Fired for trying to keep our customers happy and keep them as regulars without being notified of any changes to policy. I was the sole employee/store manager of the tiny little e-cigarette shop in my area. I was never, ever kept in the loop on our policies and would always get torn apart for not following procedure because of it, which made no sense.

So we would get a lot of shitty Chinese devices that were D.O.A. Before, we were able to switch the items out with a different working one in stock, send the broken one back to our warehouse, and everyone was happy. When, apparently, I was supposed to tell someone "Oh, sorry your $200 purchase doesn't work and is useless to you now. You can either buy another one right now or just deal with it." And this happened a lot. At the very least once a day, quite often more. Whether it was a small $10 accessory or a $160 device, it was a normal issue where something was broken. Turns out, they were never actually doing anything with the broken devices anyone sent back. They were basically financial losses. But no one told me for several months. No one saw the totes of D.O.A.'s coming from my location and thought "Huh, this isn't right. We should probably tell her."

My manager walked into my shop one day when I was closing, and said "Hey I'm gonna need your key." I handed it to him, thinking nothing of it. Maybe the locks were changing? Giving me a new one? I don't know. But as I was walking out, he said "Is that everything you've got? Make sure you have everything." Confused, I asked him why. He told me "There are a lot of inventory imbalances and there is quite a loss of product and income coming from your location. If that's everything, you can go now."

I nearly walked out with a skip in my step. It sucks to have lost my job, but the company, if you can even call it that, was so horribly run by people who didn't know the industry whatsoever. They were horribly rude and micromanaged the most insignificant things like how my stock in the back was organized while ignoring the important things like what this industry is for and keeping people healthy and happy while on their smoking cessation journey. I was being talked down to daily even though my location had such a high return rate of customers, stellar reviews and a great income. I was told by my regulars that they will never step foot in any other location because the employees are toxic and rude and extremely unprofessional and knew next to nothing, never helping them with device setups and all. Plus, my manager was talking shit about me after I left. My best friend/coworker told the manager that he was looking for another job. Manager said "Yeah, go ahead find one for BOWL_OF_OATMEAL_AMA too while you're at it."

Good riddance. Jokes on them, though. A pretty good handful of my regulars never came back and left some negative yet honest reviews. The company's prices are astronomically high compared to others in the immediate area, they are losing business rapidly and hiring constantly. I keep telling everyone the moment I see a "For Lease" sign in their window, it'll be a great day.