I don't know what to do.

[AriGriffin]

I am a part-time cashier at a general store and I make minimum-wage with no benefits. I have worked for this company for a year now. There have been several times where the manager, assistant manager, or manager-on-duty has changed my schedule and did not inform me. The last time was the third time it has happened. The most recent time happened on 10/20/09. I went to work on Saturday evening around six and checked my schedule for the next week. I was supposed to have Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday off; work 9-4 on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday; and work from 3-9:30 on Saturday.

I had to take my mother to the doctor's early on 10/20/09. I returned home that evening to a voicemail from the manager-on-duty that had been sent at 9:07 am on 10/20/09.

"(AriGriffin). This is (Manager-on-Duty). I know you know you had to work this morning, Darling. You need to call somebody and let us know whether you are coming in or not so we can put another person on the till instead. If you are at the doctor I need a note."

I did not get home until late in the evening on 10/19/09, but I checked my voicemail before going to bed that night and there was not a message from work informing me of the schedule change. There wasn't even a note on the incoming call log stating that someone from where I work had called. There had not been a call on 10/18/09 nor one on 10/17/09.

Since this is the third time this has happened, I was wondering what could be done. I spoke to the manager the first time it happened and he said it wouldn't happen again. The second time they changed me to being off instead of working 9-3 like I was supposed to. I ended up working though because the cashier was sick. The manager I talked to after the first incident is currently out due to medical reasons. I believe they might fire me due to the no-call, no-show even though I feel they should have informed me of a change in the schedule. The first time it happened, I worked the morning shift the day before so they had changed it that night.

Also, I never get a break at work. With the way the registers run, only one person can use the register at a time due to personal numerical passwords that must be entered after two minutes of inactivity. I have worked anywhere from five to over eight hours without a break to eat, rest, or go to the restroom. It is starting to effect me medically as I am getting pain in my sides from having to wait for so long to go to the restroom. My co-workers, including the various managers, all go outside to smoke and/or talk for at least fifteen minutes at a time, several times (never less than five) per shift. They also leave me alone in the store while they go run to the bank or to a fast-food place and they are usually gone for thirty minutes. At this time I cannot do returns, exchanges, void more than one item, or void entire transactions because the manager has to put in their password.

Customers naturally get upset when there is no one to help them as I cannot leave the register and I can't do a return or check anyone out due to the need to do a void. I have had customers complain, curse at me, throw things at me, spit at me, and threaten me. When I need a price check or a customer needs assistance, and my co-workers are outside smoking, they take a long time to come into the store to help. Some co-workers have said, "Okay, as soon as I finish my cigarette," when I page them for help.

I stock items, hang clothes, clean the store, run the register, and get yelled at for not doing anything. While I am getting yelled at, my co-workers are outside smoking and talking. The Manager-on-Duty and a co-worker were outside smoking. The store had had a large shipment of stock the day before and the second shift had not put anything away and due to running the register while having to stock on truck day/Senior Citizen Day I was not able to put everything away the day before. I stepped outside to ask the Manager-on-Duty to come inside to do a refund when I heard the co-worker say, "This place looks like shit." The Manager-on-Duty took a drag off the cigarette and replied, "Yep." I told the Manager-on-Duty I needed help, but they didn't come until they had finished their cigarette.

They play the radio at work- the day seems to go by faster when the music is on. One of the managers changes the station from one that plays classic hits from the 50s-80s to one that plays religious music and a [IMHO controversial] talk-show (homophobic remarks). Customers have complained about the religious music/talk show but that manager will not change the station. I have different religious views than what is being played and have told the manager about it and how I felt. The district manager was in the store when the religious music/talk show was on and they did not do anything even after I told them I did not appreciate listening to that station. The manager that changes the station also nags me about joining their church. I don't want to fratch, but I feel like I am being descriminated against.

