For pretext: I work for a company that consists on several stores all overseen by a central office staff. The office makes various policies to standardize everything in the stores, including policies dictating how to handle requested days off. The policy states that management has to turn in a completed schedule for the next week the Thursday before at noon, which is also employees cutoff time for turning in a leave request form.
The story. This morning (thursday)at 8:15am I turned in a leave request form for the 15th. My crew lead who does not have anything to do with making the schedule then started yelling at me for turning it in after my assistant manager had made the schedule, which I had no way of knowing she had done. My assistant manager witnessed this wrongful reprimand. I later tried to discuss specifically the wrongful reprimand with my assistant manager privately, to which she responded with “well I didn't even have to give you the day off anyway” which had nothing to do with the wrongful reprimand. Later during our daily team meeting our assistant manager brought it up again, stating that she doesn't care the company policy, we have to get our leave request forms in before she gets the schedule done, whenever that may be. We can't possibly know when she does the schedule.
So my question is what next steps can I take. Im hesitant to go to HR because the last time I did that my manager retaliated by demoting me (yes I am looking for a new job)