40 employees quit at unmanaged retail store, leaving 3 brave managers to run it alone: 'Callie [tells] me to call the entire staff 1 by 1'

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Jan 5, 2026 11:00 AM EST

Imagine a perfect clothing store, then imagine the opposite of that, and you'll be picturing the exact scenario these 3 managers found themselves in. 

In the retail world, we tend to think of the employees doing most of the work, while managers do very little. At least in my experience, it seems like the workers really run things: they keep the shelves stocked, help customers find things, ring up purchases, do returns, and fold clothing to keep the store tidy. Managers get called in for the big issues: they assign employee roles for each day, they get called over when a customer flips their lid, and besides that, they seem to spend most of their time hanging out in the back room together. Honestly, it's hard to blame them. Most retail managers have spent years on the ground as an employee before moving up to that prized position as a manager. If you spent 5 years of your life as a cashier before being promoted to a cushy managerial position, you'd probably just want to hang out in the back office and never look a customer in the eyes again. 

Manager work can vary greatly between people, too. Some managers are very hands on with their workers, directing their tasks constantly, and truly having eyes in the back of their heads. They're they kind who love to bark out, "If you have time to lean, you have time to clean," which is one of the worst phrases ever invented, by the way. Others, meanwhile, could not care less what their workers do. They trust them to do their duties more or less, handle the customers or whatever, who cares. You can find them lounging in a comfy chair, watching the cameras while sipping an iced coffee while listening to their music with the world tuned out. 

These managers, though, pulled off a genuinely incredible feat in the worst conditions you can imagine for a retail setting. Their story is unbelievable: they discovered a store so grimy and unloved that basically the entire staff had given up on it. The success here is thanks to these 3 managers, who collaborated and shaped this store back into a proper establishment! 

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  • 01
    Woman in yellow jacket smiles while touching clothing at retail store, to her right a woman in a white shirt and gray skirt folds arms and look serious
    via Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash+