I do not feel safe at work. I am under a lot of stress, having frequent anxiety attacks, and trouble sleeping in addition to the pain in my sides. There have been several other incidents over the past year, but these are the most recent. I don't know what to do about the situation. I have sent an e-mail to human resources and intend to follow up with a phone call. I don't know what else to do.

[KhirasHY]

I don't know if you are in the US, but if so, this might be useful to you (Note, there are two entries, and these are long, so grab a comfy chair):

"A hostile work environment is primarily a legal term used to describe a workplace situation where an employee cannot reasonably perform his work, due to certain behaviors by management or co-workers that are deemed hostile. Hostility in this form is not only a boss being rude, yelling, or annoying. It is very specific, especially in the legal setting when one is suing an employer for either wrongful termination or for creating an environment that causes severe stress to the employee.

There’s just a handful of ways in which you can define hostile work environment. Any act of sexual harassment on the part of bosses or co-workers can be viewed as hostile. Any act or remarks that are overtly discriminatory regarding age, race, gender, sexual orientation, or disability are also considered to create a hostile work environment.

The other way a hostile work environment may be defined is when a boss or manager begins to engage in a manner designed to make you quit in retaliation for your actions. Suppose you report safety violations at work, get injured at work, attempt to join a union, complain to upper level management about a problem at work, or act as a whistleblower in any respect. Then, the company’s response is to do all manner of things to make you quit, like writing you up for work rules you didn’t break, reducing your hours, scheduling you for hours that are in total conflict with what you can do, or reducing your salary. The company’s reaction can be viewed as creating a hostile work environment, one that makes it impossible to work and is an attempt to make you quit so that the employer does not have to pay unemployment benefits.

Lastly, overt hostility that threatens you physically are hostile work environments. If you really feel that you are at physical risk because of the behavior of another employee, specifically through violent behavior or threats of a violent nature, the employee’s manner is not only hostile but also potentially criminal.

When people find themselves in a hostile work environment, they may not know how to act or what to do. Actions should be determined by the degree of hostility. In the last example, if you truly feel a threat to your physical well being, it may serve you best to leave work and report the matter directly to the police. Such documentation can then serve you if you plan to sue the company or claim unemployment benefits.

In the first case, when discriminatory behavior is evidenced, or another employee acts in ways verging on sexual harassment, most experts in this field suggest that you act immediately. If someone tells a racist joke, let the person know that it’s inappropriate; if someone says anything of a sexual nature to you, ask him or her to stop. When the behavior continues, inform management, first with a documented letter, and second with a sit-down conversation.

Most companies have policies in place to deal with this type of behavior. When management fails to act appropriately, you can sue the company. Success in this type of lawsuit largely depends on not only how management failed to help but how you acted. If you respond with hostility in a hostile work environment, chances are your suit will be unsuccessful. Studies show that in court cases, your behavior is scrutinized just as carefully as management’s behavior."

Here is #2:

"Understanding Workplace Harassment


Workplace Harassment is a Form of Discrimination

Unlawful harassment is a form of discrimination that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other federal authority.

Unwelcome verbal or physical conduct based on race, color, religion, sex (whether or not of a sexual nature and including same-gender harassment and gender identity harassment), national origin, age (40 and over), disability (mental or physical), sexual orientation, or retaliation (sometimes collectively referred to as “legally protected characteristics”) constitutes harassment when:

1.The conduct is sufficiently severe or pervasive to create a hostile work environment; or

2.A supervisor’s harassing conduct results in a tangible change in an employee’s employment status or benefits (for example, demotion, termination, failure to promote, etc.).



Hostile work environment harassment occurs when unwelcome comments or conduct based on sex, race or other legally protected characteristics unreasonably interferes with an employee’s work performance or creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment. Anyone in the workplace might commit this type of harassment – a management official, co-worker, or non-employee, such as a contractor, vendor or guest. The victim can be anyone affected by the conduct, not just the individual at whom the offensive conduct is directed.

