I’ve been so messed up about this ever since it happened, and oh my goodness I just want another opinion. This may even belong in AITAH, but I want to know if this culture is reflected in any other store. And I want y’all opinion because you’ll know exactly what I’m taking about. I’ve never worked for a company where this kind of language/speaking to coworkers like this has been acceptable… and something tells me this store was an isolated case. I know we got a new SM right before I left and part of why she was there was “to fix the culture”. I kinda wish I had sent her these screenshots just so she could see what she was walking into. 

So this is a lot but I promise it’s entertaining (who doesn’t love drama you aren’t involved in)


Overall context:

So I was hired as a supervisor, and at the time the only SLT who had been at the store longer than a month was the old SM and a key holder. Talk about red flags right… This key holder didn’t like me from the beginning, and I genuinely have no idea why… but I’m assuming it was that they hired me instead of promoting her. But just passive aggressiveness I’ve never seen anywhere else. Like getting Christmas gifts for everyone on management except me, going out of her way to micro-manage me or find faults in my work. Like if I was making a sale she’d come coach me about breaking away when there was literally no one else in the store to break away for. Or if I put in Zipline that I pulled and worked out a cart of replen, she’d comment the next day that was impossible because the cart we had in the back looked the same as yesterday (as if we didn’t have 4 more I could have used?). Would constantly accuse me of not doing something/not replenishing xyz and send would photos to the group chats calling me out when NONE of us were completely perfect all the time… but you better believe I was the only one regularly called out for minor misses. Everyone else was “set up for failure” (usually by me, apparently) but when they left me in similar situations it was an issue of me not performing. I just couldn’t win, even when my segment numbers looked good. 


Context for this conversation: 

Blue - the key holder doing floorset 
Purple - the associate closing with me (former SLT who was hired at the same time I was)
Pink - me
Yellow - ASM 
Green - SM 

This was one of my last shifts. It was just me and one associate (who had been a key holder, she stepped down a week prior to this) closing after a busy Saturday. We had a big promo update too. The older key holder was in the store with 2 of her own associates strictly to do a few tables, and I was told very clearly by the ASM not to even speak to them and let them do their thing, closing is completely separate. Cool. At our store we had three rooms to replenish, and then there’s sweeping/mopping, trash, bathrooms, and marketing. Those are all the closing things. The associate I was closing with is fully aware of all these things because we basically had the same job until a week prior. I remember that I did trash and the bathrooms before close, but I was too busy to sweep before locking up like I usually try to. I stayed in room 1 to finish recovery/replen because I started before close (9) and wrapped up at maybe 9:10. I had my associate doing room 3 because it was standard procedure for the cashier to be working on that between customers and then finish up after. When I get up to room 3 to start closing the registers, the key holder who should be doing her floorset is already closing them. I’m confused but knew questioning her would cause issues, so I decide to knock out sweeping because I never liked having my associate sweep AND mop. My usual game plan with 1 associate is having each of us do a room, doing the last one together, and then they mop while I do marketing. Ofc this is contingent on all the other cleaning being done prior to close, but apparently my big mistake this night was not going over my closing plan with her… even though the ASM told me not to bother her with closing. 

It’s also important to note here both of them regularly coached me on overloading the associates. Apparently I should only be giving them a task at a time instead of  “overwhelming” them with the big picture. These are all adults… but whatever. I really think it was one of those “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” things, because they had a habit of just telling me to do that opposite of whatever was I currently doing, and then telling me that was also wrong. It got to the point where I was scared to make decisions about anything because they’d find a way to make it the wrong call. 

So I start sweeping because my associate isn’t done with room 3, with the hopes that she’ll finish around the same time as me and we can do room 2 together, then she can mop while I do marketing. Good plan right? Guess not. The key holder on floorset tells me I need to get started on the marketing ASAP because there’s so much, and she was right, it was a lot and I hadn’t looked too closely at it yet (and I’ll admit that was one me… but I still don’t see how it would have changed anything. In fact, I think pausing my game plan to do it then made everything more complicated but I didn’t want to fight). So I put down the broom and go to the back to start pulling all of it and it takes ? at least 15ish minutes to get it all together in the back (our marketing was always a MESS it took forever to find anything). It should have been pulled by the mid shift manager earlier in the day, that’s one of the things that would have been “setting them up for failure” if I didn’t get to but they never did it for my closings. And note, this conversation about “no stop sweeping, go do marketing” is the only conversation we had that night. When I get back out my associate is still finishing room 3 while I start the marketing, and by this time it’s probably 9:30. Eventually I pull her off room 3 and say it looks fine, for the sake of time go ahead and sweep. After a sale like that she probably could have spent 2 hours in there and it still wouldn’t have been set perfectly back to page and with full understocks. After she swept, she immediately started replen on room 2 (the only one that hadn’t been finished) while I finished marketing. Whether the other key holder told her to I have no idea, but no I really don’t think I should have HAD to (like I can’t imagine her assuming we were all done and can go home just because I’d I didn’t specifically say “okay now let’s do room 2!”). I honestly think any associate would be able to pick up on that, especially a former SLT, because it was the only thing not finished. If she was just standing or had asked what next, I would have told her, but clearly I didn’t have to because she was already doing it. At this point it’s maybe 10:15, and we didn’t finish room 2 until around 11 because, again, it was technically only 2 people closing a huge sale. 

I don’t remember if I specifically directed my associate what exactly to replenish, but am I really in the wrong for assuming I didn’t have to when she was a manager literally a week ago? We do this every day. We didn’t even get to mopping because if there is a way to recover/replenish an entire store plus do a huge promo change with 2 people in an hour, I never figured out how. I was supposed to have all that plus mopping done by 10 and I just don’t physically see how I could have. But that’s what I mean when I say it’s a performance issue for me, the rest of them would have been “set up for failure”. 

So I get home, and then is the group chat conveniently leaving out the new SM there to “fix” all this. This is the first and only time responded to her trying to do this nightly because I had already put a notice in and I was so sick of her lying about me. Like why? Girl really. Like why. You’re almost 30, have a college degree, and your choosing to spend your time picking fights as a part time retail manager… If it’s not clear, I’m saying she’s making assumptions that I was just never going to touch room 2 and leave it for her to do, just because I never specifically mentioned it… even though I was told not to involve her in closing in the first place by the ASM, and was also told to stop giving associates a run down rather than 1 task at a time. The whole thing about not doing room 2 threw me too… because again, she WATCHED US work on it for 45 minutes. 


TLDR - is this a normal experience at BBW???? Am I the crazy one for thinking the lack of professionalism at this place was wildly unacceptable? 

Manager group chat… would LOVE to know another manager’s thoughts because this was wild 😅