People Reveal When The Scales Dropped From Their Eyes And They Realized How Toxic Their Jobs Were (30 Stories)
Sometimes, people spend such a long time surrounded by toxicity that they can no longer tell the difference between healthy and downright harmful behavior. It’s pretty clear that they should make plans to get out of toxic environments as soon as they feasibly can, but recognizing that someone’s in one isn’t as easy as you think. Especially when you’re in the thick of it and can’t afford a moment’s respite to get a different perspective. However, sometimes it takes a single moment for the scales to finally drop from people’s eyes.
Redditor u/Expwar asked the workers browsing r/AskReddit to open up and share the moment that they realized their workplace was truly toxic. We’ve collected the most insightful stories to share with you, dear Pandas. You’ll find them as you scroll down. Let us know your own experiences with toxic work environments and how you solved things in the comments.
Meanwhile, have a read what psychotherapist Silva Neves told Bored Panda about the importance of having firm boundaries at work and what drives people to be unkind, pushy, rude, and demanding. (Spoiler warning: it’s usually due to fear.)
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"Why do you have to be at the hospital if your wife is the one having the miscarriage?"
An actual email I received while sopping up my wife's blood from the floor in the emergency room.
Bored Panda reached out to Silva, a psychotherapist from the United Kingdom, to have a chat about why very clear boundaries are vital if we feel like we’re constantly being walked over, the importance of being kind and understanding of those closest to us whether at work or outside of it, and what the lack of outward empathy implies about a person.
According to British psychotherapist Silva, the kindness that we show to the world, our social circle, and everyone we meet throughout the day answers the fundamental questions about who we are as people, deep down. In short, through our daily actions and interactions with our colleagues, we reveal to everyone else how we live, what we value, and what we think of the people closest to us. He noted that people tend to be kinder during the holiday season, but they must remember to extend this kindness and empathy throughout the year.
When my partner was giving birth to our only child.
I had spent weeks preparing to be gone for two weeks to be with her during and after birth, held many meetings, cross-trained etc (I was a manager at a tech firm). I had accrued ample vacation time.
My 2nd day off my partner goes into labor and we go to the hospital. During labor the CEO called my cell repeatedly and I finally answered and told him my partner was in labor and I was on vacation. He totally ripped my head off and told me to open my computer and finish reports. These were reports that I had trained someone else to do, and actually others within the company were perfectly capable of doing.
Because we were broke (yes I was underpaid) I ended up doing reports in the hospital, took a short break during the birth, then went back to working until we were released. We had a couple of days with our newborn but then I had to go back to work because my phone was blowing up. That week I ended up working 6am to midnight some days getting everyone caught back up while my partner was at home recovering from delivery and learning how to be a mom.
Everything in me wanted to quit but I knew we needed the next paycheck and at that moment I could not fight a legal challenge with my employer. They had me right where they wanted and made my life hell while my child just coming into this world.
Never again.
When I woke up in the hospital after attempting to take my life in work.
This should be number 1. If your work is so toxic that you want to end your life, that is the most serious reason of all.
“I think it is a good practice to remind ourselves all year round of what kind of human beings we want to be: someone who is kind and contributes to the goodness of our loved ones, social circle, and greater society, or someone who lives in fear, anger, and protection?” Silva told Bored Panda that we should strive to be kind to others and remain compassionate no matter the situation. We ought to be nice to our colleagues and be mindful of their boundaries all the time, whether it’s the holiday season or not.
“It can be challenging in the world that we live in because there is much fear and anxiety around, and it is easy to forget our kind nature for protecting ourselves and our values,” the expert acknowledged that being kind is far from easy with how difficult things are currently, however, we should still strive to be empathetic and respectful, even if we’re afraid.
When my manager said I wasn't a team player for refusing a shift on my wedding day.
I had a job where my girlfriend’s Mother was my boss, so I guess the moment I realized my workplace was toxic was when my girlfriend cheated on me and then my girlfriend’s Mom hired the guy she cheated on me with. In hindsight, probably more than just the workplace was toxic.
When someone was called into the manager’s office, then returned to box up their desk and leave. When I asked the manager if she was okay, I was told, “We don’t talk about people after they leave.”
If someone quit or was fired, they were just never mentioned again. It was creepy AF.
Silva suggested to Bored Panda that people should change the way they view someone who’s being pushy, rude, demanding or unkind. He stressed that these people’s lives are often ruled by fear and they deserve our compassion despite the way that they treat us.
“A part of being kind is to remind ourselves that when we meet someone who is unkind, it usually means that that person is afraid of something, and it can help with staying empathic and kind to someone who is unkind,” he said. Though this isn’t an excuse to allow others to walk all over us. There have to be some limits to our compassion if someone is being maliciously rude or dismissive of us.
“It doesn't mean we should condone unreasonable unpleasant behaviors, because being kind also means to have strong boundaries so that everybody can feel safe within them,” Silva said that we have to balance between standing up for ourselves and being kind to the unkind.
When my boss addressed me as "fat a**" in front of a room full of my coworkers.
A couple years ago my dad died. After my bereavement time and I came back to work, my boss came up to me, looked me right in the eyes and with a smile said “you know what will make you feel better? Doing more work.”
I bet what'd make you feel better is punching that stupid boss in the face and then taking your time to grieve like the HUMAN YOU ARE
A couple of female coworkers went to the HR manager to file a complaint about sexism in the workplace, related to the same guy. They got told by the HR manager and their boss that the company wasn't gonna do anything about it, because it would be very hurtful for this man to hear that his behaviour was wrong...
