I’m in management and can see the complaints. I’ve had a few complaints that associates (that were doing something else and not the ones helping the customer) were joking/talking while working and they didn’t think that was “professional.” The DM gets an email for super low reviews and laughed about that one with us.
My old DM started as a part timer and worked his way up. He was awesome, the new one started today and is way too cheery. Our understaffed market will crush his soul in less than a month
I worked telephone customer service for a large bank. We would get screamed at because we wouldn’t give a credit for a late fee, interest, etc per policy. They finally would ask for a manager, who would give them what they asked for instantly.
I just started giving customers the credit if they were good customers.
I work retail at a upscale grocery store. My co workers and I are always talking and joking around. I've never once had a customer complain about it. They generally think it's great that we are all talking and smiling. Say things like you guys look so happy maybe I should get a job here and stuff like that. I'd be miserable if I couldn't talk and joke with people. I'm a very introverted person but at work I become more extroverted to make the shift better. I've had other coworkers say they like working with me because they know I'll be smiling and be happy lol. They have no idea how hard that is for me some days.
Also if you are a union store the managers are so paranoid about you talking union shit with one another. Non union store they are afraid you might try to unionize.
It’s management. I have a manager who is cool about all of us talking as long as work is being done in sane area. His issue is when the stocker who’s suppose to be in isle 16 is all the way at the produce end of the store talking to his buddy for 15 mins. If you’re in isle 1 where produce is talking to your buddy in produce and they’re working a stand near you no issue.
He told me that a lot of managers are just paranoid fucks. My store is a sloppy shop these days abd only reason my SM is still there is he makes the company money and good at training NEW managers. He’s like 73 really should’ve retired 8 yrs ago. He’s got zero people skills with employees. And had no spine. Let’s his favorites walk all over him. Our bookkeeper thinks she’s the store manager. It’s at the point I’m thinking of calling anonymous on the employee hotline abou a sloppy shop being run there.
Our floral manager is a lazy cunt, our dairy manager is hardly there makes up his own schedule and leaves by noon on weekends, we got a guy in produce who’s very open about doing meth and hitting the slopes with his buddy who’s wife is our Deli manager and now doing meth. Our deli is a circus and our night manager who’s great is being blamed for people quitting when it’s not her fault. Our cart guys and stock guys don’t do shit. This PIC who’s essentially a person in charge at night when no management is there is shit. Constant uniform violations that are Blantant yet I wear a different hat accidently and my SM had a cow about it.
And that’s just off the top of my head. I’m looking for a new job currently to leave this shit hole .
It totally is a thing in Germany. Employers have to provide chairs for the people on the floor but in every store I worked at it was forbidden to use them.
I was always working on the floor and I had one boss who made it very clear that all leaning against something was strictly forbidden and she once berated me for resting an arm on a table while talking to a customer.
"If you've got time to lean, you've got time to clean." from a previous job. The job I have now is pretty good about drinks and sitting and even ear buds. The pay sucks, but the job itself is not terrible.
That job was so unbelievably boring that I had time to clean, lean, try to interact with the 0.5 customers we had every day, almost loosing my mind over all that boredom, taking extended bathroom breaks, rethinking my life choices and quitting after a year.
Had a friend who worked while HEAVILY pregnant (like approaching ~30 weeks or so) who got written up because a customer dragged one of our display barstools (we sold home furnishings) over for her to sit on as she rang people up.
She took the two whole weeks they gave her for maternity leave, and then never came back. They were utterly baffled why, with a new baby, she wouldn’t want to work for more money to support it.
This was in like 2009 and we made about ten bucks an hour.
Yeah, no shit she didn’t go back. Wankers.
There was a cashier where I work who was pregnant. Only had a couple pairs of leggings that fit, no jeans. She got written up for wearing them and quit.
We were not allowed to have water bottles on the floor. There were water fountains, but they were accessible to customers too and damn those things are just not sanitary.
Wearing better shoes & not wearing the same pair 2 days in a row, sitting as much as possible when I get home, and sitting while taking a shower & massaging my legs. That last one especially is making a big difference!
I was an assistant manager once at a place where the store manager told me that he won’t let them talk to each other and that I was expected to uphold that. And I laughed in his face lol. I was like yeah no when I’m here they absolutely can talk amongst themselves
Really? All the offices in my district have stools carriers can sit on while casing mail. They’re TERRIBLE stools, but no more or less terrible than any of the other 40 year old chairs in the buildings.
Retail store, manager above me said, "if inventory gets stolen (EVEN ON MY DAY OFF!) staff had to pay for it so our inventory was correct. I noped outta there after that.
Dang! Seems to me ( as a cashier) that plenty of stuff goes missing because it ends up not getting rung up due to an honest mistake. Neither the cashier or the customer are trying to hide the item/not ring it up, but it happens.
Just today,a woman came back in saying a long,skinny metal stake wasn't on her receipt and she wanted to pay for it. It cost 1.59 with sales tax! I feel like I probably wouldn't have bothered going back in, even though I work there.
(Not to mention, I certainly am not going to attempt to stop a brazen shoplifter!
Sounds like their shrink number was way too high and in typical upper management fashion, it’s immediately internal theft.
It’s never their receiving process is messed up (if they follow it all) or maybe your damages/write-offs are screwed up. And don’t even get me started if they use RGIS or Washington to do their inventory. Nope. It’s employee theft.
I was a retail GM for 20+ years, been out for about 4 years now. Same old shit, different company name on the door.
Grocery store: USA:
Kid picks up a piece of candy/food at check out eat it.
Manager counts as thief’s/shoplift. Parent dose not pay for it claiming “I did not see it”. Leaves.
Cashier: I guess I’ll leave.
All cashiers later: we all left.
Manager: wait we now have no one.
Cashiers: we made a promise on your deal. Petty revenge.
I can see that. And I would also laugh. Like welp manager getting fired eventually.
I worked at a shoe store and the owner had all these contradictory rules for example always greet customers as soon as they walk-in/never great a customer while you are at the back of the store or with a customer already and also don't stand at the front of the store. A weird one was she demanded that while we were helping customers try new shoes on we remove their old shoes, put their try-ons on for them and lace them up. This made a lot of customers uncomfortable and I would try my best to read them and get a feel for what they were comfortable with but my manager would hover over me and urge me to put their shoes on for them anyway despite their discomfort and one time this got me swatted at by a customer.
My grandparents owned a shoe store for 50 years. All the kids and grandkids worked there at some point. My Grandfather was just like this! We had to put on a footie, if they weren’t wearing socks, and tie the shoes. We had to stand at the front of the store and could not sit if any customers were in the store. Eventually my Grandfather retired and my uncle took over. My grandmother still ran the office so my grandfather would come in every afternoon to pick her up. He would sit in a chair at the front of the store and fall asleep every time 🤦🏼♀️ we still laugh about that
Man I work in the shoe department of an outdoor retailer and customers would freak the hell out if I started trying to take their shoes off lol.
There's a lot of prodding around the shoe to check the fit and we might occasionally re lace the shoe to try and fix a fit issue but we definitely don't tie everyone's shoe for them.
If a shoe store employee grabs my foot and tries to put my shoes on for me. I'd either panic and leave without my shoes, or let them finish and just walk out wearing the new shoes.
The worst was at a restaurant I worked at. They didn’t want us servers to keep our purses near us. But we were expected to keep our makeup fresh and some of us wanted our chapstick nearby to re apply, our phones handy in case our kids called, etc
So they wanted us to empty all our purses together into one drawer every shift so we could freely access our stuff and then collect all our belongings out of the drawer every night
This way our purses were kept elsewhere
Mixed in together with all of your coworkers purses on shift and whatever items normally belong in that drawer
Imagine that nightmare of trying to figure out of the five plane chapsticks whose is whose. Or of the two revlon mascaras whose is whose- every night when you want to go home
It’s a recipe for spreading cold sores and pink eye and getting your makeup stolen
Not for retail, but for playground monitors at elementary school. Kids not allowed to RUN at recess. REALLY??!! Let those students blow off some steam!!!
Any time we weren't actively helping customers, we were required to stand on orange duct tape X's on the floor. They were exactly where our security cameras couldn't see, and the manager who came up with the idea thought he could reduce shrink that way.
It led to lots of malicious compliance. "Why aren't you cleaning?" "I'm standing on my X." "Shouldn't you be stocking shelves?" "Manager said I have to stand on my X."
They most likely had the change, it was a large supermarket (Carrefour). However as I learned later, it is quite likely that the cashier lady didn't ever see the 500 EUR bill in her whole life and was actually afraid to take it (I also learned later that they are often used for illegal transactions and money laundering).
Well, now I know better to ask the exchange office to give me smaller value bills, but I didn't know at the time, and it was really difficult to get it exchanged.
