You Can't Always Get What You Want....and bad bosses.

Uh-Oh. Not even one post later and I'm back to my bitching and complaining. The typical narcissistic blogger. Me, me, me....


Wow-ee. It's been a stretch since I've last posted. And a crap load has occurred in my absence. Where to begin....Well, I'm a bit embarrassed to admit, but I don't work at the health food store anymore. It just was not going to work out. I technically quit before I got fired but he got his two cents in before I left for sure. I have to clarify that I have only been really fired from one job. By "really" I mean I didn't quit first like in this instance and I really didn't see it coming. Most of my jobs I've left on good terms and stayed at for years. I worked at a farm in VT for four summers and a grocery store there for three years. I worked at a youth center for two years and the crappy truck yard even for fourteen months. I have had other jobs for six months here and there because I used to travel a lot and then when I went to school and such. But my point is that I'm generally a hard worker and very thoughtful. Even the whole time I used I worked full-time and my employer liked me. I still use him as a reference and I know he gives me a good one. So really it boils down to the fact that the owner was just too hard for me to work with. I kind of knew he was weird, but I didn't know the half of it until I really started to have a lot of contact with him. It just got to be unbearable. He called my co-workers idiots in the middle of the store in front of a bunch of customers. And then later that same evening he called the cashier stupid and too dumb to put the candy away correctly, also in front of customers. And that's just a blip in the craziness. There was a "procedure" for EVERYTHING! Now, I'm all for an organized, well-run workplace. But it got to be crazy. Mostly because if you didn't think to ask if there was a procedure for something and did it wrong, even once, he'd bug out and talk to you as if you were the biggest loser retard in the world. And how could you BE so STUPID as to not think to ask what the EXACT procedure was for letting a customer use the bathroom. I'm not making that up either. There was a procedure for that which needed to be followed to the T. Apparently, we were not allowed to hand the customer the bathroom key, we were supposed to unlock the door and let them in and hang up the key and then wait for them. Because, he said, there was too much theft and we needed to check the bathroom after each customer use to make sure they didn't steal anything and also to check cleanliness. Which, whatever, a bit insane, but if that's what he wants, whatever. But I asked my co-workers if she could use the bathroom first and they said sure. They didn't mention anything about a specific procedure for this instance, so I figured common sense could prevail. But he (the owner) must have heard her or saw her leave the bathroom and he found me to yell at me about not asking about "procedure". This is when he called everyone idiots. It was really humiliating and that's when I started to lose it. I knew it wasn't going to work at the end of that day. But things didn't blow until the following day.

The straw that broke the camel's back was when he told me I should have finished putting the day's order away "hours ago" and why was I SO far behind. I was crushed. It was a huge order and it was the second time ever that I had put the whole thing away alone and only maybe the fifth time ever I had even touched an order there at all. And I had always worked with someone else. I still didn't know where a lot of products went. And I thought I had done an awesome job. Other employees had even come in throughout the day and commented on how much I had done so fast. Not to mention I had found products on the shelves that had been out of code date since JUNE! I must have found a total of thirty products in the time I worked there that were out of date. And rather than take them off the shelf, he'd just mark them down. Even dairy products, like yogurt. I also moved almost four shelves of back-stock onto the store shelves. Stuff that he was ordering new because he didn't even bother to see what he had. You have to understand that this store was rather small. So it's kind of really bad that stuff was so disorganized and not up to code. They kept saying that couldn't find any good help and they'd been so understaffed for so long. Now I know why. Nobody wants to work for this guy. During the interview I said (and I don't know how this came up) I was wary of businesses that always had an ad in the paper because it made me think they couldn't keep employees for a reason. Maybe they were bad places to work. He got all weird and started to explain why he always had an ad in the paper. I didn't realize that he was always running ads because I didn't generally get the paper that I found the ad in. I had no idea that I was talking about him. But now I know it's a good rule to follow.

Anyhow, after he dissed my work I was pretty frustrated and I wasn't really in to staying late to finish the order which I had been fully prepared to do before. You have to know that he had insulted me at least ten times that day already and I had received it gracefully. Despite the fact that most of the times he should have realized it was stuff I was hearing for the first time. He would yell at me or correct me over stuff that had happened way before I ever worked for him. Like stuff with price tags in the wrong place. (Every item had a SPECIFIC location in which the price sticker must be placed. Or else.) Or if stuff wasn't set up the way he wanted it. Or there was a lettuce leaf or a drop of water on the floor. It could be anything. And he would talk to you as if he just caught you stealing a hundred dollars out of the register. He'd say things all the time like, "Because you didn't remember to write that pudding down as a credit on the bills, I forgot to call it in. Now it's too late and that's going to be a loss for me you know". And then he'd give you this look like you idiot, how are you still alive. That really happened by the way. Except you should know that it was me in the first place who happened to notice that the Indian pudding we had just received had a code date that was bad in about four days. So if we had put it out we would have ended up eating most of it because it would have gone bad way before it sold. But they were totally surprised I caught it to begin with. Because, of course, I was new so when I noticed it I asked him what he wanted to do about it, he told me to tape it up and where to put it. I swear he didn't remind me to write it down. I think at that time, I'd seem him do that with some items but only after the fact or from afar. I hadn't been specifically instructed. And maybe that's common knowledge but I just didn't realize. And he was throwing way too much at me at once anyhow for me to remember everything I'm told after hearing it once. Obviously he knew about it because we had a lengthy conversation about the whole "procedure" of where it needed to go and how. He also checked the bills after the order was complete to make sure I checked every item off and hadn't done anything totally off base. So that was another opportunity for him to catch my mistake of not writing down the pudding. So how is it all my fault? How does he bear no responsibility? In my short time there I heard him tell another employee that he never forget anything important at least. And very rarely did he forget anything at all. I swear he thought he was the most perfect, flawless human in the world.

Could I get in legal trouble if I mention him and his business by name? Is there a site on which employees or former employees can warn other potential employees about bosses who are abusive or unethical? There should be. There are sites where customers can tell potential customers about how pleased or not they were with their escort, or prostitute, for the night. If we have that, then we should definitely have the same type of thing for the world of employers. Don't people have the right to be informed of a potential issue with an employer? Do they belittle their employees, do the make sexual comments, do the pay late or not at all, do they give breaks or just pretend to? Things like that are important and you can't ask them in an interview. No, on the contrary, the person being interviewed has to kiss butt, like the employer doesn't need employees just as much as we need an employer. You can't run a business, in many circumstances, with no employees, right? So why isn't the relationship more give and take?

Well, what it came down to it that he wasn't paying me enough to do the job at double speed, never make a mistake, EVER, and on top of all that be his emotional punching bag because he had a mental illness combined with massively low self-esteem. In the end, though, it has been a blessing in disguise. But I have to run now so I'll have to update on all the other news later. But trust me, there are BIG happenings.

Whoa, thanks for letting me get that out. It's been eating at me for days. I really wanted that job to work out. I loved the actual work. And the other employees were cool. The hours were great, the location convenient. But alas, not everything is what we wish it would be.