This has the potential to be a long story, and I don't really have a plan as I start typing this, but I hope to keep it as short and sweet as possible.
Yesterday, my boss took me up to the office to discipline me for a few cases of expired meat. (I am the manager of a meat department at a big box store) I immediately was upset because four days prior to this, I let him know via email we had a bit of an excess and that we needed to take action to try and get through the product. When I sent this email, his response was to follow up with a different manager to try and manually drop the price in our system and if that didn't work to reduce it early. I did as he said, but in spite of the efforts, we still lost a few cases. His discipline was that I should have done more to sell through the product. (He says I should have presented it in multiple areas)
Now, they tell me all the time to run my department like it's my own business. I do my best to do that, although there are a lot of outside factors I can not control. When it comes to this incident specifically, my decision was to present it as is and see if reducing the price would cause them to sell more quickly; if it did, I would expand the product so that it would be more easily seen. However, days went by with the same product sitting in my counter, so I chose to stay the course.
What this led to was my boss telling me that I made a poor decision and that I should have done more. Eventually, this started a tailspin of everything he thought I had messed up within the past week, to which I asked him, “So do you just think I'm bad at my job?” To which he replied, “Yes.” or something of the like. This seems completely unfair because, ultimately, it was a judgment call that I made that he did not agree with. Now if I am going to be disciplined for having to make the judgment call he would have made, I fear I could lose my job if he continues with this line of thinking.
Now, a little bit of background of my day to day for the past year in my position. About a year ago, almost exactly, we lost both a full-time meat processor and a part-time packager. We also hired (or should I say my boss hired) possibly the worst worker I have ever seen to be a full-time opening packager. With all this, the labor demand for my department called for about 280 hours. I was maxing out my hours and could still only reach about 240-250 hours on a good week, and 40 of those were this packager that was basically worthless in spite of multiple conversations between him and I. What this meant is that I had to fill in on a lot of the hands on duties. Depending on the day, I would stock counters, process meat, and/or put away the meat we received on a truck each day. This has made things very difficult to manage as I have less time to look at things in detail as I once was able to do. But, every day, I do my best to run my department, and I take pride in what I am able to accomplish.
All this to say, I am beyond hurt that he could say I am not doing well, let alone doing badly. I know I should not tolerate this kind of treatment, but unfortunately, this job is about the best paying job I can find within a reasonable distance of my home. I am actually afraid of losing my job because of this, even in spite of the treatment I have received. I'm just….not sure what to do.
TL;DR – Boss says I'm bad at my job because I made a judgment call he did not agree with, I am afraid I will lose my job and possibly much more because of it.