I am currently working in MVWJ as a transportation dispatcher, which is basically getting our cabs to pick up train crews to go from point A to point B. The job itself wouldn’t be that bad if it weren’t for the company and the people who run it. It’s owned by a local guy who owns a good portion of business here in town. None of us ever know what we’re going to walk into on a daily basis. Our head supervisor is a former Marine, who if you dare get sick, you’re scheduled on your next day off, usually without warning. We are required to do what they call “highlight” early or late, which means we either have to come in four hours early or stay four hours late. I am on first shift, which means if I highlight early, it means getting up at 2am to see if I am needed at 3am (I live across the street so I don’t need to call any earlier) and there’s no guarantee that you have to go in early.

You rarely know if you will have to stay late until you’re already making other plans, after they’ve told you all day you weren’t needed. Nothing’s worse than when they decide to tell you as your putting your headset up and walking out the door. They’ve been known to chase people down in the parking lot to get them back in to stay! If you have a day that you can’t stay or come in, you’re written up, and they don’t care why. Most of us are parents and some of us have had massive health problems, but even when you’re contagious, you’re expected to be there. The supervisors are also some of the most ridiculous people that I have ever met in my life! One supervisor in particular will virtually scream at you from across the room for something you supposedly did wrong. He has been sent home for his behavior, but won’t ever get fired. I’ve been sexually harassed, insulted, screamed at, threatened, you name it.

One of the worst things is the intimidation tactics they use. They will scream at people on the floor, threatening to suspend them for insubordination for things that are just crazy. We work with the big train companies — CSX, Norfolk Southern, Sooline, Amtrak and Union Pacific. UP has their own system that we have to close out and sometimes, if we are unusually busy, we get behind doing this. That’s when the supervisors come out to yell at us for not getting them out fast enough and threatening suspension. I’ve never worked in a place where people are so afraid to come into work. The only reason why we stay is that the money is halfway decent but that’s about it. I guess it’s a bad sign when there are only three or four people out of about 200 to 300 who have been there longer than three or four years. One has been there about 10, but she’s the exception. All I can do is keep looking for something better.

I’m writing this submission while still employed at MVWJ. I began this entry-level position at my company a year and half ago. At the beginning, I had a great relationship with my boss, J. When I had been employed for about eight months, J pulled me into his office and told me I had been doing a great job and asked if I was interested in more responsibilities, a title change and increased salary. The department was making some big changes and he had been approached by his boss and HR about this. I said of course! I was so thrilled that my hard work had paid off and I was moving up the company ladder. The next week K, the head of HR, came to my desk and told me I would be reporting to V from now on. My desk would be moved within a couple of days. I was in shock and asked her if she was sure and what my position would be. She replied yes, and that it was still administrative assistant, then smiled a fake smile and walked off.

The reason for my shock and dismay was that V was the executive assistant for J’s boss. I went from being an “assistant” to an “assistant to an executive assistant.” No title change, no salary increase, nothing. I was crushed. J came by and apologized profusely. He said he had no idea that HR was moving in that direction and his hands were tied. I was upset but knew it wasn’t his fault and resolved to suck it up and try to be optimistic.

 As soon as I was moved closer to V, she began her tirade. It takes about two hours for me to commute on the train to my job and J had always been very understanding about this since he commuted from far away as well. He would let me make my own schedule because he knew I always completed my work on time and was very reliable. J would even let me work from home some days as he did as well.

V did not care. She wanted me at my desk and checking in with her at precisely 8:30 every morning and not a minute later. This meant leaving my apartment at 6:15am and not returning home until 6:30pm and I was NEVER allowed to work from home. Some days I couldn’t help being late because the train would break down or be delayed. I would tell V and notify her from my phone when it happened. She wrote me up with HR and I was given a final warning. I had been on a train that struck and killed a man! I tried to explain to them that it wasn’t my fault but K (who had stuck me with V in the first place) told me to suck it up and figure it out myself. This would have been bearable had that been the only issue. V and her other friend B (who was also an executive assistant) would give me all the work they didn’t feel like doing. She sent me to pick up lunches for their bosses (which were paid with the company credit card). V would also make me file her expense reports for her boss, which she would then check and submit under her name to receive credit. She sent me passive aggressive emails marked high priority with read receipts attached.

One of my favorites went like this: 

V: “I need you to research the best and safest way to purchase American Express gift cards online for the upcoming baby shower. This is high priority.”

Me: “http://amex.com/americanexpress.com.” 

She would shuffle past my desk to check to make sure I was working. It was obvious she was checking up on me because my desk was not on a convenient route to anywhere i.e. the kitchen, elevator, bathroom, etc. I stopped taking lunches because she treated me as if I was doing something wrong whenever I said I was going to take a break. She demanded I inform her the second I returned and would make sure I wasn’t a minute off on my time card or she’d send it back to me to fix it. I began to hate work so much that every morning I’d wake up with a stomachache at the thought of dealing with V, always worried she would throw me under the bus. I wasn’t the only one who felt this way. She had several nicknamed around the office, such as “Cruella” and “Lady of the Dark.”

