The people I work for are stupid

[BitVyper]

So last week, I fell and hurt my shoulder while doing forced overtime late in the evening. No broken bones, but I couldn't really lift anything. The next day I let my supervisor know, and she gets bent right out of shape, starts all but accusing me of lying, and demands to know why I didn't tell a supervisor right when it happened. Apparently the fact that the last supervisor had gone home fully two hours before I fell was not enough justification.

Nevertheless, I go to the doctor with some paperwork, and the doctor says I'm on light duty for a week. She had offered to give me a week off to recuperate, but I figured nah, I don't want to put anyone out too badly.

The next day, I go to work, and apparently the fact that I had pointedly told my supervisors that I was unable to work the previous day due to my injury was not clear enough - they are shocked that I didn't return to do work after seeing the doctor. We get that resolved though, but then we run into another problem - apparently their own paperwork plus the doctor's note isn't thorough enough, and they need me to go back to the doctor with a new batch of paperwork to find out exactly what I am capable of doing. So back to the doctor I go, and we do the whole song and dance again.

I get back to work, and I find out I have a disciplinary meeting scheduled because they're trying to blame me as much as humanly possible (apparently, I should have gone to a friggin emergency room instead of waiting a night). They say it's just a mandatory thing, but I can't help but notice they didn't do any extra meetings the time I got an injury where I could have sued them for negligence. So we do the meeting, and the union pretty much proves it was just a waste of time.

Now, a week passes, and I'm off modified duty. Suddenly, I get more paperwork in the mail this time. So I go and wait two hours at the clinic just to hand fifteen minutes of paperwork to a doctor, and now we're here.

Lets take stock, shall we? For every page of paperwork the doctor does, the corporation is billed 55 dollars. When all was said and done, there were eight full pages of paperwork penned by doctors. Every time I go to a doctor, the corp owes me three hours of wage. That's nine now. Disciplinary meeting takes the time of two supervisors plus me plus a union steward, then there's the resulting fireworks display from that, and when all is said and done, this injury has cost a lot of friggin money. And for what? To waste my time? To waste the doctor's time? For the sheer euphoric joy of lighting money on fire?

What the hell?

Oh, and by all means share your own stories of retarded bureaucratic bullshit.

[Funka Genocide]

One time I joined the Navy. They made me eat my own soul continuously for 6 years.

But yeah, your story sounds pretty harsh too bro.

(As a side note I've never worked for a union but it seems to be the general consensus of everyone that doesn't work for a union that everyone that does work for a union is a lazy ne'er do well and that's probably why you're jumping through so many hoops.)

[Krylo]

I got fired for not turning in a fellow employee for making threats.

The threats he made in my presence were that he was going to light up dynamite at his home in his garage and commit suicide, not against the company.

He had been making similar threats (some even violent) since he started working there when the store opened three years prior. I informed a manager about six to seven months into my employment that someone should talk to him.

To top it all off, there is nothing in the employee handbook which says that I am required to turn in a fellow employee for making threats, violent or otherwise.

On the plus side, I am thoroughly enjoying my unemployment benefits to this day, after winning a trial to get them.

Note: Employers are taxed extra for every employee receiving unemployment benefits.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

You should try working for my sisters bosses. It's like what Bitvyper's said, but every single day. For 3 years. About anything and everything they can become arseholes over, they will do. Complete fucking bastards.

I guess you expect that though. They're laywers.

EDIT; as an example; my sister just bought a house and requested some time off to try and get stuff worked on so it can be made livable. Her boss accuses her of, "Fucking him around and skiving off" (his actual words) and then demands a letter from our mum to prove that she's telling the truth.

My sister is 25 and had to get a letter from a parent for permission to have time off work. Yeah...

[Professor Smarmiarty]

(As a side note I've never worked for a union but it seems to be the general consensus of everyone that doesn't work for a union that everyone that does work for a union is a lazy ne'er do well and that's probably why you're jumping through so many hoops.)

Only if your union is from the 1930s and thus run by the mob.

