So, I have realized that over all of my years working that several places of employment have either closed down or had a complete management/staff change-over since they screwed me over in some way. Yes, seriously.
Never piss off a witch.
Why?
Well, settle in for a bit of a read.
My first real paid job outside of babysitting was back in 1988 - an A&W drive-in restaurant, that last of it's kind in the region. I was hired to work as a cook, and I lasted about three months, give or take. It was a shitty job, but I was still proud to be working. I was 16, and still going to high school full time. I had done some paid stints with my schools cafeteria cooking for large banquets, but that didn't prepare me for the world of fast food. We didn't have timers like McD's has to know when food was finished cooking - we had to go by how it looked, and we certainly sent a LOT of raw food out of that kitchen. And I was often left alone during a rush to try to cook everything on my own once I was trained on the deep fryer and grill. This was back in the day of A&W Chubby Chicken - like KFC, but not. Yes, we prepared our own fried chicken from the raw pieces that were shipped to us in boxes. And because the fryers were not cleaned as often as they should be, we had no way to know that the chicken we were sending out wasn't cooked all the way through because the crispy outside LOOKED the right colour, but because we didn't have timers we had no clue.
I got fired out of there for my attitude, or so I was told. Yes, my attitude sucked but that was because I was being left alone to cook everything, bag or tray it in a reasonable amount of time, and then clean everything on my own. While my coworkers were in the back fucking on the chest freezer. Yes, it happened often, and it was gross.
Well, about six months later the place was hit by a random food inspection due to the report of a rat infestation. The place never re-opened. It looked like it *might* reopen at one point, but a fire finished the place off. Rumours were that the owner or head manager got pissed off and set the place ablaze.
The summer of 1989 saw me get a job as a hostess at an IHOP. It was my first front of house position, and I was nervous as fuck about it. Especially when on Saturdays and Sundays they would put me on the cash register - before cash registers told you how much to give in change. I told them I would rather bus tables or seat guests because I knew that my math was shit, but they decided to keep me at the cash register. And then give me shit when it didn't balance at the end of the day. I did eventually master the art of giving change and I was made head hostess.
After I graduated from high school in 1990 I asked the manager about my wages going up from student wage to regular minimum wage. I was told no, despite the fact I was no longer a student, as the wage was based upon my age. I can't remember if that was true or not because it wasn't like I could just google it, but I remember calling bullshit. So I went and got another part-time job washing dishes at a Greek-owned Italian restaurant. I had set hours there, and let my IHOP manager know this, only for him to get pissed off because me set schedule interfered with the hours he wanted me to work. And when I asked him why he wouldn't have me train to be a waitress he told me it was because I talked too much. Meanwhile, I was the one who rarely spoke and did all the cleaning of the place while other hostesses who came in after me would do almost nothing and talk a whole lot more than I would ever dream of were trained as waitresses. The final straw for me was when I came into work one afternoon to find the newest hostess was now wearing a waitress uniform (yeah, we were colour-coded so guests could tell us apart) - she'd only started there a week prior. I quit on the spot, threw my uniform at the manager and walked out. It was set to be a really busy night so he tried to talk me into coming back. I told him to fuck off.
In the end, after several months, he lost his job (rumour was that he was screwing one of the waitresses despite him being married to the restaurant owner's daughter), the franchise was sold, and all the staff that stabbed me in the back got replaced. And the day after I quit, I was offered the f/t dishwasher position at my 2nd job.
I left that second job due to injury - I slipt on a soaking wet floor at the end of the night. I had been carrying a huge stack of freshly washed dishes and they went flying as my feet went out from under me. Dishes broke and I put my hand down on a shard of a dish. Long story short, I couldn't go back to work until the wound properly closed. And during that time I found another front of house job, again as a hostess. And instead of night shifts it was all day shifts, so I jumped at it.
At first I was okay with it, especially after being promised that after two weeks I would be trained as a waitress. In most restaurants waitressing is where you want to be because of the tips. Yet, after a month I was still a hostess. Two months later, still a hostess. So I started looking for something else. I figured that I could work part time at this place (Ricky's...a one-time chain restaurant, might still be, I don't know), and then part time at a place that offered me a waitressing position right off the bat. Only to have the management at Ricky's tell me that they would prefer I didn't have two jobs because it would mean that they couldn't just call me at the drop of a hat. Well, follow through on your promises and I wouldn't have gone looking for another job. Besides, I only worked day shift at Ricky's and had a half hour after my Ricky's shifts to get to my other job (Golden Pagoda, a Chinese food restaurant).
