So before I posted about the 3rd worst management team I’ve worked for so now here’s the 2nd. In this case, failure can sometimes be dangerous for the general public. This one is a tad long too, sorry
I worked at the post office in my hometown before transferring to a new location for university. My old location was super busy, processing around 45 customers/200 parcels per hour. I was trained exceptionally well. When I got to my new store we generally had about 3 customers per day one of which was usually just looking for a washroom. We had a lot of time so it wasn’t surprising that this new team was very detail oriented.
When my new manager wasn’t constantly scrutinizing my work, my co-worker was (Specifically where I put stickers on packages and stuff because between myself, the manager, and my co-worker who had been here since before the manager we’d all been very specifically trained differently on the correct placement of stickers.) It was an odd thing but both the manager and my new co-worker always made the tiniest details out to be the end of the world (Not a great work environment).
Now you’d think that would mean she’d be very thorough with the really important details like… y’know… our anti-money laundering, anti-fraud, and anti-terrorist activity training. Things like ensuring that the person picking up a gun is licensed to be able to, or that the people sending and receiving money are who they say they are. Nope. This manager would always talk about how she’s been with the post office since before computers but that’s really only impressive if you actually update your policy knowledge, which she didn’t.
The protocol she followed in these situations wasn’t necessarily wrong… it just hasn’t been in place since the 80s. She’s scold me for refusing to give people their guns if they showed regular ID because in order for a person to receive a gun they have to show their gun license. She’d let people send money under any name or pick up under any name and she’d accept ID’s she wasn’t supposed to. As someone who has confiscated weapons people tried to ship to Hell’s angels and worked on police reports regarding the post office, I’m very familiar with why the paperwork is done the way it is. Stuff like that had me really on edge because I could get in real trouble for that.
After awhile I got put on shifts alone thankfully. This did however, become a different issue since she had me work 8 hour shifts without a break but she was using a loophole that made it legal and since I could just go into the back and rest in between customers (so like, 98% of the day) it didn’t bother me at all really.
Anyway, christmas time rolls around and things are relatively uneventful. There’s a staff poster to sign up for the Christmas party and I sign up. My name is on there 2 months before the actual party. One week before the party the manager comes to me and asks “did you get someone to cover your shift so you could go to the party?” Keep in mind, I’m in university so I only work weekends and the party was on a weekday. Plus I’ve literally never worked a company that had the store be open during the time they had their Christmas party so I didn’t think about it.
Now I did pick up extra shifts during the winter break because well, I’m broke. But again I didn’t realize the store was going to be open for the dinner. I just assumed we would close early since that’s what my other store did. So I didn’t get anyone to cover my shift and ended up working during the party, but the store owner had already paid for my dinner so my manager said she’d bring it to me after the party. I didn’t pack any food because of that which really was my mistake since I should’ve known she’d never actually go through with something like that.
To make things worse the whole store didn’t get a single customer that night. Not one person in any of the departments since it was snowing so bad so the store literally lost more keeping it open than if they’d have just closed early. It was pretty fun though since I liked the two other people on shift in the other departments. We just sat and talked near the store entrance (got a text at some point from my manager saying ‘don’t sit near the store entrance. It’s unprofessional. Go back to your post’ but naturally I ignored it).
It wasn’t the worst experience but it left me a fair bit more bitter towards management. I was evidently under appreciated especially considering the regional post master came to me working one day and said “I noticed how well you do your job and I’d like to hire you at the regional centre. 2 of our most senior employees are retiring so I can offer you the full benefits of a senior postal advisor. In a few months I could even put you in as Assistant Manager.” I was tempted to take the offer, but full benefits comes out to a max of $60k/yr (and about 10k in benefits) When just the average starting salary for the jobs I’m going for with my degree path is $80k/yr. I politely declined but thanked her for the compliment.
Sometime shortly after I ended up realizing that my time card was weird. I had initially gone back to double check whether Valentine’s Day was a stat or not but realized my timecard had been edited to dock all the extra hours I had to work re-doing the managers botched paperwork as well as auto-inserting breaks. The amount of time I was docked ended up being worth over $3,200. I brought it up with the management team about the postal manager and they said “if you can’t perform within the allotted time you simply won’t work for us anymore.”
I went through a hellish back and forth, until I got fired so I filed for a store audit to get the money I was owed. I got an e-mail from the store’s accountant saying “oops, looks like we made a little mistake in your payment. We’ve fixed that accident and you’ll be receiving the rest of your pay this Friday.” I decided to take the rest of the time off to focus on my studies instead of working. Needless to say I’ll never be going back there again.