When the CEO let everybody work from home except for a female junior dev on my team. Not sure whether it was because she’s female or an immigrant, but the two of us had other jobs within a month. Fuck these powertripping CEOs.
The boss told me to leave and never come back.
Yeah, that’ll do that.
Managed a shop for over 10 years and took on duties to the point that the owner was only there for a few hours a week in the morning to check emails. The store did record business during the early covid days, and never closed the doors for a single day. The staff was stretched thin, stressed, and everyone was working like crazy and a bit nervous about health because we had a couple older guys working with us and nobody knew the harm profile of covid at that time. The owner bought expensive store improvements (with profits, and fraudulently claimed federal covid benefits) instead of paying the staff, or even saying thanks in any way. See ya!
I want to report them for the fraud thing, but I’m the only one who knows about it aside from the owner, so they’d know it was me who reported it.
I want to report them for the fraud thing, but I’m the only one who knows about it aside from the owner, so they’d know it was me who reported it.
What’s the owner gonna do, fire you?
Fair point. However, we still run in the same professional circles & there would be blow back. The fraud thing offends my core values on fairness, but its easier for me to leave it weighing on my conscience, than report it and stay up at night wondering if it will come back to bite me in my professional life and make it harder to keep a roof over my head and food on my table. It’s a shitty situation.
CEO scolded me in front of my team for joining a meeting virtually and told me to come into the office more frequently. The underlying assumption that my work is not good unless I come in is what drove me away. Especially because it’s a hybrid position and my commute sucks. 1 day remote is not hybrid. The interview process led me to believe they were far more flexible than they actually are.
A similar thing just happened at my current hybrid job. My company is owned by a much larger corporation and the only reason it hasn’t been fully absorbed is because we’re making a lot of money for them. An email was sent out from corporate with the usual RTO talking points (COVID is over, we did great working apart but now we need to all come in to work together because we’re better this way) with the due date being early September. Less than an hour went by when a rep from my company sent out a follow up email asking us to ignore the first message because it’s only for the parent company. I was halfway done updating my resume when I saw it. I’m guessing there where more than just a few people who sent out some very angry emails to upper management.
It was my first real job out of college. It was at a university “group” (literally 3 people at the time including me) planning to spin out into a company.
It started with stupidly long hours until covid hit. Then things were okay for a while, we were just working on our prototype product at a comfortable pace. Then this prototype started nearing completion and shit hit the fan.
First off, I was asked to be a co-founder. This would apparently entail working evenings and Sundays (!!!) on company-related stuff so the normal working hours stayed free for working on the product. I declined.
Then, the team lead started making promises. Lots of promises, for demonstrations of our product. And every fucking time he never told us until the last fucking moment leaving us scrambling to prepare something. At some point there were a couple of 12-hour days and that’s when I said fuck it and handed in my resignation.
What also played a part is that I wanted to do more software development for quite some time but the team lead kept blocking me in that.
at my old company I had a co-worker who was moderately competent if he tried but didn’t seem to do so all that often.
My boss had been dangling a promotion for me for a few months, and I’d put in some extra work during that time related to my co-worker who seemed to be unable to manage a development team for one of his projects.
promotion time came and even though my manager was very aware that I was doing a significant portion of a co-worker’s job, they offered the co-worker the promotion in order to keep them around since they had another job offer.
I think I was gone in about 2 months? didn’t take too long to line something better up.
From the CEO: “Our competitors won’t accept these jobs. They result in too many workman’s comp claims. We’ll take them.”
It’s a gig economy company… They are willing to take them because the workers are considered independent contractors and not employees. They offload liability onto the workers themselves.
Good lord do I wish I was recording that when it happened…
Small tech Company fired a loyal and tireless employee so they could use her salary to hire an executive.
Fuck that shit, I bolted.
I worked for Dish Television. One day their CEO announced that they were going to enter the 5G cellular space as a pivot from their primary TV distribution business that was losing subscribers at an alarming rate.
Cox cable has been advertising that they now have cell phones. Again. They tried it ten or so years ago and then they stopped providing cell service after about a year.
I wouldn’t even get internet through cox if we had a reasonable alternative. Why would I torture myself by adding another service?
I spent one night cleaning commercial airliner cabins at a regional airport.
Since I was would have basically unrestricted access to commercial airliners post 9/11, I had to go through serious screening to get this job. Fingerprinting, MASSIVELY invasive federal background checks, the whole 9 yards. You’d think I was going to work at the Pentagon. But that’s a good thing. If someone has momentarily unfettered access to an entire jet that will be carrying a ton of jet fuel and hundreds of passengers, I absolutely want to make sure people are thoroughly vetted. It was made ABUNDANTLY clear to me, the potential consequences of fucking up this job. If I were liable for a fuck up I would be at the very least fined thousands of dollars, at worst I’d be thrown into federal prison.
