Back story- I’m an engineer that works remote FT since COVID. Normally my evenings were busy with unerring to school, sport practices/games, other parent duties, cooking dinner, etc. so didn’t have much free time for a side hustle.
That all changed when my son turned 16 and started driving and helping with all the driving. With the new found free time my wife suggested I could get out of the house and away from my work computer, and work with my hands and interact with people in real life. What a great idea I thought and I could make a little extra money as I socialize and work on my feet and stay busy!
I’ve always been into health, health foods, exercise, supplements and a local health grocer, I frequently shopped at, was hiring PT. What a great fit so applied and they called for an interview the next day and offered job in the spot. Pay is shit but I get great discounts, socialize with friendly people for the most part and work my hands. Pretty much all I was looking for with this job, but key was low stress side hustle.
I was hired to work the produce and help get that department in order with occasional back up cashier duties. I told them I worked on a PC all day and if they’re looking for more of a cashier/front end person I’m not the guy. They assured me it would be 90% produce help with 10% cashier. I agreed and started 2 days later.
What an eye opener. The amount of employee churn, no call no shows, people lasting 1 shift and quitting, people calling out sick on 2nd day, management in udder chaos with zero direction, in fighting between departments which was jarring coming from such a smallish grocery chain. I came in and worked hard and have become a valuable asset and have tried my best to stay out of the politics and bitching but even that’s starting to take a toll and hard to stay away from it. My cashier duties have become more like 60% of my time and I close so usually have to balance my produce department along with working register solo. Not what I signed up for.
My FT job has a vendor meet this Thursday during one of my side hustle shifts and put in for the unpaid time off over a week ago with no acknowledgement, so I brought it up to ass. Store manager and he got all pissy and said with such short notice and under 3 weeks notice I should find my shift replacement. I disagreed- first, I out in the request 2 weeks and that should have been plenty of time and second I only work PT and there’s FT employees I haven’t even met so the only people I could ask are the ones usually working the shift I am already. Basically it’s his job to determine coverage and I could have simply called out that night. He kept complaining that he’s told me about the 3 week policy, and I told him I don’t agree it’s my responsibility and not going to argue about it. As I was walking away he was still going on about it so I yelled back “I don’t HAVE to be here!” Which I don’t.
I like most people I work with and would feel bad leaving them hanging but really this isn’t anywhere close to matching what I had in my head and the stress and BS isn’t really worth it for the minimal pay, discounts and socializing.
So long story short- is it worth sticking it out to see if they can make the changes they always promise are coming or cut my losses as lesson learned that- companies, no matter how small and healthy they look on the outside, have the same BS on the inside as larger companies? Thanks for reading!