by Jen Thorpe

Created on: March 14, 2008   Last Updated: February 14, 2010

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 its 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,

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