My junior year of high school, I had MVWJ at a well-known smoothie chain as a smoothie maker and cashier. I worked with a guy, the night manager, who I was distantly acquainted with from my high school, two teenagers from the owner’s church and once or twice with the day manager, Candy. The night manager was a larger kid and he would take home a six-pack of large smoothies at the end of every shift. We were all allowed to make a drink while we were working, but I thought that was a little excessive. He was nice enough at work, but would leave early when he was signed up to close. He wouldn’t acknowledge that we knew each other at school either, even though we worked together three-plus nights a week.

The two kids from the owner’s church were extremely sheltered and would constantly ask me questions about dating, parties, drinking and smoking, etc. It was like explaining to aliens how not to creep out your date or what kissing “was like,” or other stuff that was extremel weird to talk about with people you hardly knew. They were both 17, but weren’t going to be allowed to technically date until after they turned 20.

Part of my job was to clean the juicing machines: orange, carrot and wheatgrass. Orange juicer was the least disgusting to clean, but you had to go in with a tiny brush and clean 75 tiny grinder teeth individually to get all the pulp and rind out, then spray it down into a bucket and make sure it wasn’t sticky. The carrot machine was the same concept, only everything was extremely tiny, so it took FOR-EV-ER. The wheatgrass machine was just disgusting and the grass left this gummy residue all over. Ugh. It would never fail that 10 minutes to close, we would have just finished cleaning the juicers and someone would walk in and order a 36 oz. carrot juice. Who drinks 36 oz. of carrot juice at 9:30 at night?

The owner, who I never met face-to-face, would stop in the store at random times and take money out of the register to dole out to his eight children (he was the member of an evangelical-type religion). So the register was almost always off, however I don’t think anyone ever got in trouble for it. I showed up for work one Saturday morning and there was a sign for employees on the back door (where we came in and the deliveries were made). It basically said: “The store has closed suddenly. Sorry for any inconvenience. Your tax information will be mailed next February to whatever address we have on file.” I still can’t walk into one of these establishments without cringing, although I do still find the drinks delicious. The only lasting benefit is I can now whip up a helluva smoothie at home and I got my full servings of fruit and vegetables each day for six months!

I worked in a pharmacy located in a rich town, and the people were horrible. So many of them had drug dependencies and would get mad if we couldn’t fill their prescriptions. Meanwhile, they are trying to get us to fill something that looks like it’s been written in crayon on loose-leaf paper, or narcotics that had expired over a year ago.

I had one man that threw a book at me because he was angry that we were filling a crying infants medicine ahead of his stool softener. We had people urinate on the floor in front of us, one lady even defecated on a stool in the waiting area. I know that when you sign up to work in retail, you should be aware that you will be dealing with people like this, but when I would tell people things that happend there they were flabbergasted.

Aside from the customers being horrible, the working conditions were insane. I would work 10-hour shifts and would not be allowed breaks (the girls were not allowed breaks). We had to eat standing up between customers, who, when they saw you to the side of the counter, would walk over to you instead of to the regular pick-up area and sneeze and cough all over your lunch. The guys were allowed out during their shifts to wax their cars & get haircuts, even if they were just hired. The manager that worked there always formed a tight bond with the teenage boys that worked there because he always had them driving him around to places because he got his license taken away after too many DWIs.

Anything we purchased we were instructed to not ring in to the register and to put the cash in an envelope the manager kept in the back. (wonder where that money wound up going?) His girlfriend would also come in and fill up bags with expensive toiletries and cigarettes and leave without paying. Meanwhile, when the owner came in, we were all scrutinized for stealing because there was always money missing.

The worst part was how the manager acted when I left. I was there for seven years. Mainly because I was able to make alright money there and I had a child I was supporting. I was seeking employment in the career field that I wanted during the last two years I was there, but since it is not an easy field to get into it took a while. For seven years, I did the ordering for the store, all the return processing, worked the cash register, helped fill prescriptions when they were busy (at least two hours a day and ALL day on the weekends I would fill prescriptions), I made sure I was there to open the store and would work until closing when they had a fill in Pharmacist working because I would be the only one with a key, and the manager wanted to take the weekends off.

