Let's share the worst things we've had to endure as employees. I'll go first:
Teenage, food service, pizza. The AC breaks in the middle of a California summer, easily 110°f outside, 115°f inside the store (verified), with 500°f open-ended ovens running nonstop. Then the makeline which holds ingredients breaks. The cheese melts into clumps. We stay open, business as usual. Also, no breaks, ever. Pay: $8.50/hr.
Adult, teaching, high school. No in-class heat for four years. School provides one basic 11" fan heater used to warm small bedrooms. My class ceilings are at least 12ft with tons of windows. I developed a routine of showing up an hour early, turning on the collection of heaters I'd acquired (including several from home), and get the room up to a sweltering 62°f by first period. I also figured out which electrical items can be plugged into which outlets and how to reset the fuse panel on a moments notice. I have photos of my students huddled around an oil-radiator with their hands out, eager for even a semblance of heat.
Your turn:
I got paid minimum wage to wipe dementia patients' asses, get beaten, clawed, punched, grabbed, and screamed at the whole time. Also had to make beds, stock supplies, take out garbage and dirty laundry. Came home covered in shit piss blood and who knows wtf else each day. The only benefits were a health plan that had a $1200 deductible and a premium that was literally almost half your paycheck. Endured constant abuse from residents, management, and other staff. No covid protections or PPE either, while the facility was undergoing a covid outbreak that killed approximately 70% of the residents. Oh yeah I had to help out with the bagging up the corpses when someone died too. I have fucking trauma from working there and have frequent nightmares.
Goodamn that is some incredibly fucked up shit right there fuckkkkk
And that's when you decided to burn the world down the only way you knew how: by becoming a DSA wrecker.
But for real that sucks comrade. Cowardly/company-loyal middle managers are the fucking worst.
I was a delivery driver, delivering boxes of produce to houses on a weekly route. There was always something wrong with the vans. Mechanical issues abound, and the refrigerator in the back almost never worked.
One day I was driving my Friday route, through a rural part of the state, driving one of the backup vans while my usual one was in the shop. I stopped along a relatively busy road, and went to the back of the van to go grab the customer's box. As I step into the back of the van and reach for the box, I hear the door behind me shut.
"No biggie" I thought, and turned to open the door back up. There was no handle. I went to the side door to open it from the other side. No handle there either. I was trapped in the back of a dark van with boxes of produce. I reached for my cell phone, only to realize I left it up front. I try banging on the doors and reaching in for a handle, disassembling it, whatever I can do. No luck.
I start screaming for help. I can hear that cars are driving by me, so I hope that by screaming and kicking the door someone will notice. Insulation breaks off the back door as I brace myself against the food pallets and kick with all my might.
It's getting hot in the van. There's no cooling and I am sweating from the exertion. I strip down to my underwear and keep going, hoping I will somehow break the latch open.
I have no idea how long I did this. I was tired and sore and sweaty, covered in cuts and scratches from bracing myself on the pallet. My throat is sore from screaming.
The door opens. The old man looks like he's walked in on a murder scene. I try to explain what happened - why I'm naked and bloody, trapped in the back of a van.
I take some time to cry in the front of the van, put my clothes back on. I call the office to tell them what happened, and that I'm leaving for the weekend. My boss tells me to finish the route or not come back.
I gather myself and grab the next delivery box, the one I was going for before I got into this mess. I bring it to the door. It's the old man that saved me. I give him his box and leave, neither of us says anything more.
I was making $10/hour and barely making rent. I had no work history to speak of, and no real qualifications. I was so beaten down by that job that I finished my route and came back the next Monday. I should have reported the state of those vehicles to someone, but instead I worked there for another couple months before I decided to pack my life up and move to another state.
I've worked a lot of shitty jobs, but this definitely takes the cake. Still sometimes have nightmares about this.
The monster is capitalism and it just. won't. fucking. die...
I've got one I've been meaning to write into safety 3rd about.
So around 5 years ago I was working as an EMT at a non-emergency transport company. We mostly dealt with dialysis calls and discharges, but we also had an air wing of the company, and so would occasionally pick up patients from flight crews out of cessnas & shit at small regional airports. Except for the one time we picked up out of one of the largest & busiest commercial airports in the US.
The call was to pick up a patient from out of a 747 for transfer to an extremely ritzy rehab facility. The patient is question was a rich PMC dumbass who obliterated himself trying to ski down a mountain in Europe, and had so thoroughly broken his legs he required some sort of experimental treatment that involved a hemipelvectomy. (Which I didn't even know was a thing until this call.)
