Sometime in 2020 I worked at a Togos (basically Subway but exclusive to the West Coast, mainly California)
Now this place sucked. I was being paid minimum wage at an understaffed, falling apart Togos. The GM is this old neurotic lady whose been extremely exploited by the owner, who was the biggest POS. Would name drop him but I think doxxing is against the rules or something. The AM was this angsty, pseudointellectual stoner whose first thing he said to me was “This job ruins relationships” in a pissed off tone. He didn't like me for a while and this story is mostly about him.
I have work boundaries, one is no physical contact, I have been groped at work before. Nowadays I also don't do threats, at all. Even vaguely threatening things get called out. Another is that you don't fuck with my hours. I don't work more than 5 days a week and I don't work any less hours than what I want. I don't do direct deposit because I want to scrutinize my paystubs to make sure I was paid for every second I worked.
Back to the Togos, AM would constantly act like an overdramatic douche, he would verbally abuse the GM constantly and at some point he started trying to yell at me. First time he yelled at me I just went “Dude, are you ok?” and he stormed off. He made many threats over a while but after I subtly threatened to beat him up in the parking lot, he decided he wanted to be friends inside and outside of work and I accepted that.
Around December of 2020, I caught some viral whatnot and I was scared it was covid. I told the GM, she said “come back to work when you aren't sick”. So I go to the hospital, test, and get my results and I didn't have covid, doc said they couldn't do anything (and then proceeded to charge me, yay capitalist healthcare). I was out for about a week or so and I was texting the GM to keep her updated.
Im feeling better and I come back to work and the AM has the audacity to sit there and act like I quit my job, and that I didn't have my job anymore. After calling the GM, she called him out on his bullshit and I was coming back to work the following day.
I work for about a week except I notice my hours were severely reduced. I had about half the hours I had before I was sick. When I got my paycheck, it wasn't enough to cover rent. I knew what happened, I watched it happen before. The AM convinces the GM to give me reduced hours for whatever reason they could make up.
So, what I did the following morning was come in to work where it would be just the GM and I. During the lunch rush, I told the GM that she was either going to bring my hours back to normal, or I would quit. She went “You can't just threaten me like that” and I said “Im not threatening you. Im giving you an ultimatum. I didn't make rent this last month, I didn't come to work to lose money. Don't fuck with my hours, I made this clear from when I started 6 months ago. Change it back or I work for another sandwich shop”.
My hours were changed that day and even when the owner fucked with my hours, I wouldn't show up to work and I would threaten to leave. They were extremely desperate and I took advantage of that often.