I got a babysitter job via Craigslist. I was to take care of a stay-at-home mom’s kids. She never asked for references or a background check, but I was immediately given full access to everything she possessed – home, car, purse – and she left bills lying all over the place, which I found odd. Day One – I trained with their last babysitter who’d recently resigned for “health reasons.” It was nap time and the kids were asked to visit the potty before going to bed. The five-year-old refused. The nanny suddenly hugged him tightly and BEGGED him not to pee on the floor again.

Day Two – Mom drove us to a medical appointment for the five-year-old. While in the waiting room, the mom handed me some confidential paperwork and told me to give it to the staff. She then left me to watch the three-year-old, claiming she had to go outside to the car to have a “business meeting” phone call. She said she’d try to make sure it ended when the appointment did. The appointment ended and the kids and I went out to the parking lot but the mom wouldn’t let us in the car because she was still on the phone. So I waited outside in the parking
lot with two small children who didn’t really know me…for ONE HOUR. The five-year-old kept asking when he could see his mom and punched the hood of a car. When Mom finally got off the phone and summoned us, she didn’t even apologize.

Whenever I told the five-year-old no he would shout at top volume or threaten me. He had a problem with impulse control and had been recently evaluated for ADHD. Even so, the mom would let him have whatever he wanted anytime, often contradicting everything I’d told him. Once she gave him a real hammer to play with in the house. All the kids were far and away the biggest brats I’ve ever seen in over 20 years of child care. They were constantly whining and treating me like a servant. They had clearly been raised with no rules or consequences for their behavior, and it made them into little monsters, especially the five-year-old.

After two weeks I was suddenly fired because the kids weren’t “happy.” I still have no idea what that means since they were like NEVER happy. I think Mom just decided I wasn’t peppy and lax enough for her perfect little crotch nuggets.

I had just graduated university and was looking for my first real job. A friend suggested I apply for a job at a local flooring store as an office worker, as her Dad knew the owners. I should have known right away that this wasn’t a good idea, but I really wanted to get started on my career. I applied and interviewed for the position and was thrilled when they offered me the job. The name of the store was so embarrassing I wouldn’t even tell people where I worked.

The shift started at a different time everyday ( I got all the bad shifts) which wasn’t ideal but beggars can’t be choosers so I sucked it up. Their daughter was about to have a baby and they needed someone to cover for her and then stay on afterwards. They asked me to promise that I would stay for at least one year, which I had no problem doing.

Right away the dynamics of the office seemed odd. It was made clear that they were family and I was an outsider.  The daughter (A) and her husband (B) worked there as did the mother (owner), I will call her P and her ex-husband’s new wife, T. She had bought her ex-husband (F) out of the company. Despite this F continued to come in all the time and acted like he owned the company, fine who was I to say anything. He was a local politician but was a shady character, the type of guy that just gives you the creeps. He used the staff to put up his campaign signs.

I got along with B really well and even got him free tickets for him and his son to see his favourite band. I liked everyone and things were fine for a while, although I did little office work and did a lot of cleaning, sales and other things.

They used an archaic system to store their business contacts and expected me to instantly grasp the way they filed, even though it made no logical sense, not alphabetical.

Then right before A had her baby I broke my ankle. I called to say I had to go to the hospital but that I would come in after I had my cast on, so I would be about an hour late. She told me to stay home and call the next day. They continued to tell me to stay home even though I said I could work because I had a walking cast. I came in to see them and brought A some really nice baby presents. P sent me home and said she would call me.

Eventually, after much begging on my part (I needed the money and I was ok to work) P allowed me to come back to work, but got angry if I made even the smallest mistake even though they didn’t have the time to properly train me. Then one day out of the blue P fired me, said it just wasn’t working out. Other then the occasional small mistake I had done nothing really wrong, was always dressed really well, on time and polite. I was confused as to why but then I figured it out. They had hired me only until the daughter could come back to work. She would now work under the table (while collecting maternity leave) and bring the baby to work everyday; she had been doing this a few days a week while I was still there.

