For the sake of everyone’s sanity, apologies for the mobile formatting. For my sake, I will be vague about my job, use false names, and only state that I make commission on the things I sell, and I primarily work with and sell things to women. I will also say for the sake of the story, my job is about a half hour away on the highway, so current gas prices are killing me.
My boss, Cassie, has been out for the past month due to a procedure, so our customer service manager Nancy has essentially been her replacement for the time being. Nancy is very abrasive in the way she handles things, and she is blunt and honest. I can respect that, as a fellow fire sign. What I can’t get behind is Nancy lashing out and being short with people when she is upset with her life outside of work. She has health problems herself, as do many of the people who work at our store. We all have shit going on. But we are told in our training to leave our personal issues at the door when we walk in and clock in.
Over the past month, I have had time off that was previously discussed with Cassie during my interview and this time off was okayed before I even signed onto the job. Over this past month we also had a performance review period. During this period, I had two conversations with Nancy within 48 hours. In the first, I was doing amazing, bouncing back and forth with the first place salesperson, meeting all my marks. I left work that day feeling amazing. Then, when I came back the next day, Nancy told me we had to do the review again because they had just changed the policy. In this second review, I was told that I was “in danger”, and that I could be written up for not making my sales numbers due to the time off I had scheduled. When I asked what numbers I wasn’t meeting, we
went over the paperwork and saw that I was still meeting all my goals. Nancy’s response to this? “Well, sometimes the situation can be the opposite, but if you take time off you can be penalized for not making your numbers for those days you miss.”
I still had one bit of that pre-determined time off left to take, and while I was away from work, I grabbed an application at a locally owned tobacco store that’s ten minutes away from my house on a bad day. Filled it out, came back from my time away, and then things got interesting at work. Cassie came back from her leave – YAY! – and then a couple of other coworkers are talking to her about how they’re looking for other jobs. Then, my hours get cut down to just two shifts because “we’re way too over on hours, everyone’s schedule got cut, don’t worry about it”. So I dropped off the application at the other job.
THEN, we get our pay statements. Due to the short period of time off I had, I was short in sales by about $200, so I made zero commission and only got paid hourly. I asked how this could be possible, and all Nancy had to say was “Well, we did warn you about the consequences of taking time off.” The same night, the other job calls me and asks if I can start any sooner than the date on my application, because “we’d love to hire you!”. When I go in for my next shift, I do the math to make sure I am, indeed, commissionless this pay period. I talk to Nancy about it, and tell her I have a job offer for a place that won’t cost me a quarter of my paycheck in gas, so I guess I need to give my two weeks or something. Her response?
“Well, Cassie already posted the schedule for that week, so you can’t really do that.”
I finish out my shift, go home, come in the following day. Cassie is there, so I pull her aside to tell her everything that’s happening. She was understanding about my situation, let me know that Nancy shouldn’t have said any of those things to me, and that I could let her know when my last day will be. She also took notes and let me know she would be talking to Nancy, because she was telling people incorrect information. Among other things.
If you made it this far, congratulations. I hope you enjoyed my little story, using all this to plainly say fuck commission based corporate sales, and FUCK Nancy, laughable to even think she could get away with telling me I couldn’t hand in my notice. I’ll be staying at this place until I get the rest of my signing bonus then I’m just straight up OUT.