Workplace Horror Stories!

Lately, my physical well being hasn't been the greatest. Nausea, lack of appetite, increased heart palpitations and anxiety. Yet, I found the one thing that has helped me cope (and reduce my stress levels)
is by distracting myself with writing.

In my teenage years, I worked on and off at my dad's home renovation business. With the help of one other assistant, We mostly fixed up homes around the city's middle to upper class neighbourhoods; practically
the only areas where a contractor could make an honest living.

Besides working nonstop from the early hours of the morning right into the evening, my biggest problem was travelling to work. More often than not, I would show up to the job before daylight. 1 bus route, 2 rail
transit stops and 27 stops on the subway itself. Most times, not eating breakfast or getting a full night's sleep in the process.

For this particular story, I showed up to a job near the city's waterfront. The homeowners were a pleasant Ukrainian family that needed their living room and upstairs bedrooms painted. As per my usual custom, I would
change on the job before work began. With work clothes in hand, I ended up changing in the basement out of view of the family. Conveniently, the basement was located below the house's small kitchen with the doorway
imposed over the breakfast nook.

In full uniform, I walked upstairs, passed the family enjoying their breakfast and headed for the front hallway. Picking up a paint brush, my dad glanced over at me and quietly gestured for me to lean in closer. In a hushed
 aggravated tone, my dad murmured:

"fix your f*cking pants"

Being sleep deprived, I had just proudly paraded past a family having breakfast ....with my work pants on backwards.


So, the moral of the story? A cup of coffee goes a long way in the morning.

Just watching this video on twitter:

I've pretty much subscribed to the idea of 'Quiet Quitting'. That isn't to say you're not doing your job until someone notices and fires you. It's doing your job exactly to the specifications of your employment contract and no more and no less.

I remember my father giving me the advice that whatever job you have, be the first person to volunteer or be the first person to offer to go above and beyond and that by being pro-active in your career you'll find yourself moving from the bottom, upward fairly quickly.

This was probably some of the worst advice I ever got. Probably because Meritocracy doesn't really exist in most modern work environments any more. I'm sure it did at one point and still might in some places, but I've been working since I was 13 and have never experienced it. In fact it actually worked against me over the years. Being the guy to volunteer to do the dirtiest jobs only meant I was now defaulted to doing those jobs permanently, because a supervisor wouldn't have to go through the hassle of designating an employee who will complain about it.

The breaking point for me was seven years ago when the same supervisor who used to constantly threaten my job and call me in to work on my days off even when I wasn't on call and who I skipped all my breaks and lunches for and came into work sick or injured, called me into his office and told me "So I hear you're not doing any work." Whether this was someone else in the shop trying to get me in trouble or him just finding another way to harass me, I don't know. I had speculated that a lot of his hostility toward me was because he couldn't fire me so he was hoping to get me to quit.

That event completely changed my mentality to the work place. I'm killing myself for what? My wages aren't going to go up. I don't get a production bonus if I have a really good shift. Whether I build two units or two hundred units a shift I don't see a penny more or a penny less and the last five years the company has hardly promoted anyone from the labor force into management and have just been hiring people off the street who don't know anything about the business.

Our plant hasn't been at staff capacity in almost three years. There used to be people lined up around the building applying to get in here, but the wages have not kept up with inflation and the disparity between us and car builders used to be a wage gap of $4 and now it's around $20. They kept up with inflation over the years while we haven't.

The most we get is if we have perfect attendance for a year, we can wait six months and get a $200 pre-paid Visa card as a thank you. But it's always nice to hear the news about the executive branch of the company getting their multi-million dollar bonuses because profits were so good that year.

It's the people that get friendly with management that get the promotions. I'm not that kind of person. I don't come to work to make friends I go there to work, and I believe my work should speak for me. I didn't get a promotion once and was told it was because I didn't have enough experience, even though I had worked several different positions in the front and back of the store and at one point was a supervisor. The guy who got it had no supervisor experience and had only worked overnights, and mostly in the backroom. I didn't care that he got the position, but I hate that they lied to me.

I can't help but work hard. My goal at a job is to outwork everyone else. Not to impress anyone, just to be the best. But it has backfired in the past. I was on the truck crew, and eventually the truck crew lead. Every day we came in we had to clear the floor and set up for the truck. Then I went on to become the backroom supervisor on days. At that point the manager decided me and my crew needed to start setting up for the truck crew because it helped them to get the truck unloaded faster. Then, after spending several years working hard, I was exhausted and went to receiving. Before I went there, there were two ladies working receiving and they spent a good portion of their day sitting back watching me and my crew work and management never said anything. So I thought when I went there I would get to relax a little. I was wrong. Anytime I sat back to rest a little it seemed like there was a manager making me do the things I did for my previous position. Sure enough I had to start setting up for the truck crew because the new backroom supervisor couldn't get all of his work done. The worst part is the girl that I worked with in receiving got to sit around and nothing was said to her.

Honestly been mostly more of the same for a while, but another "maybe there's a chance this isn't as terrible an idea as it looks on paper" is limping along.

The problem child in particular is stuck with someone with nearly identical habits so it's both amusing and sad to see them react to the same exact shit they pull.

Had my first raised voice disagreement in a few years.

