Mostly a vent. I am currently on disability for mental issues, and they don’t give me much at all to live, so I figured I would try to work an under the table job to try to make a little extra, to survive, and keep my insurance so I could stay in therapy. I got lucky because an old acquaintance/friend of mine, has a family partaking in running a business, and I Had worked for them before.
When I started things seemed to be going well. I had laid out how much I can work because of my disability and number of appointments, and everyone seemed understanding, first two weeks flew by.
Week three my friend says she’ll be going on vacation to Florida with her step brother, and is leaving her sister, who was supposed to be “supervisor” in charge to work with us. Making 4 of us left behind.
Not even the first day she’s gone, her sister calls out without warning, leaving us without work. day two she informs us she’s in the hospital, and leaves the three of us behind, and the biggest jerk of a person in charge. Immediately, there are issues, the two others that are left are a mother and son, both drug addicts, whom actively showed up to work, visibly altered, one coked out, sometimes, others sluggish, we’ll call him Kyle, and his mom, nodding off standing up constantly, we’ll call her Jane.
Kyle shows up to pick me up for work one day, and is swerving on the roads, Almost driving us into a guard rail twice. This was the first offense I tried telling my friend about in Florida. She asked me to hold out until she got back.
The following days, they are asking me to come in more, because the sister is still out, leaving just the two of them and me, come to find out, she’s in the hospital because she smoked weed again, after knowing she has allergic reactions to it. I show up, and called off a few appointments, to try to help out but explain I can’t miss too many or I will be charged out of pocket.
It started out at 9hrs a day, but soon progressed into 14 hour days, as the two of them were slow, one nodding out most of the time. we were cleaning 4-5 sites in the morning and 6-7 sites at night. I started getting burnt out, and was passing out from having only 2 hrs of sleep and one 1 hr break, and feeling nauseous. I had to call out, one day. I woke up to to texts from Kyle bullying me, and blaming me for leaving him and his mother on their own to do so many sites.
I apologized, but expressed frustration, as the “supervisor” was still missing on the start of week two, and was supposed to be not only running the business, but covering for me during my appointments. In the following days I dealt with an insane amount of verbal abuse from Kyle, criticizing everything I did, coming into places I was cleaning and taking cleaning supplies from me and “doing it for me better” and going over things I’d already cleaned to near spotless conditions saying I trashed them, and I need to be paying more attention, because I missed a literal finger print.
Today I show up after another long day with no sleep, and make it through the whole day and half the night, when our occasional night guy, james, shows up. Jane walks up to me and tells me to put my mask on when he came inside, but wouldn’t tell me why. (I don’t usually wear it when I’m alone on the opposite side of the building.)
I nervously, but jokingly walked up to James after I found him coughing up a storm, with his mask half hanging off and said “what do you have Covid?” And he said that he did. I started freaking out because I have people in my life who aren’t vaccinated, (I am) and a young step son. I nervously started keeping my distance, and questioning to myself if I should leave knowing the belittling I would get if I did.
Kyle walks up to me, and says all Agro, “if you’re uncomfortable you can leave” so I ask, if I do, if he’ll be pissed, and he passive-aggressively responded essentially implying he would tell the boss I bailed again and I might lose my job because I left them to struggle. I flipped my top at this point after so much of his bullying. And I stormed out and left.
My friend/other supervisor is asking me to come into work tomorrow night, or Friday, when she’s back and I literally want to tell her to fuck off. I messaged her as politely as I could telling her I was done with kyles bullying, and that if it didn’t stop I was done, and that I draw the line at Covid..
None of this feels ethical, but I feel trapped because I can’t afford my life without this job.
Fuck this.