I work as an hourly drone in the paint department at a big box hardware chain, and my supervisor is, basically, a giant douchebag. He's aggressively unpleasant and hypercritical all the time, to the point where I've just given up trying to please him. I know that no matter what I do it will be the wrong thing and he'll give me shit for it. Even worse, he has the very unnerving habit of disappearing for hours and then suddenly reappearing right behind me the moment I do something he disapproves of. I've seen him behave similarly to other coworkers but not to the same extent or the same extremes as he does with me.
On the 11th a customer asked me to identify a fire alarm she had brought with her. I couldn't because I know nothing of either fire nor alarms and directed her to the electrical department, then paged an electric associate overhead to help her. My supervisor – aka The Douche – immediately teleported behind me like a goddamn evil wizard and criticized me for not accompanying the customer to the electrical department and waiting there with her until a coworker came to help her.
[Side note: This is an *extraordinarily* stupid idea to begin with, as the paint desk is the first thing customers see when they walk in the store and we're bombarded with a steady stream of idiots who walk right past the customer service desk and ask us every inane, non-paint-related question they can think of. If I'm seriously supposed to drop what I'm doing every single time and walk them to the other side of our vast warehouse instead of just telling them what aisle to go to I'll never do anything else again. The Douche already complains that I don't get enough freight put up in a day, so I'm not sure how the everloving fuck he expects me to walk customers around the store like helpless children too.]
I had been visible limping heavily all day long due to having a giant-ass wart on my foot removed two days previously, and had sent The Douche an email about the situation. I told him that walking was very painful at the moment because of my operation and he just shrugged and said I had to do it anyway. Now maybe it's just me, but I think it's extremely inappropriate for a supervisor to demand their employees hurt themselves to please him. Call me crazy! I was offended and fairly angry angry at this point, and since we were already talking about my embarrassing medical history I told him I'd tried to take off March 2 for my next appointment at the podiatrist and he had denied it, so I'd have to call off that day and I'd have a doctor's note so he might want to find some coverage. He got super pissed at me for talking back and stormed off.
I was worried he might try to write me up for insubordination or something, but a week passed and he seemed to get over it. Until today, Feb 20, when he dragged me into the office with his boss, the assistant store manager, to formally reprimand me for the vile sin of … USING MY SICK TIME. Apparently The Douche had been going through my file and noticed that I had called off seven whole times in the last twelve months (gasp)! Keep in mind these weren't no-call/no-shows. I had called in, told them I wouldn't be there, and used the sick time that our store gives its employees. I actually haven't even used all of it, as they said I still have 4 more hours left!
To my crazy neurodivergent brain this sure as hell seems like (very petty) targeted retribution for talking back to him. The fact that using the sick time THAT THE STORE GIVES YOU is considered an offense is just mind-boggling to begin with, but the timing and the fact that he said he was going through my file strongly imply to me that he was looking for something to get me in trouble for. Not to mention that many of my coworkers call off waaaaaaaay more often than I do and I've never once heard of anyone getting written up for it, so it seems like a policy that's *very* unfairly enforced.
I reached out to our human resources rep and sent her an email asking if I had a case. Her response was basically polite laughter. According to her:
1) While asking for an exception to the stupid policy of taking each customer by hand and leading them around the store because I couldn't fucking walk was “reasonable”, my supervisor was not required to grant that exception and thus did nothing wrong even though she agreed he was being unreasonable.
2) Yes, calling off sick too often, even if you have sick time, and even if you provide a doctor's note proving that you were in the hospital is indeed against company policy. Just … wild. Wow.
3) Supervisors have wide latitude in enforcing this policy (or not) at their discretion. So even if I'm the only person who has ever been written up for this in our store's entire history I'm not allowed to complain.
In conclusion, fuck work, fuck bosses, fuck capitalism. Thank you.