Employee Nightmares

Employees in whichever organization/industry/company obviously really make a difference. However, some of us many not realize how much of a difference they can really make. We can logically assume that in order for employees to be happy, their supervisor has to have proper qualifications and at least some decent knowledge and COMMON SENSE in organizational behavior.
However, this is not always the case. Supervisors, employees, and all the people working for a company have an impact on how it is portrayed and marketed to others.

The reason for this particular blog is to highlight the importance of a good supervisor, especially in the retail stores. For this case, I'll be referring to Roots and it's retail stores. I am not basing my judgments on the entire Roots retail, but solely on one anonymous store which is a good example of when 'things can go wrong'.

Anyways, one of my very close friends has been working at Roots closer to 3 years now. She has the same manager, and the same problems. I didn't realize the severity of her manager-employee relationship until she began to describe some of the things that she has to go through on a daily bases, occurrences ranging from minimal, tolerable, to rage inducing incidences which would drive any 'normal' person to bail. The reason that she did not leave was due to a number of things. 1) Since she's been there for a while, her pay has increased to beyond that of a first-time retail employee. 2) If she leaves now, then she will have to start again at starting salary, and attempt to climb up the ladder again.  3) Besides that, like many of us students who are straining to pay for school, it's a very stressing process to remain unemployed while searching for prospective jobs and attempting to pay for school, life, and even help out with the family at the same time. Some of the daily nuances that she has to deal with are her supervisors 'fake' and 'two-faced' attitude, being picked on for not smiling 24/7, supervisor forcibly pushing all work on employees and doing nothing themselves, constant nagging, rudeness, obvious employee preferability, and much much more. For instance, unfair payment on breaks (not clocking out during breaks, therefore still getting paid, unlike other employees), only hiring ONE ethnicity and speaking that language to the other staff members while excluding others, just leaving the store to smoke, shop, buy groceries, all while still getting PAID and clocking in her hours. This would get anyone else FIRED. Also, manipulating everyone to get what she wants (especially newbies) by making up fake policies that do NOT exist in order to benefit herself. Another example would be pressuring employees to smile, and interfering with employee-customer relations by making things awkward and incredibly embarrassing.

Personally, I have never experienced things like these at my place of work. I've always enjoyed my supervisor and had no problems with him whatsoever, so happenings like this in the workplace were unknown to me.
My friend has not been the only victim of the Roots supervisor, but she has been the one who's handled it the best so far, as it seems. Many others have already applied, been accepted, and quit.
Thinking about the negative impact on Roots from such employers, we can begin to see the horrible word of mouth that could be going around, and already is. Employees leave, are angry, begin to bad mouth other friends, and other friends begin to create a negative association with both roots. This not only leads customers away from Roots, but also leads potential employees from joining other Roots retail locations.

I think that manners such as these should be taken with higher consideration, especially since employees and supervisors not only have an impact on each other and the store, but on the company (in this case Roots) as a whole. Supervisors should be specifically chosen for their qualities that will not threaten, confuse, or make others uncomfortable.