Nothing wrong with socializing. My store is pretty social. A few minute chat about how shitty these hours are, a progress update with the tl, and what some shitty guest said/did isn't gonna make a difference. I usually get all my conversations in while I'm doing rewrap or sorting my carts (I find it goes quicker when I'm organized). Idk, I always see on this forum that other stores have social SL, but my store, HL is social too... Unless there's only one person on each side. I talk to hl people in toys and red if I'm working men's or baby. If your store looked as bad as you say it did, they probably already felt defeated. Talking takes the edge off when you have to go back to an overwhelming area.
On topic...
Our hours have dropped significantly and they keep scheduling newbs to close alone... Liiiike, wtf with this schedule, bro? Sales are up, but hours are down. During the like 3 weeks of denim sales we all had 40 hours and basically nothing to do. We were all nitpicking during those weeks. I did literal finger spacing lol. Usually I just run my hand across the top and it gets spaced out pretty well. Maybe they're trying to break even since they used all those hours during denim weeks.