AITA for mailing poop to my boss after a coworker passed away at work?
Long post but there's a lot on context here for this to make sense, I'll try to shorten as much as possible
For privacy I will use nicknames for everyone. At this time is was just me, my Assistant Manager (We'll call him A), two other reps (We'll call them B & C), and then a brand new hire (We'll call her D). I was working with C, and D was still doing her virtual new hire training (It was her fifth day on the job). About 20 minutes after I left for lunch I got a call from D. When I answered it was a police officer informing me that C was unresponsive, paramedics were still working on him, and they needed his emergency contact information. My husband was with me at the time and we immediately headed back to the store (I only lived about 3 minutes away) I didn't have access to my employees emergency contacts, so I called my District Manager on the way back to the store to let him know what was going on and asked how I get the information. He said he would look for it and call me back. When we pulled up to the store C was being loaded into the ambulance but they weren't in a hurry and no one was working on him so I felt relieved and thought he must have just passed out. I was wrong. The store was full of police officers and firefighters, several of them were leaving as we walked in. I asked the first officer I saw if C was ok and he said no, he is still unresponsive. At that moment I knew, he was gone. If he was still unresponsive but they stopped CPR then obviously he was gone and either couldn't pronounce it until it was confirmed by a doctor or they just didn't want to say anything official until his family had been notified first.
Poor D was sitting in the corner of the store bawling and was clearly traumatized and not ok. She had a friend that was close by that had come to help console her until her Mom got there to take her home. I was able to get the story from the officers of what happened. Literally minutes after I left, C collapsed (Found out later it was a heart attack) and when D came through the door to the front of the store she found his body and called 911. She was unable to roll him over to do CPR and just had to wait for the ambulance to get there. This poor girl was 19 and it was her fifth day on the job.
My boss finally called back and said that we didn't have any emergency contact information on file for C and explained to my boss what all happened and told him its bad, that I'm pretty sure he's gone. I then explained that the police were asking for my help to track down his family and I needed to go. He just asked me to keep him updated. So me, my husband, and the officers who stayed started searching for any of his family or friends. I was calling other stores that he had worked at and employees I knew he was close with (He was a very well liked employee and had a ton of friends within the company), and my husband and the police were searching through his social media accounts to try to get in contact with someone. An officer was also in route to the address on his ID.
After an hour or so my husband was able to get in contact with a family member on facebook and the police were able to get in contact with his family. (My husband stopped by the store often in his free time and had become friends with all of my employees including C, we were all pretty close as it was a very small store and small group of workers, which is why he had come with me to help in case anyone was wondering) While we were doing this me and my husband both were going back and forth to check on my new hire and console her as she was not handling this well. My boss started calling and texting me wanting to know how much longer it would be until I opened the store back up. I had obviously closed the store down during all of this and the company was not happy about that. For context, they had a very strict policy that for safety we cannot open the store unless 2 employees are present. So since D was clearly going to be leaving, I couldn't reopen the store. I didn't give a shit about the store and I was just trying to keep my shit together while trying to help D and track down C's family, but my boss kept calling.
This is a brief summation of how the calls went:
"Do you think she will calm down enough to finish her shift?" Me- No, she is freaking out right now. "Well give her some time and she will calm down, we have to get the store open"
"So how is D doing, do you think shes ready to finish her shift?" Me- No, she is still crying and shes not ok. "Well just keep trying to calm her down so we can open"
"So how is it going?" me- She is not going to finish her shift, she is traumatized "Just try to talk her into staying, its only a few hours. Whatever you have to do, we HAVE to get the store open"
"If she isn't going to be willing to stay then you need to make A or B come in, we cannot leave the store closed." me- A is on paternity leave "Well in this situation he needs to be a team player and help his manager out so call him and see if he will come in"
While we were all still looking for C's family my boss called me to happily inform me that he had watched the video footage of the incident. He actually said roughly "Good news, I looked at the camera footage and C fell straight down, he didn't hit his head or anything so there's no liability on the company. So thats good!" He said this in a chipper tone that really pissed me off, no compassion, empathy, nothing.
