#my boss told the racist bitch of a seasonal hire that it was great having her and she can come again next christmas

[nekomegami-chan-blog]

Just Venting - non fandom related

I’m getting rather fed up with my managers at my day job. I can’t wait until my new business is solid enough to provide all of my income. I don’t normally bitch about work, but I really need to today. 

I got into work at 2:30 and the store was in chaos. We were crazy busy and under-staffed (we shouldn't have been, but our manager who is literally almost NEVER actually in-store was there, but like usual, he spent 95% of his time on his phone, rather than helping), and our assistant manager was running around trying to place orders with the faulty laptop like a chicken with her head cut off (her normal state - she has zero time-management skills (or people management skills, for that matter)). I walk in and immediately begin to help organize people but before the rush can even fully die down, my assistant manager tells me that there’s a large store-to-store transfer that is sitting in shopping carts, and that we had to get it out ASAP. To make matters worse, the manager has taken one of our sales people/cashiers and has her making new endcaps and packing up old seasonal merch. I’m dumbfounded by all of the merch being torn apart when there was fresh stuff just arriving that needed to be put away when we had clearly already been busier than normal. 

So anyway, I start putting the transfer away and there was an item that we didn’t stock at this store. I ask the assistant manager if she knows if it’s a special order, or a new item for us, given that it wasn’t in the special order book (not unusual, she doen’t always write special orders down). Instead of saying, “I don’t know” or “we’ll deal with it later”, she gets pissy with me and says, “Yes we do! It’s over there.” I calmly reply, “I checked the UPC/SKU and no, we don’t stock this, and it’s not just a new UPC, there’s nothing by this description on the shelf, I checked.” She huffs at me, smiles in this totally irritating, nasty way she has when you call her out on something, and says, “Well, I guess I don’t know, then.” And walks away. She literally can NOT handle being wrong or caught in a mistake, even just a minor clerical error or something - she blows up and then blames it on being “tired” or her “anxiety” - bitch, no. You just can’t take any sort of conflict with a coworker, even if it’s no big deal. She can be nice to a nasty customer and control her attitude with the managers above her and the owners, so I KNOW she’s capable of controlling herself, but she has a LONG history of verbally beating on coworkers who correct her in any way, which the higher ups seem to always make excuses for. Which is weird, given that she has no actual say/stake/power in the company? Anyway, I digress. The worst part about her snarly comebacks when you challenge something she says is that a few minutes later she will calm down, rethink her response, and either say something “nice” like, “How are your horses?” or else come back and want to tell you why you upset her and she responded the way she did - not really an excuse or a “fuck you” but kind of a mixture of both, like it’s your fault she got pissy. 

Next, since my manager was actually IN the store (though it took a half hour to actually wait for him to be off the phone and walk by at the same time so I could ask to talk to him) I pulled him aside and asked if there was a reason he’d cut me back to part-time hours. He looked confused and I elaborated. “I had asked you to cut me back from 40 hours to 30. 30 hours works great for me. But the past two weeks, you’ve scheduled me for only 25 hours, and you have me down for 25 again next week. Is there a reason for that?” This GROWN ASS MAN who is 26 years old and supposedly running not ONE, NOT TWO, BUT THREE stores (which is ridiculous anyway), looked at me blankly and said, “What?”

