My old Boss: Mr. Lee.
Well I started working for him when I was 14. Paid me minimum wage of course, but while I was working for him Parliament raised minimum wage. Lee didn't, although I didn't realise this at the time. I was also applicable to be raised a measly extra fifty cents after working for him for six months, but this I was never given.
This was at a supermarket by the way, although a pretty small local one. I did bloody everything - every single last shitty job Lee could think of he gave specificly to me. I cleaned his scungy dishes, thick with the oil of his wife's horrid cooking, (Mrs Lee hated me too.) I cleaned the plastic flaps of the Deli section one by one for no reason. When I was done Lee complained that I had taken too long and done a poor job, so he made me do it again. He made me clean out the freezer on the coldest day of the year. All of which I did without complaint. I was only about fifteen and didn't have the guts to tell him off.
He was stingy with money. Think Spongebob's Mr Krabs x 100. He used the shittest most outdated scungy tools he could - the mops could have been classified as antiques, as could the old food clinging to the rags. The uniforms were moth-eaten and about fourty years old. The jearsys were apparently sacred, and could not be worn by anyone but by those whom Lee though deserving of their glory, (I, unfortunatly, did not qualify - even on fiendishly cold days.)
He refused to let me work the checkout, a haven of monotany that would have meant an end to my dismal chores. He complained about nearly everything I did, and while doing so leaned close to my face to lecture me so I could smell his putrid breath and had to flinch every time flecks of spittle hit me in the face. He once lectured me about the time spent on putting out the soft drinks. The boxes were poorly stacked and fell on me, so I had to re-fill them and re-stack them. He complained that he only made 20 cents per soft drink sold and that I wasn't worth the time I spent putting them out in the shop. Not once did he compliment me on rearranging this poorly-kept area of the storage room, but accused me of wasting time on it. He later complimented others who did the soft drink job in slightly less time because of my organisation of his storage room.
He gave you shifts without telling you about them. He once rang me up on a sunny Saturday afternoon to demand to know why I hadn't turned up for work. I informed him that my shift was on Sunday and that it was not my time to work. He told me to get into my uniform and get to the store. As soon as I got there he marched me to the employee timetable and showed me the timetable where it clearly said in fresh ink that I was working on Saturday from 2PM to 8:30PM. I apparently acted so miserably during the shift that Lee couldn't stand the sight of me and sent me home at six o'clock, commenting multiple times on his generosity that I would be indeed paid for the four hours I had spent there. Although I won an extra two and a half hours, Lee succeeded in ruining my weekend, as I of course had to go back to work the next day as well.
Once I worked for him late with one of his more trusted cohorts as he went out for dinner with his wife. It was raining hard and some of the water leaked into the fuse box. This exploded and caught alight, right next to me at the time when I was putting the milk back into the storage fridge. I alerted his trusted cohort to the fire and he rushed to get the fire extinguisher. I was later critisised for not getting the extinguisher and putting out the fire myself. The extinguisher though was hidden under a mountain of old shopping bags that Lee refused to throw out and there was no way you could tell it was under them unless you had been told it.
This guy hated me, and did not bother to be subtle about it. I was fifteen at the time, and too young to defend myself against a malicious man like Mr Lee. While Lee had fired my sister's friend Avi over juggling cans a while beforehand, he didn't fire people any more. Instead he decided who he liked and who he didn't like on their first day, and to those he disliked he would act cruelly and picked on them until they left by their own choice. I had a mountain of Lee-brand abuse hurled at me, yet instead of leaving I employed a different strategy - I became indifferent. This turned me into a Zombie. I had a glazed tired expression and replied to everything with a dull 'yes' and I didn't speak to anyone. Going to work was the hardest thing I had to force myself to do, as I had to turn myself into this Zombie, but it meant that Lee's abuse couldn't break me, which made Lee angrier.
He left after being offered a job at a larger supermarket, and the day he announced it was the one day I let my expressionless emotionless zombie self crack and, unfortunatly and without any control, celebrated. This, if possible, caused Lee's intence dislike of me to increase further.
On his last day as my Boss, Mr Lee offered an act of generosity so kind that I considered forgiving him for everything he had put me through. I was dealing with the produce at the time that Jaden, one of Lee's favourites and one of the few decent people working at this place while Lee was in charge handed me a small fruit bag and told me to go into the freezer at the back and fill it with as many warped unsellable icecreams as I could. I gleefully ran to the freezer where I shovelled as much as I could into the bag. Mrs Lee saw me and told me not to put the more expensive ones in there. I took them out, still quite content. I put my respectable haul back into the freezer to be taken home later. Later while I was mopping the floor I was told by Lee that the icecreams couldn't be given to me, for some financial reason or something. I was okay with this. I thought it was too good to be true really.
At the time I was to leave, Jaden, that suck-up bitch Cameron, and who was to become one of the new bosses, Henry, marched to the freezer and retrieved three enormous boxes. Gleefully boasting about their icecream hoards and bounding out of the store, boxes on their shoulders. Jaden threw me a poor warped paddle-pop to consul me, althogugh iI wasn't in a mood to thank him.
The fact that I was not allowed the expensive icereams is okay.
The fact that I was offered such a smaller amount than the other three is okay.
The fact that I had to give them back was okay.
But the fact that this ARSEHOLE first offered me something then took it way just to get at me, and lied to me to why he did it is NOT FUCKING OKAY! This summed up just about how much of a simply mean man Lee is.
His replacement, Donald Chung was a nice guy. He immediatly gained my favour by saying that Lee was "Tighter than a fishes' arse" while complaining that he had to pay to replace all the dilapidated equipment Lee had left him. He was on a Paintball team and immediatly 'promoted' me to checkout, where I did a fine job and Donald wondered why on earth I had been working there for over a year and Lee had not put me there. The guy's taste in music and his singing ability was the worst thing about him, and the music he played while the store was open is why I ended up leaving the place. He didn't approve of my long hair, but didn't pull me up about it and was still as nice to me as anyone could bring themselves to be.
Lee now manages a huge supermarket up north where he probably earns a lot. The many staff workng under him are probably still divided into favourites and scum on their first day, and the staff turnover is probably just over three months as it was when he managed the little local supermarket. I have promised myself that one day I will go up there and meet with him again and tell him off as I should have, but couldn't have done when I was fifteen. No doubt that will cause a hearty cheer to erupt from the oppressed workers of Lee's new regiem.
Phew. Sorry guys, I needed to get that out.