I thought of this question because someone joked about double-dipping their hands in the chocolate fountain at Golden Corral and boy did that invoke one of my least favorite paying-for-college memories.
Yes, someone did dip his hands into the chocolate fountain at the Golden Corral. Worse, he was a repeat offender, a man that was at least in his 30s if not older slurping it off of his fingers and all, sometimes while making eye contact with me or my coworkers. Worse, there was no enforced rule against doing so, at least at my location, so my manager just told me to let him do it, don’t make a big deal out of it, and hope he doesn’t bother anyone else.
That same manager once insisted on me making the place extra clean a little before Christmas, so they insisted that I use double the amount of cleaning bleach in the same bucket. I explained that’s not how cleaning works or how OSHA compliance works. I got a write-up. I said that wasn’t an offense that qualified for a write-up, and what they said was “thanks for the tip, I’ll find something that is. Your word against mine.”
That same manager punched me out early without telling me, because the place wasn’t perfect enough before I left over an hour late, missing my family waiting to pick me up outside by that long to go out to do holiday stuff. I did call that in on the supposedly anonymous tip line later, but you can guess what happens when an anonymous tip about wage theft is called in on a manager that already knows who would call in that tip in a “right to work” situation.
That same manager was fired a week later for embezzlement, and not the cool kind. They were writing up and firing people for months for money missing from the register. I found out when collecting my last check and noticed someone new.
I’m sure I could think of more if I tried but I remember the first time during my first job that I realized customers will tell you to do things simply because they want a servant to perform arbitrary tasks for them and they’re willing to lie to or guilt trip strangers just for the rush of bossing somebody around.
I was working as a cashier and some lady went to pick up a bag and lifted it 3 inches before going “Ah” and her wrist gave out and dropped the bag. She wanted me to take some items out and put it in a separate bag because it was too heavy. At that moment it was no problem, I simply took half the stuff out and placed it in a separate bag. She then grabbed both bags in one hand and effortlessly lifted them into her cart.
It was such a short and meaningless interaction but I wanted to punch my register’s screen as hard as possible and quit right there but I just pretended like it didn’t happen because it was the end of the order. After that I started to notice all the little things people would do or say simply to get the feeling of having a servant and not because they actually need a task done
God damn do I have a lot.
I worked at McDonald’s when I was a teenager. It was around the same time that History Ended. I vividly recall being punished with a 12 hour shift exclusively running the deep fryers because I dared to complain that, hey, making kids who are barely teens stay until 1 AM was a teeny bit illegal.
I worked a 20 hour shift at a big box store the day after Christmas. The “sales staff” (read: the manager’s friends) made enough in commissions to buy new cars. I handled about a quarter million dollars in cash that day. I was paid less than $100.
I had a client pick up and throw a computer monitor at me, giving me a concussion. The regional manager waived his outstanding bills for this terrible inconvenience. I received a negative performance review and was put on probation for “not having a customer-first attitude”.
I took parental leave when one of my kids was born. Management started calling me “Mr. Whipped” during the lead-up to their birth. I was laid off during my leave.
I could go on.
No one incident comes to mind, but my last job saw me working in a lighting and furniture outlet. At least half of our customers were some manner of petty boug - homeowners, landlords, AirBnB owners, and the like.
They would come in to get furniture and fixtures for cheap, sometimes in bulk, which left us busting our backs and sweating our asses off in the un-air conditioned warehouse or out in the hot sun, loading hundreds or even thousands of pounds of merch into their expensive trucks, Land Rovers, or G wagons. Even the ones who rented transit vans or Uhauls tended to own Mercedes or BMWs as their personal cars. Oh, and Teslas. Lots and lots of Teslas. I saw more Teslas at that job than anywhere else in my life.
These people would almost never tip, and we weren’t allowed to accept them even if they had, since parking lot service of that kind was company policy - it was expected that we would break our back lifting sofas and fountains and stone and marble tables and whatever else, so it would be inappropriate of us, they said, to accept gratuities (we did anyway, fuck em).
The worst, though, was how they always seemed to be looking down their noses at us. Talking down to us. Treating us like scum, like field hands. I knew even before I started that service work was inherently demeaning and undignified and soul destroying, but this job really made me feel it, made me viscerally understand in a way that only direct experience can. I hope I never work customer service again, but if I do, I know the hatred I felt for customers will come right back to me.
I have my own story but it’s longer, maybe I’ll post later.
A woman I worked with was like, super into this job, took it very seriously and kind of also thought of herself as really good at the job and felt kind of self important or whatever. She had been there a while, longer than almost everyone else.
We had another worker get hired, same position as all of us, and she started off making quite a bit more than I started off making. I got hired for 13, she got hired for 16. She sucked. So. Bad. Less than zero productivity, literally only creating more work for other people. We couldnt tell if she was sandbagging or actually really really dumb, for real. For some reason management refused to even slightly do anything, and it just screwed us over again and again. Her dad probably knew the psychotic owner or whatever, which wouldn’t be the first nepo hire there.
By that time I was making 17 or 18 bucks. A couple of us gossiped to the first woman in the story, that it was so annoying to have to work with the new hire, etc. We also told her the nepo was making 16 bucks, and how crazy that was compared to what we all started with, but we told her in a way that it was immediately obvious that we were already making a little more than 16, not less. We weren’t sounding pissed in the way you would if you were still making less than the dumb nepo asshole.
She tried to smile through it but it was total devastation - her face was literally twitching.
We immediately realized, with 100 percent certainty, that she was still making less than 16… and knew we were all making more… including the nepo dumbass… despite her putting tons of energy into the job for longer than any of us…
JOKERFIED. HARD. She left pretty quickly after that.
