Job Happies and Hatreds

[R. Daniel 01]

I just finished my last day of work at Stanley Steemer. It was the worst experience of my life, a real trial-by-fire. I stumbled across a few anime lovers in the blue-collar crowd. I'd love to bitch and exchange work nightmare stories.

Get this, though. And Char listen in cuz I figure you'll appreciate this one, being the undead rocker that you are. For my new job, I shall be... a roadie! For a venue, of course. Got my interview tomorrow.

Interesting thing about the job process: "interview" is usually code language for, "you got the job." Rarely have I known anyone where the interview has actually functioned as part of the screening process. Maybe that's just because me and my buddies have only sought entry-level positions thus far.

[Randolf]

By all means, bitch away. Who doesn't love a good workplace horror yarn?

Seriously, though, Stanley Steemer? Did you actually clean carpets or was it just clerical duties?

I've got a few tales myself, but I don't know if they'll hold a candle to yours.

[Tifaria]

You gotta tell some carpet cleaning horror stories, man.  I'm really curious now.     

I can only think of one story of my own at the moment.  I used to work at a craft/art supply/random home decor store in the picture framing department, but I finally quit last September after seven years.  Seven years-- nearly a quarter of my life, now-- that I'll never get back.  I have so many bad customer stories, but they're not necessarily nightmares, just really, really, ridiculously rude people.  The management wasn't entirely awful... but there's one incident that was definitely the worst.  It's not the worst story ever, but it still makes me mad when I think about it. 

Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this story... The Tale of Thanksgiving Eve. 

The morning of the day before Thanksgiving, I went to my second job and was there from 8-noon.  Then I headed over to the store at 1pm to work the closing shift in my department.  I had become sort of an unofficial authority in my department after so many years there, and at the beginning of September, they dumped four new night people on me.  I therefore had to train four new people AND deal with customers, right at the busiest time of year.  The night before Thanksgiving, I had two of them with me, and I desperately tried to juggle all of the customers while answering questions from these new kids who had only been there a couple of months.

It may not sound like a difficult job, but there are actually a lot of things to know, and the dumb training manual they make you read doesn't really teach you a thing.  The new kids were pretty clueless, and by the end of the night I was exhausted from trying to juggle impatient customers while working on orders that had to be finished by that Friday so that we didn't fall behind.  The busy season there starts in about mid-September and doesn't let up until well into February.

We closed at 9pm, and then everyone in the store had to help restock the Christmas stuff for the big after Thanksgiving sale, so after everyone cleaned up their respective departments, they headed over to that part of the store to start stocking.  I will never, ever, to this day, understand why they don't just have a night crew come in to do that stuff, instead of making already exhausted employees do it and keeping them so late that they are no longer productive.

That night, they kept us there insanely late.  Later than I had ever been forced to stay there before, and I had worked late nights until 2am in previous holiday seasons. 

By about 2:30, most of us were completely loopy.  A friend and I started making up stories about all the bizarre Christmas ornaments we carried and laughing hysterically about it, even though in retrospect they weren't that funny at all.  We broke so much stuff.  Everyone was dropping ornaments, stepping on things-- I still think the amount of broken items far outweighed the amount of actual merchandise put on the shelf.  The floor had a fine crust of broken ceramic and glass strewn all over it by the end of the night.  The phone began to ring constantly with panicked family members wondering why their spouse/daughter/son/etc hadn't come home yet.  Everyone had dark circles under their eyes and were lumbering around like the sleep-deprived zombies we were.

I ended up on a ladder for some time, restocking the overhead shelves, which was a terrible idea.  My blood sugar was dangerously low and I kept feeling like I was going to pass out, particularly being on top of a 12-foot ladder and having to climb up and down to retrieve merchandise.  I was dizzy and shaky and really, really needed to eat something, so I finally ran off for a bathroom break and scarfed something down from the vending machine.  We were never actually given a break by the managers.  People kept going to the bathroom just so they could sit down for a minute, or to run to the break room and get some junk out of the machine to sustain them.

We were finally allowed to leave at 4am.  In all, I worked a 15 hour shift with only an hour lunch break-- no fifteen minute breaks-- at 4pm.  So I worked from 5pm to 4am with no break, on my feet the entire time, and I had been awake for nearly 24 hours.  Some people were there at 8am, took their lunch at noon, and had planned to stay late for some overtime, and therefore worked from 1pm to 4am with no extra break.  I don't understand why they weren't sent home much earlier than that, or at least given a second lunch break.

