Yeah you read that right.
A few months ago I was hired onto a renovation company as a lead carpenter. The day I started I discovered the other two employees had only been working there for a couple of months, a giant red flag when looking back. During my second day on the job my boss sent me a text making a big change to the framing that had already been installed which would require some more lumber that we didn’t have on site. His rule was that I had to let him know what I needed at the start of the day so he would only have to come by once, which was fair but in this situation I obviously had to tell him I wasn’t able to get to it that day because of the late text. He then called me and began to berate me over the phone calling me a dumbass for not including the lumber on the list I made that morning. I’ve never had somebody yell at me like that in my life and I’ll admit, I had a good cry on the way home. He even went as far as to question my skills as a carpenter which really cut deep. I should have quit then and there on the spot but I had just moved to this town and was low on money so I decided to keep with it for a bit.
Things only got worse. It was hard to tell what would set him off. Some days he would be in a great mood and some days any little question I had would tick him off. The tipping point came one day when I was making my list of what we needed for the day. We didn’t have an outhouse on site because my boss didn’t want to have to pay for one so instead we kept one of the bathrooms hooked up to use for the duration of the project. The day prior I noticed we were running low on toilet paper so I added it to the list. Once I sent him the list he asked if I was serious about the toilet paper to which I replied “yes?”. When he arrived later that day he told me that I shouldn’t be wasting company time by “taking dumps on site” and that I should be doing that at home before I leave. I’m sorry but when did the biological process inside my body obey a schedule? When you have to go you have to go!
After that conversation I told my apprentice working under me what happened. He then told me he had also been working with our boss one day and had to go to the bathroom to which our boss told him that if he had to take a dump that he should go in a bucket outside and throw it into the site garbage bin. What makes this worse is my coworker had IBS so when he had to go he had to GO.
That night I sent my resume out to a new company and got hired the next day. Quitting that job was one of the most satisfying moments of my life. I now work for a great company that lets me take care of my business when I have to.