I truly felt close to most of the people I worked with seeing as I spent so much of my time with them. I gave four weeks notice when I left instead of two so that they would have enough time to replace me. Everyone was generally happy for me except for the manager. Even the owner of the store was happy for me and wished me well and thanked me for all I had done. The manager got mad at me and threw things around and yelled, “That’s just great!” really sarcastically. He wouldn’t speak to me for four weeks, and made me clean the bathrooms!

Even now if I go in there, he won’t even look at me. I still don’t understand why he was so surprised that I grew up and got a real job. Nobody keeps their high school/college job forever.

I’m currently a grad school student getting a master’s degree in Counseling Psychology. My school sends out a listing of all the jobs in the area that pertain to the counseling field, which is where I found an available job as a Counselor Assistant at a rehab. My interview went very well and I found out that the CEO was a graduate of my program. I got called the next day offering me the Saturday and Sunday 8pm to 8am shifts. I wasn’t too keen on that, because I was still trying to make friends and it would make it more difficult when two of my weekend nights were booked and I would also be prevented from going to church on Sunday. But I took it because I figured my shifts would change as I integrated.

My first day I worked Friday during the day. I found out that the role of Counselor Assistant wasn’t anything like I was expecting. I was told that my job was to be a “glorified babysitter” since the clients couldn’t be trusted. I was also told that the guy who would be training me for my weekend shifts was actually the one I was replacing, but not to tell him because he didn’t know he was being fired. That made me really uncomfortable, but I kept plucking away. While filling out my paperwork, I saw that the only note on my application from my interviewer was that I was young, but likable. The guy who I was replacing had an idea of what was going on and so he asked me straight up if I was his replacement. Not wanting to rock the boat that soon in my job, I told him I didn’t know. He was then fired.

After a few weeks, I was given the Friday night 4pm to midnight shift, so there went my entire weekend. Something I noticed pretty quickly was that regardless of what I did, even following the rules, I was criticized, but not given an alternative. The clients, who were there for drug, alcohol and gambling addictions, don’t want to listen to anyone, but I was always being fussed at for not being able to make them listen. As time passed, there was a lot of turnover. After a staff meeting, the weekend supervisor told me that the guy who hired me (who was actually just the maintenance guy…WTF?!) told her that he didn’t want to hire me, but only did because the CEO knew my advisor and that they didn’t think I could do the job because of my age and the fact that I look younger. I used that as motivation to prove everyone wrong.

Not too long after that, there was a regime change where the CEO and my weekday supervisor were fired and things seemed like they were looking up. Then my partner (who I had grown quite close to) couldn’t make it so the old weekend supervisor stayed later. I had found where a co-worker hadn’t properly documented something with a client so I did. Then I got in trouble for writing about it because it would get my co-worker in trouble. She also told me that the mental health field might not be the best fit for me and that the clients thought I was a joke (which I knew was not true). The next night she got mad because two clients had been complaining to me about being sick and wanted to go to the hospital. Turns out they both had bronchitis and my supervisor was just mad because she had to stay later while I was with them at the E.R. This was then brought up at an administrative staff meeting (which my friend told me about) where I was turned into a scapegoat for not following a procedure that doesn’t exist — I checked the handbook.

I was going to turn in my notice but had a change of heart and decided that if they wanted me gone they would have to do it themselves. After hearing that this new guy had told my partner that my overnight shifts were now his I went ahead and typed up my two-weeks notice, but before I could print it out, I got the call. I was so relieved to be away from such a toxic environment (in the three months I worked there 14 people quit or were fired), but irritated that I let myself get fired because I had been so close so many times to quitting.

MVWJ was a couple years ago at a florist. I love flowers and thought it would be an enjoyable job. It would have been were it not for The Office From Hell. The designers all attended church together. One of their husband was the pastor there and she was opposed to wearing any lower garment other than skirts as a religious conviction. Another’s husband was a deejay at the local Christian radio station, which they always listened to at work too. This would’ve been fine, except for the fact that I am an atheist and that wasn’t fine with them. The owner was like Ms. Swan, from MADtv, complete with insane clothes and incredibly rude, inappropriate comments. She would show up in her bedazzled jeans with gold and purple sequins and say things in a mocking tone.

