I was fired from a retail management job I had held for 7 years, ostensibly for performance issues. But it was one of those situations where the new manager didn’t like me, and therefore nit-picked every single thing I did to death, while piling more work on me than normal. Basically it came down to not putting little plastic caps on product hooks.
My former manager, “Kyle”, who had been screwing around, goofing off and not getting his work done, decided to “step back” to assistant manager. They had been training a new manager at another store, and we had heard she was the regional’s new “Golden Girl”…a short, driven blonde we’ll call Gigi who got very chummy with the regional very fast…another short, driven blonde. We had been operating on very restricted hours, and as the only two full-timers in the store, Kyle and I delegated many tasks to the part-timers, but ultimately ended up having to finish things up ourselves because the task would take more hours than a part-timer could devote to it, and we had to train them on how to do it properly. I was always putting in time off the clock to finish things up that the part-timers couldn’t finish…hell, I even came in by myself on more than one Thanksgiving, when we were closed, to set a sale for the next day because we just didn’t have the hours to pay people to do the work. During blizzards I was often the only person to report to work. I straightened out the department I ran, got the ordering under control so that we weren’t ordering stuff we didn’t need, kept my department neat and organized, moved our understock out onto the floor and reduced the quantity to acceptable levels, organized the back room so that things could be found, and streamlined the receiving of shipments so that merchandise got to the floor in a timely fashion and in the right places instead of sitting around in boxes in the backroom for a week or two.
In short, I worked very, very hard. I waited on customers, increased sales, cut wait times, and trained the part-timers. I’d worked my way up from part-time clerk to full-time with benefits assistant manager. I’d moved from store to store as needed and asked, and been promoted every time I was moved. I was asked to organize the set-up of the crafts department in a new, prototype store. I got along with almost everyone I worked with, and the ones I didn’t get along with, I worked at fixing the relationship until they at least respected my skills if they didn’t like me personally. i thought I was in line to manage my own store soon.
Then Kyle stepped back, and Gigi was sent in to “fix” our not-broken store. She was given an unlimited hours budget…something we hadn’t had, that would have helped fix the issues we did have immensely, and would have, if she hadn’t squandered part of it on two stockboys that had no clue what they were doing. Then she started doing things that violated not only company policy but even some laws, and we called her on it…after all, she was still in training, and Kyle and I had way more experience than her, so we told her that we thought perhaps she shouldn’t do X and Y.
She started criticizing everything we did. We were supposed to be a team, and she treated us as if we were imbecile newbies. She contradicted us when we assigned task to the part-timers. She took people who did certain tasks, and had for years, and gave their tasks to other people…not for purposes of cross-training, but just to show she was the boss. When that person couldn’t do their new task properly, and orders didn’t get placed on time, she blamed Kyle and me.
Then the regional, who had backed her up in everything, blew a gasket when she discovered we had used 500 more hours than allowed…a major, major mistake on Gigi’s part. The unlimited hours were not supposed to be used forever…only for two weeks! She had to cut the hours of all the part-timers and let one of the stockboys go. Projects that had been given to part-timers were suffering, because they weren’t working enough hours to complete them. All this happened right at Christmas time, our busiest time. Lines and lines of customers, everyone working as fast as possible…
So two things went south. One, an big project returning hundreds of pieces of a certain product line. It was assigned to a part-timer, but she couldn’t possibly do it on her own, and she kept messing it up…she didn’t understand the codes, or how to find the proper item on the list. She’d never worked with the product, and was just lost. I’d help her when I could, and even stayed after hours to work on it…but it was an immense project. If two people could have teamed up and done it, it could have gone so much faster. The deadline was approaching, and I called corporate to get an extension, which I got. I worked on it as much as Gigi would let me, but everytime I took time off the floor to work on it, she’d yell at me to go do something else. So I’d work on it after she left, late at night, early in the morning…and finally got it done.
Somewhere in the company, a customer scratched her hand on one of our new hooks, and sued. We were required to use little plastic caps on the hooks, but we didn’t have enough of one size. I asked Gigi to order more, she didn’t. Then she ordered some, but most of them got used up…the few that were left were tossed into a margarine-type tub with all the smaller ones, and you had to sift through to find the right size. then, someone put the cup away someplace it wasn’t supposed to be. I stayed late finishing up a display that was due, and couldn’t find the caps. Most of the hooks were covered…I just needed a dozen more caps, but it was too late at night to call anyone. So I left them uncovered…not a huge problem to me, since we were probably short on them anyhow.
Next morning, I get fired for , among other things, not finishing the return project on time (wasn’t my assignment, got an extension on the time from corporate) and not covering the hooks ( couldn’t find anymore caps the right size.) When I protested, saying we were out of caps, she pulled the tub out of where it had been stuffed (I’m sure she hid it there on purpose) and that was that. Oh, there were many other complaints on her list…about 12 pages handwritten, but most had to do with misunderstandings we had had over very petty things. She’d yelled at me for waiting on customers, in front of customers, and was standing behind me when I’d tried to explain to a coworker why I wasn’t being allowed to ring people out that day…said I had insulted her to the coworker, when she had only heard half the conversation.
So anyhow, long story short…I was crushed. Humiliated. Slipped into a three month depression where I didn’t even bother to get dressed most days. I’d just gotten divorced shortly before this, I now couldn’t pay the rent and had to borrow money, I had no health coverage for me or my kids and felt a total failure. When I asked the regional if she knew Gigi had fired me, she said I should have seen it coming, having been moved around from store to store so much…I asked why, if I was so incompetent, had they promoted me and given me a raise with each move? Unemployment agreed I had not been let go for cause, so at least I had a little money to feed my family…but I had just taken a loan against my retirement plan to pay some bills, and they took it out of the account, leaving me with no savings whatsoever. I cried for weeks. I had put my all into that job. I loved it, I loved the company. It was a very rough time.
It was some satisfaction to hear that Gigi quit two months later because she couldn’t deal with corporate’s petty rules (nor could she get anyone to work hard) and Kyle, whom I passed on my way out the door that morning, gave his notice that day (unrelated, just a coincidence) and everytime I stopped in that store for the next year it was filthy and disorganized…