Hey there antiworkers. Today I put in my unofficial notice that I'm leaving my gig as a retail assistant manager at one of the Big 3 grocers in Canada. (Hint, it has the word “OBEY” in the name!) Anyway, goodbye forever, you horrible green bastard. They like to throw around the slogan “we all deserve compliments”. NO, no, you do not deserve compliments and you will not be getting any in this post.
I was pretty unhappy for a while but kind of running on autopilot and honestly found myself too tired/busy to even really recognize how burnt out I was. A series of events in the last couple months led to me finally just snapping and rage applying anywhere I could. A few weeks into my search I landed a job as a sales rep for a smaller local business that handles supply for restauraunts/foodservices. I start in two weeks. I'm so stoked to work with people that aren't spineless, profiteering ghouls.
I didn't hate my job entirely, but I hated how disingenous it made me. I hate that I was expected to kiss so many asses and spew the fakest, most forced toxic positivity. I was constantly having to put in extra time and YET, and YET!!! My best efforts would never have been good enough for these clowns. It honestly broke me.
I got sucked in to the job because I had worked for the company for the entirety of my high school/university years. I have been there for a literal decade. I enjoyed the flexibility and the wage and benefits were good thanks to the union. I graduated university in the fall of 2020, six months into the pandemic, and I had literally zero job prospects. I thought it was in my best interests to stay put as the grocery industry remained intact and almost everyone I knew was laid off or precariously employed at that time. I stayed. I secured a full time position. I got into their bogus management training program. I thought I would do whatever I could to build my resume and just assess as time went on. I deferred from a masters' program (I wasn't really committed to going back to school, I just liked the idea) and kept working, because rent and bills. Surely, I moved up within the company pretty quickly. I got into their fake school for nonsense grades about bullshit company policy. And sure, I was making pretty alright money for someone just fresh out of school with limited job prospects. But I paid for it dearly in my wellbeing and self esteem taking a fucking beating. Here's a small recap of the events in the last year and a half that led me to finally deciding to leave the expensive Green Bastard Grocery Chain.
- Got into their fake management school
- Fake management school turns out to be a wildly disorganized shitshow and gets delayed for four months due to the omicron outbreak (it's online)
- I got written up for “coming to work with covid” (I felt 100% fine that morning and had a bit of a scratchy throat at 3pm. Went downhill fast around 8pm that night… but fuck me I guess)
- was criticized by my bosses relentlessly, I was made to sit through some impromptu “professional development meetings” where I was made to feel so, so, so fucking stupid and disorganized and sent me down a bit of a spiral that made me feel the need to agressively treat/pathologize my ADHD and just really beat myself up.
- I got promoted! Hard work really does pay off I guess <3 and I am sent to a store that is notorious for having no labour.
- Surprise! We have no labour! I spend most of my day in a checkstand!
- My assistant gets promoted because she doesn't like the location and people can pull strings for her bc her dad works in another department backstage. Do I get a replacement? No. My workload effectively doubles.
- They decide to launch a new loyalty program with three weeks' notice, almost six months ahead of schedule. Everything must be grand opening ready because we'll get visits from head office. I give up days off, work twelve hour days, cancel appointments. Do we get a visit from head office? Absolutley not.
- I have an assessment for fake manager school the week I had NINETEEN PEOPLE OFF SICK WITH COVID. I'm talking defcon level five crisis. The store would have looked better if it were on fire. How am I supposed to be preparing for an assessment when I'm just trying to have enough staff on hand to keep the store open? Top brass knows this and proceeds with the assesment anyway because “they have a tight schedule”. (They don't).
- I was told they'd give me another assessment in about six weeks' time. Did it happen? Nope!
- We were affected by “IT issues” (they weren't IT issues – we were hacked, because despite being one of the largest, wealthiest, nationwide companies, we cannot invest in tech that is newer than windows XP)
- We are not functional for like a month. People are moving their holidays, there's conference calls every single day, there's very little information being provided to us.
- Around this time I get a letter in the mail saying my dental benefits had been terminated. Huh, that's weird. I give the benefits program a call. They say that I hadn't worked enough hours to maintain my benefits. How can that be possible if I work full time? Turns out it was a clerical error when my information had been changed backstage at payroll. They fix the clerical error and reinstate my benefits. Which is great, but I had to cancel an appointment with the oral surgeon to deal with my painful wisdom teeth.
- Two weeks before Christmas I get a paycheck that has been docked by nearly $1100 for no apparent reason and with NO WARNING GIVEN AT ALL. I reach out to my HRBP and demand some kind of answer. No answer.
- I reach out to HR call center. They tell me it was an error caused by the IT blackout and I would be reimbursed.
- My HRBP reaches out, finally, to clarify that I would in fact not be reimbursed because I had accidentally taken two weeks of paid vacation that I was not entitled to, but had somehow ended up in my accrued vacation hours bank. So when I got an email (from her) to remind us to use up any remaining annual vacation before December 31st, I did.
- Do I get an apology or any kind of recourse? No. My district operator comes to the store, but he can't wait five minutes for me to get out of a checkstand (the customer comes first you know!) so I can talk to him face to face.
- I work myself ragged into the holiday season, exhausted AND broke! I spent most of christmas and boxing day sleeping because I was so bagged from the days before at work. We did $100 000 in sales on the 23rd alone, effectively four times more than our daily average. I fuck up my knee pushing shopping carts on Christmas eve because, once again, we have no staff so we resort to managers having to push carts every. goddamn. day. Do we have those power cart pusher things to make things a little easier? NOPE. TOO EXPENSIVE.
- Right after new years I am told that my performance in fake manager school was unsatisfactory, I'm given a crock of nonsense reasons, including that they felt as though my assessment (you know, the one where I had half my staff off sick) should have been better. I politely remind my district operator that I was actually supposed to have another assessment which never materialized. I am told, point blank “you weren't going to be assessed again” and not even acknowledging that he literally failed to schedule that second assessment.
- I guess I'm supposed to eat shit then. I learn I'm getting transferred and demoted for a “couple months, six maximum”. They say the store will “really benefit from my merchandising skills!”
- I learn I'm going from 23.45 an hour back down to 19.00. (“Union rules, not ours” they say)
- I arrive at my new store, bitter as hell and determined to find a new job ASAP, where I learn that we are scheduled to host a showcase in a few months' time. These showcases are super labour intensive and require all hands on deck. Essentially it's a tradeshow where the store gets all gussied up and these massive displays are made (INCREDIBLY wasteful, btw. Shrink goes through the roof.) The big shits walk around and ooh and ahh and it's done in one day. One big stressful dog and pony show.
- I put 2 + 2 together. I was SENT TO THIS STORE TO BE ANOTHER SET OF HANDS FOR THE TRADESHOW. They threw together some total BULLSHIT REASONS to demote me just so they could put me in an unfilled, unionized position at this store so I could HELP THEM WITH MY MERCHANDISING SKILLS. MORE WORK. FOR LESS MONEY.
- I say goodbye, kiss my ass, I quiet quit and take long lunches and watch tiktok all day.
And now I'm starting a new chapter. Goodbye to these cheap, lousy morons. This is why nobody wants to work. See you never! xo <3