Your "I can't do this anymore" moment at work

In My Humble Opinion
21

I was working for the public safety department at the time in a busy tourist town. I was one of two dispatchers on duty at the time. Let me first note that at this time I had already given my two week notice for the current job I have. The dispatch union was in the middle of a fight with the town regarding them wanting to shut us down and move operations to the next town over. In was in our union contract that they couldn’t do this. The town manager was on the chief, Deputy chief and LT to get the union to back down. This made for an extremely hostile working environment. Just a bad scene.

Okay, on this day I had an officer going to a welfare check to a woman that hadn’t shown up to her granddaughter’s rehearsal dinner. She had a laundry list of medical problems, so I thought for sure we were going to find her passed on. Just as the officer went on scene, I had a car accident come in on the busy side of town. Car hit a tree. Two trapped in side. While having the caller on the phone screaming hysterically, I sent out two officers code in that direction as well as got the fire department started.

Just after I started the FD to the car accident, the officer off at the welfare check request FD to force entry into the house. No one was answering the door and her daughter didn’t have a key. So I dispatched them. Then 5 different officers decided they were going to make traffic stops.

All this within a 15 minute period. Phones are still ringing. Radio traffic from officers requesting info and the FD using equipment to get the victims out of the car crash.

In the mist of this cluster going on, I have the LT sitting upstairs at his desk thinking that we are nothing more then his secretary. He decides that he is going to call down and ask me to look up in my email a phone number for one of the detectives. The same email that the entire department got. The same email that is in his friggin computer that is on and sitting right in front of him.

I told him that I was in the middle of a bunch of calls and asked if he even had his radio on. He said no, that he wanted the number. I told him that I was busy. He said, he wanted the number. I told him that I would have to call him back in 15 minutes, that in my exact words, “Right now you aren’t a priority to me.”

About 30 minutes later the LT comes down from upstairs and pulls me out of dispatch. In the hallway (within feet of a recording camera he forgot was there) he proceeds to go up one side of me and down the other. Telling me that he didn’t care if I was only there for 2 weeks or 2 more years, that I am to never talk to him like that again and that he would write me up for insubordination. I grew up with a father as a cop who threw his title or job in any fight to try scare people. After living with him for so long, I don’t back down from someone who thinks their authority should scare people.

I raised my voice. Stood my ground and refused to back down. As did he. It was a nasty scene. I realized that night that I wasn’t going to deal with the drama. Egos. The hostile working environment that was my reason for leaving to begin with. I called him and told him I was done at the end of my shift. What caught me off guard was that he begged me to stay. What the hell?

That entire department was all over the place. Admin was going after the officers. Admin was going after dispatch. They made the working environment horrible.

Ultimately after I left, an officer called me and asked to meet up with me. Asked if I would talk to their union about what happen with me. About LT actions. I told him that I was finished with them. I also heard that the dispatch union got the tape of the LT yelling at me and used that against them, though I don’t how much truth is in that. I just know that the stress was causing health issues.

22

I was working at a university and a new boss was brought into my department. He was a real jerk, but had a “company” face that he’d show outside the department. It was getting harder and harder to work with him, and I was getting more and more frustrated. But I was a good camper; when he told me that he wanted to take my spot on several campus committees so that he could begin meeting the community and getting involved, I said okay, even though I liked being on the committees.

One day, I ran into a colleague on campus. She said, “You know, we miss you at the committee meetings. I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy being on the committee.”

Me: :confused:

Her: Well, your boss said that you were complaining about the meetings and how much you hated them, so he volunteered to take over for you even though he doesn’t have time.

Me: :dubious:

Her: I wish you could have told us you were unhappy.

Me: :mad:

It took me another six months or so to get my ducks in a row, but then I left. I later found out that of the 14 people in his department, 12 left that year.

23

Nearly ten years ago, when I was 17 and in cégep, I worked for about a month in a horrible telemarketing job. When I found myself intentionally going to the bathroom with no need to pee, but purely in order to have five minutes to rest and cry, I said the hell with it and quit.

I realized some time later that it was all a scam, and a year or two ago, the managers got arrested. I did the happy dance.

24

I was going to school full time, working four ten hour graveyard shifts a week as a night auditor at a hotel, and then I had jury duty. I informed my boss of this and I got the day of jury duty off, which she was required to give me…but since my shifts started at 9 at night, I’d actually be working until 7am before I had to drive thirty miles into the city.

So, knowing that I’d be operating on very little sleep when I had to show up at the courthouse, I tried to go to bed as soon as I got home from school, to get as much sleep as possible.

At 6:30 in the evening, my boss called. She needed a babysitter and thought I could watch her kids for an hour or two before work. Um, no? I got rather upset over it and couldn’t get to sleep after the call. I went to work, finished my shift, and then went to the courthouse. As luck would have it, I was picked and spent the day in court. Operating on no sleep for about 36 hours at that point, I drove myself home and, unsurprisingly, got in a car accident.

