MVWJ at an ice cream chain was a mixed bag; I liked most of the people I worked with, and on many nights we could have work efficiently together and leave confident that we’d done a good job. But If S (manager) or L (wannabe manager) came in the next morning, they would find something, even just a smudge on the glass, to blow out of proportion and claim we left a mess. Both of them fed on drama and would often complain about someone to a coworker only to turn around to the person they complained about and say they were doing great and complain about someone else. Every few weeks they would find someone else to target, and while I knew they were probably just blowing off steam, every time it came around to me it made me anxious.

We worked in a small area so it was common to touch someone gently on the shoulder so they’d know you were there and not back into you, but B would often wrap his hand around girls’ waists and hips as he moved past. He would come up behind me and “hug” me from behind, pressing into me and conveniently getting his hands right under my chest. Whenever I closed with him he would try to get me to lay down with him in the back of his car and talk about sex with our respective significant others. Talking was actually most of what he did, and he would often follow me around the store to brag about how awesome he was while I tried to get everything spotless so S and L wouldn’t freak out.

One girl, H, who always worked very hard and was my favorite person to work with, had a boyfriend that called and came in more and more often to make a scene and shout or throw things. Everyone complained about him, but none of us talked to her about it. One night, the guy tried to kill H and she was severely wounded. I felt awful for not speaking up about the warning signs. The next shift I worked, the prick I worked with had the balls to roll his eyes and go on for quite some time about how she “should’ve known better” and that she was stupid, though he had also never said anything to her about the crazy boyfriend.

I landed a very part time job that worked around my schedule at the store, but S found out and started complaining that I was being sneaky. Having had enough of the drama, I found an on-campus job to start in the fall and finished out the summer. On my last shift S smiled and told me to come back and visit, but I’ll never know whether she meant it or if she started badmouthing me the second I walked out the door.

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’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!

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 my childhood newspaper route. My brother (12 years old at the time) decided he and I could share our neighborhood route when I was 8 years old. Being young and naive, it never occurred to me that people would screw me over at every opportunity. The job started out well enough; I delivered the papers to 20 houses each morning before school.

The problems started happening when I had to collect the monthly fees from the customers who didn’t put their subscriptions on their credit cards. People would refuse to answer the door, slam their doors in my face, argue that they didn’t owe what I asked for, and short-changed me constantly. One woman didn’t answer her door for six full months. When I called the newspaper office to complain about her, they said that only the customer could cancel their subscription and I would just have to keep trying. When I finally got in touch with her, she asked me to come to her house at midnight on a school night to collect the money!

For three years, I would come home in tears and beg my parents and my brother to let me quit because customers would scream at me, other kids would tease me, and one time a group of teenage boys spat on me and shoved me in a snow bank while I was trying to collect money from one of their parents’ houses. Another time, a dog bit my leg, and the owner said it was my own fault for “showing fear.”

Maybe the worst part of all? My brother handled the money once we collected it, and only paid me $10/month for my work. I didn’t realize until years later that he was pocketing way more than his fair share.

As we all know, there was tremendous suffering during that horrible day of September 11, 2001. In this context, my story is insignificant, but as a result of that attack, my Very Best Job turned into My Very Worst Job. In a previous life, I worked for a federal agency that responded to national disasters. And no, this was not FEMA. In fact, we hated FEMA. I loved where I worked and I loved the people. I actually consider them my friends. My pay grade was relatively low and at the time there wasn’t any room to move up, but I was so happy in other aspects that it compensated for it. I remember that morning very well. The weather was gorgeous and I was looking forward to a fun weekend. And then I was summoned down to our emergency operation center. And when the gravity of the situation hit, it hit like a ton of bricks. I never worked so hard or got so stressed in my life. I had first-responders literally screaming at me on the phone and all around me there were monitors that showed the buildings burning. And when the first tower went down, I turned away, but right there was another monitor.

They finally told me to go home after 16 hours. One of my co-workers, a grizzled old fireman, told me to follow him. In the darkness of his office, he reached into a locked cabinet and gave me a first-responder shirt, which is worn by real heroes. He lost a lot of brothers that day, so this was a tremendous honor and I will always keep that shirt. For the next couple weeks I worked 12 hour shifts, since our center was obviously running 24 hours. Even after that, there was a lot of work to do. But these people were my friends, and we all supported each other, so it was an honor to be a part of it. And then FEMA happened. You see, in the examinations after 9/11, we were considered “redundant” to FEMA, so someone had the bright idea to consolidate us. Since FEMA was substantially larger than us (“larger” as in “bloated”), they won out on the merger.  And what does an evil conqueror do to their victims? You first kill all the leaders among them and separate the remaining people from their family and friends. And that is what they did. They took my supervisor away from me and put me under one of their trolls (an incredibly vile woman).

