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Getting it off my chest...former job rant!

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  • Getting it off my chest...former job rant!

    Now that I'm done and gone from my recent retail job, I feel like I can rant away about it

    My last day of work was exactly six months from the day I started. This wasn't on purpose but it gave me leaving a certain shade of irony. Y'see, I left the job I'd had when I started at the store because I was promised that I'd get 32 hours a week. And that it wouldn't change because those hours were needed for me to do my job properly over in the section I was trained for. My second to last week of work saw that change, despite being promised that my hours wouldn't be cut. 32 to 24 hours a week. And it's damn hard to find another p/t job that would fit with that when you work overnights, unless you work for a competitor. As soon as my hours got cut I told management that as soon as I found something else that I was gone. All I got was a shrug and a "Well, what can you do? The decision came from the mainland."

    I know folks that work at a few of the other stores in this chain in my province, and they told me that pretty much all p/t positions saw hours cut. The only people getting f/t are those in management roles of some sort or they've survived the last round of f/t employee cuts - in my old store, there weren't very many of those left.

    Upper management had been on everybody's case to 'work harder'. As if one person isn't already trying to do the work of 2-3 people at once! The list of responsibilities I had was more than a simple replenishment clerk should have had, especially when the department manager decided (yet again) that she wasn't going to retire after all was said and done. Well, now the department manager is the only person working that particular department.

    Speaking of that department manager - she had a habit of not asking me why certain things didn't get done during my shift. And then flipping out on me in front of other staff over what she'd been told by other folks. Folks who had NO idea what I was actually doing, what my responsibilities were, and didn't have the same amount of responsibilities that I had. That had started my new job search even before my hours got cut - why should I have to put up with that crap?

    The overnight grocery replenishment team is supposed to break down the orders that come in on pallets. It doesn't matter what department it's for either, but for whatever reason the overnight replenishment manager decided that that anything for my department (heath and beauty, aka HABA) and Natural Value would get touched. It didn't matter if items for those two departments were mixed in with grocery stock, she decreed it wouldn't get touched. Which meant that either I'd have to break down those pallets on my own - which I was specifically told by both my department manager and the store manager not to do - or those pallets would have to sit in the back until somebody on day shift got to them. Or I had nothing else to do because I had no stock to put out so I'd start sorting those damn pallets. Before I started the overnight team had no issue separating those departments' stuff out, and it was that way for the first 3-4 months I was there.

    The overnight replenishment manager was another going concern too, and near the end I simply couldn't be bothered with her. She was always whining about how the overnight crew would complain about her to store management, and that she couldn't figure out why. Well, it had a LOT to do with the fact that she'd disappear shortly after the shift started and nobody could find her for hours, that she'd yell at everybody while they were trying to do their jobs - jobs they'd been doing just fine before she was made replenishment manager, that she'd arbitrarily decide that something had to be done differently from what was written on the note by a store manager, and the lies. Oh. My. Goddess. The lies.

    This woman couldn't tell the truth if her life depended on it, I swear. Big lies, little lies, it didn't matter. For example, I lost it on her one night when she decided that a pallet didn't need to be sorted - despite the store manager making it very clear that it HAD to be worked that night - because it had HABA stuff on it. She claimed that it had no grocery items on it so she wasn't having her team touch it. I went off on her and said that when the store manager tells her something needs to be done, that it isn't her decision to ignore it for any reason, especially when the pallet had originally been put out on the floor to be separated in the first place even though she'd put it back into the warehouse when she wasn't supposed to. The rest of the team came with me as I stormed into the warehouse and started helping me with said pallet - the ONLY reason that pallet was handled was because I got pissed off. And it was mostly grocery anyways with only a few HABA items that had to be put out right away because there was none on the shelves or in backstock. What did she tell anybody who'd listen? That the pallet only got worked because SHE got pissed off. Of course she left out the fact that SHE was the one who decreed it wasn't going to be worked, and that SHE was the one who put in back into the warehouse. The overnight team backed me up when the store manager asked what actually happened. Yet she didn't get reprimanded over it. And let's not forget how she would lie about pretty much anything that would potentially make her look good - another employee makes a suggestion that would actually work only to have her lose her shit bad enough that the employee instead went home out of it? Well, she'd tell it like she made the suggestion herself, didn't lose her shit, and she sent the employee home because they refused to do what she wanted...this happened at least once a week. Or how she'd use another person's scanner codes to scrap out food items she wanted for free instead of paying for them...regardless of how many times she was told to leave any and all scrapped out items near the trash compactor for one of the store managers to verify...'oh, I forgot that's what you wanted, boss, because we'd done it the other way for so long...' And so many more things that amount to straight up theft that she'd been caught doing, but still managed to keep her job over the 18+ years she'd been with the company, shuffled from store to store when they couldn't stand dealing with her anymore.

    And she hated that I'd remind her that she wasn't actually MY boss, that the only folks I answered to were my department manager and the store managers. She threatened to write me up over something that had nothing to do with me, and got pissed off when I told her that she had no power over me and that any write-up she tried to do against me would only get thrown out. Yet, when I first started there, she had decided that we were somehow suddenly best buddies because I was the only other woman who worked overnights...at first I didn't mind her, but then I cottoned onto how much of a narcissist she was and quickly noped out of any idea of friendship with her.

    And store management in general somehow figured they could find a way to get more work out of less people. People who were already disillusioned with the place and management to begin with. My old store is known to be the one that's the most worn down and dirty of all of them in the area - there's nowhere near enough staff to keep it properly cleaned, maintained, or properly stocked. All areas of the store are notorious for not having the most up-to-date planograms because there's not enough staff to make this happen. HABA had only gotten up to date because I was there, so I know it's going to fall behind yet again. I KNOW that the general merchandise section was months behind on their planogram changes and was weeks behind on their seasonal directive changes - because the person who'd been assigned this section was repeatedly being pulled to work grocery, and then getting crapped on for not having the general merchandise stuff done. Even now, after they assigned a different person to handle the general merchandise, the new person is being pulled to do everything else but general merchandise!

    Honestly, I think it's only a matter of time before that store ends up closing, either due to strike or lack of profits. Or even potentially health and safety violations. It's got the worst selection of pretty much everything, and customers are going elsewhere. I have spoken to many people who refuse to shop there because it's dingy and dirty, or people who only shop there for last minute items that they don't have time to go to one of the other, much better, locations.

    I'm so glad I'm out of there. Two weeks later even my mental health is perking up and I'm not so depressed about everything as much as I was for entirely too long. And how any store can expect to have any sort of loyalty from its staff when screwing them over is beyond me, but it's entirely too common these days.

  • #2
    Quoth KuariKaydrith View Post
    This woman couldn't tell the truth if her life depended on it, I swear. Big lies, little lies, it didn't matter. ...
    I wonder--has she ever considered a career in politics?
    “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.
    One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world.
    The other, of course, involves orcs." -- John Rogers

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    • #3
      Spot is headed this way. People are supposed to be doing this or that in GM and depending on what you did before, you'll probably get pulled to do that. and register work. And help the guests, and backstock, etc...all the new people are getting the hours and it seems like they want everyone who's old, fat, ugly, or has been there longer than 3-5 years to get the hell out.

      Things are looking worse and worse and I honestly think the only reason we're still doing well is because of all the store closings that have been happening in the last year or so.
      My Guide to Oblivion

      "I resent the implication that I've gone mad, Sprocket."

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