I ended up sleeping until Thanksgiving dinner was ready that afternoon, then went back to sleep until the next morning because I had to be at work at 8am the day after Thanksgiving.  What's ridiculous is, that wasn't even what prompted me to quit-- I waited another year to quit, until I started grad school.  That job actually paid surprisingly well for retail, and I had benefits, and my second job was only part-time, so I couldn't afford to quit.  Bastards knew it, too. 

[Mike]

I used to work at a craft/art supply/random home decor store

I know a guy who has worked in a store like that for about 7 years, still in the same crappy position, doesn't go to school, no ambition at all. Kinda sucks.

Anyway, I'm a dentist. Lots of horror stories there. Such as people who expect me to treat them for free, meanwhile every time I see them they have an entire sandwich still in their teeth.

I had a bunch of crappy jobs before, though. I worked in a garden center for a while in high school, basically getting paid minimum wage to put bags of fertilizer into peoples' trunks. People would always ask me "how much does this tree cost?" and honestly, I had no goddamn idea. For whatever reason, it was pretty fun to refill propane tanks. A couple of times, I went on deliveries, which basically meant I got to shovel dirt out of the back of a dump truck. Fun.

Then in college one summer I worked at an ice cream store. It was pretty fun, but surprisingly hard work. And some people were complete snobs as it was a nice beach town. The store opened at noon and served lunch, sometimes people would make weird orders. Like a cheese steak with no roll (this was the height of Atkins diet craziness). The cook looked at me like "um.....ooookay" and put a pile of meat on a plate. Once I asked someone if they wanted soft serve or regular, and had to explain the difference. Their reaction? "Ew, the soft serve comes out of that MACHINE back there? no thank you."

Another summer I worked at a CVS pharmacy, also at the beach. My store was basically the first place people saw after sitting in 2 and a half hours of traffic, so I often got yelled at by customers for, basically, no reason whatsoever. Plus, people are freaking morons when it comes to medication. Someone once brought a bottle with like 8 different pills in it and just asked for more of them. Took the pharmacist all day to sort them out, and THEN he had to explain to her that she would need prescriptions, he couldn't just hand out pills out of the kindness of his heart.
Then there were the people who dropped off a prescription at their store at home, then went to the shore 100 miles away and expected us to have their shit waiting at our store. Or the woman who swore up and down she always to CVS, but forgot which store, we called like 10 stores before she found a bottle that said Rite Aid. Ugh.

[Yuko-san]

Wow. I just realized how lucky I am.

I work in a college cafeteria. I've worked there since March 06. I was 15 then, and the whole reason I got a job was because my Mom said she would no longer buy me video games. So I got a job to buy them myself. Best damn thing I ever did. My bosses are friendly, and they love me cause I'm so nice and polite, plus they know they can tease me relentlessly and I'll be laughing with them. I've got friends at the college that the caf is part of, and I earn enough to support my comic book and trading card habits as well.

Only 2 bad things have ever happened to me.

Last year the Seminary across the street from the college got a deal so their student could eat and work at the caf I work in. Meaning I had to take some worse jobs then normal because older students from the Seminary where taking the good ones. That wasn't the bad part, as I don't care how bad the job is so long as I get paid. Which is another reason my bosses like me, I'll take the worst jobs and will only say "Yuck", but I'll do 'em anyway. no, the bad part was the fact that a lot of Korean and French people started eating at the caf. Now mind you I have nothing against either of these groups of people, but every time I deal with French people they tend to insult me. And the Koreans would yell at me for not have fresh rice for them to cook with... I did the demo bar (aka stir fry line) last year. It takes 25 minutes to cook a 2 pound pan of rice, but the Korean people would yell at me to hurry up and cook it.

I wanted to yell at these people some insults I knew in their respective languages, but I needed my job more then my dignity. Only one man from either of these groups apologized for yelling at me. And it was a Korean man, saying he was sorry for yelling at me and that he was having a bad day and shouldn't have taken it out on me.


The other bad day was when my Boss, one of the higher ones, got angry. This is a man that is usually jovial and happy. Seeing him in a fit of rage scared me shitless.