I guess they wanted to see if it would work with the baby there and I was the back up plan. I had never been fired in my life. Getting fired from this place was the best thing that happened to me, I got offered a government job the next week for over double the pay. I figured I was better off anyways, since the whole dynamic of the place was odd. F and T even lived in the store for a while.

MVWJ seemed like it could be MVBJ, but took a sudden turn for the worst. I was hired by a bank as a supervisor in the summer of ’08. My particular branch won quite a few regional outstanding performance awards in ’08 and at the end of the year we received a new regional manager that took a liking to me. By early ’09 I had been promoted to Assistant Manager and when the new regional manager had enough with the current branch manager he got rid of her, leaving me in charge. A few months later I was training to be a full branch manager, all of this happening within the first year that I started working for this bank.

As Branch Manager I was one of the most successful managers in the company’s history right off the bat. I was awarded with free box seats to professional baseball, basketball, and hockey games. I was earning large monthly bonuses, and very excited about possibly moving up farther in the company, but then it all came crashing down.

I had a supervisor, J, who was basically one of the laziest employees I have ever seen. I was at home when my regional manager called me up and told me to go ahead and terminate her employment (entirely his decision to make). Immediately following J’s termination all hell broke loose. Her parents and fiancé would regularly come into the branch and stand at the teller line complaining about the employees and, of course, me. Her father filled out a customer service report rating us “poor” in every category and claiming that one of my employees was intoxicated at work. On one occasion J’s parents refused to leave the branch and I had to call the police in order to get rid of them. On a near daily basis calls were made to our customer service and legal departments that J’s parents were hiring lawyers and planned to sue the bank for discrimination unless they terminated me. Since this is posted as MVWJ you know what happened.

I was brought in two months following J’s termination and my regional manager was nearly in tears as he fired me, promising to give me stellar recommendations if needed in the future. The bank dug up a minor policy I had violated 12 months prior as the reason for the termination, but everyone knew what the real issue was. I consulted a lawyer, but when you are an at-will employee there is really nothing that can be done outside of discrimination (curses to being a white male). Perhaps I got the last laugh though since the day after my termination the complete branch manager rankings came out, and guess who was ranked first for the entire company?

MVWJ was not really a bad job at all. In fact, it was a really good a job in a field where I’d trained (journalism). But let it serve as a cautionary tale of how NOT to run a company or treat your employees. I had been job hunting for months. I interviewed for a writer job at an online news site. The future editor interviewed me over the phone from his remote office. I interviewed again at their local office with him (still on the phone at his office as he almost never came to the office in my city) and guy I would be replacing. The job had great benefits and salary. Most of the employees were young and fun to talk to. I would be writing stories for the news service and would be trained to produce programs for the website, usually panel discussions and interviews.

I  trained for a week with my predecessor. He was a bit of a geek, but funny and easy to get along with. The editor who hired me was another story. He had been pleasant and humorous on the phone, but from the day I started, I heard dire warnings about his ‘difficult’ nature and fights with management. “Watch out for Mr L!” “Oh, Mr L is your boss…good luck, you need it!” He was reputed to be even worse in person, but I only had to deal with him over the phone. So I was warned, but not worried. I’m not easily bothered by cranky editor types and not thin skinned about criticism of my work. It’s part of the job. However, the warnings began to make sense very quickly. The Editor was like one of those abusive men who acts really sweet until you get married. As soon as I was hired, he no longer felt the need for any social niceties. Even that isn’t necessarily a deal breaker in a high-stress environment, but he was really rude and insulting, way beyond what was necessary.

If I asked a question about the job, he would insult and berate me, then he’d tell me in the next second not to worry, that I would receive his support through the three month probation. It was rather disorienting. I knew I was a good journalist and got the hang of the routine, even the editor’s ‘difficult’ behaviour. To be fair, he did compliment work that was good, and I thought things were fine, no further problems. I took it all with a grain of salt because, as I said, he was mostly a voice on the phone like Charlie’s Angels. But I felt like my job was in peril every moment because I never knew if/when he’d call me up and berate me. I should point out he was like this with everyone, so I didn’t take it personally and after a few weeks, I didn’t have that feeling of peril.

