Notoriously Spiteful Store Owners
I was recently let go from my job as a store manager. The company I worked for was abusive to both me and my staff. Some examples (there are a lot more) would be:
- The owners/upper management coming to the store and chasing the staff around while snapping their fingers and saying “You’re not working hard enough! Go, go, go!”
- The owners/upper management coming to the store and telling me how fat X employee is.
- The owners/upper management spreading rumors about the staff and I.
- The owners/upper management screaming at us over the phone loud enough that customers could hear it.
A month or so before I was let go I had a pay dispute wherein I explained bluntly, but professionally, how they need to pay me because it’s the right thing to do. They had promised extra pay above my salary for working hours I shouldn’t have had to then purposely did not pay me that money. Eventually they paid me but they REALLY didn’t like that I stood up for myself and thus started their plan to get rid of me. One of them even stopped speaking to me altogether.
After this, I was strangely given permission to hire a staff for the store. I needed one so I happily posted an ad online and started interviewing people. It took a month but I finally found one I liked and called their references which came back average but good enough. A sales representative I knew saw the resume on my desk and told me I should call X business (which was not on the resume). I did and it turned out this person had been fired for theft of money and product. I decided not to hire the thief.
A few days after deciding against the thief I was forwarded a resume from the owner that had stopped speaking to me. It was instructing me to interview the thief I had decided against. But how did this owner get the thief’s resume in their inbox? The ad was mine, and forwarded only to my email, and only I had the password to the account. I followed the link back to an ad that I didn’t write and posted from a different account. This ad was for a store manager. A poor attempt at being sneaky. I could have quit right then, but I had a better idea.
The owners are notoriously spiteful. But I know they are also lazy and don’t do their due diligence. They think they are having me hire my own replacement without me knowing. So, I hired the thief as my “employee” while the owners, having already seen the thief’s resume, sees them as a good fit for store manager. I vouched for the thief’s references knowing they’d never call them themselves.
Three weeks later I was let go when I arrived at my store. The owners seemed confused by the big smile on my face when they told me. I was genuinely happy to be finished there. It was the worst employment experience of my life but it was a job of necessity. I was able to collect Employment Insurance, thankfully.
The thief took over managing the store. Thanks to the new store hours the thief works 5 days a week, with no staff, open to close, unsupervised.
Story credit: Reddit / Colo1984