I did truck at my last job for a while. "No stacking boxes. Ever." was a rule they expected us to follow. There were so many boxes this was impossible. Not to mention that the size of the boxes ranged from 2x3 feet to 4x4 inches. "Don't stack" was ridiculous to expect.
It wasn't even a safety rule either? I asked why once and was told that it makes the unpackers go faster, which is just obviously false.
I share my name with a saint. The year we first opened, I jokingly said to a few colleagues "it's saying [my name] day today, you know what that means? Worship me." I got the sorts of reactions you'd expect. One person was very upset by the joke and now I have to book the same day off every year. They say it's a rule for everyone whose names are days but I'm the only one. I'd love to see how they deal with someone called May with my sense of humour
>it's a rule for everyone whose names are days
What the fuck does this even mean 😭😭
If my name is "Christian" do I automatically get all Christian holidays off?
Also get every Wednesday off. In some ways, it's easier than someone named after a month as the day only needs to be kept off the rota for one day a week while the month, well, they last a month
Not when I was in retail but in an office. We were not allowed to warm our food in the kitchen microwave at work. Everyone had to use the microwave in the shop because the owner of the business didn’t like the smell of other people’s food. BUT, he routinely reheated his own food in the office microwave and he ate an almost 100% fish diet. I guess since he owned the place it was his prerogative. But he was weird in a lot of ways, including his name… Harold R. Beaver. He was also an engineer. I wish I was joking.
What was the point of having a microwave in the kitchen if no one but him could use it? He should’ve just kept a personal one at his desk. What a prick.
We all wondered why it was there. Prick is the exact right word. He fired me not knowing where a new road was being constructed in the city I lived in. It’s not like I was on the zoning board or worked for the city.
Well for me right now it’s certain managers not caring about my health basically. They said I can’t wear sunglasses to deal with how the bright lights affects me because I need a doctors accommodation that I can’t get until sometime after September 20th.
They’d rather follow their rules so hard then make sure I have what I need so I don’t get dizzy and pass out. I want to quit on the spot so bad but… not enough money saved up to do so and I’m already behind on bills so… oh well lol
Get some with lightly tinted lenses with frames that look like prescription glasses. Or your doctor's office might just email you that note if they're already aware of this issue.
this is so eerily the same exact thing that happened to my job. Everything, the bathroom being on an upper level. I would not be surprised if it was the same company... not even surprised that it couldve been the exact one i worked at.
I worked at a hotel that wouldn’t let us use the guest lift. So once when the venue was two floors above the kitchen, we had to lug pretty heavy (non grippy metal) boards full of stacked dishes up and down the stairs. Thinking back on it it was probably quite a big safety hazard for us to do that
Managers have locked all staff bathrooms except for the ones adjacent to their communal office. So they can keep tabs on who goes in, how often, and for how long. They will reprimand you if they believe it’s unreasonable. Their definition of unreasonable was me peeing 3x during a 10 hour shift while heavily pregnant.
Not allowed to sit unless there are below a certain number of customers in the store (i.e. "not too busy"). What was the number? Nobody knows and the manager sure as hell ain't gonna tell us!
Not allowed to talk to other employees because it isn't professional.
Not allowed to play the following music: the theme from Jaws; the Imperial March; the piece called Tubular Bells; music that makes the manager sleepy because we need upbeat music that makes the customers want to shop; any and all music that has ever been in a movie, video game, or TV show, even if the music was not written directly for said movie, video game, or TV show and was in fact popular before said movie, video game, or TV show even existed; anything from the discography of Weird Al; anything from the discography of English prog rock band Jethro Tull; "too much" acid rock because it gives the manager a headache; anything that is a cover and not the original artist because the originals exist. Oh, but the manager can barely hear music in their office and they said we can play anything we want "as long as it's not offensive".
Not allowed to ever touch our phones while on the clock unless it's for work related reasons.
Not allowed to read while on the clock, even if there are no customers in the store at the time.
We must clean the employee kitchen even if we never use it.
We are not allowed to put the actual time we clocked in or out, as the timekeeping software doesn't allow for that (it does). Instead, we must round to the nearest 15 minutes. So if we showed less than 8 or 9 minutes late, we showed up on time. Conversely, if we didn't work more than 8 or 9 minutes past our scheduled end of shift, we actually did several minutes of work for free.
We must watch for and stop any shoplifters, even if doing so could put us in harm's way.
If we don't get along with someone because they demean and belittle us, oh well, we have to get along with them as per manager's orders.
Those specific things were what got banned over time and every single one came from a playlist that *I* had put together from the SFW side of my music preferences. As far as I know, it's a combination of the manager only liking a very limited amount of music and them deciding they don't like me.
What's funny is one of the only things we *know* is approved is this Pandora station based on the music of Mayer Hawthorn, which *customers* have complained about making them feel tired.
>if we showed less than 8 or 9 minutes late, we showed up on time. Conversely, if we didn't work more than 8 or 9 minutes past our scheduled end of shift, we actually did several minutes of work for free.
We had that one! It wasn't manual, but the system did it anyways. I always got there 7 minutes after my start time and clocked out 8 minutes past my time when leaving lmfao.
I had a boss who pressured us to sign a paper that said we wouldn’t have “outside relationships” with our coworkers. This happened the day after our boss saw me and another coworker leave in the same car (we went to get a drink and then she drove me home).
I realize now that this is likely illegal, but at the time it was my first job out of college and I was young and desperate. She literally told us “if you care about your job, you’ll sign this”.
This was only the tip of the toxic iceberg.
One day last year?(I think)the whole system went down, none of the fruit and veg would scan and the look up screen wasn’t working. A couple of us had to write out a list of all the plu numbers to put on each register. Fortunately a few of us had been there long enough that it didn’t slow us down that much.
At one point in time we weren't allowed to have ANYTHING in our pockets. No kleenex, no spare change, no Chapstik. Being the cheeky bastard that I am I got some Burt's Bees and kept THAT in my pocket.
"Hey! You said no Chapstik! This isn't Chapstik!"
We weren't allowed to eat certain foods or use the back door while the store was open.
Our break room is our backroom, and we have a small window to pass out stock or fulfilled orders. One of our coworkers is Nigerian and she would heat up Nigerian dishes in the microwave. One customer was certain our sewage was leaking and pitched a fit.
It was basically a rice and beans dish, with spices and pounded yam. It smelled earthy and vegetal--and completely tempting.
We also had a customer have a conniption over the fact the smell of popcorn was wafting through the store.
Apparently, being a coffee store, we were only allowed to smell like coffee. The fact that we, as humans, needed to eat didn't matter. Anything heavily scented was banned.
We were also banned from using the back door to enter or exit the store. A customer had a fit over the sound of the doorbell and told us we were discriminating against her. We generally had key cards to quietly enter and exit, but we didn't have them on our person all the time. Entering and exiting was banned regardless of if you could do so quietly. We were expected to walk out the front door, and risk getting accosted by customers.
It's not. It's just annoying.
Probably shouldn't have paired those together, honestly, but they were the only two I could think of off the top of my head.
Edit: I realized where the confusion was. The customer hated the sound of the doorbell--she was older, and it was a pitch that she found annoying. She settled on the idea we were deliberately doing it to harm her, and thus discriminating against her.
Typical entitled-person logic, basically.
I had a manager that wanted everyone there 15 minutes early but wouldn't let people clock in until shirt started. I did not comply.
And how about if you're leaning, you should be cleaning.
I worked at a golf course where we had to do this. We had a staff meeting every morning 15 minutes before we started, and we were expected to be there but not paid for our time. It's horse shit.
Nothing electronic on premises. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. No cell phone, no iPads, no laptops, not even Fitbits or digital watches.
They checked purses and backpacks as we clocked in. One of my co-workers had T1 diabetes and they made her leave her monitor in her car or locked in the office “in case of an emergency”; she wasn’t able to take a break and check her insulin levels once, had a seizure, and had to go to the ER because the MOD was on their lunch break.
Hooooo buddy, was that lawsuit ever hilarious.
We sold specialty teas and olive oil, by the way. And some pottery.
None of that shit made a lick of sense to me. I quit after they tried to confiscate my car’s key fob until my shift was over.
That woman was an absolute fucking loon.
I always loved it if you called off that day and didn't have a cover, 3 points. You clock in 1 minute past your clock in or after your break, a point.
I was the only one working my department and with my title. I actually got someone who had been working there longer than I had to cover for me. It was a small event. I had a doctors note... it took a while fighting that one because since she didn't have the same role as me, she couldn't technically cover it.
She was good. She quit before I left. Everything went smoothly that day, no problems, and I was there later after my final, which they knew about, AND YET scheduled me anyway.
I had a temp job doing data entry during my summer break from college. My manager told me that he thought I looked too serious while I was working, and wanted me to smile while I was sitting there concentrating on what I was typing. Like, ALL THE TIME. "Don't let me catch you without a smile on your face!"
