I had something similar happen to me whenever I was the second shift supervisor at a privately owned 7-Eleven franchise store. I had started working there in December of 2007, and by the summer of 2008, back whenever the store was still corporate, I was chosen to be trained for management because I was making a good impression, and was being noticed. I was asked if I wanted to be trained for management, and when I replied in the positive, I was sent to... and I shit you not... real live 7-Eleven University! Yes, there is really such a place. A 7-Eleven University where they send management trainees. I of course graduated, and I was the assistant manager of that particular 7-Eleven for about a year and a half.
Then, in the winter of 2010, the store was sold to a private owner as a franchise, and I was fired on the spot by the new owner from my job as assistant manager, along with about 90% of the employees who worked there, so he could hire his own fresh batch of brand new employees.
Another year passed while I collected unemployment, and I guess the new owner decided that he had possibly made a mistake when he had fired almost every single person on the spot who knew a damn thing about how to work at a 7-Eleven, so he offered to hire myself and the other assistant manager back, and we agreed to come back.
However, he wouldn't let us perform any of the management duties we had both been trained to do. The new owner was actually a really great guy, but he was very, VERY adamant about running the management part of the store by himself. Nobody else was allowed to do the books, make the cash drops, reconcile the inventory with the manifests - he did almost everything himself, except eventually for ordering product. After a couple of months the work was just too much for him so he relented, and allowed me, the other assistant manager who had been rehired, and a couple of other employees to do most of the ordering.
While my new title was second shift supervisor, and I was making the same amount as I had been making as a REAL assistant manager, my new role had become basically Captain of the Cooler. I was in charge of ordering everything in the cooler, making sure it was always stocked, and keeping it tidy. Otherwise, that place became a chaotic mess in no time!
Over the next several years I continued working as the second shift supervisor, ordering all of the alcohol and soft drinks and dairy that go in the cooler... and as for my second shift supervisor job title, it really didn't mean anything.
Technically I was in charge, but I didn't throw my weight around. I helped out new hires, showed them how to do their jobs, made sure that the drawers were counted at the end of each shift, did the shift reports, and since I was pretty much the highest ranking guy there (the other assistant manager had since left for another job), I was also the go-to guy to cover for anybody who didn't show up for their shift. That meant lots of overtime, and even in a franchise store, there are laws to enforce that kind of overtime whenever it is demanded of you. The owner hated having to pay overtime though.
And I worked a shit ton of double shifts, because third shift is the most hated shift at a 7-Eleven, and about a quarter of the time employees just wouldn't show up! Third shift had the highest turnover rate, and I was constantly working double, 16 hour shifts - my shift, which was from 2:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., and then third shift to cover for whoever didn't show up, from 10:00 p.m. to whatever time the owner decided to show up.
Many times I worked until 9:00 or 10:00 a.m., especially on truck nights... because one person on third shift simply cannot check in all of the product deliveries, both from the main trucks and from CDC which supplied all of our fresh food, plus perform all of the other third shift duties such as cleaning the entire store - including scrubbing down the grill every night, doing all of the paperwork that came with the CDC order every night and the main truck orders which were delivered twice a week, as well as getting the breakfast rush ready by setting the grill up and loading it up with breakfast items, and cleaning all of the coffee pots and the cappuccino machine and making fresh coffee...
There was a shitload of work to do on third shift, and these were all duties that had to be performed every night, by one person, because the owner wouldn't schedule two people for third shift. That's why so many people either quit, or just didn't show up to work. The owner was a great guy, and I'm sure he still is, but what can I say. He was a cheapskate whenever I worked for him.
I worked at that particular 7-Eleven for 10 years, until 2018, and other than the raises that corporate gave me when it was still a corporate store, I got one $0.20 raise by the new owner over an 8-year period. And looking back at that, I'm baffled. Anybody else would have asked for at least a couple more raises, but I just never did. I didn't want to put the financial pressure on the new owner, because I was developing a personal relationship with him and his family, and I cared about them.
Here's a piece of advice - don't let yourself get personally or emotionally involved with your boss and his family, ever!
Now, everything I've just told is merely history and really doesn't matter when it comes to the main story, except to establish myself as the longest working employee at that store, the highest 'ranking' employee at that store, as the only employee with an actual job title at that store, which was second shift supervisor, and to demonstrate my work ethic over the course of more than a decade at probably the most shit job you can work at for such a long period of time.
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Now comes the fun part of the story! In the summer of 2016, the owner hired a new employee. Let's call him Simon. At first, Simon was a really easy person to get along with. He was very nice, he was always giving compliments to EVERYONE, he always doing altruistic things like sharing his lottery winnings whenever he won something substantial on a scratch off, and he would actually volunteer sometimes to help me out and take up some slack that I was always getting stuck with, such as covering for workers who either called in, or just flat out didn't show up to work. On third shift, that was extremely common. Simon did his job really well.
