Do you hate your job?

Yes

1 of 35

by Jen Thorpe

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Yes, I hate my job! I work in retail sales for a nationwide corporate owned company. The countless hours I spend working at this job allows me to (usually) pay my bills, and (often) buy groceries, but not on it's own. If my husband did not work, I would be homeless, and yet, I am a full time employee!

I hate that the amount of money I can expect to receive when my yearly review comes around is already set in stone. Hourly workers can, potentially, receive the maximum raise of fifty cents an hour. Ooooh! This has little to do with how hard I work, the quality of the job I do, or the potential I may have. The most I can ever hope to get is a raise of fifty cents an hour. If the boss decides that he or she doesn't love me, well, in that case, I might receive a twenty five cent an hour raise to get me through the next twelve months. If the boss really doesn't like me, I might receive a ten cent an hour raise, or, nothing at all. No hourly employee will ever, under any circumstances, receive more than a fifty cent an hour raise. This sends the clear message that this corporation believes that I'm only worth, at the most, an extra half a dollar an hour to keep around another year. Somehow, this does not inspire me to jump out of bed in the morning and dash off to work, smiling all the way.

I hate that I never know when I will be working. This corporation wants employees to start working at seven in the morning (two hours before the store opens). The store closes at eleven at night, and the corporation wants employees to be working on cleaning up until midnight, (at the earliest). Now, I know that I will never be scheduled to work more than eight hours on a given day, (because this corporation is deathly allergic to even the concept of "overtime"). This means I might start work anytime between seven in the morning and four in the afternoon each and every day. That's a pretty big gap! I know that I am supposed to be given two days off per week, to comply with the law. But, which two days? Technically, the bosses can fool around with that as much as they want. I end up feeling jet lagged all the time, without getting to experience the fun and excitement of travel by airplane!

The other fun little trick that can, and does, happen to hourly employees who work at the corporation I do is that you can end up working eight or nine days in a row without a day off. Those who survive this spontaneous endurance test are not even eligable for overtime pay, either. How is this possible, you ask? Easy! Work weeks start on Sunday. Give some poor wage slave Sunday and Monday off, and you have fulfilled the requirement of giving the employee two days off that week. Now, don't give this person his or her days off until, Friday and Saturday of the next week. They still get two days off in that calendar week, so the corporation is following the letter of the law. However, this poor, unfortunate, soul ends up working ten days straight. Think this doesn't happen too often? Then you have never worked in retail!

I hate that the "sales plans" are created by people who seem to be completely deficient of any kind of common sense! They take whatever our store earned in dollars on that date last year, and raise it higher. The reasons why we had those kinds of sales last year are never taken into account, and yet, we are expected to do even better this year. One year, the coffee shop across the street was closed for a week for renovations. People came into our store to get coffee, and bought some other items on the way out the door. The next year, we were expected to somehow come up with even more money that we did on that date last year, despite the fact that the coffee shop across the street, that was long since done with its renovations, was open for business today. Last summer, we hosted a special overnight event that brought in hundreds of people, and enormous sales. The attraction was for one particular item, that will not be anywhere near as interesting to shoppers one year later, and, there will not be anything as popular as this particular item was. Next summer, on that date, we are going to be magically expected to come up with even more money in sales. This is impossible, and we will fail, and then the corporation will punish us for it (usually by cutting everyone's hours). Most days, I just want to take all the decision makers in this corporation, lock them in a classroom, and force them to learn "Common Sense 101".

I hate that we are always at either "DEFCON 1" or "Red Alert" about something. The big boss is going to visit next week. Quick! We must get such and such a task done, right this instant! Never mind that the reasons why we don't have that particular task done is because we haven't been given enough hours to allow anyone to get near it. Forget the fact that this particular task is either impossible, or asinine, or, quite possibly both. Hurry! Run! The big boss visits at least once every two or three weeks. No one can be expected to be this alert for this long a time span, about each and every little detail in their world. After a while, you either go crazy, or, ignore the fanatics, screaming about doom. I mean, how long did the news programs keep the color coded National Threat Advisory in the scroll that goes across the bottom of the screen after 9/11? Three months? After that, people just burn out. Not everything can be equally important all the time! And yet, somehow, it is, if you work in retail sales. We are not quite at the (impossible) sales plan for this week! Quick! Run! Ask every single customer in the building about buying our membership card! Hand them more stuff, maybe they will buy it! Hurry, before the fiscal week ends! It's always some massive problem, that the lowest paid people are expected to solve.

Don't get me started on how much I hate my job around Christmas time! I hate that this time of year, when all good people are focusing on spending time with their families and celebrating how good things are, we wage slaves who work in the circle of hell known as retail sales are forced to forget about all that. I have been told that no one in my corporation can use any vacation days between October and January, because of "the needs of the store". This is the time when the most customers, who need the most assistance, will be in the store, and yet, somehow, the people on high don't seem to feel the need to allow us to hire a reasonable amount of extra workers to help us. This is the time of year when I can expect to be abused by disgruntled customers, just for showing up to work that day. This is the time of year when stressed out managers will insist you arrive at work, even if you are dying from some illness (likely brought on by stress). Forget about going home early one day, to try and get healthy! Forget about taking time off work to spend with your own family, especially if they live in another state. Christmas time equals chaos. Every year, I get closer to "going postal" during the lovely holiday season.

So far, the hatred I feel for my job is so great that it has inspired me to look for another, potentially better, job. I haven't found one yet, but I continue to look. My hatred for this job has inspired countless haiku poems of frustration, stories of insanity to entertain the people who listen to my "work stories", and even this article you just read. This is what keeps me sane, until the glorious day when I can afford to leave my job that I hate.

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