Once when working for a non-profit organisation we made too much money and Internal Revenue was coming down on us for it so we had a month where we were forced to be profligate with money. We started giving stuff away to our clients, buying ourselves new chairs and computers- good times.

[BitVyper]

but every single day.

Yeah, pretty much the same here. It's nice to have a specific incident to use for an example though.

[Azisien]

Well let's see, I guess racism is stupid so this story works.

My boss is a full-on overt racist. I was getting used to analyzing the more subtle 21st century aspects of racism but this guy is open about it, stopping short only of saying things right to customers faces.

I'm an assistant manager at the retail store so I tend to get a lot of resumes. My boss pulled me aside and said, "Make sure to throw out any resumes straight away from, you know, questionable applicants."

I reply with a joke, something along the lines of people that haven't showered or shaved for the past 3 months.

His reply, slight movement toward me and lower voice volume, "No, black or brown people. And don't worry, I'm allowed to be racist because I'm a minority too." (He's Chinese)

That was a specific instance, but there's been plenty of cases of his straightening up and telling me to watch out when any kind of darker-skinned visible minority shows up decked out in 'thug' gear.

So much for the Charter of Rights and Freedoms!

[Shyria Dracnoir]

"No, black or brown people. And don't worry, I'm allowed to be racist because I'm a minority too." (He's Chinese)

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I'm sorry I don't have anything thread-relevant to share (haven't had a job before), but attitudes like that are a personal beserk button of mine. I'll get out of everyone's hair now

[Funka Genocide]

You might think that I have no morals when it comes to work since I joined the navy, but honestly I don't have much trouble with the concept of killing other people for money, I mean it's not like most of them didn't have it coming.

But that shit is just unacceptable. I would quit or make a huge fuss with all kinds of paperwork, hidden recorders, eyewitness news etc. etc.

(Being a "brown" person myself I am highly offended, which is unusual for me.)

[bluestarultor]

Not only that, but he's absolutely wrong. There are laws against racial discrimination and it doesn't matter if the boss is black, white, Chinese, or Martian. Racial discrimination is not tolerated.

[Azisien]

I've played out scenarios in my head to my best extent already. I would most likely end up jobless, and nothing would happen. I considered quitting on way less, the same boss readily accepting stolen goods to re-sell, from a store literally two blocks down the road. Nothing happened.

And it's almost more of a law in Canada, it's in the goddamn Charter. Doesn't mean anything, impossible to enforce, especially in a small business.

I also have no hidden recorders. At this point, I just don't listen to him and accept all resumes.

[Funka Genocide]

Well, when I was working for DENSO (which is an automotive parts supplier, mainly for Lexus/Toyota but also does some side stuff for GM and others.) we were testing the hell out of this new feature on their latest line of navigation systems for Lexus.

The gist of it was, they would download commercials into your car that you could then read at your leisure.

Commericals, into your car. With the option of turning this "feature" off.

If you knew how many millions they dumped into this you'd probably laugh.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Not only that, but he's absolutely wrong. There are laws against racial discrimination and it doesn't matter if the boss is black, white, Chinese, or Martian. Racial discrimination is not tolerated.

Really? Maybe I shouldn't have murdered all those gypsies then. My defence was rock-solid!

[Funka Genocide]

Most of my "wow you guys are stupid" moments aren't due to my immediate supervisors or coworkers, its mainly the corporate higher ups and their purchasing and funding decisions. Some of the shit the government dumps money into is just completely nonsensical (as are the amounts).

...but since one of those nonsensical amounts is my paycheck it's more a chuckle inducer than a brain hemorrhage manufacturer.

[Toastburner B]

Most of my "wow you guys are stupid" moments aren't due to my immediate supervisors or coworkers, its mainly the corporate higher ups

This. Oh, good heavens, this.

Being a retail store, things have slowed down a bit in the current economy, so people were looking forward to the holidays, and the promise of increased hours, and as such, increased paychecks.

