Long story short, 4 days ago I've decided to quit abusive, toxic workplace straight from hell and i feel lost, i have no clue what to do next with my life.
Past four years of working in a bar+restaurant in the kitchen were easily worst years of my life, i am 25 years old and the feeling of losing best years for my life in it is tearing me apart…
From the best gems of this experience i can list up are:
– being forced to work 6 days a week, almost every day from
10am till 8pm
– work required us to work with gas propelled grill without literally any protection, no gloves no nothing – as a result me and other people developed severe hands skin damage, painful as fuck, due to heat radiation
– our wages didn't go up at all during this period, in theory
i earned minimum wage during this period, in practice our boss/manager was often cutting the pay to for dumbest shit you could think of, sadly nobody ever took legal action against him
– working understaffed almost all the time, amount of work and the speed to perform certain tasks was inhumane.
– common practice in this place was first allowing us to schedule days off just to refuse 90% of them via calling us to work in these days no matter what have you planned+ threatening to fire us
– abusing workers mentally and physically by manager and boss on daily basis, i.e. threatening whole staff to not talk with certain person who left leaving notice, insulting us if did otherwise, insulting us for every possible mistake even if this wasn't even our job, threatening to spread information on us in our small city in case of leaving, not to mention literally hundreds of situations during 4 years when boss tried to be physically abusive while being drunk
– shaming workers in front of customers by manager
And many, many more i cannot even think of now (But ask me for any stories from inside, i could write a whole book)
During this period i started suffering from heavy depression, half of our staff did. It gets even worse after leaving because i feel like i am unable to do anything else due to wasted years i could spend on education etc. but i feel like i could never work in kitchen again, work i previously loved.
To all workers worldwide who suffered similar forms of abuse – know that you're not alone, don't let some cocky small business owner cut ruin your life and mental health for his personal gains without any respect for you, quit your work asap if you notice any red flags because it only gets worse over time.