So I currently work as an assistant manager at a famous dollar store and let me tell you that I have never been this extremely stressed out in my entire life!!! We are so short staffed that we are running the store with just two people for both night and morning shifts meaning the shifts only have two people running them.(Myself, and one other Cashier for the night shift.) It's so bad, that we really have no store manager that can train people properly, employees are quitting due to not getting hours, or because corporate wants the very tiny amount of people to do six times the work for poverty wages. The store is usually a mess and because of it could lead to OSHA violations!! Plus we are experiencing supply issues which also creates a constant amount of stress which causes the customers to become assholes.!
Well today, I had to administer an EpiPen to a coworker who got stung by a wasp which she is deathly allergic and had to get her brother to take her to the hospital asap as she was already experiencing symptoms. She kept saying she was sorry that she could not be there at all and was afraid to lose her job. I told her I want her to take care of herself and that she will have a job still. I am terrified, frustrated, angry and worried as I keep hoping that she is ok. I am not a doctor, and have never saw what a EpiPen looked like until today. I do not even have the authority to schedule or call people to come in to take over someone else's shift. I was so scared, that I ended up crying really hard when I got home. Never ever been in such a situation and was worried that if I did not do something, it could have been worse!! I ended up running the store by myself for a few hours until luckily another co-worker came by and helped out. Of course customers start getting impatient and ugly which only added to the fiasco. Meanwhile Corporate shows up at the store not understanding why nobody wants to work and gets angry that we are simply not working hard enough in order to justify the shitty wages that are simply not enough to live on while having us become overworked to the bone!! They even stated that it is not in the budget to hire more people which is nothing but a load of bullshit!! They also do not give an fuck about coworkers getting injured on the job or sick, which instead of caring, they have us do even more work!!
Because of Corporate, we do not have a store manager who not only can train me to do my job properly, but also cannot hire more people, cannot run the store properly, cannot have the store cleaned properly and much much more because Corporate does not give a fuck at all just because!! I want to not only give people more hours, I want to give them a real living wage to where they can afford to live life without having to worry about surviving, I want to create a fair work-life balance so employees could feel relaxed or take care of personal things, I want to create a more positive workplace and etc. but can't simply because to be a store manager you need a bachelor's as well as 15 years experience. And who came up with this nonsensical requirement? You guessed it!! Also did I forget to mention it's all for 13.00 per hour? Shit is making me really infuriated and currently in the middle of signing up for classes for the summer semester just so I can work on a way to permanently leave the service industry. Like, I really do not care anymore and the way these companies treat their workers makes me absolutely batshit insane. This raging dumpster fire has been an absolute circus and cannot imagine getting caught dead working another year in retail or fast food. Like I just can't!!
I will try to text my coworker to double check to see if she is ok and about to go cuddle up in bed with my lovely dog. Thanks for listening to my TED talk!!