Welcome to Tales from the Job!

hi all. this is my first post here, but i wanted to share this story as a way of venting and also just sharing a creepy encounter with one of the worst patients i have ever had.

i work at a psychiatric hospital, and i am too lazy to make a throwaway, so i have to tread extremely lightly here. however, as an intake clinician, i come into contact with most of the patients that we accept. in my role, i also do the initial "screening" to see if a patient is fit or not for our hospital and staff with the doctor if it's a toss up.

this referral i received was a creep. however, i have to staff if there's any doubt. this guy was arrested in one county for masturbating and urinating in front of a young girl in public. obviously fucking gross. however, when these people have mental issues... well, we're supposed to help them.

the patient was transported to a different county to a hospital when the police realized he was mentally impaired, likely in psychosis. the hospital was... eager to get rid of him. they sent us his referral, and he was a john doe with no identifying information on him and refused to give any info, blood, urine, etc.

i was, VEHEMENTLY (i think that's the right use?), did NOT want this patient. however, this was at my old hospital, and to decline you had to have the doctors' permission (luckily, at my new job, i can decline on my own). but, for some reason, the doctor accepted. amazing!

by the time the patient arrived, my shift was over, so i was not there to do his intake. instead, one of my coworkers did so i went home. well, i clocked in the next day, and i asked how the patient was doing but apparently he had been sleeping all day.

about two hours into my shift, we had a code green on his unit, which is a patient acting out. so, i sprint back to the unit (since i work in intake) and of course, it's the guy. he had a patient in a headlock, the patient passed out, and it took seven, yes SEVEN, staff members to subdue the 6'4", 300 pound man. in the process, he injured two staff members.

once we got him on the ground and in a restraint, we had to give him three emergency shots to subdue him. a normal person takes one, MAYBE two (don't worry it was still a non-lethal or non-harming dose due to his size). we called police who then called EMS.

EMS gave him a different shot to help with sedation, then we got him on the gurney and he was going to be transported to the hospital. there was only one problem. we didn't get to discharge john doe, so he was still our patient, meaning that someone had to go with the hospital with him.

and, you guessed it, i was the lucky winner. so i'm prepping to take my stuff and go to the hospital, and one of the unit nurses grabs me and says "have they told you?" and i'm like... "girl what do you mean..." and she was like "what they found on him during his strip search" (we have to search all patients before they go to the unit)... and i felt the pit in my stomach drop.

she says, with the most terrified face: "a slab of raw bacon, a child's dinosaur toy, a little girl's hat, and seven pairs of bloody women's underwear, sizes xs to xxl". i knew something was wrong, but at that point, i had to go with the patient to the hospital.

at the hospital, i told the ER doctor everything i knew, including what was found on him. she was visibly disturbed, as was i. when they put him in an ED bed, there was so many bugs crawling all over him. the police there wanted nothing to do with him and what was found on him, and they told me that it was out of their jurisdiction and i'd have to reach out to the original county he was arrested in.

great! so at this point, it's 3am, 3 hours after my shift should have ended. so, i go home and get some sleep. in the morning, i call the original county's sheriffs office, and they flat out say they won't help and it's not their problem. cool. so i call our county's, again, and they maintain that they won't help. AWESOME!

so i decide i've had enough, i tell off the cops and immediately call the state sheriff. he immediately recognizes how horrible this could be, and he asks me to meet him at the hospital in 30 minutes. i agree, and i meet him there. the john doe eyes us down the entire time we try to get answers and tells us "you'll regret this."

so obviously i'm a bit freaked out but need to do what is right. so i cooperate with the investigation and provide everything i can. the officer goes through the belongings found, takes it as evidence, and goes back to his office to investigate.

two days later, the police tells me his name. turns out he was from another state, he was a federal sex offender, and is now wanted for murder. since he crossed state lines, fbi was now involved as well.

for what i know, he is now imprisoned while awaiting trial. but this is why now i do not even provide my real name to these patients. you never know who they are.

Just found this sub and these stories are wild. Mine is nothing too crazy, but was a pretty classic case of out of touch managers and the stupid stuff hourly employees have to put up with at times.

This happened several years ago when I was taking some time off between finishing my undergraduate degree and starting a graduate program. There was about a year gap where I needed some income before I returned to school. I wasn’t expecting to make that much, but just needed enough to hold me over. It was also temporary. So I applied and was hired for a company in the US who I won’t name, but I’ll just say they were retail and growing fast. It was a barely over minimum wage, hourly position but they said they could give me 40 hours a week no problem, so it would be enough. They were opening a new storefront and were hiring staff for that location. Until it opened, we would be working and training at this other location. The training store already had their own full staff so there were way too many of us at that place. Honestly, it was off-putting for customers to come in and there were 10 of us on the sales floor greeting them. After a few weeks it was clear there wasn’t enough space or work to keep us all occupied.

I’m not sure if they just had poor planning or if there was a delay, but either way the new storefront wasn’t opening yet so all the new staff that had been hired got moved to a different location that worked more with inventory than sales. I ended up doing  completely different job than I was hired for, but I didn’t care because it was a temporary job for me. Honestly, the job was kind of fun at times.

What I did care about was the cut in hours. They were paying a full staff that didn’t have a store to work in so they were cutting hours as much as they could. This went on for months with them continuously assuring us that it would all pick up. I was frustrated though because they assured me in the interview it would be no problem to give me full-time hours.

The best part was this after-hours mandatory meeting that we all had to go to. It featured some of the toxic workplace classics such as:

1.        “We are all a family here. So we need to work together and support each other while we are launching this new store which, by the way, is such a great opportunity for you all!”

2.        “Don’t discuss your hours or salary with anyone else. That’s not allowed.” (Pretty sure they cannot legally enforce this in the US).

3.        “That concern needs to be addressed directly with me (the manager) and not in a public forum.” (It was a legitimate concern that all of us had and they are the ones who insisted on the public forum in the first place).

The best part was when they acknowledged we weren’t getting the hours we were promised so if we needed to get a second job then “we will completely support you in that.”

Just so happens I stumbled on another job at a local café that was desperate for help. They paid about the same and guaranteed 40 hours. They were also much closer to my house, so less of a commute. They were a bit of a disaster as a business but they were nice to me and it didn’t affect my ability to do my job, so it was a chill gig. They kept their promise and gave me full-time hours all the way up until I left to go back to school.

When I told my manager from the first job that I was leaving to take this other job, she was so offended. I think she was mad because they had hired this whole staff for the store and I was about the third or fourth person out of eight to leave (almost all because of lack of hours) so they would need to start hiring again. She was ranting about how the store would open so soon and they had big plans for me to start doing more just next week. Funny enough, no one had mentioned these important plans for me before that conversation. She was also going on about how if I needed more hours I should have brought it up and I never talked to her about this. I told her I did talk to my immediate boss both individually and at that meeting who, if she remembers, encouraged us to get a another job if we needed it. So I did!

I gave her two weeks’ notice but she was so mad she just had me leave after that shift. Fine with me! My new job wanted me to start right away anyway. It was actually an interesting year where I learned several random skills that has nothing to do with my current field of work but was fun to learn!

When I first started working there I was part time and taking the bus.

The way this place worked with the schedule is that it was made 3 weeks in advanced automatically, wherever it worked, disregarding your availability.

The HR's job is adjust it to match your availability.

I remember with every new schedule everyone in my department had to meet up to trade shifts and get managers to sign off on it because our availability wasn't being respected.

I asked twice to not be scheduled too early on weekends because the bus doesn't start running until late morning.

Both times I was magically only scheduled that day at that time for the next 3 weeks.

She even went out of her way to tell a manager that someone was trying to "get away with" using 2 weeks of vacation time all at once to which the manager said "so?". The guy who requested 2 weeks off found out, confronted her and made her cry.

She also had several strokes so sometimes she wasn't all the way there if you know what I mean.

I love this forum and dealing with some crazy shit myself as I've bounced around to number of different jobs in my young professional life has inspired me to create a channel. Looking for people to hop on a call and chat about a story you would post in here. Im in the early stages, lining up phone calls, talking to people of all shapes and sizes. Im not gonna interrogate you, I'm looking to have a normal chat as if we were sitting across the table sipping a beer. I think telling these stories through your voice is a more impactful way to get the message across. Based out of the US. Message me here on reddit or send me an email at randomjobsbydave@gmail.com. Thanks for reading! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEduVkwzank

I want to feel him bad and express that I am deeply offended without telling him anything about it, "My boss called me during a discussion, but unfortunately, I couldn't answer his question because I was distracted. My other boss had been messaging me, asking me to do another urgent task. After our meeting, he told everyone that they were all smart except for me. I was deeply offended by his comment. And feel so humiliated. What do you think I need to do?

