I feel incredibly anxious right now but I don't regret my choices. I like the other employees at this job I started working at, however I did not like the manager with her obvious discrimination.
A friend of mine asked around how much everyone was getting paid because she had to fight hard for $16/hr. Most people there made at least $16 starting though.
All of the Latinx only made about $14-$15/hr. All of the Asians and black employees made $15-16/hr. Then the white people made $16-19/hr.
One new girl was OFFERED the job at $19/hr for "being pretty" (which no offense but she's very average to all of us there - she's just pale blonde and blue-eyed which the other white kids were not - and which the manager WAS)
I say this all in past tense because I quit. I didn't show up for my last day. I'm having another "snowflake" moment where the bad news of the world is crushing me and I can't stop spiraling and crying. But that's irrelevant.
I made $17/hr so why am I complaining? Because I don't think it's right. I don't care that I made a little more - that's not enough to keep me when the white girls do near-nothing all day and no one says anything about it. I'm not saying I dislike them for being white - I get along with the old white ladies actually. But the high schoolers who don't do their job and leave more work for the rest of us - why aren't the assistant managers saying anything???
And that new girl? Well she asked the only Latino if he knew where to buy cocaine, kept going to the bathroom, spoke very loudly and stared holes into people, her pupils were dilated as fuck and you can clearly see it with her blue eyes. She was married and faked a seizure twice to try and get the assistant manager she had a crush on to help her. He's married too. $19/hr. The only thing she had to offer was blonde hair and blue eyes.
They fired her. But that didn't make up for it to me. I want nothing to do with any place that divides people. If you watched the store closely, you would see that all of the minorities had to do more work for their section, lift heavier things, restock more items while the white people did not. And yet there were more white workers than minorities combined.
I knew Trader Joe's was racist before applying, but I didn't know it would be that obvious. I plan to report this. I don't care that my credibility may be shot from calling in so often. I only did so because I didn't want to deal with the extra work weekenders have while being paid the same (if not less) than weekday workers. And yes, the weekenders is when you see all of the minorities at once. I was only available weekends anyway, and that might be the only reason I was able to negotiate $17. Regardless, it was an awful experience. Don't get me wrong - the majority of the people I met and worked with were GREAT PEOPLE but I felt myself getting close to snapping on some high schoolers for shirking their responsibilities which would stir up trouble for the friend who referred me. So I quit.