The trouble started almost immediately, because almost all major airports have dedicated Fire & Medic units, so there's not any good signage for where to park an ambulance, and people get mad and yell at you if you just park in the middle & block off the terminal, and nobody could tell us where we should park.
Eventually I just commandeered the sidewalk and told people to politely shut up, Which worked until we had to go through TSA screening with our stretcher. Almost didn't make it through at first because nobody told them we were coming and they didn't know how to x-ray a stretcher. I didn't mention to oxygen bottle, lithium batteries, or the bag full of narcotics, because I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have let us through.
Anyways, when we board the plane it's immediately obvious there's no way in hell we were going to be able to fit the stretcher through an airplane isle, and we left our backboards back at the truck, but it turns out it's cool. The patient has his lower torso & legs wrapped in a meter-wide erector-set cage of steel bars & pins that perforate his leg like some hell-raiser shit, and the guy isn't going to fit through the front of the plane anyways.
Turns out they loaded the guy into the back of the plane in Europe, and didn't think it was relevant to tell anyone on our end. Which was great, because the boarding ramps are designed differently in burgerland or something and was completely unable to reach the rear door.
I called my supervisor to complain and tell him this whole thing is a complete mess, and they can show my unit cancelled on-scene. We can't take over care of the patient and they need to figure this shit out and call us back. This did not help, as the quisling made us stand-by and ended up coordinating with the airport FD and runway personnel.
An incredibly stupid plan was born to ride a scissor-lift 7 meters up to the rear door of the plane with the stretcher, and transfer the patient through the door onto it. The scissor-lift in question was made for maintenance, and we could almost have room for myself, my partner, a single firefighter & the stretcher if we leaned over it & let our heels dangle. It should be noted the brakes on a stretcher are largely decorative.
I should have refused, but this had taken so long it was almost the end of my shift, and I just wanted to get this shit over with, go home, and get really goddamn drunk. So we rode the damn thing up & tried our best to keep the patients pelvis stable as a dozen people bent & manhandled several thousands of dollars of medical braces while we twisted him out of the doorframe. The patient wasn't very happy about it, and threatened to sue all of us, but I've never gotten a summons for that so he can blow me.
He didn't really fit on our stretcher either, due to the thunderdome of medicine around his legs, so once we got him onto it there wasn't any room to ride the thing down with 3 people again. My partner and the random firefighter managed to scuttle back into the rear door, and I rode the thing down holding onto the patient cage, railing, and stretcher with flexibility I didn't think I had.
Once he was on the ground we pumped him full of fent and stuffed airplane pillows & backboard straps around him until he vaguely resembled being secured, and transported without incident.
Fuck airports.
TYFYS, EMTs are awesome. :rat-salute:
Also what a clusterfuck lmao
Also made a point to write down his own salary and literally tell me why i had to do x project in x weeks to earn HIM money. Insta communist lol
I love it when rich people literally describe Capital: Volume I but don't realize the contradictions because it benefits them.
I accepted a new job offer, and they were going to rescind it! They stalked me on social media. I had to withdraw my application to save face. No worker is immune from cancel culture
Just remembered another one. It was considered a perk to clock out and drive your own car to another store to get supplies. YOU'RE A FORTUNE 500 COMPANY how is this your standard operating procedure?
YOU’RE A FORTUNE 500 COMPANY how is this your standard operating procedure?
When you start working a lot of the mystique around BUSINESS kind of evaporates and you find out how the world really works. Which makes me believe that a lot of "capitalists" (read: redditors) have never worked a 9-5 at some shitshow before.
It's insane how the system gets away with wage theft, they figured out if you make contradictory company policies like saying you need to follow labor laws and also making middle manager's pay based on keeping labor costs low, you can wash your hands of wrongdoing and pin it all on the manager making $30k/year when they inevitably break the labor laws.
Almost everything is a shitshow from my experience working retail, either humans as a whole are really fucking stupid or capitalism pressures everything to be ludicruously inefficient and ass backwards
my older brother works in IT and says from what he can tell it's not better in white collar work except that there's even more graft, everyone is more educated and everyone largely knows its bullshit but still does it anyway
I had to do something similar while working at a large pizza chain named after a tile based game. Literally 40 minutes total to drive to another town's store to get stuff we were out of, missing all of the deliveries, and therefore the tips, I could have been making during that time. Sure, I didn't have to clock out, but I was probably making 50% less for that near hour of my shift I had to do it, since I missing out on those tips.
