Many years ago I worked for one of the big supermarket chains in the UK and it was just simply a horrible company to work for. They had a set of values that all the lower end workers had to adhere to like it was the 10 commandments or something but it was perfectly fine for management to violate them whenever they felt like it.
The deputy store manager was just a disgusting human being. Our store was brand new and had employed over 450 people. But the company was all about “more with less” so always looked for ways to get rid of staff members – just as a side, once we employed 30 new starters. Within a month all but 5 had left from being bullied out. And that was this jerk's tactic. Bullying.
He made it his mission to bully as many staff member as possible into living. Every day, he would come down to my department to tell me what a piece of shit I was, how worthless and pathetic I was, how I wasn't company material. And yet via myself and my 2 co-workers our department was the best in the store and that is no word of a lie. I knew what we had and where we had it and we had hundreds of products.
I tried putting in a complaint about him once but was told because he was senior management it would go no further and I'd end up with a disciplinary. So I had to deal with this, with his bullying, for 4 years. In the end, on a day I was on my own, he literally gave me an impossible list of jobs which I had no chance of fulfilling then chastised me for doing a terrible job. I put in a transfer to another department as did my 2 co-workers.
Eventually I moved to another town and got a transfer to another store. I spent 90% of my time on the tills because the company has gutted the staff budgets and then all I got were complaints from the night crew I wasn't filling the shelves. And that got me a citation for poor performance.
After 8 years I had to move again and was unable to secure another transfer – a job is a job right? So I handed in my resignation. On my final day, at the very end of my last shift, I was told I'd been over paid for some annual leave I'd taken – authorized by my manager but he messed it up. And then I was told to leave.
So, after 8 years of blood, sweat and tears and I mean literally, my thanks was “we're docking your pay, there's the door, fuck off”. I know my story is the story of hundreds of thousands of people here but I wanted to share mine.
And capitalists and politicians wonder why people demand better treatment and wages and refuse to work dead end jobs like what I worked.