I’m coming up on 14 years of experience in my field, and I feel like because I like to have fun at work and joke around while we work, I don’t get treated like an adult. I’m 37. I work circles around some people and I feel like I leave it all on the field every day. I help everyone, I do just about anything they ask, I help get new people up to speed, I come in early often, I don’t come in high… you get the picture.
So my manager has like a year of on the job experience and is just about the worst manager I’ve ever had. Nothing is ever good enough and I’m always “wrong”. I’ve tried standing up for myself, and I’ve tried letting it roll off my back. Neither approach solves any of my problems.
Today, my manager waylaid my team member on a break and asked her what I do back there. I’m never not doing stuff and everyone but my manager sees it and knows it. I’m the type of worker that you don’t have to worry about.
So I text the manager after she left and asked if she had a problem with my work. Of course not! I’m gods gift to bread! Blah blah blah…
She calls my teammate after hours and discusses why I have a problem… doesn’t ask me why I am upset. Instead I’m the asshole for standing up for myself.
There’s a guy I work with that is basically checked out and refuses to make decisions or small talk. He’s a good worker though. He told me one day that I should just turn off my brain and do what management says no matter how stupid and just let the pieces fall where they may. I’m trying. I really am. But the leftist in me is screaming at me to stand up and try to fix it. It’s against my nature to prostrate myself to people like this. My new strategy is to turn my brain off and just be a soulless husk of a man at work who just keeps his head down and isn’t friendly toward anyone. I’m only going to talk about work and work related stuff.
It’s hard to do and it’s so lonely! I have to listen to the same garbage music every day hear the same “working hard or hardly working” jokes every day and eat the same bowl of shit every day because the management doesn’t pay any attention to the yahoos they pull off the street to do this job that should realistically have some training. It’s a daily shit show and me and a couple of people have to “deep state” fix everything behind managements back while they chortle at the wine bar and take credit for all the fires we put out.
I should just quit, right?
My job is recession proof, it pays pretty well and on a good day, I enjoy it. I’m also hitting that age where I’m slowing down a bit and I don’t know how to do anything else. I live at least 25 minutes from towns where jobs are, and they all would be a significant pay cut. I’m scared of the trump economy and rolling the dice on a different job.
I’m a lifeguard and half my coworkers don’t know what they are doing. If someone needs help it’ll be like 50/50 if I have backup. Even one of my managers is dogshit at rescues/dealing with emergencies. Needed an extra day for his recert because he couldn’t do it.
Also I’m depressed so sitting there with my thoughts is fucking horrible sometimes. Earlier I cried for like an hour. Probably unsafe.
That sounds rough. Also very dangerous. If your backup is incompetent and something happens to a swimmer, that would scar you for life. Such an easy problem to avoid, but there’s nobody at the wheel anywhere anymore
It’s a daily shit show and me and a couple of people have to “deep state” fix everything behind managements back while they chortle at the wine bar and take credit for all the fires we put out.
Typical. I’m inclined to believe this happens all across the economy.
I’d really like to talk with you more (perhaps privately) about what industry this is, and also about radical directions in the workplace and rural organizing. I suspect we have a lot in common- except that I’ve never put more than 2 years’ worth of full-time into a single job.
I don’t mind talking about it here I have a little in the past. I work in a commercial bread bakery. We’re pretty big, but not interstate big. Checked out guy I mentioned is in a relationship with someone else we work with and she’s a firecracker who wants to unionize. I told her that I just don’t have it in me to fire the first shot, but I’d happily back her up. She’s tenacious and he’s knowledgeable about the law side of things and is a lot more organized in his brain than I am. His demeanor is a lot cooler and goes over better with the higher ups too.
Still waiting for them to get off the dime.
So, uh, not related to anything at all, what do you think are the capital costs for entering into this industry?
And do you know anything about their balance sheets? Oftentimes the petty bougs will be arrogant enough to just outright brag about it.
Well, I know that every month they have a big staff meeting where they’re like “we’re growing and making crazy money!”
