Employees at stores in the same district help one another.

The company keeps staffing levels at its stores very low, so every day someone has to go support another branch in the same district. It is practically equivalent to requiring every store employee to be familiar with all the stores and counters in the district. In addition, many things that could be resolved quickly are made unnecessarily complicated. There is also the issue of employees’ meal breaks: they have to eat while watching the surveillance monitors and helping retrieve clothes requested by customers, so they cannot really take a proper break.

Later, when I took bereavement leave because a family member had passed away, the store manager asked me to take a photo of the obituary. I happened to have an electronic file, so I sent it directly. However, the manager insisted that I obtain a physical obituary and photograph it for them. After taking the photo, I was also required to bring the physical obituary to the company. (At first, I thought it was only needed for the leave application.) After I brought it in, the district manager immediately told me that because I had not yet completed my evaluation, I was not eligible for a bereavement allowance, so I did not need to submit it and should take it home. It was never about the money, but traveling between cities during the funeral period was already exhausting, and I still had to deal with this. At the time, I also had other family-related factors to consider, so I resigned after working there for nearly two months. The district manager continued to emotionally blackmail me, saying that two employees at other stores in the same district had also resigned that month, and that my resignation would leave two stores understaffed. When the emotional blackmail did not work, the manager began making sarcastic remarks.