"I realized my workplace was toxic when ..."
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Tell me the moment when you realized that your workplace was toxic AF.
00:05It was when my colleague got a promotion, and then instead of hiring someone else,
00:09they gave me all of her responsibilities, and then didn't even give me a raise,
00:12even though I was taking on twice the work.
00:14When my boss looked at us and said,
00:16my staff is a bunch of f***ing morons.
00:18That was one week after I relocated my entire family for that job.
00:23We bought a new building, and so we hired movers to move all our furniture
00:27from the one building to the other.
00:30The movers wouldn't move our one boss's desk
00:36without bubble wrapping it from like top, bottom, middle.
00:40They used so many rolls of bubble wrap,
00:43and we were charged a lot of money because there was c*** all underneath his desk.
00:51I no longer work at this company, but I walked in and the store manager's like,
00:55hey, no one's really cleaned the bathroom in a while, could you clean it?
00:58And I was like, yeah, I don't mind, you know, I don't care, whatever.
01:01I cleaned it, I mean, I did a really good deep clean, like therapeutic deep clean.
01:06She looked in there, and I'm kidding, she goes,
01:09yeah, it looks great.
01:11And then she turns around and she goes,
01:12to my assisting manager, she goes,
01:15see, I told you Mexicans are good at cleaning.
01:19I remember I just had surgeries.
01:20I just had a shoulder surgery, and I just had another surgery on my opposite hand.
01:25And I remember we were at a media day when my manager, my coach,
01:28my employer came up to me right in front of my face,
01:31and he said, if you ever do X again, I'll make sure your other shoulder is broken too.
01:35I realized my workplace was toxic when my 38-year-old supervisor with seven kids
01:41was beefing with 19-year-olds, people my age at the time,
01:46over 19-year-old boys that she was sleeping with within the campaign.
01:50I'm talking, she was full-on threatening people,
01:53like, you better not sleep with my man.
01:55One particular Sunday, I'm driving to work, and I'm rear-ended by a drunk driver.
01:59My car is totaled, and the guy takes off.
02:03Happens, right?
02:04So there I am, car is completely messed up, can't drive at all,
02:08and I have to call him to work at 4.30 in the morning or so.
02:12I call the store, tell my manager, hey, I was just hit by a drunk driver.
02:15I'm waiting for the cops to show up because they took off.
02:18This mother-
02:19First question that he asked me after I said I was just hit by a drunk driver who took off was,
02:24so, did you get someone to cover your shift?
02:27I never took my one-hour lunch break out.
02:30I always had my lunch at my desk, always worked through lunch, addressing anything that came up.
02:34Once I left the office 10 minutes early, I got ripped a new one.
02:37My daughter had just turned two at the time, and I was working at Starbucks.
02:41I was in between other jobs.
02:43We were at the park, and she had a medical emergency,
02:45which resulted in her literally dying in my arms.
02:48She was brought back to life by CPR that a stranger performed on her,
02:53and she was brought to Children's Hospital by an ambulance,
02:56and I called into work at Starbucks,
02:58and they said, it's your responsibility to find coverage for your shift,
03:01and we need you back in tomorrow.
03:03So, starting out, we have a trigger warning, just warning you ahead of time.
03:07My boss was asking me questions about what I had scheduled for my particular client,
03:11and as I'm going through everything that I had scheduled coming up,
03:14she looks at me and, in front of the whole team, says,
03:18oh, if that's what I had scheduled, I would off myself.
03:23We had a new supervisor, and this supervisor did not like me whatsoever.
03:27And me being a Muslim, I have to pray five times a day, and the times fluctuate.
03:31Sometimes it's not always on the same time.
03:34So, I used to go in the back and pray, and she had an issue with that,
03:36because, like I said, it wasn't consistent,
03:39and I wouldn't leave when we were busy or had a rush or whatever.
03:42And she just goes off on me in front of everyone, and I go back off on her,
03:46and I'm just like, it's not my fault you don't understand the way my religion works.
03:50I'm going to call this place Boo Boo Orange.
03:53Boo Boo Orange hires through temp agencies.
03:56Boo Boo Orange will keep temp workers on for as long as they possibly can,
04:01and claim it's because they don't have it in their budget,
04:03and they have to have a temp-to-hired-on ratio in their warehouse.
04:07So, I was kept on as a temp for a year,
04:09despite them making me Employee of the Month twice,
04:13and making me train 30 people.
04:15Our general manager abused us.
04:18Verbally and emotionally abused us.
04:21She would say horrible things to us, and had a terrible temper with our guests.
04:25This was about six or seven years ago, so I wasn't out as non-binary yet,
04:28so I was considered the only boy working in the store.
04:31She was especially hard on me, and she would justify this behavior to me
04:34by saying that I can handle the emotional stress that my female co-workers can't.
04:39That would be when they asked me to manage without manager pay.
04:41I said yes because I'm dumb.
04:43Just to later have them promote the girl that I trained
04:45to manager
04:46without telling me
04:48during a staff meeting.