Today I woke up telling myself that this is going to be a great day. Nothing is better than an overcast cold Monday. I can get everything that needs doing done inside the house and not feeling the urge to go outside to work on stuff. I made breakfast for everyone. Donny took Jackson to school. I ran Hannah to work at 8:30. It was going to work out perfectly today because she gets off at 1 and Jackson gets out at 1:20.
I made myself a different breakfast than normal, peanut butter and bananas on sourdough. I added the banana skin to my jar because the banana water makes great fertilizer for my plants.

The day was going perfectly. I lit some incense in my room while I dusted from ceiling fan to floor then hung up our freshly washed curtains.

I had this little one vying for my attention loudly.

The chickens have started laying again, to which we are very appreciative.

The day was going so well. I made the kids to-go lunches and headed out the door to pick up Hannah. When I see her walking to the car I can tell there is something wrong. When she gets in her eyes are filling with tears. I try to find out what happened but all she says is please drive. When we get on the loop headed toward the school the tears come and she starts spilling what happened.
I’m going to backup for a moment. Hannah works at Beall’s. She really likes her job. She has only called in sick once and she was really sick. She will pick up shifts when her coworkers ask her to. She will stay late if they need her to. They have a loyalty program that each employee, when checking someone out, has to get the customer enrolled in, or at least ask them to enroll. The employees have 3 levels: green means you have enrolled the number that is required, yellow means you need to step it up and red, well, we all know what that means.Hannah has never been on anything but green. Her numbers are over 500. EVERY other person in the store is on red with only about 30-40 enrolled. My point is, if you ask Hannah to do something she will do it and to the best of her ability.
Fast forward to today. There are 4 registers, but they normally only have one cashier. Hannah was the only one on the register and she had a customer whose credit card, when she ran it, was giving her a weird message that she had never seen before. They all carry walkies so they can get a hold of someone because you can’t just leave the register. She tried to get the manager on the walkie 3 times. By this time a line had formed and she was apologizing to the customers. She said everyone understood. One of the men in line said that he knew what the manager looked like and he could go find her. When Deidre, the manager, finally made it to the front she told Hannah that her walkie wasn’t working and that Hannah should have known to use the phone number to call her in the stockroom. No one had ever told Hannah that there was a number to call because they have been trained to use the walkies. None of the customers were upset, but the one who went to get the manager told Hannah, you’re too pretty to work here. You can find a better job and the manager heard him. Everything was taken care of so Hannah thought everything was okay.
When her shift was almost over the manager told her she wanted to speak to her in the stockroom. She told Hannah that she had left hangars everywhere. She had had a 200 and 300 dollar sales. The hangar holder is at the furthest register from her. She asked the manager if she could move the holder closer to her whenever she was on the register. The manager’s answer was, everyone else can handle it so you should be able too also. Then she told her that she was too slow and that the district manager mentioned that to her (the manager). This is the first Hannah was ever hearing about this. She had been told to try to keep the hangars put up and she had always tried her best to do that. Never had she been written up for anything. The manager had even given her a box with a bookshelf in it that she told Hannah to put together. It didn’t have any tools so Hannah was having a hard time. The manager came by and said, you’re not done with that yet? She did finally get it put together.
But all of this isn’t what broke her. It’s when the manager told her, “no one likes to work with you. ALL the employees and ALL of the supervisors have come to me to tell me how much they don’t like working with you”. Then throws in, “oh, a customer called and said how helpful and nice you were”. This is a grown woman who is close to my age. Hannah did not cry in front of her and did not say anything rude back to her. That was it for her though. She was devastated. She kept asking me why wouldn’t they tell me if they didn’t like working with me? She takes criticism very well, but what that woman said to her was cruel. Hannah said that she felt like the other employees liked her. They were always very nice and friendly. She respected them since she was the youngest in the store.
If you know what we went through with Hannah then you know what a punch to the gut this was for me. She has come so far and was finally gaining some confidence. I felt sick. Gavin came over to console her. I called Donny and he was ready to go scorched earth on that woman. She was supposed to work tomorrow but told me she just could not go back there. This wasn’t the first incident with the manager, but it was the first time she got personal and mean.
Hannah decided that she was done. Her confidence was shattered and she was deeply hurt. She wrote a resignation letter and Gavin and I walked it into the store. I know I should have had her do it, but she had been through enough today and I didn’t want them to just not have her show up. Deidre finally came out of the back, which I found out she stays most of the time, and took it. She just said, “well she needs to come in and fill out paperwork”. I ignored that and told her I needed the contact information for HR. She went to get it and was gone forever. She finally came out when an associate when to find her. She handed me the card and ran back to her office.
I don’t know why this woman didn’t like Hannah or why she would lie about employees not liking her. We are encouraging her to call the HR rep that actually lives here. The turnover at this store is staggering. Two supervisors just quit, once saying that Deidre has the least empathy of anyone she’s ever met. Hannah needs to let him know her side of the story, even if it’s just help someone else who might get treated the same way.
She’s going to be okay. We’ve been through so much worse. God’s lesson is somewhere in this. When He closes one door He opens a window.





































