Desperation and oppression in the work environment- a personal history.

Jessica Wildfire wrote an excellent article on this subject. Anyone who worked low level jobs in their life will understand. There are just some employers who take advantage of their staff. Below is a tale of my personal history in this arena.

My first job while in high school was Village Inn Pizza. Friends from Muskegon will know it. I was a dishwasher and pizza maker. Very often, I would show up for my 6pm start time and the manager would say “we aren’t busy yet. Go sit in that booth until we need you and then clock in.” Later, as I became more knowledgeable about such things, I would not have done such a thing. You scheduled me at 6pm. I clock in at 6pm.

In college, I worked at a Burger King in downtown Kalamazoo. The first manager we had on 3rd shift was a dynamo and great to work for. The second one who replaced him after his promotion was an 18 year old who had worked at Burger King for several years as a teen. He was a nice guy but a terrible manager. One night, three guys came in to the counter (I worked drive-through). They started harrasing Jenny, a fellow music student with sexual comments such as “how’d you like some big co#%,” and “I want to see your ti#$” Jenny had had afairly sheltered background, so getting flustered she burst into tears and ran into the back of the restaurant. Manager John yelled through the kitchen to her “Jenny get your ass back to the counter”! WOW. I told him we was completely wrong. He said he has to put up with that kind of stuff. I told him as manager he was PAID to do so. She was not.

After I moved back to Muskegon in 1983 and was looking for a teaching job I worked part time at K-Mart during the day and Denny’s as a server on third shift. The Denny’s gig was okay. Decent management, but the bar crowd could be problematic at 230 in morning, yet wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle.

The K-Mart job? That was another story. I got hired mostly to work the photo-jewelry booth due to my photography background. Why they combined photo equipment with jewelry is a mystery. Anyway, when hired I was told “we give a 30-day review. Either we give you a raise or we let you go.” Fair enough. So 30 days came and the “full of himself, wink at the female employees” assistant store manager called me in to the office. He started citing negative things on my performance such as I didn’t do enough work with the jewelry. I told him when the department got busy, we staff naturally gravitated to our strengths. My female co-workers would move to help jewelry customers and I would move to help customers with cameras. He also griped that I re-arranged the photography equipment displays and it didn’t fit the planogram. I said no one told me there was a planogram. He told me they wouldn’t be giving me a raise but would keep me on probation. Two days later I went to HR and told her not to schedule me past Friday because I got another job. When she asked why I told her. Mr. Bigshot wanted it both ways- no raise but keep me on staff. He could find someone else.

Fast forward to 1985, back from living and teaching in Arizona, I was working three jobs when I met my now wife. I worked for a 7-Eleven on third shift during the week, offset by shifts as a bartender at a local watering hole and during the day in the photo-electronics department at Witmark. (West Michigan people will remember Witmark). The manager of the Witmark was sometimes a jerk, but in general the job was decent. Same with the pub. The owners were volatile in their treatment of staff depending on who was on their good side. After one blow-up with another bartender, I took my week’s pay and quit to work at another pub in town which was a much better run management team. At the 7-Eleven, I had great bosses. It was family owned and they really appreciated my work for them.

The new bartending job was an awesome place to work until it was bought by owners of another local restaurant. They came in all full of themselves, changed the atmosphere of what was already a successful establishment. The place was right on Muskegon Lake and during the summer the outside dining deck was constantly busy! We had great food from a really decent menu. The new owners told all of us current staff we need to “interview” for our jobs. I got scheduled for a 3pm interview a couple of days later which was to take place at their current well-known establishment on the other side of town. I arrived ten minutes early and waited. And waited, and waited. Thirty minutes later, after being ignored by the manager doing the interviewing I was finally called to the table. I opened the conversation right away and told them the interview could be quite short. I had no intentions of working for them. Not only did I not like the atmosphere they brought to the establishment, I didn’t appreciate the way I was kept sitting around for over a half hour for the current interview. It was completely disrespectful. I promptly got another bartending gig in Whitehall on White Lake at a high end restaurant.

