I could write several novels on my first job out of college — all of them being what-not-to-do best sellers, I am sure. While the product the company sells could be quite lucrative as there is a market for it, the owner has selected the worst person to manage it. She decides to “take me under her wing and grow me,” but in actuality, it becomes me just doing her job for her on top of whatever odd tasks we need done. I learn a lot of useful management and soft skills simply because I am doing all the management straight out of college, but I am not improving technically.

Because of that, I let my boss convince me that I do not have a right to ask for a raise for four years. She insists asking for one would be selfish to boot, as we are struggling to get started, but always “acknowledges” how much work and effort I put in — privately, of course, so she can take credit publicly.

Sadly, my manager doesn’t just pull this with me. And even sadder still, I am not the worst case as I at least have a job with meager benefits — health care I have to pay fully for. The other people she does this to are contractors promised full-time jobs. And as to be expected, after six months of waiting for their actual job offer to go through, they end up leaving and looking elsewhere. This typically leads to her finally scrambling to get their contracts so as not to upset the owner. Not that anyone stays. She never knows why these people leave, though! And it is always “their fault” for not asking for what they need.

In actuality, what is happening is that my boss’s bonus is based on our profit margins, so it benefits her to severely underpay people and make them pay their own taxes.

For other reasons, I am pretty fed up with the job. I decide to go back to school to get my Master’s degree and leave the company outright. But before I do, I decide to finally ask for a raise, knowing full-well I have no real shot at getting it approved. I also know because of my boss’s shady business practices that she will try to exclusively speak to me and hide any potential paper trial of any promises made so she can deny everything.

Sure enough, it goes exactly as planned.

Friday #1: At 9:00 am, I send an email asking to sit down next Friday and discuss my compensation plan, pointing out all the things that she has thrust onto me that no one else knows how to do. I do not receive a reply, but the owner seems to be in a good mood with me after. As expected.

Next Monday: My manager stops by my office to say she cannot say anything officially but it was promising. Great! I ask when I will learn something more, to which she cannot give me an answer. Right on track.

Friday #2: I send a follow-up text message to the owner asking to meet about compensation. He doesn’t reply but forwards it to my manager, who calls me into her office to give me thirty full minutes of platitudes about how she sees I deserve this raise, but she cannot give me any information, not even if it is going to be approved. I leave and send a follow-up email thanking her for talking to me and asking to let me know when I can hear an official word. I expect no response except for her to stop me when I leave to let me know she told the owner we spoke.

Next Monday: My manager asks if the owner has responded to the email. I know she said she would take care of it, so I know he wasn’t planning on it, but I tell her unfortunately not. She “apologizes” and says that he was very happy we talked yesterday. I ask when I will hear something and get a vague excuse that he is busy this week. Checks out.

Thursday: I send a follow-up email asking when we can discuss compensation. Crickets from both parties.

Friday #3: I resign, making note that no one has given me official word on my compensation package. I do such at 4:30 pm to send her scrambling.

Monday: I come in to find my manager waiting for me begging me to reconsider. Apparently, as expected, the owner is unhappy, as he approved the compensation weeks ago. She says I am being unreasonable and not giving her enough time. I remind her I only wanted a meeting to have an actual discussion with facts, but both were ignoring me, so I figured this was my best course of action. She is unsatisfied, but what can she do?

Friday #4: I finally get my compensation package approved! (Verbally of course, with nothing in writing.) That’s great, but I am not the kind of girl who likes to resort to blackmail, so I am keeping my word. I wish them the best of luck moving forward.

Safe to say, my boss still hasn’t learned her lesson, but at least the owner is now wising up to what she is pulling.

I work for a biotechnology company. The most recent few weeks at work have been EXTREMELY busy — not a moment to sit and think, always running from one fire to another, etc. It’s hectic and crazy, we’re severely understaffed, and everything breaks all the time. We all bring our laptops to meetings because we can’t afford to lose an hour, and we inhale our lunches in five minutes while typing with the other hand.

Our CEO thinks of himself as a cross between God and Socrates. He’s an arrogant a**hole who believes he’s filled with wisdom to impart yet has absolutely no idea how hard everyone is working.

As I was flying between tasks, [CEO] came in with someone I hadn’t seen before.

CEO: “[My Name], this is our new intern, [Intern].”

Me: “Oh, hi, nice to meet you.”

CEO: “She’ll be primarily reporting to you.”

Me: “I’m sorry?”

CEO: “She’ll be here all summer. Please put her to work right away.”

I quickly introduced myself and my team to [Intern], who seemed pleasant and competent enough but knew nothing about the company. As grateful as I was for additional help, bringing on a new person means training, and I sure as heck didn’t have time to give even thirty seconds’ worth of training that day. I thought about having her follow me around just to watch, but most of the craziness that day was happening in the lab, and she wasn’t allowed in the lab without certain safety training that wouldn’t even be available to her until the next week.

So, the result was that I did my best to hand her some papers to read, apologized that I wouldn’t have time to do much training that day, and left her at her desk to start reading. It’s not the way to give someone a stellar first day, but I had emergencies and deadlines all through the afternoon, so I really couldn’t do much else.

Apparently, while I was running between tasks later in the afternoon, [CEO] sauntered in to ask [Intern] how she was getting along. He directly asked her what she was working on at that moment, because that’s the kind of a**hole he is. She had already finished reading what I gave her, so she honestly answered that she had read a couple of papers but had run out of things to do.

