This is your daily reminder to do work according to your wages.

I got fired from a job for the first time in my life. For privacy reasons I won't go into crazy specific details. But I will tell you the kind of employee I was:

I was your dream employee by all metrics. What I mean is:

1. Showing up early
2. Leaving late
3. Asking for things to do when my tasks were done
4. Spending almost no time on my phone, even during slow periods
5. Speeding up shop production in my area by 30 – 50%
6. Always doing my work to near-perfection
7. Helping other employees improve their own knowledge and skills
8. Organizing the shop to create a steadier workflow

And much more.

I still got fired. Why? Because my boss (owner) squeezed too tightly on the operations of the shop. This lead to a decline in productivity, as we constantly depended on him to be there to approve product. Even his second in command routinely had to wait for his opinion.

He simultaneously also complained about how he had “other duties” to attend to, and made excuses when he wouldn't approve product, and it would pile up in the shop, leading to a large productivity decrease.

All the while he would also go on one to two week vacations, plus call out for weeks at a time whenever he got sick. This would lead to a massive bottleneck as product could sit around for weeks on end after I or someone else got done with the project.

Whenever we had a slowdown, or things didn't get done according to the owner's schedule, he would find a reason it was our fault rather than his own for not training staff to do his duties when he was gone.

I eventually pointed out the weak points of the shop. His response was to make excuses or say he was “getting to it”. Literally one day of full on cleaning and garbage removal could speed up his shop revenue by tens of thousands a year. Yet he wouldn't pull the trigger on it and then offloaded all stress on to the workers.

So why was I fired? Because I left a stationary vaccum on by accident while I went to go use the bathroom.

The real reason is that they didn't want to pay unemployment, couldn't create a shop product flow fast enough for how fast I worked,. and were looking for a reason to fire me.

I made $15 an hour at this shop.

Your work will never reflect your wage unless you make it so. If you are being underpaid… underwork. Simple as that. Learn from my mistakes.