If Boys Will Be Boys Then They Need To Stop
I am 22, and have been working for my employer for over a year. At the beginning of the calendar year, I had a car accident and my car wasn’t salvageable on my budget, so I let it go.
I want a promotion, and I feel like 22 is a good time to start moving up someplace, so I start training with the manager in late summer. I am only learning the most basic things: how to use the handheld device to count stock, what frozen items to pull and when, etc.
It isn’t long in the “training” process when my manager hires a young man we nickname “Young Neil.” His name isn’t actually Neil, but we already have somebody working in our small convenience store with his same name. Young Neil was 19 — barely old enough to sell cigarettes and definitely not old enough to sell alcohol. After a few weeks, I learn he was actually hired to be the new shift lead, since he has a car.
If that isn’t bad enough, I make it clear when he and I meet the first time that I am in a committed relationship with another woman. My impression of him is that he’s a harmless flirt. Am I ever wrong!
He begins hitting on me, mercilessly. He constantly asks when I am going to take him home to meet my girlfriend, when we are going to all have a threesome together, etc. At first I write it off; I’m not attractive enough for him to be serious.
And then he starts asking me every single day. Every time we work together, this boy is harassing me.
I take it to my manager. He says, “Boys will be boys!”
I call corporate HR. They never answer the phone. So, I leave message after message. I get one call back and she basically tells me to suck it up.
The best day I ever have working there is my very, very last. I was hired the night before at a local fast food joint, so I go in to work at the convenience store fifteen minutes late for my shift, in street clothes. I owe my in-laws gas money, so I grab a twenty-cent item and ask for $20 back off my card.
The manager is at the register and asks me if I know I’m late, and if I will be returning shortly in uniform.
“F*** that. I quit!” I march out, head high. I have not gone back, nearly five years later.
This story is featured in our “I Quit!” roundup!