I love the feeling of driving my own car.
I love the American lifestyle.
Andropausal boomer threatened to "kick my ass" because he "didn't like my tone" (I wasn't even serving or interacting with him, he just singled me out for some reason, probably out of some weird alpha male brainworms) and instead of kicking him out for threatening staff or standing up to him in any way, management apologized for me ruining his dining experience (even though it was never explained what I was even doing) and comped his meal.
I was just a scared teenager at the time, in hindsight I should've 1) told him to step outside, and 2) quit immediately afterwards
*Another one was getting jumped and chased by 4-5 guys because our employee entrance was in a back alley that always filled up with sketchy and dangerous people after the late night bar rush. Despite all the muggings and fights that happened back there, management did not give a shit about their laborers getting beaten up and was like, "Oh, if you feel threatened just have another staff member walk with you when you leave. Use the front entrance? Don't be silly, we can't let our valued customers see you people coming and going, they find the sight of you distasteful."
Smash the glass coffee pot over his head and while he's sitting there bleeding, burning, and wheezing out painful gibberish, be like "sir, I don't like your tone. But don't worry, that coffee's on the house"
My first job did something called a split shift where I’d work from 10am-2pm, then clock out, then come back and work from 6-9pm.
The economy was shit and I was too young / nervous to realize how bullshit this was. “Oh, set aside your entire day to do 6 hours of work.” Fuck them.
That sucks. I worked a job when I was a teen that would have me work closing shifts (till 11 pm) then opening shifts (either 6 or 7 am) the next day.
Yeah, I've had people try to pull that. I did it one job cause I lived a block away so I could actually go home and stuff
I got another one! From a student of mine.
He is/was an undocumented central american high schooler, great kid, always smiling, always eager. he gets a job at a banquet hall, making $10/hr under the table. He goes into work at 4pm Friday, works until 2am Saturday morning. Goes back into work at 10am Saturday, works until 2am Sunday. Goes back into work 10am Sunday, works until 2am Monday. Comes to school 8am Monday beaming with pride because he made $380 over the weekend :capitalist-laugh:
I mean that's 20k per year and no taxes. Not a living wage, but it probably helps his family a lot. Sucks to know that capitalism would gladly bring back child labor if they could abolish (or skirt) the regulations, but important to remember.
We had one of those 'days without injury' boards, and the job was fairly prone to injury - working with specifically people prone to self-harm.
The incentives for going a certain number of days were as follows:
45 Days - Pizza party where they got Costco pizza. Which was fine, but there wasn't really enough. It's after a lot of people are close to done with their shift, and the pizza was cold long before night shift got there.
90 days - 2 hours added to everyone's vacation/paid time off hours. It's bad enough that they mixed sick days with vacation days (to an overall reduction of hours)
150 days - a single paid day off for each that of course, had exclusions.
This itself wasn't too bad, and I looked forward to having days off with little consequence. However, the incentives served to make people underreport injuries or guilt/harass people who did seek out treatment for their injuries.
The supervisors understaffed competent people on a shift and the turnover rate was already high. I remember a woman who got hit in the head with a fire extinguisher. She got victim blamed and was moved to a different department afterwards while people grumbled about her. A really good and compassionate worker too.
Pay started at 11.00 at the time for California minimum wage and went up to 13.50 if you had a master's.
The annual profit was in the tens of millions.
We had one of those ‘days without injury’ boards, and the job was fairly prone to injury
Similar to this shit when I was working as a package handler for a pretty famous parcel deliver service. That number never went past 6 days in my 2 odd years working there. It was a fucking joke especially because most of the work got done overnight, and the warehouse was full of teenagers, people down bad, immigrants with a questionable status citizenship wise, and a whole lot of dudes first day out of county or prison. Ridiculous amount of turnover, and there were few people that had any sort of normal sleeping habits. You'd only ever get 20-25 hours a week, and they worked you to the bone. Because of the large turnover and people missing days all the time, you'd have instances where boxes would be piled high across platforms and some workers would climb over them to get to other areas, mainly because you couldn't load the packages faster than they were being sent down.
That job is always my first example when it comes to explaining how bullshit wages are relative to the work being done.
I was doing Americorps in the southwest. We did a survey in 110 degree desert heat. On our way back to the truck we had to hike through 3 miniature canyons. Before hiking out I already ran out of water. When we reached the truck I almost threw up from the heat exhaustion.
