TLDR : I had to leave early due to possible COVID. Part timer doesn't want to work overtime because he has personal matter at home. Manager got pissed and resulting him quitting (allegedly since I'm not there in person when it happened). Manager proceeds to get stressed out because of lack of manpower and tells me to come in tomorrow unless my condition is really serious.
Disclaimer: This is going to be a very long post.
I've been working as an admin in a home improvement store for about one month now. The place is generally fine, ok pay, cool coworkers, kinda heavy workload with having to understand their complex business systems on a years old computer that probably disintegrates when I open more than 2 chrome tabs but manageable to say the least. The only problem there, is the manager.
She's your typical bossy boomer lady that wants everything to go at her way and acts like she knows more about someone's job than the person who literally worked in the position for more than 10 years. When I first went for the interview, I was actually interviewing for a sales position, but she told me that she needs an admin and since I have relatively basic computer skills, I might be suitable at it. I don't mind working as an admin, but I explicitly told her that I DO NOT have any experience being an admin, so don't expect much out from my first couple of months and if I proved myself not suitable for the job, I would switch to the sales job. She doesn't have any problem with it.
For this past month, my job working as an inexperienced admin is not going smoothly to say the least. I constantly make minor mistakes, stuff like mistyping product codes, resulting in having to make a COMPLETELY NEW order to be emailed, my anxiety constantly gets in the way and the manager doesn't like it, without noticing that she is half of the reason why I'm like this. She constantly bosses me around (in an extremely passive aggressive way), nitpicks and getting mad over every minor mistake bigger than it's supposed to be, has a “scold first, check later” attitude and tends to start meetings in the middle of the day to talk essays whenever someone on the team makes a mistake small or big, preaches about teamwork and we should all be together in this job etc, overall not a good person to work with.
Now comes the “part timer”, who joined about 2 weeks after me. I put the “part timer” in quotations because he is basically working a schedule of a full time employee but is registered as a part timer, which means he can't receive certain benefits like EPF (which is a small cut of salary that is saved up for retirement) and SOSCO (which is like a social security protection for work related injuries, sickness etc) for my country. He's a cool dude, much like the other coworkers in the store.
Fast forward to today, I was showing mild symptoms of COVID (sore throat, strong coughs) and the manager told me to take a test which turned out negative. She insisted that the test is absolute and I should have no problem continue working despite my obvious coughing (I'm working a full day shift today, 12 hours which is 8 hours work with 2 hours overtime and 2 more hours for break which doesn't make anything better). I told her that I will be leaving at 6pm to go to see a doctor no matter what since I don't want to put my coworkers and customers at risk. She reluctantly accepted, but keeps telling me stuff like, “sore throats are not a big deal”, “if you didn't get a fever that means it's not COVID”, “you better be here working tomorrow” and the classic “back in my days we just popped a paracetamol and continued working”. I don't really care, and proceed to work until 6pm. Realizing that with me gone early, the night shift is lacking in manpower (2 people manning the entire store instead of 3) and decided to ask the part timer to help work for at least 1 hour extra. He declined because he had to take care of his family. The manager went furious, saying stuff like “it's just one hour, it's not a big deal” to him and generally acting like she doesn't like him for putting family over work. After hearing her, he hit her with the “if you don't like me (for not working the extra hour), then I will be going then.”. She stopped arguing, let him do his job, retreats to the office where I'm doing my work, and starts talking shit about him. I stood silent the entire rant, and later told the part timer what she said. He is cool with it and we both resume back to our jobs.
After the checkup which I ended up with a MC for 3 days (the doctor did not test me for covid, I have to test it myself tomorrow morning) from the doctor, I sent a pic of the MC to the manager and she basically went on full interrogation mode, asking about the details and shit, and telling me that I should've just come in tomorrow regardless of my illness unless the test shows that I'm positive for COVID and ONLY COVID. I just told her I'm starting to have a fever and she gave up, giving me the news that the part timer might not be working anymore. All I can think about is when she told me that, is that she brought this onto herself. It feels good to see a manager of a store that already has a low number of employees losing one all because of ego, and I'm probably going to be next at the end of August which is also the end of my 3 month probation period.
Sorry for the very long post, just had to get this out of my chest, have a for reading this far.