All I can say was I'm happy I wasn't who he was angry at. And I ran outta that room so fast my supervisor had to do a double take, then ran out after me. Both of us knowing better then to get in the way, and we both just went back to what we where doing. I waited till the end of shift to ask my boss what I had been going into his office to ask him. By then at least he was calmer and was happy again.


Yeah. Other then those to things I've had a happy 4 1/2 years working where I have been.

[EyeOfPain]

Ugh, I don't think I could ever work in food service, and for that you have my respect. People are just way too uptight about their food being just right. At least your bosses are nice.

If there's really that much demand for fried rice, or whatever this cooked rice dish is, in the back. Or just let them do it themselves.

[R. Daniel 01]

Tifaria

Did you complain to the managers after that? Your story is ridiculous. You may have been one snickers away from breaking a limb in a fall.

Mike

I feel it. The garden job sounds thankless. Sounds like Stanley. As for the pharmacy job: lol.
You're a dentist, eh? That's cool. I didn't know we had a real professional on the board. I figured all of us were still students of various ages.

Yuko-san

I never have, and never will yell at a food service person. Unless they get cheeky! It's pleasant how happy some of them get when you just say "thanks" after they hand you the food or your change.

Shafted


I'll make this quick. Got three jobs today besides you, after all.

Part of what makes a Stanley Steemer experience is the characters you find at the shop. My shop had five weirdos, give or take.

The Predatory Salesman:
"She's laughing. It's always the weak ones that laugh; let's see what we can squeeze out of her."
--Mohamed

The first thing to know is that we get paid by commission. This means it doesn't matter how late or early we stay out. All that matters is that we get the customer to buy stuff. We get sent to jobs by appointment, and we have invoices for each customer, listing what they want us to clean. But of course, we are encouraged to add on. Guys with high add-on averages get a better percentage on their commission. SELL SELL SELL!

So there's this guy named Mohamed. He is a fifty-year-old Jordanian man. Every job, as soon as the customer lets him into the house, he walks around, and points to every piece of furniture and every floor surface he sees and tells the customer she should get it cleaned. The customer would say no thanks, so Mohamed would then sit down with them, smile at them quaintly, and repeat everything they should get cleaned and why.

The customer is agitated. He continues to sit with a patient smile, a gracious smile, and say, "If we add that in, the price will be $150 more, okay?" No, thanks, so Mohamed names something else. Around it goes, until the customer throws her hands up in their air, adds on that sofa or that extra room, and flees to some other part of the house with her head shaking.

Meanwhile I've grown tired and disgusted by the pitch. I've long since finished setting up the lines and the hoses and the engine, so I walk into some other part of the house and start doing Mohamed's job for him. Five minutes later I've finished about a third of the work, he walks in and says, "Looks good. Want to do the rest? You're doing a good job."
"No, I don't."
"But you're doing good."
"This is your job."
"Well, okay man, but you were doing good..."

Then I call to the customer so she can see the difference between the cleaned and uncleaned carpet, and Mohamed says, "It's cleaning up well. If you'd like, we can clean those other three rooms for you today... No? I'll let you think about it a little, then."

So, when working with Mohamed, I don't get home until around 8pm. Keep in mind that Stanley starts at 7am. I was partnered with this man often, giving me frequent 13 hours days.

And the man couldn't follow a GPS. He has glasses but doesn't wear them. Every exit ramp, every turn, he asks if he should take it. I tell him, "Read the GPS/ learn to read the GPS/ I'm sick of telling you every turn; put on your glasses."
"I need your input, man! I just want your input!"

The Textbook Narcissist:
"I went to that restaurant last weekend. There aren't that many five-star restaurants on the island, you know. I spent $1100 there in one night. Nice people there. Let me tell you man, you haven't had steak until you've had a $100 steak."
--Brian

"I made $80,000 cleaning carpets last year." (this is impossible)
--Brian

"Most people are surprised by the size of my dick... I'm not saying eight inches is the biggest, but it still takes people by surprise."
--Brian

Me, baiting him: "What was your craziest sexual experience?"
"I once had nine girls at once, all in a line waiting to get a piece of me. One would get off and the other would get right on. They were just curious, really."
--Brian

"MOMMM, WHO CARES ABOUT YOUR FUCKING PEP RALLY, I'M NOT GOING TO LET YOU AND THAT FAT DUMB BITCH RUIN MY BEACH WEEKEND!"
--Brian

(Brian, to a customer) "I drive a big ol' truck that'll make your ass bounce and your titties jiggle." (she is incredulous)
He drives a Ford F-350. He does not tow or do construction work. Congrats, you just forbade yourself from driving on parkways and saddled yourself with enormous gas costs, for no reason at all.

