My Resignation

So, I was supposed to hand this in on Sunday [my LAST shift], but I was SUPER sick that day.  Yeah, I know how it LOOKS, but really, i was sick.  So I handed it in today... here goes:

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May 28, 2006

Ryan M. Moore

401 Brock Street East,

Apt #5

P7E 4H8

Sears Canada

HR Department

880 Fort William Rd

Dear Human Resources, Scott Osadic, Debbie Suslyk & Michael Lepine:

After much personal deliberation I have come to a difficult decision to resign my position with Sears after 6 years of faithful service.  Over the past few months I have felt that Sears’ management team was no longer in need of my services as Product Knowledge Specialist.  In my own opinion it was the management that gave me the distinct impression that I was no longer wanted in Sears’ employ.  Detractor’s to that comment may say that I was unhappy at Sears and I would like to address those comments now.  I love working in retail and many of the Sears customers were enjoyable and made my time feel worthwhile; what made me seem unhappy was the management attitude towards me.

Over my 6 years at Sears I have seen many things that contributed to, what I felt, was a poor work environment.  There was little support for any staff and I have seen many good employees leave because management failed to do anything to mentor and assist [the biggest of which was watching Rayanne Legros leave because Sears was unwilling to help stop the harassment she suffered at the hands of co-workers].

Recently my hours were reduced severely (see attached chart), which caused me concern because I was not told why.  I researched and asked questions to the management.  This process took me some time to any response and an unclear and undocumented one at that.  During this search for an answer I was given ‘coded’ remarks that made me feel isolated from the team.  All of which were symptoms of a poisoned environment that were leading to a ‘creative dismissal’ case.

·         I was told my shifts were cut because my availability changed

o        In fact, my availability, yes, did change, but for the better of Sears.  Before Christmas I was working full time teaching which had never been a problem before.  In the second semester I worked only 1/3 part time so I would have more time to work at Sears.  During September to December I had asked to have my scheduling scaled back to 3 days per week and yet it still ended up being 4-5 most of the time.  I was told that I would be ‘helping out’ and I did so without any negative feelings.  When I was able to work more I was shunted down to 1 shift per week, and some weeks less.  For more detail see the attached spreadsheet, it is evident in areas that where my availability was the same as others I was used significantly less than other employees

·         I was told I was misbehaving during my shifts

o        I did play guitar on two shifts at work.  I felt that the store employees should use the products we were selling and allow the customers to see them in action [everything else is demo-able].  Additionally, I was not the only employee to do this, yet I was the only one being punished for it and notably not at the time of the indiscretion but instead many months later.  If this was wrong I was NEVER corrected by my immediate supervisors.  There was plenty of opportunity for management to say something when they walked past me and encourage me to change the behaviour if they believed it was detrimental to Sears.

·         I was told that I had abused the sick-phone system.

o        Over the past year I had called in sick 5 times: {05/21/05, 08/22/05, 08/23/05, 12/03/05, & 01/22/06}.  This is less than some others in the department (some up to 13 times in a single year).  The unfound accusation of abuse came because one night I had called around 2am.  I was unaware that there was hours of operation for that line and that sickness needed to be scheduled around those times.

What perplexes me is that if I was being punished for these situations why I was not informed that there were infractions and moreover what corrective action needed to be taken?  Why did I have to search out the reasons on my own instead of being informed by management, whose job it is anyhow?  If there were infractions taking place I wish I would have known when they took place and not month’s later so positive corrective action could be pursued.

Recently there was a poor decision made by myself concerning price matching.  I totally understand my being written up for it as I realize my error, and I was actually glad to receive immediate notification of the error so I could take steps to correct it in the future.

I make this decision with a heavy heart as I will miss the store, the coworkers and the customers.  I will, however, not miss the poor treatment that I received over the past 6 months.

 

Sincerely,

Ryan M. Moore

former Product Knowledge Specialist

 

 

* - Description of the data:  The data was collected from the scheduling book for the department.

The first is a chart showing # of shifts worked of employees who worked for the same period of time.  All roughly had the same availability as myself, some even less, yet the numbers show that I consistently was used far less.  More so evident since January where I was scheduled less than half of the average for comparative workers.

The second chart is a comparison of the frequency [# of shifts per month / # of days per month] and the rolling average of my scheduling.  The frequency runs a rough average of 57% up until December at which point the frequency dips well below 30% and as low as 9%.

The actual charts of data show the number of shifts scheduled for each month, for the past 9 months [and in my case almost 2 years] and the frequency therein.  I have separated the data before and after January to show contrast for my case.  Where other employee’s frequency remained an unchanged average of roughly 50% my frequency average dropped from the same 50% to 16% which represents a 78% reduction.  How could anybody stand idly by as their pay was reduced by 78% with no reason given?

 

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Moore
month	# of days	# of shifts	frequency (%)		cum. Averages
September	30	19	0.63		0.63
October	31	16	0.52		0.57
November	30	18	0.60		0.58
December	31	18	0.58		0.58
January	31	13	0.42		0.55
February	28	15	0.54		0.55
March	31	18	0.58		0.55
April	30	18	0.60		0.56
May	31	21	0.68		0.57
June	30	18	0.60		0.57
July	31	18	0.58		0.57
August	31	19	0.61		0.58
September	30	8	0.27		0.55
October	31	11	0.35		0.54
November	30	9	0.30		0.52
December	31	14	0.45		0.52
January	31	9	0.29		0.51
February	28	3	0.11		0.48
March	31	3	0.10		0.46
April	30	5	0.17	Avg (overall)	0.45
May	31	5	0.16	0.42	0.43
June	30	4	0.13		0.42
Total	668	282
	Avg	Avg			0.16	average from january
	30.36	12.82	0.42

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Schultz
month	# of days	# of shifts	rate
September	30	13	0.43
October	31	12	0.39
November	30	11	0.37
December	31	20	0.65		0.46	average up to this point
January	31	10	0.32
February	28	12	0.43
March	31	8	0.26
April	30	14	0.47	Avg (overall)
May	31	17	0.55	0.44	0.43	average from january
June	30	16	0.53
Total	303	133
	Avg	Avg
	30.30	13.30	0.44

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Ball
month	# of days	# of shifts	rate
September	30	17	0.57
October	31	12	0.39
November	30	15	0.50
December	31	21	0.68		0.53	average up to this point
January	31	20	0.65
February	28	17	0.61
March	31	16	0.52
April	30	12	0.40	Avg (overall)
May	31	12	0.39	0.51	0.49	average from january
June	30	11	0.37
Total	273	142
	Avg	Avg
	30.30	15.30	0.50

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Krupa
month	# of days	# of shifts	rate
September	30	17	0.57
October	31	16	0.52
November	30	13	0.43
December	31	19	0.61		0.53	average up to this point
January	31	14	0.45
February	28	16	0.57
March	31	17	0.55
April	30	16	0.53	Avg (overall)
May	31	16	0.52	0.53	0.53	average from january
June	30	16	0.53
Total	303	160
	Avg	Avg
	30.30	16.00	0.53

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