"Not so!" says Corporate! "This holiday season instead of giving the people who already work for us more hours and hire on a few more people, we'll tell the store managers to hire on a lot more people so no one gets enough hours! And then we'll wait for people to quit instead of letting the temp help go, insuring that no one works more than one or two days a week!"

So, yeah, have I mentioned that I've worked maybe 3 days this month, and I'm basically living off my tax return right now?

[Funka Genocide]

Shit like that is why no one should work retail ever, just replace them all with robots and let people find real jobs.

If anything that should motivate you to get an education. My girlfriend has to deal with similar shit working at a coffee shop and the whole process is just so much more bullshit than slightly over minimum wage could ever be worth. I never could quite understand the strange dichotomy of treating the least compensated employees the worst. You really and truly are disposable and they make no attempt to hide that fact.

[Ecks]

This. Oh, good heavens, this.

Being a retail store, things have slowed down a bit in the current economy, so people were looking forward to the holidays, and the promise of increased hours, and as such, increased paychecks.

"Not so!" says Corporate! "This holiday season instead of giving the people who already work for us more hours and hire on a few more people, we'll tell the store managers to hire on a lot more people so no one gets enough hours! And then we'll wait for people to quit instead of letting the temp help go, insuring that no one works more than one or two days a week!"

So, yeah, have I mentioned that I've worked maybe 3 days this month, and I'm basically living off my tax return right now?

Sounds like my predicament. I work for a food manufacturer as a temp worker at a plant near my hometown. I work two to three days a week. Naturally, lots of job turnover from us temps. But because we work through an agency, once three months go by, they either move you to another plant (to avoid having to go through the hire in process, I'm sure) or they lay you off. Unfortunately, I'm on my second merry-go-round in this company, because they're hiring temps like the motherfucking fist of the north star, and no one else in the state is hiring people. Rather than let a couple of people into the company, and keep as many temps as possible so they don't have to pay more for more contracts, they constantly bring new people in and dump "loyal" people off, JUST to avoid giving health benefits.

Even though this invariable costs more to do in the long run.

[pochercoaster]

Tim Hortons was the worst place I ever worked for. As someone who has worked in multiple other coffee shops I can attest to the fact that not all Tim Hortons are shitholes, but a good portion of them are simply because the owners get into the business because they think it'll make them millionaires, not because they actually know one goddammed thing about coffee or customer service. (And seriously, the coffee business is the easiest business in the world- it's hard to fuck up. Somehow, Tim Hortons did this.)

At this particular Tim Hortons location, the owners did not give one shit about acting like decent human beings. I got in trouble for giving someone a free cup of water when it was so hot outside that day you could have fried an egg on the sidewalk. The store policy was to charge for a cup of water the same way you would charge for a cup of coffee.

The owners were so cheap they did not buy us hand soap for our sinks- instead they picked up alcohol gels from the dollar store. You cannot wash your hands with alcohol gel! And believe me, after handling change from 400 customers on a Saturday morning your hands get grimy and very disgusting.

My co-worker was denied having a day off to attend the funeral of her husband's mother. I am pretty sure that this is against labour board policy.

Their paperwork was never organized and I was routinely underpaid, once by 18 hours (which is significant when your work week is only 34 hours.)

When I handed in my two weeks notice, my manager handed off my remaining shifts to my co workers without informing me beforehand. Note that despite my intense hatred of this job I was well liked by my co workers and my regular customers and generally had a favourable track record in most other matters, so I expected that my manager would have the courtesy to let me finish my last few shifts.

Onto the store itself...

The store was filthy. There were flies hanging around the iced coffee machine. The floor was slippery even when it was dry because it was just coated in dirt. I cannot fathom how we passed health inspections or how anyone who gives a shit about their store could let it become so dirty.

Dishes were never washed by hand first- instead they were put through the "noisebox" (a.k.a. the ineffectual industrial dishwasher) and came out dirtier than they were before they went through. So we had to serve customers coffee in disgusting mugs.

