TL;DR – I’ve been getting screwed over at jobs for two years and my step dad thinks I’m a bad worker for it. Advice?
I’ve been avoiding posting this but I think I need advice but also to rant. My step father, I’ll call him Jason, has been saying some pretty shitty things about me behind my back. I’m currently unemployed after getting fired from my last retail job at a big box store seemingly without reason. I have an interview for a job I know I will be amazing at and I’m very excited for. I’ve been told by my sister that Jason, in talking to my mother about this interview, is saying I’m just going to lose my job again, so what is the point, I’ll just get fired since I keep getting fired from jobs. He started working at his current company at 18 and never left, and stayed in the tech field. He is making a lot now, and is always mad at me for not doing what he did. He says I should work at a job that pays for my college, but no jobs will pay for a degree in the science field that I want to do. Every time I lose a job or leave a job, they tell me I should just work at a call center and move up in ranks there. My mother is unemployed while she gets a teaching degree. With how bad things have been this year, I’m having issues telling if this is a work environment issue or if I’m just not a good worker. And I want to see if anyone else is having this issue or feeling this way given the current work climate. I’m not one to put my head down and take workplace abuse, and I’m very vocal about pushing back when people try to bully me into unsafe or illegal working conditions, that’s how my father raised me.
Last two years of work history:
Job 1: I moved to a new area in my state and started working at a warehouse for a pretty well known online shopping platform. I won’t say who for, but it is well known for not caring about its employees. I quit after I wasn’t approved for a medical leave to take care of my partner AND a glitch in the system charged a bunch of people UPT (unpaid time off) and then auto-terminated them and hr couldn’t do anything about it. I left before they could technically fire me. I was there for 11 months.
Job 2: grocery store, 7 months, left for another warehouse job that paid way more.
Job 3: was let go after three weeks because they ran out of work. Said I was a perfect worker and they would gladly be a reference, they just didn’t have enough work. (Family owned company).
Job 4: cleaning service. Nearly died in a highway accident and had to leave due to medical issues. Three weeks.
Job 5: big box store, three months, was fired 6 days before my 90 days was up (along with a bunch of other new people being fired for the same reason) and was not given a clear reason by my manager other than “performance issues and no sense of urgency” despite being the one of the fastest on my team and all my coworkers agreed, and being told I was doing really well the week before.
Is this an issue with other work places right now? I was very open about needing health insurance and the moment i started talking about it (about two weeks before i was fired), my manager started dropping hints that I shouldn’t apply for insurance just yet because i could be fired, and then in the same breath would tell me I was doing amazing and killing it at my performance. I was never written up, and i was never late, and I picked up shifts to help out. This whole thing is making me unsure about the next year since it seems like workplaces are getting more and more toxic. Am I always going to be on the chopping block? I’m feeling a little helpless right now.