I'll start by saying, this situation was already somewhat resolved, so not truly serious at the minute. But it is a bit silly. I see a lot more misogyny living in a military town..
So, at work, we got a new employee back in late July. I'll just call him T. Around the same time, a couple weeks prior, we also received a temporary comanager who has been a blessing to work with. I'll call him J in here. My other managers usually ignore me and everything cause they're lazy. But J is the best. He gives a toot!
T was hired on to become our warehouse manager. He serves to count and organize back of house inventory, mainly the mattresses and bases themselves. Among other tasks. Even so, we're a team, we are all equally responsible for inventory. As sales people, the rest of us just sorta find what we're good at and settle into a rhythm. T does all the back house inventory while we do the front. Im tasked with processing damages, which is the only back house thing that T won't be doing cause its supposed to only be done by managers. I just... do it cause my managers admittedly suck at it
This means I go into the warehouse to research items once a week.
We also alternate pages of an inspection booklet to make sure everything in the store, front and back, is right.
So I go into the back to do both of these things and I am faced with a huge mess. As usual.
And like usual, I roll up my sleeves and get to it. I ended up straining my back a little cause I hate asking people to help me with something. One of the things I did was toss some mattresses that were discusting. They weren't our product, they were haul away mattresses from people's houses. gross gross
T was glaring daggers at me the whole time.
After I tossed the mattresses he barked at me a little, telling me not to do his job. I knew this guy lacked bedside manner, so I didn't think anything of it. I laughed and said sorry, I only did it to test my own strength. He didn't laugh with me.
I later asked him about the two mattresses, our product, that was sitting out without being in a bag or box. Just naked mattresses slumped in a bad way. This should never happen!
I didn't want to stress him so I simply asked like, "are these damages or returns?"
He flips his hands up rudely, and snips "idk man I just got here"
rude, rude. I just shook my head and left the warehouse to investigate in the system. They were returns. He was supposed to sanitize them and bag them up first thing, like, an hour ago. So I go back and tell him I found out they're returns, so they just needed to be processed. I handed him a paper with their skus and he ignored me otherwise.
4 hours later.
Mattresses haven't been touched.
Hes new, and I'm not a manager, and my manager on duty is lazy as hell. So I'm not about to instruct this guy on how to do his job. But at the same time, we're all responsible if mattresses [keep on] getting damaged by us mishandling them.
So as I'm walking through I ask T, "Could you start on sanitizing these so they have time to dry?"
The sanitizer has to soak for a couple hours on the mattresses before we seal the bag. We closed in 3 hours. and still need to pull deliveries.
This hit a button, and he just has a go at me about how I shouldn't be asking him to do anything. He straight up said that he was hired with the idea that he would expect a lot of downtime in this job, "and I haven't had much down time lately"
He said a lot of weird rude things and disrespected me, kept standing over me. He kept saying that our managers tell him to set his own schedule so he does things at his own pace. Despite what I wanted to say, I just smiled and said "I'll talk with them to get on the same page then"
I tried to walk away and he stormed after me like "what do you mean by that?"
This ended up wasting so much of my time. He kept berating me and not letting me go. I just kept saying ok, it's fine, ok ok yup
Like, I got way better things to do than fight with you man.
Let it GO
Finally, that ended and I was super agitated. I've never supervised an employee like that before. So the next morning, J was in so I sat to ask him what his thoughts were. I explained my point of view and my confusion. I asked him what I should do in such a situation without being unethical (but I did tell him what I wanted to say lmaoo)
He didn't like hearing about this and it really made him angry. But he also needed a minute to think about how to handle it appropriately without things exploding in our faces.
We dont have HR managers and J is still quite young, so he has not dealt with this before either. Not specifically with someone like T. Our company unfortunately does not offer guidelines for these kinds of misdemeanors (unless its sexual misconduct) and even our store managers sometimes have limited authority. If an employee rage quits cause we hit the wrong buttons, we can actually get in trouble for it. IT'S DUMB. Companies only care about money in their pockets.
As the day went on, J noticed more than I did that every time I would go to the warehouse or pass through for anything, even though I was minding my own (and I never went into T's side of the warehouse, Id go in through another door where someone else is stationed for the furniture side) T would start stalking and storming behind me. When I truly mind my own, I apparently don't even notice this big ol bear of a guy looming over me with questionable intentions.
at one point he even stalked me back to the sales floor and J had ENOUGH of it. J went to the warehouse to ask T what's wrong, and it ended up with a long conversation.
Basically my female existence was pissing T off even before I ever asked anything of him. Because I'm a girl he doesn't want me to tell him what to do. The last warehouse guy we had was also like "get these women out of my warehouse"
Like
it's our warehouse toooooo
How did we end up finding a guy even worse than the last?? At least the last guy was friendly to my face, he would only complain about the women being around to the males.
J couldn't find a conclusion even after trying to tell T to knock it off. So he called our Regional manager for advice. The regional manager is not my favorite person in the world, and I wasnt surprised when he told J to just kiss T's ass and give him what he wants.
J never fully got over how mad that made him.
He actually ended up protecting me from not just T but also our Regional manager too
Regional manager wanted to deal with us himself, which would have made things worse no doubt. So J intersected and we kind of unintentionally did a setup where J acted like a judge and T and I each had a turn in sharing our story lmao T straight up SWEAT.
Then J said his piece and sets T in his place. I didn't do anything wrong, but J was really good at laying everything out without sounding like we're ganging up on T.
T and I came to terms and shook hands.
He still hates my guts, but when I have to ask something of him, his complaints are just noises and not words. Then he does it. I watched J and our store manager continue to fuss over how this guy acts for the last few weeks. He's not great at the job cause he's lazy and he keeps breaking very expensive product, which affects our customers.
Does my company really benefit from keeping a person like this, really...
It's so annoying that I still have to work with this person. Hes already offended the girl on the furniture side too, and they're not actually the same company/staff so they don't even work WITH him, we all just share a building!
Update: J has been an unmaintainable grump when it comes to T for the last month. The store manager, S, also got involved but in this company he does not have the power to fire someone (backwards i know). RSM aint got no one's back cause he gets in trouble when employees quit. So he continued to tell them to kiss T's ass.
The moment they were like "this is bullshit we need to set boundaries right"
T quit
He's gone now :>
J and S are happy af
RSM big not happy but no one care
The moment they were like "this is bullshit we need to set boundaries right"
T quit
He's gone now :>
J and S are happy af
RSM big not happy but no one care