Going full rant mode here.
I've worked retail before, and have had enough experience to know what to expect. I worked at a recreational cannabis shop, and for the first bit it was fine. And then came the standard retail discourse of dealing with the public, including the most entitled and ill-tempered people that ever existed, a full scale global pandemic that has no signs of stopping anytime soon, as well as the high profile security risks and the fickle whims of our own policy makers.
Work was challenging but it never got me too stressed until last year around July. Our last manager quit and we for the longest time had our Area Manager doing our schedules, and it was done in the most incompetent way possible. Most people, including me were scheduled to work up to 12 days in a row with maybe 1 day off in between. To add to that another shop of our franchise opened but needed people, so they sent a bunch of our workers to fill in. This left a lot of people overworked, severely understaffed and stressed out to the point multiple people had full on mental breakdowns and had to quit due to the stress. We told our higher ups what was happening multiple times, and almost every time we were ignored and the one time we submitted a formal complaint they sent us pizza(because of course they did).
I made the mistake of staying because our new manager told me I was going to get promoted to night manager, and it would come with a pay raise. Months later they pulled a 180 and told me the only difference between my job and a manager was just making the schedules. So I'm doing manager level work and only getting associate pay.
After that I became incredibly jaded, I stopped caring about work entirely and started dating a co-worker on the down low(which I was told wouldn't be problem, there was no policy in place that said we couldn't, but we kept quiet for privacy's sake) and to add to that they cut all of our hours to where we couldn't make a living wage and working skeleton hours, like 3 hour shifts 5 days in a row for full time staff. It was the middle of winter at this point so even if I did quit no one would be hiring. So I was stuck in a pretty bad spot for a few more months, and slowly losing money as my paychecks weren't nearly enough to cover my monthly expenses and had to dip into my savings a lot. It was in January that I tried to write another formal complaint, express the workers problems and try to get our old hours back, and even get a pay raise for everyone after all the bullshit we went through. I even compared that we do the same work as liquor store workers and they get paid way more than we do.
Finally submitted it and the response was… nothing. Complete fluff and disregard for our complaints, citing that they were still a new business and “we don't know what we're doing”(Big red flag right there). Only thing that came out of it was giving us a pittance of ten extra hours, which I thought was because of me, but was told that it was because our sales numbers were slightly better. So that was another blow to my mental state, and when the panic attacks started.
Another month passes and our employee evaluations were coming up. Again I was told if they went well, we could get a raise based on our performance. Despite my increasing hatred for my job I still tried to be professional and do my job, which I was pretty good at. Week before though The secret was out about my relationship because I wanted valentine's off, and my manager used that to not only tank my evaluation and refuse my raise(Even though again, there was no policy against it and my co-worker had already quit beforehand), which I needed because I showed them the numbers that the hours and pay I made working full time weren't enough to pay my expenses. Their response “We can get you an app to help budget”. IT WASN'T A BUDGET ISSUE IT WAS AN I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH FUCKING MONEY ISSUE! The stress and anxiety of it all gave me daily panic attacks after, to the point I ended up in the hospital and had to take a week off for stress leave. So my mental and physical health were ruined, and I was even broker before.
Final straw was after my piss poor evaluation, they said they would revisit it in a month and re-evaluate me if I “fixed my attitude”. Waited until after filing my taxes, I got a big ass refund so I could finally quit and use the money to support myself while I looked for another job. Printed off my two weeks notice because it was a shit job that basically destroyed me emotionally, mentally and physically, but I am still a professional and have a personal sense of honor about these things. Went in and thought, last Hail Mary and I brought up the re-evaluation. Had to remind my manager about it, and they dance around the issue, saying they were still “working on it”. Can't say I didn't try and put my two weeks in right after they finished talking.
Bastards.