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Antiwork

My old workplace was super toxic

tldr: old workplace was toxic, now I work somewhere not toxic and I have to adjust to the better environment I worked at an international retail store for 8 years, as a student job (I'm 24). The first 6 years were generally pretty good (aside from the customers, lol) but then I moved so I had to be transferred to another store. This new store was straight up awful. In the getting-to-know-you-interview I was immediatly asked about children, which is a huge red flag for me. It's either childless people have to fill in for the parents all the time, or parents (specifically moms) aren't hired at all. The management consisted of awful people, literally all of them. They all had some kind of God complex, everything an employee did was always bad, making mean comments. The working hours were also the exact opposite of what I had said I…


tldr: old workplace was toxic, now I work somewhere not toxic and I have to adjust to the better environment

I worked at an international retail store for 8 years, as a student job (I'm 24). The first 6 years were generally pretty good (aside from the customers, lol) but then I moved so I had to be transferred to another store.

This new store was straight up awful. In the getting-to-know-you-interview I was immediatly asked about children, which is a huge red flag for me. It's either childless people have to fill in for the parents all the time, or parents (specifically moms) aren't hired at all. The management consisted of awful people, literally all of them. They all had some kind of God complex, everything an employee did was always bad, making mean comments. The working hours were also the exact opposite of what I had said I wanted to work, messing with my school schedule. I was also forced to do physical labor, but I have chronic back pain so I told them from the beginning I wouldn't be able to do that. After 6 months they “had no room for me” anymore so I got transferred again.

So I work in the second new store for not even a week and the old manager keeps calling me if I could come work for her instead because “they're understaffed”. Obviously I declined. Sometimes the old manager came in the new store as a customer and she would pretend she didn't even know me.

The new store wasn't that much better though. There was a lot of unpaid overtime and when I spoke up I was “that person”, you know what I mean. The hours per day were also insanely long, 10 hours/day was no exception. If you were only there for 8 hours/day it was a gift. I also felt like I was treated differently, I had a permanent contract and some diplomas within the field (as opposed to restockers who kept quitting after a month), but everytime I came up with an idea they didn't listen to me, and I was always the one that had to fill in for others and if I said no they'd get mad. Others could get away with things I couldn't get away with. All my coworkers also only brought negativity to the workplace. I don't care about your teenage son's behaviour, I don't care about how much your boyfriend sucks, just stfu. Everything they said was always negative and it definitely influenced the vibe. There was gossip going on in town that you shouldn't work here because it was always so negative.

I quit because I have to do a fulltime internship, I'm doing it for 2 weeks now and Im mentally in such a better place. All my coworkers are nice and positive, the work itself is much better, the management is actually managing instead of just screaming the loudest. And when I leave at 5, nobody yells at me that there are still things left to do. I still have to adjust to this better environment but I have not gotten a negative reaction from anyone yet, to anything I did/said.

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