Eventually D's Mom took her home, the police left, and I was just sitting there because I wasn't allowed to leave. Through all of this my boss just kept hounding me about getting the store open because I can't just close it down, over and over. He was angry that D wouldn't stay, he got really angry when A & B refused to come in and work (Like of course they would, I just called and basically told them their friend just passed away but you'll come in to work right? Idiotic.) and then he told me that his boss was now involved and not happy and that I absolutely HAD to reopen the store, so he made me start calling other stores to try to get help. No one was willing to come in of course, but they wouldn't let me leave the store. Not once had my boss shown any sympathy or anything about the situation, he was only concerned with getting the store open and making sales. I kept asking to leave because I wanted to go to the hospital, but they kept saying no.
Finally after 4 hours or so my boss let me leave but he was not happy about it. We drove straight to the hospital and found out that he was gone, and it was a heart attack. While I was there my boss shockingly showed up, but it was awkward. He offered his condolences to the family, told me he found someone to work with me tomorrow and they were "generous" enough to let me open the store 2 hours later than normal the next day, and left. He was there maybe 5 minutes.
They held a short conference call the next morning with the whole district announcing C passed, sent out a company wide email, and that was all they did. My boss did randomly show up to the store the next day to drop off some cheap ass walmart cupcakes and cookies and then promptly left.
It was a shit show after that. I was EXTREMELY shorthanded at that point and really needed help. I wasn't allowed to let anyone have overtime, so since I was salaried I had to work all the extra hours. The day after the incident my boss told me "Don't worry about staffing, you just tell me what days you need help and I will make it happen. Don't stress about it." He never helped me. D came back to work for a couple days and then quit, she called me crying saying it was just to hard to keep working there where it all happened, which I completely understood. When I told my boss his response was "She just quit like that with no notice?? Well she's going on the do not rehire list" and then hung up. So at that point I was screwed. I called other stores literally begging for help, offering to pay for gas, buy them lunch, even offering $50+ dollars on top of that, whatever it took to get some help so I could have a day off, but no one would help. One other Store Manager worked for me 2-3 times but that was all he could spare. No one else would even try, they just told me no. I was working every single day open to close, which was 11-13 hours per day, and I was working 10-12 days straight at a time. I did reach out to my boss for help, and the first time he said he'd see what he could do but never got back to me. When I reached out again he said he was still working on it and again never got back to me. Then after that he stopped answering my calls and texts. Now with this job we are in constant communication through text and Group Me chats updating sales. He would respond to my messages about sales and other things, but he would ignore me when I asked for help with staffing. He knew the hours I was working and still ignored me. So I just gave up and stopped asking. After a couple months I finally got a few new people hired and once they were trained I was able to go back to my normal hours.
During that time A & B were also working more hours and witnessed how I was treated by the company after all this and all 3 of us got chewed out for our sales being down the month after C passed. We were accused of using that as an "excuse" for underperformance. Both A & B quit because of how poorly we were all treated. They both also made it clear why quit, and that they only stayed as long as they did out of respect for me to make sure the new people were fully trained and wouldn't leave me in a bad position.
I later found out I was pregnant and day before I went on maternity leave my boss put me directly on a final write up for my "Turnover Rate". (I have never been written up before) He told me, and I quote, "Your turnover rate is worst that I have ever seen in my entire career in this industry. This is a reflection of your poor leadership skills." And then went on to explain more on how I was a bad manager and that I would be on a performance plan when I came back from maternity leave and could be terminated if I had another issue. I did have to fire one employee, but other than that, every single person that had left my store quit because of C's passing. And he knew that. He just wanted me gone and was trying his best to get me fired or force me out. I was caught so off guard by this that I didn't really say much. I just went quiet, responded when I had to, and got off the call. My husband was livid and wanted me to quit right there, but I wanted the 6 weeks of pay so I didn't do anything. I went on maternity leave the next day and found another job.
When I quit I sent my boss and HR a very nasty email explaining how awful I was treated and why I quit, which he never responded to of course. But my husband had heard of this website where you can pay to have literal shit delivered anonymously to someone's address. They have all kinds of options of poop from different species, different combinations, and you can even add glitter bombs. It is sent completely anonymous with no return address and comes with a card that says "You've been pooped on, want to know by whom? Turn over" and the back says "We'll never tell" My boss made the mistake of hosting our Christmas party the previous year at his house, so I had his address. We chose a combination of Gorilla and Elephant poop and had it sent to his house in the middle of a severe heat wave. I only wish I could have been there to see his face when he opened it.
So AITA and overreacted or was this fair?