Oh boy where do I even begin. Well some discretion for those to tell me to take my boss to court. I am not well versed in my country's laws but I know it's not super reliable and it's not affordable to me. I'm also very emotionally drained and tired even months still after I quit, but I'm far happier now than I was working. I'd suggest strapping in and getting some snacks and drinks, it may be a very long read.
So my first job was as a gas station worker. Most people I worked with were great. I worked 60 hours a week, 12 hour shifts with 24 hour offtime until the next shift. There are no “days off”. By the time I get home from work, I'm extremely hungry and dead tired, and due to the busted sleeping clock I often end up sleeping through most of my 24 hour break. There were no holiday breaks, and your vacation time is unpaid. The amount of hours I worked on my paycheck paper is way less than the hours I actually worked.
I wasn't considered an “official employee” until I worked for 5 months. Many of the people who came and went, got to be official employees way sooner than I did, one guy even got the news the very next day. So for 5 months I was uninsured and it didn't count to the total time I worked. By law if I worked a minimum of 8 months, I would get monetary compensation. I worked for 11 months, but since my boss didn't make me an official employee, by the books I worked 6 months so I'm ineligible for the compensation. My boss also told me I couldn't leave when I wanted to, but when my contract ended. Many people told me I didn't have to work those extra few weeks but I was so scared of any legal consequences that I decided to work those extra few weeks instead.
So I worked the pump, ya know, pumping that gas (No I don't know when it's going to get cheaper), managing some food stock and some car supplies like motor oil. Pretty standard stuff, but there's also a cafe. Which we (there were only 2 of us after a certain point) had to manage on our own. It may not be super uncommon to have a cafe at a pump, but usually it's not managed by people whose hands smell like gasoline and aren't oily. We had a dedicated waiter at one point, even though they worked less hours and only had one job, they had the same pay as me. But the boss got rid of the waiter because he feels like us 2 can manage all of this shit on our own, and we're one of the busiest stations in town.
Then get this, we got another job, which could easily be a position on its own. Monitoring parking and writing bus travel routes and checking their papers. This got pretty chaotic once the official bus station opened (yes the place was a bus station too). Where a fuck ton of lines dropped by, there's people at the pump, there's people at the register, there's people who want their coffee and there's people who want their papers signed. Not to mention that cleaning was also expected and all of the other secondary and tertiary responsibilities that came with those positions. A manager (we just call him that, he was just a poor sap like us, only the main boss had all the say) told me that I should write the bus lines with better handwriting and as they properly arrive and leave. I said fuck that I'm not paid enough and there's simply no time, wrote as fast as I could and have written all of the buses for the day ahead of time. It's better to do that at more quiet hours and fill up all of their lines right away than to have them wait in rush hour, the bus drivers seem to agree with us.
When I just started working, there was a lady at the register and a waiter. That's been taken away. The place was reorganized multiple times. The bar was moved to a far worse place. The cash desk traded for some generic work desk so all of the shit would be there plus all of the cafe supplies. The desk was so tiny that customers who had a lot couldn't put everything at once at the counter. The boss also wanted the monitor to face the customers, cause fuck us more I guess, can't see the total. He also at one point didn't like us having chairs because “we were sitting too much.” That day my bones hurt so much at the end of the shift, that's physical abuse to me. I sneak the chairs back when he wasn't there. One day my coworker and I were both at the pump, both lanes were busy. When we came back the boss yelled at us because there was someone at the counter who wasn't serviced. We explained we were busy but he didn't care. When he's there and sitting with people, he expected top service, and wants us to fetch various things from the store and bring it to his table, can happen even in rush hour.
The pay was terrible. After all the costs including rent, you'd have almost nothing for yourself left. The pay wasn't much better for even the senior employees, who worked for 20 years even. What the last straw was is a completely new employee, getting as high pay as some of the senior employees. There were no connections involved and he wasn't blood (By my boss' logic, I was somehow related to him as well yet I got treated like ass). Not to mention it was definitely more by me. And even then for the work we do, it's absolutely criminal. We deserved at least double. Nobody working for him liked him either, despite the various views and situations of all of the people there, nobody likes him. Yet I'm still sickened that people buy there, that they hang out with him. There was no security either. You could do the day perfectly and still end up paying an hour's worth of pay of money missing simply because that's what the pumps circled to. But on the very little plus side, any small excess we got to keep. Any large one and everyone suspects it's something that was sold but wasn't checked at the register. Which we'd have to eventually pay for when the inventory inspection came. Almost no expense was at the boss, yet he pretends to be generous. Oh someone had an accident on the pump, oh let me pay the fine. Oh your little boy is cute, here have chocolate on the house. Here let me fill up your full tank. But nothing for the employees. I only got one real raise and that's because the government actually did something and forced him to, it wasn't because I asked, because I begged for something to make up for the massive inflation that was spiking (and there would be a record inflation when I started working)
One guy also stole some money, we got it on camera and everything. Yet we were essentially told to “hope” that they'll return the money. At best we could use scare tactics to make them think that the cops would be on them if they didn't pay up. I assume unless it's an extreme case, someone could get away with stealing and there wasn't anything we could do even with evidence. So known thieves were allowed to come back. That was pretty early on and at that moment I realized that this job was a mistake.
I could honestly write a whole book about this, there's many more frankly horrid and dumb things, but you get the general picture. The damages to my mental health are incalculable. I didn't even talk about experiences with customers and shit. Some may wonder why I didn't quit. Idk why I didn't quit early either. Family encouraged me to stay just for a little bit. Many people also told me I shouldn't quit till I find another job. If I'm not mistaken, that sort of strategy is only valid for some high qualifications job. Much of my ex colleagues can't quit the job. They're old and nobody would hire them. They didn't also have much choice during the early days of their job either. They can't support their families and it's hard enough to get a job as is in the world, let alone in this corrupt fucking country. And the worst part is, I'm told many places are also like this. In the last job interview I had, the manager told me to expect “Being yelled at from time to time” as a natural part of the work environment. I am completely fucking speechless.
I am not faking this, I have nothing to gain by faking this. All of this happened and I'm so fucking glad it's over. As I was writing this, I remembered many of the awful parts and I am so much more glad now that I'm unemployed.