Rachel, who hated Ms. Swan and totally lacked the social skills to acquire a job, was my supervisor, but fortunately for her she was leftover from when her sister’s rich husband had owned the place, and was therefore the only person there who could run it; even Ms. Swan could not. Rachel looked like Mariah Carey if she grew a beard, shaved it and covered the five o’clock shadow with creepy pancake makeup. What’s worse was that Rachel had the monopoly on the place and she knew it.

I spent six months kissing Rachel’s enormous ass and trying to read her mind. I would do something as she had previously instructed me to, only to be called stupid when she found out what I’d done. Bringing up the fact that I was following her directions would result in her explaining that I “should’ve known this was different” or denying she’d said it to begin with. I was terrified of screwing up, but when I did (always in a very minor way) Rachel would make sure I understood how stupid I was for it. In reality, I was very skilled at my job based on what the owner and other employees would tell me, but I always felt utterly inept and incompetent based on the abuse of my supervisor and spent my time at that job falling into bed at night and crying to my fiancé because the emotional stress was so much.

I mentioned before that I am an atheist, but I have no stickers on my car, no shirts, nothing displaying this information. I do nothing to advertise it, but of course, that wasn’t good enough for Rachel and the other ladies. Where I attended church and more importantly, would I attend church with them, became major focuses of our conversations. Gay people who came in ordering flowers for their partners were openly sneered at and declared “disgusting” by the employees (I’m also bisexual). African Americans who came in were made fun of as soon as they left the building. As the only one not partaking in their hate fest, I obviously didn’t fit in. Besides all of this (or maybe alongside it) was the fact that Rachel was almost definitely a painfully repressed 35 year old virgin and hated the fact that I had a love life. She would tell me how “cute” my fiancé was every opportunity she got, and even said at one point that she needed one of him for Christmas. This was not normal girl-to-girl flattery, but Single White Female-esque weirdness.

She would also call me at home every day I was off to ask about things she could’ve figured out or things that I had left notes about. This was a passive-aggressive move that started after I’d called her at home quite a few times, because she’d freak out if I made any decision without asking first. One day, after months of explaining to me that we could use the internet whenever we wanted, I was on NPR’s website while Rachel was on FOX News. Within hours, it was being explained to me that the “internet was for home.” My employment ended when I asked Rachel for a certain day off, to which she agreed. Weeks passed and when the day arrived I was about to begin my daughter’s birthday party when she called to inform me that it was a busy day and they’d have to cut me down to one day a week. I told them no thank you.

Last summer, I got a job at a tanning salon until the semester started. Since I was a bit of a tan-a-holic I was up for the free tanning. I didn’t expect it to be great or horrible. But, I should have realized that things weren’t going to go well when the manager who hired me quit the day before I started.

After the first few days I realized that the assistant manager, M, and the owner were both crazy-ass bitches.

M was extremely rude and bossy–and addicted to pain killers. She would talk about how she didn’t eat anything fattening -”like avocados”- but would always eat candy (“no calories!”) and fat-free chips.

The second day of work I had to get balloons for a little event we were having and since the wind was blowing they got entangled. Of course, that was my fault. M kept saying “oh my god! what did you do?!” and actually pushed me out of the way and smacked my hand while I was trying to untangle them. This girl was only a year below me and I’m in my early 20s.

My fiance would occasionally bring me lunch and one day a manager from a different store was visiting the store. My fiance came in, dropped off my food, and told me bye. We’re not PDA when visiting one another at work. We just think it’s unprofessional. Well, apparently M feels totally different. When my fiance left, she turned to the visiting manager and asked her “Can you believe they are engaged?”  The manager just said,”Oh, I didn’t know.” To which M replied, “I know! You wouldn’t be able to tell by how they act.” Then went on and on about how her boyfriend always kisses her when visiting her.

Let me add, that when her boyfriend visited her, they made out outside of the store and inside the store. They would also sit on the couch where she would lay down with her head on his lap–and she would remain there as customers are going in and out.

Now, as for the owner, she was absolutely crazy. From day one, she asked me when I’d like to work and what hours. I told her I prefered evenings but if she needs me for days I will do that (my fiance wouldn’t get off work til 4 a.m. so mornings were a little difficult for me) I also requested that I have Thursdays off (best for errands, doctor appts, etc.)