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • 02
    I mentioned I once had nearly an entire 40 person staff quit, and as promised here is the story. (Names and a few details. changed for everyone's protection) For setup, I had been hired on as an Acting Store Manager.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 03
    Basically, for an entire six state region, I'd fill in whenever a manager was out of the store for longer than 48 hours (vacation, sickness, maternity, etc). We were basically substitute teachers of the retail world. This was only temporary, and when a store manager position opened up, I could step in with zero probation period. There were three of us in this role.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 04
    I was the first hire of a rather ambitious new district manager, Callie. I interviewed her third or fourth day in the job and she was psyched about everything in the company, and talked at length about her plans. Of course, all this ambition meant she bit off more than she could chew, and within six weeks she was burning out. Callie had originally planned to visit every store in her district over her first three months. But according to rumor the previous
    via u/[deleted]
  • 05
    DM, knowing he was retiring, had sort of slacked off so all the stores had issues one way or another. She ended up spending far more time at each location than she wanted. Which is why she hadn't made it to this one store (I'll call it store 333) at all. So Callie sends an email that she's heading down to check up on them just before she leaves, a
    via u/[deleted]
  • 06
    semi surprise visit. We get an email not long after, saying that she needs an Acting Store Manager there ASAP, asking for one of the two of us who were free, Victoria and I. Not five minutes later there's a revision. She needs BOTH Victoria and I. So knowing we're heading in to disaster, we each drive four hours to the store. Walking in the place is a mess. Not just normal retail mess, but actual dirty windows, literal dirt caked in the corners of
    via u/[deleted]
  • 07
    the floor, burnt out bulbs, etc. Callie is just sitting at the manager's desk looking like someone hit her with a brick. She tells us that she walked in, and the previous store manager, Jane, handed her her resignation and walked out. The only full time employee was gone, too. And there was a lot wrong with the store.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 08
    So Victoria and I take over registers, finish out the day, and then the part timer hands in her name tag and says she quits. This was, sadly, just the start of it. That night we literally spent the entire night at the store. I can't tell you what order we found out the mess there, but over the next few days, it all unfolded.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 09
    The old system in place wasn't really integrated between cash registers and accounting, and there was a step in there where managers would transcribe numbers. It seemed that Jane had been faking the numbers for cash. Oh, and the last four deposits? Disappeared. Never taken to the bank, and nowhere in the safe.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 10
    Plus, there were these mysterious bins in the front with heavily discounted "manager sale" items, marked as cash sale only. We puzzled over this for a while before finding that occasionally Jane would mark shipments as coming in damaged and unsaleable. Items which mysteriously were the same as those in the bins. So, cash fraud. Great.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 11
    Then the next morning, NONE of the morning staff showed up. Victoria and I are running the store solo for a while, while Callie sat in the manager's office shifting through paperwork trying to figure out all that was wrong with the store. An employee shows up, but just to hand in their badge and tell us to stick it up our asses.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 12
    One of the weird things we had noticed was that there were far more people staffed for this store than made sense. Jane had one full time employee, then a ton of part timers, mostly each only working 4 hours a week. This didn't seem the weirdest thing about the store, but we later suspected she wouldn't have anyone there long enough to figure out things were shady.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 13
    Almost all of those employees were high school kids, or people who were there to earn spending cash rather than a living. None of them were really invested in the job. When we finally had an employee show up, she tells us the full time employee had called her and fed her this line about how Jane (who apparently was very well liked by the staff) had been cruelly fired, corporate was screwing them over and how they need to make
    via u/[deleted]
  • 14
    a stand. If all of them quit the store would go under and they'd benefit...somehow. Apparently a really good number of them decided the statement was worth more than the job and had decided to quit. Callie ends up telling me to call the entire staff one by one and asking if they planned to continue employment. I spent an hour with everything from slammed phones to cursing to lame excuses. Most talked about how they hated our
    via u/[deleted]
  • 15
    corporate who was mean. And a few mentioned how corporate wouldn't even give them their bonuses. What? Now end of year/Christmas time, all employees who had worked more than six months would get a Visa gift card, value dependant on number of hours worked. I hadn't HEARD of any problems. Neither had Callie, who forwarded it on to accounting.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 16
    Meanwhile, knowing that we had basically no one to work the store, we sent out an email to the closest stores. If they could spare a few employees, we would pay for their transportation, meals while working, if travel was more than an hour we'd pay for a hotel room, and they would have a 50 hour week at DOUBLE normal pay. This was during summer when there were a lot of college kids, so people jumped at it. By close, we had locked in about 12
    via u/[deleted]
  • 17
    people from 6 or 7 different stores to work staring the next day, and staying for at least 2 weeks. This in addition to the 4 or 5 part timers who hadn't quit on us. Meanwhile, all day its calls from corporate, from the corporate lawyers, etc to Callie, who looks like she's ready to cry. We get word corporate is sending two representatives into town.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 18
    Again, my timeline isn't entirely straight here, but in the next days Callie finds out that all the bonuses were given out, sent to the store signature required. All appeared to be redeemed. Then later I heard all were redeemed at the same Walmat... Oh yeah. Jane had stolen from her adoring employees.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 19
    We later heard from the next door sub place that just before Callie showed up, Jane and the full time employee had been loading. boxes in their car our of the store. Wait "thier" car? Oh yes. The two were dating! And who knows what they had just stolen.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 20
    We also found over the next days that inventory was just a nonexistant thing. According to the system, we had more negative quantities than positives, and none of our stock was made from anti matter. We task a few employees to re inventory the store headed by Victoria, while I handle store operations and hiring a new staff. She finds out that there's just boxes of stuff everywhere, tucked in nonsensical places, still
    via u/[deleted]
  • 21
    in packing boxes, mixed in illogically. Inventory was this nearly impossible thing as they kept finding stuff. A box in the bathroom. Shipping boxes stacked in the backroom, used as a table. A box stuck up in the damn ceiling tiles, found by the electrician. I'm trying to retrain the old part timers, meanwhile. Some realized they needed to basically erase how the store was run and start
    via u/[deleted]
  • 22
    over. Others insisted that "this is how its always been done!". Like layaway. Our company didn't do layaway. We never did layaway. Apparently Jane did layaway, but that's wrong, and I have no way of verifying what those. customers spent. (Lots of confusion, and issues forwarded to corporate). One or two employees just had to be let go because they insisted doing things "Jane's way".
    via u/[deleted]
  • 23
    The backroom had been a mess, and I was sparing man hours just to clean. Cleaning up back there, they found a door that had been covered with empty boxes. It was locked and Victoria and I were debating whether it was "ours" or lead to the adjoining store somehow. Then one of the part timers chimed in something along the lines that "that's the trash room, they locked it up when it got full."
    via u/[deleted]
  • 24
    Now, that employee was high school aged and I think this was her first job, and she said it like this was a sane and logical comment. As though every business had a full trash room. So not really wanting to know the answer, I asked what a trash room consisted of. Apparently, if it was raining, or they didn't want to go out to the dumpster, they'd just throw their trash in there.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 25
    Callie had just sat down with the corporate guy when I walked up to the office and informed them of this. They both just stared at me like I shit in their Cheerios. A locksmith was called in to open the door, and we found a 15 ft x 15 ft room chest high full of boxes and trash bags and stuff. The only saving grace was it was closed up long enough to be not fresh garbage smell, but old musty garbage. At any given
    via u/[deleted]
  • 26
    -- point over the next few days we would have an employee wearing gloves and digging through it bag of receipts, kept for evidence. A bag of trash from the bathroom. A box of unopened merchandise, covered in fluids leaked from a questionable bag that may have contained food at some point. Inexplicably a busted up bicycle. The employees would come up shell shocked on break describing the weird horrors they found.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 27
    All this time, I'm hiring a whole new staff. Normally, we did background checks and a lengthy interview. This was shortened to my fifteen minute judgement calls on someone and "can you start training tomorrow?". As far as the thefts, etc, I can't tell you the end conclusion. Callie and the corporate guy kept that bottled up, but there were lots of calls to the lawyer. But the end result was that store needed a
    via u/[deleted]
  • 28
    new manager! Someone who could finish training the random new hires, handle the pissed off customers who suddenly saw their store turned upside down, handle inventory, and of course, the angry ex employees. Thankfully they picked Victoria, and I went to my next, less stressful assignment.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 29
    Woman in yellow jacket browses clothing of retail store while holding paper bag and smiling
    via Andy Quezada For Unsplash+

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

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satisfying quitting story workplace story retail tales from retail
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