I recently got hired for a new job, it has been a struggle with rising costs, I have no family or other means of help, and have a small boy to take care of as a single-mother, so it's been incredibly hard to find a job after I was laid-off my previous one that couldn't handle the long-term damage from the covid times anymore. We didn't even get two weeks warning before they pulled the plug.
I ended up finally getting a new job recently, especially after not hearing back from any of the social services yet I applied for, including Unemployment. I was relying on my now empty savings. I guess this is a consequence of my location being in the southern United States though that's not really my fault, but I'm guessing either a lot of people are on these same programs down here, or people are abusing the programs so the process is not quick. Either way, I needed a job quickly since I was running out of resources, and now that I did, only have enough left to reach the first paycheck. I figured that now I got this job things would be better.
But then I went in on my training day, to do computer courses and video presentations showing how to do various parts of my job, when I got there I received this letter in my Email, it was also printed out on the table and hung on the break room door for ALL new hires to see:
Notice the condecensing tone in this flyer.
This flyer is as is. I don't really understand the logic here considering that they had immediate hire on their job listings because they needed people, and I myself needed a job, but why would you make new hires pay for the clothes at all, let alone at a specific retailer? Now to be fair, they tell us we are supposed to be reimbursed after the first 90days of employment, but because of that, they tell me that they can't offer us alternatives if we don't have the money to buy the required clothing. I am in poverty struggling after I was laid off my last job, with no credit card, how am I supposed to pay for this to get started even if I get reimbursed? I would still need to buy the clothing now and show them the receipt, and they only give us 48hrs to do it.
I think the most peculiar part about this letter, is that they require MORE from the Women than the Men for clothing requirements, and expect us women to pay MORE money for the dress requirement. Being a women myself I'm expected to pay $88 according to their sheet. It's actually $85~ but that's still unnecessarily expensive. Why would they make the women buy more with higher requirements than the Men?
Regardless, I have no idea how I'm supposed to pay for this before Saturday evening, there's no credit or anyone to loan from. They even have a program at this very same job for high-school students (for less pay) coming out of high-school to help pay for college. But those HS kids wouldn't have jobs and wouldn't be able to afford this dress code either, so there's not one employee from the few HS around working here. I guess they didn't want to be “Superstars”.
How can management be this disconnected? I'm at a complete loss of what to do here. There's no one else hiring right now, and I am running out on things I need, but they want not just for new hires to pay for their uniforms, they want us to buy it from a specific retail store (Macys? Really?) that isn't cheap, and want us women to pay more than the men, with more requirements. All of this is very stressful. Hired and then charged to work for where I'm hired for. The system makes no sense.