After months of job searching, I finally found a new position where I will get to use my brain, not my ability to fetch lunches and make folders! Even better, it’s 10 minutes from my apartment. I almost cried from relief when they hired me. I’m going to miss J (he actually helped me get my new job by giving me a great reference) and a few other people, but I’m so happy to get out of this dead-end position. 

I told V last Friday that I would be leaving and she’s still trying to make my life hell. It’s ok, though because I’M OUTTA HERE!

I am currently employed at MVWJ. I work in the shipping department of an online retail company.

One major rule is not to put items that are very similar into the same bin. Today, someone in stocking decided to break The One Rule and put pink Doc Big Johnson ringed plastic dildos and purple Doc Big Johnson ringed plastic dildos in the same bin. I had to get 21 of them. Twenty-one Doc Big Johnson ringed plastic dildos. Twenty. One.

The 21 dildos I had to pick had to be pink, but there were 20 purple dildos mixed in. I had to separate all of the dildos. So there I was, sitting in the floor with a lap full of dildos. I counted out 18 pink dildos. Three short of how many I needed. Employees must get a supervisor when they have missing items, so I had to leave my giant pile of dildos and get my boss.

Sadly, the only supervisor available was a lady, well into her 40s.

I brought her back and simply pointed at the pile of dildos, ashamed. She sat down and said, “If I’m going to sift through these fake dicks, you’re going to sit down here with me.”

She would hand me one, I would scan it, hand it back to her, and she would put it into the bin. After we determined that I was indeed three dildos short, she had to fill out paperwork saying that I was correct in counting. The paperwork had my name and ID number as well as a line where she had to write in what item was missing. All day, I carried a piece of paper in my back pocket about my dildo shortage. I had to turn it in to another supervisor that night.

Tonight is the very last night of MVWJ. I’m a junior in college and needed to make a little extra money this summer to cover expenses, so when a colleague of my mother’s told me about a job opening at a convenience store nearby I applied right away. The hours were perfect, Monday thru Friday, four hours an evening and the weekends off. It was in a really bad part of town, but it wasn’t really a problem and I honestly liked my job. Until one day, my great boss decided I was just the employee he needed to go work at his nephew’s store. The hours were to stay the same and the new store was in a great neighborhood downtown, about six blocks from my house. I was very excited and went to the new location without any hesitation.

That’s when I met L, the nephew and part owner. Within 30 minutes of my starting work he told me he needed me to work different hours.  I was okay with it, as it was still summer, but warned him I couldn’t work during the day or graveyard during the school year. He said it was okay. Quickly, my hours fluctuated everyday, from the supposed four hours to sometimes twelve. I’d get off at midnight, only to receive a text message at two from my boss saying he needed me to come back in at five in the morning. It turns out I was the only employee there besides my boss and his brother V, who was chronically late. Sometimes by more than four hours. I’d call repetitively to his house, which he shared with L, but got no answer from either boy. I constantly was texted by both boys, either with a fluctuating schedule or excuses why I was stuck at the store at four a.m., despite the fact I needed sleep before my eight am class started.

I had two sitters quit outright, and one just not ever return. I was racking up 60 plus hours a week and L was always surprised and angry when I demanded overtime. Every day off I had was filled with text after text from my boss asking me to come in, just for an hour, to go to the bank. At first, I’d agree, but I soon learned that coming in always led to being trapped for several hours while I waited for my boss to do whatever he had to do. Aside from the messed up scheduling and my constantly late co-worker, my job had other joys, like insanely drunk old men hitting on me in the most repulsive way possible, the fact that as the only person there, I could not go to the bathroom, or take breaks. And then there was my boss. He yelled at me every day, almost always contradicting something he had said the day before.

And about a week in, he told me the only reason I was transferred was because I was a pretty white girl and I could flirt with the customers in a way that would encourage the men to repeatedly come back. When I explained to him that that was an excellent way for me to gain new stalkers and that no boss in his right mind could possibly expect me to flirt with men as my job description, he quickly ignored me and complained that I needed to dress nicer and wear more makeup, because we were in an area of town where most of our customers were business professionals. Ironically, since starting here, my professional behavior, my newly vamped up looks and friendly personality have landed me three job offers at various downtown businesses. I start next week as a cashier for a trendy and small clothing store, where my new boss promises that I will be out of the store at ten, every night. I’ll miss the free beef jerky, but won’t miss my boss, not even a bit.

I am currently working My Very Worst Job. I am a 911 dispatcher and though the job isn’t always all that bad, it has its days. I have a list of my top five worst calls, all of which involve someone (who didn’t even have any kind of life threatening emergency to report) cursing me out and calling me every name in the book (dumb bitch seems to be a favorite), sometimes calling back two or three times in the span of three minutes because they didn’t understand why I couldn’t magically teleport an ambulance to their house (and all of which involve me going into the bathroom and crying afterwards). There have been calls where people would yell at me when I asked them their address and phone number even refusing to give it to me because I’m supposed to have computers and whatnot that tell me all that information and they shouldn’t have to tell me too. I’ve even had people call me, on 911 mind you, asking why they’re stuck in traffic, whether a road was open or closed during storms, asking why they hear sirens a couple blocks away, etc.