However, some strange things did happen. Employees were fired from various departments after only working there for brief periods and everyone would be totally surprised and talk about it over lunch. One morning about six weeks after I started working, I was called into HR. The editor was on the speaker phone. He informed me that I was being let go because, as he said, I hadn’t gotten the hang of it. I was stunned, because there had not been any indication. No one had complained or talked to me, there had been no warning at all and it had only been a month. I told him that but he insisted I wasn’t doing a good job. He convinced that I wasn’t going to pull it off, despite the fact that he had not once stepped foot in the office since I’d been there and I’d never even met him. I reminded the editor that he had been impressed by my experience and the writing samples I had supplied with my resume. His response was that, “It just isn’t working out.” Everything he said contradicted everything he’d said in the interview: that I would be trained and that I would get three months probation. I pointed that out to him but his response was good bye and good luck.

I simply went to my office, got my stuff and left without even saying goodbye to anyone. I cried on the way home. I dreaded having to tell my boyfriend, who had been so proud when I got that job. They did save me the trouble. When I got home, he told me he already knew. He had called the office to say hello and the receptionist told that I’d been let go. I am highly critical of my own work and would have admitted if I did a shitty job or had any trouble ‘getting it’ as The Editor so eloquently put it. I tortured myself, wondering how I could have screwed up a great opportunity that I had needed so badly. About a year later, I was at a party and met some former employees. I learned from them that my experience was typical. The editor was notorious for firing people on the spur of the moment and they were surprised I’d even lasted a month. In fact, no one who worked there at the time was still employed only a year later (most were on contract, I should point out). They never hired anyone to replace me. The company ended up in financial trouble and nearly everyone was laid off. It was later bought by another company. The editor continued to work at the new company. Of course, I never got to meet him.

MVWJ was right before my current job, which happens to be My Very Best Job. I worked my way up in a barbecue chain restaurant. I started out as a cashier, then a server and was eventually a cook/meat slicer. I loved this job at the beginning. My boyfriend had recently lost his job and since we had two kids to support I threw myself in, working 50 to 60 hour weeks, usually double shifts. In the morning I would serve and then change clothes and be in the kitchen at night. The owner was a family guy, the managers were all younger and pretty cool. Like I said, I loved it. That was before they asked me to become a manager. I was so excited they had asked. I’m the type of person that does my absolute best and was just happy that someone had noticed how far I would go to be a team player. Picking up shifts if we were short, sometimes managing to do two jobs at one time, being the first girl to learn how to run the slicer and being amazingly fast in the hot, smoke-filled kitchen! I started working more and more. Once you become manager you are on salary so I was working 60 to 70 hours a week and barely ever saw my kids. I was committed to this job!

The boss’s son was a big party kid. He had just came home from college and was thrown into being general manager of the store. He would often come to work drunk and or late. One time he even came in and slept on the desk in the office because he was so hung over. He would be late opening the store, hired all his drinking buddies to work there and he stayed in the office his ENTIRE shift. I mean he would literally sit in there and watch the security cameras and call us up front to complain or ask one of the other managers to do something for him. The front end manager was a complete nightmare. She couldn’t write up a server schedule to save her life and we always had to find people to cover shifts because she would give everyone off if they requested it because she couldn’t tell these young college kids no! They all learned that pretty quickly and would suck up to her constantly for better shifts. But, I still loved it. I thought I was doing a really good job, I was always tired, called in on my days off constantly, always worked longer than scheduled, was actually scheduled as a cook most nights to conserve labor costs. I thought I was an appreciated member of the team and loved working hard for the owner.

