A story so common to you all, long but familiar I'm sure. This happened last year but I think now is time to share my story. I was with the company for 3 years. I had always made it clear from day one that I would like a consistent schedule and I would like for my days off to be in a row. I requested that I would only work no more than 25 hours a week. It was a retail sales job so it's exhausting for me while I was in college.
This company paid exactly minimum wage, was a metric driven environment however there was no payout for the high sales… Unless you count the amount of hours that you get on your schedule for high sales. The better your sales the more hours you got.
I was consistently the #1 on sales so automatically the boss would put me on the schedule more often than I requested. But then she ended up doing it in a way that was absolutely horrible. I would be bullied for keeping my standards and the contract that I signed for my work availability. I would always cave because I was scared to speak up.
She would make me work 8 day work “weeks” but only 4 hour shifts, and they would vary from closing and opening the next day, to only mid shifts. Mind you the store closed at midnight, and would open at 9. Then when I would have my days off they wouldn't even be together, and often other locations would call me in for a “short shift” so I wouldn't be considered “full time”. At times she would only schedule me one day a week until I would complain then she would pressure me into working 32 hour weeks or more, because apparently 24 wasn't good enough. They even at times, didn't add my pay right and would short me on my paychecks. My hours would be correct but the pay wasn't.
The company also had blackout periods for holidays so I never was able to request time off to go visit my family for the holidays. However the underperforming employees were allowed to.
After 3 years of this bullshit I decided I was finally done. I was never praised for my skills with money, I was never promoted, but constantly given new responsibilities and tasks. Whenever I would speak out to HR or upper management I was reprimanded and gossiped about. In fact, I was written up for gossiping when I went to the district manager about the behavior that my manager was displaying to me despite having proof. On my vacations if I ever got lucky on getting one, I would be scolded for work related things or ask to come in. Even though I had proof, it would count as gossiping…so I found out.
For the company policy even though we were only getting paid minimum wage, our nails had to be painted and it had to be “professionally applied”. Our makeup had to be natural and there was only specific colors we could wear, and our clothing had to be business attire. Woman also were required to wear bras and shave. If your hair was highlighted or dyed it had to be maintained every 3 weeks at least, per company handbook. With these policies you would think that we were dealing with high-end clientele but we definitely were not. Most were sketchy people and burnt out mom's.
My boss would always sit on the job as well when the other employees were supposedly not allowed to, and apparently the cameras were “watching”. I have a disability which allows me and accommodation to sit because I can't stand for long periods of times without fainting. If I worked cash register I had to be sitting. My boss didn't believe me about my disability because I “looked fine”. I figured that since my boss sat on the job without going through disability accomodations, why should there be any issue with me doing it? Anyways so it was this big issue and they got me a special stool that apparently no one else was allowed to use…but my boss did anyways even though she didn't go through the process of getting this stupid accommodation that should just be… allowed. Mind you, it only became an issue of me sitting 3 years into working.
To top it off my boss would always use her phone on the sales floor. Despite our district manager warning us that it would be instant termination if the camera saw our phones. My boss told me if I've ever became management that I could do that too. She'd be watching tik toks all day in a corner, where the cameras couldn't see her. I felt awful because there would be hours throughout the day where we would have a zero customers and we would just have to sit there twiddling our thumbs. I tried coloring once because it had been 2 hours without any customers and she stood up from her corner and started reprimanding me for coloring. In fact she was furious.
I had enough so I casually talked to my boss and I told her over text on my day off that I would be leaving in September. (6 months notice) She didn't respond. So I brought it up to her at work the next time I saw her. She looked me dead in the eyes, her ears went red, she started shaking and she told me she was going to forget that I ever said that. Keep in mind I gave her 6 months notice because I wanted the company to have enough staffage so that the other employees weren't suffering from my absence.
I guess the highest performing employee for the last 3 years finally got fed up and wanted to leave and I guess that was an issue for her. Yet the boss didn't want to change her behavior.
Only a month goes by and I get a promotion… What a shocker. I take the offer and I take the health insurance and all of everything that comes with that… Mind you I didn't need to take it at this point because I had my contingency plans. // It was time for revenge, via malicious compliance.// I had a stable relationship with a partner who makes a lot of money, I had my college degree and my years of experience in a sales and metric driven environment. Fuck, even the CEO loved me and I could email her for a recommendation at any point if I wanted. I needed nothing from this job at this point anymore. I even learned what not to do.
