If you’ve never worked retail, you might not realize just how much bull employees have to put up with on a daily basis.
Whether it’s customers, fellow employees, or managers, there’s always someone in the wings waiting to ruin your day.
OP worked at a hardware-ish store, and was pretty good at a whole lot of different things.
Anyway, several years ago I was working at one of the big hardware stores in my area. It’s a household name and had some upward mobility with decent pay for the area.
I never really found a niche there after my first year and a half. I learn quickly though, so they kinda made me a swiss army employee.
I could work hardware, plumbing, mix paint, make keys, prepare contracts for installs and knew all the features and flaws of the appliance models we sold.
I was happy to do this because I was building a reputation as someone who could do everything.
When they created a new position, they thought he was perfect for the job.
Two years in, a new program was implemented that I was uniquely qualified to assist with. They crated a new position for me. It was marketed as an all in one renovation/remodel service for interiors.
I was to assist the designer with product selection, product information, contracts and local marketing for this service. Everyone involved was super excited about it.
Note: I was still only making $10 an hour in 2015 for this.
The problem was that because this was brand new, no one knew how it should work.
The designer basically had to figure it out for herself while I tried to catch her up with all of the store and product knowledge I had accumulated during my unique experience with the company.
It took awhile to get things going, but they started to take off.
Issues with the program:
It was waaaay too expensive.
Product to be used HAD to come from one of our stores, which was limiting.
No one knew about it.
It was a rocky start. Coworkers would call me over to talk to customers if they mentioned working on a big project, but that’s all we had. No completed jobs to reference or anything provided by corporate to get us running.
We made our own stuff. I put together a video advertising the service and got the nod from management to use company card to purchase a TV and media player to roll the video on repeat.
We built vignettes in the store to showcase our design ability (I had been picking up a lot from the designer, so it ended up being a partnership in effect).
Which is exactly when a new manager thought he would “fix” things.
And just when we finally started getting some business and a rhythm around 8 months in, Devin decided that it was not working fast enough for him.
Obviously the designer was to blame since he had no authority over the contractors or setting prices. She didn’t know what she was doing and he was “going to make some changes.”
He honestly didn’t do much besides hover, bring bad energy and make terrible suggestions. He didn’t understand the scope of what we had to do to get a customer out the door and happy.
He forced us to cut corners and get the sale as quickly as possible without concern for liability (for basically destroying a room in someone’s home to remake it) or what was realistic in terms of timelines.
Customers felt rushed and got nervous. They backed out. We came to a standstill.
We would only have two or three designs in progress at a time, but suddenly after working our asses off building the program, we had no customers for the first time in 6 months.
Obviously Devin was not subjecting us to his authority hard enough. So he went harder, and fired the designer. I lost my patience.
OP got fed up and decided to tell the guy exactly what he thought of him.
Justice (or injustice idk)
I’m a chill dude, but I had been working my ass off for this company, making peanuts on the promise that I was working towards something. I endured working for the incompetent managers that got their positions because they started working there at 18 and made it their life.
The toxic alpha male “I will lead, you will follow” BS was too much. So I started bullying him back, making fun of him in a teasing way where he couldn’t really react without looking bad or losing control.
I did that for a while and he left me alone to run the program in the interim since I was the only option.
The designer and I had become friends though, so I was still mad about how it went down. I wasn’t finished yet, but I didn’t know what to do.
Eventually they got another designer and Devin had me moved back to what I had been doing before. Passed over for several promotions that I was more than qualified for (the market had been flooded with long time employees that were being moved around).
Bad luck, but I was done with the place. One day we were sent an email link to an anonymous manager review survey. The store computers were set up with an always on and logged in user profile, so I wrote down the link and verified with a coworker that they weren’t unique.
In every department I visted that day, I wrote a review for Devin. All different ratings, some good, some bad, but I made the good ones so that they sounded bad, but as if I didn’t know it was bad.
I did that maybe 10 times.
And everything worked out in the end.
It wasn’t character assassination or anything, just opinion based stuff with some vague examples so no one could figure out it was me. I didn’t lie either, I just said what people don’t usually say out loud.
He would barely look at anyone after that.
A couple of weeks later he resigned his position as assistant manager and took an exterior design position at the other end of the store, as far away from the departments he had been over before. Basically the same thing as what we had done with interiors, but he was in the designers shoes.
I left a couple of months later to work tech support for DHS, but while I was still in training for that, my friends from the store told me he had gotten fired.
Maybe he learned something? He should at least have learned how my designer friend felt. They were both fired at Christmas.
Does Reddit think he should have done more? Let’s find out!
The top commenter hopes the old designer is doing well.
Everyone loves to see managers like this get their comeuppance.
They love that he got justice for someone else, too.
Some people think he could have done more, though.
Everyone was appalled at his pay.
I, too, love hearing stories about people like this getting their due.
It probably doesn’t happen enough in retail.
Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were travelling for business.