The Floor Scrubber

I used to work for one of the major companies that provides dining
services to colleges, hospitals, etc. My job was “utility” a fancy
word for dishwasher. At the end of the night I had to clean the floor
in the dining area with a floor scrubber, a machine which ran on
rechargeable batteries. It sprays water on the floor, scrubs it, then
sucks the water back up. I’ve seen this same type of machine used at
Wal-Mart late at night. After a while the pump on the machine broke
so I mopped the floor by hand instead. The company sent the floor
scrubber out be be fixed but didn’t want to pay the repair bill so it
sat in the corner unused. I went into work one day and the manager
says that she has exciting news for me: they had just purchased a
used floor scrubber, the exact same model, also with a broken pump.
It was to be my project for the evening to turn two broken floor
scrubbers into one working floor scrubber. I tried to explain to her
A: both floor scrubbers have the same broken part, and B: I’m a
dishwasher. What do I know about floor scrubber repair? We argued for
a few minutes and when it became clear I was making total sense, she
pointed to a toolbox (complete with missing handle and broken latch)
and said, “just see what you can do.” Inside the “toolbox” I found: 1
broken screwdriver, 1 rusty paint scrapper, various nails and screws,
and 1 rubber glove. I wasn’t written up because I threatened to bring
the union into it, but every manager (except for one) nagged me every
day for weeks because I “didn’t even try”.

The Coffee Shop

I’m currently working for a small coffee shop in Texas that puts the
big guys to shame, in all honesty;
We serve great coffee, make incredible drinks, stock fantastic
pastries and other foods, have fantastic service and clean the place
top-to-bottom every night. All of this contributes to an incredible
atmosphere for the customers… except for my boss.

My boss, the owner, isn’t crazy, but actually she’s just somewhat
pitiful. She worked for an airline company for roughly 30 years, took
their retirement package and decided to open up a coffee shop. The
area soon underwent massive construction, thus reducing the number of
customers in the store. Now, she’s not only in the red, but she’s
working 7 days a week and using the money from her retirement savings
to fund the place. She’s got a good 4 years left before she can leave
the place alone, so she’s said, but that doesn’t quite matter in the
meantime… The work and lack of money turned her into a bitter boss
that can’t stand giving up ANY control.

I tried to be a good employee from the very beginning- I offered my
managerial experience (which I had a lot of) and she refused to
delegate such tasks to me. I tried offering suggestions, but if she
so much as thought that I was trying to undermine a decision, she
would send me home and threaten to fire me (she has yet to, and I
don’t think she plans to.)

The most shining example of incompetence on her part was when she
brought me into her “office” (i.e. a small desk in the back) for a
disciplinary conference. She told me I was being written up for
up-selling. Yes, up-selling customers. By asking them if they’d like
a large coffee instead of a medium, or offering them some flavor in a
plain drink, I was being written up.

She told me “Our regulars know what they want when they come in here.
They don’t need someone trying to upsell them on things they don’t
want.” That quote is verbatim, I might add.

In my most calm phrasing, I explained to her that I was actually
making her more profit during my shifts because I’d get no less than
five people ordering larger drink sizes. It’s not much, but it’s
still additional income. No dice. She sent me home, threatened to fire
me and then told me I’d better not be late tomorrow.

Her policy of tardiness was also more than a bit perplexing. I’m
typically a punctual guy, but my route has some traffic from time to
time. I leave 30 minutes early for a place that’s 20 minutes away and
sometimes I still barely make it.

I was once a minute late. One minute. My shift began at 1:30 and I
showed up at 1:31. She told me (quoting verbatim again) “To me, one
minute late is the same as thirty minutes late.”

She threatened to send me home- I bit my tongue and just apologized,
trying to blame the traffic.

I understand that being late isn’t an acceptable, repeated behavior,
but one minute simply isn’t the same as a half-hour… and just
imagine the consequences if I’d had interrupted her tirade to point
out that her clock was 3 minutes fast?

Extreme Cow Tippin’

I’m a conductor for a small railroad in Arizona. One of my bosses,
the Assistant Trainmaster, is a pretty cool fellow. He treats you
like the human being you are, and he and I regularly chat outside of
work about random stuff. However, like any good railroader, he can be
a bit calloused about some things. A few months ago, one of our
engineers (the guy who actually drives the train) hit a cow. That’s
actually not an uncommon thing in Arizona – we go through open range
land. What sucked was that this engineer is an animal lover, and this
cow was the first living, breathing creature he ever killed. The first
thing my boss said was “Sounds like we’re having steaks tonight!” The
engineer called someone on the radio, and you could hear that the
poor guy was about to cry. I mentioned that and my boss said, “It
sounds like [engineer] needs to mourn the cow’s death over a bacon
double cheeseburger. It’s what I do.” I suppose I can’t judge him too
harshly, because when the engineer brought the train back to the
terminal that evening, he and I were both standing outside, waiting,
just to point and laugh at the damage the cow did to our train.

I must say, that cow did quite an impressive number to that train.

In House Abortions

I work for a small company that has more temporary workers then hired
employees because the boss is too cheap to hire anyone, but when she
does hire someone they will usually be between 55-60 years old and
they soon retire after being hired (which we pay for). She is also
horrible at her job. She makes a better receptionist then a boss, but
her husband owns the company so she is the boss. I have SO many
stories to tell, but I guess I’ll settle for the most recent one.

One of the temps, let’s call her “Brenda”, is actually a better
worker than most of the hired employees and just a joy to work with.
Recently all of the other managers and employees noticed that
she had been going to the bathroom a lot and looking ill. We asked
her boyfriend “Jeff”, who also is another temp that works better then
most of the employees, what was wrong. He just kept saying that it was
a stomach bug that must be going around. One week straight I counted
that on average she went to the bathroom 6 times. I asked her what
was wrong and she said that she hasn’t been feeling well lately but
that she’s fine and can work and wouldn’t tell me anything more. This
continued and our boss brought me and the other managers into her
office and she told us that she has noticed Brenda being ill. I
suggested that the manager closest to Brenda talk to her and see if
we can find out what’s going on, our boss thought that was a bad idea
and instead called Brenda into the office and confronted her in front
of all of us managers, and threatened to let Brenda go if she didn’t
tell us exactly what was going on. Brenda broke down in tears and we
couldn’t really understand her, so Jeff came into the office and
Brenda told him to tell us. Come to find out Brenda wa pregnant and
since her and Jeff didn’t have enough money to pay for the hospital
bills or raise the child, and her boyfriend is giong into the
military in 3 months, so she was going to get an abortion the
following week. We all felt horrible and our boss didn’t make the
situation better. She said “Well, maybe if you do an in-home abortion
you’ll be able to get back to work faster and you won’t have to wait
for an appointment. After all, isn’t that how all the kids these days
are doing it?” My jaw dropped and Brenda started crying even harder. I
asked if she knew what that was and she said that she thought it was
an abortion kit or pill that people used when they couldn’t afford to
go to the doctor’s office.

Our boss is retiring this year and Brenda and Jeff are still working
for us and we are still trying to get Brenda hired perminantly.