B = My step-dad
O = Owners
DISCLAIMERS: This isn't my story, clearly, and he doesn't Reddit, so I'm posting it on his behalf. The first paragraph is my backstory with him and why he's so important to me, so you don't have to read that, just a way to understand why I think so highly of him and to show off why he's such a hard worker. Also this story is pretty long, so bear with me, please
BACKSTORY: To start off, B isn't really my step-dad, I just don't have another title for him, since to me he's been my father figure since I was 12. He was with my mom for the better part of 2 years and had a kid with her, my sister. Eventually they broke up, but he never left our side. He's a great father to his daughter and never once considered me and my brother less than her. He was there for us, driving me to school every morning at 6 AM cause mom would wake up to get my sister and brother ready for the bus to pick them up around the same time. On the way he'd talk to me about my life at home and would always give me solid advice through the years. Eventually he was the reason I joined the military cause I wasn't good in school and was heading down a path I wouldn't have been proud of. As good of a father figure he was, he wasn't able to be there as much as he wanted to be, despite doing so much, I wasn't the best person. He laid it out like this “Down the path your going, you're choices are these: You improve your studies and head to college, you join the military and work your way up, eventually easing into working as an adult, or you drop out and I see you at the local McDs serving fries for a living”. He was crude with it and old-fashioned, but damn it if it didn't hurt hearing it. I eventually graduated and joined the Army and have made a pretty good life so far, with him always there if I need it. Anyway, backstory complete, on to the work part.
STORY: The company he worked at was new. His specialty is building pallets and all the machinery involved. The owners found him while working at a different one and basically offered him to help start the company off in exchange for better pay. He accepted under some conditions, which will be important later. To be clear, the company was NEW new, as in he was the first and only worker, so he had his work ahead of him. He was a soldier before he started working and had incredible knowledge on the business. So in a sense, he was the most crucial part of the company. This served him well as he gained the attitude of “I know my worth” and could back it up easy.
B was the only employee for some time at his company, legit did everything on his own (Inventory, Processing, Building, Organizing, Loading/Unloading),while the owners of the company took care of the economics and logistics of the company. Also, I forgot to mention they didn't have machines besides forklifts to help with the processing of the wood, so he did everything by hand with a sander and nail gun as his equipment Over time they grew in record time and became a much bigger company, all thanks to B and his work ethic and experience. As the company grew, so did the workload and in return, his pay. Eventually they made enough money to expand their workshop, buy wood processing machines (by that I mean machines that cut and sanded the wood, cause again, he did everything by hand at first) and hire people to help, with B as the leader since he was the manager.
B had a style of operating. The owners called it him “militarizing” work, but in reality, all he did was establish a leadership system. He was their boss, he had 2 supervisors who did exactly that, and each section of the workehop had its lead, the first line leader who was supposed to know what they're doing. B himself had grown a lot as a person, cause before this, he never liked working with women (cause in the pallet-building industry, to his experience, women typically don't pull their weight) or African-Americans (he had terrible experiences with them at more than one other jobs, so he thought they weren't hard workers and were unreasonably aggressive). He's Mexican, born and raised, for context, and we all lived in a ghetto part of the city I'm from. That being said, 2 of his best workers was a woman he had as the lead of her section and a black dude who had just left prison, but who he sympathized with cause he knew what it was like to not be given a chance cause of your background.
One day, however, the owners brought in a woman, who turned this situation and where everything starts. Mind you, B is technically the manager of this warehouse, but he's not an employee (the conditions I mentioned earlier). He was smart in the way that when he started working for them, he made sure they understood that he wasn't an employee, he was a contractor of some sorts, like a “I'm here to show you how it's done, and to keep this afloat”. Technically, they're hiring him for his services and he's not under their policies, but that also means he could be fired at any moment without having to go through channels. The pros outweigh the cons, so that's what he went with. It worked for the owners at the time cause they didn't have to worry about insurance and it worked for B cause it was easier to deal with.
Anyway, the woman they brought in was their to interview for a different position, but then took a liking to B's “position” in the warehouse. She came and saw the machinery and talked about her experience and basically said this “I can do what he does, but better. I'd produce more in less time”, and the owners ate it up. After that, they pulled Beto aside and told him he was no longer needed for his services and fired him, without giving him time to say goodbye for the reason of not wanting to cause issues or cause any bad blood. Also, they told him their mistake was letting B basically run everything in the warehouse, cause they realized he had too much power and sway over the workers, since he not only started at the bottom like them, but did everything from working on the floor to leading the warehouse down to maintenance and fixing of the equipment they used. When I say he did it all, I mean he did it ALL.
They somehow saw this as a problem and with the new lady promising better results, fired him, so he didn't fight, gathered his stuff and left with only a warning that they were making a mistake. This prompted people asking where he went, and the owners lied to them saying that he left cause he was offered a better job somewhere else, which was funny cause it seems they forgot he wasn't an employee, he was contractor, so a “better offer” doesnt exactly sit well with them. The workers started ringing him up and asking for the story, spreading the owners' incompetence in the workplace and caused a lot of bad blood between the workers and the owners. In the end, 20/30 workers planned to quit when they figured out the real reason he wasn't there anymore, the owners not thinking they'd actually call him and verify. Now they lost the majority of their workers and according to one of the workers that stayed, they only make 35% of what they made daily when B was there so far. He had told me that if they called him to come back, he'd accept under better “conditions”. He was valuable and they just couldn't accept that he knew what he was doing and got along the people that worked under him. Instead of trying to get better with the workers, spend more time with them, and understanding just how hard B worked for them, they fire him under the guise of a “better” person and could've avoided a lot of mess. They'd come in late, leave early, and take vacations whenever they wanted cause they owned the place. After B left, they also figured out that even if you pay a decent wage, respect goes a long way, and if you don't treat workers well, they'll find better options. They rallied for B and up and left as the sound of what they did
TR;DR: Step-dad helped build the company from the bottom up through sheer hard work, owners think him having so much say in the operations and sway over the workers is bad, they hire a different person under false promises, workers leave cause they're more loyal to step-dad than the money they earned, owners are now reaping what they sowed
Thanks for reading if you got to this point. I know it's a long read and I'll answer any questions to the best of my knowledge or I cam always ask him, he likes talking about work and is very proud