I work for a long standing computer/electronic repair company in my city. I've been at this company since December of 2020. I applied here because I was looking for work in my field after returning to my home city and because COVID and other factors had closed my previous place of employment multiple times and I needed consistent work for more than 12/h to survive in this area.
So I saw a listing on Indeed at Charlotte Street Computers for a PC Repair Technician with a salary range of 15-20h. This was acceptable and I didn't have much time to pick and choose. When I was in highschool I had known about this company and back when I would have done anything to get onto even the geeksquad due to my interest in computers… it seemed like a god send. So, I applied and very shortly after received a phonecall/e-mail to come in for an interview.
My first interview went well, I met with the Mac Department and PC Department Leads. They told me this was a long standing company, and that there were about 15 employees give or take but that they had some experienced PC techs leave during COVID and were looking to fill the positions. I spoke of my skills/experience and it went well and I was told it would be very likely I'd receive an e-mail with an offer. However a few days passed and I got a phone call asking me to come inl. I was told the CEO wanted me to be there for a second interview and prove that I knew how to solder like I had stated on my resume before she would offer me the job. Fair enough I thought, I suppose people could lie about their qualifications to get into a position they weren't suited for.
Upon meeting her the red flags started appearing. While I was there and when I first met her she said that the 15-20h starting pay the ad listed wasn't actually what I would be paid and that I would have a 3 month trial period where I was at 13/h but then I'd be reviewed and put at the 15/h. She also spent the “interview” talking about doing drugs and making comments on customers that she had snorted pills with while the Mac Dept lead reluctantly checked on my progress with a simple throughole desolder/resolder job. I was uncomfortable and nervous, I actually soldered it back onto the PCB upside down, but hey those joints looked GOOD. Afterward I was told I'd receive an offer in my email and sent on my way.
Mind you, I needed a job. I was very qualified for the work and preferred to work in my field but if this didn't work out I was going to be applying for fast food because I needed money or I wasn't going to be able to survive. So I accepted this despite the obvious red flags. I took the job offer for 13/h, a clear manipulation of my desperation for gain by the CEO.
To put the desperation in perspective. In my city, Asheville. There is a monument that has been taken down recently due to it's ties to the confederacy and it's in the main square of the city. The last time I drove through it when it was wrapped up for demolition there was a single message spray painted across the front of it.
“If you lived here, you would be homeless.”
So I took the job and began training and working there. It didn't take very long for me to realize that no one at this company liked the CEO. She treated everyone as servants and was very clearly struggling with mental illness and drug addiction. Thing is though everything was in her name, and she had money. She didn't know how to repair Macs, PCs, or electronics of any kind. She clearly showed no interest in learning either, her focus was completely customer facing and she ran the company as such.
If a customer issue came up and you had to explain to her what the solution was to give a time frame she would accuse myself or other coworkers of talking down to her because she was a woman. She called me a misogynist and would very often say “Don't talk down to me just because I'm a woman, I'm NOT STUPID!” but then literally shush myself or others when we tried to break things down for her. It was frustrating. She would also just walk quickly through the departments and accost people while talking so fast you could barely understand her and then expect you to follow through on what she asked when in reality she would just walk into another room of the building while still talking and not even look at the people she was trying to address.
5 Months pass and I wake up and realise I no longer have access to my work e-mails or payroll/paystub login accounts. Turns out no one did. She had just decided that day that she was tired of running the company and fired everyone and just kept a skeleton crew of about 5 people to finish all the current tickets. She paid for an AD in two of the local papers so that customers could come in and say goodbye to her and thank her for her years of service to the community. No really, you're not reading that wrong. She on a WHIM shuttered a company and then planned a celebration day for herself for retiring from it.
I came into work that day to confirm what was going on and I witnessed her personally fire an employee that had worked there for many years because she had told the PC Department Lead that he was only allowed payroll for one person and so she did any eeny-meeny between myself and him and fired him on the spot and expected me to fill in and cover for all the work he had been assigned to finish. I was livid, I spoke up then and there. I said that was ridiculous, that she wouldn't even pay out people to finish up and that I couldn't believe she would just send people out on their ass on a whim when she didn't even need to be at the company for it to run perfectly anyway because she didn't even understand it's needs.
