Only Editors And Teachers Get To Wield The Red Pen!

When I was an undergraduate in university, I worked part-time at a well-known international coffee chain. I had been working for this chain for about three years at this point, but I had only recently been transferred to this location. It was the closest to campus (there wasn’t actually one on campus), and I would often work four-hour shifts between my classes. My availability clearly showed which days and hours I was available to work.

Transferring to a new location meant transferring to work under a new manager. His policy for “requesting time off” was fairly standard. He had a big black book in his office that had a calendar for the year in it. You just had to get the book, write down your name on the date you couldn’t work, indicate which hours on that date you were unavailable (or “whole day” if that was the case), and write down a reason (e.g., “appointment”, “vacation”, etc.) 

Exams were coming up, and as those didn’t occur during my normal class hours, I went into the back and got the time-off book. I noticed that another coworker had written down which days they needed off with “exams” as their reason. (Since this was the closest [Coffee Shop] to campus, many of us baristas were students. Their exam schedule didn’t overlap with mine. I grabbed a pen that was laying on the desk, wrote down the days I couldn’t work, and, just like my coworker, wrote “exams”.

I came in the next week to see that, although my coworker had gotten every single day off they had requested, I had been scheduled for EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. OF. MY. EXAMS. Some of them were days I didn’t even normally work but had requested to book off just in case! 

I went to talk to my manager about it.

Me: “Hey, I requested these days off because I’m actually going to be writing exams at these times. I’m not going to be able to come in for these shifts.”

Manager: “Well, you’re going to have to figure it out. I scheduled you for those days.”

Me: “Why did [Coworker] get their exams off but I didn’t? Obviously, neither of us is going to be able to work since we both are students and have finals.”

Manager: “[Coworker] requested their time off in pencil. You wrote in red pen, and that made you look extremely entitled.”

Me: “What?! I just used whatever pen you had on your desk!”

Manager: “That doesn’t matter.”

Me: “Okay, well, again, I’m not going to be here for these shifts, so you can either change the schedule so someone can be here or have this shift be understaffed.”

Manager: “Well, here’s the thing… I don’t work for you.”

Me: “I guess I don’t work for you, either, then.”

And with that, I took off my apron and left.

I never had any complaints during my three years working for this company, I won “Employee of the Month” several times, and I won several of our internal “who can sell the most bags of coffee” contests we held. I had always gotten along with my managers and coworkers, would pick up extra shifts when other people were feeling sick/just didn’t want to come in for their shifts, would work until close if I was needed, and just overall enjoyed the job. However… apparently, none of that mattered.

This [Coffee Shop] ended up closing down a couple of months later. I wonder why.