From Former Mchell Manager:

I am so very, very, very, VERY frustrated right now. Frustrated, sad, and lonely. I may get a bit of flack for this, but I am quite honestly done with people who have kids getting priority over me. I am childless. But that does not mean I do not have a family or a life. 

I have worked in the Fast Food industry for years. Too many years to admit. And time and time again, I see people who have kids get priority over people who do not. Now, I am not talking about "Oh, you have to work Halloween because Suzy needs to take her kids out for Halloween". I'm talking about people who have fairly older kids and go "I need to be out by X time and can't work weekends because of my child" and then jumps on Facebook every weekend and posts about how they dump their child onto a supposed non-existent babysitter and goes out camping/partying. 

I'm talking about the Assistant Manager who never works a closing shift because she has kids, though her oldest is 12 years old, but "I want to be home to see them and to eat dinner with them!" That manager rarely works a closing shift. Last month, she had no closing shifts at all. If she does work a closing shift, it's maybe twice a month.

--Former McHell Manager

From Nubbinz:

So it has been awhile. I am currently keeping small children alive at a drop in daycare center in a gym.

However, I am feeling quite underappreciated by the boss lately...or actually stream of bosses.

Going on 3 years, 3 bosses, one temp boss.

1st boss was nice and I liked her however she got into an argument with a coworker over medical treatments and restrictions. Coworker went up the food chain and 1st boss was found to be WILDLY incompetent. 

Temp boss comes in to clean her mess while the search for a new person goes on. Under Temp boss I am given the authority to basically run the daycares hours. We had 7 people 3 quit. I pull 45 hour weeks to keep it covered. After new boss is hired I am thanked and given a gift card. People were hired so I did not have to kill myself covering things 

2nd boss is better. However it has been a year. Nubbinz knows there should be a performance review and raise. Nothing happens. Words were said and write ups were threatened. Pattern repeats with new boss over tiny things. 

Year 2 of work passes and 2nd boss is stepping down. Her last week she gives me a performance review I agree with and a raise that is double a yearly one. 

However, I had a chat with a friend who was briefly hired by 2nd boss right after she started. 2nd boss had given her a STARTING rate that was still higher than my raise. I have also overheard a conversation that I should not have heard that another coworker is also receiving higher since she started.

I am back and forth if I should ask what the f is up with this to new 3rd boss. All of us in the daycare have similar backgrounds. I have been working the longest and while I have had arguements my record is clean. I just want to know why it took me 2 years of working my butt off to get the same rate that my coworkers were given from the start. The consensus IRL is that if I ask I need to have another job on hand.

 --:/ Nubbinz 

From jbalazov, TalesFromRetail

So someone explain this one to me.

Work in a retail pharmacy as a shift supervisor and I get a call to the front.

Woman (w) and a man, maybe mid twenties to early thirties are standing at the registers and the cashier (A) tells me they need to know the payment policy on Money Grams. I tell them cash. Always been that way. She protests and asks why. I state that's simply our policy.

(W): "Well then how come I can use a card at other places?"

Me: "I'm not sure. I only know our policy."

Turns out the man she was with was sending the money gram and trying to use a credit card to pay for it. I'm wondering if it was stolen? It just seemed so strange. Especially with how quickly the woman got angry about cash being required. Like she was overly defensive.

The weird part? He was sending it to her. The woman he came in with. In the same store.

Why would someone do this when there's an atm in the same store that charges half the fee?

This screams some kinda scam to me.

--jbalazov

Ok RHU I come to you in the hopes that the community I have come to love through the years can offer me advice through a troubling time.

About a year ago I rejoined the retail world (higher end apparel). Up until 2 months ago I loved where I worked. My co-workers were awesome, my boss (B) was great, my DM was one of the most lovely persons I had ever the pleasure to meet. Then it all came crashing down when The Harpy Bitch Queen from Hell returned (HQ). Apparently long before my time and my amazing DM oversaw my store, HQ had been the DM previously, and oh my how the stories of the terrible atrocities set upon the staff haunted me in my sleep. One story summed HQ up nicely - Once they bullied a female customer into purchasing nearly $500 in merchandise because HQ wouldn't stop chasing her around the store badgering them about all the new products in. The following day that same customer came back to return all the merchandise complaining she had to buy just to get HQ off her case. Naturally when we all found out about the return of HQ, the older staff - B included - were not happy. Morale plummeted and anxiety skyrocketed as suddenly we were overwhelmed with e-mails demanding every minute detail of our workday. If we so much put a toe outside of plan we better damn well have a reason and a plan of action the following day to never let it happen again. HQ loves to blame people for mistakes - they want a scapegoat to pin a bad day on. Where my previous DM was so encouraging, HQ will degrade and humiliate you. I swear it's like a switch flipped in our store because overnight it the whole thing went to shit.

