Unemployed

I'm officially unemployed.

I have been for a few days now, but I've hesitated to admit it.

I quit Hastings.  I quit without notice, and I'm not proud of that, but I'm also not ashamed of it.  After the way I was treated in the time I worked at this store, I don't really think they deserved much from me.

First of all, I've averaged 10 hours a week since I got here, which is nothing, especially at $8/hour.  I've heard employees talking shit about other employees more times than I can count.  I've heard our store manager bad mouth other employees.  It's beyond unprofessional.  Another associate's husband has literally stood at my register and just stared at me, which is incredibly creepy.  I had a manager throw his keys at me because he was pissed at me for something I honestly didn't do.  That same manager has a long history of anger issues and apparently once before punched a hole through the office wall.  My boss witnessed the key throwing, and ultimately, I was told to watch myself around this other employee.  Sorry, but that is complete bull freaking shit.  That guy should have been fired, and quite frankly, he's lucky I didn't call the cops on his ass.  And no one there liked me.  Maybe a few people, but the thing is, this store has no well trained employees.  They're all shit.  Not one of them would last a week at a decent store.  So when I do things right, they get pissed.  It's ridiculous.  And I swear up and down that that's true, I'm not just trying to make myself look better.  The fact is that I was trained correctly, I do things correctly, and this store couldn't stand it.  (Always been the case with this store, BTW).

The last straw came last week.  I mentioned on here that I was scheduled to work last Sunday, the 4th.  I am not available on Sundays.  I haven't been since I started back at the Kingman Hastings last September.  Initially I did it that way because I wanted Corey and I to have one day completely off together.  Since he worked Monday thru Friday, and I knew I'd be working Saturdays, Sundays was basically the only option.  When I moved, I left it the same, so that I knew I'd have a day for my own stuff.

Well, suddenly I had a 7 AM to 4 PM shift on a Sunday.  I left my boss a note saying I wasn't available on Sundays.  When he finally got back to me about it at work, he basically told me that I'd been specially requested for a project, and that he had just really hoped/assumed I could work it.  There are SO MANY THINGS wrong with that!  Let me say that if I'd been asked in advance, say the week before, if I could work a Sunday for a big project, even though it's outside of availability, I probably would have been willing to help out.  But that courtesy wasn't given to me.  Instead, the assumption was made that what I said my availability was is a lie.  To me, that is a huge amount of disrespect.  If you can't at least respect my availability, then what CAN you respect?  That's like the most basic level of respect, in my opinion.  And it was made very clear to me by my boss that he was incredibly disappointed in me, and he hinted that it might be grounds for a write up and termination.  I was kind of in shock about that, but I stood my ground: respect me or I don't do shit for you.

On the same day that this conversation happened, I got bitched out by the LS manager for how much stocking I'd gotten done.  I'm normally a pretty quick stocker.  But on this particular day, the guy working in video was brand spanking new, on maybe his 5th shift altogether.  So every fifteen minutes he either asked me help, or I overheard him giving a customer incorrect information.  I probably saved at least $200 in sales by correcting him.  So here's another issue: people get hired and thrown into departments without any training.  Then the experienced people working on the floor have to train them as we go, and yes, it takes away from the time we have to do our own jobs.  And the LS manager was like, well, the other day in my shift, I stocked this much and this much and I was like . . . wow, really?  I don't give a crap how much you can stock in a shift, in my opinion, training where it's needed supersedes stocking.  Period.

Then I went to Kingman for Austin's birthday.  I was scheduled to work Saturday and Monday; I called in both days.  It was made clear to me that this was not OK, and again, it was insinuated that I could potentially be let go.  At this point, I'd really already decided I was done so I didn't care.  Seeing my family was well worth it, in my opinion.

Ultimately, I decided to quit to save face.  I think that at future interviews it'll look better to say, I quit because I was treated so poorly, than to have to explain why I was fired.

Am I terrified?  Oh God, yes.  I've been having anxiety attacks about this for days.  I'm scared to just not have a job, and I keep flashing back to last time, when I was unemployed for almost 2 years.  I can't do that again.  I am also ashamed of how irresponsible I feel comfortable being--but I tell myself that if this was a job where I was treated like a human being and that I enjoyed or at least didn't mind, I'd feel totally differently.  It's also weird because quitting without notice means I can't be re-hired, so if I was to move back to Kingman, Hastings isn't a work option there.  That part makes me sad, because in a way, it's like I'm severing a tie to that life, and . . . I don't know, moving on.  Making it harder to go back to.  I hate that feeling.

But as far as finding a new job goes, I actually think I'll be OK.  Since I've been back in Flagstaff, I've limited my job search to office jobs.  But right now a lot of places are hiring seasonally, so I think that if I expand my search to include other retail places and grocery stores, I'll probably be able to find something pretty quickly.  At least that's what I'm hoping.

But Jerbs supports me completely, and I trust her judgement in pretty much everything.

So . . . yeah.  Scary, but even with the anxiety attacks I'm relieved to be rid of Hastings.