Part time jobs can be a great way to earn some extra money, especially while you are in school, but only if you are able to get enough hours to meet your needs.

What would you do if a manager didn’t like you and just hardly scheduled you at all, and then suddenly stopped putting you on the schedule for over five months without bothering to fire you?

That is what happened to the guy in this story, so he assumed he was fired, but then he found that he was scheduled to work Christmas eve, so he told his manager he wasn’t coming in.

I thought I was fired?

I used to work in a cinema, I had been there since it was being built.

I’m sure the owners wanted to get everything ready as soon as possible.

When it was being built, we still had days the staff would come in (paid) and help out with setting the candy bar up, setting up the bar in the “gold class” section, food prep, etc.

I even had to drive on my own dollar for petrol to two different hardware stores looking for these specific hooks we didn’t have enough of. I then worked every weekend, both Saturday and Sunday.

He was clearly very dedicated.

I say all this so you can see the time and commitment I put into this job.

There was one supervisor that, for whatever reason didn’t like me. She would always call me up the day of my shift and tell me I wasn’t needed.

Manager is playing favorites.

It was obvious that she was just doing this to put her friends on shift. I was a student at the time, so I didn’t mind, I still got my weekend shifts and it gave me time to study.

In the end, this particular supervisor was fired because it was discovered that she would sit in the managers office for her entire shift with 2 or 3 other staff members just chatting, leaving the entire cinema understaffed.

Wow, this is unexpected.

And just for a bit of flavor, the owner-manager, after about 6 months just disappeared, taking all the money in the safe and the entire staff Christmas party fund with him.

Never found out what happened to him. So we got a new owner-manager.

Why are they cutting his hours?

After about a year and a half, my shifts started getting reduced out of no where, I was only getting 1, maybe 2 if I was lucky, shifts per week. I didn’t really say anything, but started to look elsewhere for work. I was kind of over the job anyway.

I was, and still am a bigger guy, and at one point there was a guy that was literally a “roid rager” and he started harassing me about my weight over Facebook.

This is not something he should have to put up with.

I couldn’t say anything because he was the owners favored employee that could do nothing wrong and I’d be in trouble, but I just ignored it because I never worked with him on my 1 shift a week anyway.

Latter I found out he was fired because he was stealing from the tils AND stealing food from the store freezer (things like mini pizzas, salt and pepper squid). I lost a lot of “friends” over this because they all sided with him in my harassment.

Well, that is just weird.

Anyways, back to the story. Soon, I was getting no shifts. I’d still receive the roster every week, but no shifts. It was only a casual position, so they were not technically obliged to fire me, but it was pretty obvious they wanted to get rid of me without having the talk.

I found a new job at a bar/club (not dance type – and more stories from there to come) and started there. I’d keep getting the cinema roster with no shifts on it.

Yeah, there is no way I’d go in on Christmas.

About 5 months later of not a single shift from the cinema, Christmas rolls around.

And low and behold the roster comes and I am rostered on for the entire night of Christmas eve (being a casual worker, there was no extra pay for holidays).

They can’t be surprised.

I had plans with my family for that night, so I called up and told them that I can’t come in. Their response was “did you N/A (not available) it in the N/A diary?” I said no because I thought I didn’t work there any more.

They told me I had to come in then because they wouldn’t be able to get anyone else to fill the shift (this about a week before the shift).

Yeah, this is their problem, not his.

That night I sat down and wrote a pretty stern letter (which I unfortunately don’t have anymore) stating that “They’ve been able to find someone to fill my shifts for the last 5 months, so why is it so hard for this one” and “how was I supposed to N/A when I didn’t have any shifts and didn’t even think I worked there any more.”

I even told him about the roided guy harassing me and that I was uncomfortable working there and I wasn’t coming back.

Well, this is technically true.

I got a reply saying I should have come to him about the harassment, although nothing about me not having a shift for 5 months.

I responded with basically calling him out, saying that I would be the one in trouble if I ever “dobbed in” the guy harassing me. And I never heard back.

It is kind of crazy that they never bothered to schedule him or fire him, but then tried to schedule him for a Christmas shift.

Read on to see what the people in the comments have to say about this.

Here is a commenter who had the same thing happen.

This is what I would have done too.

What is wrong with these managers?

This is good to know.

Yup, leave them to figure it out.

At what point do you consider yourself fired?

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.