Jobs you can't wait to quit.

[Starbird]

So as you can probably guess the job I currently have is giant pile of fucking horse shit and at this point I'm not sure if I'd be better off just quitting and living under a bridge. So I work as a security guard and it's shit. The job started off fine, but for the past three months I haven't had a schedule. The company lost a job site and since then they've just randomly called me to work. Sometimes They'll want me to leave for a job site that has already started. I never know more than a few days Today I was scheduled to work 7pm to 7am. So at 6:15 my boss calls me to reschedule for 10:30 tonight. I really can't wait to find something better.

I've also worked at a call center for AT&T which was a miserable experience. I was really happy to quit that one.

TLR Ever have a job you really hate/hated?

Geez that's rough! I thought my job was bad.

Teaching English. Wonderful job in theory. Sometimes it is. However my boss is an OCD nutcase that can be difficult to deal with at times and far too many of my students are simply left here by parents because an English program tends to be cheaper than a nanny.

I can't wait to move on for two reasons: My boss and I aren't a good match and there is no possibility of promotion or even a raise since we are a tiny little school always on the edge of going under.

In terms of the worst jobs ever: Being a waiter back in South Africa. I worked at a very high class steakhouse where theoretically I should have done well. Unfortunately the place was owned by two of the worst, most exploitative, most dishonest people I've ever come across. The way they treated their staff was apalling and borderline illegal at times. For example:

- Legally they can't make you work more than 8 hours. However if you go home before they 'cash you out' you don't get any of your tips for the evening (most customers paid by card) and essentially earn nothing. Oh and they can choose what time you cash out. And it can be 4-5 hours after your shift ended.

- All breakages, including meals sent back and kitchen staff errors are taken out of the staff paychecks at the end of the month. At times this amount can exceed the amount the paycheck was for. They then take it out of your tips the next month.

- Waiters were expected to attend unpaid advertising events and promotional events 'voluntarily'. Except that they were mandatory.

It was horrible. Oh and if anyone even talked about quitting or seeing a labour lawyer or similar, they were sacked on the spot with a bad reference.

 

[Rewdalf]

Valet parking.

Fun, right? Driving fancy cars and whatnot?

Well, the pay is below minimum wage because "the tips cover the rest," which most of the time they do not.
Plus that, tips get taxed a massive amount, so that wad of crumpled, filthy, and most of the time ripped in half dollar bills you come home with are just going to be taken out of your paycheck in the form of taxes.

The hours are ass, I get a Monday through Sunday schedule every Friday, except when they're late, and my hours are always different. Some days early mornings, some days overnight from 11pm to 7am. If anyone cancels following my shift, I have to stay late. Love it when the overnight guy is late and I have to stay an extra three hours on top of my usual 3pm to 11pm shift...

And not to mention, the hotel guests are absolute morons...
"I left something in my car and need it out..." Great! I'll walk all the way up to the garage, get it for you, and walk all the way back down. Oh, no tip? Yep. Just going to pay my next bill with a big fat stack of "thank yous..."
Wow, I really like your hundred thousand dollar sports car. Take care of it? Of course! No tip? Guess I should think twice next time I see you.
You're just going to take fifteen minutes to check in? That's okay. No charge. Leave the keys in the car. We aren't going to move it. Three hours later, "what do you mean I have to pay for parking?"

And boy, some of the nerve.
You've left your Prius on the ramp. That's fine as long as you'll only take fifteen to twenty minutes to check in, but I need the keys.
No?
Why do we need the keys if we aren't parking the car?
Buddy, we've got the keys to a Jaguar XJS, two Supercharged Range Rovers, and a Lamborghini. Leave your goddamned Prius keys down here or we're towing it...

Finishing college and quitting... I just can't anymore.

 

[Remus]

Any job involving a quota or pay based on performance. I like being paid hourly thank you very much, and that one job I had with a contract agency as an unloader was just asking for manipulation by management handing out the assignments. Here's the gist - it's mid-august in the hottest year in recorded history. I unload trucks - in dry dock and cold dock. So I lose a gallon of liquid working in one, then gain it back as it adheres to my skin, frozen, going to the other. No stress

Each truck has an assigned value. That value is cut in half for the management, with the other half split among the unloaders working it. So the fewer people, the more pay, but the harder the work is. The guy I'm with is Dominican and I was told, the highest paid worker they have, making an amazing $13 an hour! Ooh, that's almost a living wage. AND I COULD NOT UNDERSTAND A WORD THAT HE SAID. Did I mention he's Dominican?