(sounding badass) "I once drove twelve hours out to my friend in Ohio, spent fifteen minutes there, but he was busy, so I drove straight back here. No sleep-breaks."
Wow, now that's friendship!


END TRANSMISSION

Sorry that this is so tl;dr. I have only one other guy that's worth describing in detail, the worst guy, but I haven't even described the actual jobs yet. Want the second installment?

[Ace of Spades]

I used to work for Sprint Wireless, it's a frustrating job but the pay is decent, and also if you end up in the right call center. I know: I've been there.

I began my employment 5 years ago over here where I live on the west coast. The Economy wasn't looking too hot at the time: since we were the last part of the U.S. to feel the impact of the Bush Economy. At first it wasn't so bad, the management would bring in free food at times and we had the opportunity for raises, but it was only the calm before the fecal storm that was forming. Soon, they stopped offering free lunches, next everyone was dropped down to minimum wage-- losing their raise incentives. The Management slowly began to resemble the old gods of an H.P. Lovecraft novel-- malevolent and heartless-- only looking out for themselves. It was then that the pay matrix changed for everyone involved with the center; it only took one paycheck to start questioning this new pay system we'd been put on. And with new bond measures being approved to tax major businesses, we were starting to feel the bane of the goons we called our superiors. I knew it was too late to wait for improvements, and with my superiors barking at me for my sales figures and questioning of the pay matrices I knew I had only one of two options-- find a way of the island, or jump into the fiery volcano.

Desperately I looked for an escape. First, I tried to dig a tunnel down the hill for everyone to escape-- but to no avail. Next, I tried to jump the fence and escape through the dead forest that surrounded the place. However, I wasn't as fit as I used to be after being a phone monkey for all that time. So I knew there was only one way out, I'd take the poop pipe all the way to the crap swamp. Later on in December of last year, my wish was granted. I was fired 5 days before Christmas for having a string of low sales figures. Afterward, I filed for unemployment and decided to go back to school. So what did I learn? The volcano on the island doesn't lead to a fiery doom; in fact it was a portal back to the outside world.

[R. Daniel 01]

That was pretty brilliant.

[Mike]

Mike

I feel it. The garden job sounds thankless. Sounds like Stanley. As for the pharmacy job: lol.
You're a dentist, eh? That's cool. I didn't know we had a real professional on the board. I figured all of us were still students of various ages.

Up until May, I was a student. Now I'm doing a residency at a hospital for a year.

Today I saw a guy's face get stitched back together after the chainsaw he was using to cut up a log got mad at him.

[Tifaria]

I used to work at a craft/art supply/random home decor store

I know a guy who has worked in a store like that for about 7 years, still in the same crappy position, doesn't go to school, no ambition at all. Kinda sucks.

I had a coworker like that too-- he's still there, actually.  He's a great artist, much better than I am, but he's happy working in a dead-end retail job.  I feel bad for him, but hey, if it makes him happy, that's the important thing. 

Tifaria

Did you complain to the managers after that? Your story is ridiculous. You may have been one snickers away from breaking a limb in a fall.

Oh, we all complained, but all that happened was they started letting us go a little earlier, like 1am instead (gee, thanks, guys).  What pissed me off the most was, I worked that ridiculously long shift and I didn't even get overtime for it because I was still under 40 hours for the week even with that.  We got paid for the holiday, but the managers always made us take an extra day off during weeks when there were holidays, so that our holiday pay figured into the total amount of hours we got, instead of being extra... even though if you work 40 hours + 8 hours holiday, you don't get 8 hours overtime, because the holiday pay is separate.  They just didn't want to have to pay us more than they absolutely had to. 

So what did I learn? The volcano on the island doesn't lead to a fiery doom; in fact it was a portal back to the outside world.

Ugh, that sounds miserable.  I'm glad that it worked out well in the end, though. 

