Confrontation

I promoted my full-time girl, and they decided to pay her the same as me. I was SO PISSED!

I also had to wait two days before I could talk to anyone about it. I was off, and so was the store manager. Plus, I was getting a vibe from the girl I promoted, that all the interactions between her and the store manager (R) were confidential. That pissed me off even more. The store manager, of course, was telling me everything. Since it was my employee, and my promotion!

Thursday, I asked him what head office decided to give her, and if she took it, he told me what it was. (This happened to occur, by the way, it a customer path although there were no customers around, there were other staff around.)

He said, “13.10”

“the same as me.”

“What?! But you’re on salary…”

“Yeah. 30 000 a year. I’m required to work a minimum of 44 hours a week. If you work that out, it comes to EXACTLY 13.10”

He went white. I knew right away I had him. Every excuse he gave at this point was super weak, and showed just how wrong he was. He just kept getting whiter and whiter. “But you have benefits that she doesn’t have. You’re a manager”

“Yeah. I’m a manager I deserve more. Lucky for S she had you to speak on her behalf. You were gone for two weeks!”

Well you should have waited.”

“well you better do something about it because I have just cause”

“Just cause for what?”

“To walk out that door!” My voice was starting to raise at this point.

Panic on his face at this point. “Nikki! You wouldn’t do that!”

“I WOULD! I don’t HAVE to BE here. I’m here because I choose to be”

“well I’ll talk to head office, I’ll send them an email-”

“NO. You’re going to do something about it – TODAY. Or I’m walking out that door.”

“I’ll talk to him.”

Ten minutes later he called me to his office. He said “the problem here is lack of communication. I didn’t know you weren’t happy. When you told me you called head office yourself, I cringed. I wasn’t unreachable, you could have called me. Or if I had known about it when I came back I would have fixed it for you. I have a relationship with x that other store managers don’t have. Five minutes on the phone with x and I had it all straightened out. Five minutes, that’s all it took.”

“Now, I’m just going to tell you what’s going on here. I’m going to give you 37 000, and I’m promoting you to manager in training.”

“good. That’s what I deserve”

“this surprised me – for a number of reasons-”

I said “I think you know me enough by now, to know that I’m a good person. I’ll never intentionally do something to screw someone over.”

He nodded nervously.

“but if someone does something to mistreat me…”

I blamed the person at head office and he looked embarrassed and said it was a “glitch in the system” and a “mistake”. Then he told me that I’d better be careful with my temper because some people might take it as a threat. I said that yes, I do need to work on that. Then he said he was sorry.

I’m really unsure as to whether I went about doing this the right way. I feel really guilty, but at the same time, I’ve lost a lot of faith in something I believed so much in. I mean, they were planning to promote me again anyways…but I was really hurt by that… Should I apologize?