Don’t be rude to senior staff

This happened awhile ago but I was recently reminded of this and i thought it fit this subreddit well.

I used to work at a well known retail chain popular for its cheap prices. At the time, this particular store had a massively high turnover rate, especially for the supervisor/keyholder position; which I so happened to hold.

I was the most senior supervisor on staff by many months when Ken was hired, and I know this doesn’t sound like much but for this store I may as well have been there for years. Like all other new hires, I treated Ken with nothing but kindness when he joined our team, he returned that favour by mansplaining my job to me, blaming me for every single fault he found within the store and using the grading system we used to rate the previous nights close to bully me. By that I mean, he would write absolutely no good things about my close, offer not a single bit of constructive criticism and would only do this to me and no other supervisor on staff.

So as you can see Ken and I clashed with each other. The crux of my petty revenge came when he consistently took over my closes. For those of you who have never had the joyous experience of working in a retail setting if you are the cashier, you are on a leash. You are not allowed to be out of eyesight of cash at any point, so for example, if you need to use the washroom, you have to ask permission and get someone to cover you. One of the very few perks of being a supervisor at this job was that you had free rein of the store floor and weren’t tethered to a particular spot for hours.

On several occasions when I was scheduled to close, my closing cashier called out of their shift, and Ken volunteered to fill it. Unfortunately, for me that meant I got demoted to the role of cashier and was tethered to cash largely against my will. Around the fourth or so time of this happening I stood my ground and said I’d like to complete my close, and instead of being courteous he ran to call the manager and was given my close instead.

After that situation happened and on top of his condescending behavior, I decided I would get back at Ken. When he took over my closes and when he wasn’t looking, I would go through the store and mess things up that he had faced, put things where they didn’t belong and generally makes the store worse. This was especially fun when I was the opening manager the following morning, and I got to write up his closes as being bad.

And for those who were wondering, the reason I did not quit over this and believe me, I contemplated many times over my duration of working with him. I stuck it out because I was too stubborn to let him have his way and let a man push me out of my job. He ultimately quit for unrelated reasons and I was pretty sure my birthday came early the day that he did.