TL:DR — I want advice for how to deal with a doggy daycare chain that hired me on the spot, didn't formally interview or train me, fired me for no reason, and fired the manager who hired me less than 24 hours after I was terminated.

BACKGROUND

I am a 25 year old autistic woman; my neurodivergence requires me to need the right job environment in order to thrive. It's especially frustrating to decide whether or not to disclose your disability in fear of discrimination. Because of these reasons — and a long battle with depression after leaving an abusive relationship and moving to live with my friend in a different state overnight — it took me forever to get back to working again. Dogs are my passion (I am childfree and want lots of dogs throughout my life), so I applied at a doggy daycare that was part of a chain. My goal after a one year absence from the workforce: seek a job where I could grow.

THE HIRING PROCESS

I filled out the online application with excruciating detail, only for the receptionist to glance at it long enough to notice I had prior doggy daycare experience and greenlight me for an interview. On November 16, I had an “interview” with the nearby location’s manager, “Steve” (name has been changed). My first impression of Steve was that he’s a frazzled man with no sense of time management, computer skills (90% of his job was done on a laptop), or manners. He asked me about my dog experience while checking the emails from his phone, then swiftly had a supervisor give me a tour as he turned around to take care of matters elsewhere.

I was virtually hired on the spot; the supervisor saw I was quite confident with the dogs, and with Thanksgiving being days away, they needed help. I thought it was peculiar that the manager was trying to put out all these metaphorical fires, and yet he refused to properly interview, hire, and train a firefighter to help him fight these fires.

The day after my interview (Nov. 17), I was sent a text message from Steve, who told me to fill out some paperwork (tax forms) online and show up to work the next day for more prep work. I was reluctant — after all, he hired me on the spot and I felt like showing up to the interview was causing an inconvenience — but I obliged. I walked the 30 minutes to the daycare, only to have Steve waste an hour of my time telling me to download a couple apps and wait for him to finish completing my email.

This literally was a meeting that could have been an email, I thought as I walked the 30 minutes back to my house. The manager didn’t check to see if I filled out the tax paperwork. And upon showing up to complete my prep work, I waited 30 minutes after downloading the apps for Steve to forget that I needed help. I literally had to walk into the daycare room and flag this man down, which felt like I was breaking a million rules.

FOUR DAYS AND A WASTE OF TIME

On my first day — Saturday the 19 — Steve wasn't there. A manager from another daycare was there instead. I brought her up to speed and told her it felt like Steve didn’t even care to get to know me. I told her I was passionate about dogs, and we bonded over our mutual childfree dog mama statuses. I shadowed a supervisor but she was quickly impressed by how confident I was that she had me working in my own room, which was for the best. Due to how understaffed the place was, the “active dog” room was always staffed, the calm dog room was occasionally staffed, and the small dog room was never staffed. I did a deep clean of the calm and little dog rooms and had a great first day.

The following (and final) 3 days, I had to work with Steve as my NPC of a manager. Once again, every time I asked him for directions, he gave me instructions with his monotone library voice that made it impossible to hear him. I ended up shadowing my supervisors and coworkers, who I got along with quite well. The only problem: as much as their advice was great, I was extremely anxious about upsetting my manager, as utterly useless as he made himself out to be.

TERMINATION

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I got an email from the senior general manager (SGM) via my work email reading:

“We have decided to terminate your employment effective immediately. We feel at this time we are not a good fit for each other but we thoroughly appreciate the opportunity to have gotten to meet you! Thank you for your time with us! We wish you the best!”

Now how the hell can you tell me I’m not a good fit when you didn’t even give me an interview, you didn’t get to know me personally, and your incompetent daycare manager cared so little about me that he didn’t even bother to spell my last name correctly!?

I took a few deep breaths and fired off an email stating what had happened with strong undertones of snark.

I'm sorry to hear that I am terminated and thank you for your time. However, I would like to know, if possible, why I am being terminated. Steve did not conduct anything in the way of an interview; I was just told to examine the campus and come in on Friday to start the hiring process. Come Friday, all the training and prep work I received was Steve setting me up with an email and telling me to do my taxes paperwork via Zenefits. I was also told to complete the university website training as soon as possible, but I was never informed on whether I would be paid for this online training. When I began my in-person training on Saturday, I was only given instructions from my coworkers, not my manager. I would love to explain myself via email or phone call, but I understand if you wish to part ways with no further questions.

The SGM doubled down and just said:

“I thank you for the feedback and will take that into consideration moving forward. We again wish you the best!”

Happy Colonialism Day, I guess. I can handle being away from family for the first time this holiday season, but this felt worse than being punched in the face. This was insulting.

PRESENT DAY

I thought about letting this go and taking the massive L. I think it's peculiar yet fascinating that one month later, I am still getting work emails and my contact information is still in their payroll system. However, I got a text message on Christmas Eve from someone trying to find a replacement for work the next day (Christmas) that prompted me to make this post. I told her that I didn’t know why I was being contacted when I was an employee for all of 4 days.

I should have left the second I realized the manager was not going to give me a proper interview. The only other time I was hired on the spot was at Dollar Tree, which is par for the course for a Dollar Tree. But at a doggy daycare where people are spending $30 for a full day of daycare and $60 for boarding, I would think you might want to interview and run background checks on people who are taking care of dogs paying top dollar for daycare, only to have 2/3rds of the daycare be left unattended and full of piss and shit due to understaffing. Why are they understaffed? I would imagine folks don’t reckon to stick around that long when you’re making them do all the manual labor involved with dog care when all they’re getting is a $13/hour salary. I was especially enraged at the fact that Steve conveniently forgot to tell me that the $2 removed from my salary to enter a “tip pool” was $2 per hour — not $2 overall. I guess I should be grateful they bothered directly depositing my only paycheck to me within the legal deadline. (/s)

I doubt I have a case worthy of taking up with an employment lawyer, although my journalist friend said to get the local news involved since that’s the kind of stuff they live for. But ultimately, I think it is despicable that underpaid employees at an understaffed doggy daycare have to take care of all these dogs — and their parents are charging top dollar just to have two of the rooms constantly be covered in piss and shit.

Thanks for taking your time and reading this. I hope y'all have ideas for what to do next, because aside from the not-great idea of “email SGM and ask him what I could do to improve my work performance, casually mentioning Steve's termination — and casually blind carbon copying the email to everyone that works there,” I have got nothing.