Scheduling Whiplash

One of my first jobs is at a gas station. One of the managers gets demoted, and we get a new manager. She starts on my day off, and I’m due in the next day. But apparently, within her first hour of clocking in, she’s completely changed the schedule. And she has told. Freaking. No one. 

So, I go in the next day, and to my surprise, one of the other cashiers asks if no one has told me about the schedule change. Nope. But sweet, extra day off. I check the schedule again. Heard that? I CHECK IT AGAIN, and I see that I am also off the next day as was originally scheduled. Coolio.

I go home, make plans for the next day, and carry on with my plans in a city two hours from home the next afternoon.

At about three o’clock, I get a call.

New Manager: “Where are you?”

Me: “Um… sorry, who is this?”

New Manager: “[New Manager]? Your boss?”

Me: “Oh! Oh, I’m sorry! I’m still not really sure what’s going on. I checked the schedule,and it said I was off to—”

New Manager: *Interrupting* “Yeah, I changed that.”

Me: “Uh… Okay, that’s fine, but no one told—”

New Manager: “It’s your job to know your schedule, not mine to tell you!”

Me: “Okay, I get that, but if you’re going to change it when I’m not there to see it, you should probably—”

New Manager: “It’s your job to know the schedule. You were scheduled for 2:00, and you need to get here.”

Me: “Unfortunately, that’s not going to be possible. I am sorry, but I’m over two hours away in [City]. By the time I get to the train station, get the train, and get back, there’ll only be a little under an hour left of my shift. I can’t—”

New Manager: “So, you’re just not coming?”

Me: “I’m sorry, but there’s no possible way for me to even get there on time to even work the—”

She hangs up.

Okay. Whatever. I go about my day, and go in the next day, as scheduled.

[New Manager] is sitting in the office waiting like a spider, shoving a write-up for a “no call, no show” in my face.

New Manager: “You need to sign this. This is just not a very good first impression of you.”

I declined to sign it and took a picture of the schedule with all her pencil marks from changing it. I told her if she tried to make me sign it again, I’d be taking it to her boss. 

She spent the rest of my time there making my life miserable. I was written up for having water spots on the OUTSIDE of the roller grill. I was written up for “being out of uniform” because I didn’t wear my hair up “high enough”? She wrote me up for putting my head on the counter to STRETCH when no one was even in the store, and we were freaking CLOSED.

My last straw was when she tried to write me up for reading on my break, saying I wasn’t allowed to have books at work at all.