I wish I was taught to stand up for myself before my experience with working for the kernel, I worked a few labour jobs and did trolley pushing before working fast food, we hear all the BS that happens in the fast food industry now, especially from exploiting young staff working the bare minimum wage or less, I suffered a few more abusive work places after this over the years till I finally, I grew something that even resembles a spine.
I'm probably just jaded, kids might even have good and experiences and like it, but with the risk involved, kids don't deserve to be in this industry, far too much exploitation allows so much abuse in many ways, we've all heard stories from friends, and this is mine. If I were the man I am now, I'd have flung charges out to everyone and let top down managers know what was happening. But here I am on Reddit, 10 years after the fact.
But I would work the back end, always on clean up for months, one day I was on chicken, no training, no nothing. I showed up half an hour early for the lift and to have a snack box before starting, ordered it, sat down to eat it, other back end guy on clean up came out, scattered it all over the floor and screamed at me for not working already, cause apparently the manager was supposed to ask me to start early, but never called me. I still look back and wonder why I didn't see that red flag and left then and there, I suppose maybe being young and seeing someone age as authority.
So of course it was my fault for not going straight to the kitchen to help for free before my shift actually started, and dear god, the screaming lasted the entire 7 hour shift. I could wax poetically about how I didn't know the recipes on how to cook, him being way over twice my age and screaming at the top of his lungs at basically a child, the things he was saying, like kill yourself, every curse word known to man, threatening violence, screaming so loud that people felt uncomfortable and left (which of course was my fault and I was screamed at for), you name it, I got it, but you get the idea.
I only suffered through it out of perseverance, and the fact I didn't know I had any other options like to just fucking leave, but I stood strong I said to myself, I kept working and I didn't give him the satisfaction of breaking down or crying, nothing. Once the shift was done and he gave me the last, “if you're not brave enough to kill yourself, I'd love to help squeeze it out of you” I went to leave 1130pm on a school night (I was supposed to leave earlier at 930), but no, the manager pulled me aside and gave me a formal warning for being lazy and fucking around and those last 2 hours were free, since I was such a burden.
And for some reason, that one tiny thing was the straw that broke the camels back, not the abuse, just saying that afterwards, her office door was open and she had to have heard everything. I said nothing back, I gave no notice, burnt the uniform to ashes before the sun rose, I developed a chronic insomnia and high functioning depression which lasted near a decade, and never told a soul about it till, my now wife.
I brought it up as a comparison to the at the time workplace abuse I was suffering, I would excuse their behaviour for being more of a burden to them than me, saying things like “how sad must their lives be to treat anyone like that, it's whatever to me, I've had worse for less”. But no, she helped me see it for what it was and I've only been in good workplaces since, and my mental health is much better for it, and believe it or not, the chronic insomnia is cured.
I'm still working on the happy ending to this story, and I'd like to say that some level of karma occurred, but I have no idea, I'll update on whatever my prison sentence will be if those are the cards karma wants to deal me.