Howdy, 24m, and i’m in quite the predicament here and I don’t know what my next step is. I apologize in advance because this is a long story.
In 2021, I left my (then) high paying sales job because I just couldn’t work in retail anymore with the inconsistent scheduling, rude corporate drone bosses, and the unreasonably irate customers. I applied to a bunch of jobs and since i’m an artist, I landed a job as a custom art framer. I fell in love with the job and was so happy to be working for a chill small business with a cool shop owner/boss. I took a huge pay cut (about $20k/yr) to work this job but it was worth it because for once in my life, I felt like I actually belonged somewhere and wasn’t completely stressed out.
Fast forward a year into me working here and my boss ends up firing our accountant to bring his wife aboard since she had just been fired from her accounting job. I was upset at this but kept my mouth shut because I don’t have a say so in our operations. His business, his choices, ya know? Well his wife comes aboard and immediately starts changing everything. Again, I kept my mouth shut but what was the hardest part of all of this is her attitude. She is incredibly rude, frequently yells at us for minor mistakes, fights with customers both in person and on yelp/google reviews, and makes genuinely poor business decisions.
Despite all of this, i’ve kept my mouth shut. About 6 months ago, she starts talking about how she wants to buy an expensive RV. I entertained her conversation and that was that. Two weeks after this, she starts telling me how she’s going to knock me down from 40 hours a week down to 28. I told her I absolutely can’t do that as I have bills to pay and have absolutely nobody to help support me. She knows I have no family to fall back on and am currently in school PT at night. She then insults me and yells at me how “if you weren’t dog shit with your money, you wouldn’t have a problem losing the hours. That’s your problem not mine!” Like, my rent costs $1900 for a 2 bed!! What the fuck do you mean i’m bad with my money?! She gave me ultimatum; either go down to 28 hours or less a week, or lose my health insurance. I decided to lose my health insurance so I could stay full time. She knocked our other full timer down to 18hrs a week instead. A month later, she buys the RV. Two weeks after that, she gets a showroom new truck.
So we have two locations and I work at both. A few days at one shop, a few days at the other which is across town. Well shop #2 is closing at the end of the month and in random conversation with (my bosses wife) she tells me how when shop 2 closes, we’re going to be overstaffed and we’ll need to let somebody go. Mind you, we’re booked out 4 weeks for projects and our average ticket is up 61% over this time last year. Our average ticket is over a grand. We only have 2 full timers and a part timer and none of us make over $17/hr. She then tells me that in order to decide who keeps our job, she’s going to run a contest. Whoever gets the most sales during september using this new program shes implementing, will keep their job and get a $500 bonus. I thought what the fuck??? If we supposedly can’t afford to pay our employees, how can you be buying new vehicles and afford to give a random $500 bonus??
On September 1st, I started trying to use this new program but it doesn’t work for me. Works for everybody else but me. I figured it was just another garbage system she found and that it’s just being weird so I’m ranting to my coworker who got knocked down to PT about it and she spills the beans on everything.
Turns out, our shop owners wife has been gloating to our two other workers when i’m not around about how she controls access to the system and she didn’t give me full access meaning that I’ll lose this job contest and the chance at the bonus and when I lose, she’s going to fire me for not meeting her job standards. In addition to that, she was laughing about how she doesn’t think I’ll be able to find another job and that I won’t qualify for unemployment and all of this other shit. She also laughed about how she’s been looking to get rid of me since I got in the way of her plan to knock me down to part time and had I just kept my mouth shut and “managed my money better” I could still have a job with her but because “he’s a stupid motherfucker, he had to go and ruin it for himself”. Not only that, but my coworker was also telling me that she found out through our other shop owner (the husband who hired me) that at the same time the hours were cut and I lost my health insurance, our boss also gave herself and her husband a huge raise.
After hearing all of this, it felt like an atomic bomb dropped on my soul. I freaked out, went home for the day, and pumped my resume out to about 30 different job postings on Indeed. I just feel so defeated and betrayed and am left sitting here wondering how in the fuck she can be so evil and vindictive all because I got in the way of her buying herself a $200k RV, and a $90k truck for her husband. I feel so hopeless now.
Edit: Forgot to mention, my bosses have no idea that I know any of this plan of hers or that I applied to a bunch of jobs and plan on leaving. As far as they know, i’m completely ignorant to everything.