After getting a new batch of employees for our convenience store/gas station kitchen a few months ago, the Food Service Manager started putting up signs for the new hires — things like “Make sure the warming cabinet is empty at the end of the night.” Among these signs:

Sign: “If you s*** in the mop station, you get to clean it up.”

I did not ask about that.

When I was in college, I worked evening shifts at a gas station. I typically worked at least four nights a week and would be the only employee on shift at that time because most of the night was too slow to warrant more than one staff member. That being said, there were some rushes, typically at the start of the shift when day-shifters got off work and came in for gas and about three-quarters of the way through my shift when overnight workers were stopping for coffee before heading into work.

As this shift was primarily worked by me, and I was a reliable employee, when we had new employees start who would work my nights off, it was my job to train them.

On one such occasion, after a couple of weeks of training [New Hire], my boss let me know that she wanted to make the transition to the new hire working alone. With this in mind, I was asked to essentially not work for the last evening of training her and to only observe and be available for questions. This allowed [New Hire] to get a feel for what the shift would be like alone while still having me as a safety net, and it let me see if she was really ready to work alone and report back to my boss.

The problem with this was that I really struggled with not jumping in to help. I could appreciate the benefit of just letting her figure it out unless there was a big issue, but in practice, I just wanted to take over because A: I wanted things done right, and B: it was really boring just observing.

Knowing this, my coworker who was on the shift before me and [New Hire] hung around to chat for a while after her shift and encourage me to let [New Hire] handle the initial rush. This is where we met the second problem with this plan: I still had to keep an eye on things, and there are only so many places to do that from, so I was still behind the counter near a second register with a closed sign up.

Customers understandably saw me there and expected me to assist and/or thought I was being a lazy “kid” just talking to my coworker. I tried to politely redirect people, letting them know my register was closed and the other employee would assist. I even said a couple of times that I was just training and there to answer questions as some snide remarks were made.

Finally, one customer decided he was going to make me do my job, I guess. He walked up to the register next to me, pushed the closed sign out of the way, and deposited his items on the counter. He didn’t say a single word but made it clear he was not moving.

Trying to not make a big deal of it, I just quickly checked him out in hopes I could put the sign back and keep directing people to [New Hire], but the damage was done. Most of the line moved over to my side, including people I had already directed to [New Hire].

I understand why people thought I should be running a register, but really, if a register is closed, you don’t get to decide to open it or decide what the employee’s job is at that given time.

During high school, I had a part-time job at a grocery store. We had a lot of cashiers quit and desperately needed more cashiers. At the time, I was making $10.50 an hour. Our general manager made a promotion where any cashiers hired got paid $11.25 an hour. So, I went to talk to my manager.

Me: “Since you’re going to start paying new cashiers $11.25 an hour, can I have a raise to that amount?”

Manager: “No, that’s only for new hires.”

After about two weeks, I got fed up with being the only one who knew how to run the registers because I was really the only one with experience. I was training employees who were making more than me. I asked again to be on the same level as the people I was training and was turned down. I realized that the promotion ended in about a month, so I talked with my parents about my plan.

I waited until I knew that my manager was going to struggle because of people already asking for time off. I went in to my shift and talked to him.

Me: “I quit. Here’s my time card, here are my keys, and here is my vest.”

Manager: “Whoa, wait. Let’s talk about this.”

Me: “No.”

And I walked straight out.

I enjoyed the weekend off and hung out with friends more often than I normally did and didn’t work at all that week.

On Friday — a week and a day later — I went to the website and applied again. I was called in for an interview with my former manager. He seemed relieved and smug that I was coming back, but at the end of the interview, I asked:

Me: “Since I am a new hire, I get the new hire bonus pay, right? Also, [Coworker] gave me her referral code, so I get the referral bonus, as well, right?”

I could tell he was very unhappy, but I did end up getting both.

I missed three days of work but ended up making more from the referral bonus ($250) and got myself a $.75 raise.

This happened at a previous employer. The boss was a good person and a decent boss. It was a large facility with twenty-four-hour staffing and high turnover. In any place with high turnover, you will inevitably hit a moment when the staffing level is critically low. The place really didn’t pay enough to be competitive but instead got most of their applicants because they were known to hire just about anyone.

I had been working overnights since I got hired and had just recently switched to mornings. The graveyard shift was predictably loose, and my special scheduling needs due to a partner who traveled a LOT for work had been handled without much fanfare or to-do, so I’d not used any paid time off (PTO) and there wasn’t a record of my specific scheduling needs.

The morning shift was, of course, much more rigid in scheduling, so when my partner’s work-travel schedule for the next few months was settled, I put in for PTO to cover the days they were gone so I could stay home with our kids.

There was a full month until the next trip, so I wasn’t too worried, but then it got denied.