I think most of my frustration comes from my co-workers though.

In our office, we have four dispatchers, three supervisors and one head supervisor. The supervisors and head supervisor all hold that title, not because they’re particularly good at dispatching and promoted their way up, but because they have field experience, the belief being that if we have experienced field personnel dispatching, then they’ll be better able to understand what’s going on and to augment dispatches accordingly. The problem is, coming into dispatch is a minimum two year commitment and it’s a good way to promote so we never get anyone who sticks around much longer than two years and it can take a year or more just to get a lot of the basics down. That being said, a general sense of incompetence and mediocrity overwhelms our supervisors. In my four years here, I’ve worked for (and helped train) six different supervisors. Because they do the exact same job as the dispatchers with only minor supervisory work, they all come in with the attitude of “I’m new here and don’t know a lot and even though I’m your supervisor, I’m ready and willing to learn from you and treat you as an equal.” That quickly morphs however into “I AM YOUR KING/QUEEN. YOU WILL BOW DOWN TO ME!”

Even though dispatchers are required to type a certain word-per-minute and have a basic understanding of computers, our supervisors have no such requirements. I’ve had supervisors who were so bad with computers, they didn’t even know how to check their email and couldn’t type quickly enough to take down the information during a call, choosing instead to hand write it during the call and enter it into the computer after the caller hung up – causing us to have to call many people back to clarify address information because they didn’t give it correctly or the supervisor wrote it down wrong.

Dealing with the field can be a painful addition to this equation too. I had a firefighter call one time and tell one of my supervisors, C, for about five minutes what a dumb bitch he thought I was and that I needed to cut the attitude because my job was just to answer phones. C thought she was somehow doing me a favor by nodding and going “uh huh…uh huh” during the conversation and not taking it to the head supervisor who, at least, would have thoroughly chewed the firefighter out. After crying for two hours about it, another dispatcher brought this to her attention and then C started crying and getting all wishy washy about it (she was notorious for that). She then got even more upset when she asked me for a hug to “make it better” and I told her no. I told her she didn’t even have any right to be upset about the whole thing, I did, and I certainly wasn’t going to make her feel better about the whole thing.

I was eight months pregnant in November of 2007, so I was quite huge. I work at a job that requires you to be on the phone all day long and we were approaching our busy season. You get two, 15 minute breaks and one hour long lunch and of course if you need to use the restroom during those off times you can take a personal break. With me being the size of a small whale and having a bowling ball sitting on my bladder all day long I had to use the restroom a little more often than normal. Go figure. My manager knew that I took mini personal breaks to go use the restroom and I would quickly go back to my desk. But towards the end of November my manager’s boss sent me a message stating I was taking way to many personal breaks and that from now on I can only take my two, 15 minute breaks and my one hour lunch break. I explained to him that I take the personal breaks to go and use the restroom due to the fact that I have a child using my bladder as his personal drum set.

He said that wasn’t a good excuse and I can wait to use the restroom only during my set breaks and lunch. I couldn’t believe this! He then said if I had an issue with this I could take it up with my manager or go to HR about this issue, so I took it up with HR. My HR manager called me in and I explained to her what he had said and showed her the conversation. She then said she would talk to my manager and get back to me. Next day she called me back in her office and explained I am not doing anything wrong and to continue to use as many personal breaks as needed. Funny thing is after our busy season was over he got fired! And I was told that he was chewed out by my HR manager for what he had said to me. Sad thing? I’m still here.

I’m still in MVWJ as a kindergarten teacher in a private school. After two months of work, ten staff members have quit – most of this is due to the antics of my boss, A.

A’s grandson, D, is in my class. He is out of control. If attempts are made at discipline (like asking him nicely or using a firm voice to get him to stop hitting another child, for instance), he tells his grandmother his teachers hurt him and she immediately takes it out on us. No questions asked. However, I have seen her roughly handle and verbally abuse other students who are misbehaving. H also does not have to do academic work like everyone else.

Despite that the school is open ten hours a day, A’s rules state that NO child in our class is allowed to take naps or have pacifiers. Teachers have been fired for allowing exhausted students to lay down. D–who has his pacifier in almost the whole day–is exempt from this rule.  As you can well imagine, morale is low. In order to curb the gossip about her, A made us all sign an “anti-gossip” pledge which stated we would promise not to talk about her. Of course, this persisted so she once again began a round of firing, which stopped it.

One story stands out to illustrate their insanity. Last week, the students were filmed for a local news segment. Before the event started, A pulled me aside and said, “D needs to be front and center on film because he’s got his Spiderman outfit on!” When I watched the evening news, the camera was directed at Spiderman for a few seconds and the rest of the segment was an interview with A. The other students were completely ignored.