No, he wasn't in charge, but he was on his way to being assistant manager. The main reason it effects me is that there were only 4 of us working in the store, ideally there should be at least 5 or 6, but we can't afford to hire that many and still give them decent hours, which means we all have to start working more hours to make up for him until a new person can be hired and trained. He was also - by far - the best salesperson, and was practically carrying the store by himself. If we go too long without meeting our quotas and sales goals, head office will just assume we aren't doing our jobs and "restaff" the store (i.e., fire all of us and transfer people over from another store). He was also the "get **** done" guy, and far more organized and timely with shipments/paperwork/etc. than the manager. I wish I could pick up the slack, but I just haven't been there long enough to have learned how to do half the stuff he did.
And it's just really hard for me to do my job right now because he was a friend and I trusted him, I felt way more loyalty to him than to the manager, and I feel like he betrayed us. He was a good teacher, always gave good advice, and now I just can't help but question it. We spent a lot of time geeking out about movies and stuff, and I spent more time working with him than anyone else. I worked what was supposed to be his shift today. His name's still up on the schedule, but his slot is blank. His shredded employee card is in a plastic bag pinned on the wall so the manager doesn't forget to send it out for company records, and his name tag is still sitting on the desk where we eat lunch because it's the one thing he always forgets to put away. It's just... sad. The manager was obviously pretty upset about it and completely distracted, I just wanted to go home and cry the whole day... I know I didn't do nearly as well as I should have. It's hard when you have to pretend to be all happy and cheerful when customers come in, and they ask how it's going, and I have to lie through my teeth when all I want to do is shout at them to go away. I'm just glad none of his regular customers came in today.
At least I have tomorrow off and I'm going riding. All I've wanted to do since I found out was go visit the horses and forget it all for a couple hours.