First let me apologize for the incoming novel. Haha.
Alright, so I knew from the first day on this job that something was off about her. The place I worked at had one main boss, one “head” manager, and 5 more lower-level managers who worked with different teams. Only one was a woman, and I got the shifts under her. On my first day, she called me to the office right upon clocking-in. She gushed over how excited she was to have another woman to work with, bc there was only one other female on her shift. Then she went straight to asking if I smoke (weed). Answering no, she starts to push if i'd be up to try, cause she'd love to have smoke sessions before/after work (also offering to drive me to work/take me home after). For clarity-sake, let me say real quick that it's not that I find weed a big deal. I'm in recovery from losing many years of my life to IV heroin addiction, and I've learned it's personally best for me not to smoke weed, bc oftentimes the high from it makes me just want heroin instead. I kept just saying it wasn't my thing, until she starts to claim I seemed tense, and offers me xanax. Was caught off guard that a manager would offer this, especially to a stranger- but turned it down. she ends by saying that she's super laid back, likes to hang out with the team, and will help us out as if we're equals.
throughout the next half-year, i began dreading shifts with her. We had this dynamic where I couldn't tell if she loved or hated me. She had my number (all managers did in case they had to contact us for shift-related reasons) and would randomly text me photos of her in her pajamas in the middle of the night, asking if i thought she looked cute. She would come up to me and the other woman on staff to sexualize the male employees / gossip about them. She was was extremely touchy with me, to a point it borderline felt like some sort of come-on (not super important, but she was 13-15yrs older than me, cant remember exactly).
Then one day, i was cleaning a particular area. haven't mentioned it yet, but this was a pet retail chain, so we also sold animals. I was cleaning some cages when she walked up to point out how a corn-snake hatchling was crawling on my arm. We'd discussed once how my mom was scared of snakes, so she suggested taking a pic to show my mom that they're not aggressive. I did so and then continued cleaning. Less than half an hour later our boss calls me to his office. I enter to find him and the female manager disciplining me for wasting time “playing” with animals, and how it's against policy to photograph / record any of them (I didn't learn until MUCH later this was to prevent employees from capturing the endless amount of animals arriving sick, emaciated, and dying- if not dead on arrival). She claimed to have 'seen me” with the snake, and had NO CHOICE but to report it. I was too speechless to say anything. It ended with them saying they wont put a strike on my record *this time*.
After that, I knew where we stood. Going forward I started spending time mostly with a guy who shared my shift. About 8 months in, we began dating. He'd become my best friend, and when he asked me out I impulsively said yes- afraid that saying no would end of our friendship. Obviously a bad choice. But anyway, eventually everyone knew we were dating, and suddenly, our female manager had a constant desire to hang with him. She'd do anything she could to be near him 24/7, until one day he was extremely quiet the whole shift. After some push, he admitted that she'd asked for his help to organize the backroom, only after getting him alone to proceed groping and kissing him. I asked him if he'd wanted that- he said no but that it was best to let it go to avoid conflict. He also felt embarrassed bc as a guy, he's been taught that it's emasculating to be “taken advantage of”, and is something to feel ashamed of.
After this, I finally told our boss every single thing she'd done. The guy I was dating confirmed the stories. The boss- seemingly more annoyed than compassionate- did say he was gonna do something about it. But it really did feel as if he was more annoyed with the fact I had told him, than mad with her for her actions, because now he HAD to do something about it. A few days later when finding out what happened, I found that instead of dealing with ANY of the misconduct, my boss simply pushed corporate to consider her to run the new store they were opening, and they listened. She NEVER got in trouble, but they did cut MY hours by more than half from there on. They didn't even look back on the disciplinary reports she'd filed on me. Instead, said I didn't qualify for a raise after my first year due to those reports (all from her, I never so much as annoyed any other manager I worked with).
Did i mention this was minimum wage? $7.25 lol. yeah i quit after that, wasn't even enough to pay bills let alone rent with the cut in hours. I had worked my ass off to take care of their sick, dying, mistreated animals when nobody else gave a shit, just viewing them like any other product on the shelves. I will say one funny thing that happened recently while running by that shop to grab some dog food: my old boss approached me to say every person who worked with me was gone. He added how things are rough, and wanted to know if I was looking for a job in management.
lmao. absolutely not.