In the end he fired me for coming into work on time and sick. I didn’t call in at 8am and leave everyone in a bind. He fired me because I spent too much time in the office on this one shift because I felt so sick. Two years of working like man for him, forgoing my family and my kids. I was in shock and wasn’t able to articulate anything when he called me into the office and fired me in front of all the other managers! I just stood there with my mouth open. I still want to find him and hurt him. Fucking ungrateful jackass.

My Very Worst Job was in a department where I was a part-timer with a boss and another full-timer above me, who I’ll call M. The boss was pretty meek, the type who will avoid anything that might potentially cause a problem. M was, quite frankly, a bitch who had it out for me. My problems with her started when she would conveniently take off on days of major events — events she was responsible for — and have me run the show for her.  Then it moved into her taking projects I was working on and claiming them as her own. Finally, she started making up things about me to get me in trouble with the boss. I tried to offer proof that these things weren’t true but I still received “strikes” against me; meanwhile, she was caught falsifying her time card, with no repercussions.

The final straw came when my department received a grant and I volunteered to do the initial research that had to be completed before we could start spending money. I complied a long report with demographic and school district information and emailed to the boss and to M. The boss told me it was good work. M came in a few hours later and immediately sent out an email saying that my research was all wrong. My boss wrote the both of us back reiterating that it was fine. M sent out another email tearing my work to shreds. At that point I felt I couldn’t stay quiet and sent out an email. The first paragraph was carefully worded and I logically defended why my work wasn’t garbage. The second paragraph was one sentence: “However, if you feel that the time I put into this research wasn’t well spent, please feel free to do your own research.”

I hit send and a minute later, I hear her storm out of her office, say to the boss, “I need to speak to you” and slam his door shut. After talking with him she banged the door open and stomped out the front door. The boss then came to me and asked me to apologize to M. I refused – although my email was a little sarcastic, I hadn’t said anything truly offensive and I was trying to defend myself from what felt was an undue attack. I thought I was going to be fired the next day, since I had previous strikes against me. But a few days went by and nothing happened, so I thought I was in the clear. That Friday, the boss came and asked for a favor. We had a school group coming in on Monday and he wanted me to take charge. This was usually his and M’s responsibility, but M was “very religious” and insisted on taking that day off since it was the day after Easter. He, meanwhile, had tickets to our city’s opening day baseball game. I thought that doing this favor would get me back into his graces so I said yes.

Now normally when we have a school group we have volunteers so that one person doesn’t get overwhelmed by 50 urban schoolchildren. We looked at the department calendar but found no volunteers scheduled. The boss called M, who had forgotten to schedule any volunteers. So I showed up on Monday and spent 3 ½ hours by myself with 50 first graders. Then I showed up on Tuesday and got fired. During the speech I got from the boss, I figured out that they wanted to fire me earlier, but decided to wait until I could cover their asses on the day they both wanted off.

MVWJ was also my first job. No one wanted to hire someone with no experience. NO ONE. So what did I go through college for four years for? Well, I needed to earn money to pay off my student loan. So when I got instantly hired at a park, I was thrilled. The job was 70 miles away, but no one closer want to hire me.

I’m not bitter or anything.

Anyway, I applied in the food and beverage department. I was nervous, waiting in the waiting room with the snooty receptionist. Soon a balding guy in his mid-thirties came out. He grabbed my application, read it, and gave me the once-over. “Come in the back,” he said to me and nodded.

I went. He said, “So you just graduated, eh?” I said yes. “So you have no experience anywhere, right?” I said yes. He nodded thoughtfully, produced a piece of paper and gave it to me. “Read this,” he said.

As I did, he explained that they had an interviewer position available for college grads like me and he thought I was perfect for it. I was a little unsure, and I told him repeatedly that I would need training and had no experience whatsoever. He said that was fine and that I would be trained. I told him I had applied so many times and no one would hire me. He was sympathetic and friendly and I thought Sweet! My first job! Human Resources! Anyway, I preferred an office job to an outdoor one. I jumped on it.

(Heh.)