Later when some anonymous survey showed that employees were really not as happy as they(company) were claiming on social media, and people even felt discriminated against in the workplace, they brushed it under the carpet saying people were just too stressed when they filled in the survey, like that is not a problem on its own.
Many more of these kinds of things, but that's defo when I realised I had to get out.
...i have yet to read anything positive about HR.....let alone experience it.....in my experience it feels like it's purpose is to protect the hierarchy....
Meanwhile, life coach Lindsay Hanson explained to me earlier that each and every one of us is responsible for setting the boundaries that we’re willing to tolerate in the workplace. If HR doesn’t listen to you, you can still try talking to your boss about any major issues about the work environment.
"If you feel that there's nothing you can do to change the situation and the company or people involved are unwilling to change, then you have to decide whether you're willing to stay in that environment or not," she explained to Bored Panda.
"A good question to ask yourself is, even if this toxic situation were to change, would I still want to work here?" the life coach pointed out that this is the question that we ought to ask ourselves before we start putting a lot of time and energy in changing the company for the better. According to her, we have two options. Either we look for a way out of the situation we’re in or we try to find happiness or at least contentment in the environment that we’re in.
When my boss arrived at my doorstep trying to open my front door accusing me of lying about being sick and yelling that she will get a lawyer and find a way to fire me legally. I never went back
Mine was, and I’ve told this story a few times on here, but when after being upskirted at work (17F, the uniform was skirts, a kids/young people store) my (late 30s, male) manager bought me black lace underwear and gave them to me for Christmas. In front of the entire team. At the staff do. It was tongue in cheek, insinuating it’d give a future one ‘something to look at’. I remember feeling humiliated and sickened, but having to try and save face. I felt like the incident was my fault.
After that, the “I love my job and team and am happy to work in this field and will do anything for them” shattered. My eyes opened to illegally long shifts, being underpaid, secretly getting us to cover whilst he pretended to be in and paid us cash in hand so the CEO wouldn’t find out, a “we only hire young pretty girls because it’s good to encourage shy kids or teens and add to the fun theme!” being far more nefarious and also morally corrupt. More completely inappropriate workplace things.
I’ve thought for five years about coming out and talking about the company. It’s somewhat well known in the UK. Past employees have said the same and many are still recovering from it years after leaving. But I’ve always been too afraid and I know too well that many people would still support despite things like this coming out.
I got hired while my wife was about 6 weeks from giving birth. I told the owner in the interview that I would need at least a week off in the next 6 to 8 weeks when my kid comes. He had an autistic kid and led the local chapter of Autism speaks, so I though he was an alright guy.
When my kid was born, he had the manager call me every day and ask when I was coming back, because nobody was doing my work.
I came back after 3 days off work. My kid was born on Friday, back at work Weds....
I was fired 2 weeks later.....as a new father at age 28.....
"The idea that you can't change your situation due to the pandemic is very limiting. There are still companies hiring. There are still ways to make money on your own. There is always a way to change your current situation—telling yourself you're stuck feels very limiting," she told me.
"Again, it comes back to what you're willing to tolerate. You can do everything in your power to bring attention to the toxic situation and attempt to change it. And at the end of the day, you always have control over your own mindset, how you're reacting to the situation, and how much you let it affect you."
My own dad and employer hassled me for being in the hospital with my son for like ten days.
When I was crying from anxiety about opening up my e-mails every morning
I’m so sorry to hear that...I hope things have improved, even just a little bit to keep you from falling into the deep end!
When the union told me "These are solid proves of harassment, but unfortunately the only way to win is to pay a lawyer and go on a trial against your bosses. And they are rich, well known and you are a foreigner. You have no chances and all I can advise you is to quit."
Justice may be blind, but she's not deaf. So when money speaks, she listens :(
Previously, Eddy Ng, the Smith Professor of Equity & Inclusion at Queen’s University, formerly the James and Elizabeth Freeman Professor of Management at Bucknell University, told me that employees ought to look into workplace health and safety regulations for help if HR and their managers aren’t responding to testimonies about toxic workplace environments, e.g. harassment or bullying.
However, he warned that quitting any job is a tough decision. Workers need to consider their financial situation, life stage, ability to adapt, and other things before making this decision that depends on very subjective factors.
"This is also exacerbated by the pandemic. If the toxic environment becomes a health concern and the employer is not responsive, you can quit and sue the employer for constructive dismissal," the professor told Bored Panda.
"Generally, it is easier to look for another job while you are still in one, so you don't have to explain gaps in employment or past problems with a prospective employer," he said.
It wasn’t always. I was fortunate to have a boss who took his role as a mentor very seriously. He wanted us to learn, improve, etc. and he was kind about it. He’d reward good work, correct you when you made a mistake, yell at you/scold you only when you really deserved it, and would admit when HE made a mistake.
He retired and left the company in the hands of a dude who was an absolute assh*le. Completely the opposite. He wouldn’t reward good work - if you did something that was 99% perfect, he’d scream and berate you for the 1% that wasn’t perfect. The last straw for me was the time I got a new file in, I spent weeks working it up, and prepared a comprehensive letter explaining everything that we were doing, what we planned to do in the future and offering a detailed analysis of the whole thing. Assh*le yelled at me because HIS name should be on the signature line of that letter because “your only job is to make me look good!”
He yelled at me over a bill, misspelling my very simple name in a follow-up email. (I have one of those names that has a common spelling and an accepted, but slightly less common spelling like Steven/Stephen. He used the wrong one.) The next most senior partner reported that HE had put the objectionable items into the bill after I had prepared it. Assh*le didn’t care.