Examples of actions that may create sexual hostile environment harassment include:

•Leering, i.e., staring in a sexually suggestive manner

•Making offensive remarks about looks, clothing, body parts

•Touching in a way that may make an employee feel uncomfortable, such as patting, pinching or intentional brushing against another’s body

•Telling sexual or lewd jokes, hanging sexual posters, making sexual gestures, etc.

•Sending, forwarding or soliciting sexually suggestive letters, notes, emails, or images

Other actions which may result in hostile environment harassment, but are non-sexual in nature, include:

•Use of racially derogatory words, phrases, epithets

•Demonstrations of a racial or ethnic nature such as a use of gestures, pictures or drawings which would offend a particular racial or ethnic group

•Comments about an individual’s skin color or other racial/ethnic characteristics

•Making disparaging remarks about an individual’s gender that are not sexual in nature

•Negative comments about an employee’s religious beliefs (or lack of religious beliefs)

•Expressing negative stereotypes regarding an employee’s birthplace or ancestry

•Negative comments regarding an employee’s age when referring to employees 40 and over

•Derogatory or intimidating references to an employee’s mental or physical impairment

Harassment that results in a tangible employment action occurs when a management official’s harassing conduct results in some significant change in an employee’s employment status (e.g., hiring, firing, promotion, failure to promote, demotion, formal discipline, such as suspension, undesirable reassignment, or a significant change in benefits, a compensation decision, or a work assignment). Only individuals with supervisory or managerial responsibility can commit this type of harassment.

A claim of harassment generally requires several elements, including:

1.The complaining party must be a member of a statutorily protected class;

2.S/he was subjected to unwelcome verbal or physical conduct related to his or her membership in that protected class;

3.The unwelcome conduct complained of was based on his or her membership in that protected class;

4.The unwelcome conduct affected a term or condition of employment and/or had the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with his or her work performance and/or creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment.


What is Not Harassment?

The anti-discrimination statutes are not a general civility code. Thus, federal law does not prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or isolated incidents that are not extremely serious. Rather, the conduct must be so objectively offensive as to alter the conditions of the individual’s employment. The conditions of employment are altered only if the harassment culminates in a tangible employment action or is sufficiently severe or pervasive to create a hostile work environment.

Report any incident of harassment immediately to your supervisor, any member of management and/or to the Director of the Office of Workplace Diversity.


Note

Any employee wishing to initiate an EEO complaint arising out of the alleged incident of harassment must contact an FCC EEO Counselor or other EEO official within 45 calendar days of the date of the incident. For information on how to contact an EEO Counselor, visit http://www.fcc.gov/owd/counselors.html. The employee should not wait until the agency’s internal harassment inquiry is completed to contact a counselor if waiting will allow the 45-day time limit to expire."

[LillFilly]

Look for a new job! You shouldn't have to tolerate that abuse, and I agree the situation with breaks is appalling! Same thing happened to me; the smokers were always...well, smoking. And as for the abuse, that is not right under any terms! I am sorry for you. Listen to KhirasHY!!

[KhirasHY]

Dividing this into a second post to keep it separate from the above...here are my suggestions.

First, you need to document everything consistently!!! I cannot stress this enough. Document, document, document! You said in your post that you have complained both to your current and upper management about the religious station, and that you have received customer complaints as well. This needs to be documented if nothing is done. If he has repeatedly approached you about joining his church and been rebuffed by you, you need to make sure it is being noted that he has continued to make those advances despite you telling him that you are not comfortable with it. Repeated and pervasive activities such as that are clearly defined as acts of harrassment. If you tell him you are uncomfortable, and he does not stop, he is violating the law in the US. This is doubly so if he offers criticism regarding your religion or lack thereof.

Second, it says this above, but it should be repeated: if you intend to fight against any form of harassment, you absolutely CAN NOT be the aggressor in a situation. You will be heavily scrutinized in your own behavior to determine if you are also at fault, and exploding in anger will severely hurt any case you try to make. You also need to be prepared for a stressful encounter; having managed several employees through sexual harassment issues at my previous job, I can tell you it was not easy for them. It will create rifts for you with other employees, but that should NOT be a consideration: you are protecting your own rights, and no amount of stress can be worse than repeated harassment in the workplace.