With federal employment there is what is known as an “FTE” (Full-Time Equivalent). This is a “job slot.” An employee is the body that fills that slot. Even if an employee is gone, the slot is still there to be filled by family and cronies. So even though FEMA didn’t want me, they wanted my FTE, so it became clear that they were going to force me out. So many things were horrible, but I’ll give you an example: right before Christmas, the troll summoned her slaves for a meeting, and made the sudden announcement that she was canceling all holiday leave requests. One man was almost in tears, because he was supposed to fly across the country to bring presents to his family. The troll replied that the airline “may” refund his ticket if he called them immediately. Merry Christmas. It took me two months to get out. I found a job that gave me a huge promotion and an excellent career ladder. And I got out right before our annual conference, so FEMA got their precious FTE, but not a body to work during this extremely busy time. So I couldn’t have given them any bigger payback than that.

A few years later, there was Katrina. FEMA took a tremendous beating from an enraged public. And I loved every second of it.

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.

I got hired for MVWJ the summer after I’d taken a year abroad in college. To put things in perspective, I was a good student with lots of research experience and several important fellowships under my belt. When P offered me a position as her research assistant, I was delighted. When I got to the office, however, I was greeted by P’s underling, G, who asked what I’d been told about the job. G laughed in my face when I said I was there as a research assistant. I was set to work, not doing research, but making pointless spreadsheets of random data (phone numbers of inactive members, etc), and re-doing them repeatedly to her exacting and absurd specifications. Everything I did was wrong: deleting spam emails, bringing “stinky” (read: ethnic) food for lunch or using the bathroom during work hours (apparently I was supposed to hold it from 8am to 4pm).

When she wasn’t shopping online, she would interrupt my work to rant about “ugly dykes” (I’m queer), force me to read spam emails or pester me about my ethnicity.  She even phoned me on a day I was home sick with the flu to blame me for breaking the office copier (telekinesis, apparently). Then one day, after a holiday weekend, I came to work tan.

She glared at me and said, “I thought you said you were Scottish. You lied.”

Nervously, I replied, “I am.”

“No Scottish person tans like that,” she said.

Just to make her go away, I blurted out that my dad is Native American. G humphed and walked back to her spam emails. Later that day, she told me to move my desk, as she was unhappy about my “fraternizing” with my (white) co-workers, and declared me banned from that afternoon’s office meeting. Through the paper-thin walls, I heard P ranting about how “Indians steal things” and are “lazy” and “uncooperative.”  As much as I wanted to quit, I was stuck there because of a contract with my college. G, however, was done with me. Two weeks from the end of my contract, she fired me on a bogus claim that I had forged my time sheet and had been failing to come in to work. When I presented proof, she complained to P, who sent a series of angry emails to my college, and froze my last month’s pay (for hours I’d already worked). I was almost relieved at this point to be rid of the job, but it took months to sort out the resulting paperwork from her tantrum. And no, I never did get my pay for that last month.

Talk about a Jekyll and Hyde situation. About a year ago I interviewed for a job at a vegetarian cafe on the theatre side of town. I’m an actress and this seemed like a good sign. Let me add that my job was to work the counter and take orders, and either E or R were acting as managers, baristas, and servers. This was the justification for not sharing tips with me (but we’ll get to that.)

Both of my bosses were actors as well, we’ll call them R and E. R was the best boss ever. She was laid back, funny, and genuinely seemed proud of her restaurant and loved her customers. E was a whole other story. The first day she seemed a little cool, but I chalked it up to personality. Then her true crazy shone through. She told me on the first day that I should feel free to bring a book, “since it can get a little slow here sometimes.” Then a week in, when the place is dead, she furiously snapped at me, “I know it’s quiet, but there’s always little things do to. I don’t want you just sitting there reading!”

One day I’d be in trouble for leaving the register to make drinks, the next day I’d be in trouble for not pitching in to help out (because she was too busy surfing Facebook or taking naps in her office) and I mean IN TROUBLE. She would scream at me in front of customers. And on the days where she was “working” in the office and I handled everything for hours at a time, do you think she shared tips? Nope. Also, I would catch her glaring at me out of the corner of my eye, like I had my hand in the register or my finger up my nose. I have no idea why she mistrusted me completely.