Well, after that, he said that my job was easy. All I had to do was ask the interviewee prepared questions, stuff like “Why do you want to work here?” etc. I thought it’d be a cinch since, now that I thought about it, I had plenty of experience in interviews, though always as the interviewee. Now I would be on the other side.

Well, a lady came in to fill an application, and my new boss said I would interview her and he would sit aside and watch me do it. I was VERY nervous. It’s one thing to do something you have never done, plus have your boss watching your every move. I was sure I would mess up and I hoped that he wouldn’t fire me.

He didn’t, even though I did stutter and when I held out the paper for her to take, my hand was shaking so bad, it was a wonder that she could grab it. I didn’t know who was more nervous, her or I!

Subsequently, he sat with me through one more interview, then all the sudden took me aside and said he thought my voice was too low and I sounded like a man. I’m a woman, and I though I knew my normal voice wasn’t angels’ harps, was shocked and a little offended by this. He said that I should pitch my voice up higher and made me try. I did my best, feeling like a fool, I talked in a little high squeaky voice. He said it was perfect and ushered me to do another interview. I thought, this is crazy, but did it anyway. So there I was, speaking like Mickey Mouse on helium, to the interviewee–a tough looking muscular guy who looked back at me like I was crazy. I didn’t blame him one little bit. Now I look back and think what I fool I was; I should have got the hell out of there, but I didn’t. I was young and naive and doing what I was told to.

Well, my boss told me later that I did a terrible job. “I was just doing what you told me!” I said and he shook his head in obvious disappointment and just walked away.

It got worse. Obviously, my boss now thought I was a weirdo, because he would take others’ side immediately. Once I was interviewing three girls at once in a group interview, (I had quit the Mickey act by now) which we were allowed to do when they came together. I didn’t see the point of this, but did it anyway. The problem was, as I immediately figured out, one girl would answer and the other two would agree with her.

Of course it was true. I would ask, “So what would you do if someone asks you a question you don’t know the answer to?” Girl #1 would say, “I would SO ask my manager.” Girl #2 said, “Yeah! My manager would, like, so know the answer!” Girl #3 said, “Yeah. What they said.”

The rest of the questions went similarly. I hired the first two girls, but not the third. Big mistake. Her mom called later, demanding to know why her precious daughter had not been hired when her two friends had and accused us of traumatizing and embarassing her. I thought that was ridiculous. My boss asked me what happened, and I said that the third girl just said, “Yeah. Uh huh. Yup.” Enthusiasm was a big part of getting hired, and he knew that. He stared at me like he didn’t believe me and overrode my rule and hired the girl anyway. I thought, fine whatever. He’s the manager. He gets the last word.

The 9-5 days were tedious, I only had two or three interviews, and the nothing to do for six hours. My boss gave me some envelopes to stick labels on. Great. I tried to ask for advice on how to do my job, since I still had NO idea, but my boss never had time for me. His door was open alright, so you could see him in it with his feet up talking to his wife or his friends. A VERY annoying habit of his was to frequently grab a soccer ball off his shelf, played wih it and bounce it at us while grinning and saying sorry. Then running around and doing it again 15 minutes later. I thought this attitude was VERY unprofessional and immature but said nothing. He’s the boss. You couldn’t walk down the hall with being afraid of getting hit on the butt with a bouncing ball. I also noticed only girls got hit. It was something else to see a middle-aged man acting like a spoiled three-year-old.

I was very lenient when interviewing, having gone through what they were going through to get a job. But soon a girl wearing old sweats, baggy holey shirt, and BED SLIPPERS came in to apply for job. I assumed she didn’t know we did interviews on the spot and asked her if she wanted to go and change and come back to be interviewed. She thought for a while, shrugged then said, “No, it’s all right. I don’t care.”

Dress appearance is a big factor in our hiring decision, it counts as one strike. Two strikes and you’re out, according to my boss. I said, “Okay….” and she answered a question wrong. Since it was two strikes, I didn’t hire her.