So I'm going to apologize now Don't know if this is the right sub and I know this is going to get kind of rambly and while I've read it don't know if I got All the spelling mistakes because this is long and I am lazy and I'm using speech to text so thanks for reading I guess also (cough Pizza Hut cough)

so I work for a pizza joint That's been on the slow decline for years yeeeeeeears It has recently declared bankruptcy but our restaurant in particular is like a cockroach It stays alive through I am assuming at this point bribing the health inspector and not using outside of company auditors

I've only been here for a year and I am a manager and I've got two weeks left before I quit for greener pastures so to speak

But the amount of things in this restaurant that are broken covered in mold need to be fixed repaired or just leaking is kind of insane we're straight up with s*** hole and our name rhymes with jabba's Hut

If you look back in my post history you can read all about our previous general manager who is just s*** on the shingle our newest general manager she's fabulous she takes everybody's schedule into account she doesn't go she talks things through if it weren't for her I probably would have left a lot sooner

But there have been many instances for this restaurant should have been put out of business but we're still here out of the three refrigerators that we are allowed to have two of them haven't worked in over a year we don't put food in them anymore we have one fridge that stores everything if it goes out well sucks for us I guess

I've got one freezer out of two that doesn't stay to 10 half the time just to have to be frozen but nine times out of 10 things are fine My oven only half works there should be two separate ovens in one so you can make multiple pizzas at once only one half of it stays to temp All of this has been requested multiple fixes in the year I've worked here no one's ever come to fix it

The fan in our fridge leaks and there is a mold growing along both sides and covering the fan when the health inspector looked at it he essentially just went That's an acceptable amount of mold it'll be fine I don't eat at this restaurant I refuse I'd like life and I don't want to die

Our oven has died twice this past week our district manager has managed to Jerry rig it to work every time I'm honestly very surprised it hasn't exploded yet

I've received an eviction notice for this restaurant four times in the last 3 months alone I'm currently waiting out this eviction notice

But they will probably bribe and or have pay the landlord at the last minute like they always do

They are only two managers right now me and my general manager we both work everyday no breaks this is week 5 of not having a single day off she's not allowed to have a day off neither am I and neither of us are allowed overtime despite the fact that we're the only two managers

My general manager now is currently in the process of stepping down back to shift manager cuz she does not want to have to deal with what the higher ups are putting her through on the regular basis she gets yelled at if we put anything on outage which for those who don't know means weave hunting to the computer an item that we've run out of so that you can't order it

Our district manager doesn't like it when we do that because we we and I quote need to have sales they don't like it when we turn the times up but far too often if I don't I'll have a six people waiting for their food here in a restaurant that I don't have a lobby for or the chairs for and then they get busy that they have to wait but I'm the one that has to hear about it

It seems like absolutely anything that would put this damn restaurant out of business is just magically fixed but not really everything still covered in mold everything's still broken I highly recommend that you don't eat here but if you do and you do order for me I have to serve you they won't let me say no they won't let me cancel orders and I've completely checked out the last two weeks I'm here ya know unless landlord actually goes through with the eviction notice but this is like the fourth or fifth time she's done this so I don't think she will

And since our general manager is stepping down our new general manager starts sometime on the 12th

but I've got a bet with my manager that he either fails right quick or he tries to sign all the other managers closing because he's already stated he doesn't want to work weekends and he doesn't want to do anything except 9:00 to fives except as general manager you have to work weekends and you can't just open and I'm not going to argue with him at this point I've got two different weddings in the next 3 weeks and a birthday party for my brother

none of this I willing to miss I've got money on this fight the fact it's been requested off for months and that schedule for at least this weekend has been made He's going to schedule us to close regardless and I'm at the point where it's not worth the argument I'm just going to quit early if he does it's not worth it to me to argument when I get to leave in 2 weeks All it would mean me is rather than having a half a month off to decompress and have a break before the new job is I'd get a month and a half and I'm okay with that

I was recently hired at a casino as, what I was told would be Tech Support. If it was anything like jobs I'd had in the past, I would be working with a system and waiting for dispatch to tell me what machines need fixing. Little interface and I can use my computer science background to a reslasonsble degree.

Alas I was a glorified cashier, paying out jackpots.

This was never something I was going to be good at, I repeatedly told the hiring managers that I had no experience handling money and that doing so would likely lead to accidents. They said not to worry and as I started today, the first thing I was asked to do was to pay out a jackpot of a couple hundred dollars. This quickly upset me, And I asked the manager if I was in the proper department for what I'd been hired for. I was told yes and tried to make the best of it. I awkwardly worked with the other cashier's and went around delivering payouts.

A wide area progressive had worked its way above 250,000 dollars and I was told to run the paperwork, cash it out and deliver it on my own.

I have worked here for a total of 2 and half hours by this point and done maybe 3 deliveries of a couple hundred dollars.

I stared at my handler and they said to go for it.

I set it up and the patron who had won the jackpot came back to the security section where I was pulling the money out in stacks. I asked him to wait by the rewards area and he proceeded to grab one of the stacks of cash. Security removed it from his possession and asked him the same thing I did.

The money finished and as I walked it through the gate, dumped the entire bag onto the floor.

My handler told me to leave and that I was fired.

It's been 3 years since my previous job. I've been a stay at home dad living by the grace of people in my life, housing covered by my parents with food and other necessities coming from donations and food pantries. I make a couple hundred dollars doing nerd shit for my friends but I need more to get ahead of a few things in life and provide more for my son.

So another story from camp, the same year.

We have Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) staff, who are kids paid by the city to work limited hours, rather than the org paying them. They're placed at workplaces across the city to help them get work experience, make some pocket money, and stay off the streets during the summer. It's a good program, but the kids you get working for you are really hit or miss. Last year our SYEPs were great! They were really active with the kids and were actually doing their jobs 50% of the time, which is pretty good for SYEP! They year before, though the SYEP were terrible.

We had one boy that I'll call T. T was maybe 15 or 16, a kind of small kid for his age (5'4' and under). Clearly didn't want to be working with little kids, rolled his eyes at our procedures and didn't want to do the "cringe camp things". Par for the course, whatever, he's a body and a set of eyes. He wasn't great at doing the job, but we weren't on their asses about being good group leaders like we were our actual staff.

I started to have a problem with the kid when he started picking on the little boys. At first it was almost brotherly, just playful teasing back and forth. The kids liked him. But T didn't know when to stop, and I had to correct him on his language and remind him of their age and what was appropriate talk (he was placed with ages 3-6). Eventually, he started to upset the kids. Things like not playing ball at their level and being a sore winner, or calling them "harmless" names they didn't like.

What really crossed the line for me was one morning when I was travelling with his group. First, he took a hat form a little boy and held it out of reach, laughing as the boy struggled to try and get it. I took the hat from him, gave it back to the kid, and pulled him aside for a stern talking to about not being a bully. He didn't take me seriously (I wasn't "his boss") and just nodded along and returned to the group. I was already pissed about this, but kept my cool and gave him another chance.

A bit of time passed, and he was playing ball with some boys. He kept feinting this little kid, maybe age 5, and not letting him get the ball. The kid was about the bust into tears, when T had to throw in "You SUCK at this!"

I lost it. I got on the phone, called his most powerful direct supervisor, and told him I needed him ASAP. When he got there, I briefed him on the history with T's escalating bullying behavior, how we'd tried to address it, and on what had just happened. The supervisor was just as pissed as I was, and we pulled him aside.

We played a bit of good cop bad cop, with me being bad cop. I looked T in the eyes after a bit of reaming, and said to him:

"You don't need to tell me what it is, but have you ever had an adult say something to you as a child that fucked you up mentally? Like they didn't mean it to, but it stuck with you, and it still plays in your head today?"

His face instantly dropped, and he couldn't look me in the eye. I had struck a nerve. "That's what you're being to that little boy right now. That little boy hears "You Suck" and thinks he is a bad person. You're being a bully to babies." I looked to his supervisor and asked "Do I have permission to send him home if this happens again?"

Supervisor looked at me and said "You have permission to send him home permanently if this happens again. We all on the same page?" He looks at T, who sheepishly nods. We send him back to the group, and me and the supervisor debrief and have a chat.

T wasn't much of a problem for the rest of the year. Didn't do his job, but also kept his behavior in check and was easier to corral.

TLDR at the end.

I (23 at the time) worked for two years as management for a non-profit summer camp situated in an upper-class NYC neighborhood. So affluent that I worked with at least one celebrity's kids. This story is from my first year as management, but not my first year with the camp. We worked with ages 3-10 at the time, so parent conversations about behavior and accidents were daily. Most parents were great, but that year especially we had a few crazy Karens (stories for another day).

One of the standards of the camp is that only management handles parent interactions beyond day to day updates and greetings. Anything behavioral, anything serious, anything not positive was handled by on-site management. We didn't trust our staff to handle sensitive parent conversations, and for good reason.

One of our new staff was a very headstrong and stereotypically "ghetto" black girl around age 19/20 that I'll call S. Now, I only mention her race and her being "ghetto" because of her complete inability to code switch when this kind of professional childcare setting. Her attitude and combativeness often caused rifts in the site and kids and parents alike had issues with her approach.

Now, S was often combative with the kids at first and often returned attitude to the little kids instead of diffusing the situation. She'd let us know that a child in her group that I'll call A, aged 6 or 7, was having a lot of behavior issues, which was a little out of character for her. It was all fairly minor stuff, like taking things from other kids and attention seeking behavior like tantrums. Pretty normal for a 6 year old, easily handled. Being herself, S would scold A and felt like she was constantly telling her off and that it was becoming a problem.

Rather than bringing that particular day's issues to the management team, S decided to confront the mother herself. We didn't notice they were even talking until her and the mom were shouting at each other and S was calling the mom a racist. Management quickly intervened and separated them, trying to figure out what happened and smooth things over with mom.

