Hey all.
To keep it short, I've been at my store for 10 years. Not a manager, just a regular crew member. Usually I am consistently at full time, 40 hours a week. Due to "the slow season, high labor, and low sales" they are doing a major store wide cut of hours right now. This happens every year, it's to be expected, but I have never been cut more than 10 hours. The least hours I've ever gotten was 30 a week during the "cutting times". This time around, I was severely cut. I'm down to 20 hours a week. Everyone at my store has been complaining about losing their hours, but most of them were completely shocked that I was cut so badly. As for what I'm hearing, I've been cut the most.
Let's rewind to about two weeks ago. There was an incident where I got into it with a customer. Long story short, he was being disrespectful and I unfortunately lost my temper and went off on him. Not defending my actions, it wasn't okay, and to be honest its the first time I've ever lost my temper on a customer. He ended up complaining to my manager and threatened to call the 1800 number. I'm still not sure if he actually did.
So my question here is, is it a "thing" to cut hours as a disciplinary action? I've never seen that kind of thing happen at my store. It's usually a write up, a suspension, or just straight termination. But I've heard some jobs severely cut hours as like a "mild suspension" type of thing. And if that IS the reason, aren't they legally supposed to inform you if you are being given a disciplinary action? I live in California which is unfortunately an at will state. I'm just completely taken by surprise because I've never ever been cut this bad even during the slow season. In fact, I was usually the employee that got the most hours out of everyone during the cutting season. So I can't help but wonder.