First off, I’d like to thank QT because without them I never would have been able to afford and purchase my first home at 25. Without them I would not have some of the luxuries I have today or would I have met some of my best friends, so for that I am forever grateful; however, the QT that I got hired by five years ago, is not the same QT that we have today. Somewhere along the way over the past few years the culture has changed and I don’t see any sign of it going back to where it was. You may ask why I’m writing this letter of resignation then since I have already made the decision to quit. This letter is not for me this is for my friends and family still working at QT who I have become very close to over the last five years and I don’t want to see the same things that happened to me happen to them. Let’s get to how this all started for me and why I finally decided enough was enough and decided to quit.
A series of unfortunate events happened to me starting last February when I came down with the flu and a bad sinus infection. This flu never seemed to go away and I was in and out of the doctor’s office almost every week. I was trying to get promoted and my manager at the time was retiring so I kept coming to work to make sure the store didn’t fall apart more than it already was. I felt the need to take on the added responsibility of the manager not being there; however, I worked myself to the part where I was almost hospitalized. I hadn’t been able to breathe out of my nose since January and it was just something I was learning to live with; however, it made stocking the coolers extremely difficult for me because of the pain and pressure in my head and it mixing with the cold was not a good combination, but I didn’t want to seem weak. My doctor finally ordered a CT scan since I wasn’t getting any better and just kept getting progressively worse. The results weren’t what I was expecting. I was told I had paranasal sinus disease, which I didn’t even know existed at the time, and a deviated septum which I needed sinus surgery to correct and fix. Then the doctor also told me that they had found a growth behind my right eye and they would have to do an MRI to find out more information, but the next opening wasn’t for another month. I asked him the odds of it being cancer but he couldn’t give me an answer until he had the results from the MRI. Mind you I was still going to work during this time because my FMLA had not gotten approved yet and I did not want to get fired or the store to fall apart any more than it already had. I finally got the results back from the MRI and luckily it turned out to be nothing so that was a giant relief, but when finding out that I didn’t have cancer we found out my grandmother did which she passed away from a few weeks later. I worked until I had to have my surgery done and then after my surgery I was out for a month on short term disability because I wasn’t allowed to lift anything over five pounds, bend over, or do anything to raise my blood pressure; all things that we do on the daily at QT. My doctor said recovery time could take anywhere from 5 to 8 weeks, but I couldn’t afford to stay on short term disability because my paychecks were barely over 20% of my normal pay. So, I came back not fully recovered and tried my best but that didn’t seem to be enough because everyone was used to how good I was before I had gotten sick and I just couldn’t give 110% like I used to my body would not let me. I was under the impression that my manager was relaying everything to my supervisor because I didn’t want to go over his head but I guess all he told him was that I had taken a lot of time off work and then came back not as good. My manager was still hardly ever there so I still felt like I had to pick up all of the slack because I was still working towards getting my 1A interview that my manager kept telling me next month I’ll put you on the list…. every month. I finally realized he was just probably saying that so I would do all of his work too and was actually never going to put me on the list, so I got to the point where I couldn’t take the stress and pressure anymore and asked for a store transfer even though by asking for this I had felt like I had failed. I put my pride to the side and asked anyways. I wasn’t sleeping, I wasn’t eating and my health was still not where it was supposed to be. Three months later the week that my manager is going to finally retire and we’ll finally have a new store manager I got a call from my supervisor to go cover at another store because an incident had happened, and the next day he called me again to ask if I’d like to transfer over there and it’ll help me to become 1A and challenge me and I had asked for a transfer previously. I accepted because I wanted to do the right thing and they needed someone there. I realize today that this was a move to help QT and not to help the situation I was in at all because at this store I made less money and it was way more stressful then my last one. Regardless I tried to make the best of the situation. I had set a goal for myself to be on the 1A list by the end of the year and I had informed my manager of this as well which he said wasn’t outside of reason. I busted my butt at this new store. All of the clerks loved me and we were starting to develop a bond and I felt part of a team again since I actually had a store manager. I had my first one on one with my manager and everything went well we had a Gary ride coming up so I took it upon myself since I wanted to get promoted to make sure everyone made the store look awesome. Not that we didn’t always try this but you know how everyone gets for Gary rides, and it payed off we got a 93% which was one of the best Gary rides my store had ever gotten. I was so proud of myself and my clerks. I had my next evaluation and I had exceeded on almost everything except a few CSA things from when I was at my old store where we had staffing and merchandising issues because the manager was never there. However, I guess I had also gotten shopped the week after my Gary ride and received an 82% and was told I wasn’t going to get a 1A interview because of that even though the highest shop at my store was an 88%. I felt defeated, like all of the hard work I had put in was for nothing. It felt like they just decided to ignore all of the good I did and only focus on the bad and negative things. It was at this moment that I truly started searching for another job.
