I was 16 years old, very naive, but extremely motivated and excited to get my first job. It was at a national pizza chain, but the store was new and everything seemed clean. People were mostly hired by word of mouth, so it was me, my three friends who were boys, the cool hiring manager, an assistant manager, approximately five 30-ish guys who all knew each other from high school and some other random girls. As a female, I was to answer phones, with occasional pizza making. Being located in a relatively affluent suburb of a major metropolitan suburb, the complaints were something else. Everything from yelling at me to make their pizza free because 30 minutes had passed (that had never been policy for said chain), yelling at me because their daughter was diabetic and had needed that pizza stat, to yelling at me because someone left a flyer on their door and it was against their exclusive neighborhood’s policy to do so. Yes, yell at a 16-year-old minimum wage employee because you had to pick up a piece of paper that she had nothing to do with.
As bad as the customers could be, what far outshined them in crappiness were the employees. Those 30-somethings? Turns out most of them liked younger girls, including my 16 year old self. I was hit on, told very gross stories (“I like it when my girl gets all sweaty during sex, so we just glide against another”) and mildly groped. I didn’t really worry about it, since one of my friends was usually working with me, though in hindsight I wonder how much I could have collected from a sexual harassment lawsuit (like I said, my first job, pretty naive). The cool manager was moved along to open other stores and the assistant manager took over. His wife and children decided to hangout in the front to keep him company. Cut to me wrangling toddlers away from 350 degree ovens. Every night until he quit (his job ended when one of the delivery drivers became enraged and threw a motorcycle helmet at the crowded pizza prep line. Delivery guy was arrested and I think ended up in a mental hospital for bipolar disorder).
The obese, always sweaty and acne-ridden new manager was on a power trip. I had been working there for six months, always showed up on time and only missed days when I was legitimately sick, but I was constantly yelled at by him for nothing in particular. All of my original friends had quit at this point, but loyalty pays off eventually, right? On a typically slow night I was getting slammed by phone call after phone call and at some point we were 10 pizzas in. Since I couldn’t find my fellow 16-year-old co-worker, I made the executive decision to go ahead and make the pizzas that were over time. The phone rang, but I was so busy I didn’t answer it. Five minutes later, my manager stormed out of the office, neck-vein bulging angry (as usual), to chew me out about not answering the call. Then my female co-worker sheepishly comes out of the manager’s office. Turns out she (a 16-year-old) was giving our thirty-something manager a blow job.
I wish I could say I stormed out, but I have too good a work ethic and just quit at the end of the day. Thankfully, every job since then has been exponentially better than the last.
MVWJ was as a server in a restaurant that sold soup, salads, sandwiches, and espresso. All of which were overpriced. A husband and wife team, who claimed to be very religious, owned the joint. They always looked down on all the staff for not being the same religion as they were. In the dining room, they would play three CDs on repeat all day. Those CDs were Kenny G’s Greatest Hits, Whale Songs (noises whales use to communicate), and Ocean Sounds (seagull noises).
Whenever the owners came in, they would make a total wreck of the place as they had no business or restaurant experience. They would have their four kids do their homework in the kitchen and bar, and complain about crazy things like the soup ladles being too big or employees not cutting the sandwiches “the right way.” They never came in without their kids and would scream at them and make them cry. One of their kids they had just adopted from Romania and he spoke almost no English. This was cause for frequent yelling and subsequent crying. I knew a few words of Romanian and would try to calm this kid down and I would get yelled at for that. They didn’t want “the help” speaking to their children.
They only employed two servers for the 50 tables and at noon, the other server would leave no matter what. Most of the time we weren’t that busy, but every Sunday, we had this huge group come in and every table was full. This always happened right after the other server left. It is impossible for one person to wait on 50 tables by themselves. The owners always refused to help at first, then after I put in all the orders, the family would just start taking food out at random to all the wrong tables. Then they would get mad at me for “mixing up the orders.”
I was young, so I was really trying to make this nightmare work for some reason. But I was fired, because one day some of the customers complained to me about the Whale Songs CD being played. Sympathizing with them, I went and relayed this sentiment to the owner (I had never before voiced my dislike of these terrible CDs) and he completely lost it. He screamed that he doesn’t like the CD either, he liked ACDC and Metallica but you couldn’t play those bands in a restaurant! And on and on for about five minutes. Then after he finally calmed down, he said to me, “You know what? This isn’t working. Don’t come back!” He opened the till, cashed out my tips and gave me my hourly wages in cash.
The restaurant was shut down in the next two months. I can’t imagine why.
My first summer of law school I was excited to work in the “real world” and found a job in a small firm managed by “H”. I took the job despite warnings from classmates he was an asshole, but by the end of the first week I realized their opinions of him were tame in comparison.
