You can shove this job up your

[Department stores *sigh*]

how could i forget???


Bassically before I was a retail grunt i spent 10 months at Burger King. A lot of things tied in to my leaving there but the this had to have been the straw that broke the camels back.

I had been asking for a raise since I was reiable and I was the longest working back shifter there. 13 seconds for a perfect whopper woot woot.

One day comes where thre are no trainers on. Granted I know my job but trainers had a doller raise to their wages that i did not have. Managment askes if I would mind training some new hires for the day since it was slow. Being the nice guy I am I said I might as well. I got pretty annoyed when my request for the extra doller an hour that shift was denied.

Fast forward to me showing them thestockroom.

NG: New Guys (all voiced as one)
Me: Naive lil 16 yr old

NG:Im glad they let me work since im only 15.
Me: O? when do you turn 16?
NG: Next month.
Me: O cool anyway here is the pickles...
NGtalking amongsth themseleves about wages.
Me: Sorry what was that?
NG: We are just talking about the starting wage being increased here.
me: So you make more then X.XX an hour?
NG: yup we make Y.YY an hour.
Me: Cool. so heres a pickle pail, thats a pickle bucket, here is a pickle scoop. I'll be in the breakroom watching tv and bouncing a ball. Enjoy.

(this was about 4-5 years ago so not exactly quotes)

Handed in my two weeks about a week or so later after hearing numerous 'we have asked the DM about raises but no response yet'

[wagegoth]

Decades ago (I am old!) I got a job as an AM for a Taco Hell. I'd never worked fast food or for a chain of any kind before that, but I had some small restaurant management experience and needed a job quick.

During training I had to commute over an hour each way. Then I was working 12 hours a day, usually 6 days a week, often without a break. Yeah, totally illegal. The other trainees and I kept saying, "It's got to be better when we get our own stores." Geez, we were naive.

First, I'm sent to a very new, very nice store about 20 minutes from home. The manager was a guy I trained with, and we got along really well. The associates were young but nice and enjoyed their jobs. They kept telling me that I hoped I wouldn't be leaving too. No way, I told them, it was a great store and a great crew. That couldn't last.

Sure enough, a week later I'm transferred to another store in the same town that was having problems. The previous store had a pretty standard rush schedule with solid sales even in the off hours. This store had real problems.

It was older, no drive-through, limited parking and was downtown in an area that was pretty empty after dark. Our one real source of sales was the lunch hour, because we were right across the street from a high school. Lunches were insane. Hundreds of kids with 40 minute lunch breaks trying to get food (mostly low price items like bean burritoes and tacos) vying with local business people trying to score a quick, cheap lunch before getting back to work.

We were always under pressure because of this sales pattern. We had a lot of people working short shifts and not happy because corporate (not Pepsico, another company) wanted personnel costs kept at a certain level based on the sales rates for each hour. We couldn't win. The manager had also trained at the same time as me, so we tried to be a team and survive.

I was still working at least 12 hours, 6 days a week. I was falling asleep sitting up. They only gave me one uniform, so I had to go home and wash it every night for the next day. They brought in management people to help out (basically threatening their jobs if the numbers didn't go up and the costs down). One of them ended up vomiting in the parking lot more than once because he was working so many hours and not able to eat or sleep properly.

And that's when I knew it wasn't going to change. It was never going to get better. I got past the 3-month probationary period and then got a new job.

I walked in half an hour before my next shift with my clean, neatly-folded uniform, and told my manager that I wasn't coming back. And left feeling at least 50 pounds lighter. (Even though all my food was free and that food is fattening, I was losing a pound a week from the insane work and stress.)

I got a call about an hour later from the DM. She told me at one point that since I hadn't given notice they couldn't give me a recommendation. It felt so good to tell her, "That's okay. I already have a new job."

Even better, I filed a claim for overtime with the Labor Commission. And I won! They admitted that I spent most of my time working as a crew member, not an AM. I didn't get all the overtime I'd earned, but it was a victory I've never forgotten. I've also never forgotten that if things are bad and I know they won't be getting better, then it's time to leave.