S thought it was a good idea to go to mom and tell her how terrible her child was and how disruptive she was and how the mom needed to talk to her kid about acting right. Mom, of course, having not heard about any behavior problems yet, was very taken aback and offended, and started to defend her kid (who really was a good kid 80% of the time). S, like always, returned the energy and attitude. Things escalated and S decided mom was being rude to her because she was black. Did mom say anything racist? No, just had an attitude with S. S is ranting and raving about how "this Karen can't talk to her like that" in front of other parents, kids, and staff. We talked to mom about how yes, there was some minor behavior challenges going on and we had planned to talk to her but S got to her first.

Turns out, A's dad had fucking died a month earlier from Covid and the family was facing bankruptcy and foreclosure. A wasn't handling it well, and mom was all on her own as the rest of her family was in Australia. We had no idea. A had never mentioned her dad dying, or her dad at all really. The minor behavior problems were her processing her grief.

Needless to say, S got a stern talking to, mom got a heartfelt apology, and we changed our approach for A. A finished out the summer happy and with minimal behavior, and I became the point person for helping that family. S learned form her mistakes, and slowly became more professional. The next year, she was one of our star staff members.

TLDR: Staff member decided to confront a "Karen" mom about her "bad kid"... with an attitude. We have to separate them and then find out the kid's dad had just died and the family was losing their house, explaining the minor behavior issues.

Every morning at 10:00 AM used to come a baker into the boss office to bring the bread and pizza/sweets or specialties to him. One Summer morning the Baker came and bring a Classic that boss likes most: the bacon bread. He started eating like a child, filling his mouth till he can't put anything more inside and making a mess everywhere.. 😅 At that precise Moment, the Company partner enters the office, all sweaty (it was a very humid and hot summer morning), looks at the air conditioner which was shooting freezing air on his forehead, then looks at him while he stuffs himself... he lets out a big sigh and asks about work things. . the other in the meantime spat everything he had in his mouth into the wastebasket as soon as he saw his partner enter and Activate "serious" mode to try to divert the conversation... a funny moment that I sometimes remember and laugh at😂

A collegue has made this folder called "do not open" in plain view for weeks in the laptop used on construction sites (used from everybody to consult the site plans).. obviously Someone ended up opening It and inside there was his whole private collection of porn made by himself using his Toys on himself or casual parterns.. featuring the hotels rooms we stayed in during the working periods of years back from then..🫠 The fact Is that It was obvious he wanted Us to look at his material and that made not Easy to look him back in his eyes afterwards knowing that he knows we know. 🫥

Boss wanted to show us there was no Need to wait for the forklift to recharge before picking up a 6 mt /20 ft steel column (roughly 250kg/550lbs) and put It vertically. The big boy proceeds to put his quad under the column and suddenly a strange noise come out..🙃 Then he walks away in completely silence and goes into a "platform" of large pallets to spread out like a star fish on It (which I casually found while going to the bath a bit later) while having his drink.

I worked with these idiots for 7 Years, so I have tons of stories way more weird, strange or stupid or Dangerous then this 🥲 I literally can put this stories into a jar and randomly pick them up 🤣 so let me know if you want to hear some more

Just to lay the groundwork, I was a barber and I had worked up from the bottom.

My level in the salon(s), plural as we had 2... was that of a Senior Barber and manager.

These were two VERY successful, very lucrative salons and in an extremely tourist rich destination where we were always VERY busy.

Now, the owner was an idiot... he would travel up every 2 weeks from his home and other businesses and spend a day parading over us and fashioning himself as the great and magnificent in relation to us, the mere peasants we were for simply working beneath him.

Customers avoided him like the plague, checking of his presence and rearranging appointments where necessary to fit around his attendance.

He would demoralise staff and alienate customers like it was a sport, but the time between visits was enough to push forward and endure.

He would go on and on telling tall tales of his world travels and his royalty-like life experiences, which of course were never taken seriously and always with a pinch of salt. He once went on a rant about Portugal and his ability to speak Portuguese, so I told his to s*** m* d*** in Portuguese and he was utterly clueless as to what I'd said. "I haven't spoken Portuguese in many moons" he said.... you get the idea, full of crap.

Always a showman, always the centre of the room. Telling stories of why he started a salon and got into the barber life, yet he had zero skills as a barber himself and he continuously failed to grasp it is we, the mere peasants that made the business what it is.

Anyway... One day, after several months of me getting our second salon off the ground and thriving, making local connections with other store owners, connecting with the locals and advertising etc...

(Side note): We opened the second salon next door to a women's only hair salon... would be great right? The female owner soon afterwards started to do mens hair, which her staff obviously weren't exactly trained for. She initially darkened her doorway greeting every passer-by but then continued vigouresly until it became approaching and harassing passers-by trying to get them into her salon whether they were in need of a trim or not, stating she would do it cheaper or better etc but lets be honest, i could shave a badgers a** better than the cuts they were known to provide but this is simply down to training and experience on my part, I actually had some folk walk out of theirs and into mine to fix what had been done... stick to your lane is all im saying. She would sometimes dive like a crazed lunatic at people and on occasion try to force members of the public to go into her salon, on one occasion this became a physical encounter and a member of the public actually had the authorities involved for being assaulted. I would sometimes sit in my chair on my break if it was quiet and play blues on my harmonica (I was learning) and watch this unfold as it did nothing to harm our numbers and it actually gained us trust with locals, some booking with me out of spite or to make a statement (and it gave a good story to talk about.)

Back to my employer anyway.... I recieved a call from him enquiring if it would be acceptable for me to manage our flagship salon for 3 weeks as he hadn't arranged holidays effectively and with him being an idiot (which we could agree on) he had been left with no senior management in the main salon during this upcoming busy period. I agree, with the second salon being flush with tourism I hadn't to cancel many appointments as a good majority were walk-in anyway, just a sign in the window explaining why we're closed and easily enough off I went.

After a week of running the flagship salon, two hefty lads come in looking for the owner, they had travelled some good distance to suprise him, something to do with money owed (not a good sign). I explained his schedule of fortnightly visits and therefore he's not available and due to it being an issue regarding personal money and not business related to my knowledge I obviously had no part to play, so I led them out.

This obviously created questions and fed my curiosity, but other than passing on a message I had no idea the details of it all, at this point I was myself owed several weeks wages, this was a downside of working for this imbecile.

Another week goes by and a customer, while getting a shave - randomly asks me if we're opening yet another salon, to which I assure them is not the case. I would know, I'd be Involved in some aspect. So I shrug it off.... A few more days go by and another gentlman enquires the same, a few days later and again it's mentioned. I check with a customer of where this rumor is coming from, I'm curios as it's been mentioned too often to be coincidence. I'm then informed the other manager has been seen working in a newly opened salon just a few minutes down the road. Hmmm 🤔

Is he using holidays to cover a probation elsewhere? Are we going to get any form of notice? Do I need to employ or promote in order to replace? I'm covering holidays that may turn out to be a long term thing if that's the case.

Too much I don't know or am not aware of so it's worth going to ask... I trot myself over on my break to enquire. Apparently the owner, whom I've recently found has been having some money issues or at least in the sense of owing money so some rather suspicious looking individuals.... has also not paid the landlady rent for some time.

Apparently an argument ensued between them and she has informed him that the lease on the building will not be getting renewed (which was up at the end of the month) and he had to close up shop before the month was up.

The landlady, in her kindness informed the staff... whom hadn't been informed by the boss, but this news hadn't made its way to me in any case. He was going to have them work until the last possible moment and then suprise them with freshly stewed unemployment. They realised his disgusting plans and cut their losses, wrote off their owed wages and simply quit on the spot.

So, I wasn't covering holidays, I was unknowingly left covering his disgusting plan of screwing over the staff before he escaped and screwed us all in doing so. Making him his final paycheck before he took off with all of our money.

If he was stood infront of me at this point I'd have flogged him senseless. I went back to the salon, unsure of what the hell is going on and got out my laptop. With this I accessed the cctv of my "temporarily" closed salon, and what I saw suddenly left me feeling sick.

Everything was being packed up, boxes in the middle of the room, dismantled etc. I too was still owed money at this point, and it seems we were all getting played.

I rang the landlord of the temporarily closed salon, he's owed 6 months rent and is also taking our employer to court.

I was shook. Both the landlord of one salon, and the landlady of the other were taking legal action for rent due, members of staff had quit and were still owed money and a mystery party of loan sharks were seemingly on the hunt.

I went home and had my day off. I spent the day thinking. I needed to clear my head with everything I'd just been made aware of.

The next day I politely informed my employer that with so much money being owed to myself for previous weeks worked and having been left in such a position, unfortunately I can't afford to get to work after the upcoming Wednesday. If he'd like me in work I'd have to be paid.

I seen this as my way of clawing back some of my owed wages before the month was up and he dissapeared. The hopeful result being he'd pay up even just so I could make him more once I can afford to get to work... I though it was a smart move, make him realise paying me what I'm owed now benefits his own self interests in the near future.

Unfortunately I had zero response to anything. Calls, voice messages left, texts and emails all left unanswered and ignored.

Wednesday came around and I no longer "had the funds" to get to work. I stuck to my word and took the day off.

I later recieved an email, you have not turned up to work today and so I accept this as your resignation.

Wow!! Really??

If I did not return the keys by recorded 1st class postal delivery to his home address etc he'd change the locks and send me the bill. No mention of owed wages, holiday pay owed, unfair dismissal, possibly fraud? or anything else. Just demanding the keys and a big f*** Y**.

I made contact with a company that deals with this. Mediating etc and I prepared a case against him.

Keep in mind I am meticulous with details. I had voice messages, text messages, emails, work logs, witnesses etc etc.

