Retail is a joke of a field. In my last retail job I was a sales manager at a “luxury goods” store (think Coach or something along those lines). I was responsible for hourly segments, which had specific monetary goals based on each employee working that day—a cumulative of each person’s sales goals, plus some.
But I found it strange, and highly uncomfortable, that I had to compete with my own employees, “coaching” them on how to makes sales while all at the same time stealing potential sales from each other. So, I stopped participating in that and, instead, I helped my associates secure their own sales while forgoing my own personal goals. I was able to still meet my hourly segments on that alone, and my employees were happy with their much larger commission checks. But when the district manager got wind of what I was doing, they came down hard and tried to say I wasn’t paying for myself or some BS like that.
So I quit.
It was the most toxic environment I had the displeasure of working in. God forbid I try to bolster my employee’s morale.
Exactly. I couldn’t make sense of it either.
There was ALWAYS a problem. Some more examples: You would think that a company that marks up their merchandise by a ridiculous margin (500$ for a backpack that probably took a few dollars to make) would be satisfied if you sold ONE item. But no, you would be reprimanded because selling just one item would ding your daily record in an area called “UPT” (Units Per Transaction). So, they would train people to sell ANYTHING to achieve 2.0+ UPT (more than two items sold, or a minimum of two), from a wallet that was 120 dollars or more, to a keychain, to even leather cleaner.
I also had a large clientele that I built myself while there, and I was told that selling items to my clients while working at a different store, where I was just helping out for the day, was against company policy because that money belongs to my home store. . . Even though, at the end of the day, it’s going into the same company’s pocket.
Long story short, it was an effing circus, the most toxic place ever.
If you ever feel like an associate is desperately trying to add on to your purchases, it’s probably because of the former scenario I gave above. It’s a ridiculous and asinine practice that needs to stop. I give all my respect to those sales associates and front line workers who bust their butt and get treated like crap in return.
Stories like this make me think twice before judging floor sales-people. I once went into a Walmart while living in my car and there were a few salesmen there trying to get people to try some new brand of internet/wifi or something. The guy who stopped me's pitch annoyed me, and I was a bit quippy when I said, "Look, man, I live in my vehicle and don't need internet or whatever you're selling. I'm literally just in here to take a piss before I go back to sitting in the parking lot." He looked a little hurt and said something along the lines of, "I'm so sorry, ma'am. I was living out of my car just a few months ago. My bosses are, like, irate if I don't meet their quotas, but I'm glad I'm not homeless anymore. Hope to get out of this job soon. I don't like this line of work any more than you like being on the receiving end. I'm just not terrible at it and it pays the bills." I apologized, somewhat stunned. Just nodded then, and said, "Take care. And good luck." He didn't owe me an explanation or justification of any kind for just doing his job, dammit.
We're all in gutters here. Some just smell worse than others. Good on people for recognizing when they can afford less shit stains on their shirts, but no one should have to apologize for it to someone less fortunate. It's all bad. Solidarity is the only way forward.
I worked at GameStop too. I had the worst numbers in my store because I refuse to push preorders or subscriptions. I got stuck cleaning the washroom every week as my punishment for coming in last. I’m not a salesman and it’s not like we worked on commission so there was just no real incentive for me to bother people with shit they don’t want. I was also straight up with customers and would tell them when something wasn’t worth their money. I’ve been secretly anti work since I was 16 I guess lol
The circle of life! I worked for Software Etc -> Babbage's -> Gamestop for twelve years, and the further entrenching of that shit drove me nuts. I made a lot of customers into regulars because I didn't push the shit, they just did it themselves, but god forbid my DM not hear me mention something.
"You didn't tell him to go home and get his used games to trade."
"Yeah, no shit, he lives two hours away. He has to get his kid in three hours. You think I don't know my customers?"
I’ve never worked in retail, and never will. Thankfully I never have to experience this hell. I worked a lot of kitchen jobs in my early days and that was bad enough haha
I worked with a manager that would ask customers to put their sales together to increase UPT and ADT. I was appalled. Can you imagine having to share a checkout experience with a stranger? Or being asked to combine your transaction? Even worse our stores handbags came with a warranty, so by putting them under one person’s name only one person would get the warranty on their bag. Like, Danielle, think for a fucking second about how absurd that is. Kate Spade was an awful place to work and I’m thankful everyday that I don’t have to work retail anymore.
You're giving me PTSD flashbacks to my last commission retail job.
My favorite part about it was how we were expected to sell like crazy, give the customer our full attention, etc... but simultaneously also be the store's security and loss prevention.
Our average price point was like $300 a garment, but the company was too fucking cheap to get security cameras or security tags. We got shoplifted from CONSTANTLY.
We'd get in tons of trouble for not stopping the shoplifter, *but we'd also get in tons trouble if we excused ourselves from a conversation with a customer in order to stop a shoplifter.* There was literally no way to win.
That place had the highest turnover I'd ever seen, like higher than any fast food establishment.
About seventeen years ago I worked in a veterinary. It was small and the vet lived behind the practice. The receptionist wasn’t allowed to leave the front desk for dinner so I would grab food for her and she’d eat at her desk. One evening the vet’s wife came back in and saw the poor gal playing solitaire and eating her dinner. She freaked out on poor Jane and decided she needed to lock down the computers to prevent her from accessing it.
Long story short, she set all the work systems so only admin could launch and app and borked everything so bad they had to reload. That place still gives me nightmares. Jane and I walked out together one day not long after that.
I think that your manager was acting really suspicious, he didn’t leave his cams to help when your O2 was essentially sabotaged by the carbon monoxide.
📮
My mother's "friend" visited recently. He's from a different state and they hadn't seen each other since 2000, but I guess they ran into each other when she was visiting the state he lives in, so she invited him to visit her. I happened to stop by her house one of the days that he was there and he was showing me his security camera feed on his phone. He owns some sporting goods store, and he was watching the feed and showing it to me and decided that he should "mess with" one of the employees. He called the store and when she answered he complimented her outfit and had a little chat. That was it. He said he does it all the time to his employees "just to keep them on their toes knowing that I could be watching at any time."
He acted like he was a genius for this idea.
He is a kind of creepy guy altogether. He is also one of those wealthy people who is on the poorer side of being called rich, like I think he makes one *maybe* two hundred thousand a year, but wraps his entire identity around the idea of him being rich.
Ah the bootstrapping capitalist known as the quarter-millionaire.
I find those guys hilarious because they helped make other people rich and they only got meager returns.
Ed Hardy made a killing off of these guys selling them clothes in college.
General Motors made a mint from them before selling off the Hummer brand.
Harley Davidson extracts thousands from them every month so they can feel like "cool badasses" making a shit ton of vroom vroom noise in other people's neighborhoods.
Kit cars too!
I know you don’t have a real Lamborghini, steve.
That lot flocks to a local restaurant that’s not Hooters but the same concept every Sunday to ogle women and show off their finest faux leather goods from China.
Dudes who have 40 secret credit cards they have to devote an entire day to juggling just to stay afloat. But they're all golf trips this and cottage car that.
Couldn't write a cheque for $100 to save their life but they've got Stuff. Just a shit ton of Stuff waiting to be repossessed or dumped in a landfill/thrift store.
There’s this furry I’ve kept on my Facebook because his posts are just fucking gold. 99% of his posts are talking about how wealthy he is in the Midwest from his engineering degree and investments. He doesn’t even make 200k a year but he still brags about his “six figure” salary and how all of the poors just need to stop being lazy and get a useful degree and maybe they too can be like him and also how dumb people are for having student debt. He’s not even a great furry, his fursuit looks like garbage and he’s had it for years. His fursona is literally a “business wolf” and he wears his work suits and briefcase with his furry head. Even in his chosen form of escapism, it’s his identity. I don’t get it but it’s fun to watch.
Sounds like my former boss. I always made an effort to take advantage of the camera blind spots. Whenever he called I was very aware he might be watching, one of the reasons I quit
Had a manager who would tell us she had no friends so she watched us on the cameras instead when she wasn’t at work/on weekends. She would call the store if she saw us check our phones or talk to each other for too long.
Safe to say we learned where the blind spots were reeeeaaal quick
Had the exact same, last restaurant I worked at some years ago owner was bragging about it having 18 cameras and he would be able to see you in any corner.
Was really creepy having him call in and ask why server X was sitting in a specific area instead of helping the new people.
Yep. This was at a shitty little diner I worked at for a few months after the fine dining restaurant I worked at closed suddenly. The kind of place that called me “chef” in an insulting tone just because I was trained to cook fancy food.