The day I quit Ricky's was a day when the manager on duty told me I had to stay late that day because one of the afternoon hostesses called out sick. Despite the fact that she knew I had to go to my other job. She told me that the only way she would let me go is if I quit my job. I called her bluff and quit on the spot. I went to the Golden Pagoda for my shift, changed out of my Ricky's uniform and into my outfit for the night, let them know that I was available full-time...and was promptly given 40 hours a week there.
Inside of a year or so, the owner of that Ricky's lost their franchise rights - although he said that he was the one that wanted out - and changed their name, menu, staff, etc. Not even a year later, the place closed. The owner wasn't a shitty person, really. He just had some really stupid 'rules' in place for his staff, and the manager who tried to force me to stay late, well, she kinda faded away.
Then the Golden Pagoda turned into a bit of shit show when the owners' son decided to start dating a very jealous girl who had been hired as a waitress. Until that point, things had been going really good. The owners thought I was awesome, and the cooks thought it was awesome that I was a white girl who never turned up my nose at their traditional food. I may not have been able to identify even half of what they served me, but none of it was what has long been commonly served in North American-based Chinese restaurants.
Sadly, the owners decided to let their son manage the restaurant, taking a very hands-off approach. And I made the mistake of admitting to the manager's girlfriend that I thought the son was a good looking guy. Within three days I was fired - being told that it was because I was no longer a good fit with the direction the son wanted to go. The owners had no idea as they were told that I quit on them one night during a rush. Lies all around, of course.
I found another job at a mid-range restaurant and on the day I picked up my final paycheque I made the mistake of telling the son and his girlfriend where I had found work. Only to have the girlfriend call the place and tell them that I had been fired for stealing tips. Which was yet another lie. When I found out, I went after the girlfriend and bounced her head off the pavement a few times, and warned her that if she tried anything that she'd get worse.
The lies that the son and girlfriend had been spreading finally got back to the owners, and they gave their son an ultimatum - break up with the trouble-making girlfriend and find a way to bring me back, or be disowned and lose the restaurant. The son decided that he didn't like either idea and was surprised when his parents refused to back down...and set the kitchen on fire one night, trying to make it look like an accident, or at least that he had nothing to do with it. He didn't know that his parents had installed cameras. I felt absolutely horrible for his parents - they did nothing to deserve what happened to their restaurant, but I know that they both landed on their feet in the aftermath. They never did reopon that restaurant but went to work for another one, which meant less stress for them, and to my knowledge they never did forgive their son. Last I heard, the son married his bitch girlfriend only to get cheated on multiple times and left penniless.
The restaurant that fired me based on the girlfriend's lies went under within six months after they 'let me go' and they do not appear on my resume. For obvious reasons.
After this I got hired at Bino's, another chain restaurant, this one open 24 hours. I worked the bar shift five nights a week. The tips would have been better if the night manager didn't steal our tips. And if he could keep his hands to myself. It was while working here that I got pregnant but I kept that to myself because I wasn't showing yet. It was also here that I developed a back bone...nightly I would be telling my manager off, to keep his hands to himself, and stop stealing tips. Oh, and to stop sleeping in the restaurant's upstairs loft area because everybody could hear his snoring. Everything was reported to the owners and they brought in a cook who was actually there to spy on the night manager for them.
The night manager went a step too far one shift - he decided that it was a good idea to grab one of my breasts. Me. A sexual abuse survivor with a hair trigger towards reacting violently. And I did. I grabbed the offending hand, forced it onto the nearest table and stabbed him in the back of his hand with a fork. He went to the hospital and I finished my shift to the applause of the customers - all of them regulars who hated the night manager almost as much as I did. When I left that morning I realized that I had forgotten my paycheque so I went in a couple hours later to pick it up. There was the night manager with his hand bandaged up, smirking at me. For some reason I went to check my hours for the next week, only to find that I had none. He came back laughing and told me that I was fired - I told him that he didn't have that authority (he didn't) and to get fucked. I was going to work the shifts I had written down the night before and he couldn't stop me. It was WILD, to put it mildly. He kept it up as I walked past him and out to the cash register area, and he started calling me all sorts of nasty names. Well, I'd had more than enough so I punched him, laid him right out on the mat. I told him that he had some nerve even coming near me after I dealt with his sexual advances the night before, and then to start calling me names in front of the entire Sunday lunch crowd. I quit on the spot, fully expecting to be charged with assault, but nothing ever came of it.
