Sorry for the **LONG STORY COMING UP**, but I need to get this off my chest. This takes place over the course of the last two months but led up to what happened today.
I work(ed) for a pretty popular cannabis delivery dispensary, as a dispatcher/customer care rep. This is actually a second, part time position (which was one of the reasons I felt so emboldened to do what I did – I didn't have the fear of losing this income like the others who may have agreed but were reliant on the job so afraid to speak up). When I started here it was great, the culture was as you'd expect from cannabis, laid back but everybody was hard working and on the same page. The owner was a young, behind the scenes kind of guy but was pretty cool from what I'd seen of him. His dad and sister operated two other dispensaries (and between the three the one I worked at did the best, numbers wise). I enjoyed the vibe and hard working nature of this office so much that I considered leaving job 1 for it, even though it paid considerably less.
I stuck to both and did both – Job 1 was more about the money and job 2 was more about my interest in the industry and the people. Both jobs treated me very well (Job 1 honestly has THE best work environment I've ever been in – it's not my preferred industry but how well they've treated me plus the pay have kept me there and happy) so I felt really good about things! Worked almost a whole year doing both jobs no sweat. Would only have one day off every few weeks but I didn't mind.
Fast forward to January. The owner calls for an all-hands meeting, at 7am on a weekday (my day off, and I had to take some time off job 1 to attend). All good, I don't mind, job 1 doesn't mind me taking the time off either. I'm excited to see everybody in the office at the same time, and to see what the owner has to say. He doesn't speak.
Instead, an older man who I never met or even seen before steps up and introduces himself. He is the dad of the owner, and he proudly proclaims that they will be merging the three companies under his leadership. I was like “ehhh” but was willing to hear his vision. What followed next was two hours of the most off-putting display of dick swinging and iron-fist wielding I've ever seen, He basically tells us that if we don't like the change, we can fuck off. He tells us that he will not tolerate drama, idle chit chat, people wearing hoodies in the office (I was wearing a hoodie at the time and he was staring at me as he went into detail of how unprofessional hoodies looked LOL), whoever works from home comes back into office right away, etc. It was volleys of threats, talking about his “track record”, going back to threats and then to top it all off his daughter comes on and starts prattling on about her wellness program that she wants us to buy some Juicers she's selling or whatever. They both exclaim that “We are looking for winners blah blah blah” and basically how they are only wanting people who want to help them reach multi-billion dollar status.
This meeting left a bad taste in our mouths, but the worst was yet to come. In our work group chats, he would constantly be saying demeaning things to us and yelling at his managers via text. He was constantly calling people out and making examples of them in the threads. He tried to implement their processes onto our way of doing things (and mind you, our company is the major moneymaker of the three companies), which called for us to NOT ONLY take on the customer base and processes of two other companies, but made us to do a lot of unnecessary work on actual paper that could've been pulled from our CRM data and printed out. All the while, there is very little communication to us or even an SOP for what we should do, it was pretty much, learn it and do it, if you do it right then you can work here.
Needless to say, people have quit and morale has taken a nosedive yet the owner still goes about threatening us and talking down to us, and after only one day of learning the new systems I felt that this position needed a raise. I reached out to one of the senior managers and let him know that with our workload basically tripled, our pay should match it. There's no way I'm going to do this job for the same ass wage. He tells me that it is a perspective thing and I should look at it like a video game – knock out objectives one by one…. ok I guess?
On Monday another manager texts me asking to cover a shift for someone, to which I tell him no and explain my stance about deserving a raise. He says the same thing pretty much “It's how you look at it” blah blah blah. The very next morning, the owner posts a comment that there will be another mandatory all-hands meeting for Thursday 7am (today, on my day off and I'm having to take time off job 1 AGAIN)
At this point, I've had it and walk in only to speak my mind, quit and leave. But first I wanted to fight for my dispatch team. He starts off with his usual bullshit, but mentions how morale seems to be dropping. He doubles down on his threats and says there will be no drama here! Then he proceeds to explain about the transition and how it's going and asks if anyone has any questions. I raise my hand and tell him straight up, “with the increased workload for dispatch having to learn new processes for our original job, as well as having to learn the processes of two differently run companies as well as taking on their customers, I don't feel that the pay is on par with the workload. I'm asking that you increase the wage for this position to make it fair for us” (one of the companies isn't even in the same town so we'd be expected to learn the geography of that area as well)
He completely sidesteps my concern by saying some shit to the effect of “Let's see how well you build relationships with customers first before we get to any of that” (I'm one of the top dispatchers and my record of helping customers is great, I always go the extra mile for my people!) and continues straight on to his presentation. I'm now visibly irritated, and eventually he posts a slideshow of some new rules, this time there is ZERO talk in the building other than work talk, we are now REQUIRED to come into work 10 minutes early but cannot clock in until our scheduled time, blah blah blah so at that point, I'm so mad I say “that's bullshit”
He hears me muttering so he stops and asks “What was that?” so very loudly, and very clearly I yell back THIS IS BULLSHIT. He immediately has a meltdown and starts yelling at me like I'm one of his kids or something. I loudly talk over him and say “I'm not interested in this culture of fear you're trying to instill here, not everybody wants to be your yes man, I'm sick of how you talk down to everyone in the threads like you hold some kind of power over everybody. Fuck this job!!!” And walked out while he was yelling at me. As I walked through the door I yelled “I'm gonna go to my higher paying job that cares about me and work for a real leader now, I hope all of you guys get the opportunity to have one of those” and left. I was upset that I did that at first, but the more I think about the more at peace I am. I'm SO happy I don't have to work for that lunatic anymore.