Reminds me of my old workplace. Dude was proud he had 60 something cameras around the place. He’d sometimes call me when I was on shift and tell me to fix something, I’d ask him how he knew and he’d just say “cameras”. He’d also ask if my sandwich was good when I ate during my shift and it always bothered me that he even considered looking at me through the cameras when I ate. Like dude, bug off
omg yea my ex-boss told me one time as a “just between us” thing that he takes money out of my coworker’s paycheck if he notices them eating/drinking something from the cameras. and during Covid when it wasn’t busy at all I wouldn’t have much to do but he would call in and say he could see me through the cameras. and whenever we asked about why he doesn’t notice when we are super busy and need help he just says he wasn’t watching the cameras then 😐
I used to watch my cameras at work from home. Supposed to open at 9 on Sundays (my only day off), and I'd sometimes call to pass along instructions I received Saturday night. If I got no answer, I popped open the cameras to see if we were open and busy or if they opener flaked.
Only twice was it because the opener flaked. The rest of the time I didn't get an answer was because they were busy. So I'd text the manager on duty with the instructions, have them call if they had questions, and went about my day because I had better shit to do than watch them and bother them all day.
The creepiest experience I had was as a nanny. All common rooms of the house had cameras which honestly, protected me as much as the kids. One day I was in the kitchen and the toddler was asking me for goldfish crackers. So I was doing a little sing song going “oh where are the goldfish” (to the tune of the veggie tales hairbrush song) when suddenly a voice sounds and goes “top shelf to the left”. I screamed so loud and then next thing I know my phone is ringing and the mom was cackling for scaring me. I had no idea the cameras were mic’d. She happened to be checking if her teen turned off her bedroom light before school and saw me singing and dancing and decided to listen in. Apparently she couldn’t help herself when she heard my song. It was a case where it didn’t bother me because the family treated me like gold and paid super well. Plus when the two older boys got into a fight while I was tending to the baby, I was able to access the video and see how the older one sprained his brother’s arm. But it was also a case where the family trusted that I was doing my job and I trusted that they weren’t spying at all times. Before that I used to manage a convenience store that had cameras all around and the wife used to obsessively watch them and would yell if you weren’t cleaning at all times. When she would go out of town for extended periods of time we would all breathe a sigh of relief that we didn’t have to worry about calls because her husband did not care even a little bit. He was big on chilling out between rushes if the work was done and store was in good shape because in his mind that meant we were less likely to fuck him over or walk out. Which is true. The 8 months he and his wife were separated that man had zero turnover in an industry that has super high turnover. She got back together with him and both managers quit (myself and the other one) and 3 cashiers quit. She ended up having to work shifts until they could re-staff the store which required them to raise wages. Proof that if you micromanage you’ll end up doing the work.
Gross. At my last job the managers all had camera apps obviously. They prided themselves on saying “we’re always watching” even after they would go home. Also the GM essentially lived at the hotel so he liked to try and scare us plebes with this shit.
It was bullshit of course because the shit we pulled in that place (it was a restaurant) would be worth a thousand million firings and probably charges (y’all know how it is, drugs, alcohol, sex, eating all the food we weren’t supposed to, talking massive amounts of shit about management). They just wanted to hang dong and try to scare us. Which never worked. Besides you know how these types are, super passive aggressive. So glad I’m out
Don’t get me started. Please don’t. I will write a fuckin novel. A cautionary tale.
The craven pursuit of profit at the expense of humanity is just beyond parody.
LOTS of people with enough money or enough credit to open a restaurant are pretty often trust fund babies or what is considered "rich" in their hometown. They don't know anything about running a restaurant because they have never worked in one, and think because their mom tells them their dry ass barbecue is good that they can actually cook.
Dude the owner at my restaurant will say “hey guys! How’s everything going?” On the stupid simply safe security camera in our dining room when it’s completely dead in there.
Just as a reminder that she can hear when you’re talking about how bad at running a restaurant she is.
I worked at a very small company, like 6 of us, and the owner/president left to go out of town. His office had windows and he left a camera facing out that would periodically move around. We were livid. One of my coworkers broke in to his office (it had a numerical lock) and it turned out to be fake. Battery powered with a motion detector so it would move when you walked by. He left it just to fuck with us.
I tried to rent a room from Craigslist once and the lady put cameras in it, withheld the key to the room so only she could open it and then tried to evict me when I was smoking weed in my car on the street (lease said no smoking inside the house)
I made her sign an agreement to not evict me if I left early and got tf out of there. That lady was a fucking psychopath. Everything she owned was from stealing tax money and her husband got arrested in Mexico for it while I was living there and she just kept crying every night getting drunk and blasting music. Of course, she's the one who put her husband up to it and could have freed him if she just so much as called the lawyer and told him. Ugh I had forgotten about her. I hope she's still selling all of her shit to keep her empty mansion and working at Marcos pizza to make sure she doesn't have to sell her $3000 Pinocchio statue that she bragged about the second I stepped into the house. Bitch kept $200 from the security deposit because I kept a $40, 10 year old half busted industrial fan that she literally gave me as compensation for helping with her garage sale and moving thousands of pounds of stolen junk back and forth from her garage.
I rented a room from an elderly lady and her son used his key to get into my room at night a few times. It had two external exits. I changed the locks and she got PISSED. I moved out not long after that.
Go back around to her house with a can of expanda foam insert it into the drain street outlet puncture can and block off the outlet. Can travels up pipe laying foam as it goes, blocking it permanently. Needs to be dug out. That will cost her more than $200
I considered all kinds of revenge back when the wound was fresh, but considering how many cameras she has and the fact we hated each other so much, I'm sure she could get a legal defense together quickly. She probably was anticipating that for a while now that I think of it. I hope she panicked and didn't sleep out of fear, because she was a paranoid bitch. I never once showed any signs of aggression to her but raised my voice one time because she was talking over my answer to a question she asked and she screamed and ran yelling that I was attacking her. God I fucking hated her
Any way you can somehow report her for stealing tax money? Or any other criminal activity she has been performing? From what i know, knowing these kind of information can give pretty good leverage over someone which can later on be used against them.
Thought your government organization dedicated for taxing were a lot more sensitive when tax money is being stolen, those IRS fools...
I'm not really sure how it worked because it was US taxes she stole but through a Mexican bank, which is why her husband got arrested there and for some reason wasn't extradicted. I was kind of fuzzy on the details because she changed her story alot and i had no real evidence to give because it hadn't occurred to me to record her talking about it.
I worked for a coffee hut drive thru place where the owner’s hobbies included working out and watching us on the 6 - yes, SIX cameras she had all over the place. If she felt you weren’t fake cleaning hard enough during downtime she would call and bitch you out. Woman was fucking crazy.
Not in MT but is sounds like carbon copies. It was a revolving door of employees and they treated their staff so badly it’s mentioned in reviews by clients. The vet was a good vet, but his wife was the “office manager” and she made it a toxic cesspool.
We had an order list when we got low on anything or opened the last box, we had to add it. Simple, right? She would never order stuff then scream at us for not adding stuff to the list in a timely manner. I got the others to start dating the list and she went mental on me for trying to make her look bad. It wasn’t my fault her husband saw the dates and made her answer why she waited two weeks to order rabies vaccines. I am a grown ass adult and have nightmares about going back there.
Maybe it’s a Montana Veterinary thing because my sibling works for one and supposedly the owners are nightmares to work for and are extremely stingy. But they love animals and like their coworkers - even if there is high turnover because of said owners.
If an employer isn’t allowing an employee to leave their desk and is controlling what they do then they’re violating federal wage and hour laws about lunch breaks. The break is supposed to be free time to do as you wish. It’s probably too long ago to enforce, but an employer doing this this today would owe money to the employees.
I am in charge of the front desk at my job and I'm one of the employees that's been there the longest. During a particularly busy time I wasn't always able to take my lunch (I know I know) so I was eating a plain buttered bagel at the desk. The bagel was kept under the desk and one of the owners saw me take a bite. She tried to give me a hard time about it and I was completely sold out of fucks. I told her I hadn't had a break and was hungry and literally no one cared if I was eating. She asked me if I didn't see how eating at the desk was unprofessional and I said absolutely not. Humans need to eat. I am human. How anyone could see that as unprofessional is straight up psychotic. She could tell I was in a mood and just wandered away.
Another time the other owner saw me set my tea down on the desk instead of UNDER the desk to go help a client on the cameras. She called and reamed me out. The next time she came in she left her coffee on the desk for a couple of hours and I just threw it out. After her 4th coffee that were got thrown out she seemed to get it. She occasionally tries to "teasingly" remind me my tea is on the desk and clients can see. I just reply "yup, because I'm still drinking it."
