What I learned from my last job

I wrote this paper for my capstone course that finished on February 21. I used to work for Goodwill Industries. This assignment outlines an ethical dilema that I encountered while working there, which unfortunately let to my being fired. No one at Goodwill wanted to hear my accounting of what went on that last week, and I didn't want to fight over it. I was ready to quit anyway. Read on to see what really happened. No names, just initials, in case you wondered.

Workplace Dilemma at Goodwill

There comes a time in everyone’s life where they face an ethical dilemma, whether it’s in their personal life or in their professional life. I myself have experienced plenty. The most recent one however, led to my unfortunate dismissal from my last job.

The Experience

Near the end of March, I was working 12 hour days, often working them in split shifts, or half days with no full day off. Our store needed 9 people to run it properly and there were only 5 of us. I was one of two assistant managers. This had been the work environment since around the end of November. It was on one of my half days that a problem occurred. I was torn between finishing a sale with a customer and leaving on time. But that was just a small part of my dilemma.

The day started out normal, with the other assistant manager, G., and I opening the store with a transitional employee, B. One of the company policies was that staff was not allowed to interact with the transitional employees outside of work, including, but not limited to giving rides. This policy was enforced due to the background of the transitional employees. The day before I had witnessed another staff employee, who was new to the store, give a ride to another transitional employee to the bus station. I wasn’t sure if I needed to tell our store manager, A., about what I saw, so I asked G. in private what she thought. We were sitting in the office with the door closed discussing what I should do, when all of a sudden B. started yelling at us from outside the office door. She had been listening at the door, and didn’t like what we were discussing. When I left the office, B. continued to yell at me even as I was trying to put the cash drawer into the register and get ready to open the store. She never yelled at G., only at me. I immediately called A. and left a message that I was upset with the way B. was acting, and that I wanted to know if I had the authority to tell her to go home because of her behavior. All this happened in the span of 15 minutes. It was now time to open the store, and both B. and G. were now in the office. I opened the store, and at the same time our daily shipment arrived. I paged both of them to the front to help. Ten minutes later, neither of them had left the office, and I had the delivery guy banging on the back door, and five people in line to pay for their purchases. I paged them one more time, then after another five minutes, I finally went to the back and said “Can I please get some help in front? The truck is here and I can not leave the front unattended.” B. finally came out, but G. stayed in the office another ten minutes or so. When she finally came out she said that A. was on the phone and wanted to talk to me. It turns out that G. and B. were I talking to A. the whole time I was in the front of the store. A. asked if I wanted to go home because G. and B. didn’t feel comfortable around me. They claimed that I was yelling and screaming at them, and that G. was afraid that I would get violent with her. So starts the dilemma. G. was scheduled to work a split shift and was close to going home for her break. I told A. that it was ridiculous to have me go home if she was the one scheduled for a split. So, G. went home as scheduled. B. stayed also, but wouldn’t talk to me or listen to my directions, even though I was the manager on duty. That’s just the first part of the dilemma.

Later that day, when it was getting close to my scheduled time to leave and G. to come back, the store got swamped with customers. One customer was an extremely well known lady (I’ll call her L.), who shopped every two weeks, but always spends a few hundred dollars each time she shopped. B. was working on the cash register, and I was trying to finish bringing out the rest of the morning shipment. L. was inquiring about some artwork that had been donated from a local artist. She was interested in buying every piece that we had, which was close to 100 framed pieces. I called A. and left her a message asking her if I could bring out what we had left from the stock room and let L. buy them. When A. finally called back I was in the process of helping .L stack up the artwork that was on the sales floor that she was going to purchase. A. told me that as long as the artwork was priced and on the floor, I could sell her what was there. If I took the remaining artwork from the stock room I had to price it first, them put it on the floor before allowing L. to pick it up to buy. In the middle of all this, G. finally showed up and immediately went to the office. I called G. to let her know what A. had told me regarding L.’s purchase. So, G. agreed with me that doing it that way was only fair for the other customers. As I was in the process of pricing the artwork and bringing it out to the sales floor, A. called back again, and G. answered in the office. Five minutes later, G. came out and said that A. wanted to talk to me. A. had changed her mind and didn’t want the artwork to be sold that had been in the stock room. I told her how many were left, and how many I had already priced and put on the floor. A. told me to stop, let L know that only what was on the sales floor was available to purchase, not more than that. She also told me to have G. finish with the purchase, and told me to go home. At that point, I had been working 15 minutes after the time I was supposed to leave. I paged G. to the front to help, but she did not come. The whole time I was helping to ring up customers: B. was the other cashier, and we were extremely busy. Ten minutes later G. still hadn’t come up, so I paged her again. A. called again and asked why I was answering the phone, so I explained that I couldn’t find G., that she hadn’t answered my page for help, and that we were extremely busy and B needed help with ringing up customers. At this point A. was upset with me and demanded that I leave. I replied, saying “How can I leave with no other manager here?” G. finally showed up, 30 minutes after I was supposed to leave. I told her that she needed to ring up L.’s purchase, and explained that A did not want any other artwork to be sold. So it seems at this point that everything was taken care of, and I would get to go home. Well, I ended up having to wait for someone to pick me up, so I decided to do some shopping of my own. L. was still in the store and still wanted me to help, but I let her know that I was off and that G. would finish her transaction. Another 30 minutes passed by and I made my purchases and finally left.