Later my boss asked me if her slippers were “really” that bad, and did I make a mistake? I told him exactly what she was wearing, and he frowned. Then he said, “Well, she comes from a really good school,” and I reminded him that I lived 70 miles away, how was I supposed to know which schools are good? He shrugged and later hired her, though tried to keep it a secret from me, but I found out.

I was shocked at what people would wear to be interviewed. It seemed that we got all the weirdos. Holes in their shirt, baggy jeans (a big no no) baseball caps, unwashed etc. I felt pity but also a need to do my job right.

One guy actually flashed me. His jeans were so baggy and heavy with thick chains out the enormous pockets that when he got up from the chair, his pants fell down on the floor. He quickly hitched them up again, but not before I saw he had no underwear. Eek!

The final blow came when we had a job fair and over fifty applicants came to apply, and yes, be interviewed. My past experience with group interviews was horrible, so I tried to see them one at a time to get a better feel of their personality. The result was that I wasn’t going to get through all of them. I was afraid I would be blamed, for, I don’t know, being too slow.

So I thought up an idea. I would interview them and do their paperwork tomorrow. I had a pretty good feel of who was a weirdo and who wasn’t, so I would write at the end of they passed or failed. I did it and got through all the interviewees quickly.

Next morning, I was all set to do the paperwork when I noticed it missing from my desk. Then my boss called me to his office and shut the door when I entered. Uh Oh. He threw the paperwork at me and said, “Care to explain this?” in an angry, tight voice, teeth clenched.

I said that I was going to do it today since I had plenty of time, it was perfect, I pointed out, since I had nothing to do all day. His jaw tightened as I explained, and threw another paper at me. Before I could read it, he said that he didn’t think it was working out and could I please resign by signing this?

I remember his cold eyes bored into mine almost hypnotically, like he was trying to get me to sign. I was in shock as all the blood drained from my body. I told him that I didn’t understand why he was firing me and he said that I was fired due to “my error of judgement.”  He said that would put my file into the rejection pile and flag it as “rejected forever” meaning that I was never allowed to work there again and he would probably burn it.

At this I pulled myself together and pushed the pen that he was pressing on me, and said with dignity it was all right if he didn’t want me to work there, I wouldn’t, since I don’t want to be somewhere I’m not wanted. But I wasn’t signing anything and I did’t deserve this. As he sat stunned by my refusal, I rushed out of the office, grabbed my purse, and hopped on the interstate highway for home, upset.

I didn’t come back, and reading these stories, I realized that he was trying to cover his ass if I decided to collect unemployment. I didn’t, I didn’t even know about unemployment back then.

MVWJ started out well. I was nannying for a family with a seven-week old baby. She had some health issues, but they were all temporary. The family treated me well and helped me out financially a few times. Part of the responsibilities of caring for their child was learning now to use a feeding tube and a machine to basically suck snot out of the child’s nose. Again…all temporary. But then she had to be put in a cast for her hips. This didn’t matter to me as I was attached to the baby and happy with the family, but let me point out that these are not normal nanny functions. You would usually have to hire a nurse for things like this and they charge a lot more.
So fast forward a year and I find out I’m pregnant. My husband and I were surprised as we didn’t plan on children for a few more years. I told my employers and they were excited for me, but later told me they didn’t want me to bring my child to work. I understood, but couldn’t see myself dropping off my infant with a stranger only to take care of someone else’s. So my husband and I started saving money and decided I would quit work and go to school full time and somehow try to make it financially.

About a month later, the mother told me she had reconsidered and thinks it would be fine if I brought my baby to work. We really needed the money so I was happy.
Fast forward a few months to my birthday weekend. I gave it up and stayed the weekend at their house so they could go away for their anniversary. They came home Sunday and wanted to talk to me. I was not nervous and was 6 1/2 months pregnant at this point. They told me they had found someone else and were replacing me. They wanted me to work until the end of the month though. I was a hysterical mess and left immediately. I looked down at my pregnant belly. Who the heck would hire me? I hated their faces. So as much as I still miss their little girl and wonder how she is doing physically, I have my sweet boy now and karma, karma, KARMA. A friend of a friend interviewed with them and they haven’t been able to keep a nanny since I left!

