I'm Quitting and Nervous About Telling my Manager (USA).
Everyone should have seen it coming. Warning: long post incoming.
Last week, I went to a job interview and I got it. I'd be getting paid more than $4 an hour, PTO, insurance with hours I want. It's a little bit different than anything I've done before but I feel it's worth leaving my comfort zone, especially when my "default" mood has been just angry lately. I told my manager some time ago I was looking for other work and she laughed it off but I wasn't joking.
The problem is, she's the type of person who takes it personally when people quit. I'll be frank: we get along but sometimes she gets on my nerves. She whines about never having enough staff because the environment drives everyone away and she compares people who have only been working there for two days to people who have been working there for years and then gets pissy when they basically say GFY and dip.
I'm sorry, but nobody coming here to work is going to experience the same attachment you have just because you work literally every single day and it's the only job you've ever had. Not everyone here is friends with the franchise owner or her family. Nobody wants to work here for years and have to experience a traumatic life event in order to maybe get a few weeks' PTO and that's just because the owner likes you.
Nobody coming here is going to decide it's worth it barely scraping to get by because *you* worked there for 20 years and obviously enjoy it enough to voluntarily spend 11 hours of your life here daily and then complain about it. The world isn't going to end because you took a day off.
Sometimes, I feel like this person works all these hours so she can feel like she's needed or she likes to hold it against people how hard she works and it rubs me the wrong way. The reality is, all the adults here with any sort of responsibilities have to work 50+ hours a week to afford to live or they're forced to take second jobs because working a regular 40 hour week here ain't cutting it.
When I asked for 40 hours a week, it felt like a battle. I'm still only scheduled 39 hours but I try to stay late when I get the chance so I can get a little overtime. It doesn't make a difference. She tried talking me into changing my availability to six days a week, but like I said, I'm already miserable. Why put myself through that if I can work somewhere with better wages and offers benefits that would allow me to improve my life situation? My teeth are fucked up, I gotta go to the dentist because it's getting harder for me to eat without experiencing pain. I need to learn to drive but I gotta get a physical to get my permit. These things just aren't possible to pay for out of pocket. My boyfriend has been out of work the last couple months, so I've been trying to help out by paying gas money on top of pay bills and groceries and by the end of every two weeks, my bank account is back in the single digits because I'm having a hard time staying current after losing my prior job.
Like I said, I don't drive yet, so I'm at the mercy of other people for transportation. I'd rather just work longer hours on days I'm scheduled than work an extra day because that's just more driving for everybody else. Gas is almost $5 a gallon here.
The other problem is I'm "just a prep cook", which kinda resulted in a meltdown last week. People are being nicer to me, probably only because I snapped the fuck out in the cooler and management heard what I was saying. This was brushed off as me just being on my period and she also hasn't stopped bringing it up since it happened, which comes across as really passive aggressive.
I feel like part of the reason the GM was so reluctant to give me full time hours is because I'm "just a prep cook", but I'm their only prep cook. Last week I got pissed because people are constantly minimizing my role to "just a prep cook" but I am constantly doing something, whether it be washing dishes, prepping, thaw pulls, rolling burritos, cleaning the equipment or scrubbing toilets and my manager likes to act like I'm just singing with the all the little woodland creatures back there like I'm a fucking Disney princess. I have a whole list of time-consuming tasks and it's overwhelming trying to keep up. I can spitball and it'd land on someone standing there with their shoes off and eating and yet I'm always pulled away from my tasks and nobody does anything on my day off. They just let everything run out. There's always an excuse nothing gets done. It makes me wonder how this place functioned before they hired me, or they've just gotten lazy because I'm here now.
God forbid I may need a few days off or two days off in a row. What would happen if I went on vacation? Would they just let the store run out of everything?
So yeah, cliffnotes version: I'm nervous about telling my manager I'm quitting because I know she isn't going to handle the news well. How would you let someone like that know you're done?