On the drive-thru there's a 20-second timer. 95% of our mornings (between 7 and 10 am) our timer averaged 22-24 seconds... and we'd in trouble for being SLOW. This is with people who order 10 coffees at a time, multiple sandwiches, multiple boxes of doughnuts, etc. etc. 23 seconds is pretty phenomenal timing. It sounds ridiculous because all of the tasks involved in getting cars through the drive-thru (punching in the order correctly, getting the correct change, making multiple drinks correctly etc. etc.) can be done by any idiot but having 6 people working on all these tasks simultaneously and in perfect synchronization is not as easy as it sounds. Doing all of these tasks correctly for the 450 cars you serve in 3 hours without making any mistakes at all is superhuman, especially when your headset is very old and sounds like static most of the time.

Customers often blamed the cashiers for the food tasting like shit. The reason the food tastes like shit is because it comes frozen and just gets re-heated in the oven- it's not made from scratch. Even if the tea biscuits came out one hour ago they taste like they're a day old. So, please don't tell me I'm lying when I say our food is fresh.

Likewise, the idea that any of the coffee pots in a Tim Hortons on a Saturday morning are more than 5 minutes old is absolutely laughable. If the line up is going out the door and around the building how could I possibly stretch 3 pots of coffee to serve 50 customers? Use some logic here! The reason your coffee tastes like shit is because Tim Hortons coffee -is- shit, not matter how fresh it is or whether or not it's burnt (which happens rather quickly as having coffee sit in a decanter is NOT the best way to keep it fresh for very long.)

I could probably go on for several more posts about the idiocy of that job but I won't. XD

Prior to working at Tim Hortons I worked at Country Style, where I worked with two lovely, friendly co-owners. Because they had a completely different attitude that store was run much more efficiently and my job was infinitely more pleasant. It's amazing what treating your employees with basic respect can do for your business!

I am happy to say that I no longer work at Tim Hortons and am currently employed at an independent coffee house that serves the real stuff, not dishwater that's been sitting in a decanter. We have an espresso machine and everything! Wooh. XD Of course there are lots of problems with people fighting for hours and such but I can at least take some pride in the fact that I'm serving quality drinks now.

[Whomper]

Just this evening, my boss tried to make our two maintenance guys continue to work overtime in one of our vacant homes so it would be ready for a carpet install tomorrow. One of the maintenance guys ended up having to go pick up his kids (this happening an hour and a half after he should've been off).

The sad part? He brought them to the house he was working on, just because he was told to have it done by tomorrow. I caught him entering the home with his four kids as I myself was about to head on home from issuing violations.

Mind you, this house had all sorts of dangerous stuff sitting around inside (broken/nailed wood, paint, power tools, etc.), and the paint fumes tried to knock me out just as I entered the home.

I overrode my boss's authority and sent the maintenance guys home.

If I hear one damn negatory word from my boss or any other boss above her about the decision I made, lawsuits will happen. You just DON'T DO THAT to your workers; I don't give a fuck if the carpet guys have to wait until Monday. It's far better than his kids getting hurt, and it saves the company from a huge-ass lawsuit.

So yeah, some of the people I work for are really damn stupid.

[Loyal]

I recently got fired for taking time off for Christmas. While I can't blame them for doing so as I should have given more warning, I can fault them on the goddamn terrible way they handled it.

For the first couple weeks, nothing happens. I had come in to talk it over with the manager and was given every indication that it would be forgiven this time. I go back on schedule, work as normal, etc.

A couple weeks after Christmas, I get only one day of work. I figure they're still shuffling the seasonal workers around or something -- the manager in charge of hours is negligent at best -- so I don't say anything about it. The next week, though, I'm not working at all. I'm not told why, I just looked at the schedule and I simply have no hours that week. Or the week after that.

From here it takes three additional weeks of calling the theatre, being told that I would need to contact the manager in charge of hours, before I finally get in contact with her. At this point she confirms that yes, I am no longer employed at the movie theatre. The reason cited being the Christmas bit mentioned above. Why in god's name it took this much effort to confirm this, as opposed to them simply telling me after the event that I wasn't going to be employed any longer is beyond me.

