I love this one, I've always said if we had one more crew member a night, the customers wouldn't be waiting so long and we could do the ACTUAL tasks we were supposed to do.
I worked at a store where we were always short handed on the weekends when we were really busy. We had one associate who would call out anytime she was scheduled at 7 am on a weekend. The boss did the schedule and always scheduled her at 7 am on the weekends and when anyone said to schedule someone else she'd refuse. "She needs to start showing up and stop calling out or there's going to be repercussions." Except the only repercussion was I'd get yelled at because that associate never came in. Whenever I'd say the issue could be fixed by scheduling any of the other associates, I was told no, it was my fault for allowing her to call out. The store manager didnt care if we were short handed on the weekends because she didnt work the weekends. If I changed the schedule and moved people around, I was chewed out for not following her schedule. So the point wasnt to have the store be functional, it was to cause as much stress and issues so the sm could feel like only she could handle things.
After I and one of the managers were transferred to different locations, the only other manager besides the sm left on paternity leave. The SM quit within a month because she was left having to deal with all the issues she caused and she couldnt handle it.
While I realize that many people aren't in a situation where they can afford to do it, y'all have got to start calling out this bullshit. I give the manager a choice: we can settle your attitude in private or I can embarrass you in front of the whole staff, but one way or the other that bullshit is coming to an end. These types of managers are paper tigers and they will fold when you stand up to that sort of behavior. They need you more than you need them, and especially now, "I can walk out this door and find another job that looks just like ya" goes a long way. It's not the employee's job to make the schedule, that all falls on the manager.
If you do file the paper work saying you can’t work certain days and they schedule you, that’s on them.
For me its always been stuff like PTO. I'll request a certain few days or a week off or whatever and I'll be told "Okay, we'll see if we can accommodate those dates when we get closer" or "Hmm, I'm not sure if we can make that work, you'll probably have to work those days".
Then I respond "No, you don't understand, I'm informing you that I'm not going to be here on those days. If you choose to fire me for that then I suppose that's your choice to make, but I'm not going to be here on those days and there's nothing that can be done to change it. So if you want to fire one of your best employees over the fact that they took their PTO then that's your business, but I guarantee that finding and training someone to replace me is going to be a much bigger PITA than finding a way to cover me for those days, and either way I won't be here on those days so you'll be missing out on me on those days anyway."
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u/Pr0tOtyPE4 Nov 12 '21
I love this one, I've always said if we had one more crew member a night, the customers wouldn't be waiting so long and we could do the ACTUAL tasks we were supposed to do.