Could involve quitting a job with flair, walking out of an interview, or working around a dumbass boss/coworker during a Zoom meeting.
If anything just make it a "general work stories" thread
Once during a union drive, the bosses gathered my whole shift into the break room and gave us the big "unions are bad" talk. Regional manager was in the room. He came up and talked about how he didn't like how pro-union people were talking behind management's back because "we're all a team here." He said he wanted more "open communication," not for us to be "conspiring."
So when the bosses asked if anyone had any questions, I asked if they would invite the union to the shop to make their own pitch. You want more open communication, right? So why not let us openly communicate with the union?
He got flustered, said no and kind of just flopped around when someone else asked him "why not?"
Cue another one of the bosses, red and mad, shouting out from the back of the room that unions were just rackets that wanted to take our paycheck. Meeting ended at that point.
I was fired a week later lol.
if they got your boss that hot and bothered they must have been a good union
The same union tried to organize the shop like two years before I got there apparently, so they were familiar with it at least.
Was washing dishes at a place that was getting very very busy and I was solo in the pit, which was becoming impractical and I needed hand. The hand I eventually got was the owner's 15 year old kid who figured the authority was hereditary, which in the end it kinda was. Dude insisted on being on sink despite being awful at it, I just needed someone to run plates and check the line for pans. That way I could sub in cold side and my homies could smoke/catch up on orders. He would wash each plate completely clean, soap water, scrub it down to the point you could use it for device again AND THEN put them in the machine. A rack took him over five minutes. I told him gently tonlet the machine do the work, just blast a quick spray on em and haul them in. If some come out dirty they just go back in the dirty like but at least we have most of them clean and they can be used by cooks. He tells me that the machine costs a lot to run and the chemicals for it are expensive. He continues telling me who has several years of kitchen experience that I'm wrong about everything for these absurd cost cutting reasons that won't fucking matter when you consider the labor hours and customers that won't come back after dealing with shitty wait times I eventually snap after a few shifts and yell at him to stop having a fucking criticism, he has no kitchen experein and is a child it is MY dish out I am the full time worker and he is my help not my boss or even my fucking equal. He goes and tells his mom, who suspends me for a week. I took all the whippets and activator and filled a duffle bag with booze, took the drain stop for the dish machine and threw it out the window into the harbor and left.
He tells me that the machine costs a lot to run and the chemicals for it are expensive.
Then why the fuck is he wasting that by making the machine's job redundant? He still puts them in the machine.
i told my boss working for her was hell (she was abusive as FUCK) and she threatened my job so i told her "how about i make it easy for you, i quit" and she immediately said "you quit?" I said "yeah" and she just got up and left the meeting and rushed to HR and told them to get me out of the building. after working my ass off for her for years and getting publicly humiliated in front of my coworkers, having her spy on my computer usage without my knowledge, having her spread rumors about me to other coworkers and i end up eating shit in the end. but at least i told her off i guess. i wrote the CEO a letter telling him what went down and they didn't do SHIT about it. she still works there and from what my old coworker told me, everyone still hates her and she's still running the company into the ground. oh yeah, she also slept with my coworkers boyfriend and she is STILL her boss to this day. can you imagine your BOSS sleeping with your boyfriend and you just have to come to work everyday and pretend like it's okay? yeah FUCK bosses, don't remain professional because they sure as fuck won't. they use 'professionalism' against you like a weapon.
mine are fairly tame as far as these stories go. i had a point in my life that was hard, materially. not like living out of my car, but maybe a half step up. washing my dishes at an outdoor spigot, living in an illegal domicile, constantly getting screwed by mega rich people out of 20-30 bucks. right at the edge of disaster. if i would have gotten injured in those days, i would have been fucked.
now i'm the kind of traumatized monkey who won't let go of one branch without a strong grasp on another.
my best, such as it is, i was at this meeting of department heads. i was the head of my own department, which consisted of 1 person: me. there used to be 4 people in it, but they all left and all of their responsibilities became mine as i was "promoted". my job title went from having 2 words in it to having 6 words in it. and i got no additional income for my trouble, also i was doing shit that i didn't want to do anymore, professionally. so i leveraged the situation into getting another job offer. it took me several weeks, sneaking off to do interviews, etc.
so there i am at this department head meeting, and it comes to me in the rotation "What's new in your department, Kmart?" so i say, "Well, as of this morning I have accepted a job offer with [organization] for a 40% pay increase and [benefit highlight reel]. My last day is [x] and I won't be attending any more of these meetings." a couple of burnt out older ladies i got along with chuckled quietly, but the rest of the room was tense as fuck with shock. i guess i had played my cards pretty close to the vest or they thought i was the kind of person who was just going to take it and limp along, grateful for having relatively secure employment.
I worked in IT for a state government a few jobs back. It ruled because it was union.
One time my dipshit manager decided to put all his people into a on-call rotation without telling us. Then my superior told me I could opt out and literally everyone on my team had done it already.
I called up my manager and told him that unless he wanted to have a discussion about compensating me for being on-call, to remove me from the list.
He started trying to guilt me about how I was the only one from my agency on the list, and I told him to pound sand and hung up lol
Shortly after I started getting messages from co-workers in that office asking what I told him because he was pissed off at me. Eat shit dude
I worked in IT for a state government a few jobs back. It ruled because it was union.
Nice. I work in IT for a state government, and we are forbidden by law from joining a union.
we are forbidden by law from joining a union
how the fuck is that a thing?
State law, and state employees are not covered by Federal labor laws.
The usual reason here in my state has to do with the position having access to privileged information which would compromise bargaining. In other words, it's too hard for the employer to lie to you.
That said in most states IT can often still affiliate, just not with the same union as everyone else at the worksite. There's usually some sort of appeals process that depends on the state board of labor.
The usual reason here in my state has to do with the position having access to privileged information which would compromise bargaining. In other words, it’s too hard for the employer to lie to you.
Maybe they shouldn't try to fuck you over then. Sounds like a great way to ensure things get leaked anyway
Well I've left every job I've ever had without notice because of my mental health issues but I'm way to meek and polite to make a show of it. Like I applied for a job but everything they had listed on the application was bs, I was expecting 40 hours a week and when I came in they were like nah, weekends and overtime. I had just come from a job where I worked 7 days a week, 12 hour days (I'm not exaggerating) so I politely filled all their paperwork, let them walk me through the facility, give me a date that I could start working, and then just never showed up. And when I worked as a night stocker I didn't get paid enough so I just stole food until I got caught. Speaking of, you ever applied for food stamps? I get that I'm single with no dependents but it's a joke what they think is reasonable to live on.
it’s a joke what they think is reasonable to live on.
the cruelty is the point.
When I worked at the post office I had a boss who was straight up abusive. We had had the same position for years and he was always a dick but once he got promoted he used his power to make us miserable. I eventually had a mental break down so bad I'm now on disability.
Anyway after the break down I started to fight back. First went to the union and registered a bunch of complained against him but he used to be the union rep so he was buddies with the higher level union guys so nothing really happened. So I filled a complaint with corporate HR they started an investigation. I was also already considered partially disabled when I was hired so I registered another complaint with the ADA. By the end of it he had multiple investigations against him, they found enough stuff they offered me a settlement. He wasn't fired but his goal in life had been to make post master like his dad, I crushed that dream because he will never be promoted again. Talking to my old co-workers he basically keeps his mouth shut now and only does paper work because another complaint against him will certainly get him fired and maybe effect his 401k.
That type of backroom, "good old boy" union corruption that prevents actual worker protection is poisonous for the survival of unions.
Yeah that part sucked but for the most part the union was great. Upper management tried to force all sorts of bullshit on us, they fucking wanted driver facing cameras in our trucks, and the union slapped shit like that down constantly. They also managed to negotiate a $2 and hour pay raise and made it so that for the part time guys they got paid for a minimum of four hours worth of work even if all they did was clock in and get told to leave.
Remember this term if you ever run into a piecard (hadn't heard that term before so thank you for that): Failure to represent. I guarantee using that term will freak out state or national affiliates staff and they'll take your concerns a lot more seriously
Piecards are a blight.
edit for anyone unfamiliar with that term:
noun: piecard (plural piecards)
(slang, derogatory) A union official who is on the side of the boss rather than that of the workers.
First went to the union and registered a bunch of complained against him but he used to be the union rep so he was buddies with the higher level union guys so nothing really happened
This is why the Janus vs. AFSCME Supreme Court decision Is in some ways actually kind of a good thing for labor. If the union gets your due money even if they do fuckall, theres a good chance they'll do fuckall.
That said, I hope Mark Janus dies choking on shit.
I worked support desk during undergrad at my college.
Our team comprised of myself, five other undergrads, and two admin staff. One of the admin staff was a creep who kept a huge - at the time - encrypted porn stash on his personal computer that he bragged about inexplicably to the male students, including me. In the summer only one of the admins was on site and the other remote. The admins both had a beeper that we could ping and codes to tell them where to go on campus. One day during the summer the creepy guy came in and told us he only wanted to be disturbed if it was truly an emergency about an hour before close. Me and the other guy working the desk realized he was probably going to go into his office and whack it.
After a quick lunch I came back and he had still not left his office. A call came in from the chancellor about a laptop issue about 30 minutes before we were going to close shop. We could have fixed it easily, but chose not to, telling the chancellor we would escalate it to the admin. We then pinged the other admin telling him to call us, and we told him we had not seen the other admin all day. The other admin - who lived nearby - said he would drive down and meet the chancellor at our shop and we could lock up and go home early. We closed shop and waited to see what would happen in the adjacent computer lab.
The admin offices were down a long hallway past the server rooms and had locked doors, but any admin staff with a badge could open them. When the other admin came in he met the chancellor at our shop window, and then proceeded down the hallway to his own office. He opened his office, and then stepped across the corridor to the other admin's office swiping his keycard. The other admin was indeed whacking it, and many what the fucks were heard, shouting, and then eventually crying. I don't handle lots of drama well so I left at that point. He was shitcanned that day, and the next week we had the university's first female admin for our shop. She was cool, she always brought in fresh muffins/doughnuts on the weekends.