[Retail Associate]

Several years ago I went to work as a receptionist in a doctors' office. There were 4 gynecologists & one physician's assistant and since there were (and still are) very few gynecologists my town, this office was extremely busy.

It was my job to answer phones along with a few other tasks. If I remember correctly there were 9 lines and the phones rang non-stop from 8AM til we shut them down at 5PM. I would literally have to answer each line with "OBGYN - Please hold" until all lines were on hold, then go back through and find out what the caller needed. It was insane and I thought I would lose my mind. Nearly every night I would hear phones ringing in my sleep. I'd sit up in bed yelling, "OBGYN - Please hold."

One day, after only 5 weeks, I left for lunch and never went back.

I did call the next day and told them I just couldn't handle it anymore. Needless to say, I've never mentioned them on my resume.

As a side-note, I was the fourth person to have that job in only 9 months. Guess it drove everyone nuts!

[Namrepus221]

This is my story.

There was this little place across the street from the Burger King in our town. It used to be a Long John Silvers, but since they wanted it to be a LJS/A&W Root Beer burger place they moved down the road (BTW... the fish and chicken have never tasted quite the same since they moved)

Anyways some guy bought it and turned it into a "normal" restaruant. I walk in one day during the summer and put in an application to work as a dish washer.

I manage to impress them enough that I get the job.

Then comes the "training" I'd come in for a few hours, throw dishes into a tray, and into a small industrial dish washer. Everyone working there (kitchen staff especially, the ones that acctually cooked the food) wanted to know how much they would be getting paid.

The owner would always replay "It will be merit based, you could make $6 or $7 an hour"

A week before the place opens for business he has all the kitchen staff come in for training. The training you ask? There is a deck that was added to the building...and it needed to be stained. One individual that was hired 2 days prior as a cook walked off the job after 2 hours saying "They hired me as a cook, not as a painter"

We have a family night...and none of our families (kitchen staff, wait staff, etc) are invited. The owner had every member of HIS extended family come. Really late night, I don't get home till midnight at the latest.

Now after 2 weeks of work (really easy stuff considering that every day I was there I'd work maybe 4 hours or so and go home because they were having such slow business) I come in one day and find out our paychecks have been delayed a week. I figure fine, I'm doing a good job, more money for me because it's all based on merit.

I'm scheduled for my "long shift" on friday. Basically I work from 4 till close (about 11) and then have to help clean up for the next day. And we get swamped this night. I have piles of dishes backing up, the dish room is so small I can't get everything inside the dish washer or washed to satisfactory cleanliness (we served baked talipia fish and these ceramic bowls we used would literally have the oils, cheese, and fish welded to themselves)

I have one waitress tell me "Hurry your ass up" because of the back up. I tell her "I'm going as fast as I fuckin' can lady" (my philosophy being 'You swear at me, I can swear at you') I would later find out the same waitress would be fired that night for cussing out a customer when he complained about his meal being incorrect (as I recall the steak he ordered was Medium Rare and he got it Well Done)

Midway through the shift I can't take it any more...I quit in the middle of the middle of the shift. I stay the rest of the shift out of respect for the few "good" people that worked there (the boss would later come and say he was proud of me for staying and not walking off the job)

I pick up my paycheck that night

Hourly Wage (including training): $5.15

Minimum wage... The twat of an owner decided that "Merit based" was a good way to secure a bunch of kids to work for him thinking they would make some good money and instead screw them over. For $5.15 an hour I painted a deck to boot.

I spoke with some of the kitchen staff... Their wages? $5.15 was base. Highest wage was $5.45 an hour. Out of 8 people the wage diffence between the lowest and highest was 30 freakin cents.

The story does have somewhat of a happy ending. I ran into one of the managers that was there when I worked about 6 months later at the mall. He was working as a manager of a Hot Topic now. He said that the owner either fired or had just about every one that was working there when it opened, quit. Including himself.

Also care to take a guess what he made while working there?

Yep....he was the lone person making $5.45 an hour as part of the kitchen staff.