Ever had a job where you weren't valued as an employee? Care to share your experience?

I’ve experienced this in the military a few times over the last 20 years. It happened at different duty stations and part of the reason was that my entire military career has been in the law enforcement field and we’re not always highly looked upon by the other career fields in the service.

Sometimes the military police career can be a lonely and thankless job in some respects and you learn early on to take very good care of and protect your own to a high degree. It’s the nature of the business.

I was working for Kentucky Fried Chicken as a cook, which is very hard work. My boss told me I wasn’t worth the $1.75 I was getting an hour.
I did continue working there, and the boss changed her mind. I quit 2½ years later to work for AT&T, and she was devastated.

A few years later, while working for Pacific Bell, I told my boss I had an idea of how to fix a problem we had on a job. Without hearing the idea, he berated me, and said I didn’t know shit, and to do the job exactly as written, so I did. When he realized what I had done, he yelled at me more for not telling him about the problem. I reminded him of the earlier conversation, and of my solution, which would have fixed everything. I completely humbled him.

Since then, there has been an expression at my job: ” How do you fuck the boss? Do exactly what they want!”

That’s known as malicious compliance, @filmfann. Sometimes the most satisfying possible response to a frustrating situation.

This was one of my earliest jobs in advertising—and by far the shortest. I was hired by a small Dallas agency to do copywriting. During my first week the president took me out to lunch, I thought to welcome me. Turns out he was a Born Again and knew I was Jewish. After a few minutes of work talk, he suddenly announced that he wanted to help me convert, and he warned I’d go to hell if I didn’t.

I quit the same afternoon.

I worked at Family Dollar for 6 months this year and it was the worst job I ever had. They are the worst American corporation you could work for. Walmart treats their employees better.

First off, there were ever only 2 of us working. The store I worked at was considered “high volume”. Which means it was extremely busy. Oftentimes, I was stuck working with the store manager and she was as lazy as they come. She NEVER opened up her register, and the line would grow and grow. I’d ask her for help and she would tell me I need to move faster. Then she’d get on the phone and go to the back of the store or go outside and smoke a cigarette. I’m not exaggerating. She did this every time I worked with her.

Sometimes, I’d work with the assistant manager and he always helped me when it got busy. We hardly ever had long lines on those shifts. I used to hope every week that I’d get scheduled with him and not her.

The cashiers are also responsible for stocking shelves in between customers. This was hell and you could never get anything done because there was always a customer ringing that damn bell. You’d have to stop what you were doing and run back to the register. Customers would get snippy at us because they had to wait the ten seconds it took me to get there.

They would schedule us with 10 hour shifts and only give us 1 half hour break. No lie. We were lucky if we got bathroom breaks. Most of the time you just had to hold it.

The computer system had a monitoring software and it would unfairly flag you for suspicious activity. It would say you had too many returns without receipts, or too many returns in general. Store policy allows for returns without receipts. What are we supposed to do, refuse returns? Both me and the other girl got flagged a few times because we were the only cashiers and were the ones who ran the registers the most. It was a bullshit system.

Don’t ever work for Family Dollar.

Right now…

^ We call it “Family Squalor”, and actively protest every new one they open around here.

Well, my most recent job hired me as a full time permanent employee, with full knowledge that the company would be going defunct within a year.

I took online classes in my spare time in order to fill the space left when half the marketing team moved away by total happenstance, worked overtime, re-wrote half of the customer service telephone scripts, and caught about a million stupid rookie errors in their marketing materials before they went to print, saving the company loads of money and a ton of embarrassment.

Or so I thought.

Turns out they didn’t give a damn about any of it anyway, what with the company closing its doors and all.

All this, and I was reprimanded several times, because I wasn’t assembling “silver samples” fast enough. These are tiny, little 1 gram silver coins placed within a plastic capsule embedded in a business card, that the company was selling to its clients for $3 a piece – to drum up more clients for a company THAT WAS CLOSING. I was supposed to be making 2000 a week. On top of all of my other work. When the plastic capsules (made in China) were faulty about 66% of the time (you can do the math on how many capsules I was expected to go through)... while I was wearing two wrist braces due to carpal tunnel syndrome symptoms brought on by making the goddamn samples.

And that’s the best job I’ve had so far. I was devastated when I was laid off. With no warning.

I will be boiled in oil before I take another office job.

@Seek_Kolinahr I’m happy to say I have a much better job now, with higher pay and no grief.

I have this short conversation with my wife about once a month….

Me: ”.....and this is why…... I ......”
Wife: ”......hate people….”
Me: ... “Correct !!”

I had a shit job at a shady business as a receptionist. Paydays were on tuesday. On the sunday, the ‘manager’ rang and said the ‘accountant’ was out of town so I wouldn’t get paid till the next tuesday. The following sunday, she rang and fired me 30 minutes before my shift was over. She said I could come in on the tuesday after that ( a drive into town) and pick up my pay. I had seen them open the safe a few times and knew the combination. So, on that sunday, I said I had to go to the bathroom, got my car and parked it by the backdoor, engine running. Then I went into the office, opened the safe, took enough cash to cover my pay and left.

At my last shop, a small 6-man CNC shop, I did ~80% of the programming, posted 75% of the productivity (by dollar amount), and was the only one to do the difficult and/or high-value jobs. Basically, everything the lead was supposed to do. And for $12/hr; most who did what I did there and did it competently would get $20–25/hr at any other employer.

Well, that shop has been struggling lately since I moved on. Now, I do half the work and ¼ the thinking I used to for a place that started me at $18/hr.

@OneBadApple When my wife worked retail, we had that conversation at least 3 times a week.

Retail !! Sweet Jesus, I decided at a very young age that whatever I ended up doing for a living, it would NEVER involve having to deal directly with the general public.

Like you, I worked in a professional job related to the manufacturing industry, but my wife just retired after 27 years as a mail carrier, and has told me several stories which made me seriously consider finding some of these “fine citizens” and sending them for a nice, long hospital stay…...

And this is why….. I ......

Hate people. Yep.

Correct !!

@OneBadApple They were hiring, and it paid the bills after I was laid off. Unlike her, I never dealt with anyone who asked to use the bathroom, mistook an artery for a vein, and squirted blood all over the walls.