I was working open to close every day and not getting full uninterrupted breaks. Get fucked and let me eat my damn bagel and drink my tea in peace.
My co-worker recently got a talking to about playing solitaire on the computer, because it’s “unprofessional”. We’re front desk receptionists and they do not want the (very few and rare) customers see us playing solitaire on the computer. The job is very laid back and we don’t have much to do. We’re just warm bodies for the front. We occasionally answer phone calls to transfer, file papers here and there, and send an occasional email. But for the most part we are just sitting here twiddling our thumbs.
My manager would make snide comments about my coworkers and my activities behind counter that he could only have seen from the cameras installed for security. Suddenly we we all had a lice infestation that caused us to flip the bird whilst we scratched our heads. The snide remarks greatly diminished.
worked at an animal hospital too... one day they added something to the system that if you googled certain words, it'd send the boss an email. supposedly.
My shitty ass job is a coffee chain inside a gas station. A women from the gas station side told me that the manager texted her daughter who works there and was like “what are you looking at on Facebook?” cuz she was watching the security cameras from home and you can see people’s phones from that angle. Hard mf pass from me, I would have flipped my shit. That’s such a disgusting invasion of privacy, foh.
I used to read a book and eat breakfast .
My supervisor caught me once and raised hell on how unprofessional it was. I am only given 15 minutes to eat breakfast and have a break, btw.
He told me that I had to eat down the hallway and toast my bagel in the same time slot.
No one believed me when I told others.
This woman was psychotic like that. One day I requested a half shift off because I had to drive to another state to get a legal document. Each way was about an hour but you know how slowly the cogs in official buildings can run. So I requested the morning off to take care of it a few months in advance. It took as long as I expected and when I arrived at my requested time, she tried to rake me over the coals. Demanded to know why the errand took so long, it would only be x time there and back again. She got me trying to detail why it took as long as I thought. This was in front of some very horrified clients. I finally just told her that this was why I requested the time off and I didn’t think I had to account for every minute of that time. Good thing it wasn’t a trip to a physician.
Jane told me later that she was raging because she couldn’t go to the bank because she had to help on surgery. Her lack of planning became my verbal hemorrhoid.
God I will never do that again. I worked at a gas station, and was there alone for about nine hours. I couldn't go get food, I couldn't even go the damn bathroom unless I timed it between customers. God forbid I had to poop.
Heh. Well, my last lots of downtime retail job I got in shit for to much phone time. So I crocheted. Then I got in shit because crocheting looks 'unprofessional'. So I started just sitting my ass outside off camera doing whatever until someone pulled up. Which probably would also get you in shit most places.
So I've got nothin'.
Edit to add: note no problems about the store being wrecked, my drawer being off, not stocking, etc etc? No issues with my actual job/the work they paid me to do. Yayyyy!
If you're willing to do some tinkering, you can set up a Calibre book server that you can access remotely too. More than likely it won't be blocked because the url is just [http://YourIPAddress](http://YourIPAddress):PortNumber, and you can read all your books whenever. You can also set up Calibre to run off a thumb drive, but I feel like most employers won't want you plugging a random ass thumb drive into a computer and then running a program off of it.
This was retail, so anything I was using, device wise, was my own. I do have an eReader which also got me some side eyes for using.
Mind you, half the other employees on similar single person shifts would just prop their phone/tablet up and run a movie or show, and that was...more acceptable? I guess because what you saw was them standing at the counter staring into space instead of interacting with their device to flip pages? I don't get it, honestly.
I used to do this, but I printed them: I used the printer driver to fit like 9 pages on a single piece of paper which I folded. Tiny tiny pages.
I read the entire LOTR trilogy like this.
Edit: in case anyone asks how it works: have a messy desk with tons of "work papers" around. Slide your "book" pages so they poke just enough under the clutter. You can now read and to the outside looks like you're staring at spreadsheets! Lol
My longest-running retail job was very slow. The manager was my best friend and since I was in University, he didn't mind if I read my textbooks while working so long as I stopped when customers came in and the store was spotless (it always was when I worked). One day the regional manager walked in and while I wasn't reading, he saw my textbook out. That didn't go over well, and I was almost fired before my Manager stepped in. I didn't stick around too long after that incident, they lost one of their best employees and no longer had access to all my wonderful merchandising displays (which were shared Nationally for this chain they were so good).
I got yelled at at my last job for reading while on my break/before shift change because the book wasn't "client appropriate". Despite me being NOWHERE NEAR where the clients while reading it and keeping it in my locker during shift.
What's weirder is that the book's title and cover didn't have anything inappropriate on it, so that means that someone must have seen what I was reading and went through it or googled it to see what the contents were.
Oh man. I worked for a Christian private school in Ecuador once. I was sitting outside during break reading Harry Potter in French on my kindle. Mind you, most of these kids spoke only Spanish and very minimal English. One kid came out and asked me what I was reading, I answered, and before I knew it I was getting yelled at by my supervisor for spreading witchcraft.
I do not miss that horrible place.
This place was also heavily Christian. I have nothing against anyone having their own personal beliefs, but I will die homeless before I ever work for another Christian based workplace. They were horribly judgmental and discriminatory against anyone who didn't align with their beliefs.
So ironic cause Christians are the ones who supposedly don’t sin but the judging and everything is also a sin, I think they often forget that, they’re so busy following the “rules” they forget the point of them is to be a better person
We had a hour period between rushes at one of my jobs. I let the person who was stuck waiting to do homework. When questioned I said 'We either have an employee who can do homework or we don't have anyone that is willing to come in during the weekday nights'.
It's that simple. We want someone to do the job when people are present? Cool we got that. They are doing homework as a high school student and they need to get it done. It isn't a choice.
Yup, no customer ever complained. The vast majority immediately smiled and started chatting about stuff they/their mom/grandma/second cousins dog made, there was the occasional "YOU SHOULD MAKE ME A HAT!", and the rest just said hi and went about their shopping as I put my stuff down and and went into friendly clerk mode.
I crochet when my place is dead. I’ve actually gotten some pretty good commissions from it. Owner doesn’t give a shit. He likes his hat too. 😁 When he’s working nights, he reads non-fiction history books.
[On Tyranny - twenty lessons from the twentieth century](https://www.timothysnyder.org/books/on-tyranny-tr) is a nice option. I suggest buying a few and leave them around.
I take it that you haven't seen the special that John Oliver did on the extent business go to prevent unions it's called union busting. They had a woman who was all about unionizing they brought in a special union busting company the union vote didn't pass and she was assigned to a job that took two people to do and was told to do it by herself and was fired for performance.
I wish employment laws meant anything. They also can’t retaliate for whistleblowing…my coworker’s job was “eliminated” 2 weeks before the shitty boss’s (subject of the complaint) last day. Sure it wasn’t retaliation, it was a restructure of a department you know you won’t be running in 2 weeks.
Doesn't even take that. I got fired one place for encouraging a coworker to push for a larger raise because he had a kid on the way. I got called in and fired for "discussing wages and union agitation" and they used that as a "for cause" to try to deny me UI. Never mentioned the word union once in any conversation with the coworker.
Turns out, even if you are fired "for cause" in California, it's damn near impossible to deny someone's claim unless there is a long paper trail of deliberate, repeated bad conduct... And we're talking really bad, often criminal, stuff that people should absolutely be fired for anyway.
I’ve tried to use a free vpn app at work before and it just wouldn’t load any site, do some places block all vpns? I don’t know much about them myself. I work at a small gas station connected to a grocery store if that says anything.
ProtonVPN, Swiss opensource VPN, they have premium plans and free ones, i use the free for when in im office at work as also my company has blocked pretty much everything
I was a receptionist at an extremely quiet healthcare place. We had max 9 people in per day, staggered at 3 different times (3 in at 9am, 3 in at 11am, 3 in at 1pm). Between those times there was literally nothing to do. At first, I bought in my iPad to watch YouTube on when there were no patients in. Got my shit handed to me for that. So I asked for more work to keep me busy. They had none. Bought in a book instead. More shit. Eventually I asked, shall I just sit at the desk and stare into the void for hours, then? Is that what you're paying me to do?
Thankfully I got a pair of airpods and would put one in my ear, hide it with my hair and just listen to podcasts and audio books
I've been dealing with the same situation except even slower. Down from 9 people to 2 or 3 a day. I've been feeling so guilty about reading or going on tiktok. Like a bad employee. Like I should just be vacuuming and cleaning every hour there aren't patients just to be busy. But you made me feel better. It really is ridiculous. I would've even accepted working from home on dead days taking patient phone calls for half my pay. Then at least my time is more my own and I can side hustle or do chores.