I had to step outside and call my significant other just to vent and eventually my fired coworker came out with his backpack and all of his stuff and thanked me for defending him but that if that's how it was gonna be he didn't want to work there anymore anyway. This guy was too nice too knowledgeable for this to be fair at all. It ate me up inside. So I left, I just couldn't stand for it. I was in a slightly better position and had just gotten my tax return so I figured I could float until I found something, anything else than this.
Fast forward a few months to June and I'm driving out an hour and a half over the mountain to get trained in someone's house for remote technical support for some real estate software company. It was 12/h and the gas was killing me and my car at the time was on it's last legs and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to make the drive anymore, they wanted me to train another 3 months until I was deemed good enough to start working at home without direct supervision. On days my girlfriend didn't work I was taking her car as it's newer and it was causing a lot of strain on us.
After the 3rd week of that I got a call. It was the PC Department lead at Charlotte Street Computers. He had said that he had bought into the company as co-owner, that the CEO was no longer going to be involved in day to day activities and that the company was doing better and that he needed a PC Technician and wanted me to lead the department while they rebuilt everything. That he was losing tons of money turning people away for PC Repair and he himself couldn't oversee or tackle it as he was focusing on on-site repairs and running the company.
I was reluctant, but with my car the way it was and the offer of starting back at 15/h(keep in mind I never got the 90 day review and pay bump I had been promised by the previous CEO), I felt I had no choice. That I couldn't pass up an opportunity to get back onto my feet. I talked to the guy training me for the remote support and said I was sorry but that the timeframe on being moved to full remote and the strain on my car coupled with them not being able to match the 15/h I was being offered meant I was going to leave and take this better opportunity… or so I thought.
Everything was going as planned until early December of 2021. I was absolutely CRUSHING my workload and we were getting to a point that the company was no longer in the red every month…. but then she started showing up again. Not every day, maybe once or twice a week at first. I had learned that we had gotten 3 negative reviews in the month of December and she couldn't handle it so she was trying to return and “fix” things because of how poorly it reflected on her. Everyone started getting stressed out again, we started having to put out fires she started again, morale started crashing. I was getting annoyed. I was promised that after we showed a good month of revenue that she would leave again but this didn't happen. She intentionally hired on people we didn't need that weren't even qualified for the jobs so that payroll would increase and we were forced into the red. A day or so a week turned into a few days a week. A few days a week turned into her having a schedule again….
My car died finally in December as well. Too many issues with it and I just didn't have the funds to repair it nor did it seem like a good idea to dump more money into a beater. I was looking for a new car. I managed to find a Mini Cooper S 08 for 8.5k in this market and purchase it on January 14th, they had made a lot of mistakes and the loan officer I worked with shorted the loan 1,000 dollars on accident so I had to be setup for deferred payments ontop of regular payments just so I could leave with it and drive it home. It was the only affordable car in decent condition I could find after having been looking for cars since last August. I had been sharing my GFs car and driving her to work every single day, it was straining our relationship. I pulled the trigger knowing I had a steady paycheck after the co-owner of the company raised all of the technicians pay to 17/h.
So here I am, working a job I very much enjoy but in a toxic environment I don't. I've got serious payments to make so I don't lose a car and I know that the only thing I've been told is that if we can make the company profitable that she will go back to just collecting her salary and percentage and stop coming around and ruining the entire atmosphere with her narcissism and attitude.
So I took on the task of writing new and modern procedure for the PC Department so that we have in writing training references and guides so that other technicians can possibly do the work I do if something were to happen to me. I've been working 6 days a week since July and am the only PC Tech because the department didn't make enough revenue yet or have enough incoming to justify having a second person added to payroll for it. I'm fine with this, I enjoy the work very much and the 6 days also meant I had a freeflow schedule I could decide depending on what my workflow was. I was on-call for repairs as well.
I'm sitting writing up a specific document detailing the PC services we offer and decide I need to pull up the line item # for our services so I can include it in this document and I remember I've been made an admin in the ticketing system by the co-owner. So I look through reporting and start looking at our actual revenue. I realize I've done this before at my last jobs. I stop working on procedure and spend the entire day running reports and looking at sums and averages and how much money the other technicians are bringing in and realize I can come up with a gameplan to streamline our work and start actually making profit in the company. So I do just that.
The following monday I meet with the co-owner and Mac Department lead and show my findings and talk about what we need to do to start making more money and that if they'd like I can lead this up. I just want a raise to be paid like a department lead rather than just a technician. That I already had deserved it with the revenue I had brought in and I even showed them. I was getting paid pennies to the dollar and yet the company still was up and down month to month.
