I am a store manager of a convenience store. I have only been a manager for about a month now, but I have been training for over a year, and I actually successfully ran another store for three months while IN training, raising sales and customer satisfaction, etc. My new store is bigger than my old store and has twice the staff, but they’re severely undertrained and six months behind on stuff. With our inventory a month away, I know I have my work cut out for me.
For some reason, I come in to find myself with two assistant store managers. One thinks he’s in charge but doesn’t want to do the work. Another WANTS to be in charge but doesn’t know HOW. I decide I’ll start with him. If I can get him trained, then he’ll be able to take a load off my shoulders and step up to where he could be.
I can tell immediately that I am going to have issues with [Assistant Manager], but I try to let it slide. When he starts being late for work on a daily basis, I pull him aside, ask if everything is all right, ask if he needs time off, and ask if we should change his schedule to suit his home life a little better.
He just grumbles that he is fine and just wants to work. Then, he asks MY boss — the district leader — to tell me to stop pestering him about it. She is furious at his tone and makes the forty-minute drive to talk to him.
He gets really quiet but seems to understand that what he did was NOT okay.
I let it go for a while, but then he starts texting me during his shift if we are both working, saying he is sick and needs to go home. More than once, I assume he is at the register only to find a line waiting for help, with [Assistant Manager] nowhere to be seen. I’ll check my phone to find a text from twenty minutes ago, an hour ago, or whatever, saying he is leaving.
I pull him off to the side again and ask if he is okay, if something at home is interfering with his job, if I should cut his hours temporarily, or if we can change the shifts he works.
He grumbles again that he is fine and he’ll try to get better at being on time.
A few days later, it gets worse. MUCH worse — like, arriving two hours late without telling anyone and leaving an hour early worse.
I text him, asking if he is okay, if I need to take him off the schedule for a few days, or if he needs some personal time. I am more than willing to work with him to help him get through this, but he completely ignores me, except to send a text saying he won’t be in that day with no explanation.
I talk to Human Resources, and they say I have to chat with him and lay down the law, as it were.
The next time I see [Assistant Manager], I greet him three times, and he completely ignores me, walking right past me. I chalk it up to possibly not feeling well from the day before and let it slide, but I know I have to talk to him, so I call him into the office.
Everything takes a turn from there.
The employee who was sent to bring him to the office, whispers to me:
Employee: “[Assistant Manager] was just standing in the aisle, watching the basketball game on his phone, not working.”
[Assistant Manager] comes in with the game still playing on his phone, and he’s MAD.
Assistant Manager: “I don’t wanna talk! I’m done talking! I just want to work!”
He’s never talked to me. He barely says two words to me every shift. He refuses to talk about ANYTHING unless it’s something he’s found fault in about me.
Me: *Looking directly at his phone* “You want to work?“
He starts ranting about how I give everyone else his hours, how he never gets his full thirty, how he has kids to feed, how I am wasting his time talking to him, etc.
Me: “The only reason I have hours to give someone else is that you keep calling off. You don’t talk to me, so I don’t know what you need or how we can fix this, but I schedule you for thirty hours a week, and you only show up for fifteen.”
Assistant Manager: “F*** this.”
Me: “You walk out that door, you’re fired.”
Assistant Manager: “You sure about that? You sure you’re gonna fire me? You sure? I have kids to feed! You gonna starve them?”
Me: “If you stay, we can talk, and you can keep your job.”
Assistant Manager: “F*** you, f*** you, f*** you, f*** you, f*** you, f*** you, f*** you, f*** you, f*** you, f*** you, f*** you, f*** you!”
Yes, I counted; it was twelve times.
As he slams the door behind him:
Me: “Yeah, that’s not even the worst thing that’s happened to me at this job.”
An hour later, [Assistant Manager] sends me a private text. I am instructed to open it and take a screenshot to send to HR, in case it is a threat. It isn’t, but it contains some… choice words, including calling me a f****** idiot for thinking I could fire him because he did nothing to be fired for. (Let’s ignore the fact that I live in a non-contest state, so I don’t even NEED a reason.) NOTHING. He then ends the message with:
Assistant Manager: “I’ve hated you since the moment I met you. I’m extremely smarter than you, a better worker, and better looking than you. You’re gonna die in that store, and they’re gonna replace you before your funeral. You have nothing on me, ya dumb b****!”
After sharing this with my boss, I say:
Me: “So… he was just mad this whole time because an ugly girl that’s been training for the position for over a year now got the store manager job when he thought he — a man with two college degrees, who has been with the company for five whole months and hasn’t even finished half his training — deserved it? Okay. That makes so much sense.”
When I didn’t respond to THIS message, he sent a group message to my boss and me, bringing race into the equation. I LAUGHED, because yeah, “a stupid, ugly white girl” got the job over a “smart, handsome Black man,” but MY BOSS is a gorgeous Black woman who is married with kids and never lets ANYONE hold her back.
I’ve been emotionally drained for DAYS dealing with him.
And since he announced that he quit so I wouldn’t have to fire him, he is not eligible for unemployment benefits. So, should I feel bad for his kids? I do… that they have a father like that.
