Thursday, July 2, 2020

Revenge Of The Week: Employee Leads Revolution Against Lying Manager


Oh boy, we're back at it again with a fresh revenge of the week. This classic tale of revenge centers on an employee spearheading a revolution against a shady, dishonest manager. Manager should've just told the truth, and maybe all of this could've been avoided. 

1.

Text - r/ProRevenge u/Vikkiislost • 3h + JOIN I led a "revolution" against a horrible lying manager. To set the scene, I work in a book store, but I'm very much an underling which is what I prefer. I'm usually in the back, helping unpack shipments and prepare them for shelving. I also collect online orders and package them up for shipping, and sometimes I do the night shelving or overnight projects. It's always been my favorite because I rarely have to deal with the managers and it's a much more

2.

Text - Our store has gone through several store managers recently because most of them are getting corporate promotions or they're finding better opportunities elsewhere (our store is part of a nationwide chain and we're sadly struggling a lot against our competitors). Rather than promoting someone within our store who knows how our store functions and is familiar with the employees and their strengths, corporate has been assigning us store managers that are either not from our store, have never

3.

Text - A couple years ago, we got a new store manager that was unfamiliar with the company, unfamiliar with our store, and had zero experience in managing a retail store to begin with. We already had concerns but decided to at least work with her first because maybe she'd be a natural or she'd develop into someone that was good for our store. I'm gonna call her Tamara.

4.

Text - When Tamara was first brought into our store, rather than taking a week or two to observe our store and the employees before making adjustments and changing things, she leaped right in, changing store policies and taking on other people's tasks. She took over things like the scheduling and making sure we have a daily schedule posted every morning to know where we were supposed to be, when our breaks were etc, and other jobs that take a long time to do and have always been delegated to ass

5.

Text - jobs. She was also very late with every weekly schedule. It would be 9pm Saturday night and we would STILL be waiting for the schedule for the next week. And our scheduled weeks always starts on a Sunday so we'd literally be repetitively calling the store on Saturday night to find out if we had to show up the next morning. So many sections of the store fell into disarray and everyone was getting angry about not having our schedules. She clearly couldn't handle so much and refused to deleg

6.

Text - they wouldn't have to be stopped to provide customer service. But worst of all, she broke the cardinal rule of the store. Do. Not. Mess. With. The. Back. Room. The back room is where we handle shipments and had its own separate manager who ran that area like clockwork. It was completely organized, we had a system we were well trained in, and we have always had things processed fast and all the new product unboxed, organized on carts, and ready to be shelved on time. Tamara did not bother

7.

Text - observe and of this and put all her focus on that back area. She got it in her head that our store would thrive if we completely changed up the back room... and she had no idea what we actually do back there. First she took away a lot of our carts so we had less to stock our product on (and our usual shipments are anywhere from 150-200 boxes a day. That's a lot of books and we need those carts!). Then she took away the shelving cards we use on our carts to help divide up the titles not on

8.

Text - about getting the author's names in order alphabetically. So now we have overstuffed disorganized carts and they're not getting shelved on time because the shelvers had to keep looking up where everything goes. We explained this to Tamara over and over again in every way we could think to explain it, but she refused to listen and shifted the blame on to us. She also told us that taking away the cards was corporate's idea, not hers, and that they were no longer a required item for the stor

9.

Text - were being rushed so fast and had so many books to work with, there was no time to scan through every single item, organize them on the cart and try to remember where we put which sub-section on each cart. I honestly felt horrible for the shelvers and a lot of them threatened to (and did) quit. It made our job in the back room frustrating because we knew we were being forced to screw them over and when things don't work well in the back, it hits the entire store. Less product is being she

10.

Text - "Work smarter, not harder" and "Just make it happen." Sorry, retail doesn't work that way. This is where I come in. Working in the back - specifically on online orders- I didn't have to deal with her face-to-face much because I was always running around and frankly avoiding her because I didn't want to deal with her. This gave me an advantage. Not only was I able to see the notes she was leaving behind for employees, telling them what they were doing wrong, her bad ideas like making the s

11.

Text - and announcing the things she was changing that were hurting our work. On top of that, I was able to eavesdrop on the meetings she would hold back there with the assistant managers, explaining her great new ideas which were all horrible. With so many of my coworkers threatening to quit and getting miserable with work, knowing what they would have to deal with, we agreed we had to do something. So I went online to look up ideas for the best way to handle this and got some good tips. Now th

12.

Text - and announcing the things she was changing that were hurting our work. On top of that, I was able to eavesdrop on the meetings she would hold back there with the assistant managers, explaining her great new ideas which were all horrible. With so many of my coworkers threatening to quit and getting miserable with work, knowing what they would have to deal with, we agreed we had to do something. So I went online to look up ideas for the best way to handle this and got some good tips. Now th

13.

Text - to because the carts were not being emptied fast enough to give us room). I eavesdropped on as many of her little meetings in the back as I could so I could keep track of what other policies she was breaking, even caught her trash talking us, calling one of our mentally ill coworkers overly dramatic (even though that coworker never speaks up and just takes it when she's upset), saying we were too stuck in our old ways and too stubborn for change. Even called the manager who ran the back r

14.

Text - After I collected as much as I could, I collaborated with other angry coworkers, gathering whatever additional information they had, and together we compiled a document, each of us explaining what was going wrong, what rules and labor laws were being broken, and included all the pictures I had taken with my phone to provide evidence. We did include the disrespectful way she was talking to us and about

15.

Text - us but none of us really expected that to be taken seriously as we had no proof to provide. After we all looked it over and agreed we were satisfied with it, we emailed a copy to corporate, a copy to HR, and a copy to the regional manager who had assigned Tamara to us in the first place. It only took 24 hours before the regional manager was called in and questioned about why on earth he kept Tamara employed with us and how could he not know all the crap she'd been doing? I would have give

16.

Text - Eventually, people from corporate showed up to speak with Tamra and the regional manager. I wasn't there to see it, but according to the few who did -because it was held in our break room- she was drunk. Honest to god, drunk. She was slurring her words, wavering in her seat, and could barely give a cohesive answer to anything they asked her. It ended in them telling her to hand in her resignation because it would look better for her than if she was just fired. She walked out of there havi

17.

Text - we'd composed anonymously against her. About a month later, the regional manager also resigned as he did not recover from letting her do this. We're still having problems with new managers, but our store has now earned the reputation as the store who will not put up with this kind of crap, and that's caused them to be a little more cautious as to who they assign to us. And that, to me, is the ultimate win. Never mess with the underlings.

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