They agreed, the were stunned by the initiative I took and said so. They both reached out and shook my hand. The co-owner said he would bring it to the CEO and give me a raise if it was approved.
I push the point over the next few days and come to the realization that the co-owner is afraid to negotiate a raise on my behalf. He said he brought the fact that I had taken initiative and come up with a game plan for improvement to her but that she shrugged it off and then told me he said we needed one green month and then he think he could make a case for me. I knew what this meant. He even came to me talking about some of the action I had outlined and I just told him I wasn't going to do the work if I wasn't going to be paid for it.
I vented coworkers I trusted, they vented to me. No one had anything good to say about the CEO or the direction of the company. Many stated that as soon as they could find work elsewhere they would likely leave. I honestly can't detail all of the insane stories that my coworkers have told me over the past year, a lot of them are hard to believe… but ultimately I've set up enough backstory to come to the main reason of why I'm creating this post here.
Last thursday I was training a new hire on PC Procedure, this was the 2nd day of training for him in this department and he was the first person the company had hired in 6 months that had the aptitude and showed tons of promise. I genuinely liked this person and he was respectful and committed to learning. I'm teaching him how to disassemble and diagnose a problem with a customer laptop. I work in the basement, there is a kitchen next to the back exit, and you can take that exit to get to another entrance in the back. The co-owner is in the kitchen at the time and I hear someone angrily coming down the steps. It's the CEO, she seems to be on a tear. She says “Gordon come with me, I have to speak with you.” and then says VERY LOUDLY “I HEARD SOMEONE WAS TALKING SHIT ABOUT MY MENTAL ILLNESS TO OTHERS AND I WISH THEY WOULD TO MY FACE TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS. I :clap: WISH :clap: THEY :clap: WOULD :clap: and slammed the door behind them as they left.
I turn to my new hire and say “That was directed at me.” and he's just bug eyed, stunned at the unprofessionalism. He told me that he had confessed to the co-owner while they were on-site doing training that she made him really uncomfortable and didn't wish to interact with her in the future because of how she spoke to him.
About 30 minutes pass and the Admin/Reception Lead comes in and says “You're needed in the business side, prepare your body for discomfort.”
So I walk over there and enter into the office where the CEO and previous bookkeeper are sitting on the far end of a long rectangular office. The co-owner is sitting at a desk to my right at the door and the admin lead is standing behind me.
She starts to rail into me. “Is it true that you are going around spreading rumors and lies in this company? Did you go around telling everyone that I had hired someone for 20/h as a trainee?
Keep in mind, she did do this. I didn't spread this information, the co-owner was the one who told the department leads and it had caused the Mac Lead to be in a massive uproar as he'd been asking for a raise for 2 years at this point and now they hired someone for him to train that made more than him. The co-owner just didn't have the guts to tell her to her face that he had told everyone the truth out of frustration. He was clearly afraid of her, she was using his investment in the company to keep him in line at this point.
So I replied, verbatim. “I don't know who spread this information but as far as I can tell it's not a rumor or a lie. Regardless, Why are we in here even discussing he/said she said nonsense? It's unprofessional and irrelevant to what this company needs. This company will FAIL if we……”
and then she interrupted me before I could elaborate. How you might ask? By laughing. Loud. Mocking. Laughter. She laughed and laughed and laughed.
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It kept going. On and On. Just laughing and laughing with no pause. Nothing behind her eyes. She just wanted me to quit out of rage and be rid of me. So I walked out. I didn't slam the door but I didn't close it gently either. She was still laughing. I walked down the hall and outside and closed that door behind me. I could still hear her laughing as I stood oustide the building.
I went back in through the entrance to the kitchen and upstairs into the Mac Department. I was so livid I couldn't even speak. A coworker commented “I've never seen him this angry before”
I told them what happened. I knew at this point I wasn't dealing with someone who considered any of us human. I was dealing with a complete sociopath. That she didn't care about the success of the company. She just enjoyed looking good publicly and in private getting off on pushing the buttons of desperate people. If I hadn't just purchased that car I would have clocked out and left… but I had already done the math. I had to make 40 hours for the next 6 weeks or I'd default on my car payments and lose it and everything I have.
Later that day the few employees that we learned we could trust were downstairs in my department, discussing how she had been cornering new hires and intimidating them into spilling information about what we had been discussing. That's why I was ultimately pulled into that room.
