4
45gopro
Guest
- Jurisdiction
- Pennsylvania
Hi all,
This may be a long one, but I need some advice on what route of action to take here.
I have been employed by the same employer for 4 years now. They were my first employer out of high school. I moved through the ranks of being a clerk to a manager and now a department manager in training. This is a small private corporation with under 50 stores. It was family owned up until last year when the family transferred ownership to corporate itself (some of the family is also corporate, some of corporate is not the family). The business itself tends to act think and speak as if they are much bigger than other stores (Walmart for example) when it's 50 stores says otherwise. They also speak down to managers which results in those managers following through and speaking down to their employees. It's an overall mess of bigotry in my opinion. No sense of care or urgency for the employee.
Here is where the problems ensue: Every so often corporate keeps tacking items on our "daily task sheet" without allowing any overtime (and I mean more than 5 minutes and you get suspended-even if it's necessary to keep the department running efficiently it gets declined) or scheduling more help. Right now the department I'm in has two members. (myself, and the dept manager) It seems the more work I put it, the less work they put in, which results in tasks getting backed up and piling more onto my task sheet (which is obviously ignored because the dept manager claims it's untrue).
I put in my 110% every day, but the constant negative reinforcement (such as 9 things were done right and perfect, but one half of one half of one thing was done sort of wrong, and it's like I just punched a customer in the head) demotivates me. It makes me not want to do a good job for my manager anymore since no matter what I do and how hard I work it's never enough. I sometimes wake up to text messages on my days off etc telling me everything I'm doing wrong, walk in to a disgruntled manager who proceeds to yell and tell me in a very unprofessional condescending tone that I'm doing a bad job when in reality the department looks no different than when the actual department manager is on. Also, my boss is 'best friends' with the store manager, as well as the department's head manager in corporate. It's to the point where I could say favoritism takes place. I feel trapped, like I can't talk to anyone about it because it will circle around the loop and make everything worse for me.
Every day it seems the work environment gets even more hostile. People constantly watching over you, never giving any form of positive recognition for anything done correctly or well, just waiting for you to make a simple mistake, and then they attack. It's literally enough to make me sick.
Is there anything I can do about this legally? Does anything stand out as being unethical? My job is starting to feel more like a prison every day. I'm always afraid I did something wrong, or that I'm going to get yelled at for things the manager does as well but he's obviously not going to yell at himself or recognize that he's even guilty of it. I was told I was going to be promoted to manager by x date, by x month, etc by corporate only to be let down that it's not happening for whatever reason. (I don't believe it has to do with my performance since my manager yells at me in private and doesn't ever escalate it to store management or corporate level. I admit I'm not perfect, I do things wrong, but given the environment and circumstances, they want perfection in an 8 hour shift when there's probably about 16 hours of work to be done, how am I able to be legally disciplined for such a thing?
This may be a long one, but I need some advice on what route of action to take here.
I have been employed by the same employer for 4 years now. They were my first employer out of high school. I moved through the ranks of being a clerk to a manager and now a department manager in training. This is a small private corporation with under 50 stores. It was family owned up until last year when the family transferred ownership to corporate itself (some of the family is also corporate, some of corporate is not the family). The business itself tends to act think and speak as if they are much bigger than other stores (Walmart for example) when it's 50 stores says otherwise. They also speak down to managers which results in those managers following through and speaking down to their employees. It's an overall mess of bigotry in my opinion. No sense of care or urgency for the employee.
Here is where the problems ensue: Every so often corporate keeps tacking items on our "daily task sheet" without allowing any overtime (and I mean more than 5 minutes and you get suspended-even if it's necessary to keep the department running efficiently it gets declined) or scheduling more help. Right now the department I'm in has two members. (myself, and the dept manager) It seems the more work I put it, the less work they put in, which results in tasks getting backed up and piling more onto my task sheet (which is obviously ignored because the dept manager claims it's untrue).
I put in my 110% every day, but the constant negative reinforcement (such as 9 things were done right and perfect, but one half of one half of one thing was done sort of wrong, and it's like I just punched a customer in the head) demotivates me. It makes me not want to do a good job for my manager anymore since no matter what I do and how hard I work it's never enough. I sometimes wake up to text messages on my days off etc telling me everything I'm doing wrong, walk in to a disgruntled manager who proceeds to yell and tell me in a very unprofessional condescending tone that I'm doing a bad job when in reality the department looks no different than when the actual department manager is on. Also, my boss is 'best friends' with the store manager, as well as the department's head manager in corporate. It's to the point where I could say favoritism takes place. I feel trapped, like I can't talk to anyone about it because it will circle around the loop and make everything worse for me.
Every day it seems the work environment gets even more hostile. People constantly watching over you, never giving any form of positive recognition for anything done correctly or well, just waiting for you to make a simple mistake, and then they attack. It's literally enough to make me sick.
Is there anything I can do about this legally? Does anything stand out as being unethical? My job is starting to feel more like a prison every day. I'm always afraid I did something wrong, or that I'm going to get yelled at for things the manager does as well but he's obviously not going to yell at himself or recognize that he's even guilty of it. I was told I was going to be promoted to manager by x date, by x month, etc by corporate only to be let down that it's not happening for whatever reason. (I don't believe it has to do with my performance since my manager yells at me in private and doesn't ever escalate it to store management or corporate level. I admit I'm not perfect, I do things wrong, but given the environment and circumstances, they want perfection in an 8 hour shift when there's probably about 16 hours of work to be done, how am I able to be legally disciplined for such a thing?