I quickly found out why he was the highest paid worker. He was used for all the training assignments. This job had 2 facets of note - there was the forklift driver and the packer who restacks pallets to be transferred by the actual employees making a real wage, who are unionized. The forklift driver's job is simple - pull every pallet off the truck and leave a big enough gap between each one to set an empty pallet for restacking. My job was to in fact restack, according to directions on my assignment. Everything's grocery, ranging from heavy to damn heavy. Here's the kicker - after my trainer offloads the merchandise, he doesn't help with restacking, instead, moving to the next dock over so he can get his name signed on that truck, thus getting paid for 2 loads instead of 1. This is how he's their highest paid worker, not because he works hard but because he games the system. Luckily for me, for the 2 week training period, I wasn't yet on their pay structure. But I didn't stay past training to find out that I'd likely barely pass minimum wage, which I'd have to make because even with their system in place they'd still have to pay me at least $7.50.

 

[davidmc1158_v1legacy]

snip

Call center work is pretty much the seventh layer of hell. I'm not sure if the customers or fellow employees were worse.

In all fairness, I really have to state that my coworkers were (for the most part) pretty decent people. And, if I must admit it, 90-95% of the callers were normal people who never really gave me any real grief.

However, that having been said, the 5-10% of those callers that were annoying were MASSIVELY asinine. It also didn't help that some of our clients were complete nimrods. In fact, one of our clients, a TV evangelist (I won't type his name to avoid being associated with a complete slimeball) signed a contract with us to take his donation calls. When the day arrived for us to do so. . . . . not a single phone call came in. Turns out the idiot (or at least someone in his office) gave us the wrong 1-800 number to set up our phone lines with. Apparently he lost thousands over the course of a few hours and it was definitely a screw-up on his end. Of course, he didn't admit it, claimed we did it and canceled the contract.

I was actually relieved we lost it. Every weekend would have been a nightmare if we had ended up taking his calls.

Captcha: double cross
Sheesh. Captcha scares me sometimes

 

[Parasondox]

Valet parking.

Fun, right? Driving fancy cars and whatnot?

Well, the pay is below minimum wage because "the tips cover the rest," which most of the time they do not.
Plus that, tips get taxed a massive amount, so that wad of crumpled, filthy, and most of the time ripped in half dollar bills you come home with are just going to be taken out of your paycheck in the form of taxes.

The hours are ass, I get a Monday through Sunday schedule every Friday, except when they're late, and my hours are always different. Some days early mornings, some days overnight from 11pm to 7am. If anyone cancels following my shift, I have to stay late. Love it when the overnight guy is late and I have to stay an extra three hours on top of my usual 3pm to 11pm shift...

And not to mention, the hotel guests are absolute morons...
"I left something in my car and need it out..." Great! I'll walk all the way up to the garage, get it for you, and walk all the way back down. Oh, no tip? Yep. Just going to pay my next bill with a big fat stack of "thank yous..."
Wow, I really like your hundred thousand dollar sports car. Take care of it? Of course! No tip? Guess I should think twice next time I see you.
You're just going to take fifteen minutes to check in? That's okay. No charge. Leave the keys in the car. We aren't going to move it. Three hours later, "what do you mean I have to pay for parking?"

And boy, some of the nerve.
You've left your Prius on the ramp. That's fine as long as you'll only take fifteen to twenty minutes to check in, but I need the keys.
No?
Why do we need the keys if we aren't parking the car?
Buddy, we've got the keys to a Jaguar XJS, two Supercharged Range Rovers, and a Lamborghini. Leave your goddamned Prius keys down here or we're towing it...

Finishing college and quitting... I just can't anymore.

I really do hate that system where you can only get the majority of your salary through tips. It's a flipping cop out by the company. Shit like that shouldn't be happening. Sorry you had to go through that headache.

 

[Random Argument Man]

My worst job was when I was working with Quiznos. I'm not a very mechanical person. Doing the same task over and over again drains me.

However, I can usually work it out for the best. The exception was that I had my worst boss ever.

