80-year-old boss publicly scolds young bookstore employee over tiny mistakes: ‘He keeps publicly reprimanding me over increasingly ridiculous things’

Advertisement
  • Woman with glasses reaches for books on a shelf while another person stands blurred behind her.
  • I (20F) have worked at the same independent bookstore since I was 16. I genuinely love this job. The pay is
  • amazing, the actual work is easy enough, I love my coworkers and customers, and the bookstore itself has a
  • huge amount of sentimental and historical value to me. I work weekends and holidays.
  • The problem is my boss (around 80M).
  • He's increasingly difficult to work with, and the entire staff has basically learned to "walk on eggshells" around him. We
  • can tell he's in a bad mood from the way he walks down the stairs or closes doors. Most of my coworkers just
  • Woman with glasses talks at a table in front of bookshelves with another person in the foreground.
  • nod and comply when he gets angry because they know arguing or explaining yourself tends to make things worse.
  • I'm apparently one of the few people who will actually explain myself when I think something is unreasonable.
  • Over the past years, he's reprimanded me in front of customers before, (yelling at me in the store, saying that
  • my behavior was "absolutely unnecessary and very ride towards him." (I told him the book he was searching for
  • had not been ordered because he told me I wasn't allowed to), he's said r de and disrespectful things,
  • made coworkers cry and overall being a person.
  • He's not like this all the time: sometimes he is interested and happy with me. But it's not his default mood.
  • This behavior is happening often, not only toward me, but lately I've become the scapegoat. I actually had an
  • 'intervention' with him because he thought I was slacking off. Why? I put too
  • much paper in the bin (!!!) and I was coming across as laconic. I apologized, explained I never meant to
  • come across like that and that I take my job seriously. It cleared the air for a bit, but then.
  • Yesterday happened. Three things went down:
  • He came in already annoyed because I'd said I couldn't work certain dates next year
  • due to my internship. Then I took a customer call about a book. I checked our inventory system and then our
  • supplier's system. Both said the book was temporarily unavailable, with no indication of when it would
  • be back in stock. I told the customer I couldn't order it for him. I helped him find another book instead.
  • My boss immediately questioned why I'd told the customer that we couldn't order it. He said I should have told the customer that it
  • would be back in stock eventually. I explained that I couldn't promise that when I had no date or availability
  • information. He insisted I'd handled it incorrectly. He told me I was 'smart enough to think ahead, right?' while
  • slamming boxes while raising his voice. I didn't really respond, just nodded and tried to explain myself. He
  • didn't like the look on my face, thought it was sassy. I just felt ridiculed.
  • Later, during a break, he asked me to walk with him. He asked how I was feeling. I'd previously told him about
  • a chronic health issue because sometimes it affects my mood/memory. He then said:
  • "I'm not sure if it's your health or just your personality that's being sloppy." He proceeded to criticize me
  • that morning. Apparently the coffee was burned by the time he went to get it 3 \*\*hours later\*\*, there weren't enough cups
  • downstairs, and I hadn't done the dishes. I calmly stated that I didn't appreciate the tone he was
  • speaking in toward me, because it was about coffee. Like, come on. I then went on to explain that on Saturdays
  • we normally do the dishes and bring the cups down when we make the afternoon coffee.
  • He then pointed at me, raised his voice, and said:
  • "You're going to do things around here exactly as I want you to. Not how you want to do them. You're going to
  • behave how I want, act how I want and do what I want. And if you're not going to do that,
  • you're going to get up and do your thing somewhere else."
  • At that point I stopped listening. I nodded, walked away and went upstairs crying.
  • Later he saw me talking to a coworker about what happened and sent me to the back of the store to sort old books onto a table for
  • someone else to look at later. The store was busy at the register, and the task wasn't urgent, so it felt very much like he wanted me away from everyone.
  • I've now reached the point where I'm seriously considering quitting.
  • Yes, maybe I'm not totally fitting his image of a perfect employee. Perhaps I'm too vocal and confident or a bit informal. Sometimes I make
  • mistakes and I forget things. But I don't think I deserve this treatment. I work hard and try to do my best every single
  • moment of the day. Do you think that I need to seriously work on my attitude or is he just a bu y boss?

Tags

Scroll Down For The Next Article