A few months later, after I found out I was pregnant, one of the owners called me. They had fired the night manager after all the other wait staff told them about what the night manager had been doing, backed up by their cook-spy, and they wanted me to come back because they knew I was good at my job. And they offered me the night manager position. Even if I hadn't been pregnant I would have turned them down because it was too little, too late. Things should never have gotten to the point they had.
Less than a year later, the restaurant went under and new owners turned it into a sushi place. But the building was cursed as no business could stay open for even a year. I believe that it was torn down years ago.
Oh, and let's not forget the gas station/deli I worked at while I was pregnant. Stupid hours, horrible coworkers, bad management who decided that I would be the one working Christmas instead of her adult children who also worked there. No sharing of those horrid hours to be seen. I gave my notice and finished up two days before Christmas. Then I was hired back after I'd had my baby, only to get blamed for cigarette theft that was actually committed by her son, caught on camera. The manager at that point was fired approximately two months after I quit...after an inventory done by head office showed an alarming amount of shrinkage (corporate lingo for theft). The folks from head office reviewed the tapes for several months - the manager tried to blame me for the theft - and found that a good chunk of what was being ordered was never making it near the shelves, but instead was going out the back door into her minivan. The place was eventually closed and was last a fancy juice bar of some sort.
My first job after I had my kid was at a small local restaurant. 1995. Again I was hired as a hostess, and I was fine with that as I really didn't want to be a waitress anymore. Things were okay when there were two owners, but one of them had to sell his share. One owner. Who cut major corners. It was to the point that rancid ketchup that should have been thrown out was instead turned into soup base. And he was losing money, hand over fist. I had been there for over a year when I told his wife to get off her fat ass and do her job instead of making the rest of us do it while she pocketed the tips. Yes, I was in a bad mood, but I had hit the end of my rope with the place by then. The owner, who was also a cook there, had made a few too many sexual comments to me, his daughter no-showed for several of her shifts without any repercussions, and then his wife was sitting on her fat ass telling me what to do. I was given a written termination letter the next day, with my last day being two days after Christmas, conveniently enough. The reason given is that I didn't know how to do my job. Over 18 months of working there as a hostess, having been given supervisor duties for Sunday nights, which I also was a waitress for, and I apparently didn't know how to do my job? And then my ROE said I had quit suddenly. Needless to say that was the quickest I'd gotten approved for unemployment insurance AND welfare. And, due to the bullshit that was written on my termination letter, I made good and sure that all the regulars - mostly staff from the mall the restaurant was in - were aware of what was going on. Besides, the writing was already on the wall the first time one of my paycheques bounced - I got to the point that when I got paid I would head to the bank the cheque was from to cash it. Only to be told to wait to cash my paycheque until the owner said it was okay. Yeah, fuck that noise. Less than six months after I left there the owners went bankrupt, and people whose paycheques kept bouncing but stayed out of misplaced loyalty never got what was owed to them.
There are more, many more places that got what they deserved after I left. Those are only a handful.
A bingo hall I was a cook for was investigated for their part in the BingoGate scandal a couple of decades ago. The manager that was behind me being fired ended up fired herself after all the theft I was blamed for by her kept happening and finally traced to her. That hall lost its full kitchen after that was all said and done.
The first call center I worked for lost its main client which saw more than half of its employees scrambling. I'd already given notice when I was fired on my last day of my notice period, but the place was rife with upper management with their heads so far up their asses they were seeing daylight. I may have laughed entirely too hard when six months after I left I discovered that the major client had pulled everything after having enough of the call center's mismanagement of their contracts.
My second call center is closed now, a little over a year after I left them for fucking me over on what should have been part-time work while I was just starting university.
My third job in this province saw the manager getting fired after she attempted to set me up to take the fall for her theft. Her little stooges also soon found themselves out of work as well.
