Hello. I’m really nervous to talk about this. I don’t know why, but I am. And I’m so sorry this is so long.
I left this job nearly a year ago, a job that for five years I never called off, worked almost all positions, and worked 14 hour shifts back to back at the beginning of the pandemic, and a job that turned me bitter about working in the United States anymore with this god awful system we have. A job that caused me so much severe body pain and mental grief that a year later, I’m almost a different person now that I no longer work there and my body has been able to heal. I used to cry myself to sleep some nights from stress and physical pain. At the time I was 19-21 years old when the pain really started to bother me.
I worked for a Midwest grocery store. I started there when I was 18 as a bagger and after years, I made my way up to a department manager at the age of 21. At the beginning of the week of New Years last year (2020 to 2021), a busy week in a retail grocery store, my life was falling apart at the edges. I lived an hour away from work. My car broke down one night and I had to pay $75 to tow it to my apartment. I texted my boss and told him “I’m sorry but I’ll be late to work tomorrow as my car broke down and I have no ride that early. I’m going to take my car to a mechanic and come in late. I’ll stay over however long I need to to make up for loss time. Again I’m so sorry.” I had no friends to pick me up and my parents worked overnight and by the time I get my car to a shop, they’d be off in time to get me. He responded with: “No can do. So and so is off Bc his mother passed away and we need you. One of us can pick you up” I was awestruck. I didn’t respond to that, I was baffled they wouldn’t even let me come in late. I wanted to get my car repaired Bc I have no one to depend on for rides consistently. Before I could respond he texted me again, “By the way if you don’t come in tomorrow, it will count as a no call no show on your record.” I was baffled, and all I could do was sit and cry. My partner drove me, god bless her. Then she had to go right to work herself. I was staying with my parents after that, a not so good situation, and then on New Years Eve, while at work, my phone also broke. But that night I began searching for new jobs. I ended up leaving them a few months later, roughly two weeks before Easter and screwing them over as no one could replace me that quickly.
The manager who was off due to his mother passing: He had been on and off work for months, she had passed away months ago. I understand everyone grieves differently, however when my uncle died earlier that year, they tried guilting me to come in WHILE I WAS AT HIS WAKE. And guilted me when I came back to work about not coming in.
I was naïve and didn’t understand vacation weeks. I thought I had two weeks when I only have one week. They approved my second week of “vacation”, and instead of approaching me and telling me that I only had one week, they let me off that week and neglected to inform me it was unpaid.
My wage was $14.85 as a department manager and I worked 60-80 hours a week, with only one day off and sometimes working off the clock.
I just wish I had been confident and less of a boot licker to capitalism, and that I had been aware of this subreddit back then. To anyone who has read this all the way through, I’m sorry this is so winded, I just had to get all this off my chest and rant about the awful experience I had.