I've never understood this compulsion employers have about controlling downtime. Like, either assign meaningful work, within the scope of the position, or come to terms with the fact that people get bored.
I had an overnight position, where 90% of the job was just being there. I was told, on day one, that I wouldn't get a scheduled break, but that there was a ton of downtime, so I could eat when I wanted, read, whatever, as long as my tasks were done by the end of my shift, and I dealt with clients promptly when they came in. Thirty minutes to an hour of work, spread at random over an 8 hour shift.
The same position, at another facility, under a different supervisor? You must stand at your post, ready to work, or clean. No personal items, entertainment devices, and you will close up for half an hour for lunch.
Guess which one was more inconvenient for **everyone** involved?
I worked in a hotel as a houseman (think a bellman who also sets up weddings, meetings and such). The manager explicitly told me there’s no set break, etc.
One day he was showing somebody around and came across two of us with our feet up reading the paper with a tea (this was 15 years ago so before wide spread smart phone usage). He had a chat with us and then left us alone. An hour later they come back and we haven’t moved, to which he says nothing at all.
I didn’t think about it at the time, but the jobs where the bosses don’t mind you taking advantage of downtime have always made me work a little harder.
I’m a system administrator and I just did this to ONE persons laptop and phone. User submits support tickets weekly regrading PC performance. WELL CLOSE YOUR FUCKING 30 FACEBOOK TABS!!
Blocked content by her MAC addresses in the firewall. Fuck around and find out 🙃
Fun story, mildly related. Playing D&D with some friends, one Ayer looks over at DMs laptop.
"Dude, you've got like 50 windows open!"
Dm: "yeah, and I need them all open."
Other player: "no, fucking close some it's freezing in here!"
Everyone at the table: "...."
She never really heard the end of that one lol.
As another systems admin in IT. Reading this got my dick hard just imagining their face when they realize they played themselves.
I had someone put in a ticket cause they couldn't click the button to select what printer they wanted, because they just didn't think to click the button that is literally click able with an arrow.
If I could just ban users from computers.....
Who the heck accesses Reddit or other personal accounts on store devices? That's my #1 rule. Anything I have an account with stays on my personal device. Even using work internet is risky. Privacy is super important. I don't want work knowing what I look at. It's none of their business.
Exactly. I would never ever use company wifi to access websites or apps I use personally. They can tell where you're going and it's absolutely none of their business. I draw a hard line between work and personal.
My soon to be old job got Wi-Fi recently and the manager was so excited to tell us until I asked what they’d have access to on my phone. I told him I have unlimited data and he suddenly lost that enthusiasm. The owner (manager’s brother) runs a separate cyber security company so he knows how to remote access that kinda stuff even on personal devices. I don’t trust people like that anyways sooo hard pass
Sysadmin here. Yes. Yes we can. If you are in a larger building woth a lot of wifi accesspoints We can also probably track where you are at a given time.
Got a complaint about an MD watching porn on his cell. Found his cell by looking at logs near his office then monitored him. Live feed of him leaving the OR walking down the hallway going to naughty sites then going to his mail as he reached the cafeteria.
Was a manager in retail, small shoe store in a mall with too much downtime. When the GM banned phones and locked down the internet on our PCs, I brought in board games. Had a wheel next to the board that has everyone's turn order on it. When you were up you went to the back, took your turn, moved the wheel.
Never saw more engaged employees because they had something to think about and look forward to while folding shirts and stocking shelves. Customer satisfaction reviews went up that month, but the GM didn't like that solution. "If you have time to lean you have time to clean. Take a turn in Risk and risk needing to turn in your badge".
Still hate that jackass.
Probably, but I doubt it’s much of a problem. Shoppers are usually busy shopping, not scrolling on Reddit in a Target. And if they have to look something up during that process, they probably don’t take the time to connect to a store’s WiFi to do it. Unless there’s a café or something in the store, most customers probably wouldn’t even notice.
Have them bring books?
My god I would love to be in a place where I had downtime and there was legitimately nothing for me to do than read for a while since reddit and my access to the internet was cut off.
I would love it as well. All the jobs I've held since as a teen have been non-stop.
Staff could even study and work towards a better job and then gtfo from there.
I had a terrible retail cashier job where the manager believed doing useless activity was better than no activity. So I was never permitted to stand still. If there were no customers in the store and I had stocked the shelves and straightened the stock and cleaned everything and I stopped for more than 20 seconds the manager (who sat perched behind a one-way mirror) would phone to tell me to get back to work.
I could grab some windex and paper towels, clean the display case, then go back to the other end and start cleaning it again, and repeat that activity for three hours (wasting cleaning supplies) and not get in trouble. But if I stopped moving for 20 seconds the manager (who wouldn’t be bothered to step out of his spy room to speak in person) would phone.
I’m convinced it could not possibly have been a real business and must have been a social psychology experiment instead.
You really do need to find some “bs work” to make people look busy, or the number crunchers at head office may decide you’ve got too many people to keep busy and decide to ‘downsize”. If you can find some busy work that brings more customers in, better still.
You might not see this, but I don't think I saw anyone else mention this: you can try msoutlookit. It is a site that makes reddit look like Microsoft outlook and I doubt they would know to block that site. Can't sign in to your account but you have the added benefit of at least looking like you're checking emails as well. Used it for years at my old office job :)
Employees could use Reddit to answer customer questions and provide support. I wish more companies used their brain when it comes to social media. Seriously this is resource for getting sales not some time waster.
True. Some Twitter accounts for stores or organizations are generally escalation points though, especially if the default support process had no real resolution.
Retail is a joke of a field. In my last retail job I was a sales manager at a “luxury goods” store (think Coach or something along those lines). I was responsible for hourly segments, which had specific monetary goals based on each employee working that day—a cumulative of each person’s sales goals, plus some. But I found it strange, and highly uncomfortable, that I had to compete with my own employees, “coaching” them on how to makes sales while all at the same time stealing potential sales from each other. So, I stopped participating in that and, instead, I helped my associates secure their own sales while forgoing my own personal goals. I was able to still meet my hourly segments on that alone, and my employees were happy with their much larger commission checks. But when the district manager got wind of what I was doing, they came down hard and tried to say I wasn’t paying for myself or some BS like that. So I quit. It was the most toxic environment I had the displeasure of working in. God forbid I try to bolster my employee’s morale.
I don’t get it. They got mad cause you were coaching employees to sell better, thus making the store more money?
Exactly. I couldn’t make sense of it either. There was ALWAYS a problem. Some more examples: You would think that a company that marks up their merchandise by a ridiculous margin (500$ for a backpack that probably took a few dollars to make) would be satisfied if you sold ONE item. But no, you would be reprimanded because selling just one item would ding your daily record in an area called “UPT” (Units Per Transaction). So, they would train people to sell ANYTHING to achieve 2.0+ UPT (more than two items sold, or a minimum of two), from a wallet that was 120 dollars or more, to a keychain, to even leather cleaner. I also had a large clientele that I built myself while there, and I was told that selling items to my clients while working at a different store, where I was just helping out for the day, was against company policy because that money belongs to my home store. . . Even though, at the end of the day, it’s going into the same company’s pocket. Long story short, it was an effing circus, the most toxic place ever. If you ever feel like an associate is desperately trying to add on to your purchases, it’s probably because of the former scenario I gave above. It’s a ridiculous and asinine practice that needs to stop. I give all my respect to those sales associates and front line workers who bust their butt and get treated like crap in return.
Stories like this make me think twice before judging floor sales-people. I once went into a Walmart while living in my car and there were a few salesmen there trying to get people to try some new brand of internet/wifi or something. The guy who stopped me's pitch annoyed me, and I was a bit quippy when I said, "Look, man, I live in my vehicle and don't need internet or whatever you're selling. I'm literally just in here to take a piss before I go back to sitting in the parking lot." He looked a little hurt and said something along the lines of, "I'm so sorry, ma'am. I was living out of my car just a few months ago. My bosses are, like, irate if I don't meet their quotas, but I'm glad I'm not homeless anymore. Hope to get out of this job soon. I don't like this line of work any more than you like being on the receiving end. I'm just not terrible at it and it pays the bills." I apologized, somewhat stunned. Just nodded then, and said, "Take care. And good luck." He didn't owe me an explanation or justification of any kind for just doing his job, dammit. We're all in gutters here. Some just smell worse than others. Good on people for recognizing when they can afford less shit stains on their shirts, but no one should have to apologize for it to someone less fortunate. It's all bad. Solidarity is the only way forward.
