This was two years ago. I was working at a sandwich place of which I will not disclose the name of. I had joined the crew about a month before the lockdown, but even before that, I knew that the assistant store manager did not like me at all. Let’s call him “Steve”. Steve was also dating the store manager, who we’ll call “Shannon”, which is likely the only reason he had the job in the first place. Remember her because she’ll be important later on.
Both Steve and Shannon didn’t take the job as serious as they let on. When Steve’s truck got totaled, there were days when they would both come in when they were scheduled, clock in, and then leave and drive up to three hours away to go look at cars and not come back until about two hours before closing. This made the people who were supposed to leave at shift change unable to leave the store until the next rotation of shifts. They would then get mad that we didn’t leave when we were supposed to.
There were also times when, on his days off, Steve would park his car in the McDonalds parking lot across the street and watch us work. He had the whole stake-out gear, binoculars included, and would watch us work, and if he saw us get busy, he would drive over and act like he just saved us from death.
Steve had some random beef with me, probably because I’m non-binary, and kept trying to write me up for the stupidest crap: forgetting to take a singular label off a container when washing dishes, being a half ounce over on beef measurements, taking a split second too long at cash out when it was the only customer in the store. He kept threatening to tell the owner on me, which he never did. I had learned to ignore his empty threats. He even tried to get me to say racist remarks, which I never entertained him on.
About two days before I quit, the store owner messaged our group chat saying that someone had altered the timetables (which is illegal by the way) and that he didn’t have a way to see who did it and to let him know if we had an idea who it was. Two days later, I showed up to work an hour late because they scheduled me on the opening shift even though I had told them I only wanted to work afternoon or night shifts because I have a hard time waking up early in the morning. Steve is the manager on shift and he’s going ballistic on me being late, claiming I was late to work by an hour for an entire week, which was a flat out lie. I then reminded him of what the owner had messaged us about two days prior and asked if he was the one who illegally altered the time tables. He went crazy, basically saying “How dare you accuse me of doing such a thing, I would never do such a thing!” Yada yada yada.
I tried to tune him out until I couldn’t anymore. I went to the register, clocked out, handed Steve my apron, and went out the door. Steve was bright red with anger and marched after me, yelling that I was fired and that I was a shitty piece of crap.
The next day, the store owner called me, explaining that he had found out that Steve had used Shannon’s credentials to log into the system and alter the time tables to make it look like I had been late to work by an hour for an entire week, and that he had fired the two of them as Shannon had willingly allowed Steve to do this. He also offered me my job back as a key holder. I told him that my uncle had already offered me a job at his job and that I would be working there instead.
After all that, the owner told the rest of the crew that I was to be given free meals for a month, so some good came out of it. I’m still mad that Steve only got off with a termination and didn’t get arrested for committing illegal acts.
Edit: I didn’t realize I could have sued the assistant manager until almost a year after the incident, and not only was it too late for it, I didn’t have the money to file a lawsuit.