Current Events > general question about getting laid off

(+) Yeah! (+)

bit of context before I get into the question. I work retail. It isn't glorious but its a job. We have new people due to the virus and one of them was working with me. It's a busy day and we're having trouble with getting shopping carts into the store, I go for my lunch about 45 minutes after I'm supposed to due to the new guy not being amazing with his job yet(again I don't totally blame him, because he's new and we only have 2 people on despite 4 people supposed to be on(1 called in as his gf is autoimmune, and another got sent to another section of the store).

Anyways, eventually I say screw it and go on my break, letting my supervisors know as well as the guy at the door know so he can let the new guy know since I couldn't find him for whatever reason. I come back, immediately get hauled into the office and complaints thrown on me by one of the managers because "I'm supposed to make sure the store is filled with carts before I leave on my lunch break, and I should have went 45 minutes ago". No concept of me helping out the new guy.

Long story short, she says to me "I should get security to follow you around one of these days to see how much time your wasting". I'm bringing it up to HR on Monday because honestly that nonsense doesn't fly with me. I get that its busy, and that things don't always go as planned, but my god.

Funny enough I mentioned that to the security at our store and he laughed and said good luck with getting me to do that, I'm too busy dealing with this virus bit, doing 3x my normal duties.

My work doesn't usually lay off for whatever reason, but would that be something that would garner a lay off for me? I'm already having a hard time keeping up with college work(we just started this week and already have 4 assignments due next week plus a test, and our prof refused to teach us for some fucked up reason. Thankfully we have someone from another class doing the same course and he's linking all the online lectures his prof is showing his class which is super useful). So it would be nice to have a little downtime to help focus on class work due to work giving me nearly 40 hrs a week during class time.

TLDR: Boss says to me "I should get security to follow you around one of these days to see how much time your wasting", is that case for a layoff?

Youre right. Id go to HR too. Youre doing whats right. Good luck

They'd fire you rather than lay you off. If you get fired you're not eligible for unemployment except in very specific circumstances (depends on your state).

See if your school as any work study jobs, they're leagues better than retail and look better on your resume too.

Also just an FYI retail HR is not there to help you, they're there to help management. You can go to HR with a complaint, but it will almost certainly make things worse.

at this point, I really don't care. It's just one stack on top of another. One of my other managers is a micromanager, to the point where I was off work, shopping and she asked me why I wasn't out getting carts. Christ she got pissed off at me, when I was on my lunch break and the other guy wasn't even clocked in yet.

They already let one manager go because she was abusing the receiving staff apparently. I just came in one day and she was replaced by someone else.

If they fire me, I'll talk to EI and let them know what was going on, I have more than enough witnesses that can vouch for me. Also I live in Canada.

IronWolf87 posted...

Also just an FYI retail HR is not there to help you, they're there to help management. You can go to HR with a complaint, but it will almost certainly make things worse.

HR exists primarily to ensure the company handles things legally so they don't get lawsuits. While yes they do work for the company, they will not condone management doing stupid shit like threatening employees with nonsense.