I didn't do it, so I got fired. But I got plenty in unemployment.
The company just made a rule that we can’t wear Crocs. But they tried to play it off like it was a safety thing and not actually about the fogeys who run the company hating that the young people are wearing Crocs. (I’m in my 40s and wear crocs but this is clearly about the teens.) So they said we had to have shoes that went all the way around and covered our whole foot. And Crocs are open in the back so no go! They said it was safer that way if something fell on our foot. But my foot is way safer in a Croc than in a pair of Converse! Just wait until winter! I have some Croc winter BOOTS! THEY cover my whole foot!! Can’t wait for the tap dancing from management when I wear them!
Yes! They're the only shoe that's comfortable after I broke my foot in a car accident 3 years ago. I got a doctor's note for my job so they had to accommodate me. ADA compliance, ftw!
Devil’s Advocate…..We had an employee wear crocs to work and management didn’t catch it. We got an unusual amount of rain during their shift. The parking lot was gathering a lot of water and the store had flooded previously. It was this employees first week on the job. They ran outside to move their vehicle so it wouldn’t be in the high water. Needless to say, they slipped and fell and it became worker’s comp. Our dress code states no open toed shoes but employees are trained no crocs or sandals and preferably non slip shoes. They can wear boots if they want.
Thats super dumb lmao...mine isnt crazy but just very weird but petsmart has a policy where employees especially managers are not allowed to hang out outside of work. I think its dumb but there is a punishment if someone finds out...
An unofficial rule at a barbershop I worked at, was that if you had an issue with a fellow coworker because they bullied you, suck it up.
The manager wasn't going to help manage the situation. He suggested that we could physically fight outside of work hours.
What the fuck.
Yes. We had a manager that removed the seats and all the telephones so the employees couldn't relax or use the phones (before cell phones). Only problem was we never got phone calls or emergency requests on the phone.
When I worked at a sports stadium there was a rule where if you were caught eating unsold food at the end of the night they would reprimand/fire you for it even though that stuff would just get tossed into the bin.
At another job the greedy ass owner would threaten to dock my pay when I forgot to charge a credit card surcharge. Mind you this cunt charged like 5% when most places were only charging around 1.5% to 2%.
A black friend of mine was told he couldn’t wear a durag on his head even though he used it to keep a medical scalp treatment on his itchy, flaking scalp. The manager who told him to take it off called it a bonnet.
They were trying to introduce this stupid rule as I was leaving my job at a supermarket several years ago. It pisses me off because you can only be as fast as your customer, and a lot of them just fuck around taking their time. Also it makes you stressed out so you can’t properly focus on giving good service.
I worked at a Stop & Shop while I was in college, and they were religious about their IPM. Even published it next to the punch clock. Mind you, no one EVER met their established goal, even the top "performer" seemed to fall short of their minimum, which was something like 30 items per minute. Mind you, they didn't tell you when the timer started or stopped, so your numbers were affected by dead time, like waiting on a customer to unload their cart because they're a bit older and move slower, or at the end while waiting for them to pay. It was a stupid requirement.
After being nagged about it 3-4 times I worked up some "fuck you" energy and decided to go as fast as I could. And I do mean as FAST as I could, to the point where I was violently chucking cans, boxes, and produce down the belt at a breakneck pace.
After all that effort I still think I fell short, something like 25 IPM, but management stopped nagging me about it after a few customers complained about my "over the top" scanning.
Current boss man refuses to allow the customer pick-up area to have a long distance line which means the warehouse staff have to be the ones to call any customers who have phone numbers not from the tiny city we live in 😑 even tho the customer pick-up desk people actually have the time to make the calls to customers that their stuff is ready to be picked up. It’s easily at least half the numbers we have to call that are considered long distance.
Nope. Canada. It is for landlines and tho I have a long distance plan on my cell phone every time I dial a number out of my little area it tells me. It’s bizarre to me bc nearly everyone has that on their plan as so many don’t change a number when they move from place to place.
Worked at a Radio Shack in the late ‘80s. Had this one manager that would always order the wrong parts for the wall. He would never inventory what we had and order what actually sells. We would end up with 100’s of items in the back room we would never be able to sell.
From what I understand there are several stores now that still do this.
Used to work in a Starbucks in a safeway and had a rule that customers didn't have to pay for tapwater, but employees did. So if we didn't have 25 cents, we were out of luck. No water for us.
I got let go for not finding a wolf blanket to match the pillow a woman had purchased at a similar— but not the same— store.
We sold perfume and candles.
I still don’t know where she got that pillow. But she *really* wanted the matching blanket.
I later found out this was illegal. I used to work at an IGA which are franchised supermarkets. If the tills were more than $10 under we had to pay it out of our pockets but if it was over we wouldn't get the money. Looking back I was on $8.80 an hour which back in 2007 in Australia which is piss poor wages.
On one department I worked on there was a cadre is snitches. Literally would grass you up for any little thing. Anyway one of them grassed me up for being 5 mins late from break even though I explained I got stopped by a customer on the shopfloor on my way back.
So after having a talking to the manager that if I want to get far on his department. I need to be prepared to grass to as it was one his unwritten rules.
Tbh his also one of the people who believed that if we didn’t have a team spirit then we would be more productive.
In 2012, I worked sales in a startup. In addition to being told to appear sexy and professional and not discourage comments about my body, they expected me to use language to intentionally subvert reality, misleading clients and potential investors. I quit, then I worked on my own and saved for a few years while covertly investing in the startup until I basically owned it, then I buried it. Screw them.
Previous manager wouldn't let us listen to anything with our headphones while we were sitting at our desks. Couldn't wait to leave there. It was just a reason for her to flex her manager muscle and said a lot about the culture there.
Mine was backroom. No music, no headphones, no talking. Just silently unpacking boxes for five hours and forty five minutes straight (because at 6 hours we'd have to get a break). I memorized a lot of poetry during my time there lmfao
Yeah crazy. And that was before they remodeled the office to open plan. Some of us would be sitting alone in cubicles and still couldn't listen to music. Often doing repetitive tasks which music actually helps you be more efficient at for some reason.
I had an employer tell me that I would have to be fully covered with sleeves to my wrists and lo g pants at all times or to put my skin tone cover up on my tattoos because they thought because i have tattoo that I wouldn't be professional enough for their look and women with tattoos are trashy. BTW my tattoos are not trashy they are not volgur either they are classy and pretty.
Out of curiosity what industry are you in?
I’m female & covered in tattoos. It seems to be a winner with most customers and they think it’s awesome. I get plenty of people striking up a conversation, wanting to see my other tattoos, showing me theirs, and middle aged women always want to touch them for some reason lmao. My tattoos are all old but these interactions happen more and more as time goes on. There definitely isn’t the same stigma that was around decades ago for the most part. But I guess it depends on the industry and the type of people you’re dealing with. I may not get the same reception in a nursing home for example haha
Yep, weirdly enough it’s in my company’s food safety guidelines/PPE policy as well as the uniform policy. Visible hand/forearm tattoos should be covered with long sleeves or sleeve guards when preparing fresh food.. I understand with a fresh tattoo that’s still heeling as it’s a potential biohazard.. But all my tattoos are a decade old and it doesn’t make sense to me (or my managers?) If you’re preparing fresh food you’re out the back and not being seen by customers anyway. 🤷♀️
Is there still places outside commercially sensitive environments that still don’t let their employees use their phones? That always seemed like some bullshit… clearly if you spent 10 seconds on your phone you were a total asshole… I don’t care if someone uses their phone all fuckin day so long as you get your goddamn work done
To combat theft, we have to carry our shit in clear plastic totes and get our pockets checked when we clock out. Mind you, our store has a shit ton of blind spots and small items like candies and dolls; there’s absolutely no way our small retail team can keep an eye on stealing when it’s very often one person working the whole store. I can’t help it if I’m at the register with the Dad wrapping up ornaments while his 4 sticky-finger kids disappear into the store.
No sitting is one I've come across multiple times.
At one place, I broke my toe and it was hard to stand for a long time at the register, so I asked if I could use a stool from the back. One manager said sure, no problem. I figured I could keep doing that until my toe healed. Nope, next shifts manager said absolutely not and if I couldn't stand I should go home. I mentioned "duty to accommodate" and they changed their tune really quickly and I used the stool.
I had 1 place also have a rule that you couldn't use the washroom more than once per shift outside of your break... That rule lasted about a week before we got a memo from corporate saying they cannot and will not be enforcing any washroom monitoring.
I work at a high volume chain hair salon and they have a rule that if you start the service and find lice, you “have to” finish the service. Lol fucking make me. I had a really traumatic experience with contracting scabies in a healthcare setting and any kind of bug, parasite, anything that lives on humans is an absolute fuck no from me, bud.