For the first two weeks, I didn’t have a written schedule. She would call me at 11 p.m. sometimes 1 a.m. and just talk about her problems and tell me how she’d get so coked up that she’d black out.  I should have quit right then and there, but I wanted to tan for free and save up some money before classes started.

When I finally got my schedule, she asked me again what days I could work and I told her again that I need Thursdays off and I could work every day other than that. She then had a hissy fit. She asked me why I hadn’t told her this before. I explained to her that I did and she even wrote it down. She then calmed down and said OK. So, I worked every day except Thursday and was the only full-time employee. I worked 8-10 hours a day.

Despite that, every week she expected me to come in on Thursday. Once she called me saying she needed me at the store because it was raining and she didn’t want to drive in the rain. I told her I wasn’t even in town. Another time she called on a Wednesday and asked one of the girls to ask me to work Thursday. I was picking up a friend who I hadn’t seen in 8 years from the airport who was visiting me for my birthday that day. She then said “What is with you and Thursdays?!” I told her I didn’t think it was a problem since it was my only day off and if it was I would have to find another job. She then backed off.

But not for long. My fiance had bought a “day of luxury” at a really nice spa for my birthday. Of course, it had to be on a Thursday since I had no other day off. At the spa, they asked that I turn off my phone and leave it in the locker. So I did. After 6 wonderful hours of being pampered, I’m dressed and heading back home. Then, I stupidly turn on my phone. I had three missed calls from the crazy owner, as well as two voicemails.

I checked the voicemails and she kept saying that it was important that I call her because one girl who was supposed to work 6 p.m.-9 p.m. called in, so she wanted to me to work it. Unsure what to do, I called my father to ask him if I should go in and he told me to enjoy my day off and calling someone to work three hours is crazy.

The next day at work, she calls wanting to speak to me. She demanded to know why I didn’t answer my phone the day before. I told her that I turned it off. She asked “ALL DAY?!” I told her that yes, all day. It was my day off after all. She then told me how unprofessional I was and that I should always have my phone on and answer it anytime she calls. I told her that on my day off I don’t have to answer her calls. She then hung up on me. I called her right back and told her I was quitting and putting in my two weeks. She just yelled “WHATEVER!” and hung up.

I went inside and told M that I was quitting. M started making fun of me, telling me that she worked even on her days off. I pointed out that I was the only full-time employee and had only one day off. I also told her that she comes in for three hours, leaves for four, then comes back for an hour just to talk with her friends that tan there. That just made her make fun of me to the customers. Every customer that cam in, she would point at me, tell them that I was quitting and how stupid, horrible, etc. that was. She told them that I was screwing them over right when they were at their busiest.

The next day, I called and told them I wasn’t going to finish my two weeks. They yelled at me that I was now banned from that tanning salon and that I am extremely unprofessional. I just laughed at them and hung up.

A few years ago, when I was 20, I got a job working at a popular pizza chain answering the phone, placing orders and occasionally helping make pizzas. I got the job for extra money to help with college. The manager, “Chris,” seemed like a nice, cool guy. He was kinda cute and a little flirty, but I was a very naive 20 year-old, and didn’t think much of it. On my first day of work, a few of the fellow employees, Chris and I decided to head to a bar after work. At the bar, he was really fun and started flirting with me, but since he had a girlfriend, I just figured that he was just a flirty guy. A few weeks went by at work, I got into the routine of the job and became fairly good friends with everyone. I even got a job for one of my best friends. Chris and I would joke around at work, as would everyone else.

It all started falling into the drama category when one night, while everyone was at a bar for a fellow co-workers birthday, Chris started flirting with me and asked me on a date (oh, how I was so naive not to realize it was sexual harassment). I laughed it off, since he was drunk, and told him that I’m sure he is very happy with his girlfriend and he was just being silly. The next day, I pulled up into the parking lot and another car came squeeling to a stop at the spot next to me. I was a little taken aback and as I was grabbing my purse and hat, a woman knocked on my window. I realized it was Chris’s girlfriend, so I rolled it down. She looked like she’d been crying and proceeded to ask me if I was seeing him. I promised her I wasn’t and she asked if he had asked me out or had been hitting on me. I told her, honestly, that he had, but it was only when he had been drinking (how stupid was I?). She calmed down and thanked me for being honest with her.