One day when an obviously difficult customer complained about an order that we “messed up” and I know for a fact I triple-checked, E hauled me into the kitchen to chew me out (which is rare, since she usually tore into me in front of the uncomfortable customers!) I told her that I was entirely in the right and E said,  ”Well, you’re not focused and I need you to pull it together. You went to acting school, right? Why don’t you do one of those focusing exercises they taught you, okay?” In the most condescending tone I’ve ever heard.

Sadly that wasn’t the final straw. The final straw was arriving to work to find the other cashier in tears. Apparently E had been taking a nap. This cashier had previously been in trouble for waking E up instead of taking a message. So today she had taken a message instead. When E woke up and found out she’d missed a call from a guy she’d been “waiting to hear from all day!” she screamed at this poor girl that she could “easily be replaced!”

I decided to quit before I could be replaced, and never looked back!

When a friend posted on Facebook that his restaurant desperately needed a server and he had been given permission to hire a friend, I jumped on the opportunity. Now, I should clarify that I am using the word “restaurant” very loosely. The best description I can give for the place I worked is that we served Indian fast food. A chef in another city would make giant batches of basic Indian dishes, freeze them into small and large portion containers and we would store them in a big freezer in the basement. We would bring up a few of each at a time, allow them to defrost in the fridge and then microwave them as they were ordered, adding the appropriate vegetables and spice powder as requested by our customers. Our “kitchen” consisted of six microwaves, a grill for the “naan” (another loose term; think flat, wide hot dog buns), a rice cooker and a deep fryer for samosas and onion bhaji (the only thing we made ourselves). As you can imagine, we had very few repeat customers, except for the potheads who lived behind the restaurant and would wander in at closing and order “whatever that smell is, and five of them!”

Meanwhile, our dining room was decorated nicely, but lit like a McDonald’s, and the manager would often quietly play rap over the sound system. On top of all this, the owner, “D”, set prices that were nearly as high as the authentic, delicious, properly decorated and sufficiently staffed Indian restaurants in the area, and all of these things put together made for a restaurant that was almost always empty. Because of the low customer numbers, a number of things happened at the restaurant that made working there very difficult. For one thing, I worked almost every single shift alone. I would serve tables, “cook” the food, clean the kitchen and dining room and prepare delivery and takeout orders. Every so often, this would mean absolute, hair-tearing chaos for me, when all of a sudden there would be three tables seated, another customer wanting takeout and a delivery man coming in 10 minutes.

However, there were also many times when I would have nothing to do. As I was in university, I was okay with this – I would sit behind the till and do course readings. I always made sure that the book was hidden from sight, so that passersby wouldn’t know that’s what I was doing, but after a few shifts of doing this, I discovered that D would have his friends walk by the restaurant at random and report back to him what we were doing. He made a new rule that we were not allowed to read during our shifts and should be constantly finding work to do. When I showed him that there was actually nothing to do, that every aspect of the restaurant was spotless, he told me to clean things over and over so that I was always working, because he was not paying me to read.

All of this, so far, I could live with. He’s the owner and he was worried about money and the job was usually not that hard, so I was okay. Then, within the space of a few weeks, it became unbearable. First, a new manager was hired. He called a staff meeting and told us that since we worked by ourselves and couldn’t take breaks, we should be allowed to make food for ourselves for free. Within a week, D had threatened to put in security cameras and accused us all of stealing and when we confronted the manager, he said that he didn’t say we should tell the owner about our “free” (stolen) food! Next, I got a call from a girl who had ordered delivery and had found a cooked bee in her curry. I got in trouble for telling her to come in to the store and get a refund. Third (remember how the food was kept in a freezer in the basement?), I forgot to mention that to get to the basement, you had to exit the back of the restaurant, go down a flight of unlit, broken concrete stairs and go into a back room of someone’s apartment to get to that freezer. As the weather turned, the stairs became treacherous, and despite numerous requests for the stairs to be repaired or at least salted, nothing was ever done. Finally, and this was absolutely the last straw, two of my co-workers’ paycheques bounced.

I still remember the letter I wrote to D when I quit. “Due to a combination of incompetent management, safety concerns, unfair employee treatment and pay discrepancies, I will no longer be able to continue working in this establishment. Thank you for the opportunity.” The restaurant went out of business two months later.