Figured this story might belong here. The long and short of it is in the title. I used to work at this secondhand store for movies, video games, records, etc. It used to be a really great local spot that everyone knew about, people would bring in really cool and rare stuff, and the store would pay them out fantastically well (compared to other places like Gamestop) and everything was great. The staff was very personable and friendly, the store had a cozy and “hole in the wall” atmosphere, and all was well.
Then, unfortunately, the owner was bought out by this very white picket fence corporate couple. They just oozed “we wanna be the next top national chain” energy every single day, and it was miserable to work with them. They wore pretty fake smiles, but they were cold, callous, and religiously corporate. They fired most of the original staff, anyone who didn’t fit into their new idea of the store (including my manager who was one of the best managers I had ever worked with: unfortunately though, she had face and neck tattoos and a pierced eyebrow, nose, and lip. Didn’t fit the new corporate look.)
The new owner immediately hired a bunch of new people, two of which fit into the original store’s style of personable and local, the other three were nothing but fake ass corporate kiss asses. The worst of which were naturally made manager and assistant manager. We’ll call the manager Alan and the assistant manager Peter.
Alan was weird. I mean weird weird. He was a married man with children who frequently made passes at one of the new girls, who happened to be a happily married mother. He asked me to move in with him and his wife and child. He frequently stopped in the middle of the work day to go in the back and work on his side hustle. Total asshole. Peter, on the other hand, just never worked and only ever put effort into making sure he still had a lip to ass connection with Alan. He would frequently take in huge “buys” (purchases the store made from the customer, which then needed to be cleaned, priced, tagged, and displayed) right before he would leave for whatever reason he decided was valid that day.
I never tried to cause any problems at work, but over time, I realized a pattern with Peter: he would always take in a bunch of work and a bunch of huge buys, and then as soon as the customer was away from the counter and it was time to actually do the work, he would leave and dump all of his work on someone else. He would then show up again just in time for us to have finished all of the work but still soon enough that he could punch his work ID in on the buy and take the credit for it. This happened daily for months.
Eventually, I had enough. One day, with 5 minutes until close, Peter takes a huge buy in and tells me to do it. I was already getting set to leave, and doing this buy would’ve taken me at least an hour if not two. I told him no. His exact words were “excuse me? I don’t think I heard you.” So I repeated myself, no, I’m not going to take it, you signed it in, you do it. I could tell he was pissed but he didn’t push it further.
The next day I come in to find Alan waiting for me in the back and Peter looking like the cat that ate the canary. Alan asks me if I really refused to do Peter’s work. I said yes and explained why. Alan says that’s a write up because “it’s Peter’s job to delegate the work.” I explained it’s not so much delegation as taking on as much work and responsibility as he personally can, then dumping it onto one of us $7.25/hr wage slaves. He said it was still a write up and I’d be losing hours over this. They then cut me down to 10 hours of work a week.
I snapped. I told one of my coworkers, let’s call him Jim, that “this place can suck shit through a straw.” Little did I know that Jim was best friends with Peter and Alan. He even told me outright “I’m telling them you said that.” Next day I walk in to my termination papers for “insubordination.” I decide fuck it, I’m better off, and try filing for unemployment figuring that I might at least actually be able to pay my bills for a while until I find a better job.
My unemployment claim was denied the same day because the company decided to fight it, saying that I “refused to ever do my work and was frequently hostile and disrespectful to coworkers.” I worked there over a year without incident and was even in talks to be made a key holder, but as soon as Alan and Peter decided to start throwing their weight around, I was a problem employee and was never any good. Not to mention the snake ass Jim who I thought was a friend who sold me out in a heartbeat to look good to his manager sugar daddies.
The morals of the story I suppose are:
1. A local spot going corporate is the death knell for any piece of decency and humanity there.
2. Never trust your work “friends.” You never know who’d sell you for nothing more than a pat on the head from their masters.
3. Don’t ever question workplace authority in any capacity ever, even if it’s wrong. Just keep licking the manager’s boots until they shine, and maybe, just maybe, you might get to make less than a livable wage.