-The guy is mental nut job and a thief.
-He kept harassing me every shift we worked together. Threats of firing me or cutting my shifts were constant.
-I was supposed to received tips based on performance which always took a downturn when he was around. (The company takes all tips and divide between employees, but he gave it to the employee with the better work flow).
-He gave me half the instructions for the job.
-You had to be there one hour before your shift or you would be fired. (That hour doesn't count on your pay check).
-He kept buying leftover food from restaurants that were failing. I tried to throw the stuff that was rotten only to be bullied again. (I got rid of it when he was gone).
-He kept trying to swindle our source of our food. After a while, they've annulled the contract and we didn't received any food for a week.

AND the final kicker, the last week of July was during one of our busiest week altogether. I've worked 49 hours during that week. During the 1rst day of august, we have a holiday. During that holiday, my boss came and sold all the equipment without telling anyone. The next day, I received a call that I didn't had a job anymore. A week later, I received a pay check saying that I've only worked 25 hours. I've contacted the authorities to get the remaining money.

Get this..The guy disappeared off the map. I had to live through three weeks with only rice to eat because I had only 19$ in my bank account. Finally, I've received my loan for university. I bought myself 200$ worth of groceries with as much of stuff as possible?

I wanted to quit during the whole time, but money was seriously tight and summer jobs were pretty much hard to get when you were on foot.

 

[soren7550]

The brunt of my income comes from my personal assistant job, and I want to quit so badly. There's no schedule, I usually get notice for work less than twelve hours before I need to show up (often less than two), the whole thing literally stinks, the place isn't cleaned properly at all, the work is mind numbingly dull and monotonous (like spending four hours going through a few pieces of mail? How about doing it for five shifts?), I can't stand being around my employer(s), and I feel absolutely horrible for feeling that way because he's paralyzed senior and therefore can't clean himself or control his bowls.

 

[game-lover]

Oh yeah.

Walmart. I hated that hellscape.

Crappy managers, shitty hours, lackluster pay. We had a lot of quitters in the early days which is what made it get intolerable. Because we got short staffed but they still expected us to get everything done as if there was enough of us.

I got let go but in the end, I'm glad I'm gone.

 

[Mr Companion]

I used to work for a telemarketing firm. Now, in my defense, we never called anyone. Oh no. We were a company that took contracts with other companies to answer their toll-free numbers.

Want a travel guide to the state of [REDACTED]? Let me take down a name and mailing address and we'll send it right out.
Want to order a copy of the TV show you just watched? We can do that for you.

Dear God, I hated that job. The prank calls. The pissed offed competitors that hated the company we worked for.

Because of the company policy of employee stock ownership, I was informed that I could earn an extra $2000 dollars as severance pay if I stayed with the call center for another 2 weeks of work. I refused the money. It wasn't worth it and got the hell out.

Oooh I can trump that! I worked in a telemarketing firm that *did* call people. AND we worked for a company with no brand recognition so we had to explain it to everybody. AND I was being paid £2.50 an hour because it was technically an "apprenticeship" even though it was 8 hour working days 5 days a week. It was basically a loophole that allowed them to pay us much less than they should.

On top of that the working environment was a cruddy room down a back alley where the toilets spew everywhere if you flush. We would get s**t from the line manager if we had an off day, even if the data was terrible. It was also perfectly fine for other employees to slap you on the ass or act like one. I was the best new employee they had ever had, I acted with professionalism and worked hard and they were about as grateful as you might expect. I worked there 3 and a half months before I was eager to quit. I literally got up, told the manager and walked the miles home.

 

[Tiger King]

My most Hated job is funnily enough the job I'm in at the moment.

While I'm starting my Nursing Degree I'm working as a Healthcare Assistant in my local Hospital. I'm used to the work, heavy lifting dealing with blood/sick/other body fluids, dealing with confused/aggressive patients, getting threatened by patients and relatives, dealing with death and generally facing the blunt end of hospital nursing.
Funnily enough, while I was working in a Acute Cardiology Ward I loved the job and everything above in which it entailed, because I was being kept busy and constantly learning something new; its when I moved to a Orthopaedic Trauma ward under the pretence of further developing my experience to take towards my degree that I started to hate my job.
Here in ortho I am typically dealing with only 10-16 patients on any given day and most of them will be self caring independent folks like you and I; all the jobs that require a fully functioning brain are performed by the nurses and other than muscle strain and bone breaks everyone is healthy so my 12.5 hour shifts are functionally empty and devoid of all meaning and I'm spending those many many hours doing sweet FA until I have to leave at 9 (PM or AM) to cycle home in the dark.

