The people I work for are stupid

[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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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]

Originally Posted by 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

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]

Originally Posted by Toastburner B

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.