I had contact with the landlord, landlady and the other staff (even the evil lady next door) and I threatened him with a good time in court. I delivered the keys to the respective landlord/lady and took a signed receipt to prove collection from each. (After all, they belong to them).

He used every ounce of evil inside him to refuse, refute and talk down to me via email etc after hearing from the mediators in order to make clear he has no intention to pay me what was clearly mine for time worked or anything else owed.

I had everything I required to make my claim and win. When I say he said everything and tried anything he could to weasel out of it, I mean it.

Realising this, and how screwed he was... he eventually settled prior to court.

Now, this wasn't everything I was owed but in all fairness I just wanted rid of him.

I should have known sooner, I should have suspected something or been aware of something, anything. I mean, he was such an obvious d*** with the whole "I'm better than everyone" attitude, if that doesn't scream criminal what does. How I didn't see this d*** for what he truly was I'll never know, it truly is beyond me, hind sight is always fun though. Lessons to be learned I suppose.

In my defense, he is obviously quite good at manipulating people on a professional level for what happened to be several months, so I'm lucky to have even seen it when I did.

So overall, I went from a Senior Barber and Manager to unemployed within days. A lot of work, destroyed by a greedy con man.

The conclusion and moral of the story ... know your worth, walk away if your employer ever treats you less than that... always get paid when payment is due and always have a backup plan.

Nobody can protect you better than you.

I’ve been a full-time employee for over 2 years now and here are just some of the things i’ve experienced: (Each scenario is with a different employee)

-witnessed a server quit because they brought it to a managers attention that our greeter was glaring at their family, customers, and sexually harassing employees. When asked to do something because it was affecting their mental health, management said “well maybe you should get a new job if this place is so bad for your mental health.”

-experienced sexual harrasment by a kitchen employee and when I told a manager they told me “he’s just special needs, he probably didn’t mean it like that.”…. At the same time, the same manager was aware that the same employee was inappropriately touching underage staff on the job and didnt do anything because they were too afraid of a lawsuit.

-had multiple managers sexually harass many employees by making jokes about how they’d make good strippers with their body types.

-the complete and total relinquishment of allowing employees overtime, even if they desperately need it to make ends meet

-allowing a dishwasher to feed employees laced lolipops and watch porn in the dish pit because “at least he showed up on time” until he threatened to beat up a manager and only then was fired

-an employee is currently sexually harassing me and at least 3 other staff in the past. Management knows. This employee is still getting raises and being paid more than 90% of the other staff (with a better work ethic) solely for his sociability

I just left this job a few weeks ago and it’s hands down the wildest place i’ll probably ever work. I interviewed with them May 2023 and worked there until beginning on July 2024

1. During the interview my manager said the company recognizes xyz holidays and that we get holidays off, paid. Turns out we have to come in on all holidays including thanksgiving, new years, and Christmas. She also failed to mention we worked rotating weekends until after I started
2. It was so unprofessional! like sure sometimes it was funny and I always had funny stories to tell friends but people will SCREAM in each others faces. Once my coworker grabbed another coworkers chin and yelled “what are you gonna do? call HR??”
3. Another time, this old lady coworker brought in alcoholic fudge balls, did not tell anyone they were alcoholic and handed them out to everyone then ate 10 of them before meeting with families. Another time, she handed out edibles and yet again, did not tell anyone they were edibles. (no she did not get fired for that). She finally got fired for sending unsolicited nudes to another coworker
4. Once the crematory cremated the WRONG PERSON. to make it worse, the person that was accidentally cremated was jewish
5. Management won’t care about all the stuff I mentioned but WILL send you home to change if you wear sneakers

I have so much more stories but I’ve repressed so many moments from that place

Throwaway account, just in case...

For reference, I'm an ops mgr.

The story here centers around a Sr Engineer we'll call Gary and his son "David". At any rate, Gary was instrumental investor and contributor to our start up company, a brilliant engineer and well spoken guy. Was very good at communicating his ideas and structuring his thoughts in a constructive way and was a critical contributor in ensuring our products were better than the competition.

Tangentially, Gary contributed to our company for around 7-8 years while working for another company before leaving them and becoming a full-time employee before our group was acquired. Gary's son, David, joined the team around a year before the acquisition as well. Gary joined us to inflate the shares in his pocket before the acquisition, but also to sweeten the pot for the company acquiring us. David did not have the same attitude towards work his dad did, he frequently was out of pocket (during the pandemic, we went to WFH), would be frequently late on his project deliverables and was generally sloppy. David ends up half leaving the company unceremoniously to run his own start up company (which inevitably flopped), and a big time card player (which never came to fruition).

Fast forward a few years, and Gary still works with us, albeit planning his retirement in a few months and along comes David, at the bottom of the 9th, calling me and asking for an interview. I hesitate at first, David wasn't a great worker and we're nearly done with our selection process, but acquiesce and let David interview. Haven't seen him in a few years, but he's cleaned up, early for the interview and presents himself well enough. The skills portion of the interview is lacking but passable at best. We've had plenty of stronger candidates interview.

After deliberating with my colleague, Anthony, we decide that a different candidate, Justin, is the best choice and offer him the job. I go through the candidates we rejected and let them know one by one, but before I get to David, Gary calls me about something unrelated. Gary gave some half-assed advise on an email I sent earlier, then inquires about our decision for the engineering position and I let him know we did not pick David.

At this point, he unleashes a 30 minute tirade about how much he's sacrificed for this company, that he's given everything to us and we can't even do the bare minimum and hire his son. He's livid and essentially reading me the riot act, like he's been personally slighted and the team has conspired to snub him and his son. The definition of nepotism comes to mind. I reason with him and let him know the decision was based on skills demonstrated in the interview, our impression of their aptitude, and a few other qualities from their experience and resume. David didn't do as well as other candidates plain and simple and the decision was the best move for the company. Gary tells me that he would've been personally invested to ensure his son has all the knowledge he needs to be successful, even though Gary is retiring (he planned to give a few months as a consultant to ease the transition).

Gary tells me he is quitting on the spot after tearing into me. He gives me the boomer equivalent of a "talk to you never!" and hangs up, like a petulant child and within 3 minutes I have a full page resignation letter from him in my inbox with our leadership on copy, essentially spelling out what he told me on the phone. After blowing up on me, he calls our GM and let's him know he's done and that's that.

Anthony was out the latter half of the week, so I let him know yesterday and he's disappointed as Gary is a mentor to him. Today, our GM and I talk and I'm not exactly granted with the same support I had from him on Friday. He tells me "I almost think we should've hired David, so we wouldn't have to deal with this." Again, I reinforce that I think our decision was the best for our company and, despite Gary's contributions in the past, a job offer shouldn't be predicated on a family member's history with a company. The candidate should be able to represent themselves in a favorable light, and David had to overcome his prior exit and his own shortcomings in the interview, despite having prior experience at this job. Even with his dad's perpetual support, I doubted if David could really be a key contributor in the long term, even if hes turned his life around. I have worked with many individuals who have personal issues they never fully worked out and vices can be a slippery slope once you crack that door open.

At any rate, it feels as though I am the target of:

1. Gary's vitriol for not hiring his son and snubbing him, despite Gary's contributions
2. GM's disappointment, despite the fact that I was given autonomy with Anthony to make the hiring decision, Gary is a long time personal friend and collaborator with the GM and he feels like that relationship is damaged now
3. Anthony's disappointment, as now he's lost a mentor and a guiding voice as he comes up to speed to be a lead engineer
4. David's anger and disappointment, as obviously he was not awarded the job. David did contribute some simple projects for us on a contract basis but nothing extraordinary, but now that's lost

Our company president is kind of giving me hollow words of encouragement, like "good job, you did the right thing" and I just don't really feel that way in hindsight. Initially I felt confident in our decision and now this really undermines the onboarding process and unfortunately, really burns a bridge with two guys who could've contributed some level of work to our company in the future. There's also another issue, is that Gary is friends with many folks we contract with and, Gary could potentially undermine our connections with this individuals which would seriously hinder our ability to get work out. I hope he wouldn't do that, but after how he acted I am not sure.

Tl;dr our Sr Engineer threw a hissy fit and quit effectively immediately after discovering we did not hire his son who previously worked for us before quitting to play cards

In my late 20s, I ran the tech group for a relatively small startup, and hired a programmer in his mid 20s who had emigrated to the US from a country in Africa during college; we'll call him Mike.  My boss at the time was one of the most demanding and impressive people I have ever worked for, from whom I learned a great deal of technical skills and general professionalism; let's call him Kevin.  Both Mike and Kevin were people of color, while I am white.  This becomes pertinent later.

Mike was largely a charming and lovely person to interact with, although a bit strange.  I always assumed (what appeared to be) peculiarities were cultural differences, and found hearing about his life & ways of thinking interesting (while still at times a bit odd.)  He sort of seemed to me like he'd read a book on how to be a person, and was trying to do all the steps, but hadn't really seen them put in practice much.  But again, I just figured that was an artifact of my cultural lens.  I liked him.

My dear friend Jamie (who ran another group at the company) and I went for a ritual frozen yogurt across the street one afternoon, where we'd bounce back and forth our experiences being managers for the first time and try to scheme on how we could fix the problems in the company that seemed in reach.  As we sat, Jamie began telling me a story about how over the weekend, a member of her team, Sheril, had a birthday party at a club in the city, mostly her friends but a bunch of work people went.  Apparently, at some point later in the party, Mike walked up alongside Sheril, put his arm around her waist, began talking to her, and his hand migrated north, assuming a sort of cupping position beneath Sheril's breast.  Sheril is a beautiful and amply proportioned woman, which comes in later; but she'd worked in bars for years and was relatively unfazed by the event, brushed it off and went back to the party.