So my first day passes and I get called into my supervisors office. Apparently I missed a non-sanctioned magazine a previous passenger had left in a seat back of a flight. I wasn’t being fired or fined, but I was on final warning. Over a magazine. I quit on the spot.
I also forgot to mention that this job payed barely above minimum wage…
I wasn’t going to bust my ass cleaning airplane cabins, risking my livelihood and freedom for a fucking pittance.
When I acted as a lead for two years while they dragged their feet on giving me the official title, then immediately gave it and a major raise to my successor (who I mentored to midrange from junior) when I switched departments. I threw away the whole company, which ironically prided themselves on diversity and made a big deal about it every chance they got.
There was only one female leader in the entire division, and she was only put on fluff projects. I went to a supposedly conservative company, which gave me the title and a 50% raise within the first year.
When the new general manager (the third one in a year, and 5th since I started) decided to go really big into “Lean” and was literally reading to the office personnel from a Paul Akers book on lean as if we were in the third grade.
I read this comment twice before I figured out you weren’t talking about codeine and soda.
What was he talking about tho
Lean/six sigma. Its kinda hard to describe, but its basically a way of doing business that is ‘more efficient’. Its principles are having as little inventory on hand as possible and trying to make sure there is no process waste by making sure everything happens “just in time”. For everyone but workers it works pretty well to generate more profit and produce more goods, or at least it did until the supply chain got completely fucked.
Yeah. And it’s wildly risky for the business. Another sign that the leadership intends to inflate the stock price, sell their stock, and move to an island somewhere while the company fails.
Early job delivering flowers in a work provided van. Late 90s.
Company is a one-man-band with me as second employee/driver. Vans ‘maintained’ by the owners wishy washy mate.
On a delivery run, driving down a hill toward a stop sign to cross a dual carriageway.
Brakes fail.
Quick engine braking down through the gears(column mounted) to first, and then pull the t-bar park brake to just pull up at the stop sign as two cars go past at 70kmh.
Call the owner, tell him brakes have failed, he says “no they didn’t”, I see red and say “yes they fucking did, I quit”. I was seething.
A corner cutting brake bleed, leaving air in the lines almost had me in a car accident. Yeah, fuck those clowns.
My boss gave me stupid directions - stuff I knew was wrong or inefficient. I tried to convince her otherwise, she wasn’t having it, and I’m in trouble if I don’t do what she says. Fine, I’ll follow your stupid orders, no problem. My dad taught me, “If they want a little bullshit, give 'em a little bullshit.”
Then in a meeting with her and her boss, I get asked why I did the stupid thing. “Well, I was directed specifically do to that very thing.”
He says to me, with her right there, “Well, you need to take responsibility for your actions.”
Started applying the next day, now have a team working for me who are great, and my greatest fear is giving them stupid directions.
Don’t give directions. Offer support. Unblock them. Teach them to be autonomous experts. Good managers help their teams do their work by making sure they don’t have to do anything but their work.
You probably already know this, but I’m saying it for the group. Good managers exist, and their role is to help actual workers work more effectively and remove obstacles to good work. Not to tell people how to work.
I’ve known several people that were good leaders until they became management, then it just became like Danno’s experience. “Fuck you, I got mine” was all too common of a way of thinking at my former place of employment.
A few main issues contributed: the commute was 1.5-2h each way. The pay was low, and the raises that kept being hinted at never materialized. And the supervisor… picture this: you’re in your mid 20’s,and your supervisor is the same age as you. He was clearly only made supervisor because he’s good at the work he used to do, not because he has any leadership skills. He doesn’t seem to enjoy being in management, and is responsible for a solid 90% of all workplace hostility. He’s not exactly mean or anything, but definitely way too intense. Despite having done the same work you’re doing, his expectations seem maybe impossible? His work is his life and he brags about things like working on Christmas.
There were a lot of things I genuinely liked about the job, but after a time my mental health was the worst it had ever been. It’s the only time I’ve genuinely felt suicidal at all, as in, not intrusive thoughts, but actual desire. I had so little spare time because of the commute, but couldn’t afford to move closer. I knew I had to leave the job and was frequently applying for other jobs but hadn’t had any success yet. I was too scared of not having another job lined up.
Then I went and hung out with an old coworker from a restaurant I had worked at in the past, and I found out the dishwasher there had a higher hourly wage than I did at my STEM job that required a degree - it was a pretty fancy restaurant but still… Within like two or three days (I think, although I was dissociating a lot so it’s hard to say) I had my resignation letter turned in, and I was ready to leave and never look back.