My first day he asked if I was “fucking stupid” when I professed ignorance on a relatively rare type of legal pleading. On my third day, he and an associate got into an argument which ended in him stabbing a pen through his computer screen. Sadly, that wasn’t the last of the histrionics and the next six months saw the death of two more monitors, one laptop, (which met its end after an attempt at being the first frisbee/laptop hybrid) at least three coffee mugs and my soul.*
Most of these tantrums occurred during daily meetings where he would criticize each clerk, paralegal, and associate on their billable hours from the day before. (Billable hours are hours that can be billed to a client, they are not hours worked). Although important to review, his rants on the length of our restroom and lunch breaks would stretch well into the morning, gobbling up workable hours. Of course this led to anger the next day for not billing enough hours (and down the spiral we go).
He rarely used deodorant and rarely changed clothes, even for meetings with clients or opposing counsel. Never without a big plug of brown tobacco stuffed in his lip, his spit cups were left everywhere. Rounding it out was his habit of urinating in the bushes outside the building and images of him spitting brown ropes of tobacco juice while peeing in the pyracanthas are seared into my retinas. Not surprisingly, his digestive system was also off. Although housebroken for this issue, he would spend quite a bit of time in the bathroom adjacent to my work station. Apparently a modest man while perched on the potty, he would sing country western songs to (unsuccessfully) mask him doing his “business”.
The last straw was the Christmas party. Ten minutes before the party, he had another tantrum, and chucked an incense burner full of lit (cone) incense across the room. The sparks were pretty but showered down on a set of completed exhibits for The Big Trial. After ensuring the Judge wouldn’t get a singed copy of Exhibit A, we dutifully stayed for lame games and forced cheer. I managed a little excitement when he pressed a small but thick envelope into my hand. Unfortunately, the card contained no cash, no words of thanks, but a $5.00 gift card to Carl’s Junior.** I quit shortly after the new year. The sad thing is he honestly seemed surprised when I gave my two weeks notice.
* Who am I kidding, I sold my soul when I entered law school. As well as the soul of my first born, but that’s to the Federal Gov’t for student loans and is better covered on MyVeryWorstDebt.com.
** I was hoping to use a Christmas bonus to buy back part of my soul but I was informed the devil doesn’t take gift cards.
When I was fifteen, I started working at a big chain grocery store as a cashier. I continued to work there until I left for college. When I came back home on my first summer break, I was willing to work at the same store, but wanted something that would pay a little more. There was a job opening in the produce department, preparing items for the salad bar, chopping fruits and vegetables for prepared platters, etc. I was told I’d work about 30 hours a week, which was great and just the right amount of time for a summer job.
What I wasn’t told was that the very particular, very demanding woman training me (Donna) would be taking a three week vacation just days after I started “training.” With very little training to go on, I suddenly found myself at work starting at 5 a.m. six days a week. I was left to manage the department (imagine being 18-years-old and left in charge of seasoned veterans who has been working at this store for 20+ years). I was responsible for checking inventory, accepting deliveries off trucks and having to painstakingly go through truckfulls of pre-prepared food for the salad bar, getting it up and ready before the lunch rush and dealing with insanely demanding customers all day long. I did the best I could to maintain, and thought I did a damn fine job for having so little training.
I had one of my few days off on Donna’s first day back. I came into work the next day, I found a three page long, hand-written, aggressively threatening note outlining everything I did wrong and why I should be ashamed. I went to the store manager’s office and said I could no longer continue to work for Donna. The manager reassigned me to a new department. When Donna heard about this, she found me in the new department, dragged me out by my shirt, and told me we needed to talk. The store manager luckily intercepted her. I took off my work shirt and immediately left the store, never to return.
Proving karma does exist, I recently learned that Donna was fired for embezzling. It was a good feeling.
I was employed at My Very Worst Job when I was 18 and finishing up high school and going off to college. I was hired at a large, well known daycare as a float, which basically means that whatever classroom they needed me in, I would go and help out. So I’d work during people’s breaks, filling in for sick teachers, helping out at lunch or nap time or when things were just really crazy. I worked 10 hour days, usually without breaks, sometimes with only half hour lunches. They let other teachers go home early and made me stay late and miss class. They had me closing the center with the assistant director since the first month I worked there, which is illegal in the state I live in because you have to work in a certified center for a year before you can be alone with children. The assistant was always running off to Starbucks or holed up in her office on the phone, leaving me with the kids.
We were also always over ratio in our classrooms with more kids then we could handle (also illegal). The management did shitty things like making teachers work even when they were throwing up sick, leaving the center to go smoke in their cars (there was supposed to be management in the center at all times in case of emergency) and just generally making everyone so miserable we were all looking for new jobs. When they found out someone wanted to leave they either made up an excuse to fire them (child abuse, insubordination, taking too many sick days, etc) or made them so miserable they quit without another job lined up. I was one of those people, I quit before they could fire me and am now happily working somewhere else. I also just found out this week that both directors were fired for forging paperwork for licensing requirements!