I lasted an embarrassing number of seconds just sort of cringing at the story on face value before it hit me that my employee did this to my friend's employee, and it had gotten around the office to some degree, and as soon as my friend heard the story she had to deal with it, and now that I'd heard the story, so did I.  Sheril had told Jamie she did not want to formally file a complaint to the company, but I felt I had to let my boss know what had happened.  I didn't think I was the one in the organization who should be choosing its response to what had become a public event.

So I go into my boss Kevin (the COO)'s office, and I close the door.  I sort of awkwardly pause, and eventually ask "Sooo if something bad happened, between employees outside of work, you.... would want to have heard about it?"  I felt this pressure, although I'd never heard it expressly, to insulate the people higher up.  Some vague corporate protocol I might be violating.  I was young, and these guys were kind of intense.  

Kevin looks at me, sort of half smiles, leans back in his chair, lets out a breath, and says "Is this the moment before you ruin my day?"  I gave him a look of "sorry, yup."  I give him another moment of peace, and then tell him the story.  He also cringed, and his first words after some reflection were "Fuckin Mike...  Well, I mean, you sorta can't blame him, we've all wanted to."  He calls one of the two named partners into his office, and tells him the story; he cringes, and then says "Well, I mean, we've all wanted to."  I double recoil; this is getting surreal.  He calls the other named partner into the office, tells him the story, he cringes, and makes THE EXACT SAME JOKE.

It's decided that at the end of the workday I'm to bring Mike down to Kevin's office for a talking to.  We go and sit in the 2 shorter-than-average chairs facing Kevin's desk, behind which he sat in his taller-than-average chair.  Kevin explained to Mike that there was a story going around the office about something he'd done, and Kevin was not going to get into asking Mike whether it had happened or not; that was not the issue.  The issue was the fact that there was a story going around, and it probably made sense for Mike to not go to any outings with coworkers for a few months, and that in general he would need to act beyond reproach at all times, because "when something happens to a white girl, it's always easier to point at a black guy nearby."  Mike began to sob, his face all deep shame.  It seemed like he knew what story was being referred to.  He composed himself, and I walked him to the elevator.

I could see there being many reactions to this story; I've had a variety of them.  In the moment, watching Mike sob, I was extremely uncomfortable, feeling like I just shouldn't have been in that room.  I truly don't know how to feel about it, or what I could say with confidence; perhaps that it didn't feel like the best case scenario.  I'm not sure if Sheril ever found out that Mike got spoken to about it, but Jamie followed up with her of course to make sure she was ok.

Greetings I've been working at Lowe's for 8 yrs and sadly it came to an end on January 11th this year. I just wanted to share my experience with other reddit-folk to vent.

This happened last year before Christmas Eve where everyone was starting to wrap up the Inventory process for the store, we had several meetings about what was being done to the store numerous times every week and I enjoyed most of that month of Inventory because I stayed busy as much as possible prepping my Supervisor's department for inventory so (not saying his name) and the other Supervisors can be able to count what they need to count on the shelves and top stock.

When 90% of my department was done I thought it was time to take a good week 1/2 off from all the hard work I've done, but before I did that my Store manager at the time called me and looked at me and say, "hey Andrew, cycle counts".. right?? like huh?? so knowing myself I thought he wanted me to do SOMETHING about the cycle counts in the electrical department, and yes I probably screwed up but I felt like this could have been easily solved by not forwarding the work I commence.

So in the next hour that I finished he came up to me saying, "what are you doing?? we went over this numerous times Andrew are you okay in the head??" and he just walked off.. so what do most workers do when things are already screwed up you stay quiet right?? so that's exactly what I did because I thought in that moment I might've said something that may jeopardize my job, so he somehow knew I was gonna go on vacation and he approved my vacation time for a week in 1/2 till January 11th when I came back, I had my regular day it was a 4 hr shift and when it came to an end a different manager that I didn't know very much told me to follow her into the office and my heart was pounding and I was like okay???

So she sat me down and pretended that she KNEW me saying, "Andrew this is gonna be hard for me to say but you're being terminated from Lowe's" and SHE DID NOT GIVE ME A HIGH ENOUGH REASON and all I knew it was something about the Inventory prep, so knowing me I knew it wasn't gonna be a way to fight for my job because what's done is done, I cried a little because I felt like all my hard work was just thrown away in the garbage.. for 8 years I been nothing but a Spartan a team player for my coworkers and managers and they stabbed me in the back not even trying to solve the situation, I think the store manager that use to work there (I wont say his name) had somewhat a vendetta against my personality and my work flow on how I do things Idk.. but hey at least I learned something in that scenario and Ill definitely make sure something like that won't happen again..

It was all because of Me not communicating with my boss more about the cycle counts, but he also said Cycle counts also so he was at fault for having poor communication towards me, however I should have spoken up more about that, so yeah that's pretty much everything that happened this year.

About 10 years ago, I (software developer) was running the tech team within a small company. We hired a new developer, call him Scott M., an englishman who had a PhD in AI from Oxford . He was a bit rough around the edges, baggy pants and a chain wallet at a "suit and tie" kind of company, but a motivated and smart guy, who lived with his american girlfriend. He began working for us, and did some pretty good work; but there were moments when I'd bring up AI concepts (I do not have a specialty in that field but took a course in undergrad and read up on developments there,) and his responses would be slightly confusing, using terms in strange ways, etc, but I just assumed my knowledge was out of date.

The company was in a regulated industry, and after hiring there was some background checks etc which the HR department outsourced to some service. After a few weeks, Scott M. began complaining to me about how bad our HR team was, that there were some issues around his background check. Apparently, Oxford had responded saying that they had no record of Scott M. having ever attended. He "explained" that he had been graduated right before the school transitioned from paper records to electronic, and there had been a fire, and some documents had been lost; he would reach out to Oxford to get the admins to clear up the issue. At this point I'm quite skeptical, but trying to give him the benefit of the doubt and be a good supportive boss.

Perhaps 2 or 3 weeks go by, and one night after work Scott M. calls me on my personal cell. He finally admits to me that he had not attended Oxford, and claimed that he used to use that credential to help him get jobs, but had decided to turn over a new leaf and strictly never lied anymore. However, the morning he was rushing out the door for his interview with us, he "accidentally printed out the old resume" and didn't notice until he'd already handed it to us. Given the process by which we'd collected candidates, this was just laughably clearly untrue. I told him we'd speak with HR first thing the next morning.

I call the partners of the firm, tell them what happenned, and we all agree there's no saving this situation, despite the irony of the fact that while he couldn't code AI, he was actually pretty good at what we asked him to do. He arrived at work that morning wearing a suit for the first time, we walked him into a meeting room and the head of HR began the termination process. He seemed to have been hoping there was some way out, based on the look on his face. He signed the forms, was taken to his desk to collect his things, key card taken and escorted out.

Later that day, I reactivated the job listing to begin trying to find a replacement. About a week later, when going through the responses we'd gotten in the email box, I read the following email:

I know someone that you could hire for your job listing: [link to job post].

His name is Scott M.

Pity you already had him and your HR department is too stupid and screwed it up by harassing him every day. I am usually quite professional and stay out of these things, but I have never heard of such an unprofessional HR department in all of my life. Let alone one that does not know how to deal with international degrees. If [our head of HR] worked for any other firm he would have been fired and sued for harassment.

I don't blame Scott for quitting! Scott is successfully employed for a firm that is not harassing him everyday about his Oxford degree which others were able to verify.

[our head of HR]'s actions gave your firm a very bad unprofessional reputation amongst well educated, skilled coders and program managers. He knows a lot of people.

Regards, [Scott's girlfriend's name]

So not only did he lie to us, but had been lying to his long term girlfriend about his degree as well, and then lied to her that he'd quit "on principal." I copied her email into an email to Scott sent from my personal account with no other additional content of my own, basically just a "Hey Scott, check out what I just read..." He responded trying to tell an even more eloaborate tale about how the morning he printed the wrong resume, his gf had looked at it and saw that he'd attended Oxford, but they'd never spoken about it directly. He did not address the fact she was under the impression he'd quit.

edit: fixed incorrect reference to the other big english uni

Just venting about my colleague. I'm Japanese myself, grew up in Japan and recently moved to Australia. I started to work for this company which only has 1 other Japanese employee other than myself. Our european supervisor was talking about culture in each countries and how different we are. And she started yapping about "Oh Japanese people are lazy and don't wanna work. That's why their economy is bad".

I was shocked. This women is over 40 years old, and has not worked in Japan since when she was 23. That means she barely did her grad role in Japan. Her statement cannot be more opposite from the truth. In Japan, we do have issues about old corporate structure not incentivising performance, and instead put more weights to loyalty of the employees. This became a thing in 70s-80s when companies were struggling to keep their employees in their business. Because of this issue, the efficiency of the operation has been a big topic of the conversation. Now that the stock market of Japan is booming, Japanese corporates are putting more effort into reforming their old structures, providing more values to their stakeholders.