I went into work and was a bit distraught. I went straight to Chris and told him I had to talk to him. I told him what happened and he just looked at me and said, “And?” I couldn’t believe that he saw there was nothing wrong with the situation. I told him that he needed to let his girlfriend know that he wants to be with her and maybe spend more time with her. He was just blase about it and said she needed to get over it. I emphasized that this made me uncomfortable and he needed to stop flirting with me. He seemed to get upset about this and then decided he was going home. One co-worker saw that I was upset and said, “Hey, I have a story that will make you laugh!” I am quoting this directly (it’s engraved in my mind, since I was shocked from how horrible it was): “My uncle worked at a school for ‘special people’ (he used a different word) and he took a girl into the janitor’s closet and had sex with her. She came out of the closet with her pants around her ankles, crying that her butt hurt.” He then began laughing like it was funny. I just stared at him in horror, excused myself and went outside to cry.

A few weeks went by without incident and I had begun to date a guy in one of my classes. One day he showed up while I was working and brought me a necklace that reminded him of me. I thought it was sweet, as did my best friend. But Chris told me that he didn’t approve of friends visiting employees while at work. Mind you, everyone had friends visiting and since we were attached to a gas station, everyone had people they knew coming in. Chris even said that the necklace looked cheap. I, stupidly, ignored him. About a week later, I got a phone call from work, while enjoying the day with my best friend. Chris said they were short on people and needed me to answer the phones. I told him I only had my shirt with me and had plans later. He said he only needed me to work for an hour and I could use his office to answer phones since I wasn’t dressed for work. My best friend decided to come with me and wait.

So, I went to work. When I got into his office he showed me how his phone worked and then went to make pizzas. Later he returned and suddenly closed the door, so it was just us in his office. He just stared at me and then this wonderful conversation happened:

Him: “So you have plans tonight?”

Me: “Um, yeah”

Him: “With that guy that came by a few weeks ago?”

Me: “No, me and my best friend are having a girls night out.”

Him: “I really don’t appreciate this.”

Me: “Wha-?”

Him: “You need to open your mind before you open your legs!!”

I sat there stunned for a second, then anger took over. I started screaming at him that he had no right to say that to me and that I quit. I took of the work shirt (I had a tank top underneath thankfully) and threw it at him. I stormed out of his office, told my friend that I needed to get the hell out of there. And that was the end of MVWJ. I actually saw Chris just a month ago at a local restaurant. He was there with some of the old fellow employees and they wanted me to come say hi. So, I went by and someone asked me if I was seeing anyone. I told them that I didn’t have time for a relationship. That’s when Chris said, “Oh, looks like she’s still a cold-hearted bitch.”  I didn’t even know what to say except “Go f*** yourself” and left.

I found out last week, that he had gotten fired because he is addicted to meth.

In the autumn of 2008, after a summer of bartending and working in a newsagent, I finally managed to get a job at an archaeology company in the UK. I was thrilled as I hadn’t been out doing fieldwork for a whole year and I couldn’t wait to get back into it. However, things quickly went downhill when I met L, my site supervisor. Due to the recession the company didn’t have the money to hire people with the proper experience to run a site, so L was just a slightly more experienced digger than me yet she had been made an “acting supervisor” due to the amount of time she’d been at the company. L  seemed to be under the impression that her job title was “queen of everything.”

She was on a constant power trip and had to be in control of everything. She frequently shouted at the new diggers for writing measurements in centimetres rather than metres, as if the graphics team who would work with the plans didn’t know how to convert between the two. One extremely cold November morning, my friend H and I were having a chat inside the site hut and trying to psych ourselves up to brave the weather outside. At this point, a good supervisor would have said, “Come on guys, I know the weather sucks but we’ve got a deadline, and you’ll warm up once you get digging”. L’s tactic was to scream as us, “IF YOU’VE GOT YOUR BOOTS AND WATERPROOFS ON, THEN GET THE HELL OUTSIDE AND DO YOUR JOB!” I found myself wondering if I was actually still in primary school.

H had it worse than me, though. One day, she was writing up some notes inside because it was too windy outside to keep the papers together on her clipboard. L sent her outside. The very next day, L saw H chasing several sheets of notes across site, which predictably had blown away in the strong winds. L marched over shouting, “WHY ON EARTH ARE YOU DOING YOUR RECORDING OUT HERE, IT’S CLEARLY TOO WINDY!” In the end, there was a specialist job going at HQ, which I applied for. I didn’t get it, but I did end up spending a lot more time inside as I had skills which were useful in post-excavation.

