I worked at Hollywood Video from June through June. When I was hired, the former store director, Jennifer Thomson, did not train me whatsoever. I was not forced to attend Job Orientation, and did not sign any documents which were required for me to be employed with the company. I worked there for a while, and was able to learn the basic skills the job required.
April rolls around, and after a lenghty vacation my manager Jenn Thomson quits. At the same time the former District Manager Brenda Lory leaves. I find this to be a bit alarming, as if something fishy may be going on that they know and aren't telling any of the employees about. Roughly two months go by, and we are without a store manager. The employees on the staff are doing the best they can to try and maintain the store. The store in question was being run by two shift leaders, one of which was brand new to the company.
Finally corporate does something about the lack of management and appoints a temporary store manager to the store. Her name was Deanna Hinson, and she claimed that she was just there to get the store looking clean and organized. Meanwhile, during the months of no management on the staff, base-level employees and shift leaders are stuck and have to deal with customer disputes, and late fee issues on accounts. Without any management whatsoever, I was given the OK by Shift Leader Joshua Black, to take late fees off customer accounts, manually price items if we could not locate the discount barcodes, and to give free rentals to customers who have issues with their accounts.
Needless to say, at the store I worked at every other account had some form of late fee dispute, outstanding notice, or some other form of issue which had not been resolved, because no manager was present, or any form of supervision which could have helped with this scenario. So we removed any questionable late fees, and told customers the situation at the store. The fact that we are without a manager, or a district manager, and doing the best job we can to resolve these issues. Another disturbing instance is our equipment was faulty at times, and would not scan the movies in properly, leading to the movies being put back out on the shelves. This lead to even more customer late fee issues, and the general public was beginning to suspect something was wrong with our store.
As I mentioned, after two months of no management whatsoever, a temporary store director, Deana Hinson, and a new District Manager Anthony are placed to our store. Deanna makes me do tasks that the managers are supposed to do, and has me automatically correct missing invetory, which I found to be odd. She had log in under my name, and change the inventories which is totally against procedures.
Finally, we get another Temporary Store Director, her name is Lesley. She openly admitted that our old store Director Jenn Thomson, who left so long ago, did not do her job properly, and that if she had, that these types of account disputes would never even have happened. Lesley spends the better part of the week correcting these account issues, placing notes on employee accounts, negotiating late fees with customers, scanning in movies which were in the wrong cases, finding out why empty movie cases were sitting below the counter, and so on and so forth. After she gets our store up to speed, our loss prevention numbers are staggering. She is then obligated to call in the Loss Prevention Manager. He shows up on June 15, and begins an investigation as to why the stores numbers look so bad.
The Loss Prevention Manager named Nick Tlanis asks me and another employee to the back room, and claims that his investigation concluded that our names came up rather high in the loss column. I try to explain to this guy that we had to void a lot of late fees because of customer disputes, and that the manual pricing of items was done because we were instructed to do that if prices were incorrect, or the bar codes could not be located. Free rentals I told him I gave out to customers because of the issues on accounts, and because I was told directly by shift leaders that this was OK to do. He then does something that literally makes me sick in the stomach. He accuses me of taking concession items. I stated that I was never told by management, or by anyone that we had to pay for this stuff. He said that it didn't matter, and that if I refused to cooperate with the terms and conditions that he laid out, that I would be send to jail and prosecuted for grand larceny.
He did not give me the alternative for an attorney, and told me that if I didn't confess to what the records showed, then I would be sent to jail. Out of fear I filled out a restitution agreement, and a confession stating that I did infact remove late fees, manually price items, and give out free rentals, but not for the reasons he thinks.
As far as the concessions being taken, I admit I did take candy and soda a few times, and other items, but I also said that I was not aware we had to pay for them, and that these items would be corrected by the system automatically. I was told from the get-go that taking products such as: movies, games, and money would constitute as loss.
I know deep down inside I am not a thief, and had I been trained properly, and been sent to job orientation from the start, maybe some of these things would not have happened.instead, I believe I am doing no wrong in helping customers out with late fees, and giving out free rentals to customers who had problems with their accounts, and were being threatened to be sent to collections. I feel betrayed by my former manager Jenn Thomson for not helping me in the beginning, and I feel even more betrayed that Hollywood Video can't even take the time and make sure their employees go to orientation, and they learn the proper way to handle customer issues. I also think it is very negligent of Hollywood Video to allow a single store to go without a store manager, or district manager for over a month and let the store get worse and worse, then try to penalize innocent employees who had no idea what they were doing was wrong. I think it's an injustice, and I strongly recommend that anyone looking at a job with this company go elsewhere. I could open a whole other can of worms detailing this jobs unfair work policy, and how they hired new employees 6.50 starting off, when others on the staff in the same position, who'd been there for even longer, were still making 6.00.
The worse part is, I got forced into paying a sum of 1,690.00 to Hollywood, because they believed I caused the company loss, which is not true. The loss prevention manager and District Manager cornered me and didn't give me a fair shake, and the way they handled the situation given the awful circumstances of the store, was downright wrong and appalling. I am trying to reverse the restitution agreement against me as we speak, and I will not rest until some sort of justice is brought to light on this fradulant company. Hollywood Video treats their employees poorly, they don't train them, don't inform them how to do their jobs properly, and then to top it all off they don't pay their employees fairly, and broke at least 10-12 labor violations since I've worked there. I will not stand for this type of injustice, and I will one day make sure my name is cleared of these insulting charges.
Luka
Las Vegas, Nevada
U.S.A.
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