It’s taken me a few days to finally calm down and write this.
My boyfriend worked as the assistant manager for a small retail store of about 5 people, including himself and the general manager. He was just promoted about 4 months ago to the ASM, and had been with the company just over a year.
Last week, he was off Wednesday and Thursday. The GM verbally told the other store employees about a store meeting on Saturday at 9 am. My boyfriend did not know about this meeting, as he was not verbally told like the others.
Fast forward to Friday night. My boyfriend checks his schedule around 9:30 pm, and sees he works at 11 am the next day. He goes to bed about 9:45 pm, and sets alarms to wake up at 8 am. He got a text just before 11 pm from his GM, reminding the group about the meeting.
Saturday morning, my boyfriend rolls out of bed around 8:15 am. He sees the text from the GM and is confused. My boyfriend reaches out to the GM individually, saying he didn’t know about a meeting. GM apologizes and says that he must have forgot to tell him since he told everyone on Wednesday. We live about 20 minutes from the store, and there was no way for my boyfriend to get ready with enough time to make the meeting and stay there to work from 11-8. So, he asked the GM if he could just join via FaceTime. GM says that’s totally fine, and my boyfriend joins the meeting virtually. It’s about selling techniques, and my boyfriend is the top seller in the store.
Once my boyfriend gets to work, the district manager calls him and wants to know why he didn’t clock in for the meeting. You can’t clock in from home, and my boyfriend says he forgot because he was at home and will clock it immediately.
The DM instantly freaks out on him, asking why he wasn’t physically at the meeting. My boyfriend explained the situation and the DM wasn’t having it. He told him that it was disrespectful to his team to not show up in person to a meeting he found about 40 minutes before. My boyfriend brought up his schedule didn’t have it on there, and sent a screenshot from earlier in the week. DM said he should have checked it this morning (his schedule was changed at 8:30 Saturday morning to reflect the meeting). The DM also mentioned to him last month in a manager meeting that stores needed to have monthly sales meeting on the 1st or 3rd. It was the 5th. The GM tried to stick up for him multiple times, but the DM didn’t care.
My boyfriend was told by the DM, who at this point drove all the way to the store (2 hour drive from his house) to either take a demotion, start back at $10/hr with no commission for 3 months, and never be able to get a promotion again, or be terminated. When my boyfriend said it wasn’t fair, he was fired on the spot.
So the store has lost their ASM, best seller, trainer, and they are short a third employee now.
We are job searching for something with similar pay and with full benefits for him. This is incredibly infuriating.