AWFUL communication with my line manager and incompetent shift scheduling:
On SEVERAL separate occasions I was assigned shifts that were outside of my contract hours. For context, I was on a 14 hour contract, but there were weeks where I was mistakenly scheduled for 21 hours. I was also a university student at the time so I had a fixed availability schedule.
Over the Christmas period, I noticed that in a couple weeks' time I'd been assigned 3 shifts - Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. I contacted my line manager to please remove the FRIDAY shift because a) Fridays were not part of my agreed availability days and b) they'd mistakenly given me an extra shift anyway - so it's obvious that the Friday shift should be removed.
A few weeks passed and she still had not replied to my email. I did not mind this because it was December and I assumed she was busy. I did send another follow up email one week before these shifts were supposed to happen, but still no reply.
So, I emailed someone on the People Team. I told them that my line manager had ignored my urgent emails and I was reaching out to them as a last resort, and if they could please remove the Friday shift. They replied to me swiftly, within the space of 10 minutes, and they'd CC'd my line manager to the email, asking her to please act upon the issue at hand.
And can you believe. At the final nudge of someone in a position of more authority, and within 2 minutes of receiving their email, my line manager finally responded. But oh no, not to my original emails - but the thread that was initiated by the People Team. So she ignores 2 of my urgent emails, but suddenly runs to the rescue once she'd been called out by someone of higher authority. Absolutely abysmal, totally unprofessional behaviour. Is that not the role of a Team Lead? To LEAD their TEAM?! And she can't even reply to my email that was requesting something devastatingly basic?
As if the whole ordeal couldn't get any worse, she emailed me saying that she would not remove my Friday shift. The reason? It was a close shift, and the line manager leading the close on Friday night would be swamped if I did not work it.
WHAT?! Did you not read my email that clearly stated that Fridays are NOT EVEN PART OF MY AGREED SCHEDULE? That even being GIVEN a Friday shift was YOUR fault and not mine to begin with?? Besides, after hearing that I was not available on Fridays, what exactly did she expect would happen when Friday came around? That I would be there?
I lost so many braincells attempting to communicate with her. And clearly the People Team felt the same, because shortly after my Line Manager had sent that utterly daft response, the People Team replied saying: don't worry about this, I have removed the Friday shift for you.
What a colossal joke! It's hard not to look back at this and laugh.
But as you can imagine, a similar situation happened later along the line. Except I never EVER got a response from her in those later occurrences. On a separate occasion, I'd sent 3 emails with the subject title: URGENT. And she never replied. After weeks of running around trying to swap shifts with my colleagues, I ended up having to call the store on the days I was mistakenly scheduled for and say that I wasn't coming in because my timetable was all wrong.
When I submitted a formal complaint about this Line Manager, I received a response saying that they would check her workload to see if she was... stressed. Um... okay? I'm pretty sure that if her job title is 'Team Lead' the absolute least that her job description requires of her is to... well... I don't know, reply to her team's emails? Utterly incompetent. It's laughable that shortly after this situation, she was promoted! Gymshark is very clearly a company that functions on a 'Club-like' mentality rather than on any real merit.
I must say, despite this awful relationship with my Line Manager, there were a few Team Leads with whom I'd formed lovely friendships.