So I have 2 jobs. Well, back to just one for the moment. I'm a supervisor for a movie theater for most of the week and then work at Walmart friday – sunday. Guess which job I quit? If you guessed Walmart you'd be correct.
Never in my life have I felt more dehumanized than at Walmart. The whole atmosphere of the place sends chills down my spine. It's just not a good place to be. Yesterday, apparently the district manager was coming so all the team leads were losing their minds. They had us running all over the store doing tasks even more pointless than stocking already full shelves. During a lot of the zoning I was on lunch, but later I talked to my friend there and she was literally on the verge of tears from how overwhelming it was. At that point in the day I was absolutely livid for multiple MULTIPLE work-related reasons that I'm not even gonna fit in this post. But basically that really put things into perspective. I saw what this place was doing to people, it was depressing. I just realized, this company is just cruel, willing to emotionally break their employees so a few cans will be in the right place. This is Walmart, not sure what reputation they're trying to uphold.
At the end of the day, two of the team leads had a “meeting” with me. They told me I wasn't as productive as I was when I started. Just a little backstory, I have been known to be very very fast at what I do. They have called me things like “speedy” even. I have consistently gotten tasks done way faster than they had anticipated, so the fact that they're complaining about my productivity really bothered me. The only thing my productivity has gotten me this far is more workload, so it's not the greatest motivation. At this point, I have been working there nearly 7 months (which is longer than most of my co-workers, I've trained at least half of the team). They asked me if there was “something going on”, to which I replied “my honest answer is that I just don't enjoy working here. And the way it sounds to me is that nobody enjoys working here”. They obviously didn't deny it. Basically telling me to act like I enjoyed my job and to go faster. I should have quit right then, but I didn't.
Today, when we finished the truck and they were assigning people, they would tell you how long it should take to complete a pallet (they've never done this before). They told me my pallets would take 3 hours to complete. So I put a stopwatch on, and by the time I'd completed both pallets, my time was 1 hr and 30 minutes. HALF the time estimated. And when I showed my team leads, they gave me a high five and told me to start working on grocery. My patience with this company had finally snapped. I sobbed before clocking in today, and any job that remotely respects its employees shouldn't make me feel like that. So I put it into perspective: I have another job to fall back on, and no amount of money is worth being treated like a machine. I've saved up a ton of money anyways. Being on edge for 8 hours straight isn't healthy. I can do better than this. I've already been thinking about quitting for months, bite the bullet and ditch them.
So after my lunch break I said “what's the process for quitting?”, one of the team leads says, “who's quitting?”, I say “me”. I very respectfully told them why I was leaving, that I'd been thinking about it for much longer than they'd expect. They told me giving a 2 weeks notice wasn't necessary but courteous, but that today could be my last day. So I said “okay, then today is my last day”, then I left, cleaned out my locker, and clocked out. I can already tell it was a good decision. Enjoy my un-productivity tomorrow!