I quit. A lot of other people quit. I heard a year later that literally everyone had quit. They hired new people, including the brother of the next most senior partner. They all quit in less than a year. He lost his biggest client. They had to give up the big suite of offices they built in 2012. Can’t say I’m sad to hear any of that.
Not on the same scale, but in my previous job at a language academy a good few years ago, our boss was such a bully, as well as being the only person in the place who didn't actually know how to teach OR manage, that out of 8 people at the end of that year, only 3 remained by summer... And one if them was him! The other 2 left as soon as they could the following year. One older woman had a nervous breakdown, after 9 years of alternately being bullied then told she'd get a permanent contract, and ended up jobless and sick. He just hired new staff, but is notorious in this city, and has a very high turnover of staff. What a d**k.
My parents sent a Halloween care package full of candy to my workplace, written to “the care of lilsunflowers”. Next time I was at work, I couldn’t find the package — later was told it was opened and all the candy had been eaten
That's tampering with mail and mail theft. Isn't that a criminal act?
They used the pandemic to cut bonuses, freeze salaries and remove a majority of benefits. When we went public, they gave us virtually nothing. The CEOs and their cronies filled their pockets.
A little history: we were acquired by this company and absorbed. Our old company was the absolute SH*T!!! Vegas/Barcelona trips, beers at lunch, sick company parties. We were one of the hottest companies in the biz. EVERYBODY wanted to work for us. We had people planning to move from across the world to be in our office. They stripped all that away right when they hired us and installed a more "corporate" atmosphere.
All the fun stuff was replaced with mandatory town halls where they preach "community" and "passion" and "integrity." They then dropped a bomb on us: "were goin public!" During this time they froze salaries and cut bonuses. The company went public, and they didn't give the employees sh*t. Instead of being rewarded like we were promised, they rolled out the stingiest RSU plan I've ever seen.
To make matters all worse, the CFO is a sexist f*ck. He calls women b*tches to their face and says the most derogatory sh*t when they're not around.
The cherry on top is we used to get $1k in cash as a Holiday bonus. This year we got hats with the company logo on it and a power bank (obviously from the swag closet).
We reached a point where we regularly had to wait to cash our paychecks. We basically were told we had to get orders completed and paid for, in order for the account to have enough money to pay us.
During this time, the boss went on a vacation which was just great for morale.
My manager had to take a day off, effectively putting me in charge for the day. I texted my manager, "What should I do if the IRS shows up? lol". 2 hours later an IRS agent did stop in looking for my boss.
I found a new job not long after.
When they wanted to give me an attendance point because a terrorist blew up the at&t building in Nashville and I had no internet to work my Christmas Day shift.
How can your boss be so out of touch with reality? NO ONE could do anything on the internet in your area, after that bombing. May your next job be for people that base their actions on situational awareness. May they also treat their employees fairly.
When my 30 year old manager tried to kiss literally every girl that worked there other than 16 year old me. He just made gross comments about me almost being of age.
A male colleague was promoted above me. I was forced to attend a training he held that I had originally trained him how to do. My work wouldn’t make an exception for me, despite being the original department trainer. I was one of a couple females in my department and I never saw a promotion or raise, despite working there for five years. My male colleagues were typical stoners and got promotion/raises no problem.
When a boss told me to go to the port to bribe the officials there to release several containers of materials for the hotel we were building. I did not (and neither did that chickensh*t).
Worked in a psych hospital for a couple of years. This is a (paraphrased) conversation that one of our nurses had with the doctor about a patient that kept assaulting other patients and staff. The doctor only physically came to the facility two or three times a week. He literally did not give a sh*t.
Nurse: "Hello, doctor? The incredibly violent patient that we've all been complaining about for weeks just sent two of our staff members to the hospital. Pretty sure one of them has a broken hip. Can you please discharge this guy so we can have the police pick him up?"
Doctor: "No. Just bring in more staff. If you call me and bother me about this again I will keep him in the facility even longer. And just for this phone call I'm cancelling my rounds for the day. You can now deal with ALL of the patients getting pissed off. Good luck, don't bother me again."
Nurse: "Cool. Thanks."
We were not equipped or staffed to handle patients like this guy. He should never have been admitted to our facility. This one just one such instance of this type of situation. The doctor would frequently admit patients like this that would stretch our staff to the absolute limit. The doctor knew and understood full well the impact it would have on the staff and he just. Did. Not. Care.
Sorry, but you could go against the jerk and just walk out. It's not that nurses have a hard time finding a new job in undoubtedly better places.
When my boss started looking at the store's cameras every night to knit-pick every little detail I did so she can get mad at me for it.
nit-pick...refers to picking the eggs of lice from one's body. Not knit as the craft with yarn
One of my job's metrics for how our performance is graded by is "on time departure". We get so many points if we're within -10, -5, 0, 5 or 10 min from scheduled.
People try to cheat by tampering with the clocks and that's a punishable offense.
I was good at leaving early or on time most of the times. Got a call one day to warn me that I was under investigation because Ihad the most points in the company. They assumed that I was cheating, that's when I knew I had to go. I wasn't going to start being late to avoid repercussions
When our boss got into a screaming match with one of the managers (his daughter) in the middle of the office.
I'd just started there 3 weeks ago and it was absolutely mind boggling to watch. I looked around at my coworkers and everyone was just looking away, doing their best to stay quiet and not look at either of them. Person at the desk next to mine saw my shocked face and whispered "they do this a lot. Just ignore it."
