Years ago I was 30 and looking for 2nd shift work so I could finish my degree in the daytime. I got hired as a material handler at a light industry company. The pay was like $8.50/hr which was sadly considered kind of good in 1995 for a low-skilled job. And I think there was a $.50 shift differential. I'd been out of work for a few weeks so I was desperate and dead broke.
The company was somewhat well known because it was family-owned and the founder had died of lung cancer. So the company had a no smoking policy for all employees, even off the clock. Talk about “we're like a family here!” This was so controversial it got the attention of 60 Minutes, who did a story on the place. But by the time I started, new owners had taken over and did away with that policy.
My first day on the job, I showed up about 15 minutes early and had to wait for the HR person to come grab me from the lobby and run me through the onboarding paperwork. It took her another 15 minutes after my start time to get me and take me to the time clock, so I was late clocking in. She told me not to worry about it, since it was her fault.
During that first week, I was running a machine and some woman approaches me and asks me if I'd like to donate money for someone's retirement. I'm like, excuse me? She says, “Oh, Soandso is retiring, he's one of the founders of the company, and we'd like to get him a gold watch!” Mind you, I'm dead broke and don't even have my first paycheck yet and this person I don't know is shaking me down for money to buy some rich guy a gold watch. A guy I never heard of who I'd never see because he was retiring. I told her I didn't have any money and she started shaming me, telling me about all this guy had done for us poor little workers. I felt like it would be a bad idea to say no, so I gave her a $5 bill.
We had to run these lines that would package product. Occasionally, a line would break down and stop running but you had to stay at your station in case it suddenly started up again. But if it was down TOO long, you were supposed to go do something else. It was up to you to figure out that magic moment when you no longer had to worry about the line starting back up. If you didn't get it right, the dept. manager would sneak up and yell at you to quit standing around and go find a broom. She thought she was hot shit because she drove a Seville.
There are a bunch more little stories I could tell about that place, but I'll just skip to the kicker: they did some kind of quarterly review and after my first 3 months I got written up. Why? For punching in late on that very first day when I was told not to worry about it. I ended up quitting a few weeks later.