In 2015 I worked for Sam's Club and we were opening a new store. Oklahoma was getting hit with the hardest record setting rains it had ever had for the month of May, and I'm talking roads being submerged, highways flooding, just a torrential downpour. We were asked to go assist another nearby store that was having issues because of course lots of corporate bigwigs were in town and I'm the world of retail you're used to constantly being "walked" by various levels of upper management to get your ass handed to you and asked why you suck so much (hint: it is, quite literally, always payroll).
Anyway, we were soaking up overtime and were asked to go help this other store overnight, so we went to our hotel and were told to keep an eye on the weather before going. But when we called at 9pm and said the tornado sirens were going off, and the torrential downpour was making it impossible for travel, the manager didn't care. And in fact escalated it to
their manager to keep calling and harassing us. In the end we made the trip, five of us shoved into a truck, and took two hours navigating flooded, unsafe roads to drive something like 12 miles just to go help what was ultimately an unsalvageable expected club walk (seriously, there was 0 chance of the few of us who made it to make enough of a difference to help with what was needed). And the two bosses that wouldn't stop calling and harassing us volunteers to endanger themselves to help them out? Yeah, they didn't make it.
Retail is a shithole, I could (and have) go on at length. But I don't ever forget the time we were told to endanger our lives for time and a half.
Here's a literal quote from a news article, since one was written about the new store opening amidst the storms:
"I was so proud of the associates who were checking on their families and helping each other take the safest place possible inside this club… You were comforting each other," Moinian said. "It just shows the passion that you have for each other. I'm proud of you… I applaud you for that."
Moinan said the Red Cross reached out to the membership warehouse Thursday morning, and he said the membership warehouse was eager to help business who were flooded by the storms.
"It's part of our culture. It's part of our DNA," Moinian said.
Lol yeah. As a funny aside, for weeks we'd joked about the new store getting hit by a tornado, since locally we consider the town Moore to be tornado-destined. Well we had the slowest soft opening in company history, I think we made like $500, because for the most part we stayed bunkered down as opening day was interrupted by a tornado.