None of it ever trickles down. The owner has gone to Mt Everest every year since I’ve been back though…
I’ve had a different boss for just about every 9 months or so that I’ve been at my job. Its a very rewarding position with lots of opportunities and great things like meeting all sorts of people, but it is severely lacking in a major structure and in benefits that I’m coming to realize I need desperately. I am a professional at work but like you also said, because of how much management turns over, and that management always being pretty hands off, I’m beginning to feel like I’m plateauing and stagnating when now more than ever, because of the economy and my parent’s and partner’s failing health and so much else, I need to be rising up and being a bread winner. IDK, this shit just starts to feel more suckish and I just want to slack off more and more as the responsibilities get higher but less and less becomes concrete in the future.
tl;dr management delenda est,
Management turnover sucks for a lot of reasons, but the worst for me personally is that every time it happens, it basically restarts my own clock of how people view my experience. My 14 years mean nothing because this new person wasn’t there for it.
I spend so much time putting in the work and then the person that saw it all quits. Then I have to ingratiate myself to some new asshole that doesn’t necessarily deserve to be above me in the chain. It’s just a rotating door of PMC douches who don’t even know about bread, but they have a nice haircut and a polo shirt and a piece of paper from Fuddruckers university saying they deserve to make more money than me.
I just quit my job, I probably shouldn’t have but I couldn’t justify working there anymore to myself. I’m not sure if it was the right choice but once I hit my breaking point being there was torturous.
Is that where you’re at with this place? It sounds like you enjoy the job, it’s just this manager that is making your life hell for really no reason. Do you think there’s anyway to get them off your back?
I’ve quit there twice now. Once only for a couple of months and then again for three years. I just wanted a smaller bakery where I wasn’t getting destroyed daily. I don’t know if this is true outside of my experience but every bakery I’ve worked for was ran by a hippie coded middle aged woman who would knife you to save $5.
As for the manager and getting her off my back: we had words over text today and I was at least able to land a few punches. It ended with a bit of face saving on both of our ends because at the end of the day, I can’t just up and leave.
I can’t really go above her head because there really isn’t anyone. There’s the owner, but he’s a weird mix of a great boss and just completely out of touch. I think he would take the meeting but I’m afraid he would “we hear you, we see you” me and nothing would change. I e often compared my work culture to the DNC but nobody outside of hexbear would pick up what I’m putting down.
I’m not the only one who is in my position. I could probably organize a handful of people to have a sit down with the owner but like I said, I don’t really want a target on my back just now, and it would be a whole lot cooler if someone else put their money where their mouth is this time. I’ve gone to bat a bunch of other times with them over the years and it’s mostly made my life harder, hence the checking out and turning myself into a NPC at work
Damn, I’m sorry to hear. I have a friend who works for a smaller bakery and I think she would agree with you.
I guess getting your co-workers together could be your last resort if you’re on the edge of quitting already. I feel you about the NPC mode, I could never do it at my job either, even the most mindless of tasks can be enjoyable with just some chatter and camaraderie. I hope the situation improves, and if not, I’m sure you’ll find somewhere not so soul crushing.
Thanks. I always land on my feet but I wasn’t looking to jump in the first place. I just want to punch in, do a job and go home. No drama, no childish work politics
Don’t quit. Learn how the social systems work, then learn how to have conversations within the confines of those systems that make sense, primarily, with leadership – learn to talk like they talk, learn to think like they think. Don’t voice concerns outside that model, but instead exploit that model to voice concerns. Exploit the hell out of it.
Use their words to voice your concerns. Use their thinking to think out how you could leverage them to resolve your problems.
Then: become an advocate for your fellow workers. Because you now have a tool in your toolbox for advocacy that you didn’t have earlier.
I think this can be a useful survival strategy for corporate environments but I’m extremely skeptical of its ability to actually improve things for your fellow workers. At best maybe you can help yourself and some of your friends for a while. But I’d still put it in the survival strategy box not a genuine tactic to change anything in a broad or lasting way (unlike, say, worker organizing, though that’s got it’s risks too).
I’ve tried in the past. I’m not saying that’s bad advice, but I’m ultimately going up against a woman who has no control over her personal life so she has to come in and slap us around. You could say the sky is blue and she would say you’re wrong. There’s barely any recourse and what little there is would resemble sticking your tongue in a mousetrap.
People higher up than her just don’t care because from their perspective the job is getting done. They don’t care about the “how”
I could probably just wait her out. Other than a couple people like me, the average lifespan of a worker there is between six months and three years. She’s halfway to three years and I heard a rumor that she got a better job offer.