From RHUer

I work in a small retail pharmacy, and my manager has the worst case of Napoleon Syndrome I’ve ever encountered in my entire life. He’s constantly talking about how our pharmacy is the easiest store he’s ever worked at, yet can’t seem to complete the simplest of tasks. He has cholera of the mouth and tortures everyone around him with his endless banter about golf, his gym workouts, weekly haircuts, obsession with diet Mountain Dew, strippers and detailing pretty much every single sexual encounter he’s ever had. I get to hear about how he used to bang so and so at this pharmacy, that wedding, that prostitute, that photo clerk at Walgreens who gave him an STD, etc., to the point where I want to shove knitting needles in my ears.

Now I come from a military family and have a twisted sense of humor, but my boss will turn practically every normal conversation into something perverted. The other day he was telling me how his 9 year old son (who’s mom is a former stripper—surprised??) told him he wanted to play golf for once, and hearing that was as good as hearing his ex girlfriend (who left him for her former abusive ex husband) wanted to have a threesome with her best friend. Normally he calls his son a pussy for not liking sports the way he does.

Hold on, it gets better. He’s insanely jealous of the other staff pharmacist who literally runs circles around him. A customer who at one time told me said staff pharmacist had a nice butt, when she asked where he was on his off day I jokingly said, “You mean the one with the nice ass?” and we both shared a laugh.

Well after she walked away he instantly retorted, “My ass in nicer and I’ve got a bigger dick!”

I can’t make this up, folks. He really does think he’s God’s gift to women, yet lacks the mental capacity to find it odd that if he’s so great and such a porn star in the sack, why the only way he can get laid is by coercing desperate single moms and strippers with pills and loads of cash to sleep with him.

We can all laugh and roll our eyes at how pathetically egotistical he is, but what’s really not funny is how entitled and above everyone else he believes he is. Last summer, after not even being at our store for a year, he called corporate and gave them a made up story about how he was leaving to work at another retail chain when he had no intention of ever accepting that job. They gave him a substantial raise immediately! He’s salaried and on the days he’s scheduled he will leave 4 hours early, or take an entire day off on the company’s dime.

And ask him to do anything, no matter how polite, he will take personal offense to it and will go out of his way to not only refuse to do it, but also be a passive aggressive jackass about it.

One of our assistant managers complained to me that somebody was deliberately throwing paper towels on the floor in the men’s bathroom and she thought it was him.

I asked him about it and he lied and said, “I don’t like touching the dirty door handle so I use a paper towel and once in a blue moon miss the trash can. Whoopti-fucking-do.”

I said, “Well, she said it’s pretty much every day.”

And he immediately blows up and says, “She should be more worried about me shutting down this whole God damn store when I call the health department because there’s never any fucking soap!”

He reminds me of Donald Trump when asked a question he doesn’t like.

There’s so much more I could add, this is but a mere sample of what we deal with. While I do not enjoy working with him, at least others can enjoy the stories about my walking dick boss.

--RHUer

-----

RHU Advice

From Ilia

Oof. Wow. Okay something that might be good for everyone to know: his behavior can be considered illegal sexual harassment behavior! There are some criteria for this:

1. Sexual behavior that is
2. Unwelcome to the recipient, that is
3. Severe or pervasive enough to interfere with work, and that
4. the employer knew, or should have known, about it and did not take effective action to stop it.

Looking at your situation, you certainly have factors 1 and 2, which is probably enough to violate your company’s policies right there. If this sex talk really goes on every day, you have factor 3 covered, as well.

Has anyone reported this to HR, the legal department, or higher management? And has nothing been done to stop it? If so, then you will have factor 4.