Next thing I knew, [CEO] summoned me out of the lab, where I was rushing to meet multiple deadlines, and called me into his office. He sighed, got a contemplative look on his face, and seemed to be gearing up for one of his facetious, self-aggrandizing lectures. Meanwhile, I was so busy that I’d brought paperwork with me TO HIS OFFICE to fill out, and I’m pretty sure I filled out some of it while walking down the hall. A lab timer in my hand was counting down to some other unmissable deadline. In other words, on an afternoon when every second counted, the last thing I needed was to be called into [CEO]’s office.

When I arrived, [Intern] was already sitting there.

CEO: “[My Name], do you know why I’ve been successful in life?”

Me: “Why?”

He pretended to take a few moments to think of the answer. I mean, for f***’s sake.

CEO: “Because when I have people working for me, I always make sure they have something to do. Now, five minutes ago, I asked [Intern] what she was working on, and do you know what she told me?”

He then, at great length, described the scene between himself and [Intern], as well as how appalled he was that he’d hired someone to help me, yet I left her without any work to do. Never mind the fact that he didn’t tell me in advance that he was hiring an intern or the fact that he’d dropped her in my lap on a day when I had no time to train her. In fact, I ended up missing several deadlines and timed events that day because I was stuck in [CEO]’s office, listening to him talk about time management.

I don’t work there anymore. They never understood that if you don’t hire enough people, you’ll be stuck forever in a downward spiral because even the people you have are too busy to train the new people.

Many years ago, I used to help a friend who owned the gaming store where we played D&D. I have to admit that he was a pretty crap owner. Usually, he would sit playing on his computer until someone came to the counter to check out, and he was always grumpy when he had to answer questions or do special orders. He was pretty much in it just to get his playing supplies cheaper, and they depended on his wife’s job for their daily needs.

I’d run the store for him when he had to go out of town — not for pay, but just to help a friend. And I would always try and do the best I could for any customers that came in, greeting them, asking if I could help, etc.

One time, close to Christmas, my friend had to do his two weeks for his Air Force Reserves, so I stepped in. There were never any crowds, just one or two people at a time scattered through the day, so it was easy work.

There was one elderly lady who would come in every now and then to buy things for her grandson. This time, she came in to get his Christmas present and I pulled out the main catalog we ordered through. We sat and went through it, and she ordered five or six things to get him.

As I was writing her order up, she seemed uncomfortable.

Me: “Is there something wrong?”

Customer: “I don’t want to upset you, but you really need to fire the boy that usually works here. He’s always rude and never very helpful. I’m always glad to see you here instead of him.”

Me: “Actually, ma’am, I don’t work here. He’s the owner and I’m just helping him out.”

She apologized and hurried out the door as soon I finished the paperwork on her order. I told my friend about it when he got back, and we all got a chuckle out of it.

This story takes place during the end of my tenure with a game store chain, after I’ve settled into a familiar groove of thirteen- to fifteen-hour shifts, six days a week — also known as “absentee coworker syndrome”. I’ve also gotten a chance to get to know all the regular customers.

One of my regulars is in the store checking on the stock of our Nintendo Wii units, wanting to know when we’ll get more, etc. The guy easily drops $300 a week in my store and has two adorable, well-behaved kids, so we’re on fantastic terms.

Unfortunately, our district manager is visiting our store and brought her friend [District Manager #2] with her for advice on how to run our store.

It’s worth noting one more fact. I am the sole white employee at this store. The neighborhood in question is predominantly filled with those of darker complexion than myself (African, Latino, etc). Both of the district managers in my store are, you guessed it, whiter than new-fallen snow.

I’m chatting up my regular when I get pulled over by the district managers to a corner out of earshot, where the following exchange takes place.

District Manager #1: “What the h*** do you think you’re doing?!”

Me: “Um, my job? What do you mean? Did I do something wrong? He already has the Premium Membership card…”

District Manager #2: “Not that. Why’d you tell him when you’re getting more Wii consoles?”

Me: “Because he asked? I don’t get it.”

District Manager #1: “We don’t give that information out to people like that!”

District Manager #2: “Exactly. When you give them that kind of information, you either get robbed or you get more of them. That’s not the image we’re trying to cultivate here.”

District Manager #1: “Yeah, we’re trying to bring in more… profitable clientele.”

Me: “I don’t… I don’t understand. What do you mean, ‘them’?”

District Manager #1 & #2: *In unison* “Blacks.”

District Manager #2: “We want bleach-white soccer moms, not a bunch of sooty street rats.”

My eyes must’ve popped out of their sockets in horror at what they just said, because my district manager immediately begins trying to backpedal.

District Manager #1: “What he means is that middle-class people tend to spend more money.”

The incredibly racist conversation continued for a few minutes before I promptly excused myself back to my store and helped my customers. Still, that little bit pretty much eroded any respect I had for Senior Management. 

Luckily, the parent company — which controlled two video chains and my game chain — went belly-up a month later, and both district managers lost their jobs overnight.

Me? I went on to a data center internship that paid more and was a ton of fun.

I work at a bakery in a thrift store. The owner, a multi-millionaire, comes in one day.

Owner: “Go into the employee breakroom and unscrew the lightbulb in the employee fridge. It will save me money!”