I work in a coffee kiosk that is inside of a rather large grocery store chain. The kiosk is poorly staffed and I often times am forced to work alone for 4-6 hours. When only one person is working, store management is very upset when we leave our station for any reason. For this reason, I don't often take my 15s or my 30. At most, I take a 5 minute smoke break every few hours. When I get hungry I'll purchase one of the sandwiches we offer at the kiosk and eat it behind the counter (again, because I can't leave.)
The other day, a member of upper management (I think district manager?) saw me eating and just kinda…stared at me. I had no idea what he was doing or why so I waved at him. This is when problems occurred.
He walked closer to me VERY aggressively and asked what I was doing. “You having a little lunch there?”
“Yeah?”
The next five or so minutes consisted of me answering his questions and him yelling at me ON THE SALES FLOOR. WITH CUSTOMERS AROUND. about how this is unprofessional (bro, I make coffee in a fucking grocery store. Calm it,) against food safety (as I understand, it is not as long as I set my food down away from other prep-surfaces or products and wash my hands before handling anything. Both of these things I do,) and that if I am going to eat I need to do it sitting at the tables behind the kiosk. I told him many times that if we leave the kiosk, managers get upset.
“WHO YELLS AT YOU? DOES MANAGER A YELL AT YOU? DOES MANAGER B YELL AT YOU? DOES MANAGER C YELL AT YOU,” he yelled at me.
This is when I knew he wouldn't listen to anything I had to say so I kept mostly quiet with the occasional “okay. Yep. Uh-huh.”
He didn't want me to eat behind the counter and told me to take my break in the seating area? So be it. I clocked out and didn't come back for 30 minutes. I put up a sign saying exactly what time I would be back and walked away. This brings up another issue with this walking asshat. He HATES signs, apparently.
He feels its a better idea to carry a walkie talkie with us on breaks so that if a customer walks up or asks customer service where the coffee guy is, they can page us so we can help them. Absolutely not. I'm off the clock, I'm not working. That is a AWFUL and WILDLY inefficient method, so I use the sign anyway. When I came inside from smoking, would you care to take a guess as to what wasn't displayed anymore? The sign. I still had about 10 minutes left of my break so I put it back up and clocked in 10 minutes later.
From what I've heard, interactions like this happen a lot with this guy. Hes unnecessarily hostile, always talks down to everyone, and refuses to listen and instead chooses to yell over anyone who DARES to speak. I feel like this constitutes him creating a hostile work environment because I am wildly uncomfortable around him and others have told me similar stories. What, if anything, can I do about this and how do I go about doing it? I'm afraid that since he is pretty high up the management chain, nothing will change. How can I make sure something does?