Hello everyone, I (23f) recently started an apprenticeship as an animal caretaker in a reptile zoo. My native language is not english so please excuse my mistakes. I am in Austria.
So my boss, which I will call Karen, owns this zoo as she married the man who created it, but he died in the year 2000. Her son also works here as kind off a second boss to me. Karena is the employee that’s here for the longest so she is kind of my third boss. There is also Georg who just finished his apprenticeship and Elly a third year apprentice.
Every morning all of my coworkers and my two bosses have a little meeting with us, to clarify who is responsible for what and so on. The meetings with Karen and her son are separate. For some reason Karen uses these meetings to rant and ridicule us, for the smallest of things and go on huge tirades about it and also repeat herself quite often.
For example a few days ago she put me in charge of a very small storage room, which has almost all of the tools of the zoo, several animals and many many supplies. I don’t know where half the stuff goes or what it is even used for. I was hoping she would drop it after some days, because I did not have the time or the knowledge to reorganize it. Her problem was basically that too many things were lying around, which wasn’t even my fault. I only started working on 2 May and I am not even allowed in most of the rooms and or animal enclosures. Yesterday she went on a huge tirade at how I am an adult I am supposed to act like one. When I tried to explain that I don’t know where any of this stuff goes, she says I should stop making up lazy excuses and get my butt to work, how dare I just leave the room as is and walk home and not feel ashamed of myself. I actually almost started crying at this point, but tried to stay as clam as I can. The next two days whenever I asked my coworkers, if I could work on the room I was told to do something else so I wasn’t even given the opportunity to clear it up.
Another instance was today. I was doing some work outside which is basically wiping surfaces outside due to bird droppings. When suddenly Karen calls me and only says „Come into my office quick.“ She hangs up so I dropped everything and went into her office, thinking it was an emergency. What I see instead is all of my coworkers sitting around her table eating cake. There was one seat for me so I quickly sit down to eat my slice. It was a bit silent and some small talk, but I thought that is a really nice gesture. However as we all finished eating cake and getting ready to leave Karen again started to berate Elly and also Karena.
Elly‘s mistake was cutting down the weeds but not cutting them down enough. Karen also accused her of changing since she returnd from the 10 weeks of school and does not want to work properly anymore. She also told her she should fell ashamed of getting payed but not actually working for it.
Karena‘s mistake was that she did not write down the plan for today properly, when she literally can’t because our schedule is very flexible and depends on who gets what work done and when and so on. Karen then told Karena that she was supposed to scold us not her, when Karena got very nervous and almost started crying and saying „If I do that everyone will accuse me of bullying again and I don’t want that“. Karen then told her to get a grip and she can handle that. Thank god someone called Karen so her 30 minute rant finally ended and she ushered us out of her office with hand gestures.
After this Karena angrily looked at me and said „If I am allowed to scold you then I will! How dare you still not be finished with wiping the surfaces and get your ass moving twice as fast NOW!“ I said okay and calmy filled up a bucket with water and proceeded with my work. For the rest of the day Karena was actually normal to me and at the end of the day even helped me out with some work without asking her.
One last example is that Karen would humiliate us by asking questions like
„Do we work here or do we just slack off and do nothing?“
„Are you an adult or are you some entitled teenager?“ and many other.
She then would wait for an answer and stare at you, until you say something, then of course proceed with her tirade.
I really want to keep this job as it would be a great education for me and also well paying after 3 years. I am looking for advice here. How can I deal with this behavior? Should I look for an apprenticeship elsewhere? Is there any hope for me?
Thanks in advance