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.

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.

Day 1 as a new hiree at a landscaping job, I excitedly head out the door. B, my new boss, calls literally just as I am headed out the door and cancels the workday.

Day 2: I drive the 30 min to work only to find today’s workday also to be cancelled.

Third try is a charm and I work 10 hour days 6 days straight. Upon return from the long weekend I find three new high school  hires, including a real-life Barbie. Shockingly, after 10 hours of work in the hot sun Barbie does not return for a second day of torture to her fake nails. The other two new hires are fired the next day for making honest mistakes made as a result of a lack of training. As the sole employee now, I am told I can work whichever schedule I desire. By the end of the day, however, B has managed to change the schedule a half dozen times before finally implementing a schedule whereby tomorrow – a previously scheduled day off (for which I had made plans that B was aware of) – is now a mandatory full day.  The following day at 8:23 AM, B calls to cancel the workday.

During the course of my employment, I am yelled at and treated in a demeaning manner, often enduring undeserved and irrelevant rants and of course an erratic schedule that seems to change as often as the weather in our area (hint: every five minutes). I am expected to work 10-hour days in the sweltering heat without break even for food or drink, and B strongly suggests I pee in a bottle, as he does, in the back of the trailer (I am a woman). He places said bottle in the cooler next to my Gatorade. Then came the day B ignorantly drove 1,000lbs+ of mulch-filled trailer over my foot without so much as an apology or offer to take me to a hospital. I tough out the remainder of the day without complaint, despite being unable to bear weight on said foot.

I work long and hard for B despite all the above because a) as a university student I am desperate for the work and b) I am a really hard and proud worker who does not give up easy.

The last straw though was when pay day rolled around and my cheque was missing hours. I worked for B for a month and was one of his longest-working employees. Later I discovered that he owed at least two former employees thousands of dollars in hours and equipment; those employees recounted similar stories to mine (down to the pee bottle stored next to their lunch and drinks).

MVWJ was at a YMCA working at the pool. I got this job right out of college thinking it would be a great in-between gig. I had been working at pools off and on throughout high school and college, teaching and lifeguarding. The boss hired me and the summer went by with relative ease until my boss decided to give me five days of 5am opening shifts and then quit. Since the pool was way understaffed and the head of the place didn’t have time to find anyone eles this meant I was the sole guard for seven hours. I had to keep a constant eye on the pool to make sure that no one drowned. This meant no eating, drinking, bathroom breaks or being able to have any sort of downtime. I started letting an unqualified co-worker watch the pool for less than 20 minuets so that I could eat and go to the bathroom. Then my boss told me she didn’t think I was working as much as I said I was. I told her I quit because I was so insulted and run down. She quickly backed off and begged me to stay telling me when they found a new manger things would get better.

Like a fool I stayed and soon after I got extremely sick. Since I was the only guard the pool would be closed until the high schoolers got off classes. The members were pissed and I would get constant calls asking if I could come in. Since I was bedridden and the Board of Health wouldn’t let me the answer was no, but they called everyday for two weeks. When I finally got back they had hired a new boss, who had no sympathy for how I had been over worked for months. So he had me work pretty much the exact same way except I got a 15 minute break after four hours of constantly supervising a pool where the deck temperature was 88 degrees. Whenever they could find someone to work with me they were either crazy or never showed up on time. One 40 year-old guy who worked there wouldn’t stop talking about my body. My boss finally talked to him and then he started acting aggressively angry towards me. A few days later he chased a supervisor of mine around threatening to hit him.

Another co-worker of mine who was a 45 year-old mom (I was 22) gave me the biggest overshare of my life. She out of the blue told me she went to an amusement park with two tampons in. Then she told me they got dislodged on the roller coaster and the she had to stand pantsless in a public bathroom while washing her shorts. I dont think my horrified expression went unnoticed, but it didn’t phase her at all. Finally, I decided to go get a lower paying job and regain my sanity and it worked. To this day I can’t believe how they treated me or why I worked there for so long.

