My friends of antiwork, brace yourselves for a long story that will probably be one of the craziest stories you've ever seen in this subreddit. This is a post that I've been dreaming of writing for quite a while now, but needed certain dominos to fall before I could finally quit on Friday. Here we go.
Background: I had worked for a very small residential remodeling firm. I was one of four employees including my boss who owned the company. When I interviewed for the job, there were so many red flags that basically screamed this man doesn't know what he's doing, he isn't organized, and that I wouldn't really learn anything new in the role. However, I needed a job to pay my bills, and he offered me a salary and title that was tough to pass up. I figured maybe I was being too critical and if there were inefficiencies that he would be happy to have someone on board who is willing to identify opportunities for improvement. Wow, was I wrong. A few weeks into working for him, I had brought some concerns to his attention about how certain processes weren't efficient and certain systems weren't sustainable. I did it in a very professional/respectful way, as to not poo poo on him or his business. His response? “My systems are perfect. You all just need to work harder.” Meanwhile, he had hired me to be a Project Manager, but in reality, I was working as a Project Manager, Construction Superintendent, Lead Foreman, Estimator, and Office Administrator with approximately 1.5 years of experience in construction project management prior to starting.
Here are just a few things he did regularly that blew my mind:
1) He would have 80% of a conversation with someone (often times me) then in that last 20% where you decide how you're going to move forward, what action items need to be taken, etc.. He would instead decide that the conversation was over and abruptly walk away or hang up the phone. The amount of 80% conversations I had and rehad with this idiot because I would then have to refresh him on our last 80% conversation was mind boggling and so frustrating.
2) He didn't have a Scope of Work for any of his projects. In construction, you often give the customer a written narrative stating this is what we're doing, this is how we're doing it, this is why we're doing it, and here are all the details you need to know. This man would instead rely on poorly drawn construction drawings and pretty much every week we would have an uh oh oopsy moment where a subcontractor would charge us extra because we didn't include something in the drawings, or the customer would say hey this isn't what we expected and we would have to redo it. It was honestly as equally comical as it was sad. Every week we would lose $500-2,000 in profit on a project because of this. I honestly don't know how he was profitable on any project.
3) He didn't understand how to estimate projects. If someone came to him and asked how much would it cost to redo my bathroom? Due to the lack of a Scope of Work, he would come back and say “well I can do it for a range of $20,000 – $50,000. I'm not too sure.”
I came to the conclusion that this man did not understand the concept of money, time, respect, project management, or business management. Ooof.
Here is a list of the top low lights that I experienced in my tenure with this firm:
1) The time where he made me think I had cancer
So, in remodeling, you will often run into situations where you are knocking down walls/ceilings that contain asbestos. We had a project going on where the basement had wood paneling (not asbestos) on the walls, and drywall that contained a ton of asbestos. If you do not safely remove asbestos, it gets knocked up in the air and if you breathe enough of it in, you are pretty much guaranteed to get lung cancer. Think about all of those commercials we used to see 10-15 years ago “if you or a loved one were exposed to asbestos and suffer from mesothelioma, you may be entitled to money blah blah..” So, the day of asbestos removal came. I had never been in a situation where I was on an active construction site that had asbestos removal occurring, so I had no idea what to expect, or what to think about the process. What I did know is that we had hired a professional firm that had a great reputation of successfully removing asbestos from buildings for decades. I trusted that they were taking proper precautions and doing what was necessary to safely remove the asbestos. Boss man calls me and I tell him “yeah they're ripping the wood paneling off the walls” immediate panic button is hit. He focused on the fact that I said they were removing parts of walls and ignored the fact that it was non asbestos containing material. I thought oh shit maybe he knows something that I don't know. He then said that everyone there was going to get cancer, and demanded that they needed to stop work immediately. I freaked out and started googling asbestos exposure and cancer, and for a solid 10 minutes thought that I was a goner. After 10 minutes, I realized that he was just being irrational and that I was totally safe, but wow for those 10 minutes I cannot begin to describe how terrified I was. Ironically, he was supposed to be on site that morning, but chose not to show up. He then waited approximately two hours to show up after demanding that we stop work, despite being about 15 minutes away. He also called their office and caused a whole shit storm accusing them of being amateurs, unprofessional idiots, etc.. So for a solid 2 hours I'm just standing there on site waiting for this man to show up meanwhile I've got a demolition crew of approximately 10 people just glaring at me hating me because they think that I'm the bad guy. Boss man finally arrived, and was like oh they were just removing wood paneling? Ok yeah that's fine they can proceed. Then he left.