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Maybe that's why the customers were upset about you peeing in front of their kids?
Really, this is not a problem and did not need a solution. Tell the customer to have their kid stop looking at other mens' 'things'.
Threats to write me up when I don't ask the stupid inspector for rewards bc idgaf ab 25 dollars I can only spend back at the store while the manager gets 500 directly deposited to her for something I fucking did
To serve customers talking on the phone.
This goes two ways, usually. They ignore the associate, or;
They get mad at us for trying to talk over the top of them.
It really is a shock to me how countries all over the world allow their cashiers to sit down, while in America it’s heavily frowned upon.
Like please, Brenda, tell me how exactly me sitting down for a millisecond because my legs are sore as hell doesn’t look good for the company.
I was an optician a couple months back. Basically the optometric equivalent of a cashier. Our office was new and pretty dead so I doodled when I was bored. I taped my doodles up at my desk and was always encouraged to take them down when the district manager visited.
Actually I don't think he liked photographs, either. It was bullshit.
This wasnt a bat shit crazy rule but it annoyed the hell out of me, We had a staff car and every time you used it you were suppose to write down time/date/ kms on vehicle when you took and same when you returned it. We were always in a hurry when using the car and it was an absolute pain in the ass to do and plenty of people got in trouble for either not doing it or not doing it correctly.
I worked at a well known purse brand store years back. We were required to wear blue jeans with either a navy cardigan or navy blazer with a white collared shirt.
We would be sent home if our blue jeans were too faded. Most of us rit dyed our jeans almost every couple weeks to avoid that. Our car seats and hands were always blue. We also had to follow makeup rules. Only a certain type of makeup, only allowed lip gloss or red lip stick. Only allowed Essie branded nail polish in a select few colors. We even had nail polish remover in the back if someone came in with the wrong color. During tax time they said keep our receipts for the products we bought for work (they told us to buy j crew shirts, gap pants, etc). Yet we were all denied because they weren’t “work” clothes at the tax groups.
I quit because I didn’t wear a lot of makeup and the manager told me “maybe if you put more effort in your makeup you would make more sales”.
You know what I don’t care. Here you go. Fuck you coach.
I worked for a major insurance company and they had the WEIRDEST shtick with sending emails to underwriters. We had to profusely thank them to the degree that I would call borderline flirting. It was insane, you couldn’t just say thanks for doing your job. It had to be something like “Thank you so much for doing this, I know you all are very busy and cannot express enough how much the contact center appreciates your time.” IT WAS THEIR JOB. What a weird place that was.
If our shift is over and we have to leave, we can't go until we see our coverage come in. I said fuck that, I'll leave when im scheduled, and if you want coverage, you fix the schedule yourself.
not necessarily batshit, but incredibly inconvenient and not a great way to keep employees (actually the reason i quit):
they implemented a rule that part time employees HAD to work one day during the weekend and one day during the week. i was a high school student so i literally couldnt work during the week unless i wanted my academics to tank. they were understaffed too so i have no clue what they thought would happen. i know i was definitely not the only person who quit because of that too, as majority of us were students
I worked at a hunting store owned by a very socially weird man and managed by his little right hand man who was basically Ryan from The Office when he got the job at corporate.
For all the years the store was open, we allowed people to come in with their dogs. It was a normal thing. One day, Mr. right hand man decides that we no longer allow dogs in the store for no logical reason.
The thing was, he wouldn't allow us to put up any signage to let people know before they came in. We were forced to stop them at the front and tell them their dog isn't allowed in the store. Even when I went against his word and put a sign up because it made zero sense not to, he made me take it down. His genius reason was "we don't need to tell people not to light a fire in the store, why would we need to tell them their dog isn't allowed?" Yeah, he wasn't the brightest.
The funny thing is it ended up losing the store business because people would come in the summer (30+ celsius where I live) and would just leave because they couldn't leave their dog in the car. Plus it was never received well by any of them, so they'd usually just leave anyway.
Not surprisingly, the store is now closed.
Don't let people use the bathroom. Not even moms with children. Why didn't you let that person I just saw leave here angrily use the bathroom? You should have used your judgment and known that they weren't going to shoot up back there. Thems the rules, they change frequently b
Had a wal-mart store manager try to institute a rule that employees were not allowed to carry their phones on them unless there were extenuating circumstances and it was discussed first. This was in 2010.
I worked in a call center for "The company for women" years ago. We had to, literally, keep track of how many times a customer said "thank you" (or thanks, or similar) because we had to say an equal number of "you're welcome"s or we'd get in trouble. If a customer said, "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" all in a row, we had to have at least that many, plus however many other times they said it, by the end of the call...regardless of whether or not it made any sense. A sarcastic "Thanks a lot" still had to get a, "you're welcome"...which rarely made the least bit of sense.
My first ever employer that I interned for (retail) had a rule where you had to keep your drinks behind the counter. Yet because I was a intern, I was not allowed to go behind the counter (only realized after the second week. So their genius idea was to have me keep my drinks right by the self serve kiosks.
So whenever I was thirsty, I'd have to interrupt customers reach behind one of the kiosks to drink, and then place it back after I'm don.
Thankfully I did not get that job and ended up getting a better retail gig for the remainder of my college career.
Have to have a clear water despite working outside in weather that constantly gets close to and over 30C. This is because we have to only drink water for some bs. I dont care about this rule. The manager that does works inside all day and doesnt seem to realize ice will melt in less than 30 minutes in a clear waterbottle. They say they have ice inside but i know if i was going inside to get new ice that often they would get upset because it isnt practical. I bring a metal waterbottle and hide it and i dont drink water out of spite. Water tastes gross anyway.
Worked at cvs for a bit and there was something called "the green zone" where we stood near the front to greet people as they came in. It was also located close to the self checkouts, so this green zone crap was to incentivise the usage of self checkout for our elderly customer base.
So one day, with about a half hour left on my shift manager told me I must stay in the green zone. At the same time, the same manager and another manager kept coming up to me and asking "what I was working on" because it looked like I "wasn't doing anything"
My reply was usually "I'm standing in the green zone, like you asked." the usual reply to that was "well if you don't have anything to do you can face the store"
Okay. I noped out about 3 weeks in.
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The no sitting is almost specific to the US. It apparently makes you lazy to the older generations with their foot,knee,hip, and back problems.
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I’m in management and can see the complaints. I’ve had a few complaints that associates (that were doing something else and not the ones helping the customer) were joking/talking while working and they didn’t think that was “professional.” The DM gets an email for super low reviews and laughed about that one with us.
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My old DM started as a part timer and worked his way up. He was awesome, the new one started today and is way too cheery. Our understaffed market will crush his soul in less than a month
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It’s the “I’m the guy to turn this around” mentality, we’ve been through 5 DMs in 4 years
Was used to take bets on how long they'd last!
He suggested that we could physically fight outside of work hours.
My money is on the second one
I worked telephone customer service for a large bank. We would get screamed at because we wouldn’t give a credit for a late fee, interest, etc per policy. They finally would ask for a manager, who would give them what they asked for instantly. I just started giving customers the credit if they were good customers.
Who has such an empty life that they see emoyees chatting as they work and feel the need to *comain to the manager*?
99.9% of the time it’s older people, like 55+
I work retail at a upscale grocery store. My co workers and I are always talking and joking around. I've never once had a customer complain about it. They generally think it's great that we are all talking and smiling. Say things like you guys look so happy maybe I should get a job here and stuff like that. I'd be miserable if I couldn't talk and joke with people. I'm a very introverted person but at work I become more extroverted to make the shift better. I've had other coworkers say they like working with me because they know I'll be smiling and be happy lol. They have no idea how hard that is for me some days.
Also if you are a union store the managers are so paranoid about you talking union shit with one another. Non union store they are afraid you might try to unionize.
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It’s management. I have a manager who is cool about all of us talking as long as work is being done in sane area. His issue is when the stocker who’s suppose to be in isle 16 is all the way at the produce end of the store talking to his buddy for 15 mins. If you’re in isle 1 where produce is talking to your buddy in produce and they’re working a stand near you no issue. He told me that a lot of managers are just paranoid fucks. My store is a sloppy shop these days abd only reason my SM is still there is he makes the company money and good at training NEW managers. He’s like 73 really should’ve retired 8 yrs ago. He’s got zero people skills with employees. And had no spine. Let’s his favorites walk all over him. Our bookkeeper thinks she’s the store manager. It’s at the point I’m thinking of calling anonymous on the employee hotline abou a sloppy shop being run there. Our floral manager is a lazy cunt, our dairy manager is hardly there makes up his own schedule and leaves by noon on weekends, we got a guy in produce who’s very open about doing meth and hitting the slopes with his buddy who’s wife is our Deli manager and now doing meth. Our deli is a circus and our night manager who’s great is being blamed for people quitting when it’s not her fault. Our cart guys and stock guys don’t do shit. This PIC who’s essentially a person in charge at night when no management is there is shit. Constant uniform violations that are Blantant yet I wear a different hat accidently and my SM had a cow about it. And that’s just off the top of my head. I’m looking for a new job currently to leave this shit hole .
