Unfair treatment?

harriet.victoria

Hello.

My boyfriend currently works for a tool shop, which seems to be messing him around slightly - in my opinion.

Basically, his been there for about two years as a sales associate. Its quite a large chain that he works for. The majority of the customers that visit this shop are trades people picking up equipment for thier works. All of the trades people will ignore most of the other workers and go straight to my boyfriend for advice on products and generally find him more useful than any of the other staff, including management. In fact, before christmas he was receiving presents from customers left, right and centre when none of the other staff were.

Before christmas a Key Holder position opened within the business, which as first they were directing to give to my other half. However, in the end another member of staff got this position over him. (His not too bothered about this as it was more responsibility, with no extra perks in pay or anything else really.) The excuse they gave for promoting someone else over him was the fact that his is "unreliable." However he works 40 hours a week and turns up 15 minutes early for every shift, so it didn't particularly make sense.

Previously, he has been trusted to go to the bank on his own to pick up change ect for the business. He helps the managers with the accounts (as he has previous account managing experience and ended up in this job when the company he used to work for moved to far away for him to move with them)

Lately, the managers have decided to add some new rules. Rules, which to me seem ridiculous. Such as - whenever a customer pays in cash, and any member of staff is required to give change, they should ask a manager to come over and count the change before they give it to the customer. For me, this just seems to make the staff look incompetant and basically wastes the customers time. I have never heard of such a rule being imposed in a retail environment! The managers claim that this rule has came from head office - but no other member of staff has seen proof of this at all and it seems a strange rule for head office to enforce. (The managers claim this has been done at EVERY branch.)

Today he is getting a disciplinary. As a customer was in a rush and just wanted his changed to leave, so he didn't call over a manager. His argument is that the tills were neither down or up and therefore the change he gave was right. He asked his manager "Are you giving me a disciplinary for doing my job correctly?" and his manager replied "Yes."

I don't see on what ground they can still give this disciplinary? My other half feels like he is being victimised and singled out from other members of staff as no one else is receiving disciplinarys for such silly things. Is there anything he can do? I am personally worried they are just picking reasons, any reason, in order to get rid of him.

This isn't the job he wants to do in the long term and he is trying hard to get out of the place, but currently the job market in my area isn't the best. I just hate the fact that he is working so hard, ridiculous hours, and being treated like an idiot.

Cherry_Bomb

There's nothing stopping him contacting head office himself to query this 'cash sale/manager checks change' rule.

Has he done this yet?

heretolearn_2

Hi

Please don't take this the wrong way but you know we pretty much all go home and moan to our other halves about work/bosses/crap that happens. I can't help thinking you are taking this extremely personally and getting highly indignant about it all when probably all your OH wants is someone to listen to a couple of minutes vent. You are having quite an extreme emotional reaction to this - is your OH as bothered by it all? I'm not trying to criticise you here, but sometimes the instinct to protect and defend our loved ones goes into hyperdrive, and can make the situation worse by making a mountain out of a molehill.

OK, the key holder thing. They don't need to make excuses for giving it to someone else. They have their reasons, not excuses. He should at the time have asked them in what way they saw him as unreliable - in a non-confrontational way - to get to the bottom of it and either improve in a weak area he is not aware of, or correct their perception of him.

Counting change - yes I agree it's unlikely this is a new national policy but you never know. Easy way to find out would be for you to go into another branch and buy something with cash, eh? If it is, then it's policy, so nothing he can do about it, and what you think of his employer's policies is neither here nor there. Don't wind him up about it. If it isn't, well then it's a branch policy, not just him, for whatever reason. It could be that someone is suspected of dipping into the till and this is the manager's way of tackling that. Whatever the reason, if that's now the rule, that's the rule.

Disciplinary - he broke the rule. Rules are not optional and in this case it seems clear that the staff have no discretion over it. He's not being disciplined for doing his job well, he is being disciplined for not following the procedures correctly. Again, even if he thinks this is a totally stupid procedure, that's not his call. And their procedures are really none of your business.

It doesn't sound personal against your OH. He should have asked for more feedback on the key thing at the time. It is possible that they do suspect him of something, I suppose, or it could be that they have reason to believe someone there is doing something they shouldn't be without having an idea who - but if his nose is as clean as you think, then there's no problem.

Acc72

harriet.victoria wrote: »

This isn't the job he wants to do in the long term and he is trying hard to get out of the place, but currently the job market in my area isn't the best. I just hate the fact that he is working so hard, ridiculous hours, and being treated like an idiot.

I have underlined the bit I think is important.

I presume that all members of staff now have to follow the same rules with regards to giving change to customers ?

If so, then he did not follow the rules (as daft as the rule may seem). In future he just needs to follow the procedures set.

In the meantime, he needs to see what happens at the disciplinary (if there is one - or is it the manager just telling him what to do in the future?).

heretolearn_2

'There's nothing stopping him contacting head office himself to query this 'cash sale/manager checks change' rule.'

And then what? Go up and call the manager a liar? Managers sometimes have to do things without being able to explain why to everyone - in this case it could easily be a case of suspected theft by a staff member. Of course they are not going to go into all the details with anyone while they are investigating/trying to put a stop to it. Employees seem to think they have a right to know everything about the business, well they don't, and it sometimes would be counterproductive if they did.

I used to work at a 'trade counter' firm myself and heard recently on the grapevine that a sales person who'd been there nearly 25 years was dismissed for taking from the till. Everyone was shocked. But it's really not uncommon in those environments - lots of security is needed against internal theft. Ha, there was a thread on here recently by someone who'd stolen from work in similar circumstances and wanted advice. The OP's spouse should just follow the procedures, come home and gripe about it for a couple of minutes, then get on with their life.