MRK whispers “Look for a new job if you haven’t already started doing so”
I had a job as an industrial engineer that I really liked for 6 years. The guy who made it toxic wasn't even my boss. He was the operations manager of the building where I was domiciled, but I didn't report to him. When he started, my boss told him I was there to help him out with anything he needed. Well, a couple weeks into him working there, "what he needed" was for me to cover a Sunday shift that started at 6 AM (the reason there was a need for a Sunday shift was because he attempted to handle almost twice the amount of volume that I told him was the max for a Saturday and it went as poorly as expected), and called at midnight to let me know. When I didn't pick up because I was at my own engagement party, he went ahead and told his boss and my boss that I had agreed to come in at 6 the next morning.
It was one of the dumbest things I ever did when I actually cancelled all the plans I had with my family members who were in town and showed up. If I hadn't, there would have been about 50 employees waiting in the parking lot because nobody else had the keys, and people would have been pissed at me, but oh well. At the time, my bosses were putting me on software development projects and working on transitioning me into a software dev role, but within 6 months, I was supervising the operation from 9 AM to 9 PM M-F and 6 PM to 6 AM Saturday nights and I had been pulled from all my software projects. I quit to take a software engineering bootcamp and now I am a software engineer.
Well, I wouldn't call it toxic exactly, everyone was polite enough, but I quit a job once when it became clear to me that the task at hand couldn't be delivered on time, and my management rejected the three alternative plans I presented.
My immediate manager even told me words to the effect of "I agree that you're right, but I can't sell your plan to senior management", so I told him "then there's no point in me sticking around while this project craters", and handed him my badge.
My realization came late.
I got laid off from a job with good pay and benefits, but I was dealing with long hours, high stress, a department with low morale, and a hands-off manager who seemed to care more about the company than me.
Even though the place was toxic, I was sad to leave. I'd been there for years, and the job was in a field I know a lot about.
A few days after the layoff, I attended an event not far from the building I worked in. When I saw the building, the first thought that popped into my head was, "I'm glad I don't have to go back there tomorrow!"
Something somewhere, deep in my brain or my soul, had just told me that the job I'd just been fired from wasn't for me.
It’s amazing just how much your mood lifts when you quit and realize you DON’T have to go into that hellhole tomorrow. That your now ex-company can go f**k itself. Even sweeter a year later, when you drive by their building, and they’re no longer there. Because they’re out of business. You and anyone else who left are NOT at fault for that. The toxic management/owners did it to themselves by being a bunch of toxic m***********s. Good riddance to bad rubbish (them, not you).
Usually I am very good at drawing a line between my private life and my work life. I work an office job (IT), so I know there are people in much worse conditions, but one morning I woke up to go to work and I started crying like a child who didn't want to go to school. First and last time this happened to me. I said f*ck it, went to work and quit. F*ck those guys, they actually made me scared of the work I love and doubt myself. F*ck them.
After I quit, I heard that 7 more people quit, so it wasn't just me who felt like that.
Not me but my brother recently became a manager for a local moving company after working there for less than a year, his entire holiday bonus from the company was a $5 gift card to Starbucks.
When I was given a promotion without a raise, to a post that was not instead of but in addition to all my other tasks, and I already knew before I started it that there was zero chance I would be able to fulfill that new role at all because my manager would effectively block me at every turn. That role had already been held by a few other people for short periods time before they got fired, and I knew it was basically an ejecting seat.
I guess I should have twigged sooner because of the overall turnover rate of employees, and the astonishing number of rage quits. I'm just really, really optimistic when I probably shouldn't be.
Hell, the employees warning me not to take the job the day of my first interview should have been a red flag, but I appear to be quite a dunce that way.
Not still, right? You’ve learned what you need to do to keep this from recurring. Right? RIGHT?
Probably when people started to complain about the quality of the offshore work and the business's solution was to fire some people locally to save cost and still persist with the offshoring.
I'm desperate to leave. When your sole reason for offshoring is "cheap labor" you've f*cked up your company and reputation.
Years ago, I had an IT job that required a review of the previous day's notes, but you were publicly shamed for misspelling a word, poor grammar, took too long troubleshooting, didn't ask enough questions, etc... etc... The day one of my friends quit because of an argument over grammar and management was happy for them to be gone really solidified that this might not be the place I wanted to work. I left not too long after that. Stress wasn't worth it.
Long time ago, we had to process new hires.
Everyone in leadership was male.
Manager asked us to edit every single female internal CV to hide anything that could make them look "too smart" or "too dumb" to our parent company.
So every female getting into the company just had an average CV.
My work place requires us to be on a computer, but they started threatening to not pay us for all the hours/minutes the power goes out. For some reason it’s been going out a lot lately in our town (rural Canada) but like? I’m on my shift how are you not paying me to be here. At least send me home smh.
When the admitted narcissist supervisor was hooking up with staff.
When we were told the company had no money but upper management had new cars and vacations.
When they accidentally sent out the profit sheets and showed that we were making buckets of money for the company but were told “it was a really bad year and you need to step up.”
When I called out sick for 1 damn day and my boss called my home to make sure I was really sick. He didn’t even try to fudge it and ask if I was OK- just straight up said, “I’m calling to make sure you’re really home sick.”
When my boss told me “if you got hit by a bus I’d replace you in an instant.” Took them 8 months to fill my position.