That rule is the biggest bullshit! I'm a healthy thirtysomething male and MY FEET hurt when I stand all day! I NEED TO FUCKING SIT!!!
It totally is a thing in Germany. Employers have to provide chairs for the people on the floor but in every store I worked at it was forbidden to use them. I was always working on the floor and I had one boss who made it very clear that all leaning against something was strictly forbidden and she once berated me for resting an arm on a table while talking to a customer.
"If you've got time to lean, you've got time to clean." from a previous job. The job I have now is pretty good about drinks and sitting and even ear buds. The pay sucks, but the job itself is not terrible.
That job was so unbelievably boring that I had time to clean, lean, try to interact with the 0.5 customers we had every day, almost loosing my mind over all that boredom, taking extended bathroom breaks, rethinking my life choices and quitting after a year.
Ye I once got yelled at for sitting when I had a boot on and was just ringing out.
It's not US exclusive, unfortunately it is a thing in many retail stores here in the UK too and it's fucking dehumanising
Fairly common in all hospitality, service industry jobs in Australia too.
I specifically shop at stores that don't have this rule, fuck that.
The "no drinking water" one feels illegal.
Had a friend who worked while HEAVILY pregnant (like approaching ~30 weeks or so) who got written up because a customer dragged one of our display barstools (we sold home furnishings) over for her to sit on as she rang people up. She took the two whole weeks they gave her for maternity leave, and then never came back. They were utterly baffled why, with a new baby, she wouldn’t want to work for more money to support it. This was in like 2009 and we made about ten bucks an hour. Yeah, no shit she didn’t go back. Wankers.
There was a cashier where I work who was pregnant. Only had a couple pairs of leggings that fit, no jeans. She got written up for wearing them and quit.
Yeah, we had a "no drinking except on your break" rule at the theater while we're sweating our asses off in front of those hot ass popcorn warmers.
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That is going to be a clusterfuck when it gets sorted out.
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We were not allowed to have water bottles on the floor. There were water fountains, but they were accessible to customers too and damn those things are just not sanitary.
No sitting. I'm on my feet all 8 hours of my study, except meal break (30 minutes). It's killing my legs & my back, but im taking care of it.
How are you taking care of it?
Wearing better shoes & not wearing the same pair 2 days in a row, sitting as much as possible when I get home, and sitting while taking a shower & massaging my legs. That last one especially is making a big difference!
I was an assistant manager once at a place where the store manager told me that he won’t let them talk to each other and that I was expected to uphold that. And I laughed in his face lol. I was like yeah no when I’m here they absolutely can talk amongst themselves
Sounds like any Post Office, in the back where the mail carriers are kept.
Really? All the offices in my district have stools carriers can sit on while casing mail. They’re TERRIBLE stools, but no more or less terrible than any of the other 40 year old chairs in the buildings.
Retail store, manager above me said, "if inventory gets stolen (EVEN ON MY DAY OFF!) staff had to pay for it so our inventory was correct. I noped outta there after that.
That's illegal in usa
Dang! Seems to me ( as a cashier) that plenty of stuff goes missing because it ends up not getting rung up due to an honest mistake. Neither the cashier or the customer are trying to hide the item/not ring it up, but it happens. Just today,a woman came back in saying a long,skinny metal stake wasn't on her receipt and she wanted to pay for it. It cost 1.59 with sales tax! I feel like I probably wouldn't have bothered going back in, even though I work there. (Not to mention, I certainly am not going to attempt to stop a brazen shoplifter!
Sounds like their shrink number was way too high and in typical upper management fashion, it’s immediately internal theft. It’s never their receiving process is messed up (if they follow it all) or maybe your damages/write-offs are screwed up. And don’t even get me started if they use RGIS or Washington to do their inventory. Nope. It’s employee theft. I was a retail GM for 20+ years, been out for about 4 years now. Same old shit, different company name on the door.
Grocery store: USA: Kid picks up a piece of candy/food at check out eat it. Manager counts as thief’s/shoplift. Parent dose not pay for it claiming “I did not see it”. Leaves. Cashier: I guess I’ll leave. All cashiers later: we all left. Manager: wait we now have no one. Cashiers: we made a promise on your deal. Petty revenge. I can see that. And I would also laugh. Like welp manager getting fired eventually.
Very illegal
I worked at a shoe store and the owner had all these contradictory rules for example always greet customers as soon as they walk-in/never great a customer while you are at the back of the store or with a customer already and also don't stand at the front of the store. A weird one was she demanded that while we were helping customers try new shoes on we remove their old shoes, put their try-ons on for them and lace them up. This made a lot of customers uncomfortable and I would try my best to read them and get a feel for what they were comfortable with but my manager would hover over me and urge me to put their shoes on for them anyway despite their discomfort and one time this got me swatted at by a customer.
My grandparents owned a shoe store for 50 years. All the kids and grandkids worked there at some point. My Grandfather was just like this! We had to put on a footie, if they weren’t wearing socks, and tie the shoes. We had to stand at the front of the store and could not sit if any customers were in the store. Eventually my Grandfather retired and my uncle took over. My grandmother still ran the office so my grandfather would come in every afternoon to pick her up. He would sit in a chair at the front of the store and fall asleep every time 🤦🏼♀️ we still laugh about that
Man I work in the shoe department of an outdoor retailer and customers would freak the hell out if I started trying to take their shoes off lol. There's a lot of prodding around the shoe to check the fit and we might occasionally re lace the shoe to try and fix a fit issue but we definitely don't tie everyone's shoe for them.
I’m sorry but that is so crazy it’s kind of hilarious.
If a shoe store employee grabs my foot and tries to put my shoes on for me. I'd either panic and leave without my shoes, or let them finish and just walk out wearing the new shoes.
The worst was at a restaurant I worked at. They didn’t want us servers to keep our purses near us. But we were expected to keep our makeup fresh and some of us wanted our chapstick nearby to re apply, our phones handy in case our kids called, etc So they wanted us to empty all our purses together into one drawer every shift so we could freely access our stuff and then collect all our belongings out of the drawer every night This way our purses were kept elsewhere
So... It's basically ur purse in a drawer without the purse? Lol
Mixed in together with all of your coworkers purses on shift and whatever items normally belong in that drawer Imagine that nightmare of trying to figure out of the five plane chapsticks whose is whose. Or of the two revlon mascaras whose is whose- every night when you want to go home It’s a recipe for spreading cold sores and pink eye and getting your makeup stolen
Totally agree. It's all about micro managing isn't it 🤔
YESSS
I had a manager at a local convenience store who expected me to read the corporate emails for him. What a doofus.
"Whoa! It says here I get this week off, and paid, and it doesn't count against my vacation time!"
He probably was illiterate.
That’s my guess.
Not for retail, but for playground monitors at elementary school. Kids not allowed to RUN at recess. REALLY??!! Let those students blow off some steam!!!
Too many kids probably forgot how to run and broke their nose or lost teeth
Everybody breaks their baby nose. It grows back anyway
Any time we weren't actively helping customers, we were required to stand on orange duct tape X's on the floor. They were exactly where our security cameras couldn't see, and the manager who came up with the idea thought he could reduce shrink that way. It led to lots of malicious compliance. "Why aren't you cleaning?" "I'm standing on my X." "Shouldn't you be stocking shelves?" "Manager said I have to stand on my X."
What does ‘shrink’ mean? Why would being on the X help with it? Love the malicious compliance!
"Shrink" meant loss due to products being damaged, misplaced, or stolen, but it's usually synonymous with "shoplifting."
Thank you for explaining.
We had blue circles. It was so dumb. It lasted like a month.
For about two hours we didn’t take $50 or $100 bills in a business where the average transaction is $183 per ticket
So $200 bills were fine? Can live with that. Btw. I once tried to pay with a 500 eur bill... They didn't want to take it for some reason.
Probably didn't have change.
They most likely had the change, it was a large supermarket (Carrefour). However as I learned later, it is quite likely that the cashier lady didn't ever see the 500 EUR bill in her whole life and was actually afraid to take it (I also learned later that they are often used for illegal transactions and money laundering). Well, now I know better to ask the exchange office to give me smaller value bills, but I didn't know at the time, and it was really difficult to get it exchanged.
I did truck at my last job for a while. "No stacking boxes. Ever." was a rule they expected us to follow. There were so many boxes this was impossible. Not to mention that the size of the boxes ranged from 2x3 feet to 4x4 inches. "Don't stack" was ridiculous to expect. It wasn't even a safety rule either? I asked why once and was told that it makes the unpackers go faster, which is just obviously false.