I gave over five years of my life to this company and rarely asked for anything in return. They chose me to head one of the biggest projects QT had ever done, the kitchen training project, and that was a blast for me. I was having fun teaching and training people coming up with raps and jingles so people would remember the proper ways to make things. I even wrote, produced and stared in a training video for the company to help train people in the kitchen. Then that project ended and I finally had become a 2A which I had been pushing towards since the beginning and I thought things would get better once I became 2A…. but they didn’t. You would think it would be in the best interest of the company to make sure one of the individuals responsible for training most of the Arizona division in our new kitchen remodel would be taken care of and checked up on in case another project came up that they needed me for, but that wasn’t the case. I felt abandoned and forgotten in a store with a Manager already on his way out with all the extra burden placed upon my shoulders. This wasn’t the QT that I had started with five years ago, the QT that I saw myself moving up in and becoming a supervisor in.
Somewhere along the way we lost sight of our core values and the thing that made this company so great. If you don’t believe me I’m going to break down our core values for you which I still use in my everyday life and try to show you in my opinion where I think things went in the wrong direction. Let’s start out with the first one Be The Best. QuikTrip is still in my opinion the best gas station and convenience store out there for its customers, but I don’t think we’ve been the best at hiring the best employees since our kitchens opened. I get it that we had to hire a lot of people however when you sacrifice quality for quantity it will affect the company in the long run which I feel like it truly did, and I know you realize this as well. Which brings me to next core value of Do The Right Thing. I have always tried to do the right thing when working at QuikTrip and in my day to day life, but that didn’t always seem to be the right thing in QTs eyes. I’ve saved a woman from getting beat up from a man on the lot and have stood in front of a loaded gun before not because they’re things I wanted to do but in my heart I felt like they were the right thing at the time and both times I got in trouble for my actions even though in both of those situations I just acted without time to really process or think about what was going on. In situations like that your instincts kick in and you just do. I don’t feel safe at work sometimes, and it’s not that I can’t hold my own it’s my fear that if I get put into a situation and have to defend myself I will get fired because almost everyone who I’ve seen this happen to has been terminated. In allowing all these people to steal and not doing anything is actually making us more unsafe in the long run because more people know about it now causing more people to come in and steal. Hell the guy who robbed that one QT and then got shot later on at another gas station was interviewed and said on the news that he robs gas stations just because he can get away with it because they’re not supposed to do anything. I used to always trust QT to have my back but now I second guess most of my decisions. Also, along with the first core value I see so many people passing training that aren’t QT material but they’re passed anyways and then later on effect the store moral and overall productiveness. Leading to the next core value of Never Be Satisfied. We shouldn’t be hiring mediocre people. We’re QuikTrip come on only the best of the best should get the honor of wearing the red and khakis, but somewhere along the line we were satisfied hiring the B’s and C’s and hoping they’d become QT material along the way which never ended up happening. When I was hired, it was hard to get into QT because they only hired the best. I don’t feel like that’s the same mind set anymore. Has the company just gotten too big and started relying more on profit then of taking care of its customers and employees. I see hours getting cut more and more and less people being scheduled each week which gives us less employees to help the customers which in turn is going to be harder for us to achieve those 100% CSAs. I feel the company is more worried about the bottom line then taking care of their employees and customers now. Just like that sign in the office says “If you’re not taking care of the employees, you are taking care of the