Past Couple of Days FFFF (Rant)

[Kimmy 0]

So I get a job at Forever 21. It's real exciting. They clearly need people to work for them, I mean because I applied LAST MAY and they just called asking if I wanted a job. And so I talked to them and they said that yes I was totally hired. They asked me to come for a three hour orientation, that they said would be mostly all paperwork and stuff. Just three hours? No real standing or walking? Oh man, I am going to wear my nice heels. Oh wow, I look so nice being all tall for once.

(For those of you that don't know Forever 21 is a store primarily for fashion-conscious teen girls etc etc, they have really cute clothes that are REALLY cheap. I shop there a lot because it is just easy and affordable for me. I was hired to be a salesperson.)

So orientation consisted of me filling out paperwork for like 45 minutes, doing taxes and stuff. And immediately I noticed that they have weird policies.

1. The girl starts reading off the dress code. She is not /covered/ in tattoos but she has a fair number of them. She reads the dress code. "No tattoos," she says, "and no more than two pairs of earrings. Kimberly, you need to get rid of yours." Oh hell no, I thought. But I figured I might be able to take them out for work or whatever (I have five holes in my right ear and 7 in my left). Very hypocritical though.

2. She gets to a few pages and takes them from each of us. "This is the part that says that I have to do background checks on all my employees, you know, because they'll be working in the fitting room with like teenage girls." She rips those pages up and says she doesn't do background checks on anyone.

3. She gets out a policy concerning suing them. Basically, if I want to take Forever 21 to small claims court, they make you sign a contract before going to work there with them that if I want to sue them, I would have to sue them in California where the store headquarters is located. I would also have to pay for my managers' plane tickets and for hotel fare for all of them AND for the founder of the store, even though I have to take him to court in the town in which he lives.

So this is all very weird but whatever, some people have weird policies. At Hannaford Bros grocery, we got in trouble if we didn't meet time quotas on the scanners or if we neglected to card anyone buying alcohol who looked under the age of FORTY years old. Some places are weird, and I still liked working there. So I shrugged it off, whatever.

4. She then proceeds to tell me that Forever 21 is afraid that we're going to steal, so I have to get rung up by the manager if I buy from there (which is a common policy actually at places). But then, she says, that they need to GO THROUGH MY PURSE at the end of the day and escort me to the door every single day I work there so I don't steal from them. Despite the fact that they are afraid of theft by the people in their workplace, they did not provide me with any kind of lock to secure my purse during my stay. She goes on to say that if I go to the Forever 21 in Natick, or in Maine, or in LA, or in Canada, I need to inform the manager that I work at Forever 21 Marlborough Mass so they can get their manager to ring me up and then go through my purse. Awesome AND cool.

So we finish paperwork and get a tour in like an hour. Oh man, that's pretty fast! We are promised to get a handbook on all the rest of their policies, and that's it, that's all for orientation! I am like, oh man, that was fast, we finished like wicked early.

And then they go "ok, now, we're going to put you in the front and you in the middle and you in the back by the changing rooms." And we're like "what?"

They tell us that now orientation is over and it's time to work. We ask what our responsibilities or job description is. They say "no that doesn't matter, go work."

We spent the next four and a half hours cleaning up and dealing with angry customers even though we knew where nothing was, bringing up our "orientation" time to five and a half hours, in heels, probably unpaid (I was not given any ID number to clock in or out with, so how does the payroll program know I was even there).

Work was terrible and unrewarding. Managers kept telling me that I was doing things wrong, and then wouldn't answer me when I asked how to fix them. At one point, a manager was like "this table is awful, come help me fold the clothes on it." I folded one pile, and she folded one pile. And then I folded the rest of the piles while she tried on clothes in the fitting room while still on the clock.

When I asked when I was allowed to leave, she said "whenever we clean up," which I'd heard from some people was going to be past midnight. I finally got her to agree on 7, as I had to go drive an hour back to UConn. I asked for bathroom breaks and was not allowed to use the restroom for the 5+ hours I was there.

I got bagchecked and left, and wandered around for forever, as the only exits in my mall NOT through a store like JC Penny etc. (which were all closed, as I left after the mall closed) are tucked away unmarked employee exits. Nobody told me where they were.

Needless to say I am turning that job down.

Furthermore I should be studying, and I have been made UNABLE to do that though shitty people interfering, but I will let off steam about that after I do what I gotta do.

[Grandmaster Phoenix 26]

Wow. I dont even know what to say to this...

[Sahaqiel 1232]

If you decided on not taking the job, you should have told her off. She sounds terrible.

