Employees at stores in the same area 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 area. This means that almost every store employee has to be familiar with all the stores and counters in the area. Also, many things that could be resolved quickly are made unnecessarily complicated. In addition, during employees’ meal breaks, they have to eat while monitoring the security cameras 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 passed away, the store manager asked me to take a photo of the obituary. I happened to have an electronic copy, 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 request.) After I brought it in, the district manager immediately told me that because I had not yet completed my assessment, I was not eligible for bereavement assistance and did not need to submit it, so I should take it home. It was never about the money, but traveling back and forth between cities during the funeral was already exhausting, and I still had to deal with this. However, because there were also other family-related factors at the time, I resigned after working there for nearly two months. The district manager continued to emotionally blackmail me, saying that two other stores in the same area had also had employees resign that month, and that including my resignation would leave two stores understaffed. When that emotional pressure did not work, the manager began making sarcastic remarks.