My company was discovered using monkeys for emissions tests. They were gassing monkeys, and legitimately used “everyone in the industry does it” as an internal defense to quell upset staff.
Fuck Volkswagen. Straight up. No fucks given, worst job I ever worked.
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.
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.
When after lockdown they forced us back into the office after we showed we could do all the work perfectly from home. To top it off they hired 2 sales people for remote work.
Surviving a layoff… time to leave before second layoff happens.
Not me but my partner.
She was working as a research assistant in a lab for several years. She asked her boss if she could be promoted to a research associate, which was one level above her. She already been doing the job of a researcher (3 levels above her). Her boss said that they were in a hiring freeze and that it wouldn’t be possible, but maybe in 2-3 YEARS she might be up for a promotion. Her boss wanted everyone to get the most they possibly could out of their current position before promotion. What my partner heard was that even if she eventually got the promotion to the next level, it might be 5-7 years after that promotion until the next promotion.
I’ve never seen her so angry when she came home. She immediately started applying to new jobs in a different field. She also stopped doing work above her pay grade, to which her boss actually tried to retaliate against her. Within 2 months, she moved onto a new job that is 75% WFM, pays more, has a better culture and is in a field where she can much more easily move upward.
Her former company has started layoffs.
Not doing more than what you’re paid for was a great lesson to learn early in my working life, good on her for knowing her worth.
I wish I learned it earlier… I’m on the downslope of 30s, and still find myself going above and beyond.
I don’t expect to get anything out of it at this point though… I learned a long long time ago that hard work doesn’t pay off, but I also don’t want to do my actual job, so I find other things I’d rather do, and do that. I can easily justify doing so, because everyone known I’m out soon, and what I’m doing has direct value even if it’s not really “my job”.
And from here on out, I’m just going to take contract work. Zero expectation of going above and beyond, because everyone knows it’s a temporary arrangement. Perfect, because I have no self control and am a major major people pleaser.
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.
The entire pandemic, our security operations team got constant commendations for how rapidly we scaled up, and they touted the increased productivity we had WFH. I was officially reclassified as a remote worker at the start of Covid.
Then we got a new manager after 2 years who decided everyone needed to RTO “as needed”, then monthly, then weekly.
My disabilities and medication prevents me from safely operating a vehicle to commute and my respiratory disability puts me at an extremely high risk of complications from Covid (was bedrested for 3 days from Covid, took almost a month to mostly recover, after multiple booster shots).
Tried to get accommodation, which I had never had to formally get before. Was surprisingly easy to get from HR, but my manager on the other hand made my life hell.
My manager, though, pulled out all the stops.
- He submitted a “request for family leave” for every workday that I was working from home instead of the office while I was working through HR accommodation request process. which I only found out about after HR mailed me a letter formally denying the requests.
- Then my manager straight up told me, “I think the only reason you put in a request for accommodation is to avoid coming into the office”
- Manager would “Forget” to invite only me to meetings, when others that were WFH due to illnesses like Covid would get an invite.
Jokes on them, though, I left with a very short notice, little to no documentation on key projects that I was the sole driver and maintainer on. Literally left 2-year project with 2 pages of documentation that weren’t even up to date.
- Went from making $100K total comp to over $150K total comp.
- Insurance is kickass, talking like $400/m medication only costing $15/m with no deductible.
- Nice RSU package, 60k over 4 years
- No after-hours or on-call, no SLAs
