Yesterday I posted my frustrations with Bed Bath and Beyond and why I felt forced to quit. Today, I distilled this into a calm letter I sent to my store’s HR partner, Darrel. I’m posting it here hoping that maybe some customers may also find it and forward it to corporate. They might not listen to me, but they may listen to customers.

I have removed specifics to prevent doxxing. Call corporate since they can do something about this. They have the full version of this (errors and all) with their HR people. Don’t try and figure out which store or people this is about just to harass them. That helps nobody.

I recently had to leave my job at the (REDACTED) Bed Bath and Beyond and felt I should report why I felt forced to leave. It’s too late for me but perhaps by notifying you of the worrying conditions of this store, things can be made better for the remaining employees. Some of these concerns are of questionable legality whereas others are sources of needless hostility in the workplace.

Our store is in a county that recently “went red.” This means stricter health precautions are in place, including mandatory face masks when in public. For our store to stay open, all employees and customers must wear face masks with the exception of certain documented health conditions and children. This has gone surprisingly well. The customers have overall been complying with this order. Those who have masks down just need a polite “masks up” reminder, and those who don’t have masks gladly accept the offered masks and wear them inside the store.

We recently had a couple enter the store who refused to wear masks. They went to the clearance room in the back of the store, where social distancing is absolutely impossible. One of them had a mask loosely hanging off on ear. When she was politely reminded by an employee to wear her mask, she went on a tirade, shouting “sheep. What are you going to do about it? You are you to write me a ticket? Make me pay a fine, sheep! Are you a sheep?!” The employee left the couple and went the manager on duty that day, (J). (J) told the employee “you need to be nicer to customers. We don’t need the social media attention.” The manager did not approach the customers violating the governor’s mandate in our store.

Later, the same couple approached a register I was working at. The husband was wearing a mask with a large hole cut in front of it. His wife had hers around her neck. I politely said “masks up. Did you find everything you came in for today?”

“Sheep” the woman said.

“I don’t think we’ve ever sold sheep.” I start scanning. I thought she was in some sort of customer autopilot, giving a response to something she expected but wasn’t asked. I told her “seriously, masks up”

“I have a medical condition.” She said. Her husband then interrupted her. “And you can’t ask what it is!” He said.

“No, but I can deny you service.” I responded. I grabbed a radio since I had a feeling this was going to go poorly.

“Are you kidding me?” “Yea, funny right?” “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!” I admit, that funny comment was probably not the best way to handle this. I was beginning to loose my temper so to prevent this from getting worse, I called up my manager over the radio and walked away from the hostile customers. They were between me and the office so I went through housewares to the back of the store to calm down. Walking away, she kept screaming “I’M CALLING MY LAWYER! IM NEVER COMING BACK. YOU JUST LOST ANOTHER CUSTOMER TO AMAZON!” Other customers and employees silently watched.

My manager, (J), came up. He had not heard my call for him over the radio because he is partially deaf. Only one of the registers phones work and I was not at the customer service register. So we usually have to yell to summon him. He didn’t hear my call and arrived up front later by coincidence, catching only the end of this. I couldn’t yell for him because it would escalate things so I was hoping any employee near him would hear the radio and tell him to come up.

I went to the back and sat there shaking for a bit. Eventually I talked to the first employee I mentioned above. The customers were the same ones that had been shouting at him earlier. They were the same ones the manager avoided and allowed to come up to my register and argue.

Eventually, (J) came back where we were. We had about calmed down when he tore into us. I was told walking away from the customers was not appropriate. I should have remained there and called him up. I did call him but he didn’t hear me. If I stayed, there would have been a fight. The safest option was to walk away. He kept arguing with me and the other employee, getting everyone angry all over again. He then said to just ignore the masks and check them out anyway. We protested and said he was going to call (E), the store manager.

(E)’s method for handling any kind of conflict is to pretend he doesn’t know about it, couldn’t have stopped it, let everyone vent, then ignore the cause. It’s not much but in an attempt to cooperate the employee and I waited in the back to talk to (E).

(J) came by and when we asked if he was on his way, (J) said (E) didn’t answer his phone and hadn’t called him back yet. If we couldn’t calm down, we should just go home.

So we went home, knowing (J) did not call (E). (J) doesn’t resolve conflict. He fights things out until he wins. His strategy was to threaten us again so we clocked out and left. He escalated rather than mediated.

(J) didn’t really have the resources to deal with this. Register 2 died yet again, leaving a long line with two registers, customers confused and arguing over where a line begins and ends, and with social distancing in effect, no options to double up and use the closed down, otherwise functioning registers. After working on the register for several minutes, he went to get another cash drawer and open up another register. We couldn’t get register 2 working. That’s not unusual. It has never worked reliably but this time it was the pinpad that went down, not the register. After all that was settled, he had to catch up on two scanner screens full of online pickups. Only managers are allowed to handle those and he’s the only one scheduled for the entire day. Managers don’t even get time for meal breaks. We have nobody at the entrance to hand out and discuss masks. (J) not only handled the situation poorly. He was not in a position to handle the situation properly. He can’t handle all his responsibilities because the store is severely understaffed.

This was the final incident that led to me and the other employee being forced out.