MVWJ is my current job, working for a dry cleaners, which is a supposed promotion from my last job at another location. When I first started I soon realized how much work this place was going to be (and the employees were not much better). The managers asked me to point out what was wrong with the store so they could improve since the store was in danger of closing. Apparently this didn’t sit well with D who has been here since the store opened, close to 20 years, and she did everything in her power to blame me for her mistakes and if I did make any D made sure everyone knew. Keep in mind I am less than half her age. Also the other employees feed on drama and love to pick on the new girl. I put up with everything and settled on ignoring everyone around me, eventually she stopped acting like a 15 year-old and got over her grudge. Then her son, who also worked there, began acting like a fool.

He hits on every girl who walks into the store and actually believes they like him (I’m sure they only responded to get a discount). He’s disrespectful to everyone and talks about sex in front of customers and even told some of the older women he had something “special” for him in his pants (I’m keeping it clean). Aside from obnoxious comments, he always arrives late and everyone suspects him of stealing. I brought up his getting fired to my managers and one was completely against it. Later I found out she (who is married and “in love”) was having an affair with this illegitimate want-to-be-gangster/father of two, who didn’t even own a car! And who was also sleeping with one of the pressers who is also married. This just outright disgusted me but, I ignored it since it’s not my business, that is until this disgusting fool was trying to hit on me! Obviously I said no. He in return told that same bimbo manager that I did nothing, even though I worked the most, he always complained and always talked bad to me and about me.

I had enough when he started talking bad about Hispanics and called himself Spanish (even though he’s obviously black mixed with white). I’m Mexican and if anyone knows anything about history they know that the Spaniards colonized Mexico and on top of that my grandparents are direct Spaniards, even my last name is Spanish. So when I told him that if he went back to school and earned and education maybe he would have some right to speak about others and if he didn’t like Mexicans maybe he should get out of Texas. Usually I wouldn’t say anything like that to anyone, but insulting me is one thing that I can ignore, but insulting a race whether is mine or not really gets under my skin. Call me politically correct. I never thought I could work at such a horrible place, but you have to take what you get while you’re a college student.

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.

My Very Worst Job has to be when I worked for a steak house at 17.

In the state in which I was working it was illegal for me to bring alcohol to a table. I was the only server there under the age of 19 (the legal serving age) so the other servers were not too happy to have to “do my job for me” as they put it. The assistant manager was a haggard old bitch who marched around the place like she owned it, and reprimanded me for every little thing she thought might be a mistake. She would stand at the window in the back while food was coming out and take things off customer’s plates and eat it, which was disgusting. She also suggested to me that I should just bring out the alcohol to the tables myself although I refused. I told my parents what was going on, and they told me I should quit if I was unhappy, but the customers were all really nice, and I was making good tips so I thought I could stick it out until I left for college at the end of the school year. Boy was I wrong.

I knew there was a lot of racism in the city where I lived. I am half Puerto Rican, but have blue eyes and lighter skin. The customers just assumed I was white, but the staff knew I was not as my last name was very Hispanic sounding. The day the shit hit the proverbial fan, the assistant manager was working, it was a Friday night and very busy. I had a huge section as some of the servers had called in due to a big snow storm (in the area in which I lived, snow storms are generally no big deal unless you lived far out of the city). The tables were full and I was running in and out of the back with food, and drinks for each of my tables as quickly as I could.

I had just picked up a huge tray full of coffee and various drinks for one of my tables and headed out the door to the dining room, when the assistant manager stepped right in front of me. I stopped but the drinks kept going. All over the nearest customer’s coat and shirt. I had actually tipped the tray in a way that the coffee spilled on me and not them, so in a way that was good. I was so embarrassed. I immediately apologized and got towels to clean up the mess, not realizing at the time how badly my arm was scalded. The assistant manager actually grabbed me by the arm (right on my burn) and dragged me to the back to reprimand me for “getting in her way” and “costing the restaurant money.” She then proceeded to call me a “stupid spick” and told me they should never have hired me, knowing I was inevitably going to run all their business out by hiring someone “who obviously didn’t know how to treat white people with the proper respect.” I was horrified, and I’d had enough. I told her to she could take her racist ass right to hell, and walked out of the place never to return.

I actually talked with a lawyer about what had happened, but not long after I left, they went out of business and never reopened.

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.

