the Manager- This company is a corporate business all across America but they own four stores in Illinois AND a fruit bouquet business that they call a small business. I got hired in October 2020 and was trained for about a week and a half. Halloween and the holidays were coming up and the company was super busy during that time so that was all the training we got before our CEO manager left for her main kitchen in Naperville.. Three new hires were left by themselves with no idea how to really run the store. The problem is, there are no general managers. The CEO business owner manager lives an hour and a half away from our store and will visit only about once or two times a week. You are in charge of their store/s and the manager requires you to communicate with her through a cell phone. This became a problem very quickly as it was extremely frustrating to learn through a phone when dealing with such a detailed job. There were multiple times we where in a hurry and needed help or information on how to complete an order and we would text or call her and it would take anywhere between 2mins-2hours for her to reply. We constantly would make mistakes because of un-updated information decorating booklet (or because we weren't taught at all). Our manager just would text back and say, "you will always be training no worries! Just do it over." But the problem is this creates a negative work environment and wastes product. Not only am I not able to create a work relationship with my manager in which I would learn from her and respect her, but I have to hear every day that I have done something wrong when I didn't even know how to do it or that I was supposed to do it in the first place. At a job, I want to do things right the first time and be independent and a good worker. She would be so busy with her business and other stores that we would let her know if there was something wrong in or with our store in Chicago in the detailed Morning and Closing text summaries that were required, only for us to bring it up again later on when it wasn't fixed and she would say "Well I was not made aware of this". It drove my subordinates and I crazy. It was always made to seem like our fault even if she never said it. Within the first two months or so, I thought I would be a good employee and try to communicate all this with her over a phone call while I was on the clock. I explained how I felt, and how it would be much easier if we updated all the information we work with and get it more organized. And that It doesn't make me feel good to be told that I am wrong all the time. She literally just responded back with, "Do you need time off? are you stressed? I've trained girls for 28 years and it's never been a problem before." I cried silently on the phone that day and she has continually made me cry until I quit recently. I never brought anything up with her again because after that initial phone call, I realized quickly this is a company that doesn't listen to their employees and gaslights you so I wasn't going to put in that emotional energy again. It quickly turned into a bad work environment when even older new hires after me noticed her behavior VERY quickly. When everyone feels it, the morale is nonexistent. Also, I had to train new girls when I didn't even know what I was doing myself! It was extremely stressful because only two employees work the store at once, so basically I was flying around doing all the work of two people while trying to train someone at the same time? The Manager is the biggest micromanager I have ever met so I have no idea why she wasn't insistent upon training the ladies herself. She had this weird mentality and would talk to us or treat us like she would her own children. Just like the review below about her teaching empathy to a call center woman. She called us her cookie girls. With all due respect, I did really like my manager as a person... just not as a manager. I work a job to earn money and go home. But I was starting to take home so much emotional baggage because I would get so frustrated and heated at work. It through my anxiety into a spiral. Over the months it just keeps pilling. there are so many more stories that were just so unprofessional, but it would be too long to type.
One more thing- I was hired for a full time position that paid $15 an hour. There was no job title. She called me a "key holder" because some of us had the key to the store Even part timers. Well apparently "full time" means shift lead or general manager in her mind because of all the work I was doing. Order writing, training girls, being more responsible for communicating and overall having more decorating experience (because employees drop like flies here) definitely not enough for everything I had to put up with.