When I showed them my doctor’s note for a sitting stool as reasonable accommodation for my disability, the store leader declined. His reasoning was this:
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Employees would throw it at the customers (completely false and unfounded and a really weird way for an excuse)
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That it’s a safety hazard because people will trip over it.
This didn’t make sense to me so I had to contact our area leader, and he said he’d talk to HR about it. Few days later he brings a foldable chair but then asked if I can give him my recent medical records in order to confirm that I indeed have a disability. Is that even legal? He already provided me a chair, and I even gave them a doctor’s note so why do they need my medical records that badly?
Ironically enough, after this incident my next week schedule I only received 24 hours when I applied for a full time position at this place (7-11, corporate).
Other incidents:
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4/24/2023 @ 1:00-2:00PM, the store leader slapped my hand away after I tried to do my job and decided to do it instead without properly training me. I repeatedly told him the card reader was broken on my assigned register, but he refused to listen and continued to do it until he finally realized it wasn’t working (which I had already mentioned twice). There is video surveillance of this particular incident occurring.
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At the beginning of my employment, most, if not all, of us employees were severely under trained, or were not trained up to ‘his standards’. He has initially written us for code violations that we weren’t aware of until he told us during the later of the first week at work at his location. After receiving a complaint towards upper management regarding this unfair treatment after being trained from three days or even under 24-hours from a separate ‘training location’, the very next day he told us any of our ‘violations, and write-ups’ would be voided but would officially start after our first pay period, which was on 5/05/2023.
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Additionally, instead of requesting a group meeting where he and the all of the other employees are present during heir respective shift and trying to teach us and explain what to do, he relegated the task to a different senior sales associate located in East LA as a ‘favor’. He is very reluctant on group meetings altogether and only exclusively does one-on-one meetings against each of us employees and has continued to create a hostile working environment ever since my time of employment. I am not the only one who has realized this as the majority of my coworkers has agreed as well. I have overheard him calling me a ‘double zero’ for being a ‘clueless person’ as this is my first job working at a retail store and had not worked in years due to personal and medical reasons and due to COVID-19. I mostly worked desk and data entry jobs before this so of course it would take me several weeks at most for me to acclimate into this new working environment. And from what the area leader has stated, 7-11 policy says in-training period can be as little as to under 24 hours and there is no 30-90 days ‘probationary period’ whatsoever. Is this even true? I’ve never heard of a company with new hires having no probationary period.
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A coworker of mine has filed several complaints and they later found out it was her, and as a form of retaliation, our store leader has given her only 16 hours for this week even though she has documentation and agreement to working full-time. She mentioned having a second job as well, and after filing the complaints, the retaliation from her worsened to the point where she has been intimidated by the manager multiple times to simply transfer to a different corporate location instead.
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Preferential treatment. Especially towards three employees. I’ve heard numerous reports from other coworkers that they are receiving favoritism from our store leader/manager for ‘snitching’ on other employees for ‘violations’, yet at the same time those same employees who has reported to Melvin regarding the warnings have done either the same or similar issues but was never reprimanded for it.
My manager spoke to me one-on-one at 5/08/2023 @ roughly 3PM. He repeatedly told me that one of the employees called him complaining that me and another coworker of mine was being rude and confrontational, when it was the exact opposite. My coworker told our other coworker who called our manager with the complaint that she needs to remain ‘professional’, but she somehow took that as some sort of personal attack on her and I tried to de-escalate the situation by saying what she said was correct because her behavior was very condescending towards the rest of us coworkers and customers. She blame shifted us to the manager (who is already very biased and favors her) to make it sound like we were the ones attacking her when it was the other way around. He also noted several times that this particular employee is currently ‘in training to be a leads associate’, trained ‘personally’ by him, but at the time of the incident she still held the same job position as us (a sales associate), and seemed to insinuate that what she did was fine without any repercussions whilst we both received warnings. If this is how he is ‘training’ his employees to get promoted into lead associates, I find this highly discriminatory and predatory in nature. Why should this employee be allowed to be condescending and rude to both customers and her coworkers and do not get reprimanded for it but both me and my other coworker got a warning issued for it? She’s not even an official lead associate yet so I do not see how this even matters at all to begin with and why he had to mention this over three times.
He finally backed down after I told him that she is a sales associate and she does not have any extra duties or authorities that would supersede any of the other coworkers as we all have the same current job position as a sales associate. I believe this is preferential treatment, and I’ve witnessed this on multiple occasions.
From the multiple times I’ve witnessed and seen this particular employee, she’s done minimal or little to no duties and requirements of her job, and forced her other coworker to do the majority of the tasks and unfairly relegated to it without her consent even though they should be doing the job requirements evenly as they both hold the same current job position as a sales associate.
Because of this and his unwillingness to cooperate with his employees, it has escalated to the point that the majority of my coworkers have already filed complaints against him to his area leader. A day after this complaint was filed, he was very nice but reverted back to his hostile and degrading nature towards us.
Sorry for the wall of of text. I may have repeated several incidents as this was written on my notes as I wanted to document everything that’s been ongoing ever since since my first day of employment under this particular store leader. I have NEVER received such workplace discrimination and retaliation from upper management as severe as this from my prior jobs and it has been incredibly frustrating and it’s just a circus working under this guy.