The company I've been working for is one of the biggest clothing brand in Europe and they have tons of stores all over the world.
I worked in one of their stores for 9 months and my contract was officially going to end tomorrow; I already knew they were going to extend it and I tought it was going to be for at least 6 months to an year. I mean they were happy with me and I even had 2 weeks of paid vacation to benefit (one for April the other one for September). Many of my coworkers (that did easier tasks) were getting some type of promotions, things were going great so it just made sense that the same was going to happen for me.
To give you an idea of the situation I was working in: I did the evening shift 99% of the time, I never had a weekend off since I started my job, I worked every holiday, I was one of the few people who handeled the payments and counted the money/putted it in the safe at the end of many shifts (there were times where we made more than 20k in just one day, so you can image the responsibility I've had and how much they trusted me), I was nice with costumers and sold our products easily. The list goes on and on..the thing is that I truly liked that job and I was happy doing it. I love clothes, fashion and my coworkers are nice, funny people to be around. We are all young women btw.
You can image how sad and disappointed I was when he told me the extend period was going to be only for 2 months. I felt like my hard work didn't pay off and I couldn't understad why they treated me like that. I told him that I accepted it anyway because I had nowhere to go. But I was going to look around for other jobs because I can't afford to be unemployed after those 2 months. He was calm and understood me and told me he was looking forward to meet me at work. That was it.
Later in the day he calls me and tells me that they changed their mind and tomorrow was going to be my last day. All of this because I complained about the lenght of my new contract and they were offended. He started rambling and told me that “I should have not cared if my other coworkers got better promotions because I needed to focus only myself” that “I should give my 100% even if a company is not going to kepp me because work is about self growth and we need to be our best version of ourself no matter what” etc.
The breaking point for me was when he said that because I live with my parents I should be happy even if I worked for only 2 more months…because my kind of contract was a big weight for our company and they can't afford to extend it for more.
YALL I HAD A PART TIME JOB I worked 30 hours/week and the company has gotten richer every year despite the pandemic.
They want us to believe they can't afford to pay a part- time job when they be getting richer each day that goes by.
Moral of the story, I got so angry I yelled back and told everything that I could think of and ended the call right there.
I've already decided I'm not going to show up tomorrow. Instead I'll go to the workers union to see if it's actually legal what they have done to me. I will also calculate how much they owe to me considering the fact that they have to pay my salary, the vacaton I wasn't able to do and all of the paid permits I never benefited from. I hope they fail
LET THIS STORY BE A REMINDER TO ASK YOUR COWORKERS HOW MUCH THEY'RE MAKING EVEN AND WHICH KIND OF CONTRACT THEY HAVE! Otherwise you'll probably end up overworked and underpaid because you don't know how much you're worth/you're able to pretend.