It wasn't me doing the telling off, but I once had a manager who was a massive dick. Supposedly he was a former CEO and millionaire and he looked down on all of us for being manual laborers. Every week he would call a shop-wide meeting where he would yell at us, call us fuckers, and brag about how he didn't have to work as hard as us because of his education and work experience. He also liked to make us work mandatory weekends, and one Saturday after the shift ended his laptop went missing. Apparently it had a lot of important data on it, and for weeks he was begging for it back, he even offered a cash reward if it was brought back to him. Eventually someone found it stashed in a cooler with the screen ripped off. I think he got the message because after his laptop was found like that he started being a lot nicer to us.
because of his education and work experience
claims to have experience and education, doesn't do backups 101
every time my boss says something about me not clocking in on time or logging into our systems quickly, I blame my computer
to be entirely fair to me, it is often my computer. damn thing’s a decade old and so loaded up with work-installed spyware (do you really need to log all of my mouse movements?) that it takes fifteen minutes from cold boot to being able to open apps.
That's the one saving grace about working for old people - you can just make up shit about technology and they'll believe you every time. Even if they do have doubts, they don't know enough to question you without embarrassing themselves so they keep their mouths shut.
I was working in the seafood department of a big chain grocery store. We had a massive promotion for king crab legs. The store I worked at was the closest to the corporate hq. On the first day of the promotion the regional manager came to visit in civilian clothes. He asked me how the crabs were selling and I was like, "Pretty slow so far." He then introduces himself without mentioning his title. I shake his hand tell him my name and ask him where he works. He huffed and puffed his way out of the store and a week later I was transferred to a store 30 miles away from my place. I didn't really tell him off, but I think my not acknowledging who he was probably pissed him off more than if I called him a bellend.
I once worked at a small tech startup. It was the owner, another guy and me. The owner was a nice guy and fairly good at the conceptual work he did but he was not good at running a business and he hired some really incompetent people to do bookkeeping and payroll. He didn't know much about the rules and practicalities of employing people, for instance we didn't have any form of pension payments (very unusual here) and he felt proud of himself for offering paid vacations, although he was legally required to do so. It often happened that someone fucked up so we wouldn't get our salaries on time.
Business was bad and money were low. Payday came and no money were being paid. The owner asked if we could wait a month to get paid. I've had it then. He'd done this to us one before and it had been horrible. I went to my union right away whose lawyers threatened him with bankruptcy if he didn't pay up. That helped, a week later he had talked his friend into pouring his savings into the company and he had my money.
Half a year later the company went bankrupt. The moral of the story is to join a union. Also, never stay somewhere that can't make payroll, if their finances are that fucked they're on their way down.
Also, never stay somewhere that can’t make payroll, if their finances are that fucked they’re on their way down
:100-com:%
Had a place put me on payroll mid software transition and with no experience as the previous employee left.
I still have no idea how it happened, but I managed to pay half the workforce double while the other half got nothing one cycle.
I replied to an AllCompany email after the President shared the Aunt Jemima Story July of 2020 (you remember the one) with simply “I dont think this is a good use of company resources”
I had a very long day of bullshit already. Almost 5 mins later I got an apologetic call from both HR and the VP, and saw additional emails from the President also apologizing for sharing the fake news.
This is such a perfect way to deal with this kind of shit in a corporate setting.
:marx-ok:
My company got acquired, and our CTO had basically been out of office for the best part of a year. Endless excuses that ranged from “I have a rare condition that meant I had to go to the ER or I’d die” to endless “family emergencies”. He once let slip that he’d stayed home during one of these to have a hot tub installed, so it was obvious he was grifting - all while gas lighting everyone working with him, and sending the company down the toilet.
We organised a mass complaint to HR, coupled with bad Glassdoor reviews AND almost all of the engineering department finding new jobs as we were all sick of working there. He eventually got let go, but it took a ridiculous amount of time for it to happen (about a year after the acquisition).
:10000-com:
He would lament his “humble” townhouse in Menlo Park in front of the engineering team, all of whom were paid below market
I sometimes miss the freedom of my highschool retail job because there was very little consequence to anything I did. I had a manager try scheduling me for Christmas eve after I marked it unavailable and I was scheduled for it anyway, So I called him over to the scheduling board and asked him what the hell this was. He told me they needed people that day and I told him I wasn't coming in. He tried handwaving, saying it wouldn't look good and it would count as a no-call;no-show and I told him too bad. Nothing happened.
Another time we had this god awful supervisor who was at least 40 and would hit on all the teen girls and even strangled a kid who was pissed and trying to quit. We had just gotten these ipod touches with a scan tool in them and the supervisors got these bluetooth headsets that would pair to them. He was trying to show it off to me being like "how do I look? managers only" so I was like "you look like a douche" and he got all pissy and tried flexing manager privilege but nothing ever came of it.
Sorta the opposite of professional I guess.
Another thing that owned about that job was I was typically only on 4 hour shifts and would regularly go up to managers and be like "ah my stomach hurts i'm gonna be in the bathroom", then read a book on my phone for a half hour. I'd regularly have days where I'd be paid to shit for half my shift.