I was enjoying this job now, not only was I away from L but I was actually using the stuff I’d learned in my MA. I actually turned down a job at another company who I had previously worked for, and really liked, because we were told in October that we would have work at least until March. The head of the environmental division of the company kept telling me how great it was to have me around and to be able to do certain analysis in-house, until the end of November, when all 15 of the new staff who were hired were laid off because there was suddenly, mysteriously, no work for us. I was happy to go back to my dead-end bar job.

One summer during college, I interned at a very small corporate travel agency. It was a one-woman operation, and the owner (who was just trying to get her business off the ground) had hired two (female) college interns to man the desks during the hours when she was not in the “office.” “Office” is in quotation marks because the space consisted of one tiny, windowless room with two ancient computers and a telephone, located in the basement of a restaurant/lounge whose owner my boss “knew.” “Knew” in quotation marks because it wasn’t altogether clear how rent was being paid, other than a strong suggestion that it did not involve cash and probably involved some hanky-panky.

I didn’t meet the landlord until a few weeks into the summer. He was a tall, strikingly handsome man with a wedding ring who showed me pictures of his gorgeous wife and two adorable daughters. He came by a few times looking for my boss, but she usually wasn’t there when I was. On his third or fourth visit to our little basement room, he started cordially asking questions about my life:

“Where did you go to high school?”

“Where are you in college?”

“When did you lose your virginity?”

Wait, what?

Being a naïve 19-year old, I blushingly turned back to my computer without answering this last question, mumbling that I should get back to work and thinking he would just go away. He did not go away. Instead he started massaging my shoulders, and invited me to help him cheat on his wife. In the years since, I’ve blocked most of his romantic monologue out of my memory, but I will never forget one key phrase: “Once you go Black, you never go back.” Yes, this man actually spoke these words to me out loud. From then on, I switched all my shifts and locked the door from the inside while I was working (in retrospect this was a flimsy defense strategy considering the man owned the place).

I met the other intern at the end of the summer, and we compared notes, piecing together what had been an odd few months for both of us. First of all, the intern, myself, and our boss all looked very, very similar. The guy obviously had a “type” (interestingly, his wife was not this type). He also apparently confused the other intern for me when he met her and tried to pick up where he’d left off (square 1). Secondly, it appears our restauranteur was not very creative with his pickup lines–the going Black and never going back phrase was also used on my intern colleague. Third, our boss had recently gotten serious with her boyfriend and coincidentally, the “lease” on the “office” was running out and the company was going to have to relocate.

Luckily no innocent college interns were seriously harmed in this unhealthy work environment, but man did I learn something about how the professional world operates–and isn’t that was summer internships are all about?

I moved to a larger city after graduating from a small college town. This was when the job market was at the lowest. My degree didn’t guarantee me a career and I basically took any job that called me back and paid a sustainable wage.

My love of animals led me to apply at a local ‘high end’ kennel/grooming center. I applied for the front desk position while my boyfriend at the time applied for the maintenance position in the back. The owner D was a very nice and could forget more about the business than I would ever learn, she had a mobile grooming van for some of our VIP customers so she was in and out most of the day. K was D’s partner in life. K was a different story, she was our daily “Administrator” although she had zero management skills and had an extremely aggressive Type A personality. She was a lawyer who was running for family court judge. If she wasn’t busy promoting herself constantly on her firmly attached bluetooth, she was nitpicking my customer service. I had extensive customer service/secretarial experience and thought myself a good worker.

My boyfriend kept busy in the back with the animals and I answered phones, checked in clients and handled the schedule. I soon realized why they never took down the help wanted sign on the billboard (which was conveniently turned into a giant VOTE FOR K sign). There was a revolving door of employees, young and old. Whenever a customer would walk in they had a look of  ”not another one.” After my first day, the other two girls quickly left without notice and it was just me and my boyfriend working from 9a.m. to whenever we were let go. If I didn’t walk out the door, we would be there till 2 a.m. like D was. I was running from the back kennels to the front whenever someone called or came in. Cleaning excrement wasn’t part of my job description but I didn’t mind it, I have pets of my own and genuinely liked caring for these animals.

