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…

This Is IT

A few summers ago, I worked for a very small IT company – just me and
my boss and sometimes another contractor. We usually ran around town
fixing and setting up computers/networks. It was pretty easy work
with great hours and pretty good pay (usually).

He landed a few bigger contracts and asked that I find someone to work
with me doing a network installation in a small office building. This
setup was to include a laptop, server, network printer, workstation
and dropping cables for the network. Simple enough to complete in a
day with two people.

The person I hired was a friend of mine with good computer knowledge.
We started the day off at 8AM meeting with my boss at the office to
pick up tools and all the required parts. He forgot the tools at
home. Good start! He runs home and picks them up then decides to join
us on this installation. I knew immediately this would go horribly
wrong.

Here’s the gist of the entire (12 hour) day:
1. I cut holes in the wall to install the RJ-45 jack wall plates. My
co-worker friend drops the cable down near the hole to be fished out
and connected to the plate. My boss insists on fishing it out with
the snake line — which is metal. He kept missing the cable, got
frustrated and pulled the snake line out too fast. He hit and
electrical outlet inside the wall and knocked out power to that side
of the office building. He tried to have me call the owner and tell
them some freak lightning storm hit the building (on a clear,
cloudless day no less). I refused and made him dick around and reset
the breaker.

2. After finally pulling the cables down to the appropriate levels,
he then insists on wiring the RJ-45 plates himself. I was about to
attempt to try it myself as I’d never done it before and found a nice
and easy tutorial picture online. BUT NO! He was going to do it. He
messed around with it for a good 30 minutes, had it wired, plugged in
the cable…and it didn’t work!!! He’d wired it completely wrong. The
best part being that the picture for the correct way to do it was
sitting behind him on the computer screen the entire time. This was
after he bragged about having a 4 year degree in “Networking”. And
yes, I wired it correctly for him. Oh, and +5 to him for forgetting
to bring wire cutters with him on this venture.

3. He’d apparently informed the office owner he’d set up their
telephone punch block. He didn’t inform the owner that he had no idea
how to do this and was just trying to up his estimate cost. He said
the phone company actually had to do this or he’d get in trouble. I
listened to them go back and forth in their native language (they
were both Indian) for a good 30 minutes before my boss apologized and
knocked $100 off the job.

4. After everything was finally setup, we had to clean up our little
mess we’d made with the wire clippings, pieces of drywall, etc. Boss
decided we needed a vacuum cleaner which he also neglected to bring.
He decides to run to Wal-Mart and promptly gets lost on his way back.
He takes about 2 hours to get a vacuum. Everything else was finished
so my co-worker and I were basically forced to sit there with the
owner while he found his way back (with his precious GPS on his
dashboard).

So after this wonderful adventure that took 4 hours longer than
originally planned, my boss has the audacity to ask the owner if he
liked our work and when he’d recommend us to his other friends that
needed set up. The guy was pretty speechless.

To top it off, at the end of the day when my boss goes to cut us our
checks, he makes mine $50 less than my co-workers’. Why? Because I’m
a girl and I didn’t climb in the ceiling like my friend did. I
pitched a huge fit and gave him back his company phone that I’d had
for the past 4 months. I pretty much did everything for him that
summer and he was about to short change me for not climbing up a
ladder and apparently for having boobs. I ended up getting the $50
but not without a lot of attitude and some guilt tripping. I promptly
quit a week later after I’d been erasing something off a whiteboard in
his office and he complimented how my ass looked in my jeans. He went
out of business two months after.

Great Work!

I have worked in kitchens since I was 16, most of them were good, my
bosses and co-workers were lovely people. This particular manager was
not.

Years ago I worked for a large catering company on a mine site. I had
initially joined in order to get my qualifications as a chef (which I
had been promised) but after 2 years nothing had ever come of it. I
stuck it out though. Our crew had 12 people, usually split into 2
shifts. I was on the afternoon shift which I loved. The work was full
on but we always had a lot of fun as most of management had left for
the day. This one week in particular we had a major function on for
some visiting VIPs so we had to knuckle under and get busy.

Now, the kitchen we were in at the time was in bad need of some decent
air conditioners. During winter it wasn’t too bad but in the middle of
an Australian summer, when temperatures can reach up to 45 degrees
Celsius (which is close to 113 degrees Fahrenheit), cooking in a badly
ventilated already hot kitchen was a nightmare.

Anyway, I had finished work the night before around 10 and the general
manager called me asking if I could come in early as, due to various
reasons and stupid clerical errors, our day shift team had gone from 7
to 3 and I was the only person from the afternoon shift that had
(stupidly) agreed. I needed the money.

I turned up at 5am and the 4 of us went to work. It was hard and by
the middle of the day the temperature in the kitchen had risen to 49.
Needless to say we were all sweating and tempers ran short. During
this time our manager (moron) kept breezing in and out. Never once
offered to help. He had difficulty holding a chefs knife so it was
light years beyond me how he became manager. by 4 in the afternoon,
after 11 hours hard work, things started to quiet down for the four of
us. We were exhausted, sweaty, all of us very red in the face and
probably a little crazy from dehydration. Our illustrious leader
waltzes in during the middle of cleanup and said he has something to
say thank you for our effort. He then proceeds to line us up and says
“Put out your hand” and as we did he gave each and every one of
us….a smiley face stamp. Not the actual stamp itself, but the little
inky smiley face mark you would put on a child’s hand.

I was speechless. At the very least I thought he would have given us a
bottle of water (which we usually had to pay for), but a god-damn
smiley face stamp? Afterwards he gave us the thumbs up and with the
biggest, cheesiest grin on his face said very loudly “Great work!”,
walked out and went home.

I know this isn’t the worst story out there but it just pissed me off.
A month later I found out he had been fired. I have no idea what for
but I certainly wasn’t the only person happy to see him go.