Been working for a local business in my town for about 2.5 years.
We're in a tourist hotspot and things get crazy on a regular basis, but some of the things I'm experiencing have me seriously questioning what I'm still doing here. The owner has a known history of unhinged verbal abuse, regularly loses professional composure on staff and customers, so on and so forth. When I say unhinged, I mean unnecessary aggressive language all the way up to shouting and fabricating details of a given situation. The sort of person that,if they wake up and decide they don't like you, your days are numbered.
At one point they responded to a negative review by claiming the complaint was a lie and doxxing a coworker in the review response after firing them. The review in question was from a customer who witnessed an interaction between the owner and the coworker–i was also present. The customer was upset at having witnessed it, and was commenting on the lack of professionalism. The situation in question was essentially: owner lets local organizations leave flyers. owner saw a local ad on our wall; didn't like it. Loudly proclaimed that anyone caught posting flyers without permission will be “fing fired”. Some customers left, coworker and I went about our business. The coworker was fired a few days later. Once the review came in, the owner wrote a response in which “this never happened”, and the now fired coworkers FULL legal name was dropped for reasons I can only guess at.
I had a one on one with the owner about it, and discovered that they actually believed that this never happened. I had to explain what gaslighting was, that I was THERE when we were openly threatened with firing on the floor during working hours, and that doxxing our former coworker was highly inappropriate. Somehow I managed to get through the conversation without getting fired.
Two weeks later, I was called for a meeting in which I was placed on 90 day probation. The reasons were all unrelated, and upon asking for clarification and a copy of my writeup, I was given no clarification and was told “email me for any questions or comments so we have a record”. I like to think I'm not stupid, so I took this to mean they're trying to find a reason to get rid of me. I've begun trying to find another job.
This brings us to today — where the owner hit my arm. We were reorganizing some displays and I brought over an item to add to the display. The owner said it would be too much and that I was making the display crowded, and smacked my forearm. They were trying to be playful, I think, but immediately followed up by saying “this is abuse!” In a mocking tone.
Idk why but that seems to have done it for me. I'm on my break banging out this post wondering why I'm not just cutting my losses and never coming back. If I had no rent to pay I'd have walked out on the spot.