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So shiz goes down like this. On last Wednesday, a regularly scheduled day off for both myself and the store manager, I start getting calls and texts from various employees who are either working or stopping by the store. The texts are short but urgent, ("What's going on w/ the schedule?" and "Why are you and --the manager-- crossed off the schedule?")
I do not respond, not wishing to be the boss who has no fucking clue what's going on, and call the manager, who also has no clue, and who has started getting panicked texts as well.
Now business has been slow, so slow in fact that we have both been working long shifts *alone* to save money and doing the jobs of two or three people when we were there (please note Government workers and UC system executives, we did not get raises for this). We have also made numerous suggestions on how to cut back and save money to the owners, and were ignored.
Also, perhaps because Marin County is full of spoiled, sheltered, entitled morons, we have just never clicked with their population. In fact, a few days before what turned out to be my last day I had a scene with a woman who felt we weren't apologetic enough. (After apologizing and fixing her problem...so what else exactly was needed was, I suppose, some serious ass kissing, which I am and was not then prepared to do). This woman was a close friend of our owner's batshit insane wife, so the manager and I were wondering if we were fired.
Wondering all night and most of the morning. Thanks for that ulcer, by the way. The manager was supposed to work that Thursday, so she was wondering if she's supposed to go in at all when she gets a call from the owner to meet her at the office to "discuss things".
Now we are both torn between worried sick and pissed as hell. For about six more hours I sit at home, waiting for the proverbial goddamn axe.
Turns out the owner decided (when? When is the question of the fucking hour) that expenses were too high, that despite a complete inability to run his own store and his wife's batshit insanity, that because they lived five minutes away from that particular store and not one of his other ones, that they could run it, and so the manager and I had to go. But he felt we ought to be told in person. That was the honorable(?) thing to do.
To recap: After publicly announcing our loss by CROSSING OUT OUR NAMES ON THE SCHEDULE before TELLING US and letting us sweat it out for 24 hours, he makes the manager make the drive out there to tell her that, for his convenience and because he has run his business into the ground by refusing to adapt to a changing world, she is fired. Oh, sorry, laid off. Honorable.
Then he asks her to ask me if I'd like to drive out to get sacked in person.
I said no thanks, I have to save gas now.
The employees are pissed and freaking out, understandably. This means that as far as they saw, there were no signs this was coming either. And you know, a sign would have been nice. I might not have gone out to dinner two nights before, I might have cut back even more on my coffee purchases (my one real luxury now, aside from the internets). I might have prepared.
For background, this family owns a chain of video stores. Back in the 80's and early 90's, this was not a business you had to work at, and so they made *lots* of money. Now it requires work. Which they are just too Marin County to manage. It's going to fail, all the employees knew that, but how long it took was up to him, and he seems to be under the impression that once the depression, oops, recession is over, that things will pick up again. Which is why he ignored any and all advice.
I hope he goes down in flames. I hope his crazy spoiled bitch of a wife has to get a real job.
Meanwhile, I'm left wondering how long he was thinking about this action. The fact that it occurred on our days off leads me to believe that it was planned. But since it was him/them, it wasn't very well planned (Very LJ of him, really). He didn't even cut my hours first...you know...like a normal warning sign. He didn't once mention layoffs.
So I guess all that remains is the what should have been obvious idea: never count on anything to be there.
I do not respond, not wishing to be the boss who has no fucking clue what's going on, and call the manager, who also has no clue, and who has started getting panicked texts as well.
Now business has been slow, so slow in fact that we have both been working long shifts *alone* to save money and doing the jobs of two or three people when we were there (please note Government workers and UC system executives, we did not get raises for this). We have also made numerous suggestions on how to cut back and save money to the owners, and were ignored.
Also, perhaps because Marin County is full of spoiled, sheltered, entitled morons, we have just never clicked with their population. In fact, a few days before what turned out to be my last day I had a scene with a woman who felt we weren't apologetic enough. (After apologizing and fixing her problem...so what else exactly was needed was, I suppose, some serious ass kissing, which I am and was not then prepared to do). This woman was a close friend of our owner's batshit insane wife, so the manager and I were wondering if we were fired.
Wondering all night and most of the morning. Thanks for that ulcer, by the way. The manager was supposed to work that Thursday, so she was wondering if she's supposed to go in at all when she gets a call from the owner to meet her at the office to "discuss things".
Now we are both torn between worried sick and pissed as hell. For about six more hours I sit at home, waiting for the proverbial goddamn axe.
Turns out the owner decided (when? When is the question of the fucking hour) that expenses were too high, that despite a complete inability to run his own store and his wife's batshit insanity, that because they lived five minutes away from that particular store and not one of his other ones, that they could run it, and so the manager and I had to go. But he felt we ought to be told in person. That was the honorable(?) thing to do.
To recap: After publicly announcing our loss by CROSSING OUT OUR NAMES ON THE SCHEDULE before TELLING US and letting us sweat it out for 24 hours, he makes the manager make the drive out there to tell her that, for his convenience and because he has run his business into the ground by refusing to adapt to a changing world, she is fired. Oh, sorry, laid off. Honorable.
Then he asks her to ask me if I'd like to drive out to get sacked in person.
I said no thanks, I have to save gas now.
The employees are pissed and freaking out, understandably. This means that as far as they saw, there were no signs this was coming either. And you know, a sign would have been nice. I might not have gone out to dinner two nights before, I might have cut back even more on my coffee purchases (my one real luxury now, aside from the internets). I might have prepared.
For background, this family owns a chain of video stores. Back in the 80's and early 90's, this was not a business you had to work at, and so they made *lots* of money. Now it requires work. Which they are just too Marin County to manage. It's going to fail, all the employees knew that, but how long it took was up to him, and he seems to be under the impression that once the depression, oops, recession is over, that things will pick up again. Which is why he ignored any and all advice.
I hope he goes down in flames. I hope his crazy spoiled bitch of a wife has to get a real job.
Meanwhile, I'm left wondering how long he was thinking about this action. The fact that it occurred on our days off leads me to believe that it was planned. But since it was him/them, it wasn't very well planned (Very LJ of him, really). He didn't even cut my hours first...you know...like a normal warning sign. He didn't once mention layoffs.
So I guess all that remains is the what should have been obvious idea: never count on anything to be there.
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::Hoping you qualify for unemployment!::
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