I thought you all would appreciate this blunder of retail store politics so take a seat grab a cuppa and have fun.
so something that has outright pissed off most of my bosses in the past is my three rules of work.
1, i will not lie. it takes too much effort to remember which lies i tell to which people.
2, i will not run. its not my job to fix your poor time management
3, i will not perform miracles. until the day comes when i grow a third arm i can only do so much work in a certain time frame.
the reason this is relevant is because the assistant manager in my store REALLY hates these rules, in particular rule 3. with her often trying to get me to tidy an entire floor of the store in an hour (normally it takes me 4 hours to do half of the floor with the standard being 1 person per department) and keeping everyone there after our going home time as she believes the store needs to be perfect for the morning.
this is to the point where she has now formally requested that i get a final warning over my poor performance on tills, a department that i am only ever emergency support on, using an informal chat we had over 2 months ago as my first warning and “continued disobedience” as my second…
now since there is a genuine reason there our store manager couldn't refuse without also kicking up a hornets nest that is his bosses but since im considered “essential” to actually keeping the store running most nights despite not being in management he has had to mitigate her attempt to get rid of me to the point where if i dont meet the standard of improvement there is a much larger issue at hand.
the kicker however is that our store has an overtime budget of around 50p per person right now and to say we are running on a skeleton crew is disrespectful to a skeleton such as we are understaffed (as in we have to close our most profitable services because we just have no one in) so even though our store manager also isnt a huge fan of my rules (even if he does admit they have saved him headaches in the long run) he REALLY doesnt want to lose me because of a vindictive middle manager and after hearing through the grape vine had a very less than pleasant conversation with her about the treatment of staff when she's in charge.
so thats where we are at, I cant be gotten rid of without causing massive issues, but one manager doesnt like me and so is taking a shot anyways and that itself is causing issues.
of course i know that if it comes down to it the company and even the store manager will choose to keep her over me, so good thing indeed is on my hot bar lol.
p.s as a bonus bit of info on how out of the way she is going for this, due to how often im swapping departments to put out whichever fire is biggest that week i dont actually have a manager, i just report to the store manager. IE if theres an issue with my work only he should be making a deal out of it…