Hey all, thank you to whoever reads. I really appreciate any support or insight any of you may have. In 2020, I was offered a job at a startup COVID testing company that specializes in film/tv testing. They were offering $50/hour (which is crazy, I know) to work for them as an independent contractor in CA, however the work wasn’t super consistent. After a few months, they offered to bring me on as a full-time salary (60k) employee and send me to New York for 6 months as a transplant to train people — they would pay for my housing for 6 months. Considering I was 21 at the time, I was, and still am, young and impressionable, and I thought this was a generous opportunity. Which, at the time, it was. They encouraged me to permanently move there, but ultimately it was up to me, and after 6 months I decided to stay and got my own place and have been here ever since. Anyway, little did I know that when I came to NYC I would be working 80+ hours a week in a high stress environment, waking up at 3:30am everyday, only to not be able to fully stop working until 9 or 10pm because that’s when I was told what time/where I had to be the next day (the locations changed daily).
Quickly going to bullet point some of the fucked up things they did because I think they’re genuinely entertaining:
* told me I would be housed alone for the 6 months that I was sent there but I show up and actually am living with my boss and her first cousin
* told me Ubers were covered by the company but never put it in writing so refused to reimburse me for $3000 worth of ubering (I had to Uber to a storage unit to pick up TONS of heavy supplies every day solely for my job)
* found out that all of the people I was managing were making WAY more than what I was making (I made 60k salary and they were making $50 an hour – many people made over 150k/yr and I trained them and was their direct manager with tons more responsibility)
* after a year of working nonstop 80+ hrs/week, in December of 2021 I reached out to my boss (who I thankfully no longer lived with) and told her that I would like to switch back to hourly, independent contractor status so I could make $50/hr). I was told I’m not allowed to do that and I respectfully questioned why (this is over email) and then I’m randomly asked to schedule a meeting with HR, to which she ends up rescheduling two times. Finally, she and my boss are on the call and they tell me that I’m being “demoted to hourly, independent contractor status based on my performance”… I’m confused why it’s being worded this way, considering it’s what I wanted and I’ve only ever gotten outstanding reviews (never a warning or anything).
Fast forward a year – I’ve been an hourly independent contractor most of 2022. I’ve made maybe $40k this year before taxes and I live in NYC. The schedule started coming out and I tried to be hopeful throughout the entire year, but they basically scheduled me a couple times a week or not at all, meanwhile all the people I moved to New York to train were making tons of money. There’s also a ton of nepotism. A dude who I trained who quickly shot his way up in the company, got in charge of scheduling, then hired his siblings, cousins, and friends and gave them all hours, meanwhile I moved across the country for this company and they can’t even guarantee me 10 hours of work per week.
THE BEST PART is in March of 2022 (3 months into FINALLY being hourly again
/s, RANDOMLY, they tell everyone we’re all being switched from independent contractor status to employee status. I spoke to a lawyer about this and he said they illegally documented us as independent contractors, when we were really, by definition, employees. They then docked $10 off of our pay because of this with no explanation (???). So, one day we just started making $40 instead of $50/hr.
There is much more, but you get the point. I moved across the country for this job. Left my family and friends, where I grew up my whole life and moved to a place where I was alone and knew no one, and this job discarded me without blinking, the SECOND I “complicated” things. I was grateful at first, and that gratitude soon turned to repulsion, and ultimately feeling taking advantage of and dehumanized. Fuck working, fuck corporate America, fuck capitalism.
I am a hard worker, but I fucking hate working. I enjoy being productive, but I hate working. I’m not lazy, I JUST hate working.
Oh, and they never once provided drinkable water.