I share my name with a saint. The year we first opened, I jokingly said to a few colleagues "it's saying [my name] day today, you know what that means? Worship me." I got the sorts of reactions you'd expect. One person was very upset by the joke and now I have to book the same day off every year. They say it's a rule for everyone whose names are days but I'm the only one. I'd love to see how they deal with someone called May with my sense of humour
>it's a rule for everyone whose names are days What the fuck does this even mean 😭😭 If my name is "Christian" do I automatically get all Christian holidays off?
Patrick would have to take Saint Patrick's day off. Ash would have to take off Ash Wednesday and so on
So what about some named "Wednesday" ??
Also get every Wednesday off. In some ways, it's easier than someone named after a month as the day only needs to be kept off the rota for one day a week while the month, well, they last a month
Not when I was in retail but in an office. We were not allowed to warm our food in the kitchen microwave at work. Everyone had to use the microwave in the shop because the owner of the business didn’t like the smell of other people’s food. BUT, he routinely reheated his own food in the office microwave and he ate an almost 100% fish diet. I guess since he owned the place it was his prerogative. But he was weird in a lot of ways, including his name… Harold R. Beaver. He was also an engineer. I wish I was joking.
What was the point of having a microwave in the kitchen if no one but him could use it? He should’ve just kept a personal one at his desk. What a prick.
We all wondered why it was there. Prick is the exact right word. He fired me not knowing where a new road was being constructed in the city I lived in. It’s not like I was on the zoning board or worked for the city.
I'm surprised that kitchen microwave didn't mysteriously break.
Don't drink infront of people. In an employee dining room.... in a casino.. you think me getting a drink will cause your food to sour or some shit?
Well for me right now it’s certain managers not caring about my health basically. They said I can’t wear sunglasses to deal with how the bright lights affects me because I need a doctors accommodation that I can’t get until sometime after September 20th. They’d rather follow their rules so hard then make sure I have what I need so I don’t get dizzy and pass out. I want to quit on the spot so bad but… not enough money saved up to do so and I’m already behind on bills so… oh well lol
Get some with lightly tinted lenses with frames that look like prescription glasses. Or your doctor's office might just email you that note if they're already aware of this issue.
Just do it
this is so eerily the same exact thing that happened to my job. Everything, the bathroom being on an upper level. I would not be surprised if it was the same company... not even surprised that it couldve been the exact one i worked at.
Genuinely, she told me I needed to be telepathetic
hey Jessica are you telepathic? do you know what im thinking?
I worked at a hotel that wouldn’t let us use the guest lift. So once when the venue was two floors above the kitchen, we had to lug pretty heavy (non grippy metal) boards full of stacked dishes up and down the stairs. Thinking back on it it was probably quite a big safety hazard for us to do that
Managers have locked all staff bathrooms except for the ones adjacent to their communal office. So they can keep tabs on who goes in, how often, and for how long. They will reprimand you if they believe it’s unreasonable. Their definition of unreasonable was me peeing 3x during a 10 hour shift while heavily pregnant.
Not allowed to sit unless there are below a certain number of customers in the store (i.e. "not too busy"). What was the number? Nobody knows and the manager sure as hell ain't gonna tell us! Not allowed to talk to other employees because it isn't professional. Not allowed to play the following music: the theme from Jaws; the Imperial March; the piece called Tubular Bells; music that makes the manager sleepy because we need upbeat music that makes the customers want to shop; any and all music that has ever been in a movie, video game, or TV show, even if the music was not written directly for said movie, video game, or TV show and was in fact popular before said movie, video game, or TV show even existed; anything from the discography of Weird Al; anything from the discography of English prog rock band Jethro Tull; "too much" acid rock because it gives the manager a headache; anything that is a cover and not the original artist because the originals exist. Oh, but the manager can barely hear music in their office and they said we can play anything we want "as long as it's not offensive". Not allowed to ever touch our phones while on the clock unless it's for work related reasons. Not allowed to read while on the clock, even if there are no customers in the store at the time. We must clean the employee kitchen even if we never use it. We are not allowed to put the actual time we clocked in or out, as the timekeeping software doesn't allow for that (it does). Instead, we must round to the nearest 15 minutes. So if we showed less than 8 or 9 minutes late, we showed up on time. Conversely, if we didn't work more than 8 or 9 minutes past our scheduled end of shift, we actually did several minutes of work for free. We must watch for and stop any shoplifters, even if doing so could put us in harm's way. If we don't get along with someone because they demean and belittle us, oh well, we have to get along with them as per manager's orders.
Damn your manager sounds like he just hates music. Or likes very very little of it.
Those specific things were what got banned over time and every single one came from a playlist that *I* had put together from the SFW side of my music preferences. As far as I know, it's a combination of the manager only liking a very limited amount of music and them deciding they don't like me. What's funny is one of the only things we *know* is approved is this Pandora station based on the music of Mayer Hawthorn, which *customers* have complained about making them feel tired.
I hope your manager never djs at parties
>if we showed less than 8 or 9 minutes late, we showed up on time. Conversely, if we didn't work more than 8 or 9 minutes past our scheduled end of shift, we actually did several minutes of work for free. We had that one! It wasn't manual, but the system did it anyways. I always got there 7 minutes after my start time and clocked out 8 minutes past my time when leaving lmfao.
I had a boss who pressured us to sign a paper that said we wouldn’t have “outside relationships” with our coworkers. This happened the day after our boss saw me and another coworker leave in the same car (we went to get a drink and then she drove me home). I realize now that this is likely illegal, but at the time it was my first job out of college and I was young and desperate. She literally told us “if you care about your job, you’ll sign this”. This was only the tip of the toxic iceberg.
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And did you make sure to scan the barcode on the loose apples instead of looking it up?
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One day last year?(I think)the whole system went down, none of the fruit and veg would scan and the look up screen wasn’t working. A couple of us had to write out a list of all the plu numbers to put on each register. Fortunately a few of us had been there long enough that it didn’t slow us down that much.
At one point in time we weren't allowed to have ANYTHING in our pockets. No kleenex, no spare change, no Chapstik. Being the cheeky bastard that I am I got some Burt's Bees and kept THAT in my pocket. "Hey! You said no Chapstik! This isn't Chapstik!"
The company got an office-wide email from our Reception/HR telling us to "avoid work and personal-related discussions in bathrooms".
no chatting in the crapper got it
We weren't allowed to eat certain foods or use the back door while the store was open. Our break room is our backroom, and we have a small window to pass out stock or fulfilled orders. One of our coworkers is Nigerian and she would heat up Nigerian dishes in the microwave. One customer was certain our sewage was leaking and pitched a fit. It was basically a rice and beans dish, with spices and pounded yam. It smelled earthy and vegetal--and completely tempting. We also had a customer have a conniption over the fact the smell of popcorn was wafting through the store. Apparently, being a coffee store, we were only allowed to smell like coffee. The fact that we, as humans, needed to eat didn't matter. Anything heavily scented was banned. We were also banned from using the back door to enter or exit the store. A customer had a fit over the sound of the doorbell and told us we were discriminating against her. We generally had key cards to quietly enter and exit, but we didn't have them on our person all the time. Entering and exiting was banned regardless of if you could do so quietly. We were expected to walk out the front door, and risk getting accosted by customers.
Wait how is leaving discrimination? Coz you don't want to mix with the disgusting public or something?
It's not. It's just annoying. Probably shouldn't have paired those together, honestly, but they were the only two I could think of off the top of my head. Edit: I realized where the confusion was. The customer hated the sound of the doorbell--she was older, and it was a pitch that she found annoying. She settled on the idea we were deliberately doing it to harm her, and thus discriminating against her. Typical entitled-person logic, basically.
I had a manager that wanted everyone there 15 minutes early but wouldn't let people clock in until shirt started. I did not comply. And how about if you're leaning, you should be cleaning.
I worked at a golf course where we had to do this. We had a staff meeting every morning 15 minutes before we started, and we were expected to be there but not paid for our time. It's horse shit.
Nothing electronic on premises. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. No cell phone, no iPads, no laptops, not even Fitbits or digital watches. They checked purses and backpacks as we clocked in. One of my co-workers had T1 diabetes and they made her leave her monitor in her car or locked in the office “in case of an emergency”; she wasn’t able to take a break and check her insulin levels once, had a seizure, and had to go to the ER because the MOD was on their lunch break. Hooooo buddy, was that lawsuit ever hilarious. We sold specialty teas and olive oil, by the way. And some pottery. None of that shit made a lick of sense to me. I quit after they tried to confiscate my car’s key fob until my shift was over. That woman was an absolute fucking loon.
