I was thinking back earlier to a job I had several years ago which at the time didn’t seem to be that bad but in hindsight I’m stunned I stuck around as long as I did. I guess cause I was very young and felt helpless, and needed money (and for however shitty it was, it paid very well for a young person!)
One year the weather was really bad and I was like 17 and travelling 1hr into the city on public transport then walking 40mins through a semi-rough part of town to get to the office. I worked customer care and the helpline opened til 8pm. Trains started being cancelled for weather and the management started to send people home. But not me because I was the only one on closing shift. Everyone left me alone in the office, while all public transport got shut down and it went dark, and my manager called the helpline every 30mins to make sure I had stayed in work, repeatedly denying my requests to go home to avoid getting stranded. In the end I had to wait 4 hours in the snow for a train to run to my hometown, and got disciplined for not coming in the next day because I didn’t want to get stuck again.
One guy there was this creepy ex-military dude who constantly toed the line between normal and offensive. He was in his late 40s and I was about 19. One time he was chatting to me and without warning showed me a photo of someone who had self-Harmed in a very graphic way. I’m not easily shocked but obviously found this highly inappropriate and walked away. Reported to HR who did nothing and told me just not to speak to him anymore. Awesome.
Another time a coworker was super frustrated at a situation that they felt I was responsible for because i was acting on changes in my department. They screamed at me in front of several other colleagues and threw a (small, light) box at me before storming out. I was really upset and asked my colleagues to write statements and provided them to HR. Their solution was to have a “constructive session” where the person was able to list off a bunch of things they didn’t like about me while I listened, then asked me to respond in a constructive way to “prevent future incidents” which basically ended up being a list of stuff I would do to appease the person who threw something at me. I thought about it for a few days before resigning after this incident, and HR claimed to be “really surprised” to hear I was leaving without another job lined up.
Didn’t seem to understand when I explained I wasn’t cool with them ignoring violent behaviour towards staff. The company got dissolved about 4 years ago and I hope all the management there went on to companies where they can learn better behaviour.