The CEO and founder of Zoup! is so professional - I talked to him about the toxic situation at the Zoup location I worked at, and he was nothing but understanding. He knew I was being fair, and even when I explained to him that I couldn’t get myself to do a two weeks notice he said that the circumstances made that a respectable decision. He said my email and my (spoken) language was professional, and he encouraged that I take a break to do what I need to recover, then move on. He said that he thought I had great thing scoming if I maintained my work ethic and professionalism, and I should not let this experience bring me down.
The situation with the store is that it’s franchised, so the store belongs to this manager/store owner. They can’t just terminate her, but they said they would LOVE to. They said that this situation is not new, and that they have tried talking to her, talking to her lawyer, and legally pressuring her. Legally, though, it ends up they cannot do much. At the moment, they are trying to get her to sell. It seems recently she has expressed the interest or weakness in this, and now with me reaching out they are going to increase pressure on her to do that. They do not approve of her - he said it is sad, frustrating, angering.
I can see why she got hired - she has lots of experience (30 something years as an iron worker), and she can do the physical part of the job well. She does have a light-toned facade, and she probably used that when interviewing and when starting out. I know this because when I left she was always like “Thank you! See you tomorrow” and for that moment it always felt like “Maybe she likes me, maybe it’s not as bad as I though and I’m just being a baby.” She even tricked me in these moments, not only Zoup!, that she actually was at least somewhat decent at motivating me to work!
Once she was safe and in, she stopped. Because she is capable of being nice, she must get something out of harassing and abusing others. This is not her kind of job bc food service requires people skills, especially with young adults and people in tough life situations. Maybe iron working yelling, hissing, and demeaning works, but for a job where you watch over ENTRY-LEVEL workers, it’s not okay.