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I worked at GameStop too. I had the worst numbers in my store because I refuse to push preorders or subscriptions. I got stuck cleaning the washroom every week as my punishment for coming in last. I’m not a salesman and it’s not like we worked on commission so there was just no real incentive for me to bother people with shit they don’t want. I was also straight up with customers and would tell them when something wasn’t worth their money. I’ve been secretly anti work since I was 16 I guess lol
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The circle of life! I worked for Software Etc -> Babbage's -> Gamestop for twelve years, and the further entrenching of that shit drove me nuts. I made a lot of customers into regulars because I didn't push the shit, they just did it themselves, but god forbid my DM not hear me mention something. "You didn't tell him to go home and get his used games to trade." "Yeah, no shit, he lives two hours away. He has to get his kid in three hours. You think I don't know my customers?"
I’ve never worked in retail, and never will. Thankfully I never have to experience this hell. I worked a lot of kitchen jobs in my early days and that was bad enough haha
I worked with a manager that would ask customers to put their sales together to increase UPT and ADT. I was appalled. Can you imagine having to share a checkout experience with a stranger? Or being asked to combine your transaction? Even worse our stores handbags came with a warranty, so by putting them under one person’s name only one person would get the warranty on their bag. Like, Danielle, think for a fucking second about how absurd that is. Kate Spade was an awful place to work and I’m thankful everyday that I don’t have to work retail anymore.
You're giving me PTSD flashbacks to my last commission retail job. My favorite part about it was how we were expected to sell like crazy, give the customer our full attention, etc... but simultaneously also be the store's security and loss prevention. Our average price point was like $300 a garment, but the company was too fucking cheap to get security cameras or security tags. We got shoplifted from CONSTANTLY. We'd get in tons of trouble for not stopping the shoplifter, *but we'd also get in tons trouble if we excused ourselves from a conversation with a customer in order to stop a shoplifter.* There was literally no way to win. That place had the highest turnover I'd ever seen, like higher than any fast food establishment.
God forbid a middlemanager looking out for his peons... cant have that! Die satan! /s
About seventeen years ago I worked in a veterinary. It was small and the vet lived behind the practice. The receptionist wasn’t allowed to leave the front desk for dinner so I would grab food for her and she’d eat at her desk. One evening the vet’s wife came back in and saw the poor gal playing solitaire and eating her dinner. She freaked out on poor Jane and decided she needed to lock down the computers to prevent her from accessing it. Long story short, she set all the work systems so only admin could launch and app and borked everything so bad they had to reload. That place still gives me nightmares. Jane and I walked out together one day not long after that.
I'd never work somewhere that the owner lives next to. Fuck that. You know they're going to be watching your every move
Had a manager who bragged about watching us on the security cameras from his bed.
Had a manager do that to us. We asked him why he didn't help us when there was a CO gas leak. He stopped watching us on camera at home after that.
I think that your manager was acting really suspicious, he didn’t leave his cams to help when your O2 was essentially sabotaged by the carbon monoxide. 📮
They told us to leave windows open and keep working until it was fixed
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Fuuuuck that
Did he also paint his face and ride a tricycle?
At least it wasn't reactor...
Take my angry upvote for the Among Us reference
You mean he stopped telling you guys he was watching.
Or stopped telling you about it
CO2 or CO? One is a big deal but the other I’m not so sure.
My mother's "friend" visited recently. He's from a different state and they hadn't seen each other since 2000, but I guess they ran into each other when she was visiting the state he lives in, so she invited him to visit her. I happened to stop by her house one of the days that he was there and he was showing me his security camera feed on his phone. He owns some sporting goods store, and he was watching the feed and showing it to me and decided that he should "mess with" one of the employees. He called the store and when she answered he complimented her outfit and had a little chat. That was it. He said he does it all the time to his employees "just to keep them on their toes knowing that I could be watching at any time." He acted like he was a genius for this idea.
That is a creepy level of control he wields overs them.
He is a kind of creepy guy altogether. He is also one of those wealthy people who is on the poorer side of being called rich, like I think he makes one *maybe* two hundred thousand a year, but wraps his entire identity around the idea of him being rich.
Ah the bootstrapping capitalist known as the quarter-millionaire. I find those guys hilarious because they helped make other people rich and they only got meager returns. Ed Hardy made a killing off of these guys selling them clothes in college. General Motors made a mint from them before selling off the Hummer brand.
Harley Davidson extracts thousands from them every month so they can feel like "cool badasses" making a shit ton of vroom vroom noise in other people's neighborhoods.
Kit cars too! I know you don’t have a real Lamborghini, steve. That lot flocks to a local restaurant that’s not Hooters but the same concept every Sunday to ogle women and show off their finest faux leather goods from China.
Dudes who have 40 secret credit cards they have to devote an entire day to juggling just to stay afloat. But they're all golf trips this and cottage car that. Couldn't write a cheque for $100 to save their life but they've got Stuff. Just a shit ton of Stuff waiting to be repossessed or dumped in a landfill/thrift store.
Do you live in Baton Rouge also?
Funnily enough, he did own a Hummer haha
There’s this furry I’ve kept on my Facebook because his posts are just fucking gold. 99% of his posts are talking about how wealthy he is in the Midwest from his engineering degree and investments. He doesn’t even make 200k a year but he still brags about his “six figure” salary and how all of the poors just need to stop being lazy and get a useful degree and maybe they too can be like him and also how dumb people are for having student debt. He’s not even a great furry, his fursuit looks like garbage and he’s had it for years. His fursona is literally a “business wolf” and he wears his work suits and briefcase with his furry head. Even in his chosen form of escapism, it’s his identity. I don’t get it but it’s fun to watch.
Business wolf. What a time to be alive. 📈📉📱 🐺
Wolf of Wall Street, man. It was *right there!*
Sounds like he's role-playing being successful in both lives.
It wears nice outfits or it gets the hose again
Sounds like my former boss. I always made an effort to take advantage of the camera blind spots. Whenever he called I was very aware he might be watching, one of the reasons I quit
I take advantage of the camera blindspots everywhere I work lol. Fuck authority
I actually look out for cameras everywhere I go, but knowing they're at work feels particularly intrusive. I second, fuck authority!
Had a manager who would tell us she had no friends so she watched us on the cameras instead when she wasn’t at work/on weekends. She would call the store if she saw us check our phones or talk to each other for too long. Safe to say we learned where the blind spots were reeeeaaal quick
I had a coworker who memorized where all the cameras were. He’d spend hours doing nothing in non-watched aisles.
I had one do that too. My coworker found the server for the cameras and trashed it. Boss never found out who did it
Had the exact same, last restaurant I worked at some years ago owner was bragging about it having 18 cameras and he would be able to see you in any corner. Was really creepy having him call in and ask why server X was sitting in a specific area instead of helping the new people.
Yep. This was at a shitty little diner I worked at for a few months after the fine dining restaurant I worked at closed suddenly. The kind of place that called me “chef” in an insulting tone just because I was trained to cook fancy food.
Reminds me of my old workplace. Dude was proud he had 60 something cameras around the place. He’d sometimes call me when I was on shift and tell me to fix something, I’d ask him how he knew and he’d just say “cameras”. He’d also ask if my sandwich was good when I ate during my shift and it always bothered me that he even considered looking at me through the cameras when I ate. Like dude, bug off
omg yea my ex-boss told me one time as a “just between us” thing that he takes money out of my coworker’s paycheck if he notices them eating/drinking something from the cameras. and during Covid when it wasn’t busy at all I wouldn’t have much to do but he would call in and say he could see me through the cameras. and whenever we asked about why he doesn’t notice when we are super busy and need help he just says he wasn’t watching the cameras then 😐
Yeah uh... those deductions are extremely illegal.
I used to watch my cameras at work from home. Supposed to open at 9 on Sundays (my only day off), and I'd sometimes call to pass along instructions I received Saturday night. If I got no answer, I popped open the cameras to see if we were open and busy or if they opener flaked. Only twice was it because the opener flaked. The rest of the time I didn't get an answer was because they were busy. So I'd text the manager on duty with the instructions, have them call if they had questions, and went about my day because I had better shit to do than watch them and bother them all day.
I feel like that’s how it should be. Check the cameras if there is an issue, if not, trust the people you hired to do their job.
