#bad workplaces

[exploresmallworlds]

What are my thoughts on cooking?

I think about cooking in a few ways. Obviously cooking is food preparation. But there is one recipe that I have cooked in the last couple of months that sticks in my brain. My favourite meals are ones where I go all out and it pays off. Close to the surface of my memories is the crab risotto that I made. Someone in my family was having a bad time. Without warning, a memory of a crab risotto…

[superultrachicken]

Tim Hortons was probably the worst place I’ve worked

So... Tim Hortons is pretty notorious now for being a pretty terrible place to work. But I thought I’d add my two cents in from the week that I worked there before quitting. Which actually gave me enough fodder for a post. And this is coming from a cisgender white man, so I can only imagine it’s much worse for other people.

1. The tardy punishments are pretty bad

The first thing I want to bring up is how they treated you if you were even a second late to work. I’d nearly gotten hit by a vehicle one day before coming to work, which caused me to have to wait a bit longer before I could cross the road again. I live about a 20 minute walk away from the location I worked at and I usually made it there with a couple minutes to spare. I made it there just in time for my shift, but just making it there counted as my being late because apparently we had to be 5 minutes early to get ready for five minutes before we started. So, what happens if you’re late? Well, they treat you like shit and get you to sit out for half an hour without pay. This might be different at other locations but I honestly found this pretty counter productive at the time and I didn’t at all feel valued as a worker. See, my time is my time so I show up to work on time and work hard until I’m off schedule. For the rest of the week I showed up about half-an-hour earlier.

2. I was told not to give good customer service

There was this time when a mother came in looking for treats for her son. Her son was autistic and on a dairy/gluten-free diet that’s supposed to help with some of the more debilitating symptoms of autism (it doesn’t really work that well, my mom tried it on me when I was younger, it wouldn’t be as bad now due to the great amount of alternatives as compared to when I was 12-years-old). I took the time to explain that we had these coconut macaroons that were both dairy and gluten-free and that I’d been on the same diet her son was one so I knew what to look for. She bought us out of the macaroons but I was still given trouble for, and I quote “having a conversation with the customer”.

3. Poor working conditions

We were given a single 15-minute-break every day. For an 8-hour shift. That breaks Alberta Labour Laws and everybody felt exhausted at the end of each day. And it wasn’t even a good sort of exhaustion, where you felt like you’d actually accomplished something and you could end the day in a satisfying way. The uniform was uncomfortable and it lacked any form of pockets. I will write a post on women’s fashion, and my problems with it, later.

4. The Owner

So this guy was more like a district manager, but he owned the individual restaurants rather than just managing them. This guy was a pretty massive asshole. I’m not going to name drop, because my complaints got him put into “forced retirement” (he was 82), but I’ll talk about how he acted, anyway. So, I was called back after I’d talked about the aforementioned poor working conditions (more specifically how they were handling breaks), and he started threatening to fire me if I didn’t stop talking about it. When I stand, my body unconsciously sways from right to left, due to my autism, I need to be moving a part of my body at all times or I’ll start to feel very anxious. I explained this to him and he started his discriminatory tirade. A series of events happened that showed off his true colors. He mentioned how they shouldn’t have hired one of the assistant managers because he’s gay and when he was interrupted by one of the female workers he went off calling women nags. It was pretty bad. And I wrote to both Home Depot HQ and Alberta Labour Laws about how much he discriminated against myself and other people.

So I hope this brings some light to how terrible it is to work at Tim Horton’s. The last one is because of my boss but I’ve heard similar horror stories from other restaurants where they seem to value conformity over great costumer service and employee happiness.

[wojojojo]

Work sucks, I know

So it's becoming even more obvious that my manager is trying to make me leave. While she has been giving me hours lately (after I called her out on the absolutely pitiful hours she had been giving me), she has now started to treat me like an idiot, constantly blaming me for every little thing that goes wrong in the store, haranguing me in front of customers, and generally acting like a total bitch towards me. The other day, we found some cups that had been mislabeled after a customer had brought one up. She immediately assumed it was me and lectured me on it, despite the fact that I haven't been able to work on freight for nearly two months now because everyone keeps abandoning me to go hang out in the back.

This wouldn't be that big a deal, but the way she says it is the kicker, like she has already made up her mind that I fucked up, and nothing I can say or do to prove otherwise will change her mind. This has been going on for months. Every time one of my other coworkers fucks up (and it's usually the same one), my manager immediately targets me and starts bitching me out over it. Of course, as soon as I point out that it was actually someone else, she goes over to them all friendly-like and jokes with them about it. So fucking sick of her.

Then today, one of my coworkers (the one whose bullshit I'm usually blamed for) accused me of being racist for telling someone we don't ship outside of the US. Guess what! When someone wants to ship something, and they want to do so outside of the US, it's our job to tell them we can't do that!! Not that she would know, as she does her damndedest to never interact with customers! And when she does, she acts like she's ashamed to be around them, refusing to meet their eyes, acting really cold and trying to get away from them as quickly as possible. Idk about you, but I don't ever hear anyone complimenting her on helping them, or calling our manager about how much they appreciated the help!! I really don't care that she used to work at the busiest section in Ikea; I know they wouldn't put up with it, and neither am I.

(This same coworker also constantly disappears without telling anyone, constantly takes sick days [even when she's not sick], and is always switching shifts so she doesn't have to work mornings so she can go get shit faced. She's stopped asking me to take over her shifts, probably because I've made it quite clear I'm not going to put up with her bullshit.)

I would say I have no clue why my manager puts up with her bullshit, but I know exactly why - she lives above my manager's bar, and drinks there pretty regularly. Guess what! That's not a good reason to hire someone!! Then again, there's a reason my manager is the only person who would hire her after she left Ikea.

Seriously I'm the only one at work that: actually tries to make the store welcoming to customers; do research on our products so I can help customers pick out the best product for them; fucking clean (and by clean I mean even just running a swiffer around - don't even get me started on dusting and cleaning the bathroom); looking out for and taking care of expired and soon-to-be-expired products; and try to find better ways to display our products. Of course, whenever I come up with a display, it almost always gets shot down, but whenever one of my other coworkers makes a suggestion it's almost always approved, even when it's my idea they're presenting.

Don't even get me started on scheduling - I'm  expected to be flexible with my schedule, yet no one else will change their schedule to help me out.

Thank god I have another job interview lined up; as soon as I get another job I am out of here.