Yep, you read that right.
Let me start off with some needed back story:
I (26F) started at a fast food job 2 years ago and two managers there (we'll use fake names of course) Tia and Tamara (45F and 35F) have hated me since the start. Every single day was a new day full of issues with them, too many of which to count here. Bottom line: they've hated my guts since day one. Most probably because the GM likes me. I show up on time, have only ever called out a couple times for emergencies, and I generally just give my JOB the respect it deserves. I guess they really do not like that.
It's also important to note that the night crew is NEVER ON TIME. It's a running thing now where me and a few other day crew literally factor in the night crew being 30, 45, even an hour late to their shifts. It is damn near impossible for me to go home when I'm actually scheduled to leave because I always end up being forced to stay until they show up.
So, yesterday. I come in at 6:30AM (and am on time as usual) and I'm working with Tia, who is the opening manager for the day. Everything is good, and she's on her best behavior since our District Manager was coming to do a quick walk through and check things, ect. After he leaves though? Different story. I was scheduled to leave at 3:30PM, as well as another employee, and we were actually excited because those two replacement employees for the night crew are the only few who are on time. YAY! We get to go home when we're scheduled to!
Except Tia heard this conversation where I was talking about us leaving on time. She proceeds to look at me and say in a serious and threatening tone, “Do you want to go home now? Cause you can go home right now if you wanna leave so bad. I can put [insert employee name here] in the window and send you home. I just better not hear you crying next week about how you need money.”
Here is where the shitshow starts. (Also, mind you, we were short staffed as usual that day and she's always blowing up about it, so sending me home would just make you MORE understaffed and upset, no?)
After that, she's talking to the tech who was there to fix something, going on purposefully loudly about how all these people don't wanna work and they all just wanna jump outta here and screaming at me that I could “at least” stock up something. I had an entire hour and a half before I had to leave, the drive thru takes me 10 minutes at the absolute max to stock up, and only about 4 things needed refilling anyway, but whatever. She continues after he leaves, coming up to me and asking if I heard what he said. I said no and she proceeds to tell me he said HE doesn't want to have to work until 7PM, but he has a mortgage to pay. This all flows into the running theme of her hating that I don't want to spend my every waking moment at work like she thinks I should.
She also goes on to mention, or better put, outright lie that the GM said she wishes she had 3 more of Tia. Which is laughable at best given the fact the the GM has specifically told me Tia is the reason our GM can't keep staff in the store. I've been here 2 years and have seen countless people come in for about a week, work with Tia, get fed up with the way she treats them, and then I hear they quit a few days later. A never-ending cycle, really. The staff our GM has now mostly consists of people whom have left once already because of Tia and came back ready and well knowing how Tia is and are somewhat more prepared to handle it.
Anyway, after her continuous spiteful, purposefully hurtful jabs, I start to get really tired and start to tear up and I don't start taking orders as quickly. (For reference, our DM has a timer for D.T. menu greetings. Anything higher than an average of 3 seconds greeting time and he will – and has – screamed at us.) This further pisses Tia off and she throws further jabs about me not wanting to work or be there or just take the damn orders and saying she feels like she's working with another employee, basically insinuating that the employee mentioned is a bad employee.
(I would also like to mention that I'm essentially doing 3 stations simultaneously. Taking orders, cashing the window people out, making drinks, answering questions, coordinating orders, ect. I do this everyday because we are always understaffed, so it's not like I ever purposefully take too long to take an order, I just literally have my hands full and maybe need to set something down or finish answering a question.)
I try to get on with it and get back in the winow, many people in the drive thru see me crying and then the drinks machine needs sweetener. Great, now I'm being yelled at for having to go do it, but also for not rushing to go do it when Tia was screaming about me stepping away. Fight through more tears, the shift dies down to a dead store and Tia sends me home 30 minutes before my shift ends to save labor. And at that point, I was all too happy to get the fuck out. I texted and called the GM from my car in tears, which she was not happy with since we are somewhat friends as well.
I asked the GM not to confront her, because it has happened MANY times in the past with multiple employees where Tia will torment us to the point of tears and the employee will complain to the GM, who will then try to resolve it. The issue is that Tia knows how to make a good excuse and lie. Tia makes the GM believe things are good, and then we employees feel Tia's wrath all the more for getting her in trouble. I've been through 2 years of this. 6 months into my first year there, the GM wanted to make me a manager. Later down the road, I took that position and was damn near hospitalized because of the torment and lack of training and STRESS. Tia was worse to me at that time and it made it worse. I demoted myself after 6 months as a manager. This is mostly because of Tia, but there also aren't enough managers there, so Tia knows they won't fire her.
So, here I sit, every day is spent dreading having to go back to work, always being on edge, always expecting that SOMETHING will go wrong, we employees will be screamed at (that's honestly a given at this point), none of us are trained properly (My training was to do it wrong the first time, get screamed at for doing it wrong, and then they'd finally show me how to do it right), and generally just waiting for the next big explosive catastrophe to happen that will somehow be made our fault even if it's not.
I want to get another job. I also have wanted to quit on the spot pretty much everyday for the last few months. But I'm TERRIFIED of not being able to find anything if I walk, especially since I'm not only paying my bills but my mother's after her job abruptly dumped her for not getting enough sales. Everyday is a struggle and I'm driven to tears more often now because I feel so trapped. All I can do is keep my head down and keep going. Best believe that when my mother settles into whatever new job she can find, I'm saving up enough to cover a good month away from this place because I'm literally about to rip my own head off.
Sorry for the long rant, I'm just really tired of everything.