Hey everyone. After some consideration, I decided to make my first post here about the worst work experience of my life so far. It was riddled with red flags from the start, but I was too young and blinded by money to see it.
TLDR: Young and dumb worker gets verbally abused by bosses, emotionally blackmailed and left with no place to stay during business trip to foreign country.
This is going to be a longer one. I was young at the time, looking for work. One of my previous bosses calls and and says “Hey, would you like a job in the US?”. For context, I'm part American and have family members in the USA, I otherwise live in Europe. Of course I replied with yes. Nothing was holding me here and this seemed like a great opportunity.
I meet up with the bosses in a larger city, it's a couple, husband and wife, 1 child – I will be reffeeing to them as “male boss” and “fem boss”. . After some talking, I find out I'm going to be doing some graphic design and later on designing and selling kitchens in the US. The money was very good for someone my age (1st red flag here. They paid it out as 1 main job and 2 secondary jobs, to avoid taxes – I won't bore you with the local laws). I was like “fine, whatever”.
A few months go by. I create ads and ad banners for websites. The bosses are very friendly, even gifting stuff to me and my family. (redflag #2) I work long shifts for them in return. 9am to 11pm was standard. I'm taking classes for the kitchen design stuff, part of management meeting calls regarding a showroom in US. Everything seems to be going good.
One day, during the call, we found out there were some delays in the production, so I wanted to help out, be productive. I called the local salesperson of the company, to ask some questions about production etc. Not even 10 minutes after, male boss calls me. “You stupid ****, do you have any idea what you've done? You're the stupidest ** ******* ****** – lots of swear words in a 15 minute call.
- The problem was that I asked the local salesperson about something he should NOT have known about, which in turn I didn't know about. Something about competitors.
It threw me off a bit. I was so happy working for them up until that point. But it just got worse.
I was working from home all this time. Their headquarters were far away, so It was OK for the time being. But the male boss started having doubts I was doing anything, and wanted to keep an eye on me now. I was commanded to start traveling to their city (4 hours away) to work there.
I was like “ok” since miraculously, they did provide a place to stay free of charge.
It keeps going on like this. They are very friendly, deeply invested in your personal life. The fem boss took me shopping sometimes, bought me stuff, asked me to watch their kid. Let me eat dinner with them or even sent me on stupid little errands. The male boss was a coin flip, of either verbal abuse or 1 sentence “good jobs”.
Whenever they see me doing less, or something they didn't like, queue emotional blackmail. “I thought we were family. Our child sees you like a brother. We thought you would be better. Look at all the things we got you.” It was draining, but I was looking forward to the US.
After almost half a year of this, US was right ahead. They said they were buying a condo where i was supposed to be able to live, and that everything was going to be fine.
While they took a private shuttle to the airport in our country, and flew to the connecting airport, I had to take a bus to the connecting airport (14 hours) which I had to pay for myself.
At the airport, I got a call. “Yeah, hey, sorry, we don't have a place for you to stay over in the US”. I panicked. Went into full crisis mode. I was already 15 hours away from home, and halfway to the US pretty much. Started calling anyone I know if they had a place for me to stay.
I found a place at my uncles. It was 2.5 hours away from my place of work, but I had a place to sleep temporarily. No car or anything though, and I was still on local European pay. The US is VERY expensive on Eastern EU pay.
I stayed there for 2 weeks. His step-daughter was forced to stay with her bf becuase I was in her room.. I felt awful, but am extremely grateful.
After 2 weeks (of normal work. I had to get everywhere by train or Uber, on my own pay. I didn't have the money for more than 1 meal a day) they told me they would find me a hotel. So the day goes on, and I get a call at 8pm. “Hey, can you look for a place to stay yourself, I didn't have the time”
I wish nobody the stress of not knowing if they will have a place to sleep at in a foreign country.
After and hour, I did find something relatively close. I could only book it for a week though, as they would “definitely have a permanent place for me to stay” before the week was over.
You guessed it, no place to stay. And all hotels in a 50 mile radius were fully booked after. That night, they let me borrow their car to drive 25 miles to stay with a stranger. My step-father's old classmate was close to town, and she was kind enough to let me sleep on the couch in her hotel room..
This went on for over 2 months. I stayed at a place for a week, then I had to drive ridiculous amounts to stay with varying family members that were scattered across the country, and kind enough to let me stay with them. Always under the promise of “you'll have a place to stay soon”. I'm a pretty resilient person, but I admit that this broke me. I had so many breakdowns in the US, and I never want to go back.
They let me go home for Christmas. I refused to go back. I had barely any money. They let me be a call center operator while also still designing their banners for 3 more months full of emotional and verbal abuse, until I found a different job.
I hope you can learn something from this. If only I'd have known what I was getting into. I'm extremely grateful to those that helped. I am now at a much better job, in every aspect. I will never work for a small company again.
Sorry for the long read and any mistakes/inconsistencies. I will do my best to answer any questions, except details about places or people.