Bad Boss

My boss who hired me was fired recently back in June, when we got back from Covid. This boss was manipulative and nasty. The final straw to getting her fired was her yelling at the cooperate IT guy and also the fact that I, oh readers, submitted a long nasty anonymous report about every little thing she had done in the 6 months since I started working for her. Following suit, the company hired the Assistant Manager to step up into the Store Manager roll. This was fine with me because not only did I love the assistant manager but I also was next in line to become the Assistant Manager! Little did I know that this is when the bull crap really started. Not only did I find out I was pregnant shortly after but the new Store Manager's attitude totally changed once she got promoted. She started being racist, mean, nasty, short, and just plain rude to everyone including workers and customers. The first thing she did to me that made me raise my eyebrows, is she told me I was being too much, that it wasn't the baby making me pee it was something wrong with me. Next she decided to cut my hours due to me peeing too much. Mind you, I had a small bladder to begin with. You also might be wondering how I knew she had cut my hours because of that reason? Well, she told my coworker and my coworker told me. She also has hired a racist, who we promptly got fired. She is one of those bosses who hates confrontation, but will leave passive aggressive notes and text messages around the office and store for everyone to find. She is the type of boss who does nothing around the store or talks to customers but will find every single thing wrong with the things her workers do. Instead of talking to her workers, she will make little notes and then call HER boss about it, giving her workers a write up from things they did not even know was wrong while also making HER boss think you do not know how to do your job. Oh readers, do you remember me saying I was next in line to be promoted? Yeah well of course that did not happen. I got promoted but not for the position I deserved and purely so I would not quit and sue the company for discrimination.

So when the position opened for Assistant Manager, I personally called the District Manager to let her know I was extremely interested in the position to move up. I have had previous management experience, so I was qualified as well as the longest standing employee and one step behind the Assistant Manager roll. She then began to ask me questions. The district manager said everything sounded wonderful and she would think about it and give me a call back. She calls me back a few days later asking one simple question: How old are you?. I told her I was 22 years old. She then said that I was so young, and asked about my experience again. I then proceeded to tell her my experience again and that I knew I was young but I was dedicated and would not let her down. She then told me she was not sure about putting me in the Full Time Assistant Manager Position just yet. I asked her if it had to do with my age since everything was great yesterday, and she got flustered and quickly made up an excuse. I knew right then that it was simply because I was young in her eyes. Shortly after I mentioned the odd conversation to the New Store Manager, I was pulled into the office to talk. They ended up offering me the PART TIME Assistant Manager position, with a pay raise. I quickly pointed out that I was told I was not ready for the Assistant Manager position so why would they offer it to me as part time? That proved they knew I could do it but just did not want to have someone too young in a full time position. On top of them screwing me over in this way with the position, I also never got to agree upon my pay raise. I simply looked at my account one day and saw where they had given me a one dollar raise. Some people would be happy with that but considering my past experience and what others were making/typically made in the same position, I was so mad. I felt they should have discussed it with me. It also did not help the fact they were shutting our store down and making us move up the road into a different town about 20 minutes from where our original store was when I first got hired.

The major problem with them moving the store and not wanting to give me a proper raise at the same time was that I share a car with my boyfriend. I got the job at the mall in the first place because it was right down the hill from the apartment, within walking distance. This worked out because I would not have to waste money on uber like I did when I worked for Food Lion, which cost me about two hundred extra dollars a month in bills, yikes. Either way, we moved stores and my boss got progressively worse. She has told multiple coworkers that I did not deserve the position I was in, in more than one way. For instance, one day my coworker who was new at the time, was doing something new and my boss had walked by noticing. So she stopped to make sure she knew what she was doing, which is completely okay! What was not okay is when she went to hover over her, my coworker said “Oh Cheyenne already taught me this!” my boss responded with “Well Cheyenne does not know everything so I am going to show you myself. She does not do things the way I would.” Not only did this undermine my work in front of customers but it also made my new coworker, who I am above in positions by the way, also make her think I do not know what I am doing, when I very much do! This was not the only time she has undermined me as a worker either. Here recently, she embarrassed me in front of a customer so bad I almost started crying. I had a customer come in but she forgot her badge in the car, which she needs because they get discounts with them depending on where she works. So while she ran to the car I was getting her transaction ready, since she was doing a return and buying new stuff. To do this I had to skip over where we get their information, but you can go back and do it any time during the transaction. My boss saw me do this and promptly told me to make sure I got her information. I told her I knew, that I was just getting it ready for when she gets back. By this time, the customer had actually made it back into the store already.

My boss promptly told me, “No you get her information first. You are probably the reason our numbers have been so low like in the 70’s when we need to be in the 90’s.” Mind you, she is talking about our email numbers. Cooperate sends out a list every week saying what percentage of stores get customers emails and information out of every customer transaction. Cooperate likes us to have our numbers in the 90’s which is not too hard to achieve at all. When I first started out numbers were in the 40’s every week, and I was trained to skip the information to get it ready for customers without a wait since the very start. Our number had improved dramatically since I started, even with my skipping the information button and going to do it at the end of the transaction instead. So this clearly was not the case, I am guessing it was a new employee who did not know we got monitored on it, or because it is the holidays and most customers come in for gift cards or gifts and simply do not want to put their information in for something simply like that. After processing what she had just said to me, I replied with a simple “Nat actually trained me to do this this way so we can get customers out of here faster and simpler, and I have been doing it from the start. Our numbers have never been affected by me doing it before so I do not think it does.” My boss got the most shocked look on her face and reached over the counter, voided the transaction that was completely rang up and ready, and told me that I had to start over from the start and do it like she wanted me to. Keep in mind the customer was standing in front of us the whole time this conversation was going down. The customer looked shocked as I simply just restarted the transaction without saying anything to my boss, and rang her out. After the customer left I was telling one of my coworkers about what happened and she said it was completely unacceptable that she did that and wanted me to say something, but of course I have not because I did not want her to cut my hours. This was only a few instances that have happened with my boss, but it really goes to show you that some bosses just are not made to be bosses. Once I go to give birth, I will definitely be letting cooperate and my boss both know all the horrible things and just exactly how I feel, and why I will not be going back to that job!