Horrible Leadership - Assistant Manager Holiday Stationstores Employee Review

Staff is underpaid, overworked, and generally crabby because of the pay and hours. There are some good employees, but the general manager is not one of them. He has more employees in the morning (usually 5) than some store have for their entire store. I asked to transfer to a new store, but was told I was untransferable. His words. I had asked for a transfer before and even my wife got involved because she was so pissed off at him. Well, I took matters into my own hands. Literally, and this is 100% true, less than 15 minutes later after he told me I was untransferable I was on the phone with the district manager and asked to transfer to a store that Joe the GM, had refused over and over and over to send anyone to help even though he has an abundance of employees. The DM was ecstatic to hear this. I was excited, the manager at the other store was very excited, and the DM was very excited because the GM at the other store had 4 people for the entire store where the GM at my store had 5 for the morning shift alone. When I started working at the new store, I kept helping at my old store. I was scheduled for a couple days, but my main hours were at the new store. I was supposed to be done fully on Aug. 15th 2022, but the DM said I could just stay at my new store. Oh, that wasn't good enough for my old manager. Oh, not at all. I was clearly scheduled at the new store and yet Joe scheduled me at his store. He gets every weekend off, but the manager at my new store had been working doubles and working weekends for months before I got there. I told her to schedule me every bit as much as she could as she had barely even seen her kids in months. When he scheduled me for the days before the 15th, me and my new manager spoke to him and he bullied his way to have me working at his store and not at hers. This was complete nonsense as he has way more than enough people to have the store running. One of the days we had 6 people working that morning. Yes, 6 people. Again, the store I transferred to was back down to 4... for the ENTIRE STORE!! Joe had 6 in just the morning shift. How the hell does that make any sense? A couple days later on a weekend, my, what was supposed to be my new manager called me crying. She has no one working but her and she needs help. Literally crying and I'd been told I couldn't work there. She was looking for any help she could because her own kids told her that they haven't seen her in forever and want her home. I said screw Joe, and I would find someone myself. She had been looking but she didn't want to bother me. I would have helped in a second if I wasn't going out of town. I had put out an email to every store in our district begging for help. I called every employee on my list that i could and no one could. The DM authorized a $50 gift card and the starting pay of $14/hr. That is the starting pay for employees at her store, yet Joe had told me and apparently several other employees, that Circle K only offers $12/hr for new employees. Odd I thought. I started calling around and found out that what he had told me and others is not accurate in any way. My pay as an Assistant Manager was $16/hr which he said he had to fight the DM Mike to get for me to start, which I now doubt. I didn't really care about the money. I had left a job paying a lot more because of my mental health. Working at home for years will kill you if you don't have the mindset for it and because of Covid, we couldn't go back into the corporate office. The pay didn't bother me or my wife. Now to find out that I was possibly not told the truth about my employees pay and my own pay really pissed me off. I put in my 2 weeks notice on August 4th 2022 and made it clear my last day was on the 22nd. I also found out when I asked around that the less money GM's pay employees, and keep their costs low for the store, the bigger their annual bonuses are. The information I was told could be wrong, but that's what I was told. So we have Joe likely not being honest about starting pay and blaming Circle K, bad mouthing the DM and other GM's, one specifically in the same city, and him refusing to help other stores. The management at this store is terrible. When I put in my 2 weeks notice, I was offered a lot more to stay. Not a chance in hell. I was at this point helping the other store that was short handed because I sure as hell wasn't going to work at Joe's store ever again. I went to work after my last shift at Joe's store, I messaged the DM to quit. Before I was done on Aug 22. 2022 I hurt my back slipping in the bathroom of yet another store I was helping out at. Needless to say, I probably should have gone to the hospital, but all I did was file a workplace injury report. I didn't want make an issue for the other manager and I wanted to see if the pain went away in a day or two. Thankfully it started to get better, but work was out of the question. This store can pay its employees more but when you tell them how to get more pay, you get trespassed from the store. No BS. Don't go telling the employees that $12/hr they were told is the max that Circle K will pay starting out is complete BS, yet oddly enough the other stores seem to start out paying more. Oh, telling people they can make more at the other Holiday stores will 100% get you trespassed. Telling them to threaten to quit to get a pay increase like I was offered will get you trespassed. I wonder if the GM gets a bigger bonus at the end of the year for keeping the pay low, who knows what else they would be willing to do to increase their bonus. Anyways, most of the people, save one of the 2 assistant managers and the general manager are generally decent people. They're just stressed out because they are overworked and underpaid for what is expected of them. Because they're underpaid, they don't complete the daily checklist 9/10 days then I had to hear the complaining from the GM and the food specialist. Ummm... what do you expect from crap pay and no proper management. They also complain about the overnight crew too and call them lazy. How about you talk to them rather than complaining? Me and another Assistant Manager, that does not work overnight, came in day after day and busted our butts. She is so beyond awesome but she had no one supporting her on her shift. I hope she takes over the store because she is a good and decent person who I know treats everyone with respect, even when they don't deserve it. Sorry for the rant, but all of this is 100% true and I have texts and phone calls to back it all up!! Do not work for this company unless you absolutely have to or until they fix this crap about letting managers not be honest about their own stores. Terrible GM. Terrible pay (told it is $12/hr for CSM and $14/hr because of Circle K (but come to find out that wasn't true). Work/life balance is non-existent.