I called my boss afterwards to inform her that I’d have to miss more work, since I was selected for the jury and now had the double problem of lacking a vehicle. She asked if maybe I could continue to work, since I worked at night and jury duty was during the day.

25

Finding myself again in the WayBack Machine. A job that isn’t on my resume. I’ve posted parts of this story before in a thread on how to explain a gap in a resume caused by quiting a job that you don’t want to put on your resume.

Got recruited to be the MicroFocus Cobol Implementation Project Manager for an insurance company, via a consulting firm. Nice little raise and I was looking for more responsibility.

I get to the client site to find it an unholy mess. They had over 60 consultants they’d been hiring willy-nilly, and one manager trying to ride herd. They were so disorganized that most of the consultants were sitting around with no work being assigned.

I also found, on my first day, that I was the SIXTH person brought in on the promise of that position. Two had already left.

I sat at a table reading industry mags and documentation for three weeks. Then I was given an office - my manager didn’t have an office - but still no actual work. I was assigned to two teams, but on review of the work, it was discovered that they’d assigned many times more people than necessary and I was sent on my merry way.

After six solid weeks of Not A Damn Thing To Do, I complain to the owner of my consulting firm. I’m immediately called into the office and read the riot act. The evil fucker sits on the same side but other end of a long conference table and tells me how there must be something extremely wrong with me as a Human being, because of a couple of little things that had happened to me (my car was hit with minimal damage being one) and how those sorts of things only happen to people who deserve it. Just the most incredibly evil, destructive shit you can imagine throwing at someone, and he did it all while staring in another direction and never having the balls to actually look at me. I’m placed on Probation and assigned to report to a supervisor who works on another site, who will “train” me and help me write a plan of action for doing the job I was allegedly assigned to do, but obviously was too incompetent to actually do. They also tell the client that they’re sorry for my actions and ashamed of me, and will be giving the client two weeks of my time for free and a chance to evaluate me and decide if they want to keep me. Client manager tells me in private that he doesn’t know what the fuck this is all about, they never complained about me and had no issues with me.

I work with the guy who is supposed to train me for about a week. He’s the biggest asshole on the planet, bar none. Picks apart every single sentence I write, criticizes me in an unprofessional manner. After that, I simply stop reporting to him and write the damned thing on my own.

Mid-June, the client discovers they’re over their budget, so they “lay off” the consultants for two weeks. In the meeting we have to tell us this - on FRIDAY which is now most people’s last day for two weeks - they literally bitch us all out about how we’re supposed to be the experts and we’re supposed to come in already up to speed, so if we’re not finding work to do, it’s all our faults! Say what?

During the layoff, which for some reason didn’t include me even though I wasn’t doing anything but write my report, I complete the report and turn it in. Client is impressed and declares it a blueprint for implementation strategy…when they actually get around to implementing the damned thing, which they’re uncertain when that might happen.

By this time, I have ceased all communication with my office. In a rather beautiful flow of coincidence and serendipity, I always missed calls from both the owner and the asshole supervisor. Never returned them. The owner came out to the site to talk to me and congratulate me on my work. Without knowing he was coming, I left the building five minutes before he got there.

All the while, I was looking for another job. When I found one, I quit by fax, because I had vowed never to speak to the owner again. Owner called and left me a message. Declared that I would not be paid for the previous week’s work or for the two weeks of my notice period, which he demanded that I work. When I called him back, he started on the asshole bit, but when I pointed out that the not paying me bit was illegal and I’d be happy to call the state about it, it suddenly became a “miscommunication” and he denied ever having said it. He also acted like he had no clue why I would want to leave, I was treated so well. :rolleyes:

Postscript: In the greatest case of Karmic Retribution and Feedback I’ve ever experienced in my life, one year later I got a call from a guy who had been hired to salvage the company. Seems the owner had promoted the asshole supervisor guy to managing all the consultants, and in less than a year, every blessed one of their consultants had quit! Wanted to know if I’d come back. When I told him the above story, he said that he wasn’t really surprised, he’d heard similar stories frmo other people. But he also kept pausing and saying “wow”. Ended the conversation by stating that he was having his doubts about being able to salvage the company since it was obvious that the owner was such a monster, and that maybe he’d better start looking for another job.

26

Two stories regarding the same radio station - one involving me.

When I started at this station, the owner told me I would be starting at minimum wage. If he liked my performance in 90 days, I’d receive a good raise.

91 days in. I knock on the owner’s door. I greet the owner, and tell him my 90 daays are up and could we talk about that raise he promised me?

“You got your raise, Rico,” he stated pompously. “Minimum wage went up 25 cents an hour at the beginning of the year.”

I was at the competitor’s station doing the afternoon shift for double the money in three days.

Second story. Same radio station, same jerk owner. The newsman was a wonderful older gentleman who was a delight to work with. The owner developed a dislike for this man and would berate him loudly every chance he got.

The newsman quietly went and got a job as a police dispatcher in the small town. When he told the owner he was quitting the owner asked him why.

“I’m going to broadcast to a bigger audience,” said the newsman.

:smiley: