're saying that - I'm too perfect for you?"

He can see Tony's face fall and this time he doesn't even bother hiding it.

"I'm not making fun of you! I'm just trying- I'm trying to understand, okay?" Steve hurries to explain. He wouldn't make fun of Tony's feelings. He couldn't. Tony is his friend. He likes Tony. A lot.

"I just feel like all I ever do is fail, Steve. And it's a lot to handle sometimes." Tony admits and Steve can see that it costs him great strength to say it. "It's not your fault. I'm working on it, okay?"

It's not often that Steve has absolutely no idea what he should say but if anyone manages to render him, it's of course Tony. It’s always Tony. "You're the smartest person I know." He says because it's the only thing he can think of that at least makes some sense.

Tony blushes, not just a bit, but his face actually goes pink. Steve has never seen Tony blush before. It looks good on him. "What?"

"You don't need to change," Steve says. "We all like you just the way you are, no one expects you to be perfect. You're not failing at anything."

"I-" Tony begins, but then stays silent.

"If it's me who's putting too much pressure on you, then you need to talk to me about that, Tony and I'll try to change. But if it's you, then maybe you just need to cut back a bit. Take a break."

"It's not that." Tony looks frustrated. "It's not work or Avengers business, it's just that-" He takes a deep breath like he's bracing himself for what's to come. "You remember when you apologised for the helicarrier thing?"

Steve nods and gets a small smile in return.

"You said I was a good man. And I'm not. I'm really not, but I'm okay with that, I'm trying to make up for my mistakes and I'm great at what I'm doing at the moment. So, when you say stuff like that, it's like this whole world of possibilities opens up and it's all right in front of me, but still out of reach. It's hard." Tony pauses. "And it hurts." He finally admits.

Steve's doesn’t know what to say to that. They aren't best friends, Tony and him, not really anyway, and Tony has many, many times, proclaimed how little he trusts Steve. And still, here he is, pouring out his soul to Steve. Laying it bare, open, for Steve to do as he wishes. Just months ago, Steve's first thought would have been about using this information, this trust, to better control Tony, but now all he can think about is, that Tony doesn't think he's a good person and it's Steve's fault too.

"You're a good man," Steve says and he doesn't sound nearly as calm as he would like. "You're a hero, you put your life on the line to help others. Your mistakes don't define you, Tony. Nobody is perfect, not you, not Natasha, not Thor and definitely not me, but we all try and we do our best and that's what makes us good people. Not that we've only ever done good, but that we try to make up for the bad." He needs Tony to understand. A part of Steve, the very primal and unreasonable part of him, just wants to shout at Tony and shake him until Tony understands that he's a good person, he's one of the best people Steve's ever known and nothing in this world will change his mind on that.

"You're the most perfect person I know," Tony says lightly, but Steve sees the careful smile and maybe Tony understands, after all. Maybe he gets what Steve's saying.

"I'm stubborn and a terrible liar."

"Yeah, but on you, it's kind of hot," Tony says and Steve's heart skips a beat. Tony doesn't mean it that way, he knows that Tony flirts like he breathes - constantly and unconsciously. It's still very close to something Steve wants, desperately wants, but can't have.

"Shit," Tony says when Steve doesn't react. "I'm sorry- I thought, maybe…" He trails off and Steve can see his hands clenching nervously, and he's actually nervous, he cares, Steve's mind tells him. Say something! "Can you not tell Fury I said that? Or Natasha?" Tony asks and Steve opens his mouth to say something but no sound comes out.

"Yes." Steve finally manages, unreasonably proud of managing a one-syllable word. The peak of human evolution. Yeah, right.

"Good," Tony says and he sounds relieved and disappointed at the same time. He turns around and reaches for the door and Steve has to stop him because it's not that kind of yes, and he doesn't know how to say it.

"No, I mean- I, maybe- You-" Steve stutters and he can feel himself go red as a tomato. He can't believe he's actually doing this.

"Yes?" Tony turns back around and he sounds hopeful, just a tiny bit, which means that he gets what Steve's trying to say - which is great, considering Steve isn't really sure what he's trying to say.

"Yes," Steve says because apparently his vocabulary is now limited to one-syllable words and incoherent babbling. He can't think when Tony is looking at him like that.

"So, we could, you know, get dinner. If you wanted." Tony sounds nervous too and Steve wants to say yes so badly. You don't even know which one the fish knife is, the voice in his head says. He's a billionaire, where would you even take him? You'll embarrass yourself in the first 5 minutes and you won't get a second chance for this.

"I don't think, I can," Steve says and while he's desperately trying to find a good way of saying I'm scared I'll mess this up because I have no clue what I'm doing, Tony's come to his own conclusion.

"Oh- Yeah, okay. Sorry." Why is Tony apologising? Steve is pretty sure that Tony isn't the one who's sending mixed signals here.

"It's not what you think! I like you a lot, Tony, but-" Tony interrupts him and what is it with Tony that he always assumes he knows what Steve's about to say. He's starting to make a habit out of it and he's never right anyway.

"You're not gay, I get it. It's fine, my mistake. I won't let it mess with the whole team dynamics thing-"

"Bisexual," Steve says and surprisingly that actually stops Tony's babbling.

"What?"

"I'm bisexual," Steve repeats. He googled that and he's quite proud of figuring it out on his own. Not that he hadn't known back in the 40's, there were only so many boners you could get in inappropriate situations before you figure that stuff out, but now he had a word for it other than wrong.

"So, it is me?" Tony asks and this conversation is really going in the wrong direction.

"Yes!" Steve says and Tony's expression gets even more pained. Wrong answer. "No! I mean- I like you. I would like to go out with you, I really want to, but it's been a long time and so much has changed and I don't know how to do any of this." Steve finally admits. It feels good to have said it.

"Oh," Tony says and he smiles. "That's okay. We don't have to- We can go slow. There is a nice Italian restaurant, a few blocks from the tower, it's small and private and it wouldn't have to be a big deal. You can hold the door open for me and I'll choose a nice wine and we'll just see how it goes if you want."

"Yes," Steve says and this time it's the right answer because Tony smiles and he gets tiny wrinkles around his eyes and that shouldn't be as attractive as it is. Bucky had them too and Steve can't even put into words how glad he is that it doesn't hurt to think about that. He's done looking back and maybe this can be his new start.

Maybe he is ready for a new chapter.