The A.M.

Years ago I worked in a higher crime area where all overnight
employees needed to barricade themselves behind bulletproof glass.
Now, this was in a hotel which had recently gotten a new Assistant
Manager. The new A.M. was disappointing to put it simply.

She really seemed to like staying rent-free on the property (rather
than renting an apartment or buying a house) during a portion of the
year when we should have been sold out. Corporate eventually evicted
her from the premises after they found out that she was abusing her
rank and losing them thousands of dollars during a time when
corporate was tightening budgets due to decreased profit margins.

I personally didn’t appreciate the fact that she refused to fire or
even chastise people who were caught stealing, breaking corporate
policies or even setting fire to the office in one case.

The thing which irritated me the most was that she would wait until
after the security doors were locked for the night to come down and
get coffee from the cappuccino machine on the patron side of the
bulletproof glass (while she was staying on premises). If some item
was not stocked or if the machine wasn’t up to her standards (both
tasks for the day people – before the security door is locked), she
would shove in front of any guests I was attending to at the time and
interrupt the transaction or refuse to let me serve them until I’d
unlocked and propped the security doors (which would lock behind me
otherwise) and done whatever it was to make her coffee perfect.
Sometimes these scenes were in front of an audience of several guests
who I would need to apologize to afterward for her behavior. Most of
these people understood from the interchange that she worked for the
hotel and this did not reflect well on us. The best outcome I could
expect of the situation (and it happened more than once) was for
someone to mistake me for the manager and her for the employee (I
often wore a suit instead of the standard uniform while she was
frequently in a t-shirt at that hour) – it happened more than once
and the mix-up both saved face for the company and provided me with
an ongoing source of amusement.

To put this into proper perspective – a woman previously in my
position had been robbed at gunpoint after propping the security door
and going to the cappuccino machine during the same shifts I was
working – this was why people working my shift no longer carried keys
to the safe. The bank drawer, however, was not secured (I recall the
lock being broken or something) and the A.M. was one of the people
able to access the safe containing several thousands of dollars in
cash by the time my shift was in progress. By staging her coffee
tantrums the manager was negating all of the procedures put in place
to prevent the hotel from being robbed again. There were still
robberies in the area and frequently the offenders would keep robbing
the same place over and over. A neighboring business with better
security than where I worked had even been robbed several times while
I worked at this place – including twice in the same week by the same
suspect. The FBI would frequently give us lists and descriptions of
wanted fugitives as well and we had more than one of them check in
during my time there. If there was a high risk location to be outside
of a bulletproof booth, I was in it.

I was very disappointed with a manager who felt that someone setting
fire to the office or stealing from the hotel wasn’t a big deal but
that her coffee was more important than our paying guests, the
hotel’s security, and my safety.

I tolerated it long enough to find another job and train my
replacement.

David

I have so many stories of my past job that would make even the most
hardened office monkey tsk-tsk in pity. Working in the management
office of a shopping center caused me to lose all faith in humanity,
and likely my mind as well.

Let me just explain the horrible, awkward office political set-up.

First was the marketing manager, we’ll call him David. Shortly before
I had been hired, he applied for the general manager position while it
was open. He didn’t get it, because the higher management company
didn’t like him. (And understandably so.) So when the new general
manager, we’ll call her Sharon, got hired, he already had a chip on
his shoulder about not getting the position he felt he was due.

Sharon was inept and borderline retarded, and I think the management
company had to have REALLY hated David to choose her over him. I have
never had a boss so impossibly stupid. She went to Florida on one of
her (several) vacations, came back sick, and believed it was because
of the chemicals used to treat the recent BP oil spill. Chasing after
Sharon was her executive assistant, “Rita”, who would dutifully report
every indiscretion in the office, whether anyone was 2 minutes late
(she kept a spreadsheet) or looking at Facebook on their computer, or
hell, sneezed a little too loudly. Rita was the devil.

More than this, however, Sharon hated David, and had express orders
from Higher Management to get rid of him. This is where I came in –
I was hired to replace him. However, they hadn’t fired him yet, so
when they offered me the job of Glorified Receptionist, and I
initially turned it down, I was told (actually told) that David would
be leaving his position soon and I would transition into it. By
“leaving his position,” they were planning on firing him. And he knew
it.

So here I come, fresh out of college, wide-eyed and excited to be a
marketing director soon as long as I slide under the radar and answer
phones for a few weeks. David knows it, and resents me. I know I want
his job. Sharon hates David and to further dig the knife in, she told
me she was my direct superior (this position had previously been under
David), and to report directly to her. As such – she gave me tons of
pointless projects to keep me from addressing projects David was
giving me. I was a pawn between two superiors who hated each other,
one of whom totally resented my presence, and I couldn’t even look
cross-eyed at anyone without Rita reporting it.

One thing I didn’t know about Sharon, however, was that she had
absolutely no spine and hated confrontation, and ultimately didn’t
have the nerve to actually FIRE David even though she’d hired his
replacement (me). So I sat in a position beneath my qualifications,
which I hadn’t taken had I not been told I would be moving up
shortly. To keep me entertained, Sharon had me do graphic designwork
for various events and things around the shopping center. She would
praise my work and then after it went to print and arrived (and had
been paid for), would complain to David about my work and have him
tell me he didn’t like it, using her complaints as his reasoning. As
long as the blood wasn’t on her hands, right?

