I went back to work as a store manager for SFI but I took over Pam T's store. It was such a mess. You could hardly walk into the backroom. There was merchandise everywhere and all kinds of odd things too, like little Christmas statues/knick knacks and decorations. Plastic containers and lots and lots of clothes. It was a mess!! After the first few days I had a very brief informal store meeting telling the staff what to expect over the next few weeks and over the next year. I told them what I had done at the previous store and what I would be doing and what I expected from them. One or two of the employees arrived late. We had forgotten to lock the door after all the employees got there. We had customers wandering in and we had to get them back we had to apologize. Some of them were a bit upset. We went back to our meeting. I told them I was going to be spending my time initially, getting the backroom in order and that I would expect them to take care of the sales floor. keep it neat and clean and orderly. Take care of the customers. Be very sales oriented, etc. When we left we went out through the back door. It was pitch black dark. You couldn't see anything. They tried to show me where the store key was hidden outside the store. I was comparing this to where we hid the key at the other store. In waking life we didn't do such a thing. I also talked about how dark it was and asked them if they normally bring flashlights. They said no they just deal with it. I made a mental note that I had to talk to Lisa S about that. On another day during business hours I went up to one of the employees and instructed her on recovery. She didn't seem really offended by my instruction. She asked a couple of questions and then got started. I also made a comment to all of the staff that I like to make surprise visits when I am not scheduled to work and that I had better never find a boyfriend or spouse visiting during working hours. There was a boyfriend visiting at that time so I went up to him and told him that he needed to go and the employee said she understood. He kind of wandered around and pretended to be shopping. I noticed this when I was instructing the other employee on how to recover the racks. Lisa S came for a visit. When she did I had the backroom in much better order. She didn't seem that interested. I didn't get the reaction from her that I wanted. She was pleased and certainly noticed the improvements. I said doesn't it look great? And she said yes. I said there is just so much merchandise back here. It was folded up on shelves. It was a long narrow backroom. She said yes but this store had gotten merchandise that a lot of the other stores did not get and that's why all the unusual stuff. We would be selling through most of this stuff over the winter season. We had both been working in the store and were exhausted and we just kind of collapsed for a little bit. There was an area where Lisa S actually laid down. I said, okay Lisa S it's time to exercise now. I turned on some exercise music and I started exercising. She said no way and finally did get up and moving and exercising. I also said something to her about that light and it being so dark outside the door at closing. She said that was up to the landlord. I said something really has to be done because it would be much less expensive for them to do something about it now then to deal with a lawsuit if something happens to an employee because of the lack of light. I was giving some employees something to sign. In the place that I sign I wrote Kroger instead of SFI. One employee was talking about how the recent changes I had implemented in the store were spilling over into the rest of her life and made some very positive changes.