I sent an email to HR, my boss, and my boss' boss upon exiting my job yesterday due to clear double standards and sexism in my workplace. Something to keep in mind, I was paid hourly and 1 out of 3 needed office workers to properly function as a team. F (my co-worker), my boss, and B (my boss' boss) are all salary, B working out of state but being the 'General Manager' of my office.
Good afternoon,
I am writing to inform you of the circumstances surrounding my immediate resignation today, Monday, September 29th, of 2022.
On Friday, (8-26-22) I arrived at work at 6:44am and was by myself in the office. At roughly 7:30, I was still alone in the office and had a customer here for an order that had not been communicated to me previously or put into the company's system. So, I reached out to my boss twice. He did not answer but eventually called me back and helped me with this specific issue. At this time, he also informed me that he wouldn’t be in the office until much later. Unbeknownst to me, F (my co-worker), who was only supposed to work from home two days this week, decided that today (8-26-22) would be his third day working from home instead. At 9:02am, I was still alone in the office and our driver, had a problem with his upcoming delivery because the schedule was not correct, and the shop was loading the wrong job onto his truck. So again, I had to reach out to my boss for information that was not made available to me. It was at this time that my boss asked me if F, my co-worker was there because apparently, no one had any idea where he was. I found out later in the day that he was just going to work from home but had told no one in the office. At 10:10am, another issue arose while I continued to be alone in the office without a manager, and only one other office employee there. I considered asking the other employee for help but then remembered that the last time my boss came in late, and I had asked others for help before he arrived, I got yelled at for making him look bad to B, my boss' boss. So, I decided to call my boss yet a fourth time to help me with an issue. It wasn’t until approximately 11:30am that my boss showed up at work.
Later, one of the salesman asked me how I was doing, and I expressed my frustration around being left alone in the office for large, frequent periods of time, all without ever getting the training that I’ve been asking for repeatedly. The salesman apparently relayed my feelings to F, and F decided to call my boss. Unaware that my boss was sitting right next to me and that he was on speaker phone, F began to say that “(Salesman) left the office because he didn’t want to listen to that bullshit,” and that, “she needs to learn to just deal with it.” The ‘It’ in question being alone in the office, busy, and barely trained. My boss’ response to this was, “Yeah, I don’t want to fucking hear it either.” At this point, I’ll admit that I reacted somewhat rashly but after being alone for the first half of the day when I was told I wasn’t supposed to be and promised I wouldn’t be, I was upset. Making things worse was having no idea when or if anyone else in the office would show up to work, only to have my boss team up with F to belittle me when he did arrive.
I arrived at work today, Monday, September 29th, of 2022, on time, unlike my boss who arrived late again, without any prior notice, again. To my surprise, I saw an email from the internal system informing me that I was being given corrective action in the form of a verbal reprimand. To be clear, I was never spoken to about this issue at all, which was a pattern with my boss. Issues would come up and his response was to ignore the problem employee until he could pretend like it never happened. Of course, you can see how this would cause numerous issues within the office, and it did. Problems were never addressed, and issues were left to fester. Knowing that, I approached my boss to speak about this issue, already knowing full well that he wouldn’t approach me about it first. I expressed how I felt like I was being treated differently and held to a different standard than other employees while also being put in positions and situations I shouldn’t (and was told I wouldn't) be in. His response was to belittle, make jokes and laugh at me, telling me I need to “act like an adult”. I expressed that I would like to bring these problems up to HR so we could try to get them worked out and he told me, “HR would tell me to drop it”. This combined with the fact that I expressed to him the desire to bring up some issues to B and my boss' response being, “You can, but B will just lose respect for you,” left me feeling like I had no options or anyone to go to. So, what else could I do but quit or continue to be mistreated.
Some things worth mentioning that I wanted to address but never had the opportunity to are.
· Over 6 months on the job with no orientation, formal or complete training.
· Requested a while back that my boss give me a clear list of responsibilities and priorities, which to date I had not received.
· I witnessed F throw a solid block of post-it notes at my boss’ face with zero repercussions because my boss said something F didn’t like.