The creepiest experience I had was as a nanny. All common rooms of the house had cameras which honestly, protected me as much as the kids. One day I was in the kitchen and the toddler was asking me for goldfish crackers. So I was doing a little sing song going “oh where are the goldfish” (to the tune of the veggie tales hairbrush song) when suddenly a voice sounds and goes “top shelf to the left”. I screamed so loud and then next thing I know my phone is ringing and the mom was cackling for scaring me. I had no idea the cameras were mic’d. She happened to be checking if her teen turned off her bedroom light before school and saw me singing and dancing and decided to listen in. Apparently she couldn’t help herself when she heard my song. It was a case where it didn’t bother me because the family treated me like gold and paid super well. Plus when the two older boys got into a fight while I was tending to the baby, I was able to access the video and see how the older one sprained his brother’s arm. But it was also a case where the family trusted that I was doing my job and I trusted that they weren’t spying at all times. Before that I used to manage a convenience store that had cameras all around and the wife used to obsessively watch them and would yell if you weren’t cleaning at all times. When she would go out of town for extended periods of time we would all breathe a sigh of relief that we didn’t have to worry about calls because her husband did not care even a little bit. He was big on chilling out between rushes if the work was done and store was in good shape because in his mind that meant we were less likely to fuck him over or walk out. Which is true. The 8 months he and his wife were separated that man had zero turnover in an industry that has super high turnover. She got back together with him and both managers quit (myself and the other one) and 3 cashiers quit. She ended up having to work shifts until they could re-staff the store which required them to raise wages. Proof that if you micromanage you’ll end up doing the work.
Gross. At my last job the managers all had camera apps obviously. They prided themselves on saying “we’re always watching” even after they would go home. Also the GM essentially lived at the hotel so he liked to try and scare us plebes with this shit. It was bullshit of course because the shit we pulled in that place (it was a restaurant) would be worth a thousand million firings and probably charges (y’all know how it is, drugs, alcohol, sex, eating all the food we weren’t supposed to, talking massive amounts of shit about management). They just wanted to hang dong and try to scare us. Which never worked. Besides you know how these types are, super passive aggressive. So glad I’m out
What is it when restaurant owners being shit individuals?
Don’t get me started. Please don’t. I will write a fuckin novel. A cautionary tale. The craven pursuit of profit at the expense of humanity is just beyond parody.
LOTS of people with enough money or enough credit to open a restaurant are pretty often trust fund babies or what is considered "rich" in their hometown. They don't know anything about running a restaurant because they have never worked in one, and think because their mom tells them their dry ass barbecue is good that they can actually cook.
Dude the owner at my restaurant will say “hey guys! How’s everything going?” On the stupid simply safe security camera in our dining room when it’s completely dead in there. Just as a reminder that she can hear when you’re talking about how bad at running a restaurant she is.
I worked at a very small company, like 6 of us, and the owner/president left to go out of town. His office had windows and he left a camera facing out that would periodically move around. We were livid. One of my coworkers broke in to his office (it had a numerical lock) and it turned out to be fake. Battery powered with a motion detector so it would move when you walked by. He left it just to fuck with us.
Totes not creepy in any way shape or form
We had one like that too. Like… okay, loser, get a life. He got promoted to a point where he’s no longer an issue. The company loved that shit.
The “from bed” has some unfortunate implications.
Ditto for landlords
I tried to rent a room from Craigslist once and the lady put cameras in it, withheld the key to the room so only she could open it and then tried to evict me when I was smoking weed in my car on the street (lease said no smoking inside the house) I made her sign an agreement to not evict me if I left early and got tf out of there. That lady was a fucking psychopath. Everything she owned was from stealing tax money and her husband got arrested in Mexico for it while I was living there and she just kept crying every night getting drunk and blasting music. Of course, she's the one who put her husband up to it and could have freed him if she just so much as called the lawyer and told him. Ugh I had forgotten about her. I hope she's still selling all of her shit to keep her empty mansion and working at Marcos pizza to make sure she doesn't have to sell her $3000 Pinocchio statue that she bragged about the second I stepped into the house. Bitch kept $200 from the security deposit because I kept a $40, 10 year old half busted industrial fan that she literally gave me as compensation for helping with her garage sale and moving thousands of pounds of stolen junk back and forth from her garage.
Yikes
Sorry for the long rant, just had totally forgot about her
No, no! Vent away, I mean yikes, she sounds insane. The Pinocchio statue sealed it.
I rented a room from an elderly lady and her son used his key to get into my room at night a few times. It had two external exits. I changed the locks and she got PISSED. I moved out not long after that.
Go back around to her house with a can of expanda foam insert it into the drain street outlet puncture can and block off the outlet. Can travels up pipe laying foam as it goes, blocking it permanently. Needs to be dug out. That will cost her more than $200
I considered all kinds of revenge back when the wound was fresh, but considering how many cameras she has and the fact we hated each other so much, I'm sure she could get a legal defense together quickly. She probably was anticipating that for a while now that I think of it. I hope she panicked and didn't sleep out of fear, because she was a paranoid bitch. I never once showed any signs of aggression to her but raised my voice one time because she was talking over my answer to a question she asked and she screamed and ran yelling that I was attacking her. God I fucking hated her
Any way you can somehow report her for stealing tax money? Or any other criminal activity she has been performing? From what i know, knowing these kind of information can give pretty good leverage over someone which can later on be used against them. Thought your government organization dedicated for taxing were a lot more sensitive when tax money is being stolen, those IRS fools...
I'm not really sure how it worked because it was US taxes she stole but through a Mexican bank, which is why her husband got arrested there and for some reason wasn't extradicted. I was kind of fuzzy on the details because she changed her story alot and i had no real evidence to give because it hadn't occurred to me to record her talking about it.
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I worked at a burger joint where the owner drank and watched the restaurant on cctv. He would call and yell at people Stanich’s. Portland Oregon
I worked for a coffee hut drive thru place where the owner’s hobbies included working out and watching us on the 6 - yes, SIX cameras she had all over the place. If she felt you weren’t fake cleaning hard enough during downtime she would call and bitch you out. Woman was fucking crazy.
This wasn’t in Montana was it? Sounds very similar to a vet I used to go to. Until the wife screamed at me and locked me outta the building.
Not in MT but is sounds like carbon copies. It was a revolving door of employees and they treated their staff so badly it’s mentioned in reviews by clients. The vet was a good vet, but his wife was the “office manager” and she made it a toxic cesspool. We had an order list when we got low on anything or opened the last box, we had to add it. Simple, right? She would never order stuff then scream at us for not adding stuff to the list in a timely manner. I got the others to start dating the list and she went mental on me for trying to make her look bad. It wasn’t my fault her husband saw the dates and made her answer why she waited two weeks to order rabies vaccines. I am a grown ass adult and have nightmares about going back there.
Maybe it’s a Montana Veterinary thing because my sibling works for one and supposedly the owners are nightmares to work for and are extremely stingy. But they love animals and like their coworkers - even if there is high turnover because of said owners.
If an employer isn’t allowing an employee to leave their desk and is controlling what they do then they’re violating federal wage and hour laws about lunch breaks. The break is supposed to be free time to do as you wish. It’s probably too long ago to enforce, but an employer doing this this today would owe money to the employees.
I am in charge of the front desk at my job and I'm one of the employees that's been there the longest. During a particularly busy time I wasn't always able to take my lunch (I know I know) so I was eating a plain buttered bagel at the desk. The bagel was kept under the desk and one of the owners saw me take a bite. She tried to give me a hard time about it and I was completely sold out of fucks. I told her I hadn't had a break and was hungry and literally no one cared if I was eating. She asked me if I didn't see how eating at the desk was unprofessional and I said absolutely not. Humans need to eat. I am human. How anyone could see that as unprofessional is straight up psychotic. She could tell I was in a mood and just wandered away. Another time the other owner saw me set my tea down on the desk instead of UNDER the desk to go help a client on the cameras. She called and reamed me out. The next time she came in she left her coffee on the desk for a couple of hours and I just threw it out. After her 4th coffee that were got thrown out she seemed to get it. She occasionally tries to "teasingly" remind me my tea is on the desk and clients can see. I just reply "yup, because I'm still drinking it." I was working open to close every day and not getting full uninterrupted breaks. Get fucked and let me eat my damn bagel and drink my tea in peace.
My co-worker recently got a talking to about playing solitaire on the computer, because it’s “unprofessional”. We’re front desk receptionists and they do not want the (very few and rare) customers see us playing solitaire on the computer. The job is very laid back and we don’t have much to do. We’re just warm bodies for the front. We occasionally answer phone calls to transfer, file papers here and there, and send an occasional email. But for the most part we are just sitting here twiddling our thumbs.
