Job horror stories.

[Captain_Video]

Hey everyone.

I have been going through the week from hell at work and I was wondering as a bit of fun if anyone has any " tales of terror " to share about work.

Mine this week is a good one.

My company ( lets call them Murder Inc ) is looking for ways to cut costs, for a merger, this is widely known, but they have a lot of people in long term solid and fair contracts.

So they have been trying to force people out, either through bullying ( never written so it can't be proved in court ) or alternatively getting rid of lesser contracted workers.

Here is the horror part.

Over the last five days they have got rid of, A pregnant woman, told her on Friday not to bother coming in on Monday, A girl who had a day off for her relatives funeral, a disabled girl and a whole host of others, none given correct notice, none fighting it legally ( they dont have the money ).

So I kicked up a big fuss in a big meeting, asking how they justified it, asking if they knew the peoples situations, got them to say it was all for "the needs of the business" and "monthly profits" ( also got them to lose their temper with me which got a cheer from my co workers )...luckily I am in a tight contract and they would need really good cause to can me, but they are slyly making my life miserable at the moment, hoping I just quit.

I am glad I said something as I get to keep my pride and I was right to do so, but it was one of the stupidest things I have done, I usually don't like to self aggrandize, but I am for once proud of myself for something.

Basically this is a big measure to get out of pay outs, especially as they tried to get us all to sign a new decidely dodgy contract, that I disputed and won.

I am one of the only people left who will say anything there as all the others are off sick with stress and I am currently on the job market desperately looking to get out.

For the record I do believe there is a place for ethics and human decency in business and I also believe rampant ( I am talking multiple billions ) should be heavily taxed after a certain limit ( to help out the country ).

So what are your tales of horror and borderline evil company actions ? ( don't name, names obviously ).

[hoffmandu]

The horrors of the corporate world, AHHHHHHHHHHH. I hate em all, man, hate em worse than anything.

[macul]

We have nine offices in the city. We provide Internet connection for patients in the waiting rooms at two of the offices via business DSL connections. Those DSL connections are completely segregated from our corporate network. They do not talk at all.

Now the Big Boss wants all of the offices to have Internet for the waiting patients. Unfortunately he doesn't want to pay for DSL for all of the offices, so he wants to allow the patients on to our corporate network.

I want to ask him when he got hit with the Stupid Stick cause from a computer network security point-of-view, that is just about the worst idea imaginable.

[StoneGold]

I had a boss who threatened to beat the shit out of me physically. He seemed pretty surprised when I wasn't cowed.

[Haunt]

two people in my office came down with Hepatitis because another-ex-coworker was going around licking (& who knows what else) the plastic utensils in our desk drawers.

[Paul McEnery]

none fighting it legally ( they dont have the money ).


Employment lawyers will work on contingency. Especially if there's a group of clients. And the corporation is clearly acting illegally.

[Sir Tim Drake]

There was this one Tuesday when I was a graduate student. I had to design a website for one of my courses by Saturday, and I had two conference presentations on Thursday and Sunday, and I was also trying to make the abstract submission deadline for another conference, and on top of that, I had to make a three-minute video by Monday. I was utterly swamped with work and had no idea how I was going to finish it all.

Come to think of it, that was today.

[Nikita]

Actually, here in Illinois, we've had a sad story on the news about our newly elected county president Tod Stroger. (Cook County, Illinos, Chicago)

He's been under fire for the budget cuts he wanted and they finally settled on a plan but while no one in his office seems be feeling any cuts, his new budget is cutting badly needed jobs and public health clinics in some of the poorest neighborhoods of Chicago. He's cutting public defenders, nurses, doctors, police officers, and I think eight clinics are getting closed. That really sucks. I've had shitty bosses, but when I hear a story like that, I am grateful I still have a job.

[Joey Friday]

I've worked at JcPenny and this one really nice new girl got fired because they accused her of stealing cash without proof. Turned out it was three veteran workers. They found this out AFTER they said to themselves, "Hey, why don't we look at the security cameras to see who really took the money? Duh."

I've worked at several jobs after that where people were fired for harmless things. Stupid jobs.

[Matt Algren]

Back in my convenience store days, I had to work 26 hours straight one time. It was awesome. The best part came when I had to make the 30 minute drive home while trying to keep myself awake. Fortunately, I succeeded, but just barely.

[HomerJay]

Back in my convenience store days, I had to work 26 hours straight one time. It was awesome. The best part came when I had to make the 30 minute drive home while trying to keep myself awake. Fortunately, I succeeded, but just barely.
The worst part was that you weren't even supposed to be there that day.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v655/HomerJay64/clerks.jpg

[Matt Algren]

The worst part was that you weren't even supposed to be there that day.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v655/HomerJay64/clerks.jpg
I refused to check the bathroom before I left.

[Shellhead]

I got fired on my one-year anniversary at a job. I was actually working up the nerve to ask for a raise at the time, since they gave me a big promotion six months after I started without any pay increase.

At the time, my boss (a short Vietnam vet with a big chip on his shoulder) made some obscure references to "what I had done" and then said, "I oughta shoot you. But instead, I'm going to contact the state board and have your CPA license revoked." He dismissed me and turned me over to the Director of HR, who handed me my final paycheck and then supervised me while I cleaned out my desk.