In 1987, I became a manager myself. I was still looking for teaching positions while working third shift at a local convenience store. Muskegon people will know it as Frontier Mart on Southern & Seaway. The owners were really good people. I consider Tom a mentor. He really taught me management and how to direct and manage staff. For the most part I was allowed to run the store as if it were my own. We had quarterly meetings on the books and the store’s performance and I got a bonus every quarter which was based on profits made and losses avoided.

I did not have a solid say in pay levels but did have flexibility in scheduling. For the most part I tried to keep all the staff at as close to 40 hours as possible. Our operation hired security people from a local security company on Friday and Saturday nights. This system had been in place with my predecessor. However, for the money we paid for this service, I began to see we did not get our money’s worth. The service rarely had the same guards scheduled to us. Thus the guards didn’t know the neighborhood or the people and consequently those local customers who were trouble always seemed to get into the store and cause trouble. So I made a decision and terminated the security company’s contract. Instead, I began scheduling my own staff to do security on those hours of Friday and Saturday nights. They would stand at the door and because they knew our customer base, they would prevent the trouble-makers from even coming inside. We pushed the “trouble bubble” outside the building. We eventually extended that as my team would be outside on the front sidewalk of the store and see the trouble makers coming into the parking lot they would should “you are not allowed on the property”

At a review of the books, Tom asked why I had so much overtime. I explained the above. He preferred the old paradigm of 28–30 hours per employee and more staff. I explained that if I cut hours and hire more people, first, I don’t know how the new people will perform or if they will be honest. Second, if I cut hours, all my staff who currently I am their only or primary job, with reduced hours they would need to look for another job on the side. Pretty soon that job would take precedence and I’d be secondary. Then they’d quit and I would be hiring again. It would be a downward spiral. Tom was convinced. In fact, he was convinced enough that he had me manage a second store in Muskegon Heights simultaneously for a while until I left for a new job.

Meijer opened a new store in North Muskegon. I was rather burned out from the 24-hour convenience store business and I applied for grocery management given my background. I was told the store had no management positions but if I started out as a stocker I could move up if they had openings. So I took the position as their frozen foods department stocker. As full time stockers we did all the ordering for our aisles. The goal was to never run out of product and to really order heavy on sales items. I kept my frozen foods section in top shape. But the management there was problematic. Meijer is a unionized company and thus has contracts, grievance procedures and union stewards. Yet the grocery manager could just not resist breaking the rules and ‘disciplining’ staff without having a steward present. Consequently, there were routine grievances filed on a regular basis. More to my point, the company reduced management staff. When I hired in, there was a grocery manager and two assistants. During the year, Meijer opted to only have one assistant manager. This meant there was no upward mobility and I began looking for new opportunities.

The new opportunity was with 7-Eleven and a re-location to Grand Rapids from Muskegon in 1991. My wife got job at Witmark’s corporate offices in Grand Rapids and I started as a manager for the corporate owned 7-Eleven. For those not in the know, Southland Corporation owns the 7-Eleven name. They run some locations as corporate stores but for the most part they want to franchise out their operations. In Michigan, the entire state was franchised to a company called Garbko based in Saginaw. They in turn then franchised out their stores. (The 7-Eleven I had worked for in Muskegon year ago was a franchise). My job as a corporate store manager was to get a location profitable and to sparkling appearance so it would be attractive to franchise. Garbko would take 60% of the gross profits off the top. Franchisees would typically drop $10,000 up front and then pay a franchise fee as well as pay off the cost of inventory. Meanwhile, the franchisee would pay labor and most maintenance costs from the remaining 40% gross profits left. The district management basically acted like all franchisees were screwing Garbko out of money. My first store in Grand Rapids did get franchised out. But such was the nature of the business he couldn’t make a living under their franchise contract after all and closed up the store.

I was moved to another location and asked to run two stores for them due to manager shortages. I had applied for positions as field representative several times when there were openings in the area. I was now on my third field rep. (Field Reps were the direct supervisor to store managers in their area as well as business advisors to franchisees in their area of coverage). I now had no ability for upward movement. I was working 70–80 hours a week running two stores. We didn’t pay decent wages so we couldn’t get help and were always shorthanded. I was getting disgruntled to be sure. At this point, upper management did ask me to apply for a field rep position- in Saginaw! I told them I wasn’t moving now. I just moved to Grand Rapids. They’d had three field reps in a year here, but were tossing a sop at me to apply for Saginaw?

