I’ll preface this by saying I have ADHD. It isn’t a secret, I’m very vocal about it. It’s even a running joke in the store about how often I misplace my water bottle, because of my lack of object permanence.
So my manager, asks me where I put an old piece of paperwork from the truck today. I think back and only recall I put it on the cart. She cannot find it, I tell her I don’t know, and she checks the cameras and sees I threw it out.
Now she confronts me about it, I apologize and express that I forgot I had done that, and that at the time I must’ve thought it was garbage. She replies with “You forgot in just a few hours?”
To which I retort: “Do you know how memory works?”
This was apparently not the response she was looking for, and tells me if I’m going to talk back I can go home. I ask if she thought I threw it out on purpose to which she says: “I don’t know, but you blatantly lied to me [about putting it on the cart].”
Fast forward a bit and she calls me into the office, and it’s three managers. Two I can get, so that they don’t have it one persons word against another, but three? An obvious show of force.
They then try to concoct a story about me not working with the team, and not working with my manager, and all of that so I ask for an example.
My manager brings up a day from three months ago (no write up, no verbal warning, only just hearing this is a problem now) when myself and couple of the other supervisors were playing frisbee with a piece of styrofoam. I ask why it wasn’t addressed then and get some bullshit excuse about days off.
But if it was a problem it should have been addressed then so I could conduct myself appropriately.
Then she brings up an incident in which she shut down a time saving technique I thought would help the store (and our psyches), but turns it down because she’s the boss and has to have her way.
I repeat it and it’s so obviously a good idea her only response was “That’s not your job.”
THEN my Store Director (essentially GM), pipes in about a convo we have regarding PTO and sick time in which she tried to say I couldn’t use PTO for sick time when the handbook very clearly says that all PTO is the same PTO.
I took her around the block again and expressed that nothing she or any of her bosses say will gainsay the damned employee handbook. Like try and read the book before you throw it at me, yeah?
So after verbally fencing for about forty minutes, I try and be the peace maker. I tell them they’re all wonderful people, and that I don’t want to fight with any of them. My mistake is I had the word “dude” somewhere in there. My boss replies “I’m not you’re dude, I’m a woman and your boss.”
Put my keys on the table and told them to have a beautiful day. Not gonna sit there and let you powertrip at me.
I probably didn’t do everything right here, but I am satisfied in that they were all bringing up bullshit while I had facts, data and logic on my side of the table.
So I feel like I won.