As she escorted me to the door, I asked to talk to one of the clerks that I supervised. The HR Director refused, saying that she didn't want any trouble, until I explained that we were carpooling together because my assistant didn't have a car. We quickly worked it out that she could car pool with one of my other clerks from now on.

Months later, I found out why I was fired. We did a physical inventory count every six months there, an internal one at mid-year, and then the auditors did one at year-end. The year-end count revealed that $200,000 worth of hearing aid replacement parts were missing, and my boss blamed me. Two months after I left, they realized that they were still losing parts in suspicious quantities, and eventually discovered that the head of the inventory department and one of the customer service managers were running their own little side business selling stolen company parts to customers.

[Joey Friday]

Yep, Shellhead, that crap happens ALL the time, especially in big business. People getting fired for stealing or some other stuff and the bosses have NO PROOF whatsoever. Then usually it happens that they later find out oops, we fired an innocent person. They don't even try to rehire the person. After that insult I'm sure they know the person fired would spit in their faces. But the least they could do is apologize. Is there ever an apology? *crickets in the wind*

[Shellhead]

Yep, Shellhead, that crap happens ALL the time, especially in big business. People getting fired for stealing or some other stuff and the bosses have NO PROOF whatsoever. Then usually it happens that they later find out oops, we fired an innocent person. They don't even try to rehire the person. After that insult I'm sure they know the person fired would spit in their faces. But the least they could do is apologize. Is there ever an apology? *crickets in the wind*

In the long run, it was good that I lost that job. My boss was an angry and nasty man, the kind who would joke about women and minorities when he was hanging out with the white guys. The only good thing I can say about that situation is that my boss didn't shoot me, and he didn't actually try to get my CPA license revoked.

For six months after I lost that job, I worked hard at a low-paying temp job for an annoying micro-manager type, with a 30-mile one-way commute. Then I landed a great job working at a day spa in the Mall of America. The setting was interesting, the pay and benefits were decent, and many of my co-workers were attractive young women. One of the receptionists was Jaclyn Dahm, who quit the job to pose for Playboy with her triplet sisters.

Two years after I lost that job with the hearing aid manufacturer, I was talking to my aunt about it, and discovered that she used to work for the exact same guy, that angry vietnam vet. She told me that he was always bullying his secretary, and made her fetch his lunch every day. One time, that secretary was rushing back to the office with his fast food order in a blizzard, and accidentally crashed into his car in the parking lot. It was just a fender bender, but he threatened to have her driver's license suspended. At least he didn't threaten to shoot her.

[Astonishing X-Fan]

I work as a shift runner(basically one step below management) at a Dominos Pizza in Canada. For us, managers are constantly shifting around and changing, but lucky enough, I went for a good year and a half getting along with pretty much every manager or assistant manager we've had.

Now we have a new guy.

And good God, he is SO CHEAP.

The man REFUSES to give ANYTHING away for free. I'm sure anyone who works at any type of eating establishment knows, that if you screw someone's order up bad, the correct thing to do is to either give it to them free or at least at a discount. Either lose 20 bucks then or lose a customer for life, right?

Anyway, the other day, we had a lady call in an order in the morning. She worked at a retirement home, and was organizing a small meal for the elderly men and women staying there. She ordered like 4 or 5 pizzas and some wings, maybe a 30-40 dollar order in total. The supper was scheduled for 5 PM and she asked us if we could deliver it around 4:45, which of course we said would be fine.

So suppertime came and since our phone staff wasn't at work yet, I got stuck up front pretty much taking all the calls and helping all the carry-out customers for a while. It turned out to be a pretty busy start to the evening, and we had very few drivers to deliver all our orders. One driver showed up to work and I immediately told him to take the 4:45 order and I think one more along with it. He walked away from me and I went back to helping customers.

So the phone rings at about 5:30 and it's the lady who made the order, and she's pissed off. Why? Because her order isn't there yet, in fact it's almost 45 minutes late. I put her on hold for a second and walk over to the heat rack to see that it hasn't even left yet. The driver I told to take it didn't do it. So I get back on the phone and apologize profusely to her, tell her that I'll have it sent out right away, and that we will not charge her for it. While she was still mad, she accepted that. So I change the order in the computer to free and get the first available driver to take it.

Pretty much the very second the manager sees the order sitting on the rack, now changed to be free. He starts flipping out, and I mean FLIPPING OUT. He starts frantically rampaging around the store, shouting "WHO MADE THIS FREE?! WHO MADE THIS FREE?!" at the top of his lungs.

An hour later and he was still bitching about it. He actually expected us to still charge full price despite the fact it would have been AT LEAST 5:45 when it got there, a full hour later then the time we PROMISED it would be there.

The next day he put a note in everyone's cash box about how no one is allowed to give away a free order or discounted order anymore.

I never did bother telling him it was me.

We are also never allowed to actually offer any of the combos or promotions that our flyers advertise. If a customer does not know about it, then we are expected to charge regular price, and our regular price is extremely, extremely high. What's even worse is people who have not recieved a flyer will order food, get charged a ridiculous amount for it(I've seen them charge over 20 bucks for one ten inch pizza), and then when they pick the order up, they see a stack of flyers sitting right there on the counter, offering what they just bought for a fraction of what they just paid, and they get pissed off. As they should. But even when this happens, we're not allowed to change the price of their order to match the flyer, we have to tell them we won't give them anything unless they already have the flyer.

Thank God I'm in a high enough position that I can ignore these "rules" when the boss isn't around.