I was still in the new job honeymoon phase of saving money for an apartment and learning the ins and outs of the animal care business so I didn’t mind that K would monitor us on the 20+ streaming live feed cameras. K and D went on a trip after approximately 8-10 days of my admittedly incomplete training. Instead of their scheduled two days they took four, my boyfriend and I had to cancel the apartment showings that were suppose to be on our day off as we ran the center ourselves, around 20 dogs and 6 cats that needed feedings, medicines, cages cleaned, baths, and exercise in between grooming check ins. While they were gone, I was bit by a male chow when it’s female chow companion went into heat and sent the kennel into a frenzy.

The day after they came back, I flipped the front door sign to “we are assisting our animals, please ring the bell for service” so that the resident groomer could cover for us since she didn’t have any appointments. When we got back from our half hour break in which we signed a lease, K was furious. She screamed that she reviewed the tapes and saw us slacking on the job, that I had sat for 7 minutes without clocking out, not properly doing paperwork, and letting a human client sit in the lounge without my interaction (she wouldn’t believe me that he was chatting on his phone at the time).

She fired me for leaving the place unattended (it wasn’t) and for admitting a dog in heat, which it wasn’t at the time of check in and the owners did not answer my calls or messages till after their scheduled check out. My boyfriend was also fired for lesser offenses at the same time, while crying and walking to clean out my locker to retrieve my personal items I was accosted by K who proceeded to slam my finger in the locker and cursed at us to leave. I left wondering how I would honor the new lease I signed. I contacted a lawyer when I got home and turns out she didn’t have many friends in the legal system, I think I successfully derailed her running for judge with a pending lawsuit but dropped it when I got another job.

I still love animals, hate that business and I’ve peppered every review site with my story. I occasionally drive by and it looks like there haven’t been very many new or returning customers recently. Their help wanted sign is still displayed ominously.

MVWJ was at a day care in the basement of a residence the summer after my freshman year of college. My boss, K, was infrequently down there with us (there were three of us looking after 13 children under the age of three), but had specific ideas about the way things ought to be done. For instance, we were forced to take our lunches at the exact times dictated, regardless of whether we were in the middle of something. At lunch time, food had to be prepared, kids needed to be fed and cleaned, diapers changed, beds made and everyone laid down for naps while no one was left unattended. Noon was when the first girl was supposed to take her lunch break and I was supposed to leave at 12:30pm, leaving the third girl essentially on her own during the busiest time of day. K viewed overtime as stealing her money and I was chastised for leaving half an hour late, though I was sorely needed.

K had a highly impractical schedule for each day. If she found us off-schedule, she lectured us. Of course, if she was with the kids, she deviated more than anyone, putting fussy kids down for naps because she didn’t want to listen to them cry. Two of the kids in our care were K’s children, who were by far the worst behaved. K became upset if she came downstairs and found her unruly son in time out, even though he often hit other children and called teachers names. He had been kicked out of several preschools and she left him with us when she got tired of dealing with him. At one point she told us we weren’t allowed to put him down for naps because he no longer needed them, leaving him up to pester us on our time off and the only chance we had to accomplish the huge cleaning tasks she left for us, which included bleaching toys and polishing the stairs of her home.

Worst of all, she was stingy. Halfway through the summer, she took to locking up the supply closet, where the cleaning materials and trash bags were stored, to prevent waste. She claimed to have lost the key, but she “found” it pretty quickly when she needed something. She bought the cheapest materials for the day care, but had nice things in her home upstairs. She eliminated morning snack time, saying the kids didn’t need to be fed between breakfast at 7:30am and lunch at noon, because she didn’t want to pay for food. We took to sneaking them snacks, because if we didn’t, they would completely break down around 10am. K also shorted our checks. She attributed it to the computer system she used “rounding” on our times, but often it was too big an error for that explanation. At any attempt to discuss it, she became belligerent and self-righteous. If pressed, she would print off the hours record and show it to you, then take it away with her, leaving you no chance to examine it closely.

I loved the children and the girls I worked with, but it was a toxic work environment. In my three months, five families left the center and four employees quit, not counting myself. I left at the end of the summer to return to school and I would never go back.