A Double Sale Double Cross

A few years ago, I got hired on as a general manager for a small, corporate chain specializing in ice cream. They weren’t doing well as the pandemic had just ended, and they needed someone to boost their sales. I was hired on with the promise that once I’d doubled the sales of the store, I’d get a substantial pay raise.

I hit that goal five months into the job. During my six-month evaluation:

Me: “Why is my raise so small? It’s not even half of what I was promised.”

Manager: “The store is still catching up, so we can’t afford the raise we’d previously quoted. If the store continues on its upward track, you’ll get your raise at your one-year evaluation.” 

Yeah, no.

I started looking for other jobs and stopped going above and beyond in my duties. The assistant manager I’d hired noticed and took up the mantle, secretly going to my boss to get my job. After a month, it worked. They were going to demote me and promote her to general manager before I quit.

A few months later, a friend sent me a screenshot of a post on Facebook where a girl was warning people not to work at that shop because they won’t pay you. 

I reached out to her; found out she hadn’t been paid for a week’s worth of work and the new general manager (my old assistant manager) wouldn’t do anything about it. The corporate number wasn’t publicly listed, but I still had it saved in some emails, so I gave it to her and told her she ought to let corporate know about what’s going on in that store.

The store was shut down by the end of the next week. It was closed for a month before having a grand reopening with new owners and management. I got revenge in a “two birds, one stone,” kind of way.