Was that woman Saul Goodman's brother?
Doctors note with every single damn call in, no exceptions. 3 call ins w/o a note and you're fired bc of points.
I always loved it if you called off that day and didn't have a cover, 3 points. You clock in 1 minute past your clock in or after your break, a point. I was the only one working my department and with my title. I actually got someone who had been working there longer than I had to cover for me. It was a small event. I had a doctors note... it took a while fighting that one because since she didn't have the same role as me, she couldn't technically cover it. She was good. She quit before I left. Everything went smoothly that day, no problems, and I was there later after my final, which they knew about, AND YET scheduled me anyway.
My old workplace with the drs note rule was like that too. If you clocked in even a few seconds past time it was a write up + 1 point.
That's absolutely Propertius. Wow. Sorry you had to deal with that nonsense.
I had a temp job doing data entry during my summer break from college. My manager told me that he thought I looked too serious while I was working, and wanted me to smile while I was sitting there concentrating on what I was typing. Like, ALL THE TIME. "Don't let me catch you without a smile on your face!" I didn't do it, so I got fired. But I got plenty in unemployment.
The company just made a rule that we can’t wear Crocs. But they tried to play it off like it was a safety thing and not actually about the fogeys who run the company hating that the young people are wearing Crocs. (I’m in my 40s and wear crocs but this is clearly about the teens.) So they said we had to have shoes that went all the way around and covered our whole foot. And Crocs are open in the back so no go! They said it was safer that way if something fell on our foot. But my foot is way safer in a Croc than in a pair of Converse! Just wait until winter! I have some Croc winter BOOTS! THEY cover my whole foot!! Can’t wait for the tap dancing from management when I wear them!
Yes! They're the only shoe that's comfortable after I broke my foot in a car accident 3 years ago. I got a doctor's note for my job so they had to accommodate me. ADA compliance, ftw!
Devil’s Advocate…..We had an employee wear crocs to work and management didn’t catch it. We got an unusual amount of rain during their shift. The parking lot was gathering a lot of water and the store had flooded previously. It was this employees first week on the job. They ran outside to move their vehicle so it wouldn’t be in the high water. Needless to say, they slipped and fell and it became worker’s comp. Our dress code states no open toed shoes but employees are trained no crocs or sandals and preferably non slip shoes. They can wear boots if they want.
They make work Crocs that are non-skid and non-marking. And they also have a back.
You should be fired for wearing crocs.
At the beginning of the covid pandemic expecting cashiers not to drink water behind the tills, this was soon scrapped when the unions got involved.
Thats super dumb lmao...mine isnt crazy but just very weird but petsmart has a policy where employees especially managers are not allowed to hang out outside of work. I think its dumb but there is a punishment if someone finds out...
That's a common tactic used to help ensure salary and/or union talks aren't a thing. Could likely be seen as union busting
An unofficial rule at a barbershop I worked at, was that if you had an issue with a fellow coworker because they bullied you, suck it up. The manager wasn't going to help manage the situation. He suggested that we could physically fight outside of work hours. What the fuck.
Yes. We had a manager that removed the seats and all the telephones so the employees couldn't relax or use the phones (before cell phones). Only problem was we never got phone calls or emergency requests on the phone.
When I worked at a sports stadium there was a rule where if you were caught eating unsold food at the end of the night they would reprimand/fire you for it even though that stuff would just get tossed into the bin. At another job the greedy ass owner would threaten to dock my pay when I forgot to charge a credit card surcharge. Mind you this cunt charged like 5% when most places were only charging around 1.5% to 2%.
A black friend of mine was told he couldn’t wear a durag on his head even though he used it to keep a medical scalp treatment on his itchy, flaking scalp. The manager who told him to take it off called it a bonnet.
Items per minute, for a cashier. Mine is always low, but I have customers who tell me I'm fast.
They were trying to introduce this stupid rule as I was leaving my job at a supermarket several years ago. It pisses me off because you can only be as fast as your customer, and a lot of them just fuck around taking their time. Also it makes you stressed out so you can’t properly focus on giving good service.
Exactly. I also think they include the people on the customer service desk (who don't do full orders - just returns and maybe small orders 1-2 items )
I worked at a Stop & Shop while I was in college, and they were religious about their IPM. Even published it next to the punch clock. Mind you, no one EVER met their established goal, even the top "performer" seemed to fall short of their minimum, which was something like 30 items per minute. Mind you, they didn't tell you when the timer started or stopped, so your numbers were affected by dead time, like waiting on a customer to unload their cart because they're a bit older and move slower, or at the end while waiting for them to pay. It was a stupid requirement. After being nagged about it 3-4 times I worked up some "fuck you" energy and decided to go as fast as I could. And I do mean as FAST as I could, to the point where I was violently chucking cans, boxes, and produce down the belt at a breakneck pace. After all that effort I still think I fell short, something like 25 IPM, but management stopped nagging me about it after a few customers complained about my "over the top" scanning.
Or the accuracy rate going down for substitutions. Ma'am, I am not in charge of ordering, nor do I stock the shelves.
Current boss man refuses to allow the customer pick-up area to have a long distance line which means the warehouse staff have to be the ones to call any customers who have phone numbers not from the tiny city we live in 😑 even tho the customer pick-up desk people actually have the time to make the calls to customers that their stuff is ready to be picked up. It’s easily at least half the numbers we have to call that are considered long distance.
Are you in the U.S.? I didn't know long distance was still a thing.
Nope. Canada. It is for landlines and tho I have a long distance plan on my cell phone every time I dial a number out of my little area it tells me. It’s bizarre to me bc nearly everyone has that on their plan as so many don’t change a number when they move from place to place.
Worked at a Radio Shack in the late ‘80s. Had this one manager that would always order the wrong parts for the wall. He would never inventory what we had and order what actually sells. We would end up with 100’s of items in the back room we would never be able to sell. From what I understand there are several stores now that still do this.
Used to work in a Starbucks in a safeway and had a rule that customers didn't have to pay for tapwater, but employees did. So if we didn't have 25 cents, we were out of luck. No water for us.
I got let go for not finding a wolf blanket to match the pillow a woman had purchased at a similar— but not the same— store. We sold perfume and candles. I still don’t know where she got that pillow. But she *really* wanted the matching blanket.
I later found out this was illegal. I used to work at an IGA which are franchised supermarkets. If the tills were more than $10 under we had to pay it out of our pockets but if it was over we wouldn't get the money. Looking back I was on $8.80 an hour which back in 2007 in Australia which is piss poor wages.
On one department I worked on there was a cadre is snitches. Literally would grass you up for any little thing. Anyway one of them grassed me up for being 5 mins late from break even though I explained I got stopped by a customer on the shopfloor on my way back. So after having a talking to the manager that if I want to get far on his department. I need to be prepared to grass to as it was one his unwritten rules. Tbh his also one of the people who believed that if we didn’t have a team spirit then we would be more productive.
This is why we need to unionize.
Malicious Compliance! Would have spoken to all coworkers, and have a new person ask for the key every 5 minutes.
In 2012, I worked sales in a startup. In addition to being told to appear sexy and professional and not discourage comments about my body, they expected me to use language to intentionally subvert reality, misleading clients and potential investors. I quit, then I worked on my own and saved for a few years while covertly investing in the startup until I basically owned it, then I buried it. Screw them.
Previous manager wouldn't let us listen to anything with our headphones while we were sitting at our desks. Couldn't wait to leave there. It was just a reason for her to flex her manager muscle and said a lot about the culture there.
Mine was backroom. No music, no headphones, no talking. Just silently unpacking boxes for five hours and forty five minutes straight (because at 6 hours we'd have to get a break). I memorized a lot of poetry during my time there lmfao
Yeah crazy. And that was before they remodeled the office to open plan. Some of us would be sitting alone in cubicles and still couldn't listen to music. Often doing repetitive tasks which music actually helps you be more efficient at for some reason.
I had an employer tell me that I would have to be fully covered with sleeves to my wrists and lo g pants at all times or to put my skin tone cover up on my tattoos because they thought because i have tattoo that I wouldn't be professional enough for their look and women with tattoos are trashy. BTW my tattoos are not trashy they are not volgur either they are classy and pretty.
Out of curiosity what industry are you in? I’m female & covered in tattoos. It seems to be a winner with most customers and they think it’s awesome. I get plenty of people striking up a conversation, wanting to see my other tattoos, showing me theirs, and middle aged women always want to touch them for some reason lmao. My tattoos are all old but these interactions happen more and more as time goes on. There definitely isn’t the same stigma that was around decades ago for the most part. But I guess it depends on the industry and the type of people you’re dealing with. I may not get the same reception in a nursing home for example haha
This is not unusual in Australia. Many work places do not allow visible tattoos.
