I live in a major city in Ontario, Canada. I started working at 15 years old in High School up until I graduated University and got my first “adult” job. I worked mostly part-time aside from some full-time contract gigs in the summer months/breaks while off of school. I worked retail/grocery/food sales, summer camp coordination, services etc. and often jumped jobs in hopes to obtain different experiences. I encountered a lot of downright abusive management and got fired a handful of times. At one point I was so sick of the mistreatment that I even contacted a pro-bono employment lawyer, but they were no help. I was also advocating for a “student” or under-18 union of sorts just to protect the younger workers from predatory and explotative management/work as a lot of the younger coworkers I encountered had no clue of what their rights were as employees at the time. I still hold strong views of protecting younger or part-time workers and would love to see some sort of protections in place.
Sometimes I feel like I could write a book about the horrible mistreatment I went through. Starting from one of my earliest jobs (not necessarily the worst of it) 17 years ago at a discount clothing retailer in a major mall, there were 2 head store managers that fed off of eachother. They were probably in their late 30s eatly 40s. One of them – I'll just call her A – was very passive aggressive and held strong delusions of grandeur, constantly explaining how her parents were rich as a way to one-up her lowly employees as well as let us know how much better she was than us. Apparently she lived in a large mansion with peacocks roaming the grounds (very odd). I was not a naive kid and this always struck me as overtly uncanny considering the job she held in the type of discount clothing store we worked in, but what did I know. For the most part A was nice although crass and inappropriately sarcastic, but she was the worst when manager B was around. B was in your face mean and one could never do anything right by her. She never thanked you, always belittled you and constantly made sure you knew you were replaceable. I would have to fold and refold clothing to B's standards, mop the floor 3 times over, and climb 10 ft+ ladders by myself (with no fall arrest training) to reach product on the floor or in the back. B would make our schedules and post them up on the wall in our back staff room. Never ask for time off because it just wouldn't happen. I want to emphasize that I was never an unruly person and genuinely tried my best at whatever job I held. For some reason B had it out for me. She would post up our schedules and then modify my hours without telling me. Since I worked part-time I was not on the floor enough to see any changes posted so I often missed shifts, came in on days off, or showed up late. B also made it a point to highlight my name in yellow and single me out as the only individual not adhering to my hours. A and B would often snicker and gossip behind my back while on the floor just quietly and out of earshot enough so that I could faintly hear what they were saying. The scheduling issues persisted long enough to where I was written up and promptly fired. This was after about 1 year of employment well outside of any probationary period. I was so upset about this that I actually called the District Manager to air out my grievances and attempt to file a complaint. Smart phones with high resolution cameras were not a thing at this time, so any picture evidence I had of my tampered schedules were pixelated messes of garbage that I couldn't use. The DM obviously sided with A and B because why would they care?
At the end of the day I found new employment quickly, as I often did, but man if I could go back in time to talk to my younger self I would let her know she was doing her damn best… And that unfortunately this was only the beginning of what would be years of struggles.