Besides this particular event, there are/were legions of other issues plaguing the theatre. There are ceiling leaks everywhere, two of the three front doors have issues with closing, one of the side doors on the loading docks wouldn't close unless you slammed it shut, and there's no attempt to enforce food sanitation, whether it's in making (the popcorn) or serving.

Probably the worst of all was the elevator. Looking at the little certificate above the panel shows that the elevator had been overdue for an inspection by three years. It stalled frequently and was the only way for disabled persons to get to the theatres on the top floor -- which were the largest theatres and housed the most popular film of the week, including whatever Bollywood film was being rented out at the time. A month before I was fired, the elevator was finally inspected, and unsurprisingly shut down for safety violations (a fire code violation of all things... on an elevator!).

Absolutely no attempt was made to repair it or get it back into shape as of when I was officially fired, which not only pissed off the customers who needed it, but also caused problems for the employees, who now had to carry the 20-50 pound cans of canola popping oil and popcorn kernels up the goddamn stairs, to get to the room where we made popcorn.

[phil_]

You know what you all should do? You should work for a kid fresh out of high school. He won't screw you over on hours or make you do dangerous bullshit because he hasn't figured out that he can yet. Plus, he treats his employees like they're his friends because he's still set in that mode of social interaction. It's great.

[FloralVikings]

I work for Domino's Pizza, and I have to say, it's a fucking great job, great work environment, great money, good hours, and the people are pretty easy to get along with as long as you stay within the store and don't look to any corporate honchos.

And when I say they're easy to get along with, I'm mean about CSRs (Customer Service Representatives(glorified cashier/pizza makers)) who make half as much money as the drivers and do more work actually help us out as much as possible, b/c they know that if they become drivers we'll help them out learning the ropes. Other drivers, with whom I compete for runs and therefore money are helpful and nice, and I've never even heard of any of the drivers in my store getting in an argument.

Even managers are a pleasure to work with, and they work longer hours and still make less money that us. They're cool because they used to be drivers, and the only reason they're not is because they're on their way to a better paying job (Assistant managers make about $9 an hour, which is a little over half what a driver makes on a decent night, but store managers make $10 plus insane bonuses if the store does any business whatsoever.)

Except for one. This woman is officially the laziest, most incompetent manager in the history of ever. Ever. Or at least that I've worked for.

She was never a driver, so she doesn't understand routing us so that we can take runs in order and so that we can take multiple runs going in the same direction. She was never a CSR, so she can barely handle a phone call or make even the simplest pizza. I kid you not, in the time it takes me to take 3-5 pizzas from a shapeless lump of dough to a beautiful pie, she's putting the pepperonis on a single pizza. And then she bitches at me for going too slow. She routes drivers before they get back into the store so that the service times look good during her shift, not caring that it confuses the hell out of us and if one of us takes the wrong run (and she never bothers to remember which run is assigned to whom) we lose money. Usually in the neighborhood of $50.

One morning I was scheduled to open with her. A driver's job when opening is to wash dishes, take orders, make pizzas, and fold boxes, a manager's job is to prep the food needed for the day and help with any orders that come up. I did all of this, her jobs and mine, much of which I had no idea how to do because I wasn't trained to do it because the company doesn't want drivers doing it, while she spent 2 hours on the company phone on a personal call. BLARGH

[walkertexasdruid]

I quess the grocery store that I work for is not so bad. I get pretty decent pay, I work forty hours a week, and my shifts are somewhat flexible because my department manager is very reasonable. My assistant manger, however, is a piece of work. His main goal seems to be to skate along with doing as little work as he possibly get a way with. I always end up working twice as hard when he is in charge, than when the department head is. I just survived the department manager being on vacation for a week, with the assistant in charge, and I am exhausted. It is just not his laziness either, he has the personality of cardboard. It almost feel as if he drains the life out of you when working with him. I swear I was on the borderline of extreme dpression this last week. At least I have the next two days off, and the DM will be back. The assistant goes on vacation in a couple of weeks, and I think everyone in our department will celebrate this, hopefully he will not come back.;)