#like this guy STARTED at the same wage as my keyholder that's been here for a year (who the owner regularly forgets the name of)

[insomniacs-keyboard]

Bruh

[oddchamp]

I was originally gonna post this to r/retailhell, but I decided to just post it here instead. it's basically a really long story about my coworker friend becoming a shitty boss. I mostly wrote it down so I could get all my thoughts about it in one place.

Last November, I (20 M, 19 at the time) got hired at store in a mall. If you want an idea of what we sell, imagine the exact midpoint between a Spencer's and a Box Lunch- definitely not a kid's store, but we sell a lot of Disney and cutesy stuff. I'm a key holder over there, so I essentially do the work of a manager with the pay of a sales associate- opening and closing the store, handling returns, etc. At first I really liked the job because it was easy. Our store isn't super popular (we only have two locations in our state), so there's a lot of just sitting around waiting for customers. The guy who was GM when I first started was super lax and had the attitude of "minimum wage, minimum effort" so he didn't really care if we slacked off, especially since all the work still got done. He let us sit down when we weren't doing tasks, and he let us close the store for our breaks if we were there alone (we usually were). Not only that, but nearly every other employee there was queer. I'm a gay trans man, and while I don't need for my coworkers to be queer for us to get along, it definitely helps to have that common ground. Over time, I became especially close with one of my coworkers, who I'll call Matt (Mid 20's, gender fluid). He has the same kind of off-kilter humor that I do, and we ended up hanging out outside of work every now and then. We also were sort of trauma-bonded, since we were both at work when someone got shot in a store that was just downstairs from ours. We'd joke about sexual things a lot, and even visited an adult store together to buy toys. We never had sex or anything because he had a boyfriend for most of the time I worked there, and I entered into a relationship right as they broke up, but honestly if that hadn't been the case, I might have tried. Suffice it to say, he was kind of my "work-wife". Then, in late summer of this year, our assistant manager demoted herself briefly before quitting altogether, as she had gotten a job as assistant manager at another store in the mall. Matt had been working there the longest out of anyone except our GM, so he got promoted to assistant manager. That made me a bit nervous, because honestly Matt wasn't very good at his job before he got promoted, but I was happy for him. I certainly didn't want the promotion, I have no aspirations to ever be in management. Then, our GM suddenly quit. No two weeks notice, just a text saying he wouldn't be working there anymore. So Matt, who had just been promoted to AM a few weeks ago, was now GM with no training. On top of that, at the same time, two of our employees (including Matt) had been exposed to COVID, so they had to stay out of work until they tested negative. All of this resulted in a period where I was the only employee who was available to work any day but Sunday, besides our old AM before she quit. I put in a lot of hours covering for other people, and it was miserable. There were days when we just weren't open (I couldn't work every day of the week) or had to close for a couple hours of the day. Of course, because I was one of the only people in the store, when mall security came by to ask why we weren't open, I was the one who had to deal with them. None of this was Matt's fault (except maybe his exposure to COVID, but I think that was because of his boyfriend's family), and I don't blame him for that. However, it all made him very stressed when he eventually came back to work. He still had to hire a new assistant manager and a new key holder to fill the hours. For the new AM he hired a friend of his that had previously worked at the store, and for the new keyholder he hired literally the first person he interviewed, who would go on to steal over $200 from our cashbox and bank deposits over a period of a few weeks. At first, Matt tried to keep the same lax attitude our old GM had, but the work wasn't getting done in the same way. We've had a massive problem with not being able to put out the products we get in shipment before we get the next shipment, resulting in our tiny backroom being filled with boxes upon

boxes of items we can't even put out because the stuff we have out hasn't sold yet. Matt's solution to this was using the work group chat to constantly berate us and tell us we weren't doing enough work. And I mean, every day that he was at the store, he had something to say to us about how we weren't working hard enough or how we weren't selling enough. I thought that was rich coming from the guy I had seen slack off more than he ever worked when he was in my position. Then, he said we weren't allowed to sit down or close the store for our breaks anymore, and if anyone was caught sitting down, they'd be given a verbal warning, and written up for subordination if they got caught again. I was more upset over not being able to close the store for our breaks- often, on weekdays, the only time there would be more than one employee in the store was a brief window from 3:15 to 3:45- just enough time for each person to take their legally mandated 15 minute break. I told him that if he didn't want us to close the store for our breaks, he should schedule us so that there was more than a 30 minute overlap. It wasn't fair to make the opener take their break in the last half hour of their shift, and to make the closer take theirs in the first half hour of their shift. His response was, with how much we all slacked off, we were already getting more than 15 minutes worth of break time. Wow, thanks! All this was putting a strain on our friendship. Over text, he would be aggressive and rude to everyone, but in person he would be sweet and act like nothing ever happened. The last straw was when, on the Tuesday before Black Friday, he got upset over our tshirts not being organized and said, "if you're all going to half-ass everything, I can always let you all go and find people who want to do the work." I had already started looking into getting a new job, but this was what pushed me from "maybe I'll get a new job after the holidays" to "fuck this job and fuck Matt." I got a new job that's going to pay me more $1.50 more per hour to work as a sales associate, so I won't have to do any management bullshit over there. I handed in my notice yesterday that my last day would be Christmas Eve, so less than two weeks notice, but I still think it was generous considering the fact that I have to work from 1-6 on that day and then have to drive three hours so I can be with family that night and on Christmas morning. He seemed upset when I handed in my notice, but as usual, when I was with him in person he acted totally nice about it. Then, this morning, he texted me asking me why I didn't tell him I was looking for a new job, "not as your boss, but as your friend." I, like an idiot, decided to be honest with him and tell him that it was very difficult to be his friend with the way he acted as my boss. Instead of, you know, accepting my answer, he told me that every boss acts like he did, and asked if we were still friends. I wasn't born fucking yesterday, I've had multiple bosses before him, and NONE have ever acted remotely like he does. I told him that, and that if we were still gonna be friends, it would have to be after I left the store. He sent me some paragraph long texts about how I shut down whenever I was criticized, and that other employees said I would be in a bad mood after talking to him (gee, wonder why). He also said he didn't care if we were still friends after I left (why ask if we were still friends, then?), and that he "didn't particularly understand" that I had a hard time separating work from our friendship. At this point, I'm just done with his shit. I have to see him on Saturday and most of the week of Christmas, so if he continues to act like a shitty little baby, then I'm gonna make my notice a lot shorter. If you read this far, thank you so much for listening to me bitch and moan. I wish all my fellow retail workers the best of luck for the rest of the holiday season, and to enjoy any holidays you may be celebrating. And on the off chance that Matt is reading this, I'm sorry. Some people have the skill to be a

friend and a boss at the same time, you just don't. I know you weren't ready to be GM, and that must have been really hard, but all the things you did have ruined the friendship we had. I still wish you the best, and I sincerely hope that things get better at our store- I know you still need to replace me and the key holder who was stealing, so good luck with that.