The thing is, this colleague is in charge of marketing towards Japanese market. She is supposed to be the one who is up-to-date with ins and outs of Japanese society and economy. I just can't believe how prejudice and wrong her views are about our country. She also was saying "Oh Japan is too crowded, not relaxed at all anywhere", which also cannot be furthest away from the truth. Japan is the country with many attractions with resorts super close to metropolitan cities, or even in beautiful mountain ranges. I'm just wondering if she has forgotten what Japan is even as a country. She was also kind of criticising about how I'm from Tokyo, which apparently is "not a lifestyle city" "not a good tourist destination for adults with children" and "too uptight". Tokyo is not just a metropolitan. Tokyo also offers beautiful nature just outside of the city.

She didn't even come to Australia with her own power. She just married some white Aussie guy. I just don't know why she thinks local Japanese are "laziness". Of course there will be lazy people anywhere. But it's just such a skewed view.

I'm just thinking perhaps she is just doing this to cope with changes she experienced in her life. But as a Japanese myself, I feel weird about her hating on my country for no valid reasons.

My MBTI is ENTP, so it's hard to cope with things like this without complaining on the internet lol. Thank you for reading my vent.

So I when I was a youngin worked at a grocery store. I was a bagger and it was extraordinarily busy - you know how 4th of July weekend can be if you’ve worked in retail or in a grocery store it’s complete chaos. It was a smaller store as well so tight crew. I could see him fall to the floor motionless and went to check on him with a sizeable amount of groceries still needing to be bagged. My manager from across the room yelled at me to continue working. It took at least 30 seconds for someone else to check on him that the manager wanted to and a minute more to call 911. Edit - the guy was supposedly okay but I never saw him again.

I've had an amazing time being in the midst of the barely controlled chaos of what I can imagine is probably your average workplace experience because of the hilariously displays of incompetence I've had the pleasure of sharing with my friends and coworkers over the years. Have you ever been rendered speechless after brazen displays of decision making from "experienced" old-blood in the company you work for? Have you ever felt like a crazy person after trying to follow the logic of both your coworkers and specifically the actual people in charge at any given time? If so you would probably have built a comeraderie with the people you went through that with and had some hilarious tales to reminisce about along the way, and today I finally feel like the story of my first job would make a semi-entertaining enough of a tale to put it out there. I've more or less told this story in chunks throughout the years and I honestly just want the catharsis of having fully fleshed out the whole thing word-for-word. I want to throw in as much transparency as humanely possible here, and up front say that everything here is as accurate of a retelling of what I personally experienced as well as what I can infer went down around me during my time in this workplace and any opinions I have about any of the decisions made by other people during this time are my own. I won't be naming any people by name, nor do I want to try and slander people for things that most workplaces I would imagine partake in such as workplace hearsays about if someones sleeping with someone else or backstabbing up the ladder of success, etc. I'll try to keep the stories to my truthful, personal experiences rather than me spit balling what doesn't pertain to the actual workplace basically.\

I started working at the good ol TnT a year after dropping out of college (2016 for context and I think I was 19), which I'd only gone to for a year anyways because that's absolutely not how I personally want to be literally throwing away money I definitely didn't have regardless of the little scholarship or whatever it is that I had. I'm your standard introvertive nerdy type with at least an average to decent amount of social anxiety, so I was definitely nervous about getting out of the house and starting any form of career/job, and going into my first week I was even having to force myself to go get my license levels of "prepared" lol. My only experience going into this job was I'd played with Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon cards as a kid and been a gamer all my life, which it turns out is all you really need to be able to color sort pieces of cardboard. I started out in their lot making side company Golden Groundhog so my only responsibility was making specificcard quantity lots out of the large amounts of bulk they had on hand. The job was extremely easy for anyone who could both stand, read, and wanted to put even a small amount of effort into, so I quickly proved to the couple of team leady/manager types in the department that I could be trusted to count to 100 instead of color sorting pokemon bulk (hopefully going forward you start to see a trend of how easy these jobs actually are).\

Management in GG was pretty great tbh, they were professional and the mantra was simply you can chill and listen to your headphones/talk as long as you keep your hands moving, and any struggles that may have came from being on the floor in that company could only really occur if someone on a president of the company level would come down with complaints. Notoriously at this time the president of the companies was an extremely volatile individual that evvvvvvverybody would dread to see coming regardless of who he interacted with. Imagine someone who would have no qualms telling someone to their face they're stupid or at bare minimum making them feel that way, making decisions that involved making people work overtime as an expectation, and generally making people feel like peons. That was the atmosphere around certain people in higher forms of management going forward throughout the different eras of Troll as this status quo was more or less just taught to be blatantly honest. For instance, there's many stories I've heard over the years of blatant toxic masculine misconduct that abbbbbbbsolutely I can see happening in my opinion, which matters in the context of my experience there because some of the people still in charge at this time lived through those frat party eras of the company.\

My introduction to the main working operations of Trolls main business came in the form of new product releases, as the side company I'd started in would regularly be brought over to Troll's A-list department (an entire department that busts any sealed product down to singles that are then sorted and keyed onto the website to sell) because new releases were theeeeeee most important things to the company at the time. We're talking like 20 people all around a huge table busting booster boxes or tins of new card sets. It was always in and of itself a pretty great although high responsibility time and really highlights that this job/industry can be an amazingly enjoyable career. At the time with my little experience I wouldn't have any of the gravity or actual personal responsibility though because I was a minimum wage grunt just busting packs, but for context I wasn't having to count or key any of the product onto the website, which in and of itself is still easy, but at this time I was just a min wage fellow who got to go home at a reasonable time, but would before too long be something I was intimately familiar with doing.\

After about half a year or so I more or less got transferred but also promoted into Troll as the Keyer for A list, which I would cement my running trend of over preforming in the given role enough to be "rewarded" with endlessly increasing responsibilities. I went from being a Keyer to being: team lead of the keying department, processing employee of the year one year, then the only Keyer, helping stream line our verifying of keyed orders for a joint keying/verifying department for trolls internal data entry, being solely over making sure every new release was keyed on time or close enough (spoilers that's overtime every other week for every new release we've done for years), being primarily responsible for processing every important show buy and all of our show products coming back from every convention troll participated in for years, being brought in to work on site during covid because that was a mishandled shit-show, after work from home ended I became an assistant manager for processing for a newly formed second shift, then the only processing employee on our second shift because management literally kicked everyone else out (I can't wait to get to that detail lmao), to then taking over processing all of trolls sealed product including still keying all of the new releases, making sure new release products went live to sell at midnight, earning proccessor of the year again, and by this time I can wind down with my accomplishments because mismanagment of thr company began to finally wittle away at my ability to even participate in the dwindling work still left. Regardless, I can at least say from this rambling that I should be trusted to know what I'm talking about here lol, so let me wind back to explain any of the noteworthy points of drama over those 6 or so years I skipped.\

We transitioned processing managers many times over that period. All together I thinnnnnk I've worked with 7 or 8 different managers give or take a couple, some of which were amazing to work with and others absolutely had literally no experience doing our jobs and were only made managers because in the absence of someone actually being in charge of the company as a whole it always came down to "oh this person is popular/is my friend/idgaf this person will probably make it work who cares", which I'm honestly giving too much credit to the thought processes even with that logic. Whoever was in the management position was always either good at the people aspect and competent at the job or competent at the people and good at the job, or were just completely a waste of space and time and was a figurehead for a president of the company who only cared that they had a special parking space with their title in the parking lot. Regardless, back to points of drama.\

In 2 instances of working there we dealt with week long power outages because of how old and in ill repair the warehouse we worked in was. 1 instance a property employee for the building stuck what I assume was a battery tester up to our big industrial electric generator thingy (big source of electric for the building I dunno what you'd actually call it) and blew himself unconscious onto the ground. I assume he's okay still, I don't personally know, but regardless we were out of power in the entire warehouse that we shared with multiple companies for weeeeeeeks. We worked with headlamps during the summer with no fans and no computers for the most part alllll while working on either a gencon show or one of the other huge shows of the year. My mind blanks atm on what the other big show is tbh. Regardless, it's in situations like this that the fractures in competence and decision making from the higher ups really shows because the general attitude from said people usually could be summed up as "we want you to do a weeks worth of work in 3 days with no computers, have 6 people who dont know how to do your job do parts of your job incorrectly because of course that will save time, be constantly up your ass because now we have to be because some head honcho is up my ass (I'm mr meeseeks look at me)" It's here that I need to comment that not everyone I worked with over the years was qualified to do the jobs that the main requirement was being able to read and write because sooooooo many people over the years would absolutely drag our entire departments down. Some people will never be compatible with certain jobs and just making efficient basic decisions, and it would have helped over the years of our at-will company in our at-will state would have at-will fired problem people at any point, but for real people would only get fired in that company of they personally made a higher up slightly inconvenienced. If someone was holding up our entire buylist department it would take them cutting off someone in an iced over parking lot to be fired on the spot. Also, on top of allllllll of this was the constant need to justify to a president of the company why someone who was worth even a slight raise was potentially worth more than a $0.50 raise (in hindsight everyone should have just accepted that card companies should pay less in wages because the company as of the time of writing is doing another massive wave of layoffs because of how high our wages had become).\

It's sad to say that those times were my most enjoyed on the job/day to day times at Troll simply because the work was fulfilling. It was challenging for me to get everything I wanted to accomplish done on time, and my work ethic was up to par for the challenge back then. I thrive off of having to put in the hustle and I believed we were kicking ass back then because the card buys were always hot and the industry was doing pretty well imo. My main team member over verifying and I pushed out an ungodly amount of work to be blatantly honest. Towards the end of this golden era for me was pretty close to before covid hit the world, and some massive changes to the job as well as rotating presidents, managers, owners of the freaking company, and various other shenanigans would irreversibly affect the entire company in crazy ways.\