Third, if you are submitting repeated complaints to an upper-level manager, and they are being ignored...you need to go further up the chain. If a district manager is failing to act, you must go to a regional manager. If they fail to act, you must go further up, to corporate if needed. Sooner or later, you will reach someone who understands the severity of this...if you have not received any help, that can seriously compromise the company as a whole to an eventual lawsuit. In short, if you have documented evidence of a pattern of harassment, the company is required to act.

Fourth, the fact is that harassment has changed vastly in the past 50 years. Things like Quid Pro Quo have mostly gone the way of the Dodo, and most harassment is now a viciously subtle thing. This can go two ways; first, some people may engage in harassment without realizing that they are offending someone else. Many of these situations can be resolved by sitting down and talking through the difficulties. However, it can also mean that it is much harder to identify the exact actions of harassment when an investigation takes place. For instance, someone is offended by someone's use of language in the workplace. Does this mean they regularly drop F-bombs at every opportunity, or that something was misheard? There's a lot of distinction that has to go into these things, which is why proper documentation is so important.

Lastly, remember this one important thing: you cannot be disciplined for complaining of harassment. If you are disciplined, or retaliated against in any manner (this WOULD include having your schedule changed without notifying you, repeatedly), this can constitute an immediate creation of a hostile workplace. If you complain of any harassment, I would recommend taking pictures of your schedule during every shift, and making sure that you have a log of incoming calls to your phone at all times. Any voice mails from management should be kept. If you have not done so, keep the voice mail where the manager calls you "darling" as evidence. Such language can be considered inappropriate, and can be used if you decide to take a step in that direction.

If you have any questions, I'll try to tune in for them.

EDIT: I should note that this is another good website to read: http://employeeissues.com/hostile_work_environment.htm

What I would take from that is the very end: "Before reporting a hostile work environment to the EEOC or a state equivalent, you might have a stronger case if you first followed your employer's anti-harassment policies to no avail. Otherwise, your employer might weaken your case with the Faragher-Ellerth defense. This and other potential complications might make it a good idea to consult an attorney before filing your charge. Attorneys often take winnable discrimination cases on contingency." Do not think of moving forward with ANY kind of lawsuit until you take the proper in-company steps. Always consult with a lawyer first; if you have a viable case, and a lawyer will take the case on contingency, that may work out for you. That said, ideally, you can resolve the situation within the company without need for such a drastic step.

[Rapscallion]

I'm not familiar with the US legal system, but aren't those lack of breaks somewhat illegal?

As a side note, I'm pleased everyone's pulling together and giving thorough advice - thanks

Rapscallion

[AriGriffin]

Thank you, everyone for your help.
The manager has said that they could get into trouble for not giving me a break, but I couldn't take a break because there wasn't anyone to give me a break.

[EvilEmpryss]

Addressing Only the scheduling issue: Do you have a cell phone camera? Every day you come to work, take a picture of the work schedule. This way you have proof of what the schedule said when you're being accused of not working at a different time.

It may not pay off immediately, but while you're looking for a different job (which I would definitely recommend) you'll be covered from their stupidity.

[KhirasHY]

Thank you, everyone for your help.
The manager has said that they could get into trouble for not giving me a break, but I couldn't take a break because there wasn't anyone to give me a break.

Since I looked at your profile and confirmed you are in the US, I can tell you this: not having the people to give you a break does not suddenly make it allowable. If it's something that's missed on rare occasions (like when the store is suddenly slammed right after your lunch and no one can pull away for a break for several hours) that's one thing, but just not giving you breaks while people are taking smoke breaks as well is a violation.

