Treat your employees like a commodity, loose it all.

Forgive me, because this is going to be a long one. I am from Scandinavia.

Some years back I met a guy that offered me a job in a brand new store as the manager and sole employee except for vacations and on weekly day of, it is a specialty business, still have to be a bit vague as law suits are still ongoing (on its 6. year that is, for wrong full termination and do not want to risk their cases), but my NDA has expired.

The products was a hobby of mine, so dream job, even if the pay was lower then what I was currently doing. Over the next 3 years I made my shop the most succesful and was the boss of a few other shops. I am a nerd in the words most extreme sense, my ADHD makes me go all in when I find something interesting, I am well liked by most and my philosophy has always been to treat people as I want to be treated as well, best employees are happy and well taken care of employees.

Then comes in this big wholesale company and buy them self in with lots of promises to the owner, and he ended up agreeing even with several of us warning him about said company. They made the whole proud speech to us about being a professional company (we literally had to teach their accountant how to auto pay after all shops had to close because they had not paid the electrical bill), and they wanted to invest yada yada corporate bs.

They only wanted us sell what they sold to the B2C market, but never had enough in stock so most of the shops started running on fumes and some plainly went in to red after 4 months of them owning it. Our customers where use to special kind of service and now there where none, because they couldn't see the numbers for it.

3 months in and they throw the owner out, he begs us to stay because he still gets money from this and everything he has in tied up in this company (he was and still is a great friend), so we agreed.

But the new company ment changes for the worse so within the first week, all 15 shops under me wrote a letter of concern and all signed it. I looked at it and signed of as well.

The owner went ballistic, called me screaming on the phone several times, took him nine calls before he got the message i gave him every time: "You must have the wrong number, nobody talks to me like that."

I somehow ended up getting promoted to regional manager that day.

I work my ass of for a few months, I am one of those idiots, giving them the bennefit of doubt, but it was clear to me what way they where going pretty fast, so when it became time to give new contracts (new owner means new contracts) I went to my union, they wanted them locked to "regions" but dit not specify witch one, I knew what they ment, but I went with the unions regions and not the public service ones. Why this is important comes in to play later. My name was nowhere on these contracts, only the CEO's. He signed them after their lawyers went over them, so my ass is in the clear.

In my country we have something called interest hours, you basically work for free but get valuable experience, education or advancement in a company, this they tried to extort to the fullest, by saying that inventory count was under this, we did it one time, talked to the union and the second time we gave the unanimous "We are not interested in that". The owner exploded, the CEO loved me and laughed when i said it, and responded with: I knew this was coming. Well it ended up with me telling him, that either it is paid hours after work, do it during work (this never goes well) or give them an paid day of, we landed on the latter.

We were supposed to be two regional managers in my part of the country, I had 15 stores under me, and I worked in them all, how else will you know what is going on as the manager? Numbers are all fine and dandy but experience is better, and you get to know the others.

Then came the time where what I predicted happened, they startet selling all the stores, and treated my employees as a commodity, not on my watch. So most of them said no to work for others, and I made sure they had a shining recommendation or a new job first using my network.

And here is where the new contracts comes in to play. The take over from a new owner is a month. Most of my employees had between 4 and 6 months notices if they got fired. So they tried to shuffle them to other stores far away but within the public regions, but he contract stated the union regions, so they could just tell them fuck off and pay them for the remainder of the contract, if work came up within the region they where obligated to do it though, but that happened twice and they gladly did it. Then we where down to six stores.

Then I met my new boss as I was going to hand over a shop to him, and he offered me a job with less hours, higher pay and way more to say, basically he wanted me to be his boss for the first year so he could learn more. That day I said I needed to think about it, because with the week I had, I was ready to work at McD for way less (had three break ins in deferent shops at night). I ended up accepting it, gave in my resignation of month to the CEO who of cause was sad to loose me but understood fully, and I got promised on paper an extra months pay that I never got so I made sure they lost even more after, they lost EU exclusives on the two most major brands, by me simply putting suggestions and being honest with those two suppliers when they called me personally after I left.

So while all of this is going on, the lawsuits are on between them and the old owner. A few of the stores where still leased in his name, and on my last day they gave me this order: Empty this store completely so the old boss would not be able to start a new one easily, fire the employee then and there and then they would stop paying rent without telling the old owner, putting him in debt. No fucking way, I called him, told him to be ready for something without telling him, made sure the employee knew to call in sick that day, this was a relative new employee so she only had a month resignation frem the employers side, so I made sure she got two months like this in stead.

The day after I switched jobs I poached the two employees I knew I needed to make this new one a succes, they left without notice, and then they had two shops that where empty for a few months before they sold them, I found jobs for the remaining and they left without notice as well, so they ended up loosing 15 shops and an eight figure number in losses, salerys and started loosing a lot of B2B customers as I recommended their competitor to everyone, better products, better service etc.

I wish I could tell you they went bust, but they are still living on life support because of international customers. The other regional manager from the other part of the country still works for them, but is now the owner of the shops under him, this was cheaper then loosing them all as they where in decline as well. He was also above me in the old company as sales manager on top of the region manager, he is now paying me to consult them.

The company I am in now, grew to be the biggest online store in the north, and the second biggest sales wise in my country, by simply providing the same customer service as we would want when we shop. Fixing things instead of trying to shove a new product down a customers throat, not trying to claim it a user error that made the product fail when it is not etc.

At some point in all of this, I had to decide what kind of person I am, a company simp or to fight for what I believe is right, and I chose the latter, I protected the employees over the employer and would do it again. I stil gets calls from most of my former employees and is still friends with those I saw outside of work as well. I haven't gone full detail here, I still have to protect some people as this company loves spending money on lawyers.

Tldr: Treat your employees like people or loose it all.