My fiancé is a nurse, she is currently working towards her Bachelors degree.
It truly is a demanding job, especially here in the states. The only upsides are they get paid very well as opposed to back home where nurses are under appreciated and also, all the not so nice jobs such as cleaning and moving patients are to be done by the nursing assistants.
My fiancé has to take care of 30 patients which should be downright illegal because there is no way in hell you can provide the sufficient care required with that many patients.

I have nothing but respect for nurses, I even toyed with the idea of becoming one myself once but then I was informed that there is a waiting list to get on the waiting list for nursing school!!

Also for all the money spent here, health care really is no better than our super evil 'socialist' healthcare back home.
but that's a discussion for another day.....

 

[Rylot]

snip

Man that's bad. I have to deal with rather uncaring bosses but not out right evil.

snip

A very large chunk of the calls I dealt with at AT&T were trying to fix issues caused by other reps. This was exacerbated by the fact that the only thing that corporate cared about was call length. If we couldn't fix the issue in a few minutes we were coached to try and find an excuse to transfer them to another department. If you ever feel like you're being shuffled around from department to department, it's because you are.

 

[Starbird]

My worst job was when I was working with Quiznos. I'm not a very mechanical person. Doing the same task over and over again drains me.

However, I can usually work it out for the best. The exception was that I had my worst boss ever.

-The guy is mental nut job and a thief.
-He kept harassing me every shift we worked together. Threats of firing me or cutting my shifts were constant.
-I was supposed to received tips based on performance which always took a downturn when he was around. (The company takes all tips and divide between employees, but he gave it to the employee with the better work flow).
-He gave me half the instructions for the job.
-You had to be there one hour before your shift or you would be fired. (That hour doesn't count on your pay check).
-He kept buying leftover food from restaurants that were failing. I tried to throw the stuff that was rotten only to be bullied again. (I got rid of it when he was gone).
-He kept trying to swindle our source of our food. After a while, they've annulled the contract and we didn't received any food for a week.

AND the final kicker, the last week of July was during one of our busiest week altogether. I've worked 49 hours during that week. During the 1rst day of august, we have a holiday. During that holiday, my boss came and sold all the equipment without telling anyone. The next day, I received a call that I didn't had a job anymore. A week later, I received a pay check saying that I've only worked 25 hours. I've contacted the authorities to get the remaining money.

Get this..The guy disappeared off the map. I had to live through three weeks with only rice to eat because I had only 19$ in my bank account. Finally, I've received my loan for university. I bought myself 200$ worth of groceries with as much of stuff as possible?

I wanted to quit during the whole time, but money was seriously tight and summer jobs were pretty much hard to get when you were on foot.

I don't know why but it always seems to be restaurants that attract the real assholes as bosses. And customers for some reason.

 

[Granfaloon]

I do technical support for one of the bigger wireless ISPs in the U.S. and the job is really starting to get to me. The job itself isn't terrible but our corporate management tends to make horrible decisions regarding how they handle our network and bandwidth is so oversold that most of the troubleshooting I do is actually me trying to downplay why our customers are getting such horrible service and speeds. Luckily I am almost finished with school and should be able to quit soon.

 

[barbzilla]

Currently I work for Support.com, and while I love the company I work for, I do not like the current vendor I'm stuck with. I'm currently servicing the Comcast vendor, doing technical support for the Wireless Gateways. Now I don't mind doing customer service or technical support style jobs, but when I do these things, I want to be customer oriented (I.E. I am being paid to make this company's customers happy and satisfied with their product). Well, Comcast really sucks in this department, and is constantly pushing out new rules to Support.com as far as what the Comcast agents are supposed to be doing. Now, new/updated rules are not always a bad thing, but when they come from Comcast they seem to be.

The first rule they pushed on us is a mandatory average call handling time of 11 minutes. Now this wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that most of the problems we resolve will require one of the following; Provisioning, Factory Reset, testing multiple potential points of fault, and signing onto a customer's computer remotely to troubleshoot from their end. Now where this is an issue, is that the average trouble call will require at least one of those 4 things (which all take at least 6-9 minutes on average), 1 or more follow up tests to ensure the fix was successful, write notes in not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 different programs, manage 8 different programs on your screens at all times, deal with slow software that is shared over a remote server to every Comcast Agent in USA, fully verify the customer's account and security, do a recap of everything you did with the customer, fully complete an ITG workflow to generate a ticket number, and manage all of this without any dead air.