Normally I'm one of the first people to arrive at work. Usually an hour early. I actually punch in and go sit in the Line Leaders office. It's where people all gather as they show up for work and where we have our morning meetings before a shift.
Right after me the line leaders shows up, as they are required to be at work 30 min early anyway to get a count on stocks, get a report from the last shift, assign the crew to their machines on a posted sheet of paper and check the attendance call-in computer program to see who has called in sick for the day. If you call in sick, you're required to call in by 6:30 at the latest, with shift start at 7:00.

Now I usually don't look at the assignment sheet to see which machine I am running, as I have run the same machine for the last seven years. A lot of the veteran guys don't look at it either as they often run the same machines as well. So when 7:00 comes around we just walk out to our machines and start working.

So as usual we're in the office just casually chatting and much of the conversation before other people show up is him complaining to me about his job. Shortly after we show up two others show up, an older married couple who work in our shop, the husband also works on my machine. They arrive early as well because they have to drive over an hour to get to work. Then the second line leader shows up and the two line leaders start doing their computer work and attendance checks.

Anyway, a completely harmless remark from one of the line leaders escalated things in the room very quickly.
A few shifts back one of the women didn't show up for work. She didn't call in and people just assumed she was there. Apparently she had been assigned to my machine and the line leader remarked that I hadn't let anyone know she didn't show up for work and that we were three hours into the shift before anyone realized she wasn't there. It was no biggie, I don't know if she overslept or called in sick later or whatever. She never showed up for the shift at all and I didn't even notice she wasn't there. It's a big shop and I don't even see more than half the people working in the shop the entire shift.
But he says to me that 'we' (meaning myself or the new guy) gotta let him know if someone doesn't show up.
Not unreasonable, I've even done that in the past.

Problem is, A: I didn't know she wasn't there because I don't keep track of my coworkers comings and goings because it's not my fucking job, and B: I didn't know she was supposed to be on my machine because I don't look at the assignment sheet to see where everyone is posted because I've been posted to the same machine for the last seven years. Most of the old crew doesn't even come down to the line leader office let alone look at the assignment sheet when they come in.

The new guy (from the married couple) doesn't look at the assignment sheet either because usually when we're sitting in the office together the line leader tells him what machine he is going to work on for the shift.
So the tone of the remark was a little passive aggressive. "You need to call and let someone know when someone doesn't show up." the way he said it like he was scolding me even though I didn't do anything wrong.
Myself and the other guy exchange looks and he says, "Well I'm going to leave that to someone with a higher pay grade than me." and I said, "Same." just because of his tone; the onus of attendance monitoring and workforce placement isn't mine. Come 7:00 I'm out there working, not wondering who has and hasn't shown up for work.

Then things got a little snappy. "Well you need to give one of us a call when that happens." Completely ignoring that I just explained to him why I didn't even know she wasn't there. I immediately said something to the effect that "I'm not responsible for monitoring coworkers attendance. In fact, if you want to get technical that's a line leaders job."

"Well I don't go up and down the shop checking to see if everyone is where they are supposed to be." He's getting loud now and I can tell he's getting pissed. I wanted to say "Maybe you should then, it's what you're getting paid for as the line leader." but I held back because I've never had a problem with this guy before and said "Well, neither do I. Since day one I was told at 7:00 I am to be running that machine and that's what we did."

"Well then you're going to end up running short handed." he snapped back at me louder and the others in the room are now dead silent.

The old me would have just said 'whatever.' and left it at that seeing he was getting agitated.

"I ran the machine with two people for almost an entire year and no one cared then, you think I give a shit if I run short handed? I'll run the goddamn thing by myself for the entire shift, every shift if I have too."

Oooh, for a guy that complains about the company as much as he does he didn't like that. He spins around in his chair back to facing the computer and just loudly says "Good! Glad to hear it!"

So I add on "I got my audiobooks, I plug in and go to work if people are on the machine or not. Whether I build 2 or 200 I get paid the same."

"Fantastic!" he says and goes completely quiet.

Some of the tension started to diffuse in the silence and other people started filtering in and changing the conversation, but I could tell he was butt hurt and the other line leader didn't say a word.
I noticed during the shift that his machine broke down for a good chunk of this shift and when that happens you're supposed to go over and help out other machines and he and his little group just stayed at their machine talking. Not that I am complaining. I was completely honest about being happy to work on a machine by myself.

In the break room I told a few other people what had happened and one of them said he had pretty much had the same conversation with him a few months ago that got heated and that he agreed with me. It's not our job to monitor attendance.

The next shift I was the first one in as usual and sat down in the line leader office as usual and he came in 20 minutes later and everything seemed completely normal. While I'm sure he will always keep my voice of dissent in the back of his mind he doesn't seem like the type of guy who would look at retaliation like some of the other line leaders we've had in the past. But, even if he was, there's not much out there he could retaliate against me with aside from moving me to a different machine. He knows I like working on my machine and he knows other people in the shop hate it. I've been on it seven years and am accustomed to fixing bugs on it in minutes that other people have shutdown and called technicians to fix.

Another addition came and went to the disappointment of my counterpart. A whole lot of effort, heart to heart talks etc. that went nowhere.


The problem child is in a put up or shut up after openly pining for a spot at another company backfired. Long story short, they are envious of somebody in a similar role here but they never tried to do the same trainings etc. Somehow from there they started latching onto and talking up others griping about being shorthanded. Ended up with a pile of paperwork and a short deadline.