Events leading up to my unemployment :(

To whom it may concern,


I’m sure you have heard that I no longer am working for Perris Raceway. After being there for just about two years. The disorganization, and lack of management has been going on for awhile, but it peaked this weekend. What I have been told, is that Jeff, has partnered up with Rick Johnson, one of the co-owners of Perris Raceway, and started some off road company. I have noticed Jeff, hasn’t been around as much as he was when I first started working there. This leaves the track, unattended (no manager) except for the maintenance/groundskeeper Flavio, who isn’t really equipped for managing a place. It never really was a big deal to me, because it never really affected me in big way, just small things, like not having enough change, or running out of wrist bands. Not being given a
manager made’ schedule. Those things could have affected my ability to do my job, but being the good employee that I was, I was creative, and always found a way to work it out and make due with what I had. Me and another employee named Brittany, usually divided up the hours according to the times Jeff would give us for the practices/races. Every once in awhile there would be a few issues with scheduling, but nothing one of us couldn’t come in at the last minute and take care of. Now that I look back, that was them being extremely unorganized, and unprepared.
This weekend is when it got really bad. Jeff went to Texas with Rick. He left his wife Lisa in charge. I had always gotten along with Lisa really well, and was actually excited for her to be there. Friday morning, I came in for my usual 9:30-2:30 shift. Lisa had written down on a piece of paper, what the hours would be for the weekends events, and said I could divy them out between me, Brittany, and Bree (another girl that works there.) I started to do so, but then realized that the hours she had written down for Sunday (Ponca City Qualifiers) couldn’t have been right, because gates usually opened at 6am, and she had written 9am down. So she came into the booth, we looked Sundays race info up on my computer on Perrisraceway.com and changed the schedule for us girls for Sunday. Everything looked like it would go smoothly. Saturday morning, I came in at 8:30 in time for my 9 am shift. And I would be working until 12:30 according to what Lisa had told me the first shift would be. I had scheduled a babysitter for Hayden, and everything was fine. We ended up not having any change almost the whole time, I had to send Flavio out to the bank to break a $100 bill for me. Then, the people who run the Ponca City Qualifiers which would take place the next day (Sunday) came to do early sign ups. I figured, Lisa should have been there by now, but she was at home. I tried calling a few times, but it went straight to her voicemail, so when I had questions, I called Jeff and asked him. Because once again, there was nobody there to manage things. She did end up calling me a few times and asked how things were going but for some reason, whenever I tried her phone, it wasn’t working. I explained to her that things were okay, but kind of a mess, because the Ponca City people kept coming up to me and complaining about not being let in. She told me that they said they weren’t going to be there until 1pm, but the Ponca City people told me that they told Lisa they would be there at 11am. I figured Lisa was right, because those people were old, and probably forgot. She ended up coming in at noon. I guess the doors had been opened the whole time for the Ponca City people, but they hadn’t known. I find that story hard to believe, but once again, since the people were old, I passed it off as them being senile. Brittany then came in for her shift from 12:30-4pm. I packed up my stuff, turned in my paperwork to Lisa, and proceeded to leave, when Lisa tells me that I needed to stay to do a sweep of the property and make sure everyone who is still there had payed for their bands for the race later that evening. I was surprised, because I was on my way out, and didn’t expect to have to stay longer, but I went ahead and called my babysitter and told them that I would be a little late. Lisa sees me on the phone, as I’m getting ready to go out there and go around, and she says ‘It’s not like it’s new news, I told you last night, that you would need to do a sweep of the property before you left today.’ It WAS news to me. We hadn’t talked about that the night before at all. I quickly scanned through my texts in my phone to see if there was a converstation between us that I had missed, but there wasn’t. So instead of wasting more time, or arguing with Lisa, I went around in the mule with Flavio (which I was lucky for, because she originally wanted me to go around the huge property on foot in the 90 something degree weather). Later, when I finally was able to leave, she told me that the Ponca City people were nervous enough because Jeff wasn’t there to help them run things, so we all needed to make sure that were weren’t even a minute late the next day, so we could show him, that things could still run smoothly without Jeff. I agreed, and showed up right at 5:40 the next morning, in time to open the gates at 6 am. Lisa wasn’t there, but I figured she would be coming, since Ponca City Qualifiers were supposed to be kind of a big deal according to Jeff. At 7:25am, I received a text from Lisa asking if we were busy and if things were going okay. (Which I still have saved in my phone for reference.) I told her things were fine, and how many people we had. Then she told me that if the gates get slow, one of us can go home. I had Brittany and I scheduled for 5:45 am-10 am, and then Bree was going to come in for the rest of the day. Then I get a call from Lisa shortly after that, telling me that she had eaten at a restaurant the night before and had gotten food poisoning, and so she would be in later. We ended up almost running out of bands, because she had not left us enough, and the extra boxes that were in our booth, had been taken up to the office at her request the day before. I figured it out, and ended up using the bands from the night before because we had no other choice. Again, if someone would have been there to let me in the office, I would have been able to get a new box of bands. Lisa then informed me, that we would already be gone by the time she got there, so to have a good day. Bree ended up taking over, she started selling bands for the race the next day (Monday-FirePolice MX race.) She had to call me twice and ask about the box of bands that she received from Lisa because apparently, they were all messed up, and was missing a whole section of numbers. This was supposed to be a brand new box. So I guess, Lisa must have gone home, or else, Bree would have been able to get help from her.