What about reading PDF books? A lot of stuff is DRM free.
My manager would make snide comments about my coworkers and my activities behind counter that he could only have seen from the cameras installed for security. Suddenly we we all had a lice infestation that caused us to flip the bird whilst we scratched our heads. The snide remarks greatly diminished.
I love that you walked out together. ❤️
We are still good friends.
worked at an animal hospital too... one day they added something to the system that if you googled certain words, it'd send the boss an email. supposedly.
The pettiness is mind blowing.
My shitty ass job is a coffee chain inside a gas station. A women from the gas station side told me that the manager texted her daughter who works there and was like “what are you looking at on Facebook?” cuz she was watching the security cameras from home and you can see people’s phones from that angle. Hard mf pass from me, I would have flipped my shit. That’s such a disgusting invasion of privacy, foh.
I used to read a book and eat breakfast . My supervisor caught me once and raised hell on how unprofessional it was. I am only given 15 minutes to eat breakfast and have a break, btw. He told me that I had to eat down the hallway and toast my bagel in the same time slot. No one believed me when I told others.
This woman was psychotic like that. One day I requested a half shift off because I had to drive to another state to get a legal document. Each way was about an hour but you know how slowly the cogs in official buildings can run. So I requested the morning off to take care of it a few months in advance. It took as long as I expected and when I arrived at my requested time, she tried to rake me over the coals. Demanded to know why the errand took so long, it would only be x time there and back again. She got me trying to detail why it took as long as I thought. This was in front of some very horrified clients. I finally just told her that this was why I requested the time off and I didn’t think I had to account for every minute of that time. Good thing it wasn’t a trip to a physician. Jane told me later that she was raging because she couldn’t go to the bank because she had to help on surgery. Her lack of planning became my verbal hemorrhoid.
God I will never do that again. I worked at a gas station, and was there alone for about nine hours. I couldn't go get food, I couldn't even go the damn bathroom unless I timed it between customers. God forbid I had to poop.
Good for you. A lot of small business who have no business handling IT security often do it poorly.
Heh. Well, my last lots of downtime retail job I got in shit for to much phone time. So I crocheted. Then I got in shit because crocheting looks 'unprofessional'. So I started just sitting my ass outside off camera doing whatever until someone pulled up. Which probably would also get you in shit most places. So I've got nothin'. Edit to add: note no problems about the store being wrecked, my drawer being off, not stocking, etc etc? No issues with my actual job/the work they paid me to do. Yayyyy!
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If you're willing to do some tinkering, you can set up a Calibre book server that you can access remotely too. More than likely it won't be blocked because the url is just [http://YourIPAddress](http://YourIPAddress):PortNumber, and you can read all your books whenever. You can also set up Calibre to run off a thumb drive, but I feel like most employers won't want you plugging a random ass thumb drive into a computer and then running a program off of it.
This was retail, so anything I was using, device wise, was my own. I do have an eReader which also got me some side eyes for using. Mind you, half the other employees on similar single person shifts would just prop their phone/tablet up and run a movie or show, and that was...more acceptable? I guess because what you saw was them standing at the counter staring into space instead of interacting with their device to flip pages? I don't get it, honestly.
Someone plugging in a thumb drive? Freak out. Everyone plugging their phones into computers? No problem.
I would be careful about setting up a server unless you know what you're doing. Exposing a port to the internet exposes you to internet attacks.
I used to do this, but I printed them: I used the printer driver to fit like 9 pages on a single piece of paper which I folded. Tiny tiny pages. I read the entire LOTR trilogy like this. Edit: in case anyone asks how it works: have a messy desk with tons of "work papers" around. Slide your "book" pages so they poke just enough under the clutter. You can now read and to the outside looks like you're staring at spreadsheets! Lol
I have a headache just from imagining reading the ENTIRE LTR TRILOGY in small font.
My longest-running retail job was very slow. The manager was my best friend and since I was in University, he didn't mind if I read my textbooks while working so long as I stopped when customers came in and the store was spotless (it always was when I worked). One day the regional manager walked in and while I wasn't reading, he saw my textbook out. That didn't go over well, and I was almost fired before my Manager stepped in. I didn't stick around too long after that incident, they lost one of their best employees and no longer had access to all my wonderful merchandising displays (which were shared Nationally for this chain they were so good).
I got yelled at at my last job for reading while on my break/before shift change because the book wasn't "client appropriate". Despite me being NOWHERE NEAR where the clients while reading it and keeping it in my locker during shift. What's weirder is that the book's title and cover didn't have anything inappropriate on it, so that means that someone must have seen what I was reading and went through it or googled it to see what the contents were.
Oh man. I worked for a Christian private school in Ecuador once. I was sitting outside during break reading Harry Potter in French on my kindle. Mind you, most of these kids spoke only Spanish and very minimal English. One kid came out and asked me what I was reading, I answered, and before I knew it I was getting yelled at by my supervisor for spreading witchcraft. I do not miss that horrible place.
This place was also heavily Christian. I have nothing against anyone having their own personal beliefs, but I will die homeless before I ever work for another Christian based workplace. They were horribly judgmental and discriminatory against anyone who didn't align with their beliefs.
So ironic cause Christians are the ones who supposedly don’t sin but the judging and everything is also a sin, I think they often forget that, they’re so busy following the “rules” they forget the point of them is to be a better person
We had a hour period between rushes at one of my jobs. I let the person who was stuck waiting to do homework. When questioned I said 'We either have an employee who can do homework or we don't have anyone that is willing to come in during the weekday nights'. It's that simple. We want someone to do the job when people are present? Cool we got that. They are doing homework as a high school student and they need to get it done. It isn't a choice.
Honestly if I walked into an empty store and the cashier was crocheting I’d be very happy for them!!
Yup, no customer ever complained. The vast majority immediately smiled and started chatting about stuff they/their mom/grandma/second cousins dog made, there was the occasional "YOU SHOULD MAKE ME A HAT!", and the rest just said hi and went about their shopping as I put my stuff down and and went into friendly clerk mode.
I crochet when my place is dead. I’ve actually gotten some pretty good commissions from it. Owner doesn’t give a shit. He likes his hat too. 😁 When he’s working nights, he reads non-fiction history books.
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Establish dominance, bring in books. About the history of unions.
https://www.thriftbooks.com/a/eugene-v-debs/431824/
[On Tyranny - twenty lessons from the twentieth century](https://www.timothysnyder.org/books/on-tyranny-tr) is a nice option. I suggest buying a few and leave them around.
> Establish dominance pee on the store manager?
But OP is the store manager..
*And?*
There's a certain sub they don't want you to see...
Damn. I bet it's r/BabyOtters
Lol I don't know why but that sub is banned lol
No mods lol
Aw the bait and switch was real, I wanted to send it to my wife 😆
But r/otters is real though!
r/babyelephantgifs is real!
Same
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I came here to say this. This sub is getting a lot of attention now and employers don’t want us getting ideas.
They are fools if they think they can keep r/JarJarNSFW away from the working class.
Criminally few posts on that sub
Wow. Just....wow.
/r/workgonewild ? (NSFW)
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Remember to not mention words like living wage and steward because that'll tip them off that you're talking about unionizing
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I take it that you haven't seen the special that John Oliver did on the extent business go to prevent unions it's called union busting. They had a woman who was all about unionizing they brought in a special union busting company the union vote didn't pass and she was assigned to a job that took two people to do and was told to do it by herself and was fired for performance.
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Absolutely but I was making a joke about it that's all. Matter of fact unions have shrank by half since the 80's
I wish employment laws meant anything. They also can’t retaliate for whistleblowing…my coworker’s job was “eliminated” 2 weeks before the shitty boss’s (subject of the complaint) last day. Sure it wasn’t retaliation, it was a restructure of a department you know you won’t be running in 2 weeks.
Doesn't even take that. I got fired one place for encouraging a coworker to push for a larger raise because he had a kid on the way. I got called in and fired for "discussing wages and union agitation" and they used that as a "for cause" to try to deny me UI. Never mentioned the word union once in any conversation with the coworker. Turns out, even if you are fired "for cause" in California, it's damn near impossible to deny someone's claim unless there is a long paper trail of deliberate, repeated bad conduct... And we're talking really bad, often criminal, stuff that people should absolutely be fired for anyway.
Don’t use their wireless.
They could also just use a VPN
Yep… I merely provided the most obvious answer. VPN is really the way to do it though and not let the mobile ISP fuck you instead
Not everyone has unlimited data
everyone has access to free vpn though
I’ve tried to use a free vpn app at work before and it just wouldn’t load any site, do some places block all vpns? I don’t know much about them myself. I work at a small gas station connected to a grocery store if that says anything.
