Sorry, just need to vent...

[MattW]

Eh, I'm mostly just making this topic because I'm incredibly frustrated with my part time job. I've been working at a retail store for about two years now, part time, while going to college full time. My frustrations mostly come from management. We used to have three managers (one of them being the GM, the "main" manager). We shifted down to a two manager store (and the company terminated the manager I liked the best, who had actually even been with the company longer than the other), and the assistant manager took a promotion at another store.

 

The manager that was terminated, and the assistant manager, were both so easy to work with, and they were really great overall. Their departures both occurred this past spring. This leaves us with the GM, and the manager of sales. The manager of sales isn't too bad, but most of us employees have pretty much been in agreement that the GM is, well... not really the best boss. Before, though, the other managers (and assistant manager) provided sort of a buffer, so to speak. Now that they're gone, though...

 

Things have only really started to get bad for me, personally, pretty recently, though. From this past Wednesday on, I've been scheduled to work seven days in a row. Next week, I get one day off, and then I have to work another 7+ days in a row. I know we're getting into busier times, but that just seems like such harsh scheduling to me. Working retail isn't exactly fun, and I get burnt out on it really quickly, so only getting one day off in a span of 14+ days is pretty brutal to me. Previously, schedules were made by the manager that got terminated, and then by the assistant manager that is no longer at our store. Now the GM handles it, and he's just awful at balancing it out properly. I don't even think he knows he realizes how he schedules people; last week, he scheduled me to work two different times on the same day...

 

That's not even the worst of it, though. For whatever reason, I seem to get absolutely no leniency from the GM. I don't feel that I'm a bad employee. I do everything he asks me to do (most of the time, I even try to do tasks before he asks me to do them), I don't complain to him about the work loads, nor am I rude or anything to him. Hell, in the two years that I've worked at the store, I don't think I've ever been late for a shift, and I haven't even called off in over a year-and-a-half. Meanwhile, most of the other part-timers call off and come in late, or give pretty strict time tables as to when they're available to work, and it's no big deal.

 

Yet, he gives me grief over such little stupid things. A couple of weeks ago, I was scheduled to start at 9 in the morning. I got there and punched in a minute or so before that time (which I don't see as an issue, as I come ready to start working as soon as I get there), and he acts all annoyed because there was "a lot of work to do". Then, last night, after we closed, he was giving me all kinds of stuff to do that probably would've taken me at least an hour or so. Now, it's pretty common for him to keep us at the store for 45+ minutes after we close, but I had some stuff I really had to get taken care of, and I asked him if I could leave a littler earlier than that (and that whatever I didn't get done, I'd make sure to finish up when I go in later today, and the next five or six days I'm working, if need be), and while he said okay, he was pretty begrudging about it, and gave me a tough time.

 

I just don't get it. It boggles my mind that I get this kind of treatment, and yet there are other employees at the store who cut more corners and take more liberties, and whatnot, and they don't get half as much grief from the GM as I do. I mean, he's not a bad guy in general, and I understand that this whole "back to school" period is one of our busier, more stressful times, but it's just so frustrating to be taking the brunt of this, yanno? I feel like I'm getting to the point where I don't even want to work there, anymore, but unfortunately, I don't really have many options, as far as a part time job is concerned. Not many places seem to be hiring around here, and I need some kind of income to support myself, so having a stressful, frustrating job is better than having no job at all, I guess...

[Crazyaboutdogs]

Is it possible he is making things tough on you to get you to leave? Aren't there some employment laws which state you can't be working 7 days a week like that? You should check into the employment laws. You should also be more forceful about your work schedule and if you are scheduled 7 days in a row tell him that on such and such a day you can't work as you have something else planned.

[DN]

Are there not employment standards where you live about time off?

[MattW]

Is it possible he is making things tough on you to get you to leave? Aren't there some employment laws which state you can't be working 7 days a week like that? You should check into the employment laws. You should also be more forceful about your work schedule and if you are scheduled 7 days in a row tell him that on such and such a day you can't work as you have something else planned.

 

Eh, I don't know that he's trying to get me to leave; heck, I'm barely making more than minimum wage, so not like I'm sucking up the payroll. Plus, he, and all the other managers we've had, generally seems to say I'm a very good employee, but it seems like whenever I ask if I can leave early, or any little thing like that, he gets grumpy about it and makes me feel kind of guilty.

 

As for work standards and that kind of thing, I'm not sure. Technically, even with all the days I work, they schedule me so I'm still under what a full time employee would work (usually by an hour or two). Plus, they break it down by week; in this current week, I'm technically only working five days, but I'm also working the first two days of the next week (for a combined total of seven in a row). I then get one day off next week, and have to work the other six. So, it might be kind of a gray area.

 

I don't think he'd really be too keen on me trying to get out of working any of my days next week; if we have plans, we're supposed to file for that time off at least a week or two in advance, plus, I had just requested this past weekend off for a family trip I went on. If he gets annoyed over the tiny things I do, I can only imagine how big of a deal he'd make if I started trouble over this stuff.

 

Admittedly, though, there is a lot of stuff that needs to get done in the store. He's kind of to blame for some stuff being behind, though; from what I understood, we were supposed to set a lot of new planograms (which I guess are the general framework of the aisles, and stock, and whatnot) a while back. The one manager was in charge of the electronics department, and he made sure he and the guys in that department got all of that done. The GM, though, decided to take his vacation that week, so we ended up way behind in the other departments, and now we have one person working on that stuff, while we also have tons of stock coming in on a constant basis, and not enough people to get it moved out to the floor in a timely fashion. I guess I can kind of understand us part timers getting an extra load of work because of that, but I wish he'd balance it out better. It's kind of a head scratcher to look at the scheduling and see that I'm almost on a full time schedule, yet the other part timers are basically still working their 15-20 hour shifts.