· I’ve seen F come in late, leave early, take long lunches, take multi-hour bathroom breaks, sleep on the job for extended periods, eat other people’s food without permission, stream TV shows and movies (I have a list of what he has watched fully through and while on the job), play games on his phone for hours on end, and express constantly that he is bored and lonely ALL while offloading more and more of his job and responsibilities onto me with the assistance of my boss and absolutely no guidance. The entire shop and sales team knows that F does these things, and no action has been taken at all. In fact, now he gets to ‘work from home’ while I’m left to pick up the slack in the office by myself.
· Both F and my boss will refuse to respond to messages and calls if they are upset or mad for any reason, at the detriment of helping customers and getting work done.
· Multiple employees change in the breakroom when we have bathrooms that are available, and I was just given a ‘heads up’ as opposed to changes being made so someone didn’t inadvertently expose themselves to me. (I'm the only female that works on this site.)
· There was a meeting where it was implied that I would be involved and be able to bring up some of these issues with B. Not only was I not invited, but the only outcome that I was made aware of from that meeting was that I was going to be doing more of F’s duties that I hadn’t been trained on, which was par for the course at this point.
· F would often take vacation without informing anyone, entering it into the internal system, or giving little to no notice. When I put in for my vacation, far in advance, I was told by my boss that I needed to use my PTO on a specific day because he had that same day off as well and didn’t want his boss to ask questions. So, I was put into a situation where I had to either adjust my planned vacation or lie about the PTO I was entering. This resulted in me not getting paid a day of PTO when I was out for medical procedures, all so that he could keep things hidden from his boss which made me extremely uncomfortable and frustrated about losing that money.
· Employees in the shop would be curious why certain things were wrong or going poorly. My boss told me not to let them know what was going on because it would “upset them”. Of course it would, but I would hope that a manager would solve the problem instead of telling me to help him hide it.
· After being robbed multiple times, our site installed security cameras. As soon as this happened, F moved his desk upstairs and into an office, out of range of any of the cameras. The reason for this soon became clear as I saw him habitually playing games on his phone, and watching shows like, ‘The Office’ when I walked past his door. He even had the audacity to message me when I was overwhelmed with work, (much of which was his), that he was, “sad he finished watching The Office because now he’s bored”.
· When I brought issues or grievances to my boss, they would go something like this:
o Me: “F is not doing X, Y,Z”
o My Boss: “How do you think I feel? I’ve been dealing with it for this long”
o I would expect a manager to act about problems, not just let them linger forever and ignore them, telling their employee that ‘I have to deal with it, too’ when they are in a position to make changes.
o Me: “Do we have any resources I can reference to help me better understand my job since I am not getting the training I need to do so?”
o My Boss: “What do you expect me to do? It’s not my company.”
o What I would expect is for a manager to get their employees the resources they need to do their job properly, not just say ‘oh well’.
o Me: “I don’t feel comfortable working somewhere where people can just throw things. He (F) threw that (pad of sticky notes) at your face, what if it hit your eye?”
o My Boss: “It didn’t.”
o Me: “But what if it did?”
o My Boss: “Then I’d jump across the desk and beat the shit out of him.”
o What I would expect, is a manager to discourage workplace violence, not ignore it and tell me that if it was serious, it would be met with even more violence.
o Me: “F didn’t put the bar list in for X, Y, Z, job and the customers need it now.”
o My Boss: “That’s F, what do you expect?”
o I would expect a manager that clearly knows an employee is a problem, to address issues with that employee, not just tell me to lower my standards because, “We all know he’s lazy.”
So, in closing, I acknowledge that I might not have handled the situation the best way I could have but, given the fact that there were so many issues, and I was unable to go to my boss, his boss, or HR, I was left with few options. I sincerely hope that these issues can be corrected because there are some great people that work there. It’s just unfortunate that there are a select few, in key positions that are destroying the morale, productivity, sales, and organization of that site. I hope this email in some way helps facilitate that, as no one there seems to have a voice and problems will continue to happen if not corrected.
Sincerely,
ally-sha