MVWJ was bartending at a sports bar. A so-called friend of mine got me the job and I had a lot of fun at first. The bar was owned by a husband (J) and wife (B) and they seemed pretty cool at first. There was an upcoming pool tournament that I would be bartending so I was to get there at 8am to set up and get everything started and the owners would be serving food. I got there five minutes late since the electricity went out that night, and I got yelled at. I apologized profusely and we still had an hour to get ready. As the pool tournament started, it got unbelievably packed. I was making drinks as well as taking food orders. At this point, I could hardly even get out of the bar to bring J the orders. I had to push through all the bodies of people rammed up against the bar and I’m a small girl at 5’5″ and 105 pounds. During this time, I had to act as my own barback as well. With 200+ people, me the only bartender, and no barback, I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off.

About two hours in, when orders were flying, J screamed at me that I also needed to bring the orders out. I told him that I was having a hard time just bringing him the orders and making the drinks. He told me he didn’t give a shit. I somehow worked six hours doing this non-stop. At long last, I had a break and I grabbed a bottle of water and started drinking. This is when my so-called friend came into the bar, telling me that since I am not doing anything I need to wipe down the bar. I looked at her and told her I just got to drink some water. A regular customer actually told her that I was working my butt off and this was the only time I had a chance to stop. She told him that she’s worked non-stop herself before. He told her, “No you haven’t.” She then started trying to boss me around and I told her I didn’t need her help and she needed to get out of my bar since I was the bartender on duty. This didn’t make her happy.

It was finally the end of my shift and I had everything cleaned up and the owners were back in. My so-called friend came in to work, and as I was sitting there, drinking a beverage, she was on the phone telling me loudly enough so everyone can here that J said if I wasn’t there on the dot tomorrow I would be fired.  So, I did a really crappy thing and quit. Oddly enough, J called me the following summer and asked me to bartend again. I told him straight up that I wasn’t going to put up with the crap I did from last year. He said “okay” and told me I would have a barback every night. Turned out false. I’d close alone at night and walk to my car alone. I was always afraid of getting jumped. On top of that, I was the designated whipping girl. Anything and everything was my fault. I was so happy when J went back to his hometown for a month and his wife took over. During this time, the barback was a known man-whore and slept with every female bartender and most of the regular female customers. I didn’t fall for his charm and I didn’t realize he was a good friend of J.

One night, the barback was playing pool and not helping me. I lost my temper with him and told him he needed to at least help with the ice. On top of that, the two times that I went to the restroom, a drunken regular kept going behind the bar to make her boyfriend a drink. I yelled at her to cut it out or I’d have to kick her out (she was also a good friend of J). The very next day, J came back to town. But the next day I was at the beach and I got a call from J saying they were missing $50 and told me to call him when I found out what happened. So I call the girl I had worked with and she told me she found it and that everything was fine. The following morning J calls me and yells at me for not calling him about the $50. I told him that my co-worker said she found it and was even talking to him when I called. He said that didn’t matter. What mattered was he told me to call him and I didn’t. I apologized, again.

The next day I went into work just to get fired. He told me that several “people” claimed I had a free for all at the bar the day before, meaning I let everyone behind the bar to make drinks. I told him the only person who got behind there was the drunken regular customer and I even gave her a warning. He said he didn’t care. It was what he heard. He even said that he heard I was always late. Which I was not. I asked what proof he had. He said it didn’t matter, it was what some people told him. I told him I wasn’t going anywhere without payment for having wasted gas driving there when he could have called me and told me. He did give me some money. What happened next was shocking. He moved back to his hometown because he and the wife were getting a divorce. The wife took over for a month only to burn the place down in an attempt to get the insurance money. The last anyone heard from her she was on the run to Florida.

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!