Here it is, Monday. Lisa had told me the hours for the race was from 9am-4pm. I had scheduled Hayden for Daycare ahead of time on Friday, and it was going to work out fine, because I needed to drop him off at 8, and that’s when daycare opened. No earlier. I get a call this morning at 7:03am (again, saved in my phone,) from Flavio, asking what time the gates opened. I told him 9, and went back to sleep, not realizing that it was kind of strange for him to call me that early unless something was going on. I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I decided to get up and get ready and pack Hayden up for that day, since it would be a long day for him at daycare. I had two missed calls from Flavio on my phone at 7:31 am. I called him back, and he was freaking out, telling me that gates were supposed to open at 7am according to the riders who were yelling at him. I told him, that Lisa had told me 9am and I was supposed to be there at 8:30 (we always get there a half hour before our shift starts to set things up.) At that moment, Jeff was beeping in on my other line. I answered, and he starts freaking out on me, telling me gates opened at 7am, and where the hell was I? I was mad, but I calmly told explained to him, that Lisa had written down the hours for me for that day, and I had scheduled myself. And that she had told me it was from 9am-4pm. He didn’t want to listen, all he cared about was how fast I could get there. I was really mad and upset because again, this was all news to me, and Lisa had made yet another mistake with times (think back to Saturday when she was supposedly supposed to be there at 11am, and supposedly telling me the night before I would have to stay over to do a sweep.) I rushed out the door, and made Andrew get up and take Hayden to daycare at 8am, because I couldn’t drop him off any earlier. He was supposed to be doing homework. So now my morning, Andrew’s morning, and the people at the tracks mornings were all messed up because of Lisa’s ‘mistake.’ I got to the track, to find Flavio working the gate because there was a huge line. I parked, clocked in really fast, and took my position at the front gate selling the wristbands. I was already in a bad mood because of all the problems going on, and I knew in the back of my mind, that I would be getting in trouble for the scheduling issues because of course, Jeff was going to believe his wife over me.
Just as I was thinking that, I got a text from Lisa saying “ I did write down 9 but you asked me about it and we looked at it together and fixed it that day.” I replied with “Acutally no, you told me nine, and we looked at perrisraceway.com together for the times of ponca city qualifiers.” Part her text was true. We had looked at the website for race times so we could fix a scheduling error, but it was for sunday, not the race today. Then she texts back saying “There is no way. Very has known since last week. I wrote down 9 on the paper by mistake, and we talked about it. Please bring the paper into the office when I get there.” By this time, I was mad. I didn’t have the paper anymore. I was pretty sure I had rewritten everything and given it to her with the names of who would be working those hours. And to have her, once again tell me that we had had a conversation that I know was non existant really made me freak out. There was no way I was going to win this. So, not caring about working there anymore due to the way I was being treated and talked to (or sometimes yelled at) I decided to reply with this : “I don’t know where it is, I’ll look in the trash. Bree cleaned the whole booth. You did tell me 9. I’m not arguing with anyone, it’s fine. As soon as you get here, YOU can work the front booth and I’m leaving and not coming back here to work anymore. You can tell Jeff that, because it’s not fair that you guys are unorganized and I get yelled at for it.” I knew I was going to be looked down upon for that, but I wasn’t expecting Jeff to call me and tell me “Are you really going to be a smart ass little bitch to my wife through text messages and tell here you are going to quit?!” Then when I went to explain myself of course he lashed out and yelled and screamed and I told him that he couldn’t stop me from quitting if I wanted to do so since I was being treated unfairly. Then he hung up. My plan, was to dig through the trash and try and see if the paper had gotten thrown away, and continue to serve the people who were still trickling in for the race, but since Jeff had talked to me so inappropirately and unprofessionally, I decided to give him the same courtesy as he did to me, and just leave the gate unmanned.

I’m not asking for my job back, because I’m sure if I were to continue to work there after these events, I wouldn’t be treated the same. I’m just letting the other people in charge know what is going on as far as the ‘business’ part of the track is concerned. This is not the first time something like this has happened. There have been quite a few instances where Jeff has called me and chewed me out because he was stressed at the fact that there was some kind of problem with scheduling. Quite a few of those same times, I have dropped what I had been doing and went straight to work to help them out of the situation. If things were more organized, maybe an assistant manager or two was hired and had keys or access to extra gate change, and supplies, and made schedules for everyone, and answered phone calls, (which a lot of customers complain to me about) and/or updated the voicemail accordingly, there would be fewer problems, and Jeff would be able to run the other parts of the track and whatever else he is doing without any issues. You can’t expect a business to run well if there is hardly someone there to keep the pieces together.

Thank you for your time,

Meghan Briscoe