I work at a grocery store chain in North Texas as an overnight stocker. For a few months this job was great; it was right down the street from me, easy to do, we could listen to music as we worked, the benefits were better than any other place I'd ever seen and my coworkers and I quickly became friends. As soon as we got a new shift lead and the store manager changed as well, everything went to shit.
Suddenly there aren't enough hours for everyone, and now they're timing us to get cases on shelves, and if we're not moving fast enough, “disciplinary action will be taken”. My last shift, we did work for two other positions without getting paid their working rate. Why are we doing the work of a manager but getting paid for stocking?
I went from working five days a week, close to 40 hours (we leave when everything is stocked instead of a set time) to only working three. I only get paid $14 an hour, give or take some cents. The lead said that if we needed more hours, we could talk to him about it, so naturally I did. Taking two whole days of work away from me is devastating to me, especially right now.
I asked him for my hours back and he told me, “We'll you need to show us that you want those hours.”
I'm job searching right the fuck now. I show up to work damn near everyday for months, late maybe once the entire time, give you a good attitude and professionalism, stay behind when we're behind and you need extra help with stocking, and the best you can give me is “show us you want hours uwu”. Apparently all of my coworkers are leaving too. Good luck finding people to work the night shift; that shit is not for the weak and the turnover rate for our position is high as fuck because of it.
I'm so sick of working to survive, and having my life be up to the whims of nameless, faceless corporate assholes. How are there not enough hours when the company rakes in a ridiculous amount everyday? Without the stockers, nothing goes out. You wouldn't make any profit. Yet there's not enough hours, and we're being timed now. And for the past few shifts, even when we were done with everything, we couldn't leave? They wanted us to stay two hours after we clocked out for lunch. When I signed on, I was told, “once the work is done, you can go home unless you want extra hours.” Make this make sense! Let me leave if you don't have shit for me to do, or pay me if you're gonna fill up those hours with us doing other positions' work for them!
I'm over this shit, man. Fuck off.