[Chase 390]

This honestly sounds like hazing from a fraternity, not an actual company interview/orientation.

Wow. I probably would call the police if they don't pay you for those hours you worked.

They HAVE to pay you. It's probably against company policy to work off the clock anyway, let alone being illegal in the US when there is an expectation of pay.

[Kimmy 0]

While looking for job reviews from people who had worked at Forever 21, I found a lot of information about the terrible sweatshop conditions under which they make their clothes both in China and in California. So they're all about being immoral and illegal. To get withheld wages you have to take them to court, which I talked about.

[Skippy 82]

I've never been a fan of that store, had a friend that worked there here, horrible business plan and treated their employees like crap. i'm sorry you had all that happen, and it sucks even more having to turn down any job in this economy. And Chase, Kimmy would be correct, the lost day of wages wouldn't be worth the charges to take them to court in Cali.

This would be part of the reason I won't work retail.

[Rika Code 29]

You should make flyers about there sweat shop conditions andpost them around the mall

Than start a pitition to get the store evicited from the mall

[Cascade 741]

Wow Kimmy, that's pretty atrocious behaviour for a business. I'm sorry you had to go through that :<<<

...it's too bad that their clothes are soooo cuteeeee ;; but urghhh so much hate :<

[Teto 2609]

This is why the clothes are cheap I guess.

I wish I knew where one was

So I could cover myself in mud and throw myself at the manager

[Cirt 612]

Yeah, I've heard about the terrible conditions in the sweatshops, too. Some girl I follow on Tumblr who's a fashion student has raged about why she boycotts Forever 21 a few times. It really is a crappy store, only obscured by the fact that it has cute clothes. The clothes themselves, though, are terrible quality. I had a white v-neck from there and it lasted like 3 months before my washing machine somehow tore it to shreds. :<

I'm sorry you had to go through that. That's really unfair and manipulative, and there are definitely better retail stores out there. My brother worked at Gap for a few months, and he didn't mind it too much. They're a lot more professional there from what I could gather, and the employee discounts made sense.

[Kimmy 0]

I have clothing from there, but it's all shrunk since I got to school because I haven't been able to hang my entire closet to dry in my little dorm.

[Kimmy 0]

So my dad's been in the hospital, it sucks. He has MAC, Mycobacterial Avium Complex. It won't kill you but it is similar in form and function to tuberculosis. It is something that you or I could have in my lungs and be fine. It generally attacks people with awful immune systems, often infecting AIDS patients. However we've known that for a while. He has been on antibiotics for ages. He finally got a negative test result for the disease in October. Because it is such a strong infection, you have to take the antibiotics for a year from the date of your first negative result (assuming it doesn't grow back). So that's good.

But then right, they thought he had this thing called aspergillis. It's a fungal disease that fills up the lungs. It eventually spreads and causes so much scarring that lung transplants are necessary. So you know, aspergillis can kill you, MAC can't. So just put him on aspergillis meds right? NOPE. Aspergillis medicine and MAC medicine interact to kill you. Aspergillis /might/ kill you. The medicines together will 100% for sure kill you. So that's an issue.

So they kept giving him more and more specific tests to see if he had it. X-rays showed what looked like aspergillis. So did a test where they injected a radioactive substance into his lungs and monitored it. And on and on. Eventually, they decided to do a lung biopsy, where they scrape off a little piece of your lung and see what is growing in there. So they did the test. Takes about half an hour and then they keep you for a few more hours to see if you're alright.

Welp, he wasn't alright. They accidentally cut a hole in his lung and it collapsed. So they kept him there and put tubes in him to put air where it should be and take out air from when it shouldn't. It was a small hole and healed within 24 hours. But he's still there. They grew his lung culture and they figured out what they thought was aspergillis was actually a terrible chronic infection of pneumonia. Which would explain a lot. Both things fill your lungs with fluid, and both things make him cough as he does.

So he's on an IV of antibiotics for his pneumonia. He generally brings these antibiotics home (he's been treated intravenously for various strains of pneumonia before) in little syringes with a tube left in his arm. However, he's been having a fever every night. They aren't going to allow him to leave the hospital until he stops having fevers, which who knows how long that is going to take. So it's good that he doesn't need to take a medicine for aspergillis that would kill him. But this still sucks.

[Aethix 129]

That really just sucks. I hope everything turns out alright.

[pheonix561 2080]

yay its hug time for kimmy yay everyone is hugging kimmy look at everyone hugging kimmy yay