I am working (for a couple more days) for a small grocery chain. I HAVE been working for them, for nearly two years. I was poached, by a customer, who said that they like my insight on a specific field and when I went in for a job interview, it took all of 15 minutes to get what I had been trying to achieve the past two years within the current company. Better pay, more vacation days, bonus payments, support, less wearing several hats.
I started working at the current store and within two months, I was working just about anything within the store. I was responsible for the entirety of the store – checking expiration dates, cleanliness, and organization. I was put on the spot and made fun of when I missed a single product by one of the two managers. When I asked for additional help, I was placated and ultimately ignored. I was pushed into a position of doing all the things that the two managers were doing (bill management, orders, customer contact, emails, calls, etc etc). While I enjoyed some parts of that, it was also not paid properly. When I raised this with the regional manager, they assured me that while they would LOVE to pay me, they couldn't, since my official title wasn't in the higher ranks and my paycheck couldn't be close to those of the managers. As I later would find out, a raise wouldn't have been close to their paychecks at all. Instead, they offered me an additional home office job, where I would control and organize online activity. They had me put together an entire portfolio with my skills and examples – I did have my own business for eight years, and I was more than qualified for this job. Only to backtrack a few weeks later and offer me a six-day week, one of those days being 10hrs, for the lowest pay legally possible. Which, given the current economic situation, I had to accept.
There was an incident in which the head of the company worked with me for an entire shift. I was so sick, I couldn't think, was standing with a thick jacket in 90° Fahrenheit, and couldn't move or lift anything without expending a lot of concentration. And the entire time they belittled me and made fun of me for being “hungover” (I am not known for that or tend to drink heavily) in front of colleagues and customers. I felt so humiliated. It turned out I had a very severe infection and had been working with a very high fever. For ten hours. I wish this had been the last straw. Instead, it was an abusive customer that was so awful, other customers approached me after, to make sure I was okay. (Our customers are very, very wealthy and usually around the age of 50-60 – so, the worst generation of entitlement, a show of support from them is generally rare). The head of the company sent this asshole customer back to our store and told me to personally apologize to him and offer him a coupon for 30 bucks off his next purchase. They never asked what actually happened. Obviously, the customer acted like an absolute bitch and wasted no time to be verbally abusive again. THAT was the last straw.
Since I had been putting in overtime, almost every day, I asked for a payout or a week off. I was then told they'd had to recalculate my overtime since there had been a mishap with the system. Luckily I'm close to the person doing the working hours, and I got to look at my times. Two years and almost everything was logged wrong. I had several weeks logged as absent. The entirety of October 2022 was logged as absent. Holidays were logged as absent days. The two or three times I was sent home because I was sick? Logged as absent hours. The day there was an emergency within my neighborhood and police cars drove around announcing that we were advised to stay behind doors? Logged as absent. Obviously I raised concerns and asked them to correct all of those times, only to be told that my overtime wasn't recorded in any way (almost an hour each working day), but my absent hours amounted to half a day. I was then scheduled to work a FULL day to make up for the time discrepancy.
I have informed all my colleagues that I will be physically present, but won't help them out. All of them agreed to let me do whatever I want. Meanwhile, and more satisfying yet, my resignation has caused a wave of followers. Four more people either quit or have actively started looking for other opportunities – which means that today they had to close one of their stores due to understaffing. I really, really hate burning bridges, but hooo boy. This time I will.