I know this is antiwork but this has made me so bloody happy I wanted to share it with you guys to show that there are good people out there with best intentions for their staff. I'll add a TL:DR at the bottom cos it'll be a decent read.
I've worked as a barber for a bit over 10 years now, and I was very much falling out of love with my career choice, looking for other options to work because I just wasn't happy. I moved through 3 companies and each one was slightly worse than the other, especially when it came to the way they were managed. The last place was so bad that I wasn't sleeping for the stress, and had taken on a course in teaching to get out of the industry.
I started in a new place earlier this year, not only did they offer to pay me more than what I asked but they are open to me changing days around with fair warning (I'm doing 5 days but I want to change to 4; it'll still give me 35h/wk) plus incentives, bonuses, and an open and easy dialogue with the manager and owners.
Yesterday we had a new staff member start. They very clearly have years of experience in the industry and to top that off they're a lovely person, very friendly and wanting to get to know people in the shop. Not that it's important to how they work, but they are Middle Eastern and this woman (sounded Midwestern American) instantly took a dislike to this new barber and was immediately rude and dismissive towards them, keeping a close eye on their kids cut while the other two were also getting a cut. She was really nasty and asking if they were gonna do a proper job, why they hadn't done particular things yet etc. Eventually the manager turns around and says “what is the actual issue here, because you're being very rude to my barber”. She couldn't come up with a cohesive argument for why, but eventually the manager said someone else will finish the cut because you're clearly not gonna leave them be while they work and we won't charge you for it, but you need to lose the attitude”. Eventually she went to someone else and had it finished, and left saying she would never come back, and the manager said “that's fine, it saves me from barring you from the shop”.
I swear, every other place I've worked here would have tried to find a way to placate the mother of the kids, with the old bullshit “customer is always right” mentality. I'm still so impressed with how he handled it, and knowing the owners would stand behind his decision as well makes it so much better.
TL:DR manager stood up for new staff member instead of throwing them under the bus, unlike every other place I've worked previously