u/Anarant10

I finally quit last week and honestly the whole thing feels less like a resignation and more like the final sene of a very low budget workplace documentary.

This was always my secondary job. My actual career is stable, professional and staffed by adults who communicate directly instead of trying weird intimidation tactics that immediately fall apart when the person you’re attempting to intimidate actually understands company policy better than you do.

And I mean that literally. At one point I realized I knew the company SOPs better than the actual store manager, who I’m still not convinced knows what “SOP” even stands for.

But I genuinely liked this job once. I liked most of the customers, liked the work itself and for a long time I genuinely wanted the store manager to succeed. A lot of us did. Which is unfortunate because apparently the reward for being competent is eventually becoming a threat and then slowly getting fucked with until moving on becomes the better option.

Over the last year I watched multiple smart, capable employees slowly get run off while the people who stayed were the ones who never questioned anything, never made decisions independently and required constant direction. One employee has been there since September and still refuses to do freight because he “doesn’t know where anything goes.” Which is honestly impressive at this point.

Then I committed the unforgivable sin of asking for Saturdays off while still being fully available for my full-time hours the other six days of the week.

There was a whole back and forth with the DM before he finally said to just give me Saturdays since two other employees had “completely open availability” anyway.

This apparently launched us directly into the Fall of Rome portion of the storyline.

Suddenly my hours were gutted, I’m repeatedly hearing how I could be “written up,” blank write up forms are mysteriously being left out in the office like I’m supposed to tremble before the mighty Lexmark printer and I’m repeatedly being told about other employees’ disciplinary issues like management somehow confused me with the HR department.

Meanwhile communication became a bizarre game of “the DM said this but the SM said the opposite” and I got scheduled for Fresh on Thursday with the aforementioned freight-refusing employee.

Meaning I was once again expected to unload and put away an entire Fresh truck basically alone while management bragged about getting an extra 20 labor hours for the week.

That was the moment I finally realized I was no longer witnessing dysfunction. I was actively participating in it.

So Thursday, right before my Fresh shift, I texted the DM explaining that I would not be coming in and exactly why. Then I walked in, dropped off my key and left. Effective immediately.

And…this is where everything caught fire.

The Fresh truck sat sealed until nearly noon Friday because apparently neither the SM nor her fully available FT employee were available to unload it either.

Then despite having Friday and Saturday to find coverage for my now-open Sunday shift, the employees with “completely open availability” suddenly became unavailable. Even the freight-refusing part timer who supposedly wanted all the hours didn’t show up for his already scheduled Saturday shift.

I stopped in Saturday for a couple things and got treated to the SM loudly repeating “EVERYONE IS JUST OUT HAVING A FUN TIME” over and over while the store itself appeared to be running entirely on panic, unresolved freight and the consequences of repeatedly keeping the wrong people.

You know. The kind of vibes where burger buns are living their best life in the chemical aisle, Legos have fully settled into the laundry soap section, random carts of merchandise assigned to the same person have been sitting untouched for a week or two and unopened boxes are considered “put away” because they were placed in roughly the correct aisle by the SM and her trusty, open-availability FT employee without ever actually being opened.

Which, to be fair, became a lot more visible after I stopped quietly cleaning up everyone else’s abandoned projects and random messes a few months ago after repeatedly hearing that I “never did anything” while spending most of my shifts fixing things other people left unfinished.

Honestly my only regret in all of this is not looking directly at the Fresh driver while dropping off my key and yelling:

“BREAK THE SEAL!”

And the funniest part? At this point the only employees left there who consistently function at full capacity are high school kids who legally can’t even sell cigarettes or beer yet.