I also learned that she had accused the co-owner of taking our one good new-hire, the one I was training that day. Of pretending to go to on-site work and instead having sex with each other on the clock. She had worded it as a rumor that has started “by someone” but no one in the room had even heard of it. The Mac Department lead actually burst into laughter at the absurdity of it.
My new hire, bless him, he put in his two weeks the following day. I don't blame him at all. That was ridicluous, not only did he get to see how we were all treated but he now had to deal with the rumor that he was having gay relations with the other owner.
So I've been working the past week, knowing I need the paycheck… but feeling dead inside. They were scheduled to have a meeting with the CEO yesterday and ultimately wanted to collectively bargain that she allows the experts she's hired to actually have say in the company and correct the ship. I learned yesterday morning that when the Mac lead asked her if he could have a one on one with her. He wanted to just tell her directly that one of his new hires messaged him at 3am in the morning about how he wasn't sure if he could keep working while dealing with so much stress from her and that he was afraid of her.
She said no multiple times. Then he got a message from the co-owner that he needed to stop messaging her and let it be.
I couldn't take it anymore when I heard this, what were we doing? Do we all just sacrifice our dignity for a paycheck? I love this work. I love repairing computers. It's the most I've ever enjoyed a type of labor I've done in my entire life….. but I've never been in a more toxic environment. Where everyone feels dead inside, and no one has anything good to say.
So I wrote up a series of questions to ask. I was going to get a show of hands. I was going to ambush this meeting and get the department leads to back me up. I spoke about it with them. I asked them the same questions and they gave me their responses. I took a personal day and I returned at close and had them send me a txt when the meeting was going on. The meeting was about “code of conduct” I learned. What a joke.
The CEO played innocent when I came out. I was furious but I tried to keep it in.
I asked the room.
“Who here is awaare that Jen threatened to fire and replace us all with her staff from Morganton?” – A few raised their hands
“Who is aware that Jen told Gordon she “heard a rumor” that he was taking Isaac on on-sites so they could have sex with each other?” – Everyone that was in the room when Gordon himself told them about that encounter raised their hands and the people that didn't know looked shocked.
“Who is aware that this is the reason Isaac put in his two weeks and that he felt uncomfortable with how Jen treats her employees?” – Most raised their hands
“Who has felt threatened, intimidated, or bullied by Jen?” – The department leads and co-owner raised their hands
“Who feels their expertise, experience, and guidance is valued by Jen?” This is where it fell apart, despites all of the talks ahead of time that they would have my back everyone in the room scared to death raised their hands reluctantly.
“Who feels they see a future at Charlotte Street Computers while Jen is in control of procedure and direction?” Everyone raised their hands.
After all of these people said they would have my back and after I had made all of my intentions clear that we needed to come together for our own sakes. They all started defending the CEO. She just sat there and played dumb. She said it was something that needed to be discussed one on one and she even went on to say that she was going to have a one on one conversation with the Mac Lead and that all of our voices matter.
I couldn't handle it. I shut off my recording because I knew I had been tilted and it couldn't be used against her. She had just won because everyone in the room that had worked for her for years was too afraid to stand up for themselves and try to oust a tyrant. All because they have families and need the money and are willing to continue sacrificing their dignity to appease someone's ego.
Not even 20 minutes before this when she pulled up to the business a guy got out of her car that looked like a drug addict yelling something about if she was gonna get him either “15” or a “teenth” and when she said no he ran around to the front of the building and screamed BIIIIIIITCH!!!
Am I taking crazy pills? How is it that people in power can just get away with treating everyone like garbage? I'm not at work today. I told them I'd be back on tuesday, I still need the money too…. but it's killing me inside.
So I wrote this up, thought maybe someone could help put my mind at ease. There are way worse stories from other employees that I could gather and append to this if anyone is interested… but ultimately I'm just trying to garner some sympathy because I have nowhere to go but I can't stay here. I don't know if it's against the rules or policies of this sub but I'm attaching a gofundme with a goal of 2000 dollars to try to float me another month incase I'm fired for trying to stand up to a tyrant.
If you've read this far thank you. I'm too upset to go through and edit it for grammar/spelling/clarification as this is all too fresh. If anyone has anything to spare so I don't lose my car when the worst happens it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
https://www.gofundme.com/share/s/share-family-friends/keep-my-dignity-or-keep-my-car