Owen

First off, this is not a story about my boss, the GM, but rather a
story about our owner. The owner (henceforth known as Owen) refuses
to be part of the management team. He hired people to manage, he just
wants to come in talk with the customers and watch the dough role in.
Which is fine (and I’ll admit sounds like an awesome retirement plan)
if he followed through on this idea.

Owen refuses to allow any of the managers make any decisions, and
give contradictory orders. Example: throwing a fit about our food
cost being way too high, but not allowing us to enforce the rules of
our buffet. Or not allowing us to change any way we prepare food.

Owen is in his 80′s and uses the same business model he had when he
first began working in the food industry… in 1952. He has this idea
that the customer is ALWAYS right, even when they are obviously in the
wrong. He also seems to think I am part of the management team and I
am just a lowly hourly employee (but that is a story for a different
day).

Overall, I feel bad for my GM. He can’t manage cause he isn’t allowed
to, but still gets all the anger for not doing a good management job.
Employees are pissed because they can’t get a raise (Owen won’t
approve it), he has to constantly cut hours which ends up meaning 2
employees have to do the work of 4, and he isn’t even allowed to
create an effective management team. I wouldn’t be shocked if he left
us for a different job somewhere else… although it would probably
mean the end of where I work.

Spinal Tap

I broke my neck in January and ended up having major surgery. I’m out
of work for the foreseeable future because I can barely walk and typing
is painful (if I wasn’t so set on sharing this story, you wouldn’t be
getting it!)

At my job, I am one of two managers of a particular unit. The other
manager and I have always gotten along just fine and I believed we
were, if not friends, at least good coworkers.

I have heard from her once(!) since January. She texted me the day
after I had my spine screwed back together. She didn’t ask me how I
was doing, how I felt, or anything. She asked when I was coming back
to work, and when I said we didn’t know yet because we had to let my
spine heal, she said, “Oh, so you’re going to keep us in the dark?!”

Nothing else from her since then, except that I heard from other
coworkers that she told our staff that I didn’t want to come back to
work with them, and that I didn’t want to hear from anyone.

Nothing could be further from the truth – I’m housebound and bored to
death, I’d love to hear from someone! But my staff has heard her crap
so much since I left that now they don’t want to talk to me. Even if
I ever get to return to work, which is doubtful, I don’t think I’m
going to be very welcome.

Talk about kicking someone when she’s down.

No Laughing Matter

I was working at a home health care company in the call center /
customer service department. I would take about 100 calls a day and
place peoples orders for them. Occasionally we (the worker bee’s)
would talk to each other and enjoy a joke, and (gasp now) laugh. Well
a client on the phone overheard one of the laughs and called to
complained to our manager. We were then told that there
was no laughing allowed at work. What a tight ass boss we had. I
laughed when she said we couldn’t laugh anymore. Thank God I no
longer work there.

Eat Mor Chikin

So I worked for Chick-fil-A for over a year before I moved away to go
to college. Where I promptly found a job at a Chick-fil-A that was run
by the campus food service company.

It was a small, cramped kitchen off of a huge half empty kitchen that
we weren’t allowed to use for prep. I worked with one older gentleman
named Ken on the weekends and an older lady during the week. They both
say hello to me when I see them around campus.

So after I had been working there 2 months and never calling off,
closing 4 nights a week while being an honors college student, doing
tons of art studio homework and having extracurriculars, I then got a
concussion in a sports accident and ended up in the hospital on my
night to work. I called my boss, who was only a year older than me,
and told her I was on my way to the hospital. I was met with an
attitude and demands for a doctor’s note. Then she called me an hour
later while I’m waiting for my cat scan results asking me if I would
“be gracing them with my presence at all that night”.

The next night I came into work early still wearing my hospital
bracelet (I couldn’t find my scissors that day) and carrying a
doctor’s note that stated that I wasn’t to work for 4 days. Her reply:
“Well you seem fine and your dorm is right across the street so I need
you to work.”

Not wanting to get fired, I worked my shift and ended up passing out
while we we’re trying to close. (Probably from the constant bending
over from her making me clean the pressure fryers.) My roommate had
to come help me across the street because I was so out of it.

Turns out I had two Level 2 concussions. The next day my boss called me
and told me “Because of my unreliable nature I will be taken off the
schedule and be treated as a filler” and that “They’ll call me if they
need me to cover any shifts.” I still haven’t gotten my $200 in
backpay…