Now, I can get my call averages down to 9 minutes a call if I just help the customer get their problem resolved and ignore the rest of the mess, or manage the programs and notations on the account then transfer the customer to another agent/department. However, as I said I am customer oriented, and I want to make sure that the customer is taken care of correctly, and that if they have any reason to call back, the next agent will be able to find all of the relevant information so that the customer doesn't have to redo troubleshooting that they have previously completed with me. This is just one of the issues.

Now, they want us to sell more services to our customers and take payments. Now taking payments for a customer who can't access the internet because they are in a nopay status, I can understand, however payments in general will take away from the number of agents available for actual tech support issues, rather than just having them talk to the accounts department. The sales is completely outrageous. The customer is calling in because their service is already not working correctly, and you want me to try to sell them more services on top of the service they can't use? It is just asinine, and we can't just let them say no. After we offer them an upgrade or a new product and they say no, we have to then explain why they should want this service, and counter any arguments they have, and after that if they say no again, we have to confirm, then we are allowed to move on with our call.

This sucks as a support agent, and I can't even begin to imagine how it has to make a customer feel. I actually think it is such a stupid idea, that I am not doing it. I refuse to comply with that rule, but my customer satisfaction scores are high enough that I can get away with it. However, since I get marked off for it, I am no longer in the top 10 for the company (which means I don't get my monthly bonuses anymore).

I currently have multiple applications and resumes out, and I am praying to hear back from one soon, because I can't wait to quit this job.

 

[wooty]

My current job is a load of wank. Its factory work and I've been thrown onto the hygiene department, which is quite stressful as the job we do is NEVER good enough.

The day involves scrubbing a load of shit thats been dumped there by the wankers off the night shift. Constantly trying to keep up with other departments piling shit up all day and bringing it in in a big pile because they can't be bothered to make two trips in the same hour. Working with broken failing machinery all the time and then waiting a few hours for the engineers to make the ever so grueling 30 meter trip from their workshop to our department to fix it, all the while other stuff is piling up which we cant do anything about while the machines are down. Having our manager "Diamond Standard Dave" hovering around all day checking the floor and ceiling and drains and moaning that they're a bit dirty. Working with a guy whos full of shit, a full blown fantasist, wants people to think that he's Mr All-Action mountain climbing rally driving ex-SAS sniper survivalist expert super heavy weight champion of the world, so thats all day every day. Me being the main target for the screaming and chewing out because I'm the only one who can actually speak English on my department, that gets tiring.

But why do I do it???

I do at the moment to maintain my car and to try my best providing for my new girlfriends little girl. I probably would of jacked it in ages ago if I was single, but the Little Lady is worth all the aggravation as long as I can spoil her rotten.

 

[Ragnar47183]

Id like to offer some perspective from the other side. I own a business employing roughly 10 employees. Employees are my biggest headache. No matter what I do I can't seem to find a decent employee. Regardless of my efforts to include each one in the working process and the fact they are unsupervised during their working hours, I have yet to get someone who stays past a year or give me something more than a few hours notice before quitting.

I have a weekly meeting with all employees (even meeting with each on individually) to find out if there are any issues or questions they have for me and every time the answer is, "No, everything is fine."

My most recent employee to quit on me was supposed to come in for an 8:30 shift and ended up sending me a 2 word text saying, "I quit" at 12:30. This employee started at a part time minimum wage position 4-5 months ago and was given 2 promotions, one to full time and another to a lead position. He was given 2 raises to go along with these to get to $14.00 an hour (In the state of Georgia btw). I found out through other employees that he had started his own gutter business and had been working on it for over a month before quitting.

This isn't an uncommon occurrence for me. Im forced to reschedule entire weeks at a time because of employees. I've tried consulting companies, therapists, google of course, and none of it has worked. I have even increased my pay for all full time employees to start at $10.00 instead of $7.25 minimum wage. They get all training on job and its a cleaning job so not exactly glamorous but they dont have any customer interaction nor do they have direct supervision.

