I found work as a teenager at a wing and burger joint as a
dishwasher. The job wasn’t overly difficult, as I just washed the
dishes and helped very little with prep. I didn’t work with the food
or the customers and I only had to make sure that things were ready
for the night before and the next day after my shifts.

I was a member of my high school marching band (yes a band geek) and
time came for our yearly band camp. We had camp for a week, from 8-5
every day. I informed my boss three weeks, then two weeks, then a
week, then the weekend before camp that I would not be at work until
a few minutes after five, if I was scheduled at five. My school and
my job were only about five minutes apart, so they understood and
said that as long as I got there asap, there was no problem.

I was only working three or four nights that week anyway, and they
never said anything about my few minutes of time.

I came in that Friday for my shift and was called into the office,
not by my boss, the manager, but by the head cook who was acting as
the assistant manager. He told me that the manager wasn’t happy that
I’d been showing up late all week and that if I showed up late that
day, that they were firing me. I specifically told him again that I’d
informed everyone that I’d be there as soon as I could but couldn’t
get out of band practice before 5pm, and that they’d known for
several weeks that this was the case, and that no one had said
anything all week about it. He told me that he was only doing what he
was told and that I wasn’t welcome there.

I said fine, but I wanted the pack of cigarettes that my brother had
dropped off for me. He told me that my brother hadn’t dropped any off
and that the brand new pack sitting on the desk wasn’t mine, but his.
Bastard stole my cigarettes too.

That restaurant didn’t last very much longer. When they fired me, I
told them I would happily tell everyone I knew not to eat there. I
like to think I helped keep customers away.

We had just launched a new community web site and the general manager
of the newspaper I worked for was peering over my shoulder looking at
the home page.

“Hmm, it looks great,” he says, “but that ‘Employment’ link…that
sounds stuffy. Can we make it snappy and call it ‘Jobs’? You know the
web is more laid back than print. Let’s make it fun.”

I obliged.

About a month later the GM is looking over my shoulder again as we
added a new feature to the home page.

He says, “Um, yeah, that’s nice. But why does that link say ‘Jobs’?
It should be like the newspaper and say ‘Employment’. That’s more
professional.”

I changed it back while containing my laughter.

I worked briefly for a bagel store chain one high school summer,
meaning I spent every Saturday and Sunday getting up at 5am to start
the 6am shift. It was owned and operated by white trash who hired
other, younger white trash to run the front, and these girls hated me
the moment I stepped foot into the store for my first shift.

There was a rule that you didn’t drop the bagel-cutting knives into
soapy water because the dishwasher couldn’t see them, and could
inadvertently get cut reaching in- well, guess who got a terribly
sliced hand the first week? Nobody cared, nobody got talked to about
it, I actually saw the girl who I know did it laughing and smiling in
a nasty way with one of the bosses about an hour later. I should have
done something then, but I was 17 and naive and needed the money.

The food handling was disgusting- halfway through every shift I was
instructed to take the huge cutting boards that span the length of
the display cases (where all bagels have to be placed at some point
if they’re being sliced) and take them back and bleach them- not
bleach AND rinse off, JUST bleach. Meaning whoever got sandwiches for
the next hour got Clorox with their egg and cheese. I have no idea why
they insisted on doing something so dangerous. I actually got yelled
at because they caught me rinsing them off one time.

Their motto on cream cheese (and I quote) was “if it doesn’t smell
bad, it’s not bad- it doesn’t matter what the expiration date on the
lid says”. Which means for flavored cream cheeses, where the
artificial ingredients can mask other odors, they often pushed
containers two and three weeks past expiration. They used old food
and condiments to dangerous limits, and people complained fairly
often about getting a bad sandwich. They’d always look terribly
surprised and then publicly chew one of the staff (me) out for not
checking the freshness (!!). Bagels dropped on the floor were always
(if nobody saw) put back in the bins for sale. Oh, it was so gross.

Ironically, about two months into it I was fired for throwing away
expired food and for taking too long to clean the food containers. I
think they called it ‘wasting profits and not keeping up’. It was my
one and only time ever being fired, and I literally skipped to my car
with a huge grin on my face.

My former boss has an office with a computer monitor that faces the
door. It’s a pretty big monitor because he’s older and doesn’t see
very well. He also has significant hearing loss, which worked out
tremendously in my favor one afternoon when I walked halfway into his
office before noticing that he was watching porn…

“Those of you without walkies need to go back and get one.” This was
said over the walkie-talkie.

He shouldn’t have been so surprised when next to no one heard that
announcement.

A couple of years ago I got hired to work as a cashier at a
department store. Although I was hired as a cashier I ended up doing
a lot of different jobs including manning the customer service desk,
the jewelery counter, unloading stock and the woman’s clothing
section.

My old manager had left recently and the new manager drove everyone
nuts. She was also preaching to the employees how to do their jobs.
She would also patronize us when we couldn’t get enormous workloads
finished in her preferred time frame. This manager was also the type
to talk down to employees with a sickeningly sweet voice as if she
was trying to offer good advice. She was also disorganized and always
frazzled. It was a common sight to see her running around the
different departments trying to figure out what was happening.

At the end of the year we were required to write off all the damaged
merchandise, which was done by the customer service workers. We would
go through an inventory list to mark everything off, destroy it and
throw it into the garbage. One day I was assigned to the service desk
and my manager told me to finish getting rid of the multiple bags of
damaged merchandise that day. The cashier schedule to work during the
day was not able to make it so not only was I taking care of customer
service I was also the only cashier and I had to write off the old
merchandise. I had customers lined up forever with some of them
complaining about the wait and my manager took the opportunity tell
me that she was disappointed that I couldn’t finish writing things
off that day.

When I quit a few months later she drilled me about my new job and
told me that I wouldn’t like it because it was commission based and
she implied I didn’t have the skills for a commission based job. Not
only that but when I asked for a reference letter to apply for
college (because my college asked for them) her letter was basically
two sentences about how I was a good worker, but I didn’t take enough
initiative. Last I heard was that she had quit due to stress and I’m
currently still in school with a job on the side that I love.