I replied, “Yeah, you’ve had me at 25 hours three times in a row now.” To which he responded, “Oh, sorry. I just kept sort of copying the same schedules since they seemed to be working for people. I didn’t actually count how many hours I was giving anyone unless they asked for time off. You can go back to 30 hours, we need you anyway.” FACE PALM. I’m literally the best sales person in any of our stores by the numbers, and not to toot my own horn, but I get daily calls of people wanting to make an appointment to see me. I’m not joking - they call a pet specialty retail store to book my time because I’m a holistic animal nutritionist, but also give some dog training coaching and general animal-behavior/problem solving help and I clip nails of badly frightened pets safely without stressing them (I have mad skills). Not only thst, but 4 different area vets actually hand out my store contact info and will even call ahead to see if I’m working so they can send customers over. I’ve increased store sales by 20% year over year for TWO years in a row - and yet the company only pays me $15 an hour. I’m literally not paid enough to deal with this shit. It’s only my desire to help animals and people and my love of my “regulars” and freaking awesome coworkers that keeps me here. That, and my need for health insurance. But really, who just under schedules their best salesperson out of being too lazy to COUNT to THIRTY?! I’ll admit, I was ready to confront my manager because the only thing I could logically think of as to why they’d cut my hours lower than I requested was as “punishment” for wanting to cut back at all, or as a way to reduce costs by trying to edge me out of my eligibility for health insurance (to have matching contributions, you have to work 30+ hours).

To top it all off, we have a new-hire who started last week. He’s 30, Hispanic, and not someone I’m interested in getting to know beyond an arm’s length coworker. Not because he’s Hispanic - that's not important to me, but he makes a big , to-do about his ethnicity and comes off as low-key racist -but because from DAY ONE he’s been an annoyance. I don’t know if he’s a creep, or if he’s socially inept (he’s 30, he has to have had similar jobs, with similar rules of conduct, right?). Regardless, the first thing he does is start flirting with ALL THE GIRLS who work in the store. There are 6 of us, including the assistant manager, who is in her 60s (the only one he’s not interested in). He starts out by asking one of our other male coworkers if “AV” is seeing anyone. When he says, “I don’t know. I don’t think so,” the new-hire basically goes all Quagmire and thinks he has a shot with her. She reported that our other male coworker saw the new-hire clearly leering at her backside when she walked past them, and male coworker told “AV” about it so she’d be aware. “AV” also noticed new-hire look her up and down, blatantly, when talking to her. She felt uncomfortable. She’s a keyholder/shift lead and so am I, but I’m her “senior” so she told me and I told her to contact our Manager or District Manager. Other girls reported similar things to me, including one who is also a shift lead, but as I didn’t witness anything personally, all I could tell them to do was to contact the higher-ups. I didn’t want to get involved based on “hearsay”. Finally, the new-hire tried the same things on me. He followed me around, leaving a task he knew how to do just to talk to me. He kept asking me personal questions like, “Are you Mexican?” and “How tall are you?” “How old are you?” “Do you live around here?”. I tried to make vague answers, but I wasn’t sure what to do - I’d never been in that situation before. He also did the whole-body look me up and down thing. I didn’t feel threatened (I’m taller and I out weigh him, and I’m pretty strong) but I also didn’t feel comfortable. Later on, I went to show him how to lock the delivery door, and I thought, as I bent down to put the pin in the bottom to look up at our reflections in the door (it’s glass, and it was light inside, dark outside, so the door is like a mirror). I saw him staring at my butt, so I looked over my shoulder quickly. He stammered and took a step back, knowing he was caught. I didn’t say anything to him about it, and continued on like normal showing him how to close.

After work, I texted my boss and said he needed to deal with it, because now I actually had something of my own to report. “AV” did the same and two other female coworkers corroborated when asked about their experiences yesterday (I was off yesterday). The next day after our incident, the GM came in and had a talk with the new-hire and provided him with an employee handbook and talked abut policy. Today the GM came to talk to me and kept repeating how serious our allegations were and how much she didn’t want to let a potentially good employee go over “workplace drama” or “people ganging-up on someone just because he doesn’t fit in our store’s dynamic”. She made a point about how grateful he was for the job and how willing he was to come in early when someone else went home sick, how willing he was to stay late, etc. I was beyond pissed. She wanted to accuse us all of making it up just because we didn’t like him, because he’s “socially awkward” or “inept” and how “he’s not the brightest” and “he’s young”. 