Had a similar one to that. New boss after previous one retired. Previous boss had "hand picked" the new one. They were church friends so she was not aware of what a hellspawn they were other weekdays. New boss took an instant dislike to me and my staff because we were clinically competent (36 staff and the 4 team leaders) and decided because I made the job look easy they could do my job and theirs. Told me to my face if "all of you decided not to come in anymore we wouldn't even notice". Au contrare madam! She refused to renew my contract and threatened to quit if I was kept on so they let me go. Found out over the next 2 months they stopped rostering all my teams and outsourced everything to people new boss wanted in the jobs. They ended up having to hire 4 people to do my job when new boss found out just how much extra I did. They quit by 6 months into the job by just not turning up one Monday. By then my previous staff and myself were all working in other jobs elsewhere
They fired a new father the day before Christmas eve because he missed a month of work due to his wife getting very sick after giving birth, he didn't try to get medical leave or anything because he was worried about his wife and taking care of his newborn. Second one was When I sat in on a leadership meeting, I worked at the time as almost a bridge between two sides of the company and all the leaders did was Gossip about their employees and talk about who they wished they could get rid of, and who annoyed them. One of them was a new leader and they were friends with these people a month ago. The meeting was about how to improve morale on the floor and the end result was a competition for a 25 gift card to the company store that is nothing but company apparel that no one wants anyway... it didn't work.
When the line "You're only as good as your last mistake" popped into my head, and I realized that explained everything about how I was treated in that toxic office. It didn't matter how many things I did well, or effectively; one mistake and that's all anyone held on to.
Also I was hazed my first year there and when I tried to ask about addressing some of the office culture the director shrugged and said "That's just the [name of college] way." Yes. This was a very prestigious higher ed institution.
My boss yelling at me because a client let their dog pee in her office. Were they my client? No. Was I the receptionist? No, I worked in the back office. Was I the only person there? No, there were four other employees there.
I'm am now at a much better firm and am no longer scared to see my boss walking around the office or calling my extension.
High turnover was always the first sign.
went to a job interview once and they had a photo board of new-hires. this company been in business for over 12 years with 700 employees. i asked: why are there 17 new-hires in the last month?
In college I had a part time job at a big retailer selling appliances. They would generally have a promo of either 0% financing or free delivery, one or the other but not both.
That being said, there was a workaround where we could still give people both, and multiple members of our management team told us that if that was the only way to get the sale to do it.
2 months later they fired half the department for doing what we were told to do. I quit right after that.
I once got asked if a wanted a different position, away from coding, into project management. I said, okay, if you help me set it up and give some guidance. The next week I got a project, through a binder being placed on my desk and the words, this is your project, good luck. Before I could react, they were out the door. I had a hard time getting projects started, worked on common sense and some help from coworkers taking pity on me. I made a checklist for software deployments, for instance, but when I told in a rare department meeting that I made such a checklist, I was told sternly not to waste time on stuff I couldn’t charge customers with. After the confusing meeting, several coworkers asked me for a copy of the useful list... It still took me some 2 years of working 60+ hours a week, to make my way out the door. (And got a 65% raise starting the next job.)
I’m so happy I’m now retired. Thank you for the reminder of just how sh.it.ty work can be!
The moment my boss told me that I needed to come in early to check my emails but could not clock in for it. When I reminded her that the company settled a multi million dollar lawsuit for that same thing a few years before she started, she walked me to HR and fired me.
When my supervisor berated me to tears, then told me to seek therapy if I couldn't handle it. And I'm honestly not one to easily cry.
He was also the department head by the way and in every speech talked about "the [institute] family." Definitely learned to run the other direction if people use that phrase in a workplace.
I had the privilege of working with one of the top most paid banking architects in the country at the time, I was very young and no one in the company believed that the project would succeed.
So, when I showed up, the gentleman had one look at me and smiled and kinda mentored me along the way and we did finish the job successfully.
He was well into his 60's and treated me like a kid. After the project was done, he had come to our office and l wasn't there, was out in a client meeting.
He bought a bag of chocolates and specifically called to tell me that he's leaving it with my boss.
My boss took the whole bag with him to his home and left two chocolates from the bag.
I am still very disappointed about it. It's been 16 years since that happened.
Should have personally called to thank the architect for the 2 chocolates! They were perfect!
When one of the female coworkers tried to accuse a male coworker of being sexist because he didn’t invite her to a bar after work. (For context, this was during the NBA Finals, and she openly talked about how she thought sports were sexist and that women were just as strong/fast as men). Also, the guy was married and everyone who was invited was already a relatively close friend).
What’s even crazier is that a few days later the female coworker threatened the male coworker by telling him that she was going to get her boyfriend to “teach him a lesson” (her boyfriend was a former college football player). The male coworker then reported her to management, but she was only given a “disciplinary warning”
I would have reported the threat to the police just so that I have a record of it happening. CYA people!
My country went into a full lockdown march 2020 because of corona. So the restaurant I worked at had to close temporarily. However, my boss decided to open up again in May, but I was still temporarily laid off. Asked why and was told they needed me as a backup as they are finding someone better to replace me. I decided to quit in the moment. Got a text from my boss that I was the worst person he had ever met
When the new big boss came in and started berating people in front of each other and finding faults with performance when there wasn't any. Some people are just nasty. Insanely high turn over in the four years I was there. Like to the point you actually forget people you worked with
When my adult son died suddenly, my husband called my principal to ask her how to get a red cross flight home (i am overseas). She told him, "everything you need is on the common drive". The common drive is at my work and my husband cant access it.
When our regional manager went on multiple rants over various zoom calls about how grateful we all needed to be for head office keeping us on the payroll while the COVID shutdown was raging.
While I was grateful to have a job (many of my friends lost theirs), it was also insanely stressful as we all had much more work, with fewer resources and staff, trying to meet pre-COVID metrics, with many of us trying to juggle childcare while working from home.