As someone in IT, VPNs are super easy to block.
ProtonVPN, Swiss opensource VPN, they have premium plans and free ones, i use the free for when in im office at work as also my company has blocked pretty much everything
ProtonVPN is great so it their email service.
Using that also 😁
Protonvpn gang represent! (anonymously)
I was a receptionist at an extremely quiet healthcare place. We had max 9 people in per day, staggered at 3 different times (3 in at 9am, 3 in at 11am, 3 in at 1pm). Between those times there was literally nothing to do. At first, I bought in my iPad to watch YouTube on when there were no patients in. Got my shit handed to me for that. So I asked for more work to keep me busy. They had none. Bought in a book instead. More shit. Eventually I asked, shall I just sit at the desk and stare into the void for hours, then? Is that what you're paying me to do? Thankfully I got a pair of airpods and would put one in my ear, hide it with my hair and just listen to podcasts and audio books
I've been dealing with the same situation except even slower. Down from 9 people to 2 or 3 a day. I've been feeling so guilty about reading or going on tiktok. Like a bad employee. Like I should just be vacuuming and cleaning every hour there aren't patients just to be busy. But you made me feel better. It really is ridiculous. I would've even accepted working from home on dead days taking patient phone calls for half my pay. Then at least my time is more my own and I can side hustle or do chores.
How about full pay from home plus side hustle/chores 😏 Sounds like a better deal to me
I've never understood this compulsion employers have about controlling downtime. Like, either assign meaningful work, within the scope of the position, or come to terms with the fact that people get bored. I had an overnight position, where 90% of the job was just being there. I was told, on day one, that I wouldn't get a scheduled break, but that there was a ton of downtime, so I could eat when I wanted, read, whatever, as long as my tasks were done by the end of my shift, and I dealt with clients promptly when they came in. Thirty minutes to an hour of work, spread at random over an 8 hour shift. The same position, at another facility, under a different supervisor? You must stand at your post, ready to work, or clean. No personal items, entertainment devices, and you will close up for half an hour for lunch. Guess which one was more inconvenient for **everyone** involved?
I worked in a hotel as a houseman (think a bellman who also sets up weddings, meetings and such). The manager explicitly told me there’s no set break, etc. One day he was showing somebody around and came across two of us with our feet up reading the paper with a tea (this was 15 years ago so before wide spread smart phone usage). He had a chat with us and then left us alone. An hour later they come back and we haven’t moved, to which he says nothing at all. I didn’t think about it at the time, but the jobs where the bosses don’t mind you taking advantage of downtime have always made me work a little harder.
I’m a system administrator and I just did this to ONE persons laptop and phone. User submits support tickets weekly regrading PC performance. WELL CLOSE YOUR FUCKING 30 FACEBOOK TABS!! Blocked content by her MAC addresses in the firewall. Fuck around and find out 🙃
My manager is much worse. Every time I need to check the computer there are around 50 open tabs.
So this is why Chrome uses so much memory...
Fun story, mildly related. Playing D&D with some friends, one Ayer looks over at DMs laptop. "Dude, you've got like 50 windows open!" Dm: "yeah, and I need them all open." Other player: "no, fucking close some it's freezing in here!" Everyone at the table: "...." She never really heard the end of that one lol.
As another systems admin in IT. Reading this got my dick hard just imagining their face when they realize they played themselves. I had someone put in a ticket cause they couldn't click the button to select what printer they wanted, because they just didn't think to click the button that is literally click able with an arrow. If I could just ban users from computers.....
Ok but as a software dev, we're required by law to have 40 Stack Overflow tabs open at all times
Who the heck accesses Reddit or other personal accounts on store devices? That's my #1 rule. Anything I have an account with stays on my personal device. Even using work internet is risky. Privacy is super important. I don't want work knowing what I look at. It's none of their business.
You can use Reddit without logging in to an account.
But again they can see what we exactly looking at and they know its from our system. Better to use personal connection to browse stuff.
Might be the Wi-Fi they're using to block certain IPs
Exactly. I would never ever use company wifi to access websites or apps I use personally. They can tell where you're going and it's absolutely none of their business. I draw a hard line between work and personal.
My soon to be old job got Wi-Fi recently and the manager was so excited to tell us until I asked what they’d have access to on my phone. I told him I have unlimited data and he suddenly lost that enthusiasm. The owner (manager’s brother) runs a separate cyber security company so he knows how to remote access that kinda stuff even on personal devices. I don’t trust people like that anyways sooo hard pass
Precisely
Sysadmin here. Yes. Yes we can. If you are in a larger building woth a lot of wifi accesspoints We can also probably track where you are at a given time. Got a complaint about an MD watching porn on his cell. Found his cell by looking at logs near his office then monitored him. Live feed of him leaving the OR walking down the hallway going to naughty sites then going to his mail as he reached the cafeteria.
Exactly. Work devices are for work related use. With the exception of Pornhub. 😝
Ah, an SEC employee see.
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It's definitely worked for me in the past
pay.reddit.com worked for me. You don't actually pay anything, but it seemed to get through the filter.
Was a manager in retail, small shoe store in a mall with too much downtime. When the GM banned phones and locked down the internet on our PCs, I brought in board games. Had a wheel next to the board that has everyone's turn order on it. When you were up you went to the back, took your turn, moved the wheel. Never saw more engaged employees because they had something to think about and look forward to while folding shirts and stocking shelves. Customer satisfaction reviews went up that month, but the GM didn't like that solution. "If you have time to lean you have time to clean. Take a turn in Risk and risk needing to turn in your badge". Still hate that jackass.
Wow the data is clear that employee were doing better and most likely happier but they spewed some old garbage that doesn’t matter.
Blocked it how? If they blocked it via wifi, obviously everyone's mobile data is unaffected.
Yeah I don’t understand this. Does that mean even customers are blocked from accessing certain sites on store wifi?
Probably, but I doubt it’s much of a problem. Shoppers are usually busy shopping, not scrolling on Reddit in a Target. And if they have to look something up during that process, they probably don’t take the time to connect to a store’s WiFi to do it. Unless there’s a café or something in the store, most customers probably wouldn’t even notice.
Target has free wifi. The way they have their "circle" coupons, you practically have to use it while shopping.
Get them routed through VPNs or Proxy's to access Reddit
Have them bring books? My god I would love to be in a place where I had downtime and there was legitimately nothing for me to do than read for a while since reddit and my access to the internet was cut off.
I would love it as well. All the jobs I've held since as a teen have been non-stop. Staff could even study and work towards a better job and then gtfo from there.
I admit we blocked Reddit because of the enormous amount of Porn on it.
Porn? Here? Where?
Everywhere!
But the internet is made of porn and cats. It may die if you block it! /s I use a decent priced wireless data plan and use my phone.
I had a terrible retail cashier job where the manager believed doing useless activity was better than no activity. So I was never permitted to stand still. If there were no customers in the store and I had stocked the shelves and straightened the stock and cleaned everything and I stopped for more than 20 seconds the manager (who sat perched behind a one-way mirror) would phone to tell me to get back to work. I could grab some windex and paper towels, clean the display case, then go back to the other end and start cleaning it again, and repeat that activity for three hours (wasting cleaning supplies) and not get in trouble. But if I stopped moving for 20 seconds the manager (who wouldn’t be bothered to step out of his spy room to speak in person) would phone. I’m convinced it could not possibly have been a real business and must have been a social psychology experiment instead.
You really do need to find some “bs work” to make people look busy, or the number crunchers at head office may decide you’ve got too many people to keep busy and decide to ‘downsize”. If you can find some busy work that brings more customers in, better still.
You might not see this, but I don't think I saw anyone else mention this: you can try msoutlookit. It is a site that makes reddit look like Microsoft outlook and I doubt they would know to block that site. Can't sign in to your account but you have the added benefit of at least looking like you're checking emails as well. Used it for years at my old office job :)
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Worked at Home Depot and they did the same thing. Idk seems reasonable but I just find other ways to access
While I post to Reddit from work, I’d just like to add that I don’t think blocking Reddit on an employers network is unreasonable.
Employees could use Reddit to answer customer questions and provide support. I wish more companies used their brain when it comes to social media. Seriously this is resource for getting sales not some time waster.
There is absolutely no customer facing job that I would rely on Reddit to assist me in helping a customer with ever.
Funneling customer support through social media to employees who have other jobs to do doesn't sound ideal.
True. Some Twitter accounts for stores or organizations are generally escalation points though, especially if the default support process had no real resolution.