This was in 2018.
I worked during college for a company that would teach after school classes for K-6th grade. I liked it, and it was flexible hours that paid decent for part time work. Most importantly, I REALLY liked my coworkers and the owners who ran the business as a passion project in their retirement.
Right about the time I graduated the old owners sold the business to two couples who I guess had business experience in tech companies.
With a recommendation from my amazing boss, and a few supervisors, they offered me a full time office position replacing a friend of mine who was going to get “promoted” to a different position. I had also been interviewing for a few other jobs, and got another better offer, that offered everything a company should include. I turned It down though because I really liked working in youth education and my coworkers were already guaranteed to be awesome since I knew them. So i signed the employment agreement, and was set to start the following Monday. This is where it goes bad…
When I showed up to work Monday, all my (now) coworkers were surprised to see me. They knew I had interviewed but no one told them I was hired. Additionally, when i told them what job I was doing, they all said, “isn’t that [friend 1]’s job?” Even HE didn’t know what was going on. So they sort of let me help out until the bosses showed up to help clear things up.
2 hours later my direct supervisor (and one of the owners) shows up, and announces that I will be replacing Friend 1. But don’t worry, Friend 1 will be filling a role in HR, and Friend 2 who was already in HR will be put into another position that doesn’t exist yet. Both of my friends said “what? Starting when” and the owner said “now.”
It was all downhill from there.
1. We were very understaffed, which meant the office staff would have to go out and teach classes, driving long distances.
2. I had to fight to be paid for mileage driving in my personal vehicle.
3. When I told them I would be coming in late on days where I had to cover late classes they told me they didn’t like that my “dedication seemed to end at 5pm.”
4. During staff meetings they would change pricing almost daily and I would then have to tell schools the price went up for apparently no reason.
5. I later found out they had offered me a starting rate of 45k, but the person I was replacing who had been there 4 years was being “promoted” to a new role at a rate of 42k. No benefits. Wtf…
Most importantly, they made [friend 2] cry multiple the times because they would yell at her daily for not bringing in new clients – a job she had NO DESIRE to do, nor any experience or warning. Additionally, they had her continue doing much of her previous HR duties because “[friend 1] was new and needs help” while at the same time expecting her to do her new vague and bullshitty position she didn’t ask for.
I worked for them for two weeks before putting in my two weeks (a courtesy for my coworkers only).
[friend 2] quit with a weeks notice during a meeting, but we all told her to just not show up anymore because she deserved better. My 4 other coworkers quit once they found offers.
Thankfully I was able to go back to the other offer who, amazingly, took me in an instant and kept their offer at the higher rate they countered with a month earlier. I worked there for 3 awesome years 🙂
And that’s why am Anti-Work. I’m lucky.