My field rep came in and looked at my records and books at one point and told me I had to fire the third shift employee because he was stealing. I told Pat I know he is stealing. “Well why haven’t you fired him?” he asked. And who is going to work third shift when I do? I am already working 70 hours a week. I can’t fire him until I hire a replacement. “Are you going to work his third shift for me if I fire him?” I asked Pat. Of course he wasn’t going to work third shift. So my store was losing money, couldn’t get help due to the pay levels, and the staff I did have knew it and some took advantage.

The break came one Monday morning as I did the books and counted the cash while waiting on customers- doing it all solo due to lack of staff. The books showed a $300 shortage. I had not worked the weekend and working solo I had not yet been able to go to the bank and get the paperwork from money drops my assistant would have made Saturday and Sunday. I suspected she did a miscount. But the district manager and field rep came in, looked at the paperwork and told me to bring it all to the district office as soon as my relief arrived at 2pm. Once at the district office they began berating me, accusing me of stealing. They told me I was a disgruntled employee. (That part was true). They filed a police report.

The next week I was called to the white collar detective’s office of the GRPD. He said “we are here to discuss $30,000 dollars of theft” WHAT?! Then it clicked. The district manager decided to toss on top of a missing $300 all the shrinkage and losses the store had suffered over the last few months as “theft” and place it on my shoulders.

Anyone who knows me knows how organized I am- obsessively so. At this point in time, I had been a prolific user of a Franklin organizer. In my Franklin I had complete duplicate records of all the store documentation: Inventory gains and losses, daily and weekly cash balances or shortages, etc. “WHOAH” I told detective. Here’s what the district manager is doing. I went on.. I FIRED people at their direction due to the losses incurred based on inventory counts. Further, THEY do the inventory counts and those are not always accurate. I said the only specific money I KNOW is missing is $200 from two weeks prior which I suspect the third shift clerk at stolen and the $300 from the day in question which I don’t know if it is actually missing or was at the bank due to to my assistants error. He asked if he could photo copy all my documents which I said yes. I left- and never heard another thing on the issue. I am pretty sure the detective was peeved at being misled by my management.

But there’s a coda to the story. We were living in Grandville at the time. Grandville and Jenison both had franchise 7-Elevens. I was now working third shift at some job which I cannot recall now. I get a knock on the door waking me up and it’s a Grandville police detective. Can I come down the office that afternoon. What is this about? Let’s discuss at the office. Okay.

I go to the office that afternoon, taking a Tom Clancy novel to kill wait time. The detective eventually calls me in. We briefly discuss the Clancy novels as he is a fan too and then get around to business. Apparently someone called a bomb threat to the Grandville and Jeninson 7-Elevens recently. How did you get my name I asked? He wouldn’t tell me and I said Oh wait is it (naming them) the disrict manager and field rep? The detective stammered a bit so I knew I was right. Look, here’s the back story and I told him all the tale above. Further, I said as a disgruntled corporate manager why would I call a threat on two stores that were run by franchisees (both of whom I knew and liked by the way). Would I not be more likely to do so to corporate store? Finally, If every time there is an issue at a local 7-Eleven and I get singled out, well I am going to get a lawyer now and deal with Garbko and be done with it. Conversation ended, never heard another thing.

During the late 1990s and out of work I took a job at a music distributor as a shipping clerk. I had hoped for a front desk position given my bachelor’s degree in music, but nope! The distributor also sold music related jewelry, pendants and such in shape of musical instruments and such. If we had errors in product from the manufacturer we had to print an error sheet and keep it with the erroneous product for someone higher up to reconcile. I received some error product, printed the sheet and stapled the card on which the jewelry was attached to the error sheet. The owner noticed this and literally screamed and swore in my face about how I just damaged the presentation of the product with the staple through the card -this went on for several minutes. I was dumbfounded by this behavior and had I not been so desperate for paycheck I’d have punched him in the face. And later the shipping manager told me they had BOXES of those cards, easily replaced!

There have been other poor managers over the next years. The job market is designed largely to give power by some over others. If you are desparate you will be forced to put up with abusive behavior!

https://aninjusticemag.com/we-want-to-work-just-not-for-you-anymore-62ccca0abeeb