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Posted: Oct 18 2009 02:33 am

Went to the bookstore that I am technically an employee. I just haven't gotten hours in... about a year now. That's not too unusual. I was hired during the fall a few years back when all the college kids were gone. They came back to stay so I wasn't really needed. But I was a good little salesman and knew my shit so they'd go a 6 months or so without any hours then I'd be at 30 hours a week. I walked in today and saw a new guy I haven't seen before there. That was a little odd. He started his spiel "Hi. Welcome to Waldenbooks are y-y-y-yoooou-you l-l--" by this point he was stuttering and tripping over his words so bad he couldn't get anything else out. One of the managers walked by and said "Oh don't worry about him. He used to work here. You'll see him all the time."
Just LAST WEEK. LAST FUCKING WEEK. I walked in and asked if they needed any extra help. I told them I was free and wouldn't mind working the shitty shifts. She said they were fully staffed still and everyone was still scrambling to get as many hours as they can. She promised to call if even 5 hours showed up I could get.
:/
As I walked out the guy apologized. Said he was nervous. It was his first day and all. He asked for some advice. I feebly gave him some answer about trying not to sell the book, but to help people find the books that are right for them. He nodded eagerly and asked if I had anything else. I shrugged. I didn't know what to tell him. I don't even know why I was let go. I was an competent employee who knew the ins-and-outs of the system, was voted best employee by the customers, and never got a complaint from employees or customers. I was even the lowest paid employee!

So!
tl;dr
I got fired and no one told me

Anything similar happen to you fine chaps out there?

Posted: Oct 18 2009 06:34 am

Lottel wrote:

Went to the bookstore that I am technically an employee. I just haven't gotten hours in... about a year now. That's not too unusual. I was hired during the fall a few years back when all the college kids were gone. They came back to stay so I wasn't really needed.

Isn't that the very definition of a temp employee? You serve your time for however long they need you, then the contract just sort of ends and you part ways. Some employers have the option of re-hiring you on a permanent basis, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

If you asked for hours and they claimed to be totally dead, then hired someone else, that's a pretty clear message that someone there doesn't really like you. People don't usually complain about you at work to your face if they don't like you; instead you find out in ways like this.

The same thing happened to me when I worked a an appetizer chef in a chinese restaurant. I was well liked by most of the people there, my head chef was kind of a tightly strung douche, but we got along. Until one day, he approached me and said, "So what's this I hear about you leaving early yesterday, even before the restaurant was closed?" To which I replied, "Um, I have no idea what you're hearing, but that's not true. In fact, I can't possibly leave early because the station can only be cleaned after closing, and if you ask the morning crew, they'll tell you it was clean when they came in." And he said, "Well, Jason (my immediate superior, line cook) says you left like 30 minutes early and never checked in with him, and we just can't have that." I repeated, "He's lying, just look at the evidence" over and over, but it didn't help. I was told that I might as well quit with my dignity or I'll be fired anyway. I had gotten pretty tired of the low paying job anyway, so I quit and left without making a scene.

But it's times right there when you find out that people you thought liked you (Jason and I were pretty good friends I thought before this incident), actually don't, and conspire to get rid of you behind your back. It happens all the time in the workplace unfortunately because most people are too chickenshit to be honest with you.

Joined: Oct 01 2009 Posts: 5316

Did you set the building on fire?

UsaSatsui's Youtube Channel · Posted: Oct 18 2009 09:36 am

I'm sorry, but if you were ignoring a hint that big...

Something similar did happen when I was doing security. I was guarding an empty building at night, and showed up at my shift to find...another security guard working there. Turns out the building was sold, and the new owners got a different company to work. Not my company's fault, though...nobody even bothered to tell them their services weren't needed anymore. I even got paid.

Posted: Oct 18 2009 02:32 pm

That really, really sucks. I guess this is further proof that, far from being a simple lighthearted comedy, Office Space was in reality a hard-hitting documentary about the state of the American employee. Sad

Posted: Oct 18 2009 02:45 pm

A guy I worked with who wasn't a supervisor, but had worked there a few months longer told my boss at the time that I should be fired...he never said anything to me about doing a bad job when we were working, I did as he told me and accepted the jobs he didn't want to do like cleaning the dishes.

It was funny because, although one of the faster sub makers(not always quality though), he was probably the worst employee. He was suspected of stealing from the cash register, he always played his hardcore screamo music extremely loud and wouldn't turn it down when customers(even the eldery) came in. He sat down for a while one days and started playing the Ukelele(sp) for a while.

We didn't pay cash for our food, we had an IOU list where we listed what we had and the boss took it off our pay check. The guy that tried to get me fired would, on several occasions when I was there, trade subs for weed, they would give him some pot for the sub and he would right it down that he had had a sub.

So when he told the boss, my boss asked the supervisor if I needed to be fired and he said I was doing fine. To this day I have no idea why he tried to have me fired and despite that and his antics I never went to the boss with his shit because it would be hard to pinpoint the time to prove it via the stores cameras and some of the 'bad' things he did were off camera and I liked the job so I just pretended nothing happened when I was around him. I did however confront him about it and he said he had told the boss I should be fired like it was no big deal and didn't tell me why at that point either.

In the end he came much closer to being fired than I ever did, the boss shut down the store less than a year later, had it stayed opened much longer that guy would have likely gotten fired.

Posted: Oct 18 2009 11:05 pm

I wasn't a temp. I was a full-time employee who went to part-time. I left for school for five months but moved back. And I had been working there for years. About 4 actually. So it was just odd and abrupt. I mean, I got the hint AFTER they hired another guy but it's just weird. And aggrevating.

Will I burn down the store? No.

It's the only bookstore in town Razz

Posted: Oct 18 2009 11:11 pm

Working at a bookstore would be a nightmare for me.

Posted: Oct 19 2009 06:24 am

Lottel wrote:

I wasn't a temp. I was a full-time employee who went to part-time. I left for school for five months but moved back.

Well usually when you leave a job for 5 months, that means you've quit, doesn't it? Or did they say you can come back to work whenever?

Posted: Oct 19 2009 06:34 am

Wouldn't surprise me if the company had some new bullshit rule in place about temp workers, discounts, number of employees per store or a combination of other things. Having worked at plenty of retail stores in the past it wouldn't be a shock to me to find out they had some absurd reason for your dismissal.

At the end of the day though they just filled your spot like you said, the scumbag thing is if they knew you were coming back ahead of time for the position and filled it anyway, if they had no notice...well I guess I can understand... holidays and all. Either way sorry to hear you lost the job.

Joined: Oct 01 2009 Posts: 5316

Lottel wrote:

It's the only bookstore in town Razz

Even more reason to do it.

"Burn em all!!!"

Posted: Oct 19 2009 01:21 pm

Pandajuice wrote:

Lottel wrote:

I wasn't a temp. I was a full-time employee who went to part-time. I left for school for five months but moved back.

Well usually when you leave a job for 5 months, that means you've quit, doesn't it? Or did they say you can come back to work whenever?

They promised hours when I returned. Said they were looking forward to me returning. I called a month in advance telling them when I'd be back in town and they said they'd work me into the schedule.

Posted: Oct 19 2009 01:32 pm

Well if that's the case they are class A scum fucks, kinda makes you wish you could trigger the sprinkler system in just that store.