My wife works for a big box store (like Wal-Mart, but not Wal-Mart).
She works at a store 15 miles away, but her position opened at the store 3 miles from our home.
Long story short, her manager got wind of it, called the HR dept at the other store and said that she was far too valuable to his store and to please not hire her. They didn’t. HR at store #2 told her this.
Other than her looking for a new job, what should she do? I said to ask for a raise to reflect her “value” to the store, but I’m more pissed off than anything. This seems illegal to me. Unlawful restraint of trade or something.
Go above HR’s head at store #2 (to the general manager?) and explain the situation.
Alternatively, if you have proof*, you probably have grounds for a lawsuit. You probably don’t want to go this route as I highly doubt you’ll be satisfied from it.
Start phoning it in at the old store, because f*** them, that’s why. (Bonus: you can combine #4 with any of #1 to #3 above.)
That’s total bullshit, but I’m not sure there’s much she can do except look for a similar job at a different store that’s closer to home and screw them over the way they’ve screwed her over.
If she does look for work elsewhere, would it be worth her while to talk to HR at the closer to home store and tell them that she will quit over this, and would they be interested in re-hiring her once she does?
I’m mad at your wife’s manager on her behalf (assuming HR wasn’t lying) - what a way to guarantee that she will bolt at the first chance. “You’re valuable to us, but not as a human being, just as a worker. We don’t care what YOUR preferences are.” I don’t know what grounds she would have for a lawsuit - can any legal types comment on that?
I’ve seen this happen countless times in my career. It’s happened to me a couple of times.
A store will never willingly give up a good-to-excellent worker, especially if said worker has been at that particular store for awhile. It seems to be an unwritten rule of upper management.
In most scenarios, once the worker discovers what happened, s/he will not make waves. They’ll bitch and moan about the unfairness of it. Totally understandable. But will they actually look for a new job to screw over everyone? No.
There are exceptions, however. In one of my instances I was in the middle of a bidding war without quite realizing it: I had applied at the other store, they made me an offer, I gave notice to my then-present employer. A couple of days later they suddenly offered me a raise which would make my pay over and above what the new store was offering. I ultimately took it and ended up with a promotion a couple of months later.
This isn’t gonna make you feel any better, and it does suck for you and your wife, but:
It’s not illegal. I wouldn’t consider even consider it unethical, from the info you’ve given. From the corporation’s standpoint it may make perfect sense.
The lawsuit idea is nonsense. Your wife has a job, she wanted the same job with the same company at a different location. They have absolutely no legal obligation to go along with this.
And FFS, she shouldn’t start “phoning it in” at her current location unless she wants to be let go. And if she is let go from one location, that’s not going to help her if she applies at another location with the same company.
Look, it sucks for her and you. The best advice I can give is this:
Have her meet with her current manager. Be nice, be polite. She should explain that open position at the closer location would have worked much better for her. She should explain - "I really like this current location, I like the company, I’m happy working here for you. But the alternate location would have saved me X dollars or Y time in my daily commute (or whatever.) I really appreciate that you consider me so valuable to this location; I’m sure that’s why you asked that I not be transferred. If so, I’d really like:
Pick any combination:
a modest raise
maybe an extra week vacation / yr
work from home a few days / month
better hours
…whatever. Be flexible, but firm. She’s proven her worth.
If her boss completely shoots her down, and she’s really unhappy and/or unappreciated, THEN:
Start looking for a different job. Once she gets an offer, issue an ultimatum: “Give me X, Y and Z or I walk.” And back it up.
Figure out what gas and time add up to over a year’s time, and ask for at least that much as a raise. The reasons should be obvious even to a thick-headed manager who thinks it’s going to make an employee happy to be denied a job that is essentially paying more money.
and 4) will only motivate her supervisor to make her life hell and possibly fire her before she finds a new job.
is just plain incorrect. There is no legal basis for a lawsuit. I’ve been told many times I was too critical in my current position to move and has transfers rejected for that reason.
One option that hasn’t been mentioned is just wait it out until current manager leaves, nobody stays at the same job forever. But that said, I think the best answer is to just look for a new job. This might be one of those times where bad luck and frustration leads to a great new opportunity. And really, she can take her time and be picky looking for a new job. She still has the same job she had before, as long as she wants it.
This kinda reminds me of the recent thread where the OP was pissed off because his wife shared a sitter’s phone number with a neighbor, and then the neighbor dare hire her for a weekly gig. And this was bad, because the sitter belonged to the OP’s wife. The idea that service providers actually might walk over this sort of territorial behavior was completely foreign to him.
With jobs being so hard to come by there’s nothing she can do except look for another job.
Companies aren’t going to lose good employees if at all possible. And in today’s economy, even good employees are expendable. So the wife quits, big deal, there will be 100 other equally qualified and good people waiting to take her place.
Now is not the time to make a stand, especially with unemployment so high.
The action of her manager is not harming her. It is, at worst, refusing to help her improve her situation because the status quo is better for the manager.
So you wouldn’t defend yourself against an attack? You’d give up the last life preserver so someone else doesn’t drown? You don’t take a job because someone else needs one too?
Ethics is about abiding by agreements and fairness. You’re making a claim about morality, and one which is overgeneralized.
Not helping someone get an extra good thing is not the same thing as harming them. I fed my goddaughter a healthy dinner that included a slice of cake for dessert. It is not harming her if I say no to a second piece of cake.
Or if I fed her a healthy dinner and she was full and sated, I would not be harming her if I said no to seconds because we need to make sure we have enough food in the house later.
For what it’s worth, my daughter was asked about her long term goals in the company recently. She said that she was trying to get a position in the DFW branch of the company. She’s currently working in the Virginia branch. Now, they didn’t have a position open in the DFW section…but they did offer her a promotion and a raise if she’d agree to stay at the Virginia plant for another five or six years. However, she’s not in a retail position.
As for the OP, I think that I’d try to meet up with someone in the HR department of the desired store, and ask to be hired. Obviously, if she’s such a good worker in the one store, she’d be a good worker in the other store. So unless her boss has called in a favor, I don’t think that HR is obliged to keep her at the first store.
Ask the manager who held onto her for a raise commensurate with the savings in gas she’s forgoing by staying employed with his store. If he says no, it’s time to put on her walkin’ shoes.
Depends on whether or not it’s a company decision. She’s requesting an internal transfer and companies refuse lateral moves like that all the time. If HR at store #2 already told her as much (as per the OP), then she already has her answer.
My buddy words at IBM and wanted to transfer to a different location, they said “No” because it didn’t fit with their deployment strategy for their human resources. They wanted him where he was. It’s not any different.
When she was hired, she agreed to her pay rate. If she’s not happy with that anymore she can leave, yes. If she turns up at store #2, they may not be too happy that she decided not to take no for an answer and left store #1 in the lurch.
We had an employee who wanted permission to take 2 months to go on a tour. She prefaced the request with “If you say no, I’ll just quit and go anyway.” So if she wants to look for another job, she can. But she better not be counting on working at store #2.