This happened on Monday. On Friday, I came to work as normal. After working for about 30 minutes A called me into the office. The director of HR was there, R., and she introduced me to him. I thought that I was called in just to meet him since he was new to the company. It turns out he was there to fire me. I was handed an employee counseling report which contained the following: noted deficiency, specific incident or situation, corrective steps required, and disciplinary action taken. Under noted deficiency performance, conduct, disrupting goods flow, and failure to follow instructions were checked off. A.’s report of the situation shocked me. I purportedly entered the employee lounge when B. was taking her break and kicked the office door open, subsequently slammed it shut, and yelled “God damn it!” I was also accused of yelling at G. and B. “Stop talking and get back out to the floor!” B. is reported to have been the first to call A. to complain about my “hostile behavior.” Farther down the page, I was accused of removing un-priced merchandise out of the stock room and selling them to L., after I was scheduled to be off work. A claims that she called twice to talk to me and that I “refused” to talk to her, and I had asked B. to tell a that I was not in the store anymore. I was also accused of “ordering” G. to finish the transaction, not explaining what was going on to G., and staying 50 minutes past the hour I was supposed to leave. In the corrective steps, it was stated that this was my 4th disciplinary write-up in five months. The third write-up had stated that I was directed to “follow specific job instructions, treat co-workers and customers courteously and with respect, and not to engage in any insubordinate or disruptive behavior. I was not aware of this. As a result, the only disciplinary action that was allowed at this point was my termination.

The Ethical Dilemma

When looking at the situation, there was a small issue with power and authority. According to the job description for assistant manager, my job was to run the store in the absence of the store manager. I had full authority in dealing with customers and employees as long as it did not violate any company policies. Even though I had that authority, I took the time to discuss the problems with both the other assistant manager that came to close the store and the store manager herself. Both of us had always been instructed to call A. at anytime if there was a serious problem at work. We both did that day, but there was a definite conflict with who was doing the correct thing.

The ethics in question are still hard for me to describe. I guess one would raise the question of whether or not I should have brought up the incident I witnessed the day before. Another would be: Why I didn’t defend my side of the situation? And yet another could be: Why did I feel that I had to be such a nice person? A few personal values come into play here. First, I was the only employee that had been working in the store since it opened in December of 2002. The store manager had been there not even a full year. I felt that the store was mine in a sense that I helped put it together, I was there everyday, and the customers and I knew each other on a first name basis. I had worked hard to achieve the assistant manager position, and I was also being worked hard due to the shortage of employees. I had started to place my job in a higher position than my own family, and I felt that any new employees could not know the inner workings of the store as well as I did. So my personal value was that I was a “necessity” to the store. Without me, the store would crumble into chaos, the office would not be kept organized, and customers would have a hard time finding things. That’s how deeply I cared for my job and what I was supposed to be in charge of. The other value was that of being wronged. I was accused of acting unprofessionally, which is completely out of character for me. I was always the “honorable” employee, always available to work when someone was sick or didn’t show up, and I never had customer complaints against me. In fact, there had been many customer complaints against the store manager A. and the transitional employee B. Those complaints were of their attitudes towards the customers, especially with B. She had a tendency to argue with customers and be rude. Complaints against A. were along the lines of rudeness. There were employee complaints against her as well; strict adherence to store policies and spending too much time in the office writing disciplinary actions against every employee, and not enough time trying to help run the store. I believed that A. thought that I wanted her job (which was untrue), and was trying to get me to quit voluntarily or fire me, so I couldn’t usurp her authority. Even when she told me that I could make my own managerial decisions without having to involve her (to allow me to grow as a manger), she would still write me up for not asking permission to do things. Or if I had a valid question regarding a new policy or procedure, she would tell me “Do what I tell you or else I’ll write you up. It’s not of your concern. That’s my job.”

I truly believe that if A had taken the time to pull me aside and get my side of the story, I would have not been fired. She believed what B. and G. said, but never asked me to write down my side of the incident. I was never questioned or asked to explain what happened that day. The week after I left, G. quit. Two weeks later B. walked out on the job saying that she disliked A.’s way of dealing with people. It could have been possible that I would be temporarily suspended, nothing more. I believe that B. would have been temporarily suspended from the program, and placed in another store. G. would have quit no matter what, she had already given her two weeks notice the week before the incident.

I feel that I handled the situation as well as I possibly could. First of all, if I hadn’t been taking classes at the University of Phoenix I would have never applied for the job in 2002, nor would I have applied for the assistant manager job 8 months later. I feel that my educational experience helped me attain the assistant position, and I applied many techniques that I learned in PHL/251, MGT/330, MGT/331, MGT/350, MGT/434, and BUS/415 to my job. The managers that cam and went before A. was hired had even commented on how I applied my studies to my work, and that I had a strong work ethic. Despite that final incident which led to my termination, I hold my time at Goodwill as a valuable learning experience, which taught me a lesson on humility. It also taught me that a job is a job, and no matter how much effort I put into the job, I am expendable, and there is always someone better than me out there that can take my place.