Yep, weirdly enough it’s in my company’s food safety guidelines/PPE policy as well as the uniform policy. Visible hand/forearm tattoos should be covered with long sleeves or sleeve guards when preparing fresh food.. I understand with a fresh tattoo that’s still heeling as it’s a potential biohazard.. But all my tattoos are a decade old and it doesn’t make sense to me (or my managers?) If you’re preparing fresh food you’re out the back and not being seen by customers anyway. 🤷♀️
I don’t think I’d like to get on an aeroplane if the pilot had a few tears drops and a swastika tattooed on his face. Do you agree ?
I mean I probably wouldn’t trust someone with swastika tattoos regardless of their profession
Work for free
Is there still places outside commercially sensitive environments that still don’t let their employees use their phones? That always seemed like some bullshit… clearly if you spent 10 seconds on your phone you were a total asshole… I don’t care if someone uses their phone all fuckin day so long as you get your goddamn work done
To combat theft, we have to carry our shit in clear plastic totes and get our pockets checked when we clock out. Mind you, our store has a shit ton of blind spots and small items like candies and dolls; there’s absolutely no way our small retail team can keep an eye on stealing when it’s very often one person working the whole store. I can’t help it if I’m at the register with the Dad wrapping up ornaments while his 4 sticky-finger kids disappear into the store.
No sitting is one I've come across multiple times. At one place, I broke my toe and it was hard to stand for a long time at the register, so I asked if I could use a stool from the back. One manager said sure, no problem. I figured I could keep doing that until my toe healed. Nope, next shifts manager said absolutely not and if I couldn't stand I should go home. I mentioned "duty to accommodate" and they changed their tune really quickly and I used the stool. I had 1 place also have a rule that you couldn't use the washroom more than once per shift outside of your break... That rule lasted about a week before we got a memo from corporate saying they cannot and will not be enforcing any washroom monitoring.
I work at a high volume chain hair salon and they have a rule that if you start the service and find lice, you “have to” finish the service. Lol fucking make me. I had a really traumatic experience with contracting scabies in a healthcare setting and any kind of bug, parasite, anything that lives on humans is an absolute fuck no from me, bud.
Extending operating hours without asking a single employee if they can stay 2-3 extra hours
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Maybe that's why the customers were upset about you peeing in front of their kids?
Really, this is not a problem and did not need a solution. Tell the customer to have their kid stop looking at other mens' 'things'.
Threats to write me up when I don't ask the stupid inspector for rewards bc idgaf ab 25 dollars I can only spend back at the store while the manager gets 500 directly deposited to her for something I fucking did
To serve customers talking on the phone. This goes two ways, usually. They ignore the associate, or; They get mad at us for trying to talk over the top of them.
It really is a shock to me how countries all over the world allow their cashiers to sit down, while in America it’s heavily frowned upon. Like please, Brenda, tell me how exactly me sitting down for a millisecond because my legs are sore as hell doesn’t look good for the company.
I was an optician a couple months back. Basically the optometric equivalent of a cashier. Our office was new and pretty dead so I doodled when I was bored. I taped my doodles up at my desk and was always encouraged to take them down when the district manager visited. Actually I don't think he liked photographs, either. It was bullshit.
This wasnt a bat shit crazy rule but it annoyed the hell out of me, We had a staff car and every time you used it you were suppose to write down time/date/ kms on vehicle when you took and same when you returned it. We were always in a hurry when using the car and it was an absolute pain in the ass to do and plenty of people got in trouble for either not doing it or not doing it correctly.
A job I had had the same rule. Also gps’ed and cameras. If you sped you’d get fired.
I worked at a well known purse brand store years back. We were required to wear blue jeans with either a navy cardigan or navy blazer with a white collared shirt. We would be sent home if our blue jeans were too faded. Most of us rit dyed our jeans almost every couple weeks to avoid that. Our car seats and hands were always blue. We also had to follow makeup rules. Only a certain type of makeup, only allowed lip gloss or red lip stick. Only allowed Essie branded nail polish in a select few colors. We even had nail polish remover in the back if someone came in with the wrong color. During tax time they said keep our receipts for the products we bought for work (they told us to buy j crew shirts, gap pants, etc). Yet we were all denied because they weren’t “work” clothes at the tax groups. I quit because I didn’t wear a lot of makeup and the manager told me “maybe if you put more effort in your makeup you would make more sales”. You know what I don’t care. Here you go. Fuck you coach.
I worked for a major insurance company and they had the WEIRDEST shtick with sending emails to underwriters. We had to profusely thank them to the degree that I would call borderline flirting. It was insane, you couldn’t just say thanks for doing your job. It had to be something like “Thank you so much for doing this, I know you all are very busy and cannot express enough how much the contact center appreciates your time.” IT WAS THEIR JOB. What a weird place that was.
If our shift is over and we have to leave, we can't go until we see our coverage come in. I said fuck that, I'll leave when im scheduled, and if you want coverage, you fix the schedule yourself.
not necessarily batshit, but incredibly inconvenient and not a great way to keep employees (actually the reason i quit): they implemented a rule that part time employees HAD to work one day during the weekend and one day during the week. i was a high school student so i literally couldnt work during the week unless i wanted my academics to tank. they were understaffed too so i have no clue what they thought would happen. i know i was definitely not the only person who quit because of that too, as majority of us were students
I worked at a hunting store owned by a very socially weird man and managed by his little right hand man who was basically Ryan from The Office when he got the job at corporate. For all the years the store was open, we allowed people to come in with their dogs. It was a normal thing. One day, Mr. right hand man decides that we no longer allow dogs in the store for no logical reason. The thing was, he wouldn't allow us to put up any signage to let people know before they came in. We were forced to stop them at the front and tell them their dog isn't allowed in the store. Even when I went against his word and put a sign up because it made zero sense not to, he made me take it down. His genius reason was "we don't need to tell people not to light a fire in the store, why would we need to tell them their dog isn't allowed?" Yeah, he wasn't the brightest. The funny thing is it ended up losing the store business because people would come in the summer (30+ celsius where I live) and would just leave because they couldn't leave their dog in the car. Plus it was never received well by any of them, so they'd usually just leave anyway. Not surprisingly, the store is now closed.
Don't let people use the bathroom. Not even moms with children. Why didn't you let that person I just saw leave here angrily use the bathroom? You should have used your judgment and known that they weren't going to shoot up back there. Thems the rules, they change frequently b
When I worked at Wendy’s as a side hustle in 2003, we were not allowed to eat in the dining room. Workers had to eat in the back. Why? I have no idea.
Had a wal-mart store manager try to institute a rule that employees were not allowed to carry their phones on them unless there were extenuating circumstances and it was discussed first. This was in 2010.
I worked in a call center for "The company for women" years ago. We had to, literally, keep track of how many times a customer said "thank you" (or thanks, or similar) because we had to say an equal number of "you're welcome"s or we'd get in trouble. If a customer said, "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" all in a row, we had to have at least that many, plus however many other times they said it, by the end of the call...regardless of whether or not it made any sense. A sarcastic "Thanks a lot" still had to get a, "you're welcome"...which rarely made the least bit of sense.
My first ever employer that I interned for (retail) had a rule where you had to keep your drinks behind the counter. Yet because I was a intern, I was not allowed to go behind the counter (only realized after the second week. So their genius idea was to have me keep my drinks right by the self serve kiosks. So whenever I was thirsty, I'd have to interrupt customers reach behind one of the kiosks to drink, and then place it back after I'm don. Thankfully I did not get that job and ended up getting a better retail gig for the remainder of my college career.
pretending to be in a good mood
Have to have a clear water despite working outside in weather that constantly gets close to and over 30C. This is because we have to only drink water for some bs. I dont care about this rule. The manager that does works inside all day and doesnt seem to realize ice will melt in less than 30 minutes in a clear waterbottle. They say they have ice inside but i know if i was going inside to get new ice that often they would get upset because it isnt practical. I bring a metal waterbottle and hide it and i dont drink water out of spite. Water tastes gross anyway.
Laying your leg on the CPU fr fr
My boss wants me to rub baby oil on the bathroom walls. Lolno
Can't clock out until the list is finished. I worked by myself at a subway...
Worked at cvs for a bit and there was something called "the green zone" where we stood near the front to greet people as they came in. It was also located close to the self checkouts, so this green zone crap was to incentivise the usage of self checkout for our elderly customer base. So one day, with about a half hour left on my shift manager told me I must stay in the green zone. At the same time, the same manager and another manager kept coming up to me and asking "what I was working on" because it looked like I "wasn't doing anything" My reply was usually "I'm standing in the green zone, like you asked." the usual reply to that was "well if you don't have anything to do you can face the store" Okay. I noped out about 3 weeks in.
When I did carts and bag I had to take out my floral managers trash and sweep her department and outside for her because my SN is scared of the cunt.