OMG NO. He’s too forward and he leers at female coworkers. And who does she think she is telling his shift-lead that he’s “not the brightest”? Talk about inappropriate!! And YOUNG? He told me himself (unsolicited) that he’s 33. I’m turning 33 this month. The GM called me “mature” (as in old/experienced, not as in “you handled things in a mature way”) but his mistakes are because “he’s young”? FUCKING REALLY? He’s OLDER THAN I AM. HE SHOULD KNOW BETTER. Then she started asking questions about if he had touched me or anyone inappropriately, and whether or not I would want him to be transferred to a different store, or if I wanted to transfer, and again with “how serious” things were. I told her I didn’t necessarily think he had to go, and I don’t want to move (not that they would let me - I’ve asked to be transferred several times when there were potential opportunities for advancement and been denied every time because “this store really needs you” aka I make them too much money here to risk moving me) but that I wanted him to get training on how to appropriately deal with coworkers. She then accused me of not handling the situation myself. “It should have stopped with you. You’re a keyholder and a shift lead. You should have corrected new-hire’s behavior if it was bothering you and your coworkers.” REALLY? I told her I was caught off-guard, that I’d never had to deal with that situation before, and because I wasn’t sure if it was overstepping my bounds and I didn’t feel comfortable dealing with correcting his behavior, I CONTACTED MY DAMN MANAGER. I DID THE RIGHT FUCKING THING! I AM NOT THE HR DEPARTMENT, YOU ARE! And look, here you are, dealing with the problem. BOO HOO for you, that you had to take a few hours to do your fucking job. Don’t You DARE tell me to feel bad about how I handled this. 

She also accused me of dressing inappropriately for work and told me that our dress code didn’t include the pants I was wearing. The dress code in our handbook says we have to wear the store-issued uniform tee shirt and can’t cover it up with a jacket (if it’s cold, we can put on long sleeved shirts in a dark, neutral color underneath). As for bottoms, it says, “dark pants/slacks or jeans, no pants above the knee/shorts” (paraphrasing). I was wearing dark gray capri pants. Totally within policy as it’s phrased. She told me that “yoga pants” are an abuse of the policy, and that pants should be ankle length. No where in the dress code is that specified. I told her as much, and that my manager and assistant manager had no problem with these capri pants, and that I wore them occasionally and even got compliments from my assistant manager on them because they’re cute. She said that the policy was changing, because it’s ‘not professional” and because “old ladies” shop here and may be “offended” or think I’m too casual, and because “other employees may abuse the privilege to wear short pants and come in with outrageous patterns or colors” and told me I could only wear long jeans from now on. Bitch, really?! It’s pretty clear in the employee handbook, which SHE HELPED WRITE AND APPROVED that I was NOT in violation. She just wanted to get back at me because my getting involved and corroborating the same experiences other female coworkers had with new-hire dude meant that she couldn’t just say it was an isolated incident and she had to get involved.  I think what pisses me off most about the GM is that she conveniently forgets my resume. She makes a point of calling me "young" - today's "mature" comment being a convenient anomaly- so that she doesn't have to acknowledge my qualifications. I have a business degree, with a concentration in management. I have two professional certifications in two different fields. I ran my own business for 14 years, and am doing so again now. I have successfully managed another business and a three non profit programs. I was, just two weeks ago, appointed to a two year term on the city's second most influential commission, with a personal commendation from the mayor herself. I was even featured in this year's State of the City address video and got a VIP invite to the State of the City dinner last month. I'm outrageously overqualified and nearly all our store's yelp and FB and google reviews mention me by name in a positive way. I guess the person I'm really mad at is myself for meekly putting up with this shit because I feel trapped until I can get my new business booming. I'm off to a strong start and making headway, but I know it takes a year to really establish a business like mine snd I need to pay off some debt and build a nest egg before I jump in all the way.

UGG. DONE. DONE with this fucking job. It’s been two years, and I haven’t had a promotion (which was part of my hiring agreement, btw), and no raise for a year. And now this shit. DONE. 

[strahdvonzarovich-a]

it’s sunday but favoritism at work is killing me lol