I think you’re selling yourself short in a few ways, in terms of being afraid of jumping ship.
With your kind of experience, you could absolutely swap to a nicer job that will treat you at least as good as where you are now, while likely paying better. That’s the way things work now after all - staying in one spot just isn’t as beneficial as jumping around, generally.
In addition, people really don’t slow down as much as we’re led to believe we do, in terms of being able to learn and do new things. You can learn a whole new language in your 60s and beyond, so what does learning the handful of ins and outs a new job confronts you with compare to that, when you’re not even 40?
That said I understand not wanting to jump ship and being concerned about the potential drawbacks and risks of trying to move somewhere different… I just know that the people who I have talked to about their desire to quit their jobs and then actually did it are much happier where they are now.
I’m in a position where I’m at the highest paying bakery in town. I’ve worked for a couple of others and had similar problems on a smaller scale. Mostly you just get abandoned by management and don’t have any co workers to lean on. Me and the co worker I mentioned above trauma bonded at a smaller bakery because the bosses just left us to run everything while they fucked off to Florida for two years. It went ok for a while but then they tried to micromanage us from Florida. They kept being like “we will be on the next plane home if you need us”
Well, one of our delivery drivers almost died in a car crash on the job and totalled the vehicle. They didn’t come back to help so I had to deal with the police and go to their house to get their personal vehicle. They even asked us to go to the junk yard to get any bread or bins we could out of the totalled car. Like we were supposed to re sell this bread?
All that is to say it looks like the only way out of this job is to jump to a different industry entirely because other bakeries are paying $7 less an hour than what I’m making. I could afford a little pay cut, but I would probably have to become the Walter white of shrooms to make ends meet.
I’m often in the mega venting about work. I get where you’re coming from. My situation in similar. Most everyone I work with likes working with me because I do my best to solve problems (and there’s a lot thanks to the way things are structured) and I do what I can to help people. Maybe its the people-pleaser in me, but I also go out of my way to accomodate for my co-workers scheduling needs, whether or not it’d be for things the company would deem “worthy” of giving time off or switching shift and what not.
The biggest problem we have is lack of staffing. Aside the fact that for the 5 years that we’ve been at this we’ve had work volume that should warranty at least one extra employee, the margin between being “sufficiently” staffed and severely understaffed is razor thin. Turn over is high because pay is shit (more on that later) and any time someone leaves I end up working 6 days for 50+ hours. And its tiring. At one point we did have that extra employee, but when they left they were never replaced. When there was a discussion about adding an extra employee about 6 months after, and yet more turnover, I made my case for adding another one, not just to handle the volume of work we had, but also so that we’d have sufficient staff if turnover remained high and so that we could comfortably take time off without having to have everyone else work 6 days. It fell on deaf ears. For a couple months my manager, who works from home btw, kept saying that it was being discussed internally between our company and the client company we were working with and nothing ever came out of that. We’re currently in a bit of a crisis because another location lost most of its staff (turnover or on leave) and we still haven’t heard anything about adding more staff, even though it was discussed once again due to a huge spike in work volume earlier in the year.
Speaking of my manager, they have a propensity to try and wave off my employees needs. One of my best employees had been with the company previously before transferring to work with me and his pay was reduced to match the starting pay for my location. When he sent an email to my manager asking for his pay to be raised to was it was in his previous location so that he can keep up with the increase in the cost of living my manager says “that’s the case for everyone”. It wasn’t until I went and got his pay history that he changed his tune and even then it took way too much convincing to get it done.
Also recently I had one of my employees go take some time off to travel. When they got back they contacted me (with sufficient time) to ask if they could take an extra day off to recover from their travels. When it came up in a conversation with my manager they said “oh, I’ve traveled and gone back to work the next day.” I didn’t fucking ask and I’m that person’s direct manager. If I was ok with it I don’t need to fucking know that you would have just come back to work.
And its this flippant attitude towards others’ needs that really has me thinking if I should stay. The job itself isn’t too bad. Admittedly my current staff isn’t great at the job and I’ve been patiently coaching them, hoping for an improvement in their work with little results to show for it. Having to make up for their short comings and the increased demand from the company is wearing me out. I really don’t think my manager cares enough to rectify the situation. I’m starting to look for a new job and I know its going to suck for all of my coworkers because if I do leave whoever comes in probably isn’t going to be as patient and flexible as I am. And I legit care about a lot of the people that I work with and it hurts just thinking about moving on, but I have to.