After awhile, and David hated her so of course he told me everything
she would say, I questioned everything I did. My best work I would be
unsure of. It wears on your sanity after awhile — what’s left after
trying to keep up with and maneuver through the hilariously dramatic
and senseless office politics.

I was eventually fired because money came up missing from petty cash
– which was kept in a drawer that stayed in a locked combination
safe that I never had the combination to, and I never accessed
without the money I was taking being carefully counted and recounted
by Rita. I had never taken a dime.

Essentially, the reality was they were paying me too much — they had
offered more than the pay scale for the position to keep me happy
while I waited for David to get fired — and needed to axe the fat
because he wasn’t going anywhere. As I sat there listening to the
“You’re fired” speech, I was surprised at the overwhelming sense of
relief I felt, even in the face of unemployment in a tough economy.

Sharon quit a week after I was fired, and David is still there — as
is Rita, whom I am sure is barking on the heels of the new general
manager tattling on everyone’s newest indiscretions. And as for me?
Two weeks later I was hired at my dream job, and have adored my job
ever since.

Cheap Ass

My ex-boss was a lunatic. He owned a large electronic distributorship
in a major city which he drove to the ground in the 3 years I worked
there (when I started, we were #1 in sales). Employees were routinely
chewed out in front of co-workers and customers alike. One
salesman’s wife was to scheduled to give birth via Caesaran section
on a Friday morning. Now Friday was the company’s busiest day, with
customers coming in to pick up the equipment they would need for
their weekend installations. Boss’s reply? “Doesn’t she have a
mother? Can’t she be there instead of you?” Payday was Friday,
and since we were all paid “under the table” so he could avoid
paying taxes, we were paid in cash. Normally, the office closed at
5:30, but it was not unusual to find every employee waiting until
8:30PM to get paid, while he played backgammon in his office and
fought on the phone with his family He thought nothing of going out
of town for weeks at a time, and leaving us payless for as long as 3
weeks in a row. We started to take draws against the money our
delivery people collected, and he would question when he was back in
the office “Why did you take so much” (mind you, most of us took
just enough to get through the weekend because there was not enough
cash to pay everyone their full salary). One frigid weekend, the
pipes in the warehouse froze and burst.. We came in Monday morning to
find water pouring out of the loading docks. He made everyone stay
until 10 PM that night to clean up, no excuses. With no extra pay. He
actually bought us KFC for dinner that night and felt that was
sufficient enough reward. We caught him turning the sprinklers on in
the warehouse over a pile of defective useless equipment, so he could
collect water damages from the insurance company. The final straw was
when we all had to work a mandatory electronics show he put on
annually, which closed at 11 PM. He promised a bonus to us for our
work. Two months later, on payday, when we still had not gotten the
bonus pay, our marketing director questioned him about it. His
reaction? He fired the WHOLE COMPANY. Of course, he spent the next
few days calling and groveling to all to come back. The outcome of
this? Absolutely nothing. He never paid one person for their work at
the show. So MM, if you are reading this, you still owe me the measly
$100 you promised me, you cheapskate.

Surgical Packs

Yup, I broke up with my job today. I had had it with the way they were
running things and treating me. Worst of all, what they were giving to
the paying customers. I work in an industrial laundry facility, and we
sell our services to the local hospitals and army bases.

Doesn’t sound not too bad right? WRONG!!! My boss is the biggest ass
you can think of. I would report one of our drivers for sexual
harassment and he’d just laugh at me. He’d make snide comments about
my weight, and the fact that I didn’t attend church. He also gave me
shit for my educational choices in college. After dealing with these
minor things for a while he started having me make surgical packs.
These are the “sterile” gowns and O.R. towels used during surgeries on
all patients needing surgery at this huge hospital based out of this
area, in a completely non-sterile environment. He wouldn’t enforce
protocol and left it in my hands, so when I trained anyone, I made
sure they knew to wear a gown, hair cap, shoe covers, gloves, and a
face mask-to prevent any kind of “human” contaminations.

However, when my fingers on my right hand got broken he FORCED me on
F.M.L.A. When I told him it wasn’t necessary for me to leave he said
that I HAD to, or I’d be fired. So he hired my replacement, made me
train her, and give her my keys only three days of training. He said
when I came back I would be put out on the floor in production, I
would keep my pay, but my schedule would change and my whole job
discription–which is illegal to the Family Medical Leave Act. I
called corporate and they agreed that that was the plan and if I
didn’t like it, I could quit.

I fought and they ended up giving me an office job in the clean room
where there is not supposed to be anyone in, no food, drink, items to
be stored, or anything. I told corporate about the comments my boss
would give me and they told me to get over it. I just watched my
replacement make surgical packs without putting up her hair or washing
her hands. So what I am going to do is resign… and call OSHA, and
let them deal with this mess. Did I mention that they’re not certified
in anyway, and that maintenance is laying pipe 30 feet in the air
without any harnesses? The hospital is also paying at least $7.50 per
surgical pack (30 packs a week), they are unaware of the unsteril room
and that what they are paying EXTRA for is not a savory product to
use.–sorry it’s so long… It was so involved and this isn’t even all
of the story–PHEW! I can ask questions if you have any…