I've worked two retail jobs. Both times they seemed to be actively hostile to their workers.
First time was Walmart (shocking i know). They 'trained' me during my interview (a whopping 5 minutes) for shelf stocker. Not a hard job, but they made it a living hell. They were always yelling us to work faster, despite assigning the bare minimum number of people to a task. When we tried to tell them, their demands were impossible they ignored us or played mind games to convince us where wrong. One time we were pulled into a meeting by our coach and told that the only acceptable answer to our superiors was 'yes mam' , she also literally told us to stay in our lane, her exact words. They even stood around leaning of stuff just watching us work.
The next thing was the scheduling. I was part time, but was put on full time hours 'cause of emergency' , once i figured out they were scamming me i rolled back to part time hours. After some time the computer tried to put me back to full time hours. When i brought it up to the lady who did the computer information she got pissed that i pointed it out and sabotaged my schedule. For the next month or two i was one day working, one day off, for the week usually working the entire weekend. Getting it fixed was a nightmare, my coach was to stupid to figure out why i had a problem with this schedule. He first solution was to cut me down from 4 days a week to 3. Then she complained about me not being happy with this, while trying to work it out she ended up screaming “You have no right to your schedule as part time, i reserve that right!!”
Speaking of time, they had no respect for ours. We didn't leave until they were happy. Towards the end i plotted every day how i could sneak out at a reasonable time. Whenever we had two truck we had a shift that would come in early to get an early start. Instead, we wasted our time with random bullshit. I was stuck in the meat department despite my department not suppose to be going anywhere near the freezers. When we did actually start the trucks it was almost time for us to leave, meaning we got tricked into what was essentially a double shit. It was on purpose too, one time we had the regular shift on the truck and we had something we could finish and go home, the STORE MANAGER called us back to do the two trucks saying “thats your crews job” resulting in us staying later then promised. I refused early shifts after that.
The straw that broke the camel's back was my last day when i rage quit. The day before i was helping unload the truck and my section (Breakpacks) of the back rooms was so clogged with stock it blocked one if the ways you enter that section. They even admitted i needed help and assigned a fellow veteran to help me (i was a veteran by virtue of being one of the few to not quite after a few months). Still had to stay an hour late to get it all out. The next day i come back and all the clothes i had put out (3-4 pallets) were right back in my area. I've had no prep time to move them out of the way, and was told i couldn't move them until the lady had sorted the clothing (i had to skip that step to go home before midnight). I usually had to stay late when i worked that section, but now i couldn't even begin on time. After being told i was panicking over nothing, i cried in the bathroom, then promptly walked up to by team lead and quit. She didn't care and just barked order over her radio for some new hires to take my station.
Hammricks was slightly better, i was in the back room so i didn't have to deal with customers, plus management rarely came around so i rarely had to deal with them. But we were receiving way to much stock for out tiny store. we were literally stacking from floor to ceiling until we had blocked off entire Ailes and shelves. No choice we were that bloated, hell we had to move pallets onto the store until we could make room in the back. Of course got yelled at for doing the only thing i could do. Got read the riot act after things fell and broke, despite the fact i had no time or space to be careful.
They did share walmarts scheduling. They only gave you saturday to friday for next week, and only updated it on friday. Making it impossible to have any kind of life. They also switched between cutting your hours cause of 'budget' (despite us being a decently performing store) and calling us in last minute to come in early or telling in we had a Suprise truck the next day.
In both cases they had zero respect for workers time, and placed no value on our work. Whenever i tried to work out issues with them they essentially said, 'tought shit'. They just continued to hire new people to replace the Contant stream of people running for the hills. When i quit walmart i was only i of 3 of my original crew. At hammricks they were focused on hiring managers while we had a regular box mover just not show up one day. When did people and employees become so hated by their employers?