Wow. I could have wrote this and it would have been 90% accurate to my situation. The flippant attitude toward some people’s needs while letting others get away with murder, the stringing along on raises and promotions… It’s all too familiar. We pay pretty well and we still can’t keep a staff because of overworking new people, micromanaging while simultaneously throwing them in the deep end, some people taking a mile when we give them an inch…
We just had a dude who worked with us for about a month and he would randomly disappear for long amounts of time. He was slow as fuck and wouldn’t take direction. The manager was like “well, let’s keep giving him more responsibility and maybe he will snap out of it”. He didn’t. In fact, he went home one weekend and beat up some girl he was seeing, stole her car and died in a police chase. Employee of the month, ladies and gentlemen!
People like that keep getting all the chances in the world, but yeah, let’s make sure I’m doing my job, and the job of two other people. That’s the real problem
I’m very lucky for my position in a lot of ways but I am so goddamned tired of the expectation in retail that you have to hold the customers hand every step of the way through the process and if you aren’t on top of them every second of the day you are falling short and causing us not to hit whatever quota. Like excuse me for assuming people want personal space and can be expected to ask for help when they need it like goddamned adults.
Right? They’re adults, you’re an adult. If they need something they’ll ask. The expectation that you can upsell them is just so predatory and it always made me feel scummy.
I worked in an oil change pit of a summer once. We were always supposed to upsell them on various filters and flushes. They had a leaderboard just out of view of the customer that whoever won that month got a steak dinner with the boss (🙄 what kind of prize is hanging out with you boss off the clock?) people were into it though. They would make a sale, pump their fists out of view of the customer and mark off another X
I really want to quit, been applying to everything I can find and hearing nothing. Its a shitass retail job at a dying department store, they literally have 2-3 of us closing every day working at most 4hr shifts, and then management berates us people are walking out with huge purchases, no fucking shit I can’t always be on the look out when I’m the only one up front and the whole fucking city is buying shit for graduations. The store looks like a tornado hit it and there’s nothing we can do since my poor floor coworkers have to ring since how dare the old man whine about the line being too long since Kevin returning his wretchedly dirty torn suit be inconvenienced we can’t accept the return and takes 30min of my time being a degrading asshat and cursing out the manager. I spend all my shifts daydreaming and dissociating, while my body does things on autopilot, I always had some social anxiety but its infinitely worse now. Even if there’s only like 6 customers it feels like fucking black Friday. Then if I or other closers encounter morning shift they act like stuckup assholes and call me lazy for only being able to do the work of one man instead of 10.
People don’t see me as human anymore in this shitass lil chudville, I’m ‘that cashier’, incapable of anything else, and I know that doesn’t help my job hunt.
Kinda curious what your teammate’s thoughts were on this manager chatting them up about you…
Is the manager aware that doing these things comes off as “I’m looking for a reason to fire this employee”?
If you’re worried about jumping ship right this second, you might think about quietly looking around for another place to work. If you get some solid leads, there’s options to either move on to the new job or tell your problematic micromanager that they need to back off or you’ll walk. (Unless there’s some Unemployment Insurance stuff you would like to try to work that requires you to get fired to take advantage of. Then its just malicious compliance time.)
My co-worker is actually a pretty good friend. We met at a different bakery and she ended up rage quitting that job because of poor management and ended up where we are now. I took her role over and then quit like nine months later.
This friend is a little weird about work stuff. She says all the right things and feels the same way I do when we are complaining about work, but the second she can be on the “other side” she kind of goes along with it. Honestly I think she just loves the gossip element of it. She also has a not so great life outside of work and I think it makes her feel like she has agency
It makes it hard to be her friend when I’m the one getting picked on. I think she feels like she’s a double agent, but all she’s really doing is enabling our bosses shitty behavior.
Well… that’s disappointing.
My body is sore and my sleep schedule is unhealthy, I was unemployed for 2 years and I feel lucky to have landed work, but gah
(I yell into my arm on my way home, lockdown isolation made it so much harder to mask lol)
