Unfiltered Story #299866

(My boyfriend was hired on as an assistant manager for a western wear retailer. It was THE WORST job he ever had for a multitude of reasons. The story you’re about to read is just one of many and why he quit the toxic environment less than a year later.

Most of his associates were great team players, but like every store, there are a few bad apples.

Enter [Employee], who had a habit of going on drinking benders and not showing up for days at a time, or skipping out on his shifts to work at his second job bartending at a restaurant. When he DID show up for work, he’d laze about on his phone, take extra long time to do tasks that anyone else could do in 5-10 minutes, and complain about wanting to be at his restaurant job. A job that he often broke rules at and gave customers free drinks when the boss wasn’t looking.

Unfortunately for [Boyfriend], his power of management was limited, regardless of being second in command. He could only reprimand [Employee] and report it to his boss.

Some of you might be thinking why [Employee] still had a job. Most retail places – if not all employers – have a No-Call-No-Show policy. Said policy states you are automatically fired if you don’t show up for your shift 2+ times in a row. Well, the boss was one of those managers that wanted to keep employee turnover as low as possible. She’d rather spend her time convincing them to stay, or turning a blind eye to the headaches they caused, than looking for the real winners – another reason [Boyfriend] quit.

The first and only time he told off [Employee], he had not shown up for work for three shifts. He pulled [Employee] into the office, along with another team leader to act as a neutral third party and witness. What started out as a “You need to come to work” talk turned into [Employee] threatening to take him out into the parking lot and stab him with the machete he kept in his car.

Did he get fired for threatening his manager? No. He never showed up to that job again though.

I pleaded with him to call the police and file a report. [Boyfriend] had an eye witness in the room with him and video/audio footage of the incident from the store’s CCTV surveillance. Despite that, he only kept telling me that the cops wouldn’t do anything about it.

In our arguement about the incident, [Boyfriend] said [Employee] is better off being far away from his store and at the restaurant where he so clearly wanted to be.

It was the first time I’d heard the name of the restaurant, and I was shocked. Years before this, I had worked at that same restaurant. Even after leaving, I was still buddies with the restaurant manager and kept in touch with her.

I called my old manager and apologized for speaking with her in the unprofessional manner I was about to. Then I told her of the threat made by [Employee]. I also told her about the times he bragged about giving out free drinks and the other policies he’s said he’s broken while working there. She thanked me for bringing it to her attention and said she’d take a closer look into his employement there. She promised to keep me posted.

A month later she delivered. My call lead to an investigation and interviews of other servers. Every brag [Employee] ever made was true. Not only that, he was stealing bottles of alcohol from the kitchen supply. He was promptly fired. On the day he came to pick up his last paycheck with the restaurant, he was seen in the parking lot abusing his wife in the car. A customer called the cops on him, and he was arrested for domestic violence.

I normally don’t meddle in things that have nothing to do with me. I apologized over and over to my old boss about how unprofessional I was being, coming to her with outside information like that. But I couldn’t bear the thought of having the info and networks I did and doing nothing with them. He was a threat to everyone’s safety. Some days I feel a little guilty about the method in which I did it, but I don’t regret what I did.

As for my boyfriend, he moved on to a bank job just before the pandemic hit. He is much more happy and peaceful – not necessarily safer, but happier at the least.