Up until May, I was a student. Now I'm doing a residency at a hospital for a year.

Today I saw a guy's face get stitched back together after the chainsaw he was using to cut up a log got mad at him.

Whoa.  That's intense, I didn't realize dentistry involved stuff like that as well. 


Hmm... I have a coworker at my current job who is an absolute stark raving bitch, but talking about her would require pages and pages... but there is the story of the guy who was stalking me at my retail job for a good eight months.  It's also kind of a long story, though.   

December of 2008, I was venting at [retail] about my second job, which is at a local museum (I still work there, because that job is awesome, save for the aforementioned bitch of a coworker).  I was having problems with the exhibit I was assisting my boss with, mostly because she was a replacement for the previous curator, who was not the most organized of individuals, and had sort of left it a mess when he handed the exhibit over to her and got promoted.  So I vented for a good long while about it to my other coworkers, because I usually went straight from job B to job A with little time between, so I was still mad.

The next day, I went into the museum, worked for a while, and had to run out for supplies.  When I got back, there was a bunch of roses on my desk and a giant stuffed animal.  I was puzzled, opened the card that came with them, and found a very long, rambling, and, uh... I don't even know how to describe what was written in the card.  It made me very uncomfortable in how intense it was.  What bothered me was, I had NO IDEA who it was from.  It was signed with a name, but the only person I knew by that name was the boyfriend of a close friend of mine, so I was completely freaked out. 

I went to my retail job that afternoon and remembered that we had a new guy by the same name who had only been there for a few weeks, maybe.  He wasn't there when I got there, so I worked up the nerve to ask my other coworkers if he'd said anything.  I was really confused.  The new guy barely talked to anyone, so they didn't know anything.  When he came in later, he didn't say anything to anyone, as usual, and I was still so uncomfortable about it all that I didn't ask. 

I forget which thing came next... I think it was the cookie bouquet.  Complete with another very detailed letter that described my appearance the first time he saw me, which was creepy.  I made my coworkers eat the cookies and didn't touch them.  He came in later that day and asked if I'd gotten his stuff.  My response was pretty much, "So that WAS you?  Um..."  and then I tried politely to let him know that I wasn't interested and he needed to stop sending me things.  I'm sure it probably came across as snobby, because I am, unfortunately, not the most tactful person when saying no to people in person, but hey, I figured that got the message across, right?

About a week later I left work to go to on my lunch break.  I live not far from there, so I had time to go home and take a nap or whatever.  When I left, he was still at work, and when I got back he was gone for the day.  Well, when I left that night, I'll be damned if there wasn't an envelope on my windshield, tucked under the wiper.  I completely flipped my shit, because that meant he had left work and come back to leave that there.  What was worse was, I'd only had my car for about a week or two-- my other coworkers, the ones who usually walked me out at night, hadn't even gotten down which car was mine yet.  That made me freak out more, because I had the feeling that he had probably watched to see which car I walked to on a night when we closed together or something. 

I told him again to leave me alone, and again he didn't listen.  I kept finding things on my car-- letters professing all his crazy feelings and wondering why I couldn't realize that he was The One For Me.  Y'all, I didn't even know the guy's last name.  I didn't know how hold he was, though someone told me he was at least ten years older than me, I didn't know his family situation (but I heard from other people that he was still married, which scared me even more-- I never found out if that was true, but he didn't wear a ring at work.. that doesn't mean anything, though), I mean, I knew NOTHING about him.  Just that he was a really creepy guy who never talked to anyone and was often rude or blunt with customers and generally just made me uncomfortable.

My department manager was aware of what was going on to a point, but I finally told her about all the shit getting left on my car.  She started scheduling us separately, especially making sure that he didn't work the night shift with me.  He still kept leaving me things, though, which scared me, because that meant that he was coming up to work just to leave shit on my car. 

The thing is, maybe if he had just talked to me, instead of stalking me around and sending me things, I may have been more receptive.  I mean, he wasn't that attractive to me, but I may have been more willing to give him a shot if he'd just said something.  But as it was, I wanted nothing to do with him, and couldn't even be in the same room without feeling really, really uncomfortable. 

