A Sour Clean
My Very Worst Job was at a cafe/bakery when I was 14. When I got the job, I was told my basic duties would be to serve customers, clear tables, and to do “basic” cleaning.
On my first day, they got me to wash dishes for five hours straight, before sending me home. This happened pretty much every day for my first month, except on occasion I got to clean up grease from around the sink (lucky me), wash the display cabinets, or make breadcrumbs (which meant I ran the risk of cutting off my fingers due to the dodgy food processor). If that wasn’t bad enough, we had no price lists and changed the prices every few days so they were never actually entered in the cash registers, so I ended up just making all the prices, then getting in trouble if I got them wrong. We were also given seven-hour shifts without a break.
One unusually hot day the power went out. I’ll always be a little unclear on the details, but a milk bottle somehow exploded at the bottom of a fridge. Guess who the lucky person was that got to climb into the fridge (it was about chest height) and clean out all the sour milk from this hot, smelly, box of joy? Guess who also had to complete her 6 hour shift covered in sour milk?
My boss also once hit me with a broom for leaning on a machine while cleaning it. Like, actually hit me, across the back of my legs.
You’d think this was enough for me to quit, but apparently not. I was eventually fired for rostering off my birthday. Turned out the boss was a Jehovah’s Witness and didn’t believe in birthdays or in people taking a day off.
This is pretty bad, but depending on the state, they may not be legally obligated to give you a break for anything less than 7 hours. That is pretty common here actually, but the rest sounds pretty bad.
Sorry, that should have said 8 hours.
Well – depending on the state AND the age of the person. The younger you are, the more breaks the employer is obligated to give you.
And regardless, he couldn’t hit you.
I used to work at a sub shop that sounds somewhat like this. They just made shit up as they went along.
Don’t know what state you live in but I think you’re supposed to at least get a 15 minute break for every six hours you work. As for hitting you, I don’t know how you stayed after that. Me? I probably would have gotten fired, because I would have hit him back, and not stopped until someone pulled me off of him… but that’s just me.
In Kentucky you get a 30 minute break if you work at least 6 hours, and I think it gets bumped up to an hour if you work 8 hours. But I know that varies from state to state.
You were 14, what did your parents say about all this? Or did you tell them anything about the shittiness? My parents would’ve made me quit after not getting a break, but there would’ve been holy hell if I’d ever gotten hit by an employer.
i think you should sue him if too much time hasnt passed. between denying breaks, hitting you (was it in a joking way?), and the schedule thing, u might have a case. not that u have a right to take your birthday off, but if his religious views were a factor in firing u, that sounds prreetty unconstitutional. did u get unemployment? any lawyers out there pls school me if im off..
you’re off.
not by much, though. Good application of the 14th Amendment
If you’re 14, don’t you need a minor work permit because of your age? In my state you did…it meant you couldn’t work an 8-hour day…could only work about 5 hours a day, the idea being that you’d just done 8 hours in school.
it could have been summer?
Pretty sure you can’t get unemployment if you’ve been fired, or if you are a part-time employee. I may be wrong though.
umm you should’ve sued your boss for hitting you. they are not allowed to do that. i never had a boss who hit me, but a couple of my coworkers did. i should’ve pressed charges in them now that i think of it.
I’m going to venture a guess that based on the use of the words “dodgy” and “rostering” this young lady was not here in the U.S. Possibly Canada but more likely Britain. Either way if he hit you, the correct response would have been to punch him in the nards and call an attorney or barrister, depending on location of course.
We also use the term Dodgy a lot in Australia