I don't know where to post this, but I've been contemplating whether or not my employer/manager took advantage of my time in order to boost sales, and what to “reasonably” do about it after the fact.
I work minimum wage at a candy shop. My manager, we'll call her Ellen, comes off as super sweet and very down to earth. We have good moments together, we have awkwardly bad ones, but overall, I never really thought much of her outside of her being a really good boss.
Until..recently. Ellen's been pushing me and other sales associates to beat our previous year's numbers. It's obvious why- she wants us to outperform from last year to show our growth and success as a company. She was reasonable and fair. Push the add ons, give out recommendations, talk up sales, you know, reasonable things for us to do so we can beat last years sales for this month. Okay, whatever.
The first red flag for me was her texting me late at night what our numbers were, after closing time. Last night, about 15 minutes after I walked out the door, Ellen goes ahead and texts me “how much did we make tonight”. She has never done this before. But what's really odd is the fact that she's texting me off work hours when she told me and every other associate not to do it unless it was, one, an emergency or two, something that couldn't wait until tomorrow.
Once, she reprimanded me like a child for “violating her time off work” and not respecting her boundaries the first time (and I only asked her about if it was company policy to wear wigs. Just one text and that was it). But…suddenly she was allowed to text me off the clock about a non emergency that she could have waited until tomorrow to check out, since she was scheduled to work that day.
I brushed it off. Maybe she was just really eager to beat these goals, and I should be more considerate about it.
Today comes around, and Ellen's all chipper and happy and excitable. We have a relatively easy shift together (even as she checks the numbers periodically). But then closing comes around. She has me on the register counting it down, but suddenly says “oh, Bis, I have an idea on how we can bring more customers in since we're only x amount of dollars away from our goal”. Knowing full well we close in two minutes, my manager grabs a plate of candy and walks outside, giving out free samples and encouraging people to come in AFTER CLOSE to buy chocolate.
I was shocked. And I was angry. I couldn't believe after that entire show of her saying “don't impede on my time off the clock” and for her to “set boundaries” that she would do something this selfish. She just thought of it as a spur of a moment thing, didn't think about me, didn't even think about her damn wife who was probably waiting for her to finish up after work. She was just thinking of the numbers. Keep in mind that we have a whole thirty minute closing procedure that we have to do, and this bitch pretty much added more minutes into it just because she wanted more customers.
I would have been fine with it if she had announced that she would be doing this AN HOUR BEFORE closing, but she did it TWO MINUTES before we did. When it's time to close and time to go home, that's the end of that. Fuck the goals, fuck the metrics. When we have to go home, it's time to get the fuck on home. It's not time to “bring in more customers”.
And I also would have been fine with it if she offered a better apology about it. Instead, she was elated about how well it worked and just said “oh, I'm sorry! I didn't realize it would take this long. Next time I'll just let you know going forward that you'll be scheduled to work a little later so we can beat these numbers”.
And then she left me to do the rest of the closing alone including deposit, and went off to her wife who was probably more than pissed waiting for her to finish.
I was livid, but I had no one to talk to about this. Everyone loves Ellen but I've grown to feel sort of iffy feelings about her. I don't think she's this awful woman, but I don't like her actions at all and she really made me feel under appreciated and uncomfortable. The first thing I thought was, I HAVE to quit. It's unfair. Shes unfair. And if I keep staying here, she'll continue to be unfair.
But I can't quit this job, because I need the money and its hard to find other work right now that fits with my life and school schedule. I just really don't know what to do or how to feel. Am I overreacting? Is this just how managers are and I just have to deal with it?