That’s the only story I have where I could have died. Everything else is just weird shit that you encounter while working in natural/semi natural areas.
I've had some crazy shit happen but the first thing that comes to mind is when I was working at a self serve frozen yogurt place in high school a family of 4 came in with a kid maybe 10-12 and they were so goddamn messy. They just let the kids just grab the toppings out of the jar even though there is scoops or tongs. There was shot everywhere on the floor without a care in the world from the parents. Whatever, I've had it happen before but not on that level. Anyways that young kid I mentioned stayed with his mom to pay and the other two left and as she was paying I noticed in the corner of my eye the kid whipped out his junk and literally started pissing under this bar with stools to eat inside. Literally just emptying his bladder right there, didn't ask to use the bathroom or nothing. I said "hey HEY! Stop that what are you doing!" And the mom didn't even look at her kid and starts scolding me for yelling at him. I was like lady he peeing where people eat right out in the open, she glanced at him and in the most annoying condescending voice tells me he is just a kid! And without flinching I said yeah and I see where he got it from, please don't ever come back.
She came back in 5 mins later wanting to speak with the manager but I already called the owner and he told me to kick them out and lock the doors and sanitize the entire front of the store. So I was just a complete smart ass to her telling her how disgusting that was and how awful they were to just let it happen. So I took an hour off while on the clock and cleaned that shit and kept the door locked for awhile to collect my bearings cause I was pissed
Lord forgive me for saying this but props to the manager for kicking them out and not taking their side.
He was actually hella cool. He is Palestinian and taught me so much about Palestine and what goes on over there. Kinda a personal story to share but it really hit me how bad it was over there (being an ignorant 19yr old) when I suggested he get a baby sitter one time because there was scheduling issues one day where his wife, him and me couldn't work one day and he broke down crying explaining to me how one parent always has to be with their kids cause in Palestine it wasn't uncommon for kids to get separated, sometimes permanently from their parents if one wasn't always with them. I got it, I really wasn't worldly at that age but I got that
Some years ago I was working a job doing deliveries. Minimum wage shit. They gave me a large Dodge Promaster, similar to what you see Amazon and FedEx drivers driving. One day I need to make one final delivery for the day after rush hour. I'm just driving, everything is good, until we get some unexpected snow, and I quickly realized that the tires had all lost tread when I tried to switch lanes and the car swerved a little.
I drove in one lane for a little, and then I needed to switch lanes. Chose my spot when traffic was slow and sparse in the other lane, and my van basically swerved 90 degrees. Straightened it out, found a parking spot, and hit my manager up. Told him I was stuck, and there was more snow in the forecast throughout the night. Manager here tells me that I need to get the delivery done by tonight to the location, and to also drop the keys and van off at the same location before it closes. At this point I didn't even bother arguing.
I don't have much time, I'm tired as fuck, and I'm not thinking properly. I decided to risk driving again. Did a few miles, and was only a mile and a half to the destination when I ended up in a very crowded avenue. I had to make a left turn, so I get into the turn lane, and the left turn light comes on. As I'm making the turn, the car swerves a full 360 degrees. While it's turning and I'm completely out of control, the car behind me is also in the process of turning, and I see it come inches to hitting me as my van continues to turn. At this point I'm just mentally blacked out, so my only instinct is to find a spot where I can just park for a few minutes. Thankfully the traffic is understanding both ways, and people don't move until I'm well clear.
I find a spot, hit my manager up again, tell him I'm not about do keep going. He tells me that everything will be fine and I only have a short distance left. At this point in my life I'm going through some legal troubles, so the thought of justifiably being able to take legal action against the company seems like a hassle to me. I just get back in the van and thankfully get to the location in time, without any real damage. Told boss man next day that I'm going to dip, and he offers me a raise, along with a new van. I happily take up the offer because I don't have shit else going on with life.
The part that sucks is that I still keep in touch with him even after having left. He always treated me well before the incident and after it. Never hung me out to dry, and bailed me out a bunch of times when I was being a hard ass or got into situations where I wasn't at fault, but it would be my ass on the line regardless. He's the only boss I've had that I've been able to tolerate throughout the whole time I was at a job. With other bosses I almost always run into trouble. I remind him all the time now that he was wrong and I could've sued the company's ass off, and he always tells me that I had every right to do so. Honestly it's fucking weird. I could've probably died that night but I still got love for the dude.
