There is no perfect workplace, but some employees endure their jobs if they feel valued, heard, or appreciated.
Despite the long hours of work, no overtime pay, and missing a lot of family time, this man had no complaints.
His only request was to go home early on his anniversary so he can spend time with his wife.
Read how he went for the jugular after this request was denied.
Oh, so you can leave early for your anniversary but I can’t?
I had the worst job.
I mean, we’ve all had lousy jobs, but this takes the cake.
This man was seeing some red flags.
I was hired on to be the shipping and receiving supervisor for a manufacturer of building supplies.
Basically, I work in a tar factory.
I was promised a whole bunch of things when I was hired, and there were red flags because they were offering me about 40% more than I was making before.
For one, I was a salaried employee, so I wasn’t paid overtime.
Also, no one had been in my position for about 3 months.
When he returned from training, he was surprised to see huge problems.
Anyway, they fly me to Nowhere, Arizona for a week to train, and the lady who trains me talks crap about my plant the entire time I’m there.
I show up after training for a week, and things are, in a word, grim.
They’re behind almost $2,000,000 in shipments, and there is paperwork from deliveries for the past 3 months that haven’t been received into the system or filed.
It’s just stacked in a box.
He’s working overtime, but getting no extra pay.
It’s their busy season, but manufacturing is only producing about 30% of their daily quotas, so I’m constantly turning trucks away and trying to reschedule.
I’m working 14-hour days, six days a week, and I never see my wife or kids.
And, remember, no overtime.
On an hour by hour basis, it was a 50% pay cut.
He’s missing a lot of family time.
I cancel three family camping weekends, lose touch with my friends, and my sons cry every day when they see me putting my work boots on.
Every day, the operations manager, the most mercurial jerk I’ve ever met, who is also in charge of the failing production team that is the reason why I work so late, leaves at 5:00 sharp.
I’m very frustrated, but I keep getting promises of “it’ll get better soon.”
So I stick it out.
On his anniversary, no one covered his shift.
After about a month and a half, my anniversary is coming up.
I beg and I plead, will someone please cover the desk for the evening so I can leave at a decent hour and have dinner with my wife?
I’m assured ahead of time that I can, but the day of, they all bail and totally screw me over.
He couldn’t take it anymore, so he resigned.