My manager went with me to tell the store manager, who basically told me he couldn't do anything about it because it was happening outside of work.  Thanks, guy.  So all I could do was work my schedule around his (which resulted in me losing a lot of hours), or suck it up and work with him, which was not going to happen. 

This shit went on for months, from December of 2008 until at least August of 2009.  He kept bothering me outside of work and leaving me things and letters and shit.  I didn't know what to do anymore.  He wasn't harming me, exactly, so I didn't feel like I could go to the police.  My department manager did all she could to keep us apart, but the store manager couldn't fire him for it, so he said. 

Finally, the guy sent me a really, really angry message via Facebook.  Now, I was NOT friends with him on Facebook, but he found me anyway-- as far as I knew, none of our other coworkers had friended him either, because they knew it would give him access to some of my profile.  Which means he had to go through everyone in the city with the same name as me until he found me.  Creepy.  He sent me a really angry message about what stuck-up bitch I was and how ungrateful I was for all the things he had been doing for me and why couldn't I appreciate a nice guy like him and what did it take to make me happy, etc etc etc.  The same day I got the message, my brand new car was keyed.   

I printed it out, took it to the store manager, and begged him to get rid of him.  I think he talked to him, but still didn't fire him, and dismissed my concern about my car because I couldn't prove that the guy had keyed it... fair enough, but still... it was awfully coincidental.  I worked there for seven years, and none of my coworkers had ever had problems with their cars being messed with.  It was a really safe part of town. 

He finally stopped showing up for work after that, which was what finally prompted them to fire him.  Yeah... harassing a coworker wasn't enough to get him fired. 

A month later, I quit and went back to school. 

[EyeOfPain]

That's messed up, Tifaria.

I'm a student, but I work part time as a custodian at one of the dorms here. The students are divided into the kitchen cleaning crew and facilities cleaning crew, with separate supervisors for both crews. One of the supervisors for the kitchen, we'll call him 'M', is a major asshole. We have a small office on the ground floor for the students, and he'll often slam the door on non-supervisor workers, throw backpacks around, pour Tabasco sauce into people's drinks, and just a general shitty attitude, which makes it hard to tolerate going to work at any wage, I'm sure. He only seems to have one friend on campus, and even then, the rest of us are pretty sure he only tolerates M.

A couple years ago, before I started working, there were a string of sexual harassment complaints involving M, one of which almost grew into a lawsuit, if the guy who was in charge of the kitchen crew at the time hadn't calmed the situation down. Even after this, which didn't get him fired, he continued, so I hear, to be an ass. During the first week of school, the building's one female MA was in the office and overheard M stating he had only hired a female worker in order to have sexual intercourse with her. After going to straight to the Dean of Students with another female witness, we were told he'd be fired on the Tue after Labor Day. Well, Tuesday evening came, and M was still working, which pissed of a few of us. I think he was finally fired the next day, or the day after, after our the full-timer in charge of student workers confirmed his actions.

At least he gave everyone something to bitch about.

[Yuko-san]

Ugh. Today we got our new work uniforms.
Let me just say our old uniforms where a black ball cap and whatever clean polo shirt we could find. Now we have to wear a black ball cap and a purple shirt. Not just a purple polo shirt, but a play-doh colored purple polo shirt.

I wanted to puke. I have never complained about our uniforms before. But today I came close to telling my boss that it was one of the ugliest colored things I've ever seen.
For those curious, shit green is the ugliest color in existence.

[R. Daniel 01]

Stanley Steemer: Shafted, Part Two:

Okay so in closing, the typical day involved moving a metric ton of furniture in Zelda block-puzzle fashion at break-neck speeds. Sometimes we cleaned up blood, puke, urine, and thankfully only once a combination of all three in one single fucking pile of stains. The texture of that carpet was changed. Guy was a bedridden Vietnam Vet, with medals and one of these paintings on his wall.

Generally a thankless job that paid about half of what your manager promised, and could keep you working up to twelve hours a day fairly often.

Eccentric customers were actually one of the highlights of the job.


Right now I work for Toys R Us, though, and that place rocks! So good.

[Yuko-san]

Yay for being a kid at heart.
I just submitted a job app to a game store I love, I'm hoping to get hired for a part time position. I could seriously spend my entire life savings there and be happy, but I need the money so I can't.

But that store is awesome. I can go in and buy $60 worth of video games and only spend $30.