Honestly my last ditch effort to save my sanity is working with a homeless shelter we do some work for to try employing a few homeless vets to see if they can stick around longer and maybe be a little grateful to have a job. I am even giving them an apartment rent and utility free. If this doesnt work im going to have to either sell my customers off or sub contract all the work to another company which would mean less money and growth but 10000% less headache.

I also wanted to quickly address this...

Valet parking.

Fun, right? Driving fancy cars and whatnot?

Well, the pay is below minimum wage because "the tips cover the rest," which most of the time they do not.
Plus that, tips get taxed a massive amount, so that wad of crumpled, filthy, and most of the time ripped in half dollar bills you come home with are just going to be taken out of your paycheck in the form of taxes.

The hours are ass, I get a Monday through Sunday schedule every Friday, except when they're late, and my hours are always different. Some days early mornings, some days overnight from 11pm to 7am. If anyone cancels following my shift, I have to stay late. Love it when the overnight guy is late and I have to stay an extra three hours on top of my usual 3pm to 11pm shift...

And not to mention, the hotel guests are absolute morons...
"I left something in my car and need it out..." Great! I'll walk all the way up to the garage, get it for you, and walk all the way back down. Oh, no tip? Yep. Just going to pay my next bill with a big fat stack of "thank yous..."
Wow, I really like your hundred thousand dollar sports car. Take care of it? Of course! No tip? Guess I should think twice next time I see you.
You're just going to take fifteen minutes to check in? That's okay. No charge. Leave the keys in the car. We aren't going to move it. Three hours later, "what do you mean I have to pay for parking?"

And boy, some of the nerve.
You've left your Prius on the ramp. That's fine as long as you'll only take fifteen to twenty minutes to check in, but I need the keys.
No?
Why do we need the keys if we aren't parking the car?
Buddy, we've got the keys to a Jaguar XJS, two Supercharged Range Rovers, and a Lamborghini. Leave your goddamned Prius keys down here or we're towing it...

Finishing college and quitting... I just can't anymore.

I really do hate that system where you can only get the majority of your salary through tips. It's a flipping cop out by the company. Shit like that shouldn't be happening. Sorry you had to go through that headache.

Im under the assumption you are in America as Im not sure the laws elsewhere.

Please be made aware of your rights. If you are employed in a position where you are tipped, your employer must make up the difference at the end of the pay period if you are short of the state or federal minimum wage (whichever is higher.) Also tips are not taxed at a higher rate than your normal pay unless you work a job this is only tipped based as that is considered personal income and is under a different tax structure.

Also,

My worst job was when I was working with Quiznos. I'm not a very mechanical person. Doing the same task over and over again drains me.

However, I can usually work it out for the best. The exception was that I had my worst boss ever.

-The guy is mental nut job and a thief.
-He kept harassing me every shift we worked together. Threats of firing me or cutting my shifts were constant.
-I was supposed to received tips based on performance which always took a downturn when he was around. (The company takes all tips and divide between employees, but he gave it to the employee with the better work flow).
-He gave me half the instructions for the job.
-You had to be there one hour before your shift or you would be fired. (That hour doesn't count on your pay check).
-He kept buying leftover food from restaurants that were failing. I tried to throw the stuff that was rotten only to be bullied again. (I got rid of it when he was gone).
-He kept trying to swindle our source of our food. After a while, they've annulled the contract and we didn't received any food for a week.

AND the final kicker, the last week of July was during one of our busiest week altogether. I've worked 49 hours during that week. During the 1rst day of august, we have a holiday. During that holiday, my boss came and sold all the equipment without telling anyone. The next day, I received a call that I didn't had a job anymore. A week later, I received a pay check saying that I've only worked 25 hours. I've contacted the authorities to get the remaining money.

Get this..The guy disappeared off the map. I had to live through three weeks with only rice to eat because I had only 19$ in my bank account. Finally, I've received my loan for university. I bought myself 200$ worth of groceries with as much of stuff as possible?

I wanted to quit during the whole time, but money was seriously tight and summer jobs were pretty much hard to get when you were on foot.

If your employer operates a tip share program like what you describe above, the tips are collected from every employee and distributed evenly with the non management staff. It is illegal for management to share in the tips or for them to target individual employees to give more tips to.

