GRRRRRRRR

I'm so very angry with my friend Stu right now. This is a long story, so you all don't have to read if you don't want to, I just need to vent.

Stu and I worked together at B&N. He still works there. Now I'm at GameStop as a 3rd key manager.

As my husband was a GS manager for 4 years, I got to know the district manager pretty well. The DM loves my husband and also loves me so when I asked for a job, he gave me one, no questions asked. Stu expressed interest in working at GameStop, so I gave him an application to fill out and meanwhile got in touch with my DM. My DM (henceforth called Rob, which is actually my husband's name too, but here I'm talking about my DM) is extremely difficult to get ahold of. I had to email and call him several times before I could touch base with him. I told him about Stu and asked if he would consider giving him an interview. Rob told me to have Stu get his resume together.

So Stu prepared his resume and gave it to me with an application, which I then hand-delivered to the store where Rob's office is. Then I made sure to send Rob a reminder email several days later to make sure he actually LOOKED at the resume. Rob called Stu and told him in his awesome Boston accent "I think very highly of Rob and Erin, so if they say you're a cool guy, I think you're a cool guy too."

Rob sets up an interview with Stu and another one of our store managers, named Katy, a store that needs a 3rd key. Then I GO WITH STU to the interview because he had never been on that side of town before, and I wait in the car while he's at the interview. This store is like 25 or 30 minutes from where Stu lives.

Stu grumbled about "how far" it was away, and I told him I didn't htink it was that far. As a 3rd key, he'd only be getting 30 hours a week, but if he impresses Rob, he could easily move up to an ASM or GM position FAST .... I know Rob is always keeping his eyes open for manager material. My husband was just a measly part-time Game Advisor making minimum wage and he impressed Rob and got offered his own store like a month later.

I guess the interview went well, although Stu asks for BLOODY $8.50 an hour! I didn't think he'd actually get that, as it's $.75 more than I'm making and I know it's a full dollar more than he's making right now at B&N. Rob must have been smokin crack that week, because he gave Katy the 'OK' to offer Stu $8.50.

Stu tells her he'll "think about it" and then he mopes around for a solid week. He is so worried about the 30 hours and the drive, so I tell him that he could always keep his job at B&N and work there 1 or 2 days a week to make up the difference until he can get into a full-time manager position. He was being so wishy-washy about it, and I'm like "WTF is wrong with you? Take the job."

So I guess Stu talked to Katy and more or less agreed to take the job. She wanted him to come in on Sunday to start training and fill out paperwork, but he had to work at B&N. So they agree on Monday instead. I talked to Stu on Sunday night and he told me that he'd changed his mind and didn't want the job because it was too far for him to drive and he couldn't afford not to be working 40 hours. I thought he was a fool, but whatever. He said he'd call Katy and tell her he changed his mind, and he said he hoped Rob would keep him in mind if a full-time manager position comes open at another store closer to home for Stu.

MONDAY rolls around and I'm at work at MY store and I get a phonecall from Katy. I've never met her, but I'd talked to her on the phone once or twice at work. Katy asks me if I know where Stu is?
"No, why?"

Stu never called her and told her he wasn't taking the job. He just plain didn't show up on Monday. No phone call. No nothing.

I've left him 3 messages in the past 24 hours and he's not called me back. I told Katy to assume that he wasn't taking the job, as that's what he told me, and I apologized to her profusely. She was counting on him to be there on Monday and she had to have a manager from another store come and work Stu's shift. The poor girl could have been looking for another 3rd key these past two weeks, but she was betting that Stu would take the job, as I reccomended him so highly, and Rob gave the okay for the $8.50.

This makes me REALLY angry because I vouched for him and tried really hard to get this job for him. I would have even campaigned to keep his resume fresh in Rob's mind for another position down the road if he'd just been honest from the get-go and told Katy that he couldn't afford to work only 30 hours and it was too far for him to drive (WTF? 30 minutes is not TOO FAR in any part of the country).

Now I'm so mad about it, I have no idea what I'll say to Stu when I actually do talk to him. I really thought he had more integrity than this.

Rob is on vacation this week, but I have to figure out what I'm going to say to him as well when he's back in the district and finds out that Stu was a no-call-no-show.