Last year a pipe burst at my work site, as the only person qualified for operating the floor scrubbing machine, I had to spend 5 hours driving it around to suck up as much water as possible. I also had to teach the rest of the staff how to properly use the cleaning equipment eg what side the squeegy needs to be facing for optimum squeegying. The store I worked at opened 3 hours after it was supposed to due to the flooding. My area manager arrived an hour before the store opened, took some photos of the damage and noted how much work needed, instead of grabbing a mop or squeegy and just helping us. Jump to earlier this week and I find out from a former employee that I'm mates with that the area manager got all the praise and was rewarded gift cards for “being in the…
Month: March 2022
NOTE: This post is aimed at American small businesses. Read accordingly. Small businesses are not bad when they’re oh, say, your aunt’s Etsy store that sells custom mail boxes. Or a dog walking business you and your friend run. But a small shop or employer? No way, too much of a risk the employer will be an absolute nightmare. Half the stories here lately are about how small business owners weaponize their small status to guilt employees into accepting low wages and poor to no benefits. I have too much experience with this myself to pretend like small businesses are an automatic good for the country or for labor anymore. Small businesses depress wages by offering less than larger employers, which makes larger employers match their wages downward, which lowers the bar for everyone. Small businesses don’t offer benefits and leech off of public programs by encouraging poverty to flourish…
I thought I nailed my interview yesterday, but my friend (who works at the company) told me they're going with someone else. Apparently the hiring manager didn't like that I've been doing freelance work to support myself after losing my salaried position at the start of the pandemic. To him, that meant I “had an established customer base and a secondary income stream”; hiring me meant there was a risk that I could simply leave this job “when the going got tough” and “go back to freelancing full time”. He wanted “someone who is hungrier”. For the record, I am hungry as fuck. My “established freelance business” hasn't covered my monthly bills even once. I have depleted my entire savings account and racked up $8000 in credit card debt just sheltering/feeding myself. I fucking needed this job, man.
I had a job interview yesterday that was set up a staffing agency, where I was condescended and was told that “we notice that you don’t have a lot of experience” even though I explained that I was trying to keep my resume to a page, had four years of experience in admin. and a year and a half in property management, and went on to be as professional as possible. I basically was snipped at during the interview and left the interview feeling dejected. I was offered the job this morning and declined because after doing research on the company (American Homes 4 Rent, not a great company to work for or overall) and relying on my gut instinct, I refused because I’ve dealt with unprofessional workplaces since 2019 (underpaid, talked down to, condescended, and just treated like garbage). I’ve also had some pretty great experiences with supervisors and…
Whats up with this new trend of hiring people and sending me the employment forms the week before I start. Do you think I want to spend a few hours of my weekend filling out employment applications, forms, payroll systems, etc? Sorry but this all used to be part of DAY 1 at a new company. Where you introduce me to the team, show me where the coffee maker is and I spend the first half of the morning filling out all the forms and getting settled in. No, I am not doing this the Friday before the week I am due to start, nor am I doing it over the weekend. This is DAY 1 STUFF!