She went on like our company was running some kind of charity keeping us employed while we were all burning out and working insane hours to stay afloat.
Covid seems to have brought out either the best or the worst in most people.
When they didn’t pay us and the excuse was ‘oh yeah that’s cos you won’t be working here anymore’
My wife works at a deli that mostly employs people that are either in high school or older retired people that are just bored and want something to do. The disparity of maturity creates a lot of workplace drama. I kid you not, there is some 18-year-old girl who works there with her mother, and if you cross this chick she will tell her mom. My wife is also starting to get chewed out for things that her manager forgot to do like ordering food
in the middle of my evaluation, while being reprimanded for using my cellphone on the floor too much (my kid call me a lot) - my supervisor excused herself cause her son was calling her cell phone....
I was also told in a different evaluation that I shouldn't use my vacation time in the summer if 'i know [kid] will likely be sick in the fall' - I had called in 2 days in a row after he came down with pneumonia one year
I had a manager who forbade a colleague to stay at home with hervsick son, Not long after she (the manager) went to our boss to cry when her daughter got her first period and she went home. She was a first class nasty b*tch.
I worked at a bakery and I absolutely loved my job. When I couldn’t go to sleep because I was dreading going into work and then once I finally managed to go to sleep I’d wake with feeling nauseated and wanting to vomit.
That saying people don’t leave bad jobs they just leave bad management (something like that). That was 100% true for me.
I put up with a bad manager for around 2 years (my colleagues kept me going), when I tried to leave and she found out she would put me down. She held getting a better contract over my head, offered me it, then was transferred before she should give me it. Turned out she was a thief and going to a smaller store made it easier to notice.
When I overheard the president of the company interviewing a candidate and saying, "we're like family here"... without also saying, "I'm the son of the owner of the company."
Worked for a.family owned restaurant. They said there was going to be a restaurant anniversary party. We all showed up for a party BUT found out right there we were going to be serving the family for their party. Imagine all the angry, embarrassed employees expecting to be part of the celebration only to be told to work. Sure we.got paid, but dang, we were treated like servants. Opened our eyes real quick.
The boss took someone into the office. A coworker grabbed a glass that they had hidden near the office, and put it up to the door to listen.
When i told her something in private (the reason i didn't feel well in the weekend) and she kept repeating it in while other people were around..
When I realized no one was happy working there. No one.
The moment I realized I didn’t fit in.
I was too “poor” to be with the privileged, educated workers.
But not poor or trashy enough to be with the other workers.
Both groups made sure to treat me like crap.
I still belong no where.
"No one wants to work anymore!" Wrong. No one wants to be underpaid and treated like crap anymore.
The day I ended up in a mental health unit (involuntarily) and then had a complete breakdown because of a bullying boss. I sued them and won. But it still cost me about 18 months of my life where I couldn't work, a job that I had been at for more than 7 years and loved, plus adding more drugs to my medication routine that I still have to take now, even 4 years down the track. Bullying is no joke when you can't fight back - I worked for the bully as his EA. I will never put myself in that position again. At the first inkling I have of bullying, I am OUT OF THERE!
I didn’t know I could be made even happier about being retired, but this sure did the trick!
I've posted this before but I was fired from an incredibly sexist work environment because I went to HR to report a coworker who was sexually assaulting me. I was also fired from my job at a hospital because, despite commuting a five hour round trip a day to get there, while simultaneously battling a mystery illness that caused me to lose four stone in a month, regularly pass out at work, go to A&E, be put on a drip for a while and on a few occasions needed to have blood transfusions, then go straight back to work to finish my 12 hour shift and had to start using a walking stick to get around, I couldn't tell them exactly when I'd stop being ill. Oh and they fired me at 4pm on Christmas Eve.
My boss told me I was too senstive - this was when my husband had had a brain tumour, then had a stroke was in a coma the doctors told me he wouldn't make it. When he did wake up he was paralysed on one side, he was on hospital for nearly six months. Yea well those kind of things can make you a little senstive!
Kept hemorrhaging people in my department, including moving them to other areas (that were also losing people right and left) with zero replacements. Went from 5 people down to 2 with an increasing workload. I'd skip breaks and put off taking lunch until the next shift got there just to support the other guy I was working with. Turns out management got bigger bonuses if they keep labor costs low.
I'll have many stories, some I've already told. One of my jobs was at a home goods store, I enjoyed this job and rose in ranks very quickly, was told many times that me being on shift was beneficial due to my selling skills and abilities to memorize and finish tasks in record time. When a new manager was transferred in, we instantly butted heads. She didn't like me, I didn't like her. But I had my promotion, I wasn't doing anything that could get me fired and as added protection I often quoted provincial labor laws. One day during Christmas I was helping an older woman on the phone, she didn't want to venture out into the cold and snow and holiday shoppers and decided it was time to learn how to order online. I was walking her through the entire process and was probably on the phone for 15 minutes, but with plenty of staff, I wasn't worried. She stood beside me the entire time, ignoring calls for a manager while I was on the phone.
