Mother Hen

My dad told me about a job he had one summer as a teenager silk
screening t-shirts in this nasty hole of a warehouse with no air
conditioning with forty other people. The worst part though was his
supervisor. She believed she was a ‘mother hen’ to all of the
employees, and treated them as if they were babies.

At one point, my dad and a coworker got into a minor discussion
during work that got a little loud. She stopped everyone on the floor
from working so that she could sweetly point out that arguing while
working was against the rules. Then she told them to go stand in
separate corners. They both thought she was kidding, but she told one
to go to that corner and my dad to go to another corner, and press
their noses into the wall until she said they could stop. The other
guy actually went over and did it as everyone watched. She turned to
my dad and said “Well?” My dad laughed in her face, flipped her off,
and left immediately.

To Catch A Predator

I was working for a security company as a dispatcher when the lead
dispatcher, a 29 year old man, became the manager due to our other
manager getting fired. Needless to say it was a corrupt company.
While he was lead dispatcher he would hit on every girl who came in,
though subtle it still made your skin crawl.

With me being fresh meat, I got the brunt of his schmoozing. He added me on
MySpace before I even knew I had the job and welcomed me to the
company. Long story short, I turned him down to “hang out”. He then
started writing me up for every little mistake that everyone was
guilty of. All of my co-workers stood up for me when we had a
dispatch meeting with the CEO. He then just quit out of nowhere. He said
he had personal business to attend to.

A few months later, I was watching the local news and there he was!
He was being accused of child molestation. He had met a 14 year old
girl on MySpace, they had sex, her parents found out, warned him to
never talk to her again, he refused, and he is currently on the run
from the police. Karma is a bitch!

Dust In The Wind

One summer while in college, I got the opportunity to be a bartender.
This was great considering how much money a college town brings. This
was bad because it was a dive bar on the outskirts of town that was
frequented only by old drunks.

Despite being on the edge of town, it still brought in good money
because anyone working was always the only person working. This means
I was the bartender, the short order cook, the bouncer and the
janitor. It was at first intimidating considering I was a 23 year old
woman running a bar alone. But most patrons were regulars and very
helpful and very nice. The owner however was also a local drunk who
wasn’t so nice and wasn’t so helpful.

Most nights consisted of running to the shack out back to get food to
fry up, toilet paper, cleaning supplies, all while hoping no one
needed a drink while you were gone. There was a rat problem, and we
were told to just use buns that hadn’t been chewed on, and while
cooking/tending bar, we also had to clean rat traps while making sure
no patron saw.

One night I had the pleasure of working after the most incompetent
and lazy bartender ever hired – the owner’s cousin. He received an
order of meat for a BBQ that weekend, left it on the counter out of
site and covered, didn’t tell me about it and left without cleaning
up anything from his shift. Upon starting my shift I find out that
night that we’re now doing sawdust on the floor to “hide the dirt”.
No further details from the owner or anyone else.

I go through my whole shift, busting my butt, closing at 3:30am after
a long night. The next day I get a call from my boss letting me know
that they won’t be needing me anymore because I left $120 worth of
meat out on the counter and I failed to clean up the sawdust that
covered the entire bar that was intentionally laid down.

Cafe Bonita

My first job ever happened to be working for my grandfather’s
girlfriend at the cafe they jointly owned in our small town. My
grandfather was happy to give me the job, but his girlfriend wasn’t
thrilled. Even though I was simply taking orders, washing dishes, and
bussing tables, she gave me a hard time. She complained that I was
doing everything wrong and customers were complaining. As I’ve
mentioned, it was a tiny town where everyone knew everyone else and
were always friendly and sweet. My mom also worked at the cafe and
had never heard anyone complain. My grandfather’s girlfriend hardly
went to the cafe at all and was just looking for a reason to fire me.
She decided telling me I was too young was reason enough. I was
sixteen at the time. A group of my friends worked there as well. One
night, my friend’s brother came in to inform him that a close friend
of the family had committed suicide. He became emotional and asked to
leave. My grandfather’s girlfriend replied with, “They shouldn’t have
told you while you were working.” Talk about compassion! Needless to
say, I no longer speak to that woman.