At first Simon and I got along really well, too. Hell, Simon got along well with everyone, it seemed. I visited his apartment several times, and we would habitually trade our favorite science fiction and fantasy novels, as we were both avid readers and fans of the genres.
I didn't start getting a real clue about who Simon really was until one night after work, when he and I were spending some time together at his apartment, having a few drinks. We talked about a lot of things, but as we kept drinking, the topics started to become a little more, well, controversial, I guess. At this particular time, the topic had turned to abortion. I was against it, he was for it.
The conversation became an argument. I was adamant about my position, and so was he, and I spent a lot of time trying to explain why I thought abortion was so completely wrong, and even tantamount to murder. Until this point neither of us had raised our voices, but as Simon began to become frustrated, he started raising his voice.
I kept asking him to calm down, and that there was no need to shout. He would chill out for a while, but then he would inevitably begin to raise his voice again. Eventually, he was screaming at me at the top of his lungs! I'm sure he woke up the neighbors, who probably had to listen to him screaming, as this went on for about 15 minutes.
The only time I ever raised my voice that night was to be heard over him, and to ask him to lower his voice. I finally just grew weary of the entire situation. We were both drunk, I was getting tired and sleepy, and as he was screaming at me at full volume, I abruptly stood up, picked up the books that he had laid out for me to borrow, left mine on his coffee table, and said:
"Sorry Simon, but I'm not going to continue with this. I'll see you at work tomorrow. Thanks for lending me the books!"
I left his apartment and went home. That was the first volley of what eventually would become nuclear combat, toe to toe between the two of us.
The next day, Simon demanded his books back from me. So, after the shift, I went home and got them and brought them to him. When I asked him for my books back, he made up some kind of excuse about having to go see his girlfriend for something.
I asked him several times for my books after that, but he would always say that he had forgotten them, or he would leave immediately when the shift ended so that I couldn't bring it up. I never got my books back.
As the weeks went by, Simon became more and more passive aggressive, until his personality toward me had changed to one of genuine dislike. We never had friendly conversations anymore, and when we did talk, it was only about our job duties.
I even tried to apologize to him for that one night when we had the argument about abortion, even though I hadn't been the one doing the screaming... but that turned out to be a big mistake. The fact that I had actually apologized infuriated him for some reason, and he began screaming at me again! As soon as that started, I walked outside and just left him in the store while I smoked a cigarette.
That was the second volley.
As the weeks turned to months, I began to suspect that Simon was a flat out narcissist, and possibly a con artist with his always available charm, which he could turn on and off at a whim depending on who he was associating with. I even began to suspect that he could be a psychopath. Statistically, one out of every 100 people on the planet is a psychopath, so the chances that I've run across a few during my life, or that anybody has run across at least one psychopath during their lives, is pretty much guaranteed.
In my mind, as time went on, I began to suspect more and more, merely by observing how Simon interacted with particular people and how his attitude, his friendliness, his charm, his anger, and even his assumed mantle of authority - which I'll get to in a minute - changed, depending on who he was talking to. He was seeming to be more and more like a manipulative bastard.
Simon and I worked together on second shift together for about a year, and at the end of that year, I was absolutely convinced that Simon definitely had some kind of personality disorder. It was becoming easier and easier to tell when he was just flat out lying about something, or bragging about something that had never happened in order to impress people. The simple 180° change in his personality toward me, along with several other of my co-workers, told us that there was definitely something wrong with Simon upstairs.
I'm not a psychologist or psychiatrist, but I'm such an avid reader that I know anywhere from 'just a little' to 'quite a bit' about just about any topic that's thrown my way, as I've read anywhere from 'just a little' to 'quite a bit' about almost everything, especially the sciences.
So it was that, according to my layman's knowledge, it seemed likely to me that Simon was possibly exhibiting narcissist, codependent, borderline personality, and possibly even sociopathic and psychopathic behavior. Looking back on it now, I'm fairly positive that Simon was a narcissist, and there's a good chance that he was also a psychopath.
I didn't come to these conclusions all at once; it was a gradual kind of coalescence of my idea of Simon based upon his erratic behavior over the course of a year spent working with him, dealing with him, watching his behavior, and coming to understand how he operated with his put on charms and his subtle manipulations of people.
As I've already mentioned, Simon worked at that 7-Eleven for about a year, in total. Then something inexplicable happened - near the end of his year of employment, Simon just up and promoted himself to store supervisor! This wasn't any kind of title which was given to him by the owner, it was just something that Simon had made up!
