I used to work at a sort of deli/butchers in the UK, shit company, there's 2 in my city and both have REALLY high turnover. I started at one and moved to the smaller one when I was told of an assistant managers position available, I was 19 been working there since I was 16, so I was getting paid about £6.45 an hour, a whopping 10p above what the lowest they could pay me was. Anyways I start there, and get told by the area manager “assistant manager has a lot of responsibility, so we're gonna start you as a key holder”. I was a little annoyed, but this is still my first job I thought they had good intentions. So I went with it, got good at it, got along really well with the manager. He was mid 40s, put his heart and soul into the shop, would sometimes start at 4 in the morning to get shit done. Anyways the shop was constantly understaffed, I was doing 38 hour weeks, giving me a whopping wage of about £240 a week. So a couple of months go by and I ask “when am I officially a key holder, because I've been told I'll be getting paid more”. I was trusted to effectively run the shop myself while the manager was on a week holiday, I was trusted to cash up at the end of the day, take said cash (£2000~) by myself to the bank, manage staff (all older than me). All I was told was soon, that never happened, by the time I left I was still being paid £6.45.
I left to go to a local call center, did my 6 day induction and was getting paid (now monthly) £9.50 an hour, it was great, until I went onto the call floor and did calls. I was cold calling people to offer them broadband, 200 calls a day, never a sale. The system they had made it so the calls were automatic and constant, so as you sorted one call it would start another. I cannot overstate how soul crushing this was. Until I was put on indbound, it was great, 20 mins between calls, helping customers who actually wanted the product. Then one day were all called into a meeting. “You're all going back on outbound”. I just told them I was ill and went home, fuck that. Planned on taking 3 days off but I just thought fuck it, told my manager I wouldn't be coming back in, that my mental health was more important than that job. I was there 2 months
Next 2 weeks I was unemployed, and honestly a little stressed, I'd moved out of my parents and couldn't get any benefits so I applied for everything. After a few let downs I got my current job. I sell luxury cakes and puddings at a small kiosk, company was born out of lockdown and is really chill. And I'm getting paid £10 an hour to do this, which as I'm unskilled feels like a lot. I'm planning on leaving in September as I'm hopefully going to be trained to be a maintenance engineer, but I'm sure I'll be back with another rant 🙂
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