I'll go ahead and start with Trolls Evo program during this time. Leading up to covid for about 2 years or so prior our evo departments were a start up program by higher ups in Troll that was a money making method similar to other big name card marketplaces. It gave Troll the option to have sellers send their own products to our warehouse to be processed and listed to sell in their name and they would pay a processing fee and Troll would get a small portion of the sale as compensation. I to this day don't know how Troll was ever compensated for processing fees however. I personally don't understand how our website and employees could ever have been able to correctly make sure that all of the full 5-ks of basically bulk our "customers" would send in could possibly have been profitable for the Evo merchant to pay us for the hours it would probably take to properly sort and enter in the varying value of cards therein, but I couldn't have possibly known at the time as the Evo department and trolls processing department were completely separate. That would change however as literally at the exact same time the bright idea in the company was for Evo to be combined in with processing, troll to have a new president of the company put in place with drastic changes to how the warehouse layout would work, to not inform IT that our entire order printing for put away/pulling to be printed because alllllllllllllll of our product would then be printed out of alphabetical order as well as combining multiple games in that sort (I'll explain shortly it's ridiculous), we were moving our entire card warehouse inventory over halfway across our massive warehouse because our parent company was both trying to sell Troll annnnnd because they wanted the newly-fixed-roof area for their own shipping company (btw our warehouse leaked like a mofo and that's pretty not smart to be storing easily damaged expensive cards in), and were about to be rotating out processings managers. Does that sound like a cluster fuck to you? Because it really really was one.\

Let me start with Evo being combined with processing. Literally nobody was ready for that even though it was in plans for maybe weeks? None of the higher ups had a plan, none of either sides management had a plan, it was all literally done by the seat of the employees pants. Like how was the responsibility of the months behind Evo orders going to be split up? How does the Evo website programs work for all of us that had literally never used it? How was our barely 2 man sorting team going to be expected to help? Also, from my perspective, how was I as head of data entry for processing going to help? I'd never used the program so I would def have loved to have been introduced to it prior, but how was I going to have the time when my responsibilities were already stretched to all shows, new releases, all official acquisitions, all returns, all generic random BS that needed keyed? Now there's an entire company worth of merchant orders that it turns out had been beyonnnnnnnnnd behind that needed more than just keyed. They needed sorted. They needed graded. They needed keyed.\

Thennnn depending on who keyed it you would need to meticulously go through and make sure said person didn't waste everyone's time by keying cards incorrectly, not grading them correctly, not sorting them correctly, and the list keeps on going dude. Oh, and i mentioned we rotated managers during this time? So not only was there no plan from management, we didn't fucking have management because during the move our slave drivers of higher ups were openly rude to our female manager of processing and basically bullied her into quitting. It's once again an example of the higher-higher ups will only get involved when they want to look good, and part of looking good is to crack that whip on people who were absolutely doing a good job despite moving an entire warehouse in 2 days in the 80+ degree warehouse. Oh, I forgot to mention, we apparently had weeks worth of time to move buttttttt our president of the company decided it had to be done on Saturday and Sunday, which was mandatory to work or you get fired, annnnnd we were expected back at work Monday for regular schedules. They for some god forsaken reason believed it was a good idea to crack a metaphorical whip during all of that.\

You know how I mentioned the print offs thing earlier? Well the move involved a new layout of the shelves that held all our cards. Instead of there being a Block for each game where each bin location was "letter of the block for each game" - "number of shelf then set code for the box" the first letter of the Bin would denote which row the shelf was in. Innocent enough, so each first letter was a row that's simple enough. But each row would include EVERY BLOCK OF CARD GAME, THEREFORE EACH BIN LOCATION WOULD GO ALPHABETICALLY "MTG, POKEMON, YU-GI-OH, ETC" THEN WOULD REPEAT GOING THROUGH EACH GAME ON THE PAPERWORK MULTIPLE MULTIPLE TIMES AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN. Now for warehouses that deal with large boxes of let's say cereal or car parts or anything not small cards in big boxes that may not be that bad of a pulling/put away system, and hell even for sorting even though there's smarter ways to do that for sure. But for fucking cards with alphabetical codes that you have to be able to identify and pull, key, sort, put away in an efficient manner you would at bare minimum love for your important paperwork to coincide with how you've done your job for a living for 5 or so years at the time right? Literally 4 of us the week before talked with our inventory department and we all realized how fucked it was going to be. Our leadership in the company, did, not, care, at, all. The excuses we were given? Oh, UPS or FedEx or whoever gave us this layout idea and they're paying us money to use it so it's a good idea. Oh, we're planning on going paperless so who cares if the print offs don't show correctly. Oh, we're literally getting rid of all verifying because fuck it who cares about all of our incompetent workforce that can't key a card correctly it doesn't matter if we buy cards wrong through buylist or have sooooooo much wrong inventory, I'm sure insurance will cover any losses etc etc. I poured sooooooo much into getting my processing speed as high as I possibly could all for these incompetent jackasses to just decide they knew better than the last person in charge.\

Oh, and alongside allllllll of that our next 2 or 3 processing managers had no idea what they were getting into. They were not at all prepared to get any of our responsibilities down to a competent level, and they actively threw away all of the notes literally given to them by previous management because "nah they got this." Then on top of that they were completely not ready for an entire newly made 2nd shift to also be working in the same areas. I'm talking for the first few weeks computers weren't setup for our buylist department, our IT department legitimately didn't setup any 2nd shift processing employee with access to their own Windows login on a computer with the keying software permissions. I legit had to login to every one of my people's computers under my team lead/assistant manager permissions just for people to actually be allowed to work. And the entire time when I would come in and start trying my hand at this entire Evo trash fire of a priority or organization or work method or anything involved with getting things worked on efficiently? People newly over Evo started throwing their egos around about who's team lead and who says how things should be done, any amount of pallet organizing I would do would be undone the next morning, literally nobody would have an opinion on what we should work on until AFTER we started working on things I'm a way that I tried to make sense of. Legitimately this system on the computer alone made no sense. A merchant would send us fulllllll boxes of cards and it would be on 1 single shipment. So we were expected to get through full boxes allllll on 1 order, which would absolutely bog down our computers, printers, what our employees would be working on for a day, our throughput for getting more cards on the shelves, legitimately every aspect of the job. At the same time, 2nd processing was made of a couple veterans, a couple very competent people I legit got hired in as personal friends and step brother, and like 2 really good people that got hired in around that time. Other than that I had a few highschool girls that didn't want to work, a guy with a huge ego that didn't want to work, and randomly we would get job shop employees I would try to train.\

Every. Single. Time. We. Would. Get. Someone. To. Train. Our. 1st. Shift. Managers. Would. Take. Them. To. Do. Some. Other. Random. Shit. Why would they ever send them to us in the first place? Oh, that person was hired for put away? Why did you send them to me then? Why did you waste 3 days of my time? Who in this god forsaken place is in charge? When we did try to efficiently make multiple orders to get more work pushed through our put away department would get overwhelmed and we'd get yelled at for doing our jobs. Oh also, put away before the move was literally right next to processing. Now it was a 2 minute warehouse walk over broken stone floors, dodging the puddles and water barrels because of our completely unfixed roofing, all while either carrying full boxes of cards or a broken wheeled cart full of orders. Whoever designed this warehouse move was incompetent in my opinion, good lord. Eventually 1st shift had othered us to the point that they made the decision to take every 2nd shift processor out of the department and move them to shipping. I sat in a meeting with our floor manager as I was told that all of my years of processing were being thrown in the trash because my company couldn't manage itself out of a paper bag, and keep in mind I was personally responsible for evvvvvvvvvvery important processing task at this point. The funny thing? I was immediately texted by the main manager of my department that "they didn't mean me" and the aforementioned floor manager approached me the next morning and basically begged me to stay in the department I was just being kicked out of. I wish I could have been an ass and left them out to dry, but I carrrrred. I absolutely loved that company, I've told the daughter of the original owner I'd work for minimum wage and still be happy there. I'd told several of my revolving door managers that same thing, so I ignored all the BS and I kept doing what I did well.\

All this leads into Troll being bought by an outside buyer. I was personally dying for literally any amount of change at this point. We were told in a big company wide meeting that a new buyer was entering the fray and that they'd have full control of what they wanted done. Soon enough, he had several people he'd planned with personally coming in to take stock of our current situations, didn't like what he saw, eventually did massive layoffs including many of the people ruling processing at the time, and setup yet another person that didn't know all of the processing tasks to be in charge again. Surprisingly things were okay for a while, but still with their shenanigans. Executives up front kept calling for ways to fix our efficiency, which pretty much summed up to "don't do half of the things you're supposed to do like grade and sort, and fuck put away they can fix it", so that was fun. And soon another bigger layoff occured and then things finally settled down for a little while at least. It then became a situation of dude-bros handling our incoming product, always struggling to get things on time, and me and a few other people doing everything important when it comes to new releases as always. It was still way better than the incompetent years prior, and I was at least able to push myself in ways I wanted to. I can proudly say I've worked a 24 hour shift as I stayed over to do most of a new MTG release and all of the sealed product I needed to do as part of Distro all that night. Good times, good times.\

I'll go ahead and wind down from my ego fueled(?) ranting to say that I'm no longer a part of the company I'd worked at for 7.5 years. I was at the forefront of a layoff a couple of months ago, and it seems like this most recent layoff has brought that company down to an absolutely astoundingly low employee number, which I won't be saying here. I will personally say that they took all my hard work and patriotism from these years and told me they couldn't afford me anymore. Let me fully clarify, leading up to my being let go I was struggling to make it to work everyday on time. I recently moved in with my girlfriend who lives right up the road from the place I worked, but I had to come home everyday for lunch to help out as much as possible, and I struggled with the new schedule of getting up for work honestly. And that would have been fine for me to just make up any missing time at work, but every month since the year started I've been sick. Strep throat, covid symptoms, rashes from the antibiotics I've learned I'm allergic to, and the dog we tried to adopt bit onto 2 of our dogs and I totally ruined my finger tips trying to pry it's jaws open out of desperation. At the end of the day, the leadership at my old company decided I wasn't worth it so here I am. Anyways, I wanted to tell my little disorganized story of my years working at my first job, hopefully the parts I was willing to share makes someone else's head hurt in exasperation and giggle at the incompetence as much as I have over the years.