With his newly self bestowed title, Simon began to try ordering me and other coworkers around. When he pulled that shit with me, I just ignored him as if I hadn't heard what he'd said at all. When he pulled that shit with our coworkers, they always turned to look at me after receiving some kind of order from Simon. If what Simon was suggesting was legit, I'd just nod my head. If Simon was truly being an astronomical douchebag, I'd say:
"You don't have to listen to Simon, he doesn't have any authority over you."
After I had completely negated Simon's presumed, self-promotion several times, well...
That was the third conventional volley, and Nuclear combat inevitably ensued. What follows is a detailed description of the events which triggered and all out nuclear exchange between Simon and myself.
One night, Simon and I were working together as always, and I turned down a customer who was wanting to purchase cigarettes, because his ID was obviously fake. The customer then went to Simons' register and showed him his fake ID, and Simon turned around to get the cigarettes for the customer.
"DON'T YOU DO IT!" I said loudly to Simon.
That's the only time I ever raised my voice to almost a shout at Simon. It's the only time, the one single time, that I ever pulled rank on him. Simon was so shocked to hear me ORDER him not to sell cigarettes to that customer, that he quietly turned around, put the cigarettes back on the rack, and told the customer that he couldn't sell him cigarettes.
Things were silent between Simon and myself for about an hour after that, and then Simon started talking. I don't remember exactly what he was talking about, as he was mainly just bitching and moaning. Then he started complaining about what had happened, and how I shouldn't have ordered him not to sell cigarettes.
I replied very simply to Simon occasionally, but mostly I just ignored him entirely. As time passed, Simon began to bitch more and more about what had happened. He would not shut up about it! Eventually, he was screaming at me again. And this is when EVERYTHING exploded:
Simon: "And another thing. How DARE you try to order me around whenever I'm your superior! You're not the supervisor here, I am!"
WHAT. THE. FUCK. Okay, I'd held back for a long time. I'd kept my nukes in storage, very patiently... but now it was time for Nuclear Combat.
Me: "Simon, I don't know where the hell you got the delusional idea that you're the supervisor of this store. What's amazing to me is the possibility, due to some kind of malfunction in your misfiring neurons, that you might even believe that it's true! If that's the case then I have some bad news for you, Simon. Call it a Reality Check. Be sure to store this information in a part of your brain that's not malfunctioning, for future reference, because here it is. Simon, if there's anybody in charge around here while the owner is gone, it's me. I've worked here for 8 years. You've worked here for almost a year. Based simply on the amount of time I've worked here compared to you, I have rank over you, plain and simple. I have rank over everybody in the store, except for the owner. You can ask him about that, because he gave me that authority when he hired me. Several years ago when the store was corporate, I was an assistant manager. Whenever the store became a franchise however, instead of assistant manager, the new owner changed my title to second shift supervisor. The next time he's here, we can even talk about it with him if you want to, just to clear things up, because you are not in charge of me Simon, or anybody else in this store. I've already asked the owner about this delusion of yours, by the way. I asked him if he had made you the store supervisor, with authority over everyone including myself, and do you know what he did? He laughed! He laughed and he said:
"Hell no I didn't make Simon store supervisor!"
Simon, if there is a make-believe ranking system here that extends beyond my authority as second shift supervisor, then according to that ranking system, you are the lowest man on the totem pole. As a matter of fact, everybody here has worked here for longer than you Simon, except for the new third shift guy. So, just to make things crystal clear, I'm going to explain one simple fact to you, and here it is - I am your boss, Simon. I've never gone out of my way to hold that authority over you in any way, and I've never pulled rank on you or told you, or even asked politely, for you to do anything until about an hour ago when I ordered you NOT to sell cigarettes to that guy, after I had already denied selling him cigarettes, because selling him those cigarettes would have been fucking illegal, because his ID was fake! Maybe you didn't realize that, because you haven't been here for 8 years. But I have, and I know what a fake ID looks like. Besides, that doesn't even matter. What matters is that you tried to sell him cigarettes after I had already told him no, and by ordering you not to do that, I prevented you from committing a crime, Simon. And that's why I'm your boss, and not the other way around. So get this straight right now Simon, right quick and in a hurry. I am your supervisor. I am your boss, when the owner isn't here. So, in the future whenever we're working together after the owner has gone home, if and when I ever tell you to do something, you do it! Just like you did an hour ago when I ordered you not to sell those cigarettes. That's the first time I've ever given you a direct order Simon, and it's because you were about to break the law. Now that you know that your job is to follow my orders to a reasonable degree, I expect you, in turn, to do your job, competently, and with no conflict as far as our work relationship goes. Unless you try to do anything stupid again, I'll probably never come right out and tell you to do anything ever again, because you already know your job really well. And you do it well! You're a good worker here, but something is wrong with the way you process information, Simon. I don't know what that problem is, but I hope we've at least cleared it up as far as the two of us are concerned. If you are still adamant with your delusion that you are the supervisor of this store and the boss of everyone here, including myself, but barring the owner, then tomorrow we can bring this whole thing up with him and talk it over... but you're not gonna like how it turns out, Simon. Because if you're bound and determined to believe that you are somehow my superior here, my supervisor, and the supervisor of this store, including all employees except for the owner, then we need to clear this up with the him right away, tomorrow, at the beginning of the shift, before he's gone home. And that's all I have to say, as far as you and I are concerned. Whatever you have to say next, unless it's "Okay I understand," or something similar to that, I'm just gonna ignore it because this issue is OVER WITH!"
