This was my first job just after turning 16, and it left a horrible taste so to speak. It started off great, having been raised with LEGO with Danish family roots I had high expectations. I was blissfully unaware of how much harassment I was getting until later on.
My first day of "training" (Which was just silence in the back room while taking a digital online training course) I was privy to seeing my assistant manager barge into the back room, raging mad, and kicking/throwing boxes down the back hall. This was not uncommon later on, he was constantly raging due to interactions with customers.
Within the first 2 weeks of working there, red flags were already popping up. One female co-worker constantly and purposefully ignored me, only ever talking to me when she wanted me to do her work instead of herself, or if she wanted to poke fun at me for being a vegetarian. Another female co-worker (who was later promoted to supervisor) made the remark of "I'm going to whip out my [male genitalia] and smack you with it." (reminder, I was a minor at the time and this woman was mid-twenties.) The co-workers were very cliquey and would take any chance they could to exclude me.
One co-worker turned supervisor, reported me and 2 other of my co-workers for having a conversation about Star Wars because she had no knowledge of the subject and took offense to that.
My hellish manager, constantly pretended to hit or kick me, admitted openly that he used me as a scapegoat, and tried to embarrass me on any possible occasion.
Among many other harassment and mistreatment instances that I'm unable to recall at the moment, they also all partook in violation of company policies, such as:
Discluding me from Christmas decorating by sending me home; Making me change very high lightbulbs on a wobbly ladder without supervision; Stealing bricks and minifigs; Intentionally damaging sets from shipments so they could then purchase said sets at a discounted price; Using inappropriate language in the store and back room; Having inappropriate music playing in the back room; Having inappropriate screensavers on company phones left lying in the store; and more.
Aside from my store itself, I also dealt with mistreatment from Corporate. I had reported my co-workers for how they were behaving and corporate investigated. They ended up telling me nobody had broken any rules, nobody would be fired, that I was a liar, that nobody was harassing me, and that I was the one causing problems. Even though I had been tearing up while conversing with them and I was a minor at 16, they did nothing. I quit promptly on the spot a few minutes later.
Aside from my personal experiences I was also told stories by co-workers of people who worked there prior to me:
One old employee urinated in another co-worker's drinking cup because they had ticked him off; Another employee had called 'dibs' on girls who he said were 'gonna be hot when they're older'; another used to hit on all the Asian girls who came in including one of the co-workers.
I also had co-workers and supervisors who quit from mistreatment. A newer co-worker had also commented on how it seemed everyone constantly bullied me.
About 7 months later I heard that a new store was opening in San Francisco, and I thought it could be a fresh start. I wrote to my old regional manager and got the go ahead to apply. I applied, got a call back maybe the next day and the manager I spoke with loved my prior experience and was ready to offer me a supervisor position, he said he'd be in touch after checking with my last manager to see what he had to say about me. About a few days later there was a job fair for the store so I dropped by and left my application with the people there as well who also loved my prior experience and such, and they too wanted to see what my previous manager had to say about me. They told me to watch for a call in the next couple of days. I never heard from any of them again, even after writing an email to them to check up on the hiring process.
