I WOULD LIKE TO START THIS OFF BY SAYING I AM NOT CONDONING ANY FORM OF VIOLENCE BY THIS POST. The situation in which I was put in last week, although it mentions assault, is 100% relevant to this matter so it had to be included. There was no way for me to get past and give you the full story unless I explained what actually happened. **I do not condone ANY violence at all.
Oh boy. I just love slaving 90% of my life away. Working OT left and right for a shtty small business that pays me $16/hr… AND GIVES ME NO PTO, NO HEALTH, NO BENEFITS AT ALL. And yet expects ME singlehandedly to come in *every fcking time someone calls out*. They only ever ask me too.
Anyways that’s only half of this. Last week. We had a new hire come onboard. Our boss walked in on us at one of our stores, and dropped off some mush for me to capsule. So I immediately got to work on this. While doing that, I heard my boss snap at the new dude saying “why the fck are you dressed like that? You need to dress more respectfully”. The new guy replied with (and I quite literally quote) “Ok I apologize. I’ll make sure next shift I am properly dressed but I don’t want to fight or argue with you on this”. *My boss absolutely lost it on this poor kid*. Got up in his face screaming, telling him he was a “piece of sht” this that and the other, and to “get out of his store and never come back”. The new guy walked outside to his car… aaaand my boss followed him. For his own safety, my coworker started to record himself begging our boss to stay away from him (he’s ex military and has PTSD, so he hates conflict). Our boss shoved him, got all in his face screaming how he’s a “worthless piece of sht” this that and the other. *And this is where it gets ugly. Our boss started to record himself straight up threatening this poor kids life. Telling him how he is going to “beat the living sh*t out of him if he ever comes back” etc etc.
In no way was this kid dressed wrong. We do NOT have a dress code where we work at all. We are just told to “dress respectfully, and maintain a clean appearance.” This kid was wearing black jeans, a button up shirt that had small swirls on it, a beanie (to hide his bald spot mind you), and some converse. He was extremely well groomed, from head to toe. Was acting professional the entire time, and was very kind to customers. We desperately needed this dude. We have 3 FT people… when we are supposed to have 5. The 2 others who are supposed to be FT call out a lot… leaving me to cover and never having a day off from work.
Its been 90°F+ every day for the past week where we live. Our shops get incredibly warm, and only 2 of our 5 shops have AC’s. So it makes it challenging. My boss saw me yesterday and said I was “dressed extremely inappropriately and he was going to have a talk with my manager about this later”… mind you- I was dressed perfectly fine.. I was wearing black shoes, blue jeans, a black under T and a black jersey. No design on it. It literally just said “ILLENIUM” on the back… He threatened to fire me last week because a regular “saw me outside of work wearing a f*ck mangoes jersey and it was disrespectful”. But I was OUTSIDE OF WORK. I wasn’t due to come into work for another 3-4 hrs the day I got reported and had errands to run, and it was super hot outside the day I was caught.. so I was told him “whatever, I don’t have time for this”, and blew him off and kept opening my store.
He intentionally refuses to say any of this over text message. He gets extremely combative when I tell him I’m not coming in to cover on my days off. He usually ends up threatening me, and I have to come in anyways because I desperately need the money to pay rent. I don’t have time to just hop to another job ASAP. I’ve had to cancel 3 important emergency dental and doctor appointments recently just to cover for people as well…
How come people think that just because they own a business, they get to walk over their employees? People who are VOLUNTARILY working for them? Sometimes I genuinely wish we didn’t have to slave our entire lives away for minimum wage. Only the elite with bachelors or a snobby attitude get the good jobs apparently…