MVWD was a volunteer stint I did at a kid’s museum, which offered to let me come in for free whenever I wanted in exchange for helping out one day a week. My first day on the job went pretty well, compared to what was to come. The manager’s daughter was there all day, as I was told she would be every day. She was about four years younger than me, petite, and an absolute demon. Her mother had apparently told her I was allergic to peanuts, so she made an allergy joke I found offensive. I asked her to knock it off, she did so. Until next time.

Firstly, the door was locked when I got there (ten minutes late) so I went around back and got in through the fire escape. My boss and her little demon spawn finally showed up, and I was ordered to go scrub the fishtanks. The devil child tagged along to explain in detail exactly how much I was missing out on, not being able to eat peanut butter. Then I was sent to work the register for a while, with the devil child hot on my tail. She introduced me to customers as “The employee who can’t have nuts, so pity her.”

When I was told to go vacuum inside the maze I thought for sure she wouldn’t follow me. Unfortunately, she knew the maze by heart, got me totally lost in it, and proceeded to quite literally run circles around me, happily chanting “peanut butter” over and over. At the end of my shift I complained to her mother, who promised to have a word with the girl.

On my third day, the demon was home with the baby sitter and I thought maybe I could actually get some work done. My boss asked for some help moving a table; one of the legs collapsed and she was so surprised she dropped her end. The whole thing fell on me and bruised my leg so badly it could still be seen two weeks later. I resigned on the spot.

My Very Worst Job was at a copier company when I was 20. My boyfriend and I were a bit poor back then, so I didn’t have much in the way of proper business attire. As such, I showed up for the interview in a sundress. The two brothers who owned the place barely asked me anything and then hired me on the spot.

I was the office manager, answering phones, taking complaints from customers (of which there were several) and trying to appease them, typing, filing, interacting with the techs and doing their accounts payable and receivable. I was also forced to call the customers and harass them when their payments were late.

The accounts almost never balanced. And we’re not talking a few dollars here and there; they would be missing thousands at a time. Thinking I might be making a mistake at first, I would check and double check my work, but the results were always the same. Luckily I had no actual access to the money itself so no one could blame me, but I was still afraid of the wrath of the younger brother (who we’ll get to in a bit).

Much of the time, I was left completely alone. The techs would be out in the field, and the two brothers were out doing god knows what. They were rather lazy and didn’t seem to understand how to run a business. When the older of the two did come in (which was more often than the younger) he would tell me stories about stealing his wife’s credit card and racking up charges on it at brothels in Vegas where he would sleep with other women. When I expressed my disgust, he acted like he couldn’t understand what was wrong with that. Once he brought in a porn CD and sat there watching it right in front of me on my own computer. At one point he asked me why I never wore sundresses to the office anymore and admitted it was the reason they hired me.

The younger brother was even worse. He was a total pig regarding women as well, and an a-hole besides. He made it clear that I wasn’t allowed to do anything at all in the office besides my exact work (not even Solitaire or something to pass the time), despite the fact that on most days I would finish my job duties in an hour or two and have no one to even talk to. Whenever his fiancé would call, he would yell all sorts of rude things at her and cuss her out and tell her to stop bothering him. When he hung up, he would call her names and make fun of her.

Despite the fact that he was almost never in the office, when he DID make it in, he would strut around like he was God’s gift to the world and try his best to be intimidating. He liked to stand right behind me and stare over my shoulder as I worked (and criticize and nitpick whenever he could). He would get into rages and yell all the time and put me down. He also made a way bigger deal about the accounts receivable discrepancy than his brother. All while sniffing continually as if he had a perpetually runny nose.

Things got so bad that I would cry every morning when I woke up, just knowing that I had to go back to that place. There was a huge turnover because the techs would get fed up and leave. The younger brother took a liking to one tech, S, who started later than many of the others. S got tons of special treatment, and instead of working, he spent most of his time hanging out with the younger brother doing god knows what away from the office. Eventually, S came in one day when no one else was around and told me what was really going on. It turned out he actually couldn’t stand the younger brother who had been stealing tons of money from the company to support his cocaine habit. That explained the missing money and the constant sniffling.

Right after that, I searched extra hard and found a great job to go to. I gave them only one week’s notice, and they were lucky to have gotten that.