I've been lurking around here for a few days, and while I don't bellow about my work, I will share my worst recent experience with a company to add fuel to the fire here.
It was December 2021, my days after work were getting boring af. Since I had experience in custodianship and how fun this job was, I got hired to do nightly shifts at a high school next month. The school was 9 minutes from my house, so I thought “Perfect. More money to spend on steroids and video games I really don't need. Maybe make a friend or two.”
So, I started. It was a three-person team, each rotating specific areas of the school. Everything was going great… Until I realized that my on-floor supervisor was pulling something behind the scenes. I've noticed that my workdays were getting done earlier and earlier, even though there was more work to do. He was also hanging out with my other coworker (who was an accomplice to this stupid incident), giving him more information on what upper-management was wanting us to do and ignoring me most of the night.
I sensed this favoritism, and while the supervisor didn't appear to stand out as someone who would mess with me, I ignored it and continued my job. It was until about a month later that he made a remark that pissed me off. I wanted his help on putting a key on a key chain, and while he did help me, he said “Oh, look! it works like magic!” with one of those contemptuous mean girl looks. I laughed it off because I thought he was joking, but my afterthoughts doubted that perspective. I realized that this wasn't the first time he was trying to make me suffer.
I was fuming that day. I almost wanted to quit, but I also liked the job itself. The next day, I asked my supervisor above the on-floor supervisor for a day off, and I discussed to her a lot of the things that were happening in the past two months. The supervisor was sorry to hear that, and was going to address 10 different things. They also confided in me that if the on-floor supervisor didn't start implementing the corrections they had told him (alongside my concerns), they were going to fire him.
I was relieved to hear this, but here comes the worst thing I've experienced at a job.
I went back to work. The on-floor supervisor completely ignored me this time and didn't give me a job to do. When I asked, his buddy answered instead. I was careful and, as per my earlier conversation, my supervisor talked to him. Pretty much after that, my co-worker started to toy with me, hawking around me saying “he was done with everything and you're moving too slow!”. I told him to go do something and please let me work, but he kept asking me a lot of personal questions (at this point, this was a reconnaissance move).
I knew something was definitely up. Eventually, he left after I ignored him, but I was alone working for the next two hours, with both the co-worker and on-floor supervisor out of my sight (possibly out of the building too). I've noticed some things weren't worked on, and some of my equipment disappeared. I was close to getting done, but this whole night irked me. The night ended with the coworker saying “Good job buddy! You deserve a raise!”.
Yeah. Whatever. I felt exhausted and went straight home to shower and bed.
The next morning, my mom was leaving for work and noticed that my car tire on the front driver's side was deflated. Worke up confused, I investigated and noticed on my home cameras (thank goodness for those!) that I came home from work with a deflated tire. The tire wasn't slashed or damaged in any way, simply deflated. I was pretty shocked to see this and reported all of this to my supervisor. I told them that I was going to quit because I didn't feel safe there, and, of course, they investigated it themselves.
Their investigation took a week, I received a call from the office manager. They told me:
- The on-floor supervisor “left the company” after being talked to about me
- They don't “have evidence” that my car was vandalized that day, despite them telling me in the earlier call they could look at the school's security cameras per their contract.
- They also had the gall to tell me that “deflated tires happen all the time. I had one not too long ago” even though I haven't moved my car at all during work. Even my supervisor remembered that my car looked fine BEFORE she left the school.
I knew this company was lying, so I had to let them go. My car was in perfect shape before that night so there's no way they can cover this up. It's very easy for one to deduce that the supervisor was the one who did it. Hell, even I consulted with a few agencies and friends and they 100% backed me up with that one.
It's a shame that there are dishonest, selfish companies out that like to gaslight people and engineer unfavorable situations for more favorable ones. While my lifestyle has improved since then, this incident still is a scar worth noting. What if I took the freeway home? I couldn't see in the dark and that could create a bad accident (my old car doesn't have tire pressure sensors, so it wouldn't light up on my dashboard).
As such, it makes me wonder why I should bother being an employee of any company. I know there are good ones out there, but I thought this company was “good” too.
Anyway, thanks for reading. Sadists/psychopaths are more messed up than drug addicts.