people who are”, but are we? Less employees scheduled and more hours cut is having less people there to take care of the customers who are the ones who ultimately pay our paychecks. That’s why I started looking for another job I wasn’t satisfied with how I was being treated and I always knew and saw the potential I had to achieve great things. It’s just sad that that potential wasn’t mutually seen by the company. Another core value Focus Long Term has seemed to be forgotten as well. We are only focusing short term when it comes to hiring. We just needed bodies to run the kitchens and that’s what we got bodies… not Quiktrippers. Why are we passing everyone that comes out of training? It’s ok to fail someone if they can’t do an upkeep or are just not right for QT because then it’ll save money in the long run and make room for someone who is the right fit for our company. Then the last and final core value Do What’s Right For QuikTrip. I’ve always tried to do what’s best for QT the entire time I’ve been with the company, but recently the best thing for QT doesn’t always align with what I feel morally is the right thing to do. The way I was raised I’m always going to try to do the right thing however I sometimes second guess myself now if that’s the right thing for QT. So many people steal from the current store I’m at and there’s nothing I can do about it and it just drains you both physically and mentally. I feel like I’m stuck in Azkaban and all of the customers are dementors just slowly sucking the soul out of me. I don’t want to have to be faced with the choice of is what’s right for QuikTrip and what’s really the right thing to do.
I know so many people at QT who want to leave but are too afraid to because they don’t think anything is better out there. They stay because the benefits and pay are pretty good, and I don’t like how QT uses that fear to keep them here and that brainwashing technique of that they’re the best that there is and you’ll find no one better. Then I see people get over looked for years until they’re finally promoted. I’ve seen people’s lives and marriages fall apart because of QT and I just got to the point where I couldn’t live in that fear anymore. I can’t remember the last time I was truly happy. I used to be singing and laughing all the time and now I just kind of fake it to get by. Now there’s days where I’d rather get into a car accident then go to work. Not a bad one where I die but just enough that I wouldn’t have to go into work that day. The last time I went to the doctor I was diagnosed with severe to moderate depression and I just can’t let a job have that much effect on my health, personality and life anymore. There have been multiple times things could have been handled or done differently where this outcome would have never come to but they didn’t so here we are. I’m finally taking a leap of faith and found a job with a better schedule with around the same pay and benefits and I’ll finally be able to pursue my dreams of becoming a stand-up comedian and making the world laugh. I shared some of those laughs here but somewhere along the way I lost the thing that made me the person I am and now I have to start looking out for myself instead of everyone else. I have no hard feelings. I completely understand you have a business to run and changes happen but if you’re wondering why there has been so much turnover recently and people haven’t been as happy at their jobs I tried to give you my own personal experience and opinion as to why things are happening the way they are. Hopefully you took the time to read this and hopefully it made you realize what has been happening from an employee stand point. I just don’t want to see the same thing that had happened to me happen to others. Like I said at the beginning this letter was meant more for my friends and family still at QT then it was for me. We are a QT family after all. QT will always have a special place in my heart and I’ll miss it but it’s time to say good bye and start looking out for my best interests and wellbeing. I know people usually only tell supervisors what they want to hear and not how they actually feel because they’re afraid of losing their job or getting stuck and never promoted. Hopefully this letter is able to reach the right people and maybe even Chet so QT can get back to prioritizing the things that made them so great of a company. I figured this was the best way to go since QT doesn’t do exit interviews anymore. I wish you all the best and I hope to see some of you guys at my shows whenever I make it big!