Simon didn't say anything after that. He didn't say another word for the rest of the night. In fact, I don't think more than two dozen words were passed between us for the remainder of his tenure as 'cashier'. I never brought that up to Simon, but that was his actual official job title.
Simon didn't bring the issue up with the owner, and he never brought it up again. It was done. Resolved. Finished! And that was my 1 megaton nuke, detonated at an altitude of 10,000 feet - known as an 'air burst' - directly above Simon, a carefully calculated detonation meant to combine the ground level pressure fronts, effectively spreading the maximum possible energy of the resulting shockwaves over the largest area for the purpose of inflicting Total Destruction.
Simon's return volley - a spread of several 10 megaton MIRVs - all exploded harmlessly inside their own silos. Allow me to explain.
A few weeks later, I was informed of a cabal which Simon was actively trying to form against me, involving as many of our coworkers as possible. Simon was planning an ambush, and he was recruiting an alliance!
I came about this knowledge one night whenever the new third shift guy - let's call him Rick - basically just told me all about it. Here's what Rick said, word for word, as clearly as I can remember, as to the plan Simon was plotting against me, one filled with carefully and craftily constructed lies. Here are the details of his evil plan to get me fired:
Rick: "Hey Ash! I don't know if you know this yet, but Simon is hatching lies about you. He's trying to gather up as many employees as he can and get them all on his side, and then invent a bunch of lies about you that he would then email to corporate, in order to get you fired. Last night, he asked me if I would help him with this evil scheme. I laughed and said, 'Are you fucking crazy, Simon?' He also said that the store owner made him the supervisor of the entire store, and that he's your boss, and that if it came up and you said anything different, that you're lying. Just so you know, that guy really has it in for you for some reason. He sounds crazy. I think he's a fuckin' nut job!"
Really! Thought I. I can't say that I was shocked, but I actually was a little surprised. That was the exact moment however, that I made the mental note that I was dealing with someone with narcissistic personality disorder, and very likely a bona fide psychopath.
Of course, nobody agreed to join the conspiracy Simon was trying to plot against me. Actually, it was pretty ironic, because if Simon really was the supervisor, he would have known this fact:
For a franchise store, corporate has absolutely zero control over who gets hired and who gets fired. That control is strictly in the hands of the owner of the franchise. The OWNER. Not some entity that was in charge 6 years ago, and gave up that power in order to sell one of their 7-Elevens to a private owner. Again... OWNER is the key word here. Simon just didn't have that info. He thought that corporate had control, and that he could actually hatch this scheme of lies against me and then present it all to corporate, with the support of several store employees, in order to get me fired!
I'll tell you this: the only thing that would have happened if Simon had been successful in recruiting even just one employee, or if he had decided to risk it and just do it all on his own, is that corporate would have forwarded the information to the owner, and the owner would have laughed his ass off and fired Simon.
A few days after that, Simon was trying to order me around whenever I told him to fuck off. He flew into a rage and screamed, "I QUIT!" As he was storming out the door, I shouted at him:
"That's no way for a store supervisor to behave! You've got responsibilities here, man! A real supervisor would have handled this situation like a professional, and not stormed out like a little titty baby and quit in a fussy rage!"
It was too late for poor Simon. After I'd delivered my final message to him, which he actually stopped in his tracks in order to listen to, he stormed out the door, never to be seen or heard from again (except for one more time).
Bye Simon, you fucking reptile! If I ever see your ugly mug again, I hope it's either in a police lineup, a mugshot, or in the obituaries!
And that's my story of the failed, evil plan and nonexistent cabal which a co-worker of mine, who we've been calling Simon, tried to put together and pull off in order to get me fired. Yeah. Simon was, and most likely still is, a certified lunatic.
p.s. A few months later Simons' girlfriend came into the store, and I asked about him. She said that they had broken up a few months earlier, and that she never wanted to see that crazy fucker ever again.
