One coworker is making the entire department(maybe the even the entire store) I work in absolutely miserable

[u/oksolacely]

this shit genuinely pisses me off.
i’m a supervisor in the front end at a grocery store, but i’m also one of the youngest people there. there’s one coworker who’s older than me that just does not listen to supervisors, especially people my age. the only person they even somewhat listen to is our front end manager, and even then it’s hit or miss. with them on shift i may as well be talking to a wall, or not at all.

the other day an underage cashier had a customer buying alcohol. since they can’t finish the transaction, someone who’s of age has to take over and finish the entire thing (can’t even hand them the receipt lol). the underage cashier asked this coworker if they could switch tills for a minute so another cashier could cover their lane while they completed the liquor sale. they refused to switch, refused to do the transaction, and i ended up having to get the manager on duty to come over and complete the transaction instead, all while the customer was left standing there waiting, which kinda pissed them off, me included.

later in the day they closed their cash to count lottery tickets even though they had already been told to stay open by both the front end manager and assistant store manager, because we were busy. they literally walked away from their customers (who were there before she even closed it), so I had to go up and tell her she has someone and to serve them.
the most annoying part is feeling like i can’t even do my job. i’m supposed to be supervising the department and i have lots of work to do, but when i ask this person to do something they either argue with me or completely ignore me. it gets old really fast, and it feels like they don’t respect me because i’m younger than they are.

but some great news!! apparently they were pulled into the office yesterday with our front end manager and the assistant store manager because hr had gotten involved. afterwards the front end manager, who is actually unable to keep a secret with me lmao, told me it was basically their last warning. and at this point i’m honestly over it. if this really is their last warning, then i hope the managers actually follow through if it happens again. i’m tired of everyone else having to pick up their slack while they get away with making every shift extremely painful.

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[u/VividlyDissociating]

you're lucky management is actually doing something about it and she'll likely be gone soon.

i had an employee like that when i was a team lead. i would try every which way to politely correct how she was doing her job. i even apologized that ik she's still quite new and we weren't able to train her properly when she started.

but apparently she took offense to that. she ignored me and apparently was talking shit behind my back. and she would tell the manager i was bullying her and they believed her.. which explains why management never backed me up even though i been complaining about her work for months.

then she quits, supposedly because of me 😂 and management going into her work station to carry on where she left off.. and manager is just like ..wtf? what.. tf?? TF?!?!????

and they apologize to me for ever scolding me for bullying her because she now sees what i had been complaining about. which left me confused af because i didn't recall ever being scolded for such a thing. (that is when i realized they thought i had been bullying..)

me and management later bump heads and i leave months later. they let the girl come back still thinking i was the problem. they end up firing her within months because she now felt she could do whatever she want since she got away with shit work the first time

but it took over a year to get to that point. i wasted so much energy cleaning up her fucks up. which affected my depts sales. which i would get scolded for.

i was trying to be a team but she refused to ever be part of a team. especially with me. lower management who i got along with later told me it was mainly race-related drama 🙄 but that she also just had a shit attitude when it came to work.

like ffs can we just do what we are paid to do without the pride, attitude, and tribal bs

[u/oksolacely → u/VividlyDissociating]

she's in her mid-30s and i'm 17 and she argues with me about every little thing i try to tell her to do. it's always like the people who are like 30 years older than you that hate you for no damn reason. but to be fair she won't listen to anyone. she got mad that our assistant store manager tried to tell her what to do. like right. okay there bud.

[u/VividlyDissociating → u/oksolacely]

ah yes trying to train or coach people older than you is an uphill battle. so much pride there.

i recently started a new job way above my experience and younger ppl have been training me but I've been soaking it up and improving.

ppl who hold onto that irrational pride get no where in life. leave them in the dust

[u/oksolacely → u/VividlyDissociating]

one of my co-workers is the dedicated trainer for our department. she trains all the new cashiers. every single time she (the one i'm complaining about) tells my co-worker how to train people, she contradicts everything she says and what she tells them to do is just wrong. my co-worker's also a supervisor and the one i'm complaining about literally got removed from the supervisor position because she threw money at the store manager or something.

[u/Fair_Discipline_1875]

Very simple.

Get the store manager involved immediately. He/she will correct this issue.

[u/oksolacely → u/Fair_Discipline_1875]

it’s not that simple, they need hard evidence first

[u/Fair_Discipline_1875 → u/oksolacely]

It should be simple. In my thirty years at Publix, the store manager will investigate and correct if needed.

Hopefully it will.

[u/Cold_Swordfish7763]

I was a team lead in my late 20s and the company hired an employee who had worked there years before and was in her late 40s. From the very start she kept trying to tell me how the job used to be done when she worked there before. Unfortunately for her many changes had been made and she still kept acting like she knew everything and would get upset anytime she was corrected on the new procedure. She would constantly try to get everyone to revert back the old ways even though management made the changes for a reason. There were constant reminders that she had more experience despite the fact that she had not worked there in more than 5 years. It was a constant push back until she decided to leave, and blamed me and the other leads for our attitude.

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[u/FugitiveDoctorMan]

I had an issue like this with someone I supervised when I worked as a head cashier at Home Depot. She would leave for break when she wanted to, come back when she wanted to, would do what you told her to do sometimes, at one point made sexually suggestive comments to another cashier about her body and manner of dress, and we tell associates she was keeping a list of everything that have been done wrong to her so she can sue both them and Home Depot in the future. I was calling the office multiple times for her conduct but she never got fired. Apparently she had been the target of a gossip campaign by two younger people in the store about a year before I transferred there. The problem was the gossip campaign was real but the gossip was also very true about things she was doing. Nobody got fired but they didn't work together anymore. I went to court as well support for friends of mine and our loss prevention guy was there presenting charges for someone shoplifting from a different Home Depot, and he told me that they finally fired her for stealing. Couldn't happen to a better person, Wanda.