Names of people and companies changed for legal reasons
I used work for a company called Erin’s. It was a pretty easy company to work for at first and my job was a “floater” where I was told to fill roles in the company that were needed for the exception of management positions.
Three months into the job, I discover a feud going on in management, they shut the door and one of them takes their hand and waves me off. I had business in the office they were in but I took that as a sign to find something else to do instead. All managers were in the office, two of which, Rob and Terry, I got along with very well.
The following day Rob informed me that two of the managers Cameron and Travis were looking for a means to terminate me by getting me to quit.
When I asked why, Rob said that they had no real reason to other than not wanting corporate to find out they hired me.
When I asked why I was hired in the first place, Rob states that my position was not an official position in the company and I was basically doing all the jobs that no one else wanted to do.
Terry then said that she and Rob stood up for me and told them what they were doing wasn’t proper and that I was doing a great job cleaning, putting furniture together to sell, running the front end, and doing sales and recalls.
When Terry and Rob weren’t around, my life was absolute hell. Nothing I was doing was good enough, or I was told to do tasks alone that were incredibly stressful or hard like heavy lifting.
Being a younger man in my mid twenties at the time, I needed this job to support my family, and quitting wasn’t an option at the time. I had been looking for alternatives for work in the meantime but they weren’t easy.
Months past and this continued, I wasn’t sure what to do, did I call corporate? We didn’t have an HR department so I couldn’t complain to them. I was lost.
Then my life took a turn for the worse, my wife cheated on me with another man and left the state with my kid, I ended up wanting to call off because of this and Cameron said if I didn’t come into work I should start looking elsewhere.
So I came into work, and there was Cameron with a smug look on his face, and a paper in hand which was an evaluation paper based on my performance.
Of course it was all negative and he said I was in danger of losing my job.
This is when I was getting really angry and I decided instead of taking this bullshit anymore, I was going to make their jobs harder.
So I was a good little slave for them and did everything they asked of me until they had to both leave the store for business and it was just Rob and Terry with me.
I took this opportunity to rearrange things from documents, to how things were filed, to where tools were stored and rearranged the entire attic and storage shed making everything look neat and tidy but entirely foreign.
I then told Rob and Terry I was quitting that day, that my kid was in another state and I was moving back with my parents.
Fast forward ten years, and Rob and Terry moved on to other jobs but Cameron, the main guy who made my job absolute hell had fired someone from Erin’s. That someone was named Lucy, and Lucy so happened to get hired at the job I had been working at for years since named Henry’s. So after she got hired we were making small talk at the lunchroom and the subject of Erin’s came up.
She stated almost every week she was there Cameron was complaining about a guy named Jack. I said that was me, I was the same Jack. When I asked why he was complaining, she said he couldn’t find things and stuff was moved around. I thought it was hilarious because I figured my shenanigans would have caused a minor inconvenience at best.
But apparently it lasted ten years. It was glorious.
Lucy and I have since left Henry’s and I now work for the school system and see my daughter. Because I moved back home, I was able to find an attorney and get things moving in the right direction to see my kid again.