A Season In Hell
I had a lot a bad jobs but the worst was working in an office with my bad boss. She had obviously no managerial experience but because she married into the family-run business, she got a high position immediately. I was desperate for a job near my home, which it was, tired of long commutes, so I quickly accepted it.
Right from beginning she was a horrible boss. She took sides and made snide comments, especially of a coworker she would catch looking at porn websites. “E was looking a naked men instead or working. Hehe,” she jokingly teased at our meetings before the store opened. The rest of us would stare at one another in WTF? fashion. Every morning was a different one, she would either snap or bitch at us randomly, or just start bitching from the get go. When we asked for our paychecks, since they were hardly ever on time, she would throw payroll papers at us and snap, “Well, you do the payroll then!” She would also inform us of her mensturation cycle, how much it hurt and that she was PMSing. Along with detailed accounts of her and her husband’s methods of making a baby through in vitro and others methods, it was all so nauseating. She would also moan and whine about how her husband made her move from Detroit, and how much she misses having girlfriends.
I avoided as much as I could because I needed the money and through lots of turnover, I had seven jobs: Front Desk Clerk, Receptionist, Warehouse Receiver, Trainer of New Employees, New Orientation Presenter, Sales Assistant and Merchandiser. I worked my butt off, and didn’t even have time to finish at the end of the day. She would turn off the light in the office room and when I would protest, she said unexpressively, “You’re still here?! Go home. Now.” Once she watched impassively as one mean girl kicked me on the butt while I was walking down the hall, laughing aloud when I tripped and stumbled.
Finally, I had enough and I told her that I couldn’t do everything. She said, “Well, what do I pay you for then?” I said she was unfair. She looked at me like I just called her the worst thing in the world. Like How Dare You, Peon?
I should’ve quit right then, but I REALLY needed the money. So stupidly I waited until she fired me, which was six months of this hell.
Porn chick was lucky she only got teased, in most work places she’d have gotten fired.
Yeah this lady sounds like a bitch, and it was unprofessional to call out someone for looking at porn, but really, who looks at porn at work?
yeah, you look at porn at work you are asking for that at least.
How in the hell did you last that long? I would have gladly taken a long commute over pretty much everything you mentioned in the second paragraph alone.
She was sad she had to leave Detroit? Boss had issues. (And this is assuming that when the boss said “Detroit” she meant the burbs.)
Yeah, you should have definitely gotten out while you could have. What did you end up getting fired for?
I don’t think that public humiliation in the manner described here is a bad punishment for someone who, from the sounds of it, was caught more than once looking at porn on company time and equipment. Better than getting outright fired. I don’t feel sorry for that person at all – shouldn’t be looking at the epitome of NSFW at work.
Otherwise, the boss sounds like a nightmare.
MMairead – The issue is that public humiliation is outdated and allows for the public to lose their individual responsibility for their actions. Suddenly everyone has the “right” to treat another like trash because they did something wrong and got caught. The public can look past their own abuses and guilt for doing the same while enjoying the pleasure of hurting another. Pretty fucked up when there are more effective ways to chastise someone for abusing company policy. The employee caught learned nothing and the manager wasn’t able to address a deeper issue.
But we live in a world where we don’t have to give a crap about anyone else so long as we are justified through our own petty means. No development of empathy because you aren’t encouraged to understand WHY your neighbor went wrong… instead your encouraged to judge and feel right, because woe be it that you can have compassion for that asshole who’s dog poops in your yard every other day.
Oh please, Meshell. Public humiliation is half of the justice system. It’s STIGMA. That’s the purpose of a criminal record – you crossed society, and now everyone who hires or runs a background check on you knows about it. Stigma, just public humiliation on another level. Yes, I’d agree that there were better ways to handle the culprit in this situation, but obviously the boss was not competent enough to find those. I didn’t say it was the best punishment, I said it wasn’t a bad one.
The employee learned nothing? Please, they’d have had to be utterly dense not to learn anything from that. A negative consequence resulted from an improper action – rats can learn from that, it’s operant conditioning at its simplest. And what deeper issue? It was an inappropriate use of company time and company equipment for personal pursuits not fit for the public.
And sorry, I’ll reserve my empathy for my classmate who slacked off on a joint project because his mother was ill, not some idiot wasting time on porn at work or the asshole letting his dog shit in my garden. Not everyone is worthy of empathy in all circumstances – some people act selfishly, stupidly, and to empathize with laziness and ignorance is allow it to happen. Really, what on earth could justify someone allowing his dog to defecate on someone else’s property and not taking the ten seconds to pick it up? That’s sheer inconsiderate laziness, not worthy of anyone’s empathy or compassion.
Ahem, well, let’s see: 1) Person who, for medical reasons, is unable to bend over and pick up the dog shit, and for whatever reason doesn’t have any friends/family that are able to take the dog out that time, for one. 2) The person is on a REALLY long walk and the dog has diarrhea so they ran out of bags; 3) they realized too late the bag has a big hole in the bottom of it; I could go on?
Point is, while I agree that we shouldn’t be so compassionate as to excuse ALL bad behavior, it’s kind of dangerous to make mass generalizations about a stranger’s motives for doing something…
Wow, she sounds like a bad boss, but it does also sound like your co-workers were nightmares as well, I mean looking at porn, kicking a co-worker, I don’t even want to think about all the other stuff that went on. She might have given up all hope!
It also sounds like she was trying, and failing sadly to make friends, but did not realise that her chatter was not right for the work place, you said she got given the top job with out the skills to deal. I am not defending her though, I mean we are all adults we should know how to talk to staff members, but the whole place sounds toxic
lol hi all I was the one who wrote this MVWJ story, and the girl who looked at porn during STILL works there, and I know this because my friend who works there and worked with me during this horrible job, said so. Right now I’m in a job that has a long commute, about 40 min without traffic, and I love it! The worst thing is that my friend says my ex boss still bad mouths me at work, like when something goes wrong, , “Oh, I guess [insert my name here] did it,” she’ll joke to whoevers standing around. Plus I dread running into her again since we live in the same small town because I think I’ll throw up from fear. She’s scary. LOL Cheers!