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.
I worked MVWJ back in 2006, in a call center for a well known pet medication company. The supervisors were intense and the popular season started shortly after I worked there. We had to be like robots, pitching every pop up script that appeared when taking orders. You were expected to be on the phones every second. If you logged in, literally, 30 seconds late you’d get a talking to. If you were in the bathroom “too long” you got a talking to, it was nuts. The higher ups actually had their dogs loose in the building so there were flea bites randomly, which management denied. They kept saying someone had gone through the building and it was clean so we were getting bites from our homes, even employees who didn’t have pets.
Every third Saturday there was an early morning, all-staff mandatory meeting, whether scheduled that day or not. You were not paid for coming, but in trouble if you missed it. They did points for missing days, being late, taking too long for issues, etc. and if you got so many you were fired. Turn over was so high that I’d constantly come in the morning and not be able to key in cause someone quit or was fired and they changed the door code. Then the woman next to me claimed she needed her home office chair for her back so they let her bring it in. That would be fine except she was a smoker and the chair smelled like a 20 year-old ashtray. It was so bad that it made me physically ill and I was a smoker at the time too.
The final straw came after seven months of being there. I have health issues so I was constantly ill and I ended up getting the flu. My boss pulled me aside and told me that I should have used the weekend to get better and gotten rest. I told him I’d spent the whole weekend inside and not out crazy. He then implied I could have managed to completely get over a severe flu in two days so I could have come in healthy on Monday. I pointed out if I could cure a flu in two days with my mind I’d be a millionaire and not working for them. I then packed my entire cubicle and never looked back.
MVWJ was my first full time job after I finished school. I took a year out before university to save some money and was rather excited when I was offered a job as a receptionist at a hotel/pub/restaurant. I learned within the first day that breaks were cigarette breaks reserved for the smokers and as I was the only non smoker working there I was expected to cover for those on breaks. I was also working shifts, so I would be working 10 hour days, six days a week for an £8000 salary with no breaks. At my interview I was told I’d be on the equivalent of £5 per hour. My maths is not perfect, but that does not add up to me.
I was given the same responsibilities as the duty managers, which included banking, having access to the expensive alcohol and clocking in and out the employees who had a wage rather than a salary. That was on top of the receptionist work, cleaning, waitressing, cooking and barmen roles. The manager had only been working there two weeks longer than me, but he was deeply unpopular and people started calling in sick. He had two “favourites,” one of which was me. This was not a good thing. I am not a fan of people invading my personal space, but he took it too far for me by constantly holding on to the back of my neck. One day Id had enough so as soon as he put his hand there I moved away jerkily from him and he asked if I had a sore neck. For an easy life I just said yes.
Off point slightly, the hotel was also haunted. I am normally quite a rational person when it comes to these sorts of things, but one day I was opening up. It was 5.30am, dark,and quiet. I stepped outside to open the main doors and when I walked back in the jukebox started playing. I was so scared I ran out the building and was late starting breakfast. This was just pure silliness but after all the stories my imagination overtook my sensible part of my brain. Another story I love telling is when a couple came in one night. I checked them in to their room. They came down a little later to get a drink in the pub and I served them. Later that night they came to reception to ask where they could get dinner as our restaurant was closed, so I gave them some directions to a nice restaurant in walking distance. The next morning they came down to breakfast and I was their waitress (and cook) and then I checked them out. They asked me quite seriously if I was the only person who worked there, which I found deeply amusing. They gave me a tip, but I was silly and asked the manager what we do with tips (in case we shared them) and I was told all tips go to the cleaning staff. Doh!
I only survived there two weeks. I turned up to work one day really ill. I was told on arrival that the manager would be late in and that all except one barman had called in sick. I closed the restaurant, sat shivering in reception and was constantly running to the bathroom to be ill. Finally the manager came in hours later and I told him I was really unwell. He asked me to try and stay longer and to come and get him if I’m still bad in a few hours, which seemed reasonable to me. I had been at work for five hours and could barely move when I finally called his office, but there was no reply. He had left to go to the pub down the road. All of my punters were telling me I shouldn’t be there, even the only other employee working. The next day I rang in and said I would not be returning (I didn’t have a contract after all). Turns out five people quit that week with me.
The thing that gets me the most though happened afterward. A few months later I met a friend in that pub. We were sat chatting and having a drink, when one of the employees saw me and ran over and said, “What are you doing in here, don’t you know you’re barred?” I asked why I was barred. Apparently the week I left £2000 worth of booze was stolen and this was blamed on me. I wonder why I never had a visit from the police then? I now have a lot of respect for people who work in the hospitality industry. It is not an easy job.
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.