I set time aside to talk to management about this, and to my surprise, I got shunted to the recently-hired new director of the facility.

Director: “I’m sorry, but we’re really short-staffed and are not approving any extra time off right now. I know it’s summer and everyone wants to go camping and fishing, but we can’t spare any hours until we hire and onboard more staff.”

Me: “I get that, but it is summer, and my kids are out of school, and my partner is traveling for work, so I’m not going to be in. It was kind of a courtesy of me to ‘request’ PTO; I won’t be in those days no matter what.”

Director: “Look, you’re going to have to make other arrangements. You can’t have the time, and if you don’t come in, you’ll be written up. I’m sure you don’t want to have that happen.”

Remember how I said they were known to hire anyone? This led to a lot of the management and executives in the organization looking down on the little guys like me and thinking we were all desperate to keep the job. This would be one of [Director]’s first wake-up calls, and I like to think it helped make her a good boss.

Me: “So… here’s the deal. If you don’t approve my use of this little bit of PTO, I’ll turn in my two weeks’ notice, and at the end, you’ll have to cash out the three and a half weeks of PTO that I’ve accrued. And you’ll still be down another staff person on those days. Or, you can approve it, and I’ll be here ready to go the following Monday, and you won’t have to replace me or pay out all my PTO right away. You don’t pay me enough to cover child care, and you need me a lot more than I need this job.”

Director: “Is that really how you want to do this?”

Me: “Yes, because I have been offered a job by almost every one of our partner agencies but have chosen to stay here. I want to stay here because this job is giving me skills that will look good on my CV in my future career. But if you don’t want to work with what my family requires, then I will find somewhere else that will — easily.”

Director: “Give me a day to consider it.”

Three hours later, I got an alert on our time clock and scheduling app that all of my PTO requests had been approved.

I never mentioned it again, and [Director] ended up being the best that facility ever had. One thing that set her apart was that she showed real respect for all the employees, and as a result, they all worked hard for her. Under her leadership, the turnover dropped by almost sixty percent even while the pay only increased to be on par with fast food.

The skills I gained there have continued to serve me, and in my application to grad school, I cited that job as being key to my development in my chosen career field.

I’m a senior electrical engineer in the industrial sector. I started work at a huge firm a few weeks ago, and right off, my superior detailed what was expected of me every quarter. Among the requirements was one safety violation report a month.

I thought, “Okay, I can keep myself from f****** up more than once a month. This is a large factory with everything from spinning grinders to steaming corrosives, so obviously OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) is a big issue here, but this isn’t my first rodeo, so to speak. I generally know what I’m doing.”

My first month went by, and I kept everything nice and safe. My end-of-month one-on-one rolled around. [Boss] made it clear, to my surprise, that the requirement was for me to file AT LEAST one safety violation a month.

Me: “How does one go about controlling safety violations, as they are inherently accidents? If I had any way to influence their appearance, I would prevent them in the first place.”

Boss: “You just need to keep your eyes open; the violations will appear.”

Fine. I kept my eyes open, but honestly, everything seemed perfectly in order. Everyone else in my department was ticking off safety violations one after another, and I was nearing the end of month two with nothing. I would go on walks looking for safety infringements instead of working.

Something seemed off, so I looked into the safety violations report Excel, and I was just stupefied. This was a list of the most unbelievably inane infractions I’d ever set my eyes upon.

Here’s one example:

Report: “Infraction: cabinet door was left open in a room. Someone could hit their head. Immediate mitigation: cabinet door closed. Future mitigation: add magnets to cabinet doors.”

There were countless other esoteric reports like “unexplained puddle next to electrical cabinet” or “stack of cables on floor”. I couldn’t believe it. These well-educated grown men and women just writing nonsensical safety violations on absolutely anything. I tried approaching one of the guys about it, but he just said:

Coworker: “Keep your eyes open; the violations will appear.”

They keep repeating it like it was a mantra and then changing the subject.

I thought this was ridiculous enough, but then, one day, a report came in about a ladder missing one of the plastic caps on its legs. “Immediate mitigation: plastic cap found elsewhere and secured in its place.” I had been the last one to use this ladder the day before and it was perfectly fine, which led me to my conclusion that this man was purposely SABOTAGING company equipment just so he could fix it and then write a safety violation report.

I felt like I’m in an episode of “The Office”. Everyone I approached about this just brushed it off. Maybe it was because I was the new guy?

Anyway, I couldn’t show up to my second monthly evaluation sans safety report, so I went to a random grounding cable, slightly unfastened the bolt, took a picture, and then fastened it back in place. I wrote a report about it, and the OSHA guy commended me in person for my vigilance.

Is this a department-wide grift? Are the managers unaware of this farce, or are they playing along? Usually, this would be a huge red flag but everyone is otherwise really nice and the pay is great. I wonder what I should sabotage next month…