Recently moved to a new state to get my life back in track, set up a job as a trainee for a VR Experience place in Vegas as a host running guests through experiences and making sure they are safe for a new small business (less than a year old).
I'm 26 with ADHD, a college degree, and experience supervising a psych ward with 40+ clients and 4+ staff. I trained with people on average aged 17-22, which I have no compunction with. But I was made to train for 2.5 months, being told I just wasn't ready.
I had two conflicts with the manager, an anxious person; she first was disrespectful to me after asking a booking question, feeling the need to elucidate how 45 minute segments work as if it was my first day there despite working there for 1.5 months already. She could tell I looked annoyed at the debrief so I hung back to tell her why, and that there is no reason to ever be rude, curt, or disrespectful to me or anyone, which she understood and adjusted accordingly.
Next, I learned that they were hiring new trainees for $15 while I was still getting paid $12.50. Additionally, someone who started after me got off training before me, which also rubbed me the wrong way.
The final straw was when she came at me and a coworker asking in a very hostile manner where we were and what we were doing. I told her very pointedly that we actually had discussed what our plan was to host the groups and that we were checking the tablet to see where we needed to go before she showed up. She proceeded to tell me that I will be put in Time Out for having that attitude. As I am not a child, I told her to not talk to me like that – she proceeded to pull me aside and tell me that I was about to be taken off training/promoted but maybe not if I'm going to have that attitude.
I told her that either I'm off training next week or I'm not coming back either way. We continued our discussion for an hour how the training was inordinately prolonged and poorly organized, provided with no metrics or standards for how we should progress besides deference to their seemingly arbitrary standards. I elaborated how the staff training us may not know how to, or want to, train, and that many times the things we do learn are wrong anyways. We only ever learned but mistake, never guided through step by step or provided clear instruction or troubleshooting guidelines.
Then I discussed the discrepant pay between myself and the other trainees, to which she said that we shouldn't talk about that with our coworkers. I reminded her that that, is in fact, not true and that it was against the law to imply or state we couldn't.
I made sure she knew I was passionate about working there but as a participant and observer, it was quite frustrating and I tried to explain what they they can do to improve their training regime (the last person training was treated the same and broke down, throwing stuff in a display of agitated resignation).
The next week I came in and was told to hold back from the initial meeting, during which I was promptly thanked for my feedback and fired because it wasn't working out.
At this point in my life, I'm done with people feeling the need to be unkind, disrespectful, and exploitative so I feign no regret for standing up for myself and a more pragmatic workplace and training operation.