‘Dreary, unfulfilling place to work’: Three workers on why they left their retail and food service jobs this year

Workers report safety concerns, low wages and constant changes to their work schedule as reasons they left their jobs this year.

Buoyed by the increased bargaining power of near-record job openings, workers are embracing a new labor movement. Some retail workers are unionizing for the first time, while others and striking to push for better wages. Indeed, Reddit’s r/antiwork subreddit, grew 279% from 2020 to 2021 year-to-date to over a million members, who are sharing their quitting stories and calling out company’s union-busting tactics. In turn, frontline, low-wage workers are quitting their roles at record rates, in what many are calling the Great Resignation.

Modern Retail spoke to three former workers at Walgreens, McDonald’s and Best Buy, some on the condition of anonymity. None of the aforementioned companies returned Modern Retail’s request for comment. These employees said that various frustrations including constant job changes, concerns over retail theft and lack of upward job prospects ultimately led them to quit. Their answers have been edited for clarity and length.

“Awful managers combined with awful pay”

“I had a manager who screamed at people in the middle of the restaurant. He yelled at me and then pointed me out in front of everybody in the kitchen. This was all because I made a mistake [setting the wrong cook timer on fried chicken] and tried to correct it without asking him. He said ‘who here gets paid to make decisions?’

In short, I left as there were awful managers — good managers quit to go to places that paid better — combined with awful pay and overworking due to short-staffing. I’ll tell you that if I hear the phrase “If you’ve got time to lean, you have time to clean” again, I might lose it. There were days when we weren’t busy or we were in a lapse between rushes where I cleaned the same places upwards of three or four times. They weren’t dirty anymore, but I couldn’t look like I wasn’t busy, even if I was doing my job in a timely manner. I was literally punished for getting things done promptly.”

– A former McDonalds employee in Kentucky who quit in June

“I had no room for growth”

“When everything initially shut down, Best Buy remained open, using a curbside model for shopping and pick-up. And when we opened back up, they kept our scheduling light. And then the company realized that we were able to make stores run with a skeleton crew, and decided that was the new business model. Within GeekSquad, we referred to it as Order 66. Across the company, a huge swathe of employees were let go. We also went under a hiring freeze, so there was no new help to come. In GeekSquad, I was the only full-time Advanced Repair Agent (ARA), with only one part-time ARA who could only work weekends. There was always more work than we could handle, and we were constantly getting more.

I think the exact moment that I started looking for a new job in earnest came from our General Manager. We weren’t allowed to have any drinks or food in the back of precinct because there were client devices back there… but we could keep them out front. One of the Counter Agents had gotten coffee from a gas station on their way into work, and had their cup sitting underneath the counter, where it was supposed to be. Our GM had a problem with it and this particular day she happened to see it. She went down behind the counter — quite deliberately, mind you — picked up the cup, and poured it out onto the counter where we had paperwork, our laptops, and a client device.