I worked for a private run beer store for a number of years. The bosses (husband and wife) always made a big production about how we were a “family” and I suppose we were in the way they would abuse and take advantage of their staff. They were very much all about “image” and looking good in the community. The beer store also had a Pub/Restaurant to it as well.
The owner’s wife would bully and berate people in the kitchen, unless she took a shine to you and then she’d put you on a pedestal to berate and bully your coworkers. He husband would splash around behind the bar, socialize to people he saw as friends or potential suckers to invest in his business, then announce wearily “I have paperwork to do” then he would sit in his office watching movies or TV shows (and possibly do some work)
They would repetitively take advantage of staff to the point they would essentially have the staff running the business while they travelled, went bike riding, etc and then sigh and complain about how they were so overworked and it was a very hard life.
Due to this staff would get frustrated, find other jobs or quit (they would very rarely fire someone, they’d just reduce your hours to the very bare minimum so you’d simply just leave because you couldn’t live on that.) Then they’d have further fuel for their martyr complex about “whoa is me another person left us high and dry”
It was, essentially, myself and another employee who were sticking it out and the owner would have to fill in on shifts so we could at least get a day off. In the past I’d filled in with days they needed help, cancelled plans because they would guilt trip and play the sympathy card about needing “family time” and all. I put my foot down one day and simply said no, I had plans.
It came to the point when the wife came down with the schedule and tacked it on the wall and left. I looked and it showed near two weeks of myself and the other employee working with no days off and, in big red letters, a statement “No changes to the schedule. Family emergency.”
Okay. We didn’t like it but family is family so we sucked it up and after that time it’s amazing nobody was murdered but at the end did they say “thank you” they just sighed and said their time away was too short. Shortly after their return the wife posts pictures of them on their… vacation. Splashing around on a houseboat on a lake having a happy old time.
I pointedly told them that would never happen again. They flip flopped several times between trying and get rid of myself and the other employee and sucking up to us because they needed us. Users of the highest degree and I always said karma would catch up with them.. and it did as they ended up losing the business.