On my first day as a short order cook at a restaurant across from U of NM I dropped a burger on the dirty floor and the manager, picked it up and threw it on the grill saying, "The heat will kill anything on it." I took off my apron and handed it to him and walked out. A few weeks later the place was condemned and permanently shuttered by the health department. (I didn't call them)
How about working for a VP for 12 years? When company was sold, VP asked me specifically to leave old company (that I no longer enjoyed under the new owners) and come work for her...Which was great... For about a year... I was REALLY sick & the docs couldn't figure out what was wrong. While at Drs appts,, VP went through my PERSONAL messenger messages, where I talked to a trusted co-worker about how I was absolutely scared shitless of VP.. I learned to gauge her mood as she came into work & did my utmost to focus on work/avoid her, because she was TERRIFYING..Even the smallest mistake/misfile got me screamed/sworn at/berated. Then she took it to another level by telling me that I should use FMLA to get healthy. 3 months off sounded great! Except she never gave me FMLA paperwork & I didn't know better, so, when I was ready to return, she told me my position was now part-time w/NO BENEFITS, including medical! Totally ef'd me over. (I spent every day of those 3 months in the hospital!)
My husband's last job, his amazing boss left. He was the obvious next in line, but the board refused to even consider him. They wouldn't even give him an interview even though he'd been second in command for 5 years and had already been doing half of the job. But they did expect him to temporarily fill in the position (the position they said he wasn’t suited for) for an entire year while they interviewed other people. Then even asked him to sit in on the interviews and give his opinion. When they finally hired someone (someone my husband had STRONGLY advised against hiring), he was demoted back to his previous position at his previous pay and was told by the board they expected him to do everything he could to help the new guy succeed. He immediately started putting in applications elsewhere. In less than 3 years, new guy ran the place into the ground and the entire company folded this fall. It was heartbreaking because it had been such an amazing, thriving place.
Worked at a post office.. had a long day heavy mail and package day.. told the supervisor I'm going to need help.. she said, you don't need help you're a professional. I ended up working till 10pm.. last one in.. she easily could've send me help to deliver the mail faster but did that out of spite. Now they can't work past 8pm. Also once I was in terrible pain.. was bent over excruciating pain.. called in sick.. I was a sub.. told me they didn't have anyone to cover me so I.. stupidly went to work when I should've head to the er.. I worked super slow.. sweating just raising my hands up .. ended up going out on the street deliver half the route when they sent 2 people to take the rest of my stuff.. went home.. later went to hospital found out i had a bad appendix!
I was working in a supermarket on home shopping. We had these huge trolleys that didn't go where you needed them to and they were unsteerable when laden down with goods. I was bending, lifting, pushing, pulling for 6 hours a day. Several of us complained about the weight limit on the trolleys but they ended up increasing the load. I inevitably hurt my back and was off work for 3 months. I was called in for a meeting and told that if I didn't come back to work I'd lose my company sick pay (I'd still get Statutory Sick Pay but I wasn't able to survive off such a low amount). During that meeting I was told I needed to come back in because they had high staff sickness levels and were pushing people to return to work as the numbers looked bad to head office. I started looking for a new job that day. I did return to work on 'light duties' which were anything but light. I handed my notice in 3 weeks later.
(1) In a company with ca 12 members in 1 year 10+ new people came and went due to excessive micro management of owner. HR was his wife, who had a different last name. The customers were not supposed to know that. (2) Company branch office was renting a room from an other company in a huge campus. The other company held classes and served lunch sandwiches to the students. I got an official complaint by the other company boss for eating my lunchbox in the office. The complaint went through the main office highest chief, not the highest guy in my branch office. Also eating in the kitchenette was banned. (3) Fancy IT company, I had told of my upcoming resignation 3 months in advance (as per law). I was withheld the well earned yearly bonus in order to keep the hotshot of the team from leaving (he left anyway a month later), manager told it to my face. (4) IT company, anything I said as a foreigner female was overheard, same from a native male it was approved. I had 10+ years experience.
My hubby had a boss we called "the rabid blond ferret". That summed up that workplace for him. He quit, and hasn't touched alcohol since. We sense a correlation....
TL;DR - IMO, the larger the company the less they care. I had a good job. Unfortunately, probably because it's a large company, their attitude towards my physical and mental health meant that I had to resign. It was a lose/lose situation, I lost a monthly income and they lost one of their best, hardest working employees (I know that sounds like I’m blowing my own trumpet, but I was loyal and because it was a financial business and mostly predominately Excel/Spreadsheets based, my skills at Excel vastly improved overall efficiency in my department, cashiers).
"No one wants to work anymore!" Wrong. No one wants to be underpaid and treated like crap anymore.
The day I ended up in a mental health unit (involuntarily) and then had a complete breakdown because of a bullying boss. I sued them and won. But it still cost me about 18 months of my life where I couldn't work, a job that I had been at for more than 7 years and loved, plus adding more drugs to my medication routine that I still have to take now, even 4 years down the track. Bullying is no joke when you can't fight back - I worked for the bully as his EA. I will never put myself in that position again. At the first inkling I have of bullying, I am OUT OF THERE!
I didn’t know I could be made even happier about being retired, but this sure did the trick!
I've posted this before but I was fired from an incredibly sexist work environment because I went to HR to report a coworker who was sexually assaulting me. I was also fired from my job at a hospital because, despite commuting a five hour round trip a day to get there, while simultaneously battling a mystery illness that caused me to lose four stone in a month, regularly pass out at work, go to A&E, be put on a drip for a while and on a few occasions needed to have blood transfusions, then go straight back to work to finish my 12 hour shift and had to start using a walking stick to get around, I couldn't tell them exactly when I'd stop being ill. Oh and they fired me at 4pm on Christmas Eve.
My boss told me I was too senstive - this was when my husband had had a brain tumour, then had a stroke was in a coma the doctors told me he wouldn't make it. When he did wake up he was paralysed on one side, he was on hospital for nearly six months. Yea well those kind of things can make you a little senstive!
