Hello,
I am a the veteran Shift at my job having been a shift for a little over a year, and I left the newest shift who barely promoted about two months ago to two man on our floor. Now he is saying, I am the Ahole for not staying and helping more.
I work for a very popular coffee chain, (you can piece that together yourself.) I opened our store at 4:30am Saturday morning and was scheduled to work until 12:30pm. My mid shift lets call him Nick, came in at about 7:30, with the plan for me to give him the keys when I was off. As it got to be about 11am, I am looking at the schedule and realize Nick is going to be forced to two man, now the floor wasn’t originally scheduled like that we had a coworker get into a car accident earlier in the week and they are still recovering. So we had been down a man for a while given her schedule was from 8am to 3:45pm. Upon realizing this I warn him and started calling people to try to help him find coverage given I had finished all of the things I needed to do and was simply running breaks. Our manager was out sick and trying to find coverage as well after I contacted him about it but couldn’t come in himself. No one was available. So as people left I offered to stay and do Cash for Nick along with setting the floor up the best i could for him. (Doing dishes that had piled up during the rush and some work that needed to be completed in a set time frame.)
It gets to be about 1:30pm I have finished what I said I would do for him, I tell Nick. "Hey, I got all of that done, even did some prep so you don’t have to scramble with just the two of you for supplies. I am gonna clock out now." Nick proceeds to ask if I can do the rest of the midday stuff for him, doing the rest of his stuff would have kept me there till 3:45 when the next person was set to come in at the very least. Especially if I was going to have to keep stopping to help him and answer questions. Here is where i might be the Asshole. I replied "No, it’s not my job to do your work for you. I am not pulling a nearly 12 hour shift for you. I’ve done two mans before you can do it too. It won’t be easy but it is what it is." He got upset and proceeded to say I was screwing them over and now is complaining about it to coworkers and telling them ei was rude and left him as well as our other coworker to fend for themselves with the store falling apart around them. I did feel bad leaving them, as I now how much it sucks to two man and now I am wondering if I should have toughed it out since he’s a new shift. AITA?
NTA, he was asking way too much from you and considering the chain you probably wouldn’t even be payed for it since it was a last minute decision. Demanding free labor from a coworker just for your convenience is fucking ridiculous. If he keeps complaining to your coworkers, respond by saying that you don’t work for free and anyone who disagrees can be the ones to put in the extra work.
You could have just said you were sorry you couldn’t stay longer.
Nope NTA. If you stuck around, you’d just be enabling him. It’s not your problem. You did what you could do, which is more than he had coming to him. Your boss needs to deal with it, not you.