Now my job is at a grocery market and I stock shelves overnight (23 Male). I work full time hours but I’m coded as a part timer. A big part of why I’m even here is because my former workplace shut down for long term renovations and it wouldn’t be done for another 9 months.
Now initially with my older boss it was one of the most chill jobs I had. We got to leave early if we finished early and they even let us use the self checkout during closing hours as long as we had a card or Apple Pay. I even got away with a no call no show where nobody even brung it up to me and it was even coded in the schedule as a call in but I never tried to again I just took it as a one off situation. There was no set time on how fast we need to be done an aisle because the load was different everyday and we had day stockers so what ever we didn’t finish they would just pick up where we left off.
The only real negative I had was the grocery manager who treated the job like life or death and was here every single day which is cool I guess. But it became a problem when I noticed that if you just do what’s required and not go above and beyond like doing aisles not assigned to you or speed-running your stocking he would do this weird thing like constantly walk by and look down your aisle and sometimes even walk down your aisle adjust a product and leave but never say anything.
There was even a situation where I was changing podcast on my phone when he walked by my aisle so he snapped his finger at me to put my phone away. Mind you we’re allowed to be on our phones and listen to music during our shift we just can’t be watching Netflix or something or obviously scrolling through social media for minutes on end. And when I asked him am I not allowed to be on my phone now he just glared and walked away
Also my shifts were typically 11pm-7am and he would come in around 5am
Another negative was a few of the people I did overnight with smelled like they hadn’t showered in weeks, and I used to be a camp counselor at a summer camp so I unfortunately know all too well what it smells like when a dude doesn’t shower for days. Now of course one might say you have your own aisle why does it matter but the first thing we do is break down pallets of food one pallet at a time so for the first 2 hours of every shift I’m forced to smell them even when I tried to chew 3 sticks of gum to maybe overwhelm my nose with mint but it still didn’t help. And it was bad man like if they were in a spot standing for like 30 seconds then moved their smell would linger at that spot for the next 15 seconds. I’m not even exaggerating either I wish I was for the sake of my nose’s trauma.
And when I brung it up management didn’t care because we leave before customers even come in but they acknowledged I’m not the first to complain which is crazier to me.
Now since getting our new store manager she’s been real adamant about making her presence felt and has essentially changed a lot of what people enjoyed about working at this market. Now I’m not stupid so I know she kinda has to do that to make a good first impression to corporate and to let us know she’s our boss but that has resulted in the overall mood of the store dropping dramatically. She started implementing so many extra rules and requirements to our overnight stocking you would think we’re having a corporate walkthrough every day.
The final straw for me though was getting a write up for leaving 30 minutes early because I didn’t take my 30 minute lunch which was something everyone I’ve asked even people who’ve been here for decades told me was okay. Now through HR i was able to get the write up removed but since then she’s cut my hours from 40 hours a week to 16 hours for the past 2 weeks and like I said earlier because I’m technically coded as part time she can do it.
Now I know I should see if I can fight it but to be honest I’m already over what was once a nice little gig and I start my new job in 7 days anyways. At this point I’m just unsure if I want to clock out at lunch and take a voluntary week break from working or at least finish todays shift and Tuesdays shift because I know if I leave early they’ll just make the other guys from overnight pick up my slack and I like those guys so I don’t wanna do them like that