2) The time he changed my job description to make it more challenging and time consuming, and when I told him if he wanted to renegotiate my job, we needed to reneogitate my salary. His response was “fuck you you're doing this job at the rate I hired you at, or you're fired”
Included in this updated job description was taking out his trash, shoveling his snow, raking his leaves, maintaining his car, and forcing me to drive a company car that was not properly registered in the state the business operates in. Which leads me to the next low light-
3) The time when his negligence in failing to register the company car led to me getting pulled over and issued a ticket, which has now increased my monthly car insurance rate
When I got pulled over, I told him about what had happened, and I was pissed because he lied to me and had told me that he had updated the registration and left everything in the glove box. To my surprise, nothing was in there and I got stuck with the ticket because as the officer told me I was “the one driving the car” and therefore I was responsible. My boss also told me that it was somehow my fault that the registration wasn't updated, despite the fact that the registration had expired well before I even began working for him, and him telling me it was updated. He then told me that I would have to take time off to deal with the legal consequences if I wanted to go to court, dragged his feet with getting the updated registration, and gave me some serious attitude when I was pestering him about getting the proper documentation that I needed to bring to the courthouse to clear my name. I doubled down and went to the courthouse on company time and told him “this is a company issue so it will be dealt with on company time.” When I went to the courthouse on the clock, he freaked out and told me that I should not have gone, and that I needed his permission to go clear my name at the courthouse, despite the fact that all of my responsibilities for the day were taken care of.
4) The time when I didn't have any responsibilities for the day until 9AM and he decided to blow my phone up starting at 6:45AM with 10 phone calls and 20 texts demanding that I take his trash out
When he first started calling I was woken up. I saw he texted me demanding that I take his trash out, thought fuck that, turned the phone off and went back to sleep. When I woke up I had a ton of texts saying “please answer” and “?” “????” “where are you?” “why aren't you taking my trash out?”
5) Throughout my tenure, he made me use this application on my phone that doubled as a time clock and location tracker
Every single time I would clock out to eat lunch he would call me panicking that I left the job site and it was burning down. Every. Single. Time. It got to a point where I would have to text him “clocking out for lunch” and he would call me like 10-15 minutes after that to harass me to get back to work pretty routinely. He would also constantly call me every time I left a job site to run to a supply warehouse to grab tools/materials needed for a job and he would always ask where are you and what are you doing? I called him out on this because after the 10th lunch interruption I realized it wasn't a coincidence that he was calling me when I had clocked out for lunch, or called me the second I left the job site. He doubled down and insisted that he just had weird timing, but then I saw him one day obsessively tracking another employee and it honestly scared me. This man was more concerned about where I was and if I was on the clock than he was concerned about what work was actually being done.
6) The customer who he had this strange vendetta against that caused a ton of unnecessary drama and friction
One of our subcontractors did something improperly, and when the customer brought it to my attention, I had let the boss know what happened and that I was going to have the subcontractor redo it. Boss man instead advised me to “tell them to fuck off and let us work” in their own house. Ironically, the customer saw the red flags, and withheld their final payment until the renovation was totally complete. They had told me that they felt like he was great at the sales process, but as soon as the work was sold, shit hit the fan. Ironically, I totally understood. So, the customer informed him that they weren't going to pay his final invoice until he completed absolutely everything that he was contractually obligated to complete. Rather than understanding and accepting this, boss man decided to have a pissing contest with them and refuse to do any work for months while almost escalating things to the point where lawyers were involved. Meanwhile, I had a great relationship with the customer, so things definitely got pretty awkward.
I could honestly add another 100 items to this list, but these 6 take the cake as the most ridiculous displays of incompetence and negligence I've ever seen from an employer.
All of this leads us to the glorious moment where I quit this past Friday
I had been going on interviews and waiting until I had secured a new job with a start date and everything before quitting, because, again, I've got bills to pay. On Friday morning, I was informed by my new employer that my background check had cleared, and I was good to start in 2 weeks. I jumped for joy. Understanding how my boss is, regardless of if I gave him a two week notice or not, he would talk shit and be a horrible reference for me anyways. I've never heard him say a good word about a past employee or subcontractor. So, on Friday afternoon, he wasn't in the office. I sent him an email that was very polite basically saying thanks for the opportunity but I quit effective immediately. I left all of my shit on my desk – my company issued laptop, tools, etc. and sprinted out of the office. While driving home, I felt myself grinning from ear to ear so hard that my cheeks started hurting. When I got home, my cheeks were red, and I have never felt so happy in my life. It feels so good to be free of this absolutely toxic work environment!
TLDR; Basically I worked for this man who doesn't understand anything and it put me into weird situations where he made me think I had cancer, he caused my car insurance to go up, and he was incredibly disrespectful to everyone around him. Seeing how toxic this was, I quit without giving notice, left my shit on my desk, and walked out on Friday, and it felt amazing.