TL;DR at the bottom because I feel like typing up a monstrosity.
Let's start off by saying that while the work environment was as shitty as an over populated cow farm, the firing was entirely my fault, so dear Reddit, please show me mercy. Pweeeaase??
So I recently escaped the hellscape brimming with crippling anxiety and hatred for the general public that is retail. Let's take a moment of silence for all the poor souls who continue to march on in the war against the general public.
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Ok moment of silence over, now on to the complaining!
I managed to get a job at Fedex (yes, i am naming those bastards), and quit my retail job the same day. Great, right?
WRONG
That lead to an uphill battle on my end fighting alongside IT, failing to obtain an alliance with HR, and betrayed by the very managers who claimed i could reach out to them if I ran into trouble, just to get me on the freaking schedule and start working for The Great Flying Spaghetti Monster's sake! Twas a battle, that I ultimately lost. But that's not the subject of today's crapptastic fest.
Point is, I was broke, my savings dried up like a gal's vag after a run in with a proud pickup artist, and once again, I was in need of a job . I do have a part time janitorial gig at a YMCA on Saturdays that I actually enjoy, but unfortunately I wasn't able to get more hours there. I am lucky to be able to financially depend on my parents, but I can't just mooch off of them until they die, so let the demoralizing job search commence!
I searched and searched and search, googled and googled, scrolled and scrolled through Indeed, nervously fumbled through interview after interview, until, finally, I did it! I got the opportunity to work for an incredible and innovative company and work with a passionate and talented group of like minded people where I could grow to my fullest potential and beyond! lol
It was a position through a temp agency at a factory, everything was done over the phone and I could start the next day, which in hindsight, should of been a warning sign, but I was too excited to not think like a dummy-dum-dum. As soon as I started, I knew in my heart that I would not last. The reason for that is that everyone there spoke Spanish while, I, the classic basic white girl, did not. I thought, well, the work is not too complicated, just moving bottles around and keeping the lines moving, so it's not like I need detailed instructions, I just need to be patient and remember that it's frustrating for them as well to have to work with someone who doesn't understand them too. Plus this takes place in America, so there is no doubt they have to deal with the language barrier on a day to day basis outside of their communities. This is temporary! Just until I can save up enough money and find something more fitting.
Well… it was certainly temporary. It got tiresome pretty damn quickly having everyone repeatedly fussing at me in a language I clearly don't understand and gesturing wildly at me rather than fetching one of the few people who could translate. It was also tiring having to deal with a manager who while he wasn't too fluent in English, I could converse with him mostly fine, IF ONLY HE WOULD GIVE ME THE TIME OF FLIPPING DAY WHEN I TRIED TO FIX AN AN iSSUE WITH HIM. Fuck you, …you big meanie.
(he was also dumb, he didn't question why i started covering my ears with my hair after fussing at me for having earbuds in, but i digress)
I was 85% sure my coworkers were talking crap about me right in front of me, and when they did speak to me, it felt like they were having to speak to a dumb animal, and the one other girl there who also only spoke english agreed that she felt the same way, so I wasn't just being paranoid. I was no longer dealing with work related anxiety so severe I felt physically ill, but now I was drained, waking up everyday at the ass crack of dawn five days a week (and on Saturdays for the janitor position) to do mind numbing work all day while being berated at in Spanish for being too slow on tasks that everyone else was equally slow at, but they don't catch flack for it, just me. My breaking point was pretty small actually, coworker was trying to tell me something that seemed important while I despairingly said more so to myself than to anyone else that I don't understand them.
I spotted one of the workers who spoke a bit of English and practically chased him down shouting “Excuse me! Excuse me!” in the hopes that he could translate, (he was also one of the people there who would talk down to me, but that's irrelevant). Either he didn't hear me shouting behind his ear, or he ignored me, either way, I got frustrated and stormed outside to cool down and this is embarising to admit, cry a little. My dad should of been awake by then, so I texted him needing to vent. I felt defeated, because all my other jobs except for the janitorial one seemed to have major issues like shitty management or equally shitty customers, and the thought that all my jobs could potentially be like that for the rest of my life is so, so very exhausting to think about. My dad commented that I definitely have had bad luck with jobs, but I still feel like the problem here.
He also told me to do what's best for me, so I did. I texted my recruiter that I wanted a different assignment due to the language barrier, and left, without letting the manager know….hence the firing. In my defense, if I had spoken to him at that moment I probably would have said something vulgar, soooo.
Luckily my recruiter was understanding and accepted my feedback and agreed to look for other positions for me. I have also been dressing up my resume and managed to schedule an interview for a job outside the temp agency this week. I just hope whatever job I land next is barely tolerable, I'm so tired of hopping from one job to , and trying to write about a bad situation in a silly way has also cheered me up a bit.
Thank you for reading this wall of text.
TL:DR:
DON'T ACCEPT JOBS WITHOUT VISITING THE POTENTIAL WORKPLACE IN PERSON.
Ended up working in a place with a severe language barrier between me and the workers who most certainly did not like my non-spanish speaking self. Waked out with huff and a puff after constantly being treated like an idiot and dealing with poor management. Got fired, and now life is sorta ok! For now.
I hate it here. I”d rather be a bird and munch on worms all day than be a human. Too stressful