I am a high school student and work retail at Walgreens as a CSA. There’s an ESM at my store that I’ve had mixed feelings about lately.
She’s constantly micromanaging me, telling me how long things should take, correcting me, telling me I’m not trying, that I’m being lazy, and even saying I’m not paying attention. Sometimes it honestly feels like she’s my mom instead of my manager.
The thing is, I’m still pretty new. I am trying and I genuinely put in effort. It’s hard to get things done when you’re also expected to stay at the front and constantly check out customers.
Every time I work with her, I feel like I get less done because she’s always stopping me to talk about my performance. And it’s ONLY her. I work with other shift leads and they don’t have complaints about my performance, and I usually get my tasks done.
The other day, less than 30 minutes into my shift, she told me I needed to speed up. She also brought up a previous shift and said I didn’t get anything done according to the notes. She even told me that if I don’t improve my performance, my store manager will “send me out the door.”
Yesterday we had truck, and it came really late, so the shift was stressful. However, I genuinely thought everything went okay. My store manager talked to me and said not everything on the notes got done, but I was honest and told her I’m trying and putting in the effort. She told me it’s a process and that I’ll get there.
I still managed to get all of my front-end totes and U-boats done, so I left work thinking it was a normal shift.
Then today, my ESM texted me asking if everything went well yesterday. I replied that yes, I thought it did. She then responded with: “That’s not what I heard, but okay.”
I immediately asked, “What did you hear?” and haven’t gotten a response since
Now I’m confused. I only worked with two other people yesterday: another CSA and a shift lead. One of the shift leads is already under fire for not doing his job, so now I’m wondering: Did someone say something about me? Am I actually doing something wrong? Was there a misunderstanding? Is there workplace gossip going around?
I just don’t understand why I seem to get scolded for everything I do, but nobody is actually showing me a better or faster way to do things. It feels like I’m expected to know everything immediately, even though I’m still learning.
Am I being too sensitive, or does this seem unfair for a newer employee? Any retail workers or managers have advice?