Brace yourselves, this is going to be a long rant -

I (F) am a dental intern who just started a new rotation, working with three specialists: Dr. A (M), Dr. B (M), and Dr. C (F). On the first day, Dr. A completely snapped at a nurse, screaming at her and calling nurses idiots in front of everyone. While I understood his frustration, I don't condone disrespect at all and disagreed with his behavior. I felt really bad for the nurse who was embarrassed in front of her colleagues. Throughout the day, Dr. A kept trying to involve me in his argument, wanting me to agree with him, but I stayed quiet and let him talk. I was very uncomfortable and didn't know what to say.

Later that day, we discussed a case, and I wasn't very familiar with it, so I asked questions which he politely answered until I asked, "What could we do to prevent complications from that specific surgery?" It was clear he didn't know the answer, and he responded with, "This is not up to you to decide; a consultant has to. It is not your job," in a very hostile tone. I just said okay and stayed quiet. After that, he seemed determined to make me feel like an idiot. For every patient, he "explained" how to give anesthesia, which I had done countless times, and refused to let me work, only observe (even though we have to work to finish a set of requirements to get certified). And he would only let me observe simple routine procedures that I've done soooo many times.

On the second day, he told me not to just sit and wait for patients but to check if the other doctors had more interesting cases (he tends to say that when he doesn't want me around). I gladly joined Dr. B for an implant surgery while Dr. A took his break. After observing the surgery, Dr. B and I took our breaks, but Dr. A had a patient I didn't know about. While eating, a nurse came to the break room, frantic, saying Dr. A wanted me back immediately. I returned, and he screamed at me and said "Don't ever skip patients," and made me stand there observing without explaining what he was doing. I spent the rest of the day running between Dr. A and Dr. B's clinics, observing procedures with no breaks.

The third day with Dr. C was a relief. She is amazing at her job and a wonderful teacher. However, she told me she wouldn't be at work for the rest of the week, which was disappointing. The next day was terrible. The hospital had changed the rules about sick leave notes and they made them digital, and when a nurse printed one out of habit, Dr. A screamed at her in front of a patient, crumpling the paper and throwing it at her.

Dr. B was never rude to me or anyone else. He mentioned knowing my old university professor, who left because of the toxic environment. He asked if I planned to stay in dentistry or switch careers, which I found odd. I said I was committed to dentistry and planned to get a master's degree. He then criticized my college's curriculum and doubted my skills. I was flabbergasted and explained that despite my university not being Ivy League, I constantly seek knowledge and have been working hard in my rotations. The hospital director even trusted me to cover for a doctor. Dr. B insisted I needed at least a year of postgraduate courses before working, even though he's never seen my work, unlike Dr. C, who let me work on her patients confidently. He kept going for around an hour saying that I will never be qualified enough to work, and he would never let me work as long as he's around and I should seriously consider changing my career.

Despite my hard work and dedication, their constant criticism and belittling are hurtful. I am aware that I am smart, a fast learner, and open to constructive criticism. Yet, Dr. A and Dr. B seem intent on making me feel inadequate. It’s overwhelming to be screamed at and humiliated daily. I'm fine with criticism if I was told politely and privately, but being screamed at in front of staff and patients is too much. If anyone has advice on how to handle this situation, please let me know.

So I worked night shit in the lab at a mineral plant. Some of the following things I saw were absolutely wild: -maintenance guy built a fully functioning 1800s cannon out of scrap metal -temp worker stole the refrigerator and microwave -a pipe got clogged with a powdery substance, maintenance worker unclogged the pipe and the entire plant roughly was covered in a fog of dust(couldn't see your hand in front of your face) -dont really know how this happened, but a single stall bathroom got completely destroyed likely by a sledge hammer, toilet, mirror, sink was just a pile of ceramic and glass shards -one of my buddies asked me for help, we got in the company truck, he says ready? Jumps out of the truck and puts a huge brick on the gas pedal -our raw material had to be microwaved to remove moisture for certain tests, day shift lab employee microwaved the sample and returns to find the microwave in a million pieces and a fire in the spot of where the microwave was -so many people were watching adult movies on company wifi that they said corporate had to step in because it was swamped removing malware or what not from all the adult films

I have a colleague who is a good person but he tells stories that take a long time to tell. He goes on and on in his story describing EVERYTHING and then going off into multiple side stories that have nothing to do with the initial story. The most annoying part is his stories don’t have a point at the end, so me and my other colleagues will be sat there for 40 odd mins only to not know why he told that story. It can be so goddamn annoying.

Final bit is if we’re talking about the football (something he doesn’t like) he will try and join the conversation saying about a game he watched recently and then describe the game. We looked up one of the ones he was on about and it was played in 1983! He’s a good guy but god it’s so boring.

Does anyone else have a colleague like this?

(Ps we’re bin men)

Guys, I have a story to share, on why that usually happends, and if you guys have faced similar situations in a place that you worked

So, I worked in an office for like 4 years. I was a Cisco support engineer, and in my team, there were 12 people when I entered, all of them were men. It remained that way for like 1 year and a half, only males on the team. Literally, we NEVER had any gossip around our team, even though there were people who did not like each other, there was no drama whatsoever. WELL, until the first couple of women got hired... and suddenly, gossip, fights, and A LOT of drama started in the office. I'm not saying that all women are like that; however, it changed the dynamics of the office so much that some people even quit their jobs.

Anyway, I feel like women are way more competitive in terms of the people around them, and they care WAY more about looks, their agenda, and feelings, which for a technical support engineer is not really cool since we have to have a sense of teamwork, and all of that got lost with all the drama that was added after they hired those girls for the team.

Joined as a graduate with the goal to learn and contribute, but facing challenges in a Boomer-dominated workplace. Despite respecting everyone equally, women colleagues in sales and marketing label me as an "intern" and assign tedious tasks. Today, asked by a senior colleague to handle a coffee run for a workshop that I’m not even a part of, feeling triggered and struggling with emotions. Wondering if discrimination based on being a person of color and a woman. Seeking advice on setting clear boundaries without overreacting or overthinking or just regulating emotions at work.

First a little heads ups. English isn't my native language and I have dyslexia so I use tools to help me write so that is way the sounding of what i am about to write sound like a corporation.

As a seasoned software developer with nearly a decade of experience, allow me to shed light on my recent departure from a job. I dedicated two years of my professional life to this company, but unfortunately, the level of respect extended to me fell far below expectations. Let's delve into the positive aspects of the job first. The development team I was part of, or rather, once was part of, comprised exceptionally talented individuals, proficient in their respective fields. However, beyond this, the experience turned into a nightmare.

The foremost issue plaguing us was the recurrent delay in receiving our pay. The CEO exhibited a consistent lack of communication regarding payment timelines, often leaving us in the dark until we realized our bank accounts remained stagnant over weekends or even longer. Inquiries to the CEO regarding our overdue wages typically resulted in three potential responses. The most frequent response was utter silence, leaving us waiting for days or weeks for a reply. In some instances, salaries were months overdue. Alternatively, we occasionally received a vague assurance of imminent payment, which, while occasionally true, often left us waiting without further notice. The third, and most egregious, response was personal confrontation and verbal berating when daring to advocate for our rightful compensation.

The second grievance pertained to the abrupt cessation of our company insurance in December 2022. This decision was made without prior notice, leaving us scrambling for answers. Months later, we discovered the company had declared bankruptcy, rebranded, and reopened under a new name—a legal maneuver permissible due to COVID-related regulations in our country. However, this restructuring came at the cost of our insurance coverage, which was not automatically transferred, necessitating prompt action from employees. Furthermore, the CEO continued to deduct insurance contributions from our paychecks, despite failing to secure coverage for us. As of March 2023, we remain uninsured, with no sign of reimbursement for the deducted funds.

The third and most pervasive issue centered around the CEO, whom I'll refer to as Marc. Marc was notorious for making grand promises regarding insurance, timely payment, and compensatory measures for our patience. Yet, time and again, these assurances proved hollow. His modus operandi comprised a facade of eloquent rhetoric, reminiscent of a slick car salesman, yet devoid of substantive action or integrity. Lies, disrespect, and a glaring lack of professionalism permeated his leadership style, eroding trust and morale among the team.

PS: I had to express myself somewhere thx for reading. I will be writhing formal review on the company in effective location. <3