There are other issues with the store that have been ignored by management. The handicapped stall in the women’s restroom had been broken since we reopened from the lockdown. That restroom only has two functioning toilets now since there is another toilet broken in one of the regular stalls. It was originally not secured to the floor. Management ignored our concerns someone could be hurt and kept taking down signs. Now they leave the signs up and just ignore the problem.

The men’s restroom floods regularly. We have had to tell customers to go next door to use the bathroom. Nothing is done until a customer calls back with a complaint. Then, the floor is mopped up already so the sign it taken down, the room floods again, and the process repeats.

There are cords hanging off the edges of displays. Children can grab these and pull items onto themselves. Management won’t cut or tie back the cords. This is dangerous.

Shelves are loose and one can actually collapse, dropping heavy items on a customer. Management stuffed a piece of cardboard under it to hide the problem rather than fix it. This is dangerous.

The air conditioning has never properly worked. Some days up front are unbearably hot. We cannot have water at the registers. We cannot have fans at the registers. We cannot wear shorts. We are told the problem does not exist. This isn’t just uncomfortable, it is dangerous. I measured it one day and it had actually exceeded OSHA limits for indoor workplace temperatures. I was originally going to build a bunch of temperature and humidity probes for employees to wear so we could collect data from throughout the day to prove to management there is a problem but I did not finish the project before this above incident.

The store manager, (E), has told us about another employee’s specific medical condition. This was a HIPPA violation.

(J) is bullied at work by (E) the store manager and (D) the district manager. There are two reasons for this. One, she makes too much according to them. She has been there 16 years. Her sister also called corporate with a complaint about the store and they took it out on her. There was a big fight between her and (T), another manager, a while back. Retaliation is a regular thing at this store. Any concern is met with “if you don’t like it, there’s the door.”

We are paid worse than literally everyone around us. Sam’s club and Walmart are next door. Starting pay is $12-14 an hour. McDonalds across the street starts as $14. Target is now at $15 an hour. We are told the pay here is the same as anyone else in such positions receives. I got $9.50 an hour. I was told the extra 50 cents was because I was a college graduate.

Management had a friend of mine who works there reprimand me for discussing pay with another employee. We can not be punished for discussing pay with eachother. We don’t need a union to have that protection.

There has been talk of organizing the employees for a while, but with the recent announcement another 200 stores are closing, we gave up on it. The store likely won’t survive the next round of cuts.

When we come in we have to take temperatures before we clock in. We have to have someone else witness us taking the reading and sign off on it before we clock in. Management made clear there will be no adjustments to punch in times due to this. The problem is there isn’t always someone upstairs where we take temperatures to sign off or verify this. There is a sign saying to call someone up, but there’s no radio for us since we don’t have enough working radios. The sign is also telling us to call someone who isn’t on shift that day. So we have to either lie and just sign off on ourselves or find someone who isn’t busy (or just interrupt them) downstairs to vet us, then go up, sign off, log into a machine, log in to the web clock, and clock in. Not only does this make us late, it is requiring us to do work off the clock. When I brought this to the the store manager’s attention,he walked away, came back with a card for our store and told me to complain to 1800gobeyond. Fearing retaliation, I didn’t call that number.

So most of us just sign off and don’t take our temperatures anymore.

We were forbidden from cleaning the pin pads between customers because spraying paper towels and wiping them (note, we were NOT spraying the pin pans directly) was causing damage and it was decided only a few times a day was fine. Me and several others refused and insisted on doing so. I suggested we use the terraboost wipes if they were concerned about damaging the pads. Management’s response was if you don’t like it, there’s the door.

In situations like this, we tell customers the problem. Management won’t listen to us but if a customer calls corporate, management is sometimes forced to do something. So after a few days of telling our customers this, we finally got wipes specifically for the pin pads. We should not have to use customers to communicate our concerns with management but management ignores us without them.

Metrics also cause a lot of problems for us. For example, if the carts that customers ditch at the entrance of the store block the exit, this is a fire hazard. We are not allowed to pass through the door to address the problem because this drops our conversion rate and gets us in trouble with the district manager, (D). When I mention it is a potential fire hazard, (T) (one of the managers) told us “customers can push them out of the way if there’s a fire.” That is not how fire code works. Exits must remain clear of obstructions at all times.

We also have the email collection metrics used to bully long-term employees. The metric counts how many new email addresses a cashier collects and how many transactions to cashier completes during a day. The problem with this metric is it does not account for customers whose email addresses we already have. It does not count how many are entered and recognized but not added. It does not count how many customers decline. Cashiers have little control over the outcome. When I brought this to the attention of the district manager (D), who had been threatening (J) over her numbers, he gave me a nonsensical rant about the return rate of shark vacuums, saying we are accepting returns of other stores products. He then told me if I didn’t like it, there’s the door. (J) has always complied with email collection. She has no control over who goes through her line. The reason she being harassed over her numbers is the same as above. She makes more than the DM wants her to ($12.50) and her sister called corporate with a complaint about the store. (J) is frequently bullied by management.

Morale has been low. It’s so bad that if there was a fire, we fully expect not to be let out without clocking out first. Employees raise their voices toward management just to be heard. Without ultimatums, management ignores us. I have had to threaten to call the health department over my choice to clean the pin pads even when told not to. Rather than cooperating with eachother to solve problems, we work against management.