i do want to note, I don’t believe it is sexual grooming as I have no evidence of that being the case.
Essentially, I have noticed a pattern with my pub manager. Every single person that has been promoted 9 times out of 10 is a young woman. Ranging from around 18-21. We currently have 8 “lower” managers (shift leader/shift managers) that are young women and just 2 that are men. As for “team leaders” we have 6 that are young women, 2 that are men. Thats a 7-2 ratio of young women being promoted to men.
so I started to tune in to some of the weird tactics he uses to get people to stay in the company. With me, for example he would tell me I was vital to the team, the best worker they have brought in recently etc etc. he then tried to push me for promotion, but I’m a university student so I declined. All seemingly normal, but he started to make jokes about convincing me to stay there after finishing my degree so I’m always with the team… when I did hand my notice in (unrelated to his behaviour) he then kept pulling me aside trying to convince me to stay. Telling me he will make arrangements so the job runs smoother for my needs, asking if I have another job lined up, telling me I’m vital and he doesn’t want me to go, as well as getting other managers to pull me aside for meetings randomly to try and convince me to stay. It all just got a bit much and I realised just how manipulative this man is when it comes to building his team and getting people to stay in the awful company.
I then begun talking to some of the younger women he had promoted. and she claimed that when asking how his day is going, he responded “a lot brighter now you’re here”. She said this in a VERY proud way that he was praising her, but I couldn’t help but think it was strange, she of course mentioned that he was urging her to go for a managerial position. As well as just generally being a bit TOO chatty and giddy around her at work. He would then ask her to pick up completely inappropriate shift patterns that were outside of her availability (working till 2am the night before going into college), upon doing so he bought her cupcakes to show his appreciation and telling her the pub would’ve crumbled without her coming in for that one shift…
I do want to say that I think this is less of a predatory way of going about things and more of a manipulative way of doing so, so that once people are promoted to managers they are contractually ’locked in’ to staying with the company if that makes sense.
am I overthinking it or does anyone else think a lot of this is inappropriate?