So, I worked as a dishwasher for several months, quit, and now I'm working at retail.
I'm not gonna praise the new job: the things it's giving me are just standard. But I'm just gonna highlight things I have that how the FUCK did I not have before.
Breaks: yep. No breaks! I had a 9 and a half hour shift once. Didn't complain. Didn't ask for help. Just toughed it out. I just thought that that was standard.
Knowing what my pay was: when I got “”promoted”” from a host, they just didn't disclose payment. I ASSUMED it would be more, but didn't wanna press it cause I didn't wanna be rude. Turns out, I was still making exactly the same: minimum wage. (Deducted by $3/hr for their meal plan!)
Having the “right to know”: my new job, as per what I'm assuming are legal requirements, let me know that there are forms that disclose information regarding the safety of any chemicals I'd be dealing with. Fuck, I'd have liked to know that when I was a dishwasher, cleaning plates with chemicals that turned my skin probably unhealthy shades of purple and red. Not to mention I was doing all of it with disposable latex gloves that easily fell apart under the water. And mopping the floors with chemicals that would make my eyes itch. There were almost certainly safety hazards there, but I just didn't think anhthing of it!
Training: my training as a dishwasher was the manager vaguely showing me what to do. I only found out I wasn't doing something when I'd get a lecture about it. I thought to myself “oh, they're busy today, I understand”, but I never got any sort of training on a less busy day, lol
An HR department: I would hear chefs make sexiest and occasionally racist jokes all the time. And y'know what happened? NOTHING! One of the biggest perpetrators was the SON OF THE MANAGER. So there was no chance of anything getting resolved, because there was a policy that complaints had to go through managers first.
A schedule: I'd come in on weekends for sure. But they'd update the schedule on Sunday,,,, whenever they felt like it. And they would never tell me personally when I was supposed to come in. Some days they wouldn't update the schedule before I left, so I'd have to come in on Monday just to know when I'd be coming in that week.
God, that job was so awful. I'm not in a financial situation to pursue retribution for the horrible mental state it left me. This is a message for any other teens or people new to the workplace: look online to see what other jobs are like, to see if you're being taken advantage of.