More fun, and it's barely mid-afternoon!
It's been slowly creeping up on me that my general manager is a complete bitch. A snide remark here, a laugh at someone else's expense there. A couple of weeks ago there was some confusion between myself and another cashier about who had to clean a certain area. I'd been assigned to it after I was done with all my other chores, but she was saying it was assigned to her. We got it sorted out (she had it wrong and was supposed to clean another area), but I didn't have time because of the crush of Easter shoppers. The next day I came in and was assigned just that area to clean. My GM's remark: "And no pushing it off on someone else this time." Excuse me? That's not what happened at all. But I bit back a smart remark and cleaned like I was told.
Last week everyone's hours were reduced. It was the week after Easter, the company was cutting back from all the payroll they'd authorized the week before. I got that. But I'd seen how I'd originally had two more days to my schedule that had been whited out. I didn't think too much of it at the time, figuring the computer had messed up again and spit out some funky (or unnecessary) shifts.
This morning I walked in to open. My manager was in the back unloading the truck, and spoke to me when I went to put my purse up.
"Got more hours this week, huh?"
"Yeah, a couple more days," I replied.
"Gotta watch what you say around here. I heard what you told somebody," she said.
"What?"
"Yeah, it's gone around the whole store, how you was saying you wasn't gonna clean behind the registers. That's why your hours were cut last week."
"I... didn't say anything like that. Who told you that?"
"It's all over the store. Gotta watch what you say!"
"But I didn't say that at all!"
"Oh really?"
And she turned her back on me, done with the conversation. Finished, weighed and judged. She believed a rumor (a lie) and cut my hours because of it. And then had the nerve to laugh about it this morning while telling me that, because it was all a big joke to her. She still had her 40 hours every week, it wasn't any skin off her nose that I was down to 10.
I'm waiting for someone from the wage board to call me back now, because this goes beyond being hateful. This is harassment to get me to quit. Reducing me to minimal hours to avoid firing me because they have no cause and don't want me getting unemployment. And no matter what the wage board says, I'm not going back. Fuck them all.
I have two months until the school job fair. I can substitute teach until school lets out, and find something else to help us along until I start teaching full-time. I'll be going tomorrow to fill out forms for schools and get my paperwork settled at the school board. I hopefully won't lose my cell phone, since I need one to get jobs from the schools. We'll see, I guess. Right now I refuse to cry anymore over this. I'm done. That job isn't worth the stress.
Whenever I make big decisions, I always ask myself the "10-10-10" question.
"How will I feel about that decision 10 minutes from now?"
"How will I feel about that decision 10 months from now?"
"How will I feel about that decision 10 years from now?"
It helps put things in perspective. When I decided to go back to school, I decided that in the next 10 minutes I'd be happy, in 10 months I'd be stressed, and in 10 years I'd be glad I did it. So I went for it. Quitting now? In ten minutes I'll be so relieved. In 10 months it won't matter because I'll have another job. In 10 years I won't even think of that job. I'll be in Japan facing new struggles and new fun.
tl;dr I'm quitting my job. ^_^