Bad Boss Story: Scrubbed & Shattered

Source: Street interview

"I worked for a retail company, here in the city. I managed the store and this is when I first got promoted to manager. The floors of the store were disgusting. And so my regional manager at the time was like, you need to clean these floors. And I was like, okay, well, this is like a professional job that needs to come in. She was like, no, it's not going to happen. You need to do it yourself. So I went and bought like little scrubbers and stuff and I was on the floor, my hands and knees, scrubbing at like 10 p.m. at night. I even had cleaners knocking on the windows because I was crying. Like, are you okay? Do you need help? And I was like, I think this company needs help.

It was the expectation to be there at work at like six in the morning. There were two stores that I ended up having to manage at the same time because the managers and the staff at the second store didn't cope very well. So they would just go home when they wanted to. And then my Regional Manager was like, all right, well, once you finish your shift at your store, you need to go down. I was like, I've been here since six in the morning. You want me stay here until almost seven o'clock at night? Can you not find anyone? And she refused to find someone. I didn't get a lunch break, no covers came in. Not the best work environment.

There was, unfortunately, was a death that had happened in the centre a few years ago.

And we were the only two stores in the centre that weren't allowed to close. Even the manager from another store, she came and asked "why aren't you guys closing down?" I was like, we're not allowed to. If we close, we literally will get fired. And I was calling my state manager being like, this has happened and is triggering for a lot of people. The team downstairs are wanting to go home. And they were like, okay, let them go home. You go down and look after downstairs. So I ended up having to split my shift between both stores between both of them to make sure the teams were okay. 

One piece of advice that I could give my manager: compassion, empathy. We're all human. That was a difficult experience to go through. And at the time I was 26 and I was looking after girls, 18, 19, and they had to work through it. You need people with bit of compassion and empathy and you don't really get that with management."

👀 Our Take:

Leadership without empathy is just cruelty dressed up as authority. In moments of crisis, staff need compassion and support — not punishment.

🧠 Could this have been avoided?

Definitely. Respect for boundaries, fair rostering, and basic human empathy would have changed everything.

That’s why we built the Work Personality snapshot — a 60-second quiz that helps leaders understand their blind spots before they become harmful.

→ Find out what kind of boss you’d be

📹 Watch more street interviews