I had a very short stint working at Halloween Alley the first time they set up a seasonal location in this city. I quit after the franchisee's wife decided to harrass me for no good reason about how I looked and dressed, and after the franchisee himself tried to blame me for cash shortages when I'd never even touched the cash registers, that it was his wife dealing with all the cash. Not to mention that when he was doing his daily cash deposits that he was shorting the float to cover the missing money. I quit after yet another accusation of theft, and promptly reported the franchisee to Halloween Alley's HQ AND the place he was manager of during the day (conflict of interest). He lost his management job, and after the Halloween season was over he was blacklisted from ever running a place for the parent company ever again.
In 2010 I worked for Convergys for a short period of time. I knew it was going to be a shit show from the start because that company does not have a good reputation in the call center industry. It started when we were told in training that we were going to hit the floor as full-time, although all of us had only accepted the position as p/t. And they conveniently lost all their notes that showed the promises they'd made all of us, and lost our banking paperwork. Ugh. And they expected us to lie to our callers about their issues, when when the issues were entirely on the client's backend. Not to mention that the phonelines coming into us were utter crap and nobody on either end could be sure they were hearing the other person correctly. At the end of my time there, I called out sick three shifts in a row because the stress was enough that I was physically ill as soon as I set foot on the parking lot. And then I just stopped calling in because we'd been told that three sick calls during our first three months equalled termination. Yet my former manager tried to convince me to come back, that they would not fire me for being sick. Yeah, I never went back. A few years later, after losing even more client contracts, they closed that location.
Then there was my stint in security. I left a call center with one day's notice to become a security guard, and inside of a month I was the site supervisor. I even had a hand in hiring a new site supervisor for another of the company's sites. Then the contract for my site ended up getting taken up by a different security company. I kept my position, but it was a fight from day one to get things done. Where, under the previous company, all I had to do was pick up the phone and speak to certain people in the client's company to get stuff done, but the new security company didn't want things done that way, regardless of how well the old way worked. The reason given for the new company to be given the contract was because the client wanted to have all their sites across the country to have the same security company. Even though that particular security company had been problematic for years. In the end, after getting screwed repeatedly by the regional office, dealing with their lies and other bullshit, I hit a wall. I had a mental breakdown at work one night after weeks of working 60+ hours a week, catching regional management in their lies and getting yelled at for 'overstepping - read 'making them look inept' which they were. I was ready to commit myself to the psych ward. I literally applied for a gas station job on a Tuesday, the next day I had an interview there and by the time I left the interview I was told that I had the job. Thursday, I gave my notice and let both my sites know I was leaving. Friday was my last day and I did not bother with a uniform - what were they going to do? Fire me? HAH! I made sure that I had typed out everything necessary to do my job, and left. It's funny how quickly regional management managed to get the three empty positions filled, especially after being told for weeks that it was the client blocking my employer's actions...despite me knowing that it was my employer not submitting any information necessary to get new guards permitted to come on site. The two main culprits at the regional office regretted screwing me over - the regional manager himself got fired for not doing his job at all and trusting his office/scheduling manager to do everything, only to have her screw over pretty much anybody she could. She ended up getting fired too, but she tried to pretend that she was only demoted and would be site manager for a different client.
My last ever call center job was the one that drove me out of ever going back to call center work. My mental health took a complete nosedive, taking my physical health along with it. Until I worked there I had never taken sick leave. Between too much of the management being the shittiest to come out of all of the other call centers in the city, and the two clients I had worked on projects for being utterly horrid, it was just enough. Going into work wondering what new rule had been implemented, or what restriction they were trying to force onto us, and the utter lack of support from all sides did me in. I hit the lowest point I ever had. I went on sick leave and never went back. The place has never been able to keep staff, even though the plan had been to have over 500 people answering phones - their turnover rate ran through that much in the first month the lines were open. They've had at least one complete change of upper management in the place, and they can't keep team supervisors either. At least half the city has stories about the place, very few of them good. They still can't keep their staffing levels at a quarter of what they wanted, and it's my strong beliefe that they will close as soon as their contract with the government is over - if they close down before then, the company owes the provincial government a large chunk of change.
Maybe I've had a bad run of jobs, which I have, but some of these places were in business long before I started there, only to end up closing or being completely overhauled within months of me leaving under less than optimal circumstances, usually after I've been bullied out of the job, lied to or about repeatedly, and just utter bullshit. Go figure.
Never piss off a witch.
Comments
Post a Comment