Why I Quit

I've been getting really fed up with Boss. She is WAY too hands-off. She lets employees get away with everything--calling in "sick" whenever they feel like it, salaried employees coming in late and leaving early, people not doing their jobs yet there are no consequences. By not enforcing standards, managers are left to do a lot of the work that WE SHOULD NOT BE DOING. With proper training and standards, we wouldn't have to re-do a lot of the routine-anyone-can-do-them tasks instead of doing the tasks we get paid to do, like optimizing inventory numbers, increasing sales, merchandising more effectively, and SUPERVISING.

Employees' friends hang out at the store, personal cell phones are used on the sales floor for chit chat, etc. Boss apparently thinks that I'm too rough on employees. But I'm not…I just want them to do the jobs they're being paid to do! Further, she's hired another of the nephew's friends. Just two weeks, and there have already been problems. (And that's not counting the borderline sexual harassment or rumors of drugs. In a drug-free workplace. Right.)

Boss told me that she might be leaving next year. That would give me a good chance of being promoted and doubling my salary for very little extra work, especially since Boss is so disorganized and inefficient that I already do a lot of her work for her. Then she goes over the payroll budget by a MILE so I don't get a full bonus. If the employees weren't goofing off all day, then we could easily stay within budget. But that would require action on her part……to punish and perhaps fire the slackers. That would mean she would be unpopular…..that would be terrible. If I were to get the store, I could clean it up in 3 months, tops. Then again, they could bring someone in from another store or someone from outside the company. Possibly someone even worse than her. There are no guarantees.

Several stores in the chain have closed lately. The employees received NO NOTICE and no severance or anything. We're expected to give notice when we quit yet they can let everyone go whenever they feel like it? It doesn't show much respect for the employees. I do realize why they're doing it like that (to prevent the employees from stealing everything), but what about those with mortgages or whatever........NO notice?!

Further, the company's new customer service campaign is SO STUPID. It would work if we were some high-end store with entry restricted to only those who could afford to pay. But we're a store where lots of people browse, even more parents bring their kids as a form of entertainment, let the kids wreck the store and break things, take up lots of our time, and then leave without buying a SINGLE THING. Providing that level of service to every person who walks in the door is unreasonable.

Then I worked the whole weekend short-handed. One guy misread the schedule and I wasn't able to contact him, another guy called in "sick" (note the quotation marks—rumor has it he was nursing a hangover) and another employee worked a few hours and then quit because she was "too tired" to have a job anymore. (This just in……she quit so she could go to a local amusement park…….wait for it……with her best friend, the other manager—not Boss—who told me TO MY FACE that she didn't know anything about the girl quitting and hadn't seen or talked with her since their last shift together. Lied. To my face. Not cool.)

Retail will always have some incompetence and high turnover because, especially for the front-line crew, the pay sucks. Of course, it's not that great for me, either. Boss is the only one to get decent pay, especially considering what (little) she does.

Some of these problems are unique to my company; some aren't. Some of these problems are unique to my particular store; some aren't. There will always be shoplifters and unreasonable customers who lie to corporate to get free stuff. That's retail, anywhere. Now corporate believing the customer and rushing to chop off heads--that is, I hope, just a my company thing.

Am I willing to put up with all that? For a whole career? For another year, even?

Continued in My New Job