But if no one has spoken up, now is the time to do it! The manager is creating a hostile work environment for everyone who does not want to hear about his bedroom exploits, and the way he talks about other employees is making it ripe for a lawsuit from every employee he talks about that way.

(I know a customer initiated the 'nice ass' comment, which should be grounds for banning the customer BTW, but his comment of  “My ass in nicer and I’ve got a bigger dick!” is also very inappropriate and still sets him up for trouble.)

If you let HR know, they should jump on this situation. If you tell them that he doesn't get any work done and tends to leave early, they might jump on him for that too: most companies want their money to be well spent and don't like hearing about someone violating the salaried employee rules either.

--Ilia

From Jen:

Third, I received a write up about a week and a half before I left the practice. When I started working, several of the computers there had downloaded images for the desktop image. One morning before work (around 7:35 AM), I did the same for the computer I used, downloading an image of a kitten and using it for the main screen image. In all honesty, I didn't know it wasn't allowed due to the other computers having pictures that the other workers downloaded from online as well. The next time I worked, I was taken aside by the supervisor and told that she had to write me up for downloading the picture because I could have downloaded a virus (not likely but I concede the point). I asked about the other computers and the fact that they had images that had also been downloaded, which I was told that it was done before it became a rule. I told her honestly that it seemed rather petty and that I didn't think this job was working out, which when she asked me why I pointed out that I was constantly getting yelled at by both her and one of the medical assistants because I didn't know something that it would have been impossible for me to know since I was never told. After being pressed for an example, I reminded her of my second day there when the phones were ringing like crazy with patients needing appointments and that she had yelled at me to answer the phones and help the patients, which at the time I had no working knowledge of the phone (the particular phone at my computer did not automatically pick up a ringing line when lifted, different lines had to be pressed and I also had no idea of how to place calls on hold or transfer them) and when I did not have access to any computer systems to schedule appointments. I reminded her that I didn't know how the phones worked as the phones were completely different from the phones I had used at prior jobs and that I could not do any scheduling, at which point she rolled her eyes and continued working. To be honest, I felt horrible having to sit there and not being able to help, though I was brushed off when I asked about the phones on my first day. For the record, I didn't learn the phones or get access to the computer systems for almost a week, so I was basically getting paid to sit there and watch everyone else, aside from putting up the encounter forms for the others so they could do the things I couldn't.

Fourth, the night after the write up, I wound up spiking a 103.7 degree fever and was taken to Urgent Care by my mother, where I was diagnosed with an acute sinus infection, bronchitis, and the flu. I texted the supervisor immediately to let her know that I would be unable to work until the following Monday (which meant I was going to miss one day of work). When Sundaycame, I was still running a 101.2 fever. I called the Urgent Care and told them, they told me I could not return to my job until I was fever free for 24 hours and put me off work until Wednesday. I again let the supervisor know and was told it was fine, just make sure to bring in a doctor's note. I returned to work on Thursday (being scheduled off on Wednesday) with no fever though still congested and coughing frequently. It was a busy morning for a while, then the manager came out, looked around, and went back in her office. A few minutes later, the supervisor came up to me and told me I wasn't allowed to answer the phones or do any scheduling. I was confused, though brushed it off a few minutes later and printed out the call list for the next day's appointments, intending to do the reminder calls. From where she was sitting, the supervisor turned to me and told me that she had just gotten a call from the manager who wanted to know why I wasn't alphabetizing the charts (which no one had asked me to do). She then said she needed to talk to me before I went home that day. After working on the folders in two bookcases, I sat down for just a moment to drink some of my water, at which point the supervisor came and took me into a secluded office. I was informed that the front office was being restructured and that from then on, I would only be working one day a week for four hours. I asked if there was a reason why, if it was my job performance or being sick, though the only thing I was repeatedly told was that it was because of the 'restructuring'. The manager of the front office never said a word to me about it or offered an explanation when I came in the next day to turn in my smocks and give the key to her. Normally, I would never have left a job without giving a two week notice, but in this case when there was no warning and when the manager didn't have enough respect for me to tell me the real reason why. If I had worked a two week notice it would only have been 8 hours for those two weeks which wouldn't have been enough money to even buy groceries with, let alone fill my gas tank up.