Working in sales, companies give you a low wage usually intentionally, and you end up having to make the other half of your pay through commission. However, with my job they have screwed with our commission structure so much that I am barely meeting their requirements in ONE area to earn commission pay, which barely gives me enough money to live on.
The management team saw sales slow down so they looked at competitors and all decided unanimously to change the dress code. For us workers though, the problem was we did not receive prior notification, no e-mail, no message when we login to the system, none of the middle-management telling us about it at our morning group meetings, absolutely fucking nothing.
We just ended up randomly in the middle of the work day receiving a notice in our Groupme app group (it's a tool for workers to communicate with each other across our region somewhat like slack but different) that effective immediately on our next clockins, we now have a new mandatory dress code.
Gone was the Black T-shirt, the kakis, and no shoe requirements (could wear anything closed). In is the Black button dress shirt, Black office pants, and professional black shoes.
To replace everything I have with 1 pair of the new shoes, just 1 shirt and one pair of pants would cost $76 and that's with getting the shoes at the thrift store which is the cheapest place. The only place with the black shirt is Target, which leaves Walmart for the pants.
This is in the middle of the work week (tomorrow is Wednesday) out of nowhere without notice and we don't get paid until Monday. Just me trying to politely try and see if they can help, or maybe there's another solution, resulted in them immediately threatening me that not meeting the new dress code on my next shift would be considered insubordination, which will result in termination. When I suggested that maybe they delay until next payday they told me that “you work here to earn money, this isn't a charity” in a very condescending manner.
I did some research and it seems there is not any sort of regulation that is violated by them randomly changing the dress code. Now I am trapped without a way to buy the new clothes to meet the dress code by tomorrow afternoon.
I'm not going to lie I used to think this sub was silly but I get it. You work hard and you get nowhere just get spit on basically. Sadly, you have to work to pay the bills, and now I'm concerned if i will be able to. I can't come up with that much in the middle of the week, looks like I may end up losing my job at this rate.
I don't get the mindset of employers, why just disregard your employers and not even let them know such drastic changes ahead of time? Why not wait until the next payday? Yes, I'm incredibly fucking mad. Are we that expendable?