Kept hemorrhaging people in my department, including moving them to other areas (that were also losing people right and left) with zero replacements. Went from 5 people down to 2 with an increasing workload. I'd skip breaks and put off taking lunch until the next shift got there just to support the other guy I was working with. Turns out management got bigger bonuses if they keep labor costs low.
I'll have many stories, some I've already told. One of my jobs was at a home goods store, I enjoyed this job and rose in ranks very quickly, was told many times that me being on shift was beneficial due to my selling skills and abilities to memorize and finish tasks in record time. When a new manager was transferred in, we instantly butted heads. She didn't like me, I didn't like her. But I had my promotion, I wasn't doing anything that could get me fired and as added protection I often quoted provincial labor laws. One day during Christmas I was helping an older woman on the phone, she didn't want to venture out into the cold and snow and holiday shoppers and decided it was time to learn how to order online. I was walking her through the entire process and was probably on the phone for 15 minutes, but with plenty of staff, I wasn't worried. She stood beside me the entire time, ignoring calls for a manager while I was on the phone.
On my first day as a short order cook at a restaurant across from U of NM I dropped a burger on the dirty floor and the manager, picked it up and threw it on the grill saying, "The heat will kill anything on it." I took off my apron and handed it to him and walked out. A few weeks later the place was condemned and permanently shuttered by the health department. (I didn't call them)
How about working for a VP for 12 years? When company was sold, VP asked me specifically to leave old company (that I no longer enjoyed under the new owners) and come work for her...Which was great... For about a year... I was REALLY sick & the docs couldn't figure out what was wrong. While at Drs appts,, VP went through my PERSONAL messenger messages, where I talked to a trusted co-worker about how I was absolutely scared shitless of VP.. I learned to gauge her mood as she came into work & did my utmost to focus on work/avoid her, because she was TERRIFYING..Even the smallest mistake/misfile got me screamed/sworn at/berated. Then she took it to another level by telling me that I should use FMLA to get healthy. 3 months off sounded great! Except she never gave me FMLA paperwork & I didn't know better, so, when I was ready to return, she told me my position was now part-time w/NO BENEFITS, including medical! Totally ef'd me over. (I spent every day of those 3 months in the hospital!)
My husband's last job, his amazing boss left. He was the obvious next in line, but the board refused to even consider him. They wouldn't even give him an interview even though he'd been second in command for 5 years and had already been doing half of the job. But they did expect him to temporarily fill in the position (the position they said he wasn’t suited for) for an entire year while they interviewed other people. Then even asked him to sit in on the interviews and give his opinion. When they finally hired someone (someone my husband had STRONGLY advised against hiring), he was demoted back to his previous position at his previous pay and was told by the board they expected him to do everything he could to help the new guy succeed. He immediately started putting in applications elsewhere. In less than 3 years, new guy ran the place into the ground and the entire company folded this fall. It was heartbreaking because it had been such an amazing, thriving place.
Worked at a post office.. had a long day heavy mail and package day.. told the supervisor I'm going to need help.. she said, you don't need help you're a professional. I ended up working till 10pm.. last one in.. she easily could've send me help to deliver the mail faster but did that out of spite. Now they can't work past 8pm. Also once I was in terrible pain.. was bent over excruciating pain.. called in sick.. I was a sub.. told me they didn't have anyone to cover me so I.. stupidly went to work when I should've head to the er.. I worked super slow.. sweating just raising my hands up .. ended up going out on the street deliver half the route when they sent 2 people to take the rest of my stuff.. went home.. later went to hospital found out i had a bad appendix!
I was working in a supermarket on home shopping. We had these huge trolleys that didn't go where you needed them to and they were unsteerable when laden down with goods. I was bending, lifting, pushing, pulling for 6 hours a day. Several of us complained about the weight limit on the trolleys but they ended up increasing the load. I inevitably hurt my back and was off work for 3 months. I was called in for a meeting and told that if I didn't come back to work I'd lose my company sick pay (I'd still get Statutory Sick Pay but I wasn't able to survive off such a low amount). During that meeting I was told I needed to come back in because they had high staff sickness levels and were pushing people to return to work as the numbers looked bad to head office. I started looking for a new job that day. I did return to work on 'light duties' which were anything but light. I handed my notice in 3 weeks later.
(1) In a company with ca 12 members in 1 year 10+ new people came and went due to excessive micro management of owner. HR was his wife, who had a different last name. The customers were not supposed to know that. (2) Company branch office was renting a room from an other company in a huge campus. The other company held classes and served lunch sandwiches to the students. I got an official complaint by the other company boss for eating my lunchbox in the office. The complaint went through the main office highest chief, not the highest guy in my branch office. Also eating in the kitchenette was banned. (3) Fancy IT company, I had told of my upcoming resignation 3 months in advance (as per law). I was withheld the well earned yearly bonus in order to keep the hotshot of the team from leaving (he left anyway a month later), manager told it to my face. (4) IT company, anything I said as a foreigner female was overheard, same from a native male it was approved. I had 10+ years experience.
My hubby had a boss we called "the rabid blond ferret". That summed up that workplace for him. He quit, and hasn't touched alcohol since. We sense a correlation....
TL;DR - IMO, the larger the company the less they care. I had a good job. Unfortunately, probably because it's a large company, their attitude towards my physical and mental health meant that I had to resign. It was a lose/lose situation, I lost a monthly income and they lost one of their best, hardest working employees (I know that sounds like I’m blowing my own trumpet, but I was loyal and because it was a financial business and mostly predominately Excel/Spreadsheets based, my skills at Excel vastly improved overall efficiency in my department, cashiers).