[casey13]

Then the manager should be giving you a break. It's not allowed. Is there a corporate store you could call? When our store director found out at my old store that people weren't taking breaks, she flipped out and said that they need to take breaks even if it involves calling a manager to run the breaks.

[AriGriffin]

I worked from 9-4 (well, 4:30 really). I only got a three minute restroom break at around two. I asked for a break because my ankle was starting to hurt thanks to tripping over a cord on Monday. They said, "Oh, okay, Ma, when we get done smoking we'll let you go." When they finished that, I couldn't go because they had to put stock up. The Manager-on-Duty yelled at me for not getting all the stock on the shelves while I had to keep running to and from the register.

I e-mailed human resources about the change in schedule and they said I should contact the district manager and that person is on vacation.

[bainsidhe]

First and foremost, decide what is best for you. We can all pick apart the bits of evil that is your workplace, but what is it you want to accomplish?

You sound quite stressed (who could blame you?) and you mentioned anxiety attacks. Your work situation sounds awful to deal with, and I suspect your state of mind is ill equipped to deal with such an environment. Which is why I suggest getting out and looking for a different job. Not sure if that's an option for you, but I wish you the best. Your current job offers minimum wage and no benefits. Finding other work would offer no less.

Trust me, I sympathize about the anxiety attacks. I recently began having attacks for the first time. It is stressful, debilitating and utterly exhausting. Even without a full-blown attack, it's as though I'm running on my last nerve and trying not to have a breakdown every moment of my shift. My emotional state can go from feeling perfectly normal to perfectly shattered. Consciously I realize what's going on, but it's a physical reaction that I can't control. Any difficult customers/coworkers will upset me more than normal and I have to mentally force myself to calm down. It isn't easy, but I'm getting better.

It wouldn't surprise me if your workplace is a contributing factor to your attacks. In which case, you need to get out of there. No workplace is worth your physical and mental well-being. Good luck.

[Pagan]

I'm not familiar with the US legal system, but aren't those lack of breaks somewhat illegal?

As a side note, I'm pleased everyone's pulling together and giving thorough advice - thanks

Rapscallion

Oh, only very. Even in at-will states, they have to give you reasonable bathroom breaks. And they can't deny you have at least water to keep yourself hydrated. I think that comes under OSHA.

Then the manager should be giving you a break. It's not allowed. Is there a corporate store you could call? When our store director found out at my old store that people weren't taking breaks, she flipped out and said that they need to take breaks even if it involves calling a manager to run the breaks.

What Casey said. If there's no other people except for the the manager to cover your break, then they cover your break. I had to do this a lot when I was a Guest Service Manager and there would only be me and a GSA from 9am-1/2pm.

[CaptainJaneway]

do you have an employee hand book? if you do does it state about breaks and what not?

[Teskeria]

Email Corporate that you are not being given your breaks. That can get them in huge legal trouble with the state. Also check your state laws. They should have an email or phone number you can call regarding not being given breaks.
While documenting, be sure to document that all the smokers have breaks to smoke (if you can try to remember how many smoke breaks they take and how long their shift is. This can be difficult when you are covering everyone). Document EVERY shift you are not given your legally mandated break(s) on.

[BlaqueKatt]

I can tell you this: not having the people to give you a break does not suddenly make it allowable.

depends on the state-as i've posted numerous times my state(WI) does NOT have any form of law regarding breaks for non-minors

And because everyone always argues it-relevant law here

"Employees under 18 years of age must receive at least a 30-minute duty free meal period when working a shift greater than 6 hours in duration. Breaks of shorter duration are not required. If an employer provides breaks of less than 30 consecutive minutes in duration, the break time will be counted as work time. Wisconsin law does not require that employers provide brief rest periods, coffee breaks or meal periods for adult employees, although the Department recommends, in Chapter DWD 274.02(2) of the Wisconsin Administrative Code, that employers do so. Employers are encouraged, but not required, to provide breaks of at least 30 minutes in duration at times reasonably close to the usual meal period. Such matters are to be determined directly between the employer and the employee."