I (20m) have been working for a company since October last year. It was only my second job, and the starting pay was $15 an hour. I was coming from a different company where I was only paid $11.50 an hour, so as you can imagine, I was pretty psyched about this new job.
Not long into my work last year I picked up a second job because I had a cancer scare and needed to have testing done. I couldn’t afford it. I mentioned that I had orientation coming up for a second job and boss pulled me into the office the next day to offer me a raise and more hours. five days a week, 6-8 hours a day, $17 an hour. At the time that seemed like a pretty good deal!
Here’s where shit hits the fan though. For awhile I’m making decent money— And as someone who currently doesn’t pay bills (living with parents, rent is too expensive) I’m managing to save up a good amount of money. Until my health takes a turn for the worse again when summer rolls around.
No big deal though, right? because on my current pay I should be alright, spending more than normal but still have enough to keep me going.
…Yeah. Seasonal workers come in, all these high schoolers start working and then my GM who gave me the hours gets fired. New GM comes in and decides to change the scheduling system to be done by AI. Suddenly, all of the high school kids who came in for the summer are easily getting 30-40 hours a week. I get bumped down to 15, if I’m lucky.
Whatever. The summer is only 3 months, once these kids leave, they’ll surely get my hours back to normal, right?
They combine my position with another one that I’m not trained for. They tell me I will need to be trained again to continue working the position I’ve been in. Fine. They never end up scheduling me to train.
Now the summer is over, the last few kids are leaving by the end of the week and they’ll be back to being severely understaffed in my position. Meanwhile, they have reduced my hours so low that I was scheduled only 3 hours this week.
I just applied to a different job a few days ago, and the moment I’m hired somewhere else, I’m walking out, and leaving them without anyone to work FOH for the times they had me doing it.
It honestly feels good to screw my company over after they screwed me so hard— Even if it’s just until they hire another adult worker who isn’t in high school or college.