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Antiwork

Working at a Storage Unit company, but they also own the apartment you live in.

This is mid 2010 decade. I worked as a manager for a storage unit company for 4 years, and is the one of the biggest in the nation. The logo likes the color orange but that's all I'll say. I was hired in at something like $9.25 with a $0.25 or $0.50 raise after 90 days or 180 days. The job responsibilities are many, and only 1 person worked at the store per 8hr shift (I worked there 5 days a week and had like tuesday and wednesday off). It was a retail job 100% handle to the customer side of rental agreements, late rent (deliquency) calls, confirming appointments, and sales. This job is 100% high pressure sales to people who 85% of the time were in a desperate situation. Also, they called you a manager because you had to manage the cleanliness of the facility, the storage units, and…


This is mid 2010 decade. I worked as a manager for a storage unit company for 4 years, and is the one of the biggest in the nation. The logo likes the color orange but that's all I'll say.

I was hired in at something like $9.25 with a $0.25 or $0.50 raise after 90 days or 180 days. The job responsibilities are many, and only 1 person worked at the store per 8hr shift (I worked there 5 days a week and had like tuesday and wednesday off). It was a retail job 100% handle to the customer side of rental agreements, late rent (deliquency) calls, confirming appointments, and sales. This job is 100% high pressure sales to people who 85% of the time were in a desperate situation. Also, they called you a manager because you had to manage the cleanliness of the facility, the storage units, and the office.

However, they have this thing where they have an apartment (in various degrees of repair but generally acceptable), where you live onsite, but your pay gets cut to minimum wage + the dollar amount of any raise you received. On paper this sounds great to a young early twenty year old me because I'm basically only paying $350 in rent, and the utilities are paid. In Columbus. I made it work too. I brought a couple of friends in as roommates, and I had enough money to make a poor person not have to look at their bank account every day. I wasn't rich. I was making $0.50 over the minimum wage.

Then the threats come down. It's a SALES position, and if you don't meet every metric, you then start to get threatened. “You do realize that your home depends on you meeting your metrics” “You are working for a paycheck, but you only have 3 days to move out if you get fired.”

I realized then just what kind of vulnerable position they had me in. It costs hundreds or thousands to move out. If I get an eviction, I'm only making $8 hr. I'm not going to be able to come up with the cost to move in 3 days. I quit and I moved in with some family.

Ironically, that is why so many of my customers use a storage unit. They have a crisis and need to put their stuff somewhere in a hurry. I've seen first hand the costs this incurrs to people barely making ends meet, or not making ends meet at all… And I had to sell a lot of people's stuff at auction (think Storage Wars) when they couldn't end up paying the bill to temporarily store their belongings somewhere.

My advice: Plan to put your stuff in a storage unit, and take it out as soon as possibble. The company I worked at would start raising your rent by 5%+ in the first year, and year after year would increase it 10% or more. $100/mo would be $121/mo. I could never give my customers a good answer about why rent was raised, but they gained nothing out of the rent increase. I wasn't allowed to look them in the eye and tell them that this storage company is just plain greedy.

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