My boss starts joking and getting comfortable about how once you become higher up in the company that you no longer have to work as hard but you get paid more. She starts spilling all of her secrets about the company. She starts spilling secrets in general that can ruin her reputation. She thinks we're friends.
My boss forgot that she was actually trained by me when she was first hired on, and once I was on her level playing field because we were both managers for the same store there was an odd tone of competition. Not from me though.
Whenever I would write the schedules appropriately and communicate with all the employees to make sure that the schedules would work, and be consistent enough, I put them into our system and my boss would override them. Keep in mind I would try to write the schedule 2 months in advance, and my boss would write the schedule 3 days beforehand. I think she didn't like it that the employees started looking to me as an actual boss unlike her.
Often I would clock in and my boss would change my hours that I was working, so I got paid less… Her justification was so that we didn't go over the allotted hours, so I wouldn't get paid overtime. However she would request me to change her hours because she “forgot to clock in”. The other employees told me that she in all actuality would consistently show up hours late on the days I wasn't working, and she'd be hungover. She caught on that I knew this, so she started to take my sales and gossip about me. Should make snide comments like “I thought if you went to college you're supposed to be smart” when I wouldn't understand the new POS system, that she was poorly training me on. Or when she'd tell other employees that I'm dumb and only get sales because I'm a blonde with big tits.
I finally reached out to a person above our district manager, because our district manager always claimed that she //never wanted to hear about problems she only wanted to hear about solutions. //
I said fuck that, I'll go above you and you'll look like a dumbass for not having this resolved. So I spoke on one small thing to another higher up that was above my DM. I spoke on how my boss wouldn't let me do the schedule even though we were co- managers. She was furious. She told me that it's incredibly inappropriate of my boss and that I should stand up to her. (I was pissed to hear this). The higher up then took out this massive binder full of daily sales. She pointed out the day that it was announced of my promotion, and showed the metrics since I had been management. She told me that she sees how well the employees like me as a manager, and that I'm going to go far if I can get past my boss.
*A week later I decided to quit like I said I was going to 6 months prior. It pained me to quit because of one manager. The CEO of the company loved me, and she was amazing. I hated that I sacrificed so much of my life for one dumb company. *
So when I quit, my boss / co-manager tried gaslighting me out of quitting and said that what I went through wasn't that bad (I spoke on the time a customer tried to physically hurt me over the masks and I said that's why I was leaving) and I said that's fine I'm still no longer going to work here. She still didn't believe me.
That two week notice I gave was absolutely hell, and I'll never recommend it to anyone frankly.
My boss was so scared that she transferred herself to work at another store for the remainder of my two weeks. She even tried getting me to work 4 days past my two weeks because she already approved someone else's request off. My boss even went so far as guilting me into staying since it would make it really hard for the other employees if I didn't work those extra four days… Like bitch you're salaried for this exact reason you can work eight day work weeks just like I did to cover other people's shifts. So… I just didn't show up. I did give her 6 months notice after all, and an additional 2 weeks. Apparently she never came in to cover my shifts, and the staffing was incredibly short. Of course she blamed me. Later the store was held at gunpoint from the shirt staffing I'm sure.
That particular store started failing ever since I left. There was a large wave of employees quitting, some with notice, some without. They haven't met metric goals, and now the store has to close early because of short staffing. My boss refuses to close. It's been a year, you think they'd recover but… nope. Everyone is quitting left and right because of one manager.
Additionally, that manager my old boss, the reason why she's not fired, to which she told me was because she attended one of the sex parties that the company had and it's dirt that could get a lot of people in trouble… legally.
There is so much more that happened like my boss pressuring me into buying her alcohol while on the job. The amount of theft that I saw. The verbal abuse I went through. The sex traffickers I would come across?? That was weird. The stalking. My assistant manager choking me “jokingly” and HR telling me that we needed to just get to know each other better. Customer threatening to hurt me over the masks. The amount that I had to advocate for a stool to sit on. The amount of family events I missed out on. The fact that I gained weight and insomnia from the stress of that job.
It speaks volumes that this company had free therapy services and I finally decided to take it up towards the end of my job, and the person that I spoke to told me to leave my job to speak to HR and talk to an attorney. I decided to do none of that other than leave, even though I'm sure something would have come of it.
My story is not unique to any retail employee unfortunately, but I just want to say fuck you to my old boss you probably should have listened to me when I told you I was quitting and not perpetually gaslight me like you always did.