Employees are required to be paid for any and all time they spend at work excluding breaks and lunch. If you had to be there 1 hour early, he had to pay you one more hour. If he fired you for this you could have easily had a case with the department of labor on your hands.

Everyone please take time to read your local and state laws regarding employment so you can avoid these types of issues. Also dont think every employer is the same because there are some bad people that do shitty things. There are actual honest employers out there who are trying everything they can to get good workers and keep them. More often than not you will find just as many horror stories from employers as you do employees. The biggest difference being that bad employers may put you on unemployment for a while, but bad employees can sink your business. (obviously speaking from a small-med sized family business and not large corporations)

 

[Frezzato]

snip

I...I simply don't understand why you have a problem retaining employees. Are the hours long? Or are most of the positions part time? Does the work involve nothing but toilets?

The last position I was offered paid $8 an hour for office work (in a critical position), and the jagoff owner wanted to hire me as a 1099, which would have put my hourly earnings well below minimum wage after taxes. Hell, if I lived in Georgia I'd be asking you for a job.

 

[Parasondox]

Tip comment

No, I am from the UK and have no idea how the tip system works in the US but with the thousands of stories I here, it seems at a disadvantage.

 

[Ragnar47183]

snip

I...I simply don't understand why you have a problem retaining employees. Are the hours long? Or are most of the positions part time? Does the work involve nothing but toilets?

The last position I was offered paid $8 an hour for office work (in a critical position), and the jagoff owner wanted to hire me as a 1099, which would have put my hourly earnings well below minimum wage after taxes. Hell, if I lived in Georgia I'd be asking you for a job.

Its cleaning kitchen exhaust hoods for commercial restaurants with a pressure washer. Its 40 hours a week. There are only 3 part time positions of the 10 employees.

Its not a glamorous job as i've said but its not hard. The biggest thing I can think of is the work being overnight since the restaurants have to be closed but even still I cant figure out why employee retention is so slow. Its only started about a year and a half ago and nothing changed of note. It may have something to do with the work force here in Georgia as we supposedly had the highest unemployment a few months back but I only get about 10 replies to our help wanted adds and maybe only 1 or 2 people actual show up for the interviews.

I do everything above board as I dont want any issues with the government. I dont pay under the table (which multiple people have requested) and I dont short people on hours. I even pay them a full 2 hours for our weekly meetings even if it doesnt last 2 hours. Im vastly forgiving when mistakes happen, especially because training takes about a month and 2 people work in a crew so if someone quits their crew mate cant work alone and it will take a month to get someone trained to catch back up with our work.

The other big thing besides overnight is my age. I am 23 years old and a lot of people that work for me end up being 30-40s, even a few people have been 50s-60s. I have heard more than once how they cant stand taking orders from someone half their age.

Oh thats not even mentioning that half of the work is driving to the job. Each job only takes about 2-3 hours and they do 2 jobs in a night per crew. The drive time is usually 2-3 hours alone so theres that. They use vans provided by us and we pay all the gas of course, as well as buy all the equipment for the work so I just dont know why we have such a problem.

The consultants and therapists I tried out couldn't give me any advice either lol.

Tip comment

No, I am from the UK and have no idea how the tip system works in the US but with the thousands of stories I here, it seems at a disadvantage.

Ah, sorry then. I have no idea how the labor laws are in the UK. If you ever move to the states I could help you though.

 

[Ragnar47183]

snip

I...I simply don't understand why you have a problem retaining employees. Are the hours long? Or are most of the positions part time? Does the work involve nothing but toilets?

The last position I was offered paid $8 an hour for office work (in a critical position), and the jagoff owner wanted to hire me as a 1099, which would have put my hourly earnings well below minimum wage after taxes. Hell, if I lived in Georgia I'd be asking you for a job.

Also, while im giving advice. If he was hiring you as a 1099, which is used generally for self employeed and general contractors, that would be illegal as well. The reason he may have tried that is to dodge some taxes as employers have to match taxes from employees. So each employer is paying the same amount per pay period in taxes as each employee on top of a few others like workmen comp tax. A 1099 doesnt go through an employer and employee so to make up for that they tax it higher than a w2... if that makes sense.

My understanding of 1099 isnt as good as w-2 since I dont use them as much but in some cases depending how he filled it could have gotten taxed less. Either way if hes trying to file you as 1099 when you are an regular at-will employee, that is illegal and I woudld report that as soon as you can.