Sunday 8 January
I got to work an hour early to show
Billy the document and talk about the complaint. Billy said he had a lot of
work to do between 9 and 10 so I left to get coffee and came back for the start
of my shift. At 10 am, Billy and I went in the big office and he shut the door.
He started the conversation by telling
me he had talked to x about the complaint and about the two routes we could
go with it and that sometime after talking to x about the complaint and today
he had decided to tell Yvonne about me trying to catch up with him after the
first night out and about the note I showed him in the cash office reminding
him that I had told him I loved him on the Christmas night out. He told Yvonne
I had been “harassing” him. I then told Billy that he threw me under the bus to
cover his ass. He just sat there looking at me but didn’t say anything. He said
Yvonne would have wanted to know why I had been crying that day, as detailed in
the complaint. I told Billy that I wish he hadn’t done that because I had come
in the next day and made up a “bullshit reason” why I was crying and that I had
fixed things. He sat there with his head down.
I told Billy I would never want to get
him in trouble and that we could go the informal route. I also told him I felt
like he was threatening me and coercing me into choosing the informal route. He
responded by saying I could choose any route I wanted but he said it in a
menacing way and I told him I didn’t feel I could speak freely with him. I felt
he had already started turning on me to protect himself but still wanted me to
put in the complaint because I think he hates Yvonne (I told him I knew that he
hated her) and because I felt that he genuinely wanted to try to fix issues in
the store relating to her.
After Billy told me that he had
painted me as his harasser to Yvonne, I told him that I thought he had liked
me. He said he never liked me that way but that he liked me as an associate and
we had good banter. I asked him what about the kiss. He tried to deny the kiss
at first but then admitted it and added that it “wasn’t a full-on kiss” and
that he “had never done that before.” I took that to mean he had never cheated
on his partner before.
I showed Billy the document but
offered to not submit it if that’s what he wanted so as to keep him out of
trouble. He read the document and said he had had no knowledge of most of the
things in it. I told Billy I felt I couldn’t sit down with them to discuss it
as I couldn’t face Yvonne about the complaint, especially after Billy made out
to her that I was harassing him. He said Yvonne wouldn’t say anything about the
“harassment” and wouldn’t say anything negative to me about the complaint after
I put it in. I told him if I kept working there Sundays after that, I couldn’t
work with Yvonne as I was afraid of retaliation from her. He told me I would
have to as he doesn’t work every Sunday. I then asked him when the next Sunday
was that she was working. He said she was working the following Sunday so I
told him that today would be my last day. He told me to go do cash office and
think about it.
I went and did cash office and wrote a
one-sentence resignation letter. I was angry that Billy shifted blame of our
inappropriate relationship solely to me and that he expected me to work with
Yvonne after putting in my complaint against her. I went back in the office
after cash office and gave him the resignation letter. I told him that now that
I’m his “harasser” I can’t be around him anymore and that I can’t be around
Yvonne after all this. I said now that I’m his “harasser” I’m assuming he would
never give me a reference if I needed one in the future. He told me he would give
me any reference I wanted and he tried to get me to stay on for a couple of
weeks to see the complaint through. I told him I didn’t want my 13 years there to end like this and he said to wait a couple weeks and he would arrange a
leaving gift for me. I was angry at how everything turned out and told him “I
don’t want anything from this fucking place.”
Before I left, he asked me to send the
document to his work email so he could talk to Yvonne about it and I told him I
didn’t want to submit it anymore. He told me it’s very important to send it and
that he’s not like her and is wanting to fix things in the store. He gave me
his work email address and I sent it to him saying that at least I won’t have
to face the consequences from Yvonne as I will no longer be working there and
that I hoped it would do some good in the future. I left without talking to
anyone else in the store.
