When I was first hired at Rodeo Show Boutique, they were not aware of my age when they took me on board. On my first shift the manager was really nice to me and happily taught me all the procedures that I needed to know to open, close and run the store. I had been rostered on to work about 26 hours per week because they thought I understood the new procedures really quickly.
About a couple of weeks later it was revealed that I was only 18 years old and straight out of high school, and from then on I felt like I was treated with less respect by the management team. They had drastically reduced my hours to 6 per week with no reasoning behind it. Over the next month they had reduced my hours to 2 per week.
Another casual member had noticed that they had cut down on my shifts drastically and she told me that it was really unfair of them to have me travel to the city for only a short shift. She herself was struggling with the 30 hours a week she was getting and she did not understand why some of those hours couldn’t go to me. As a result she sent an email to the head office asking if her hours could be reduced so that I could get a few more hours per week. A few days after she had sent the email I got a phone call from the management team saying that my employment was to be terminated as they simply did need any more workers since the hectic Christmas period was over and business was quieting down. A week after this I saw a casual sales assistant job being advertised on their shop front.
I think a more professional way of terminating my employment was to just tell me that I was not age appropriate for the brand. During the group interview they should have asked everyone their age so that they would not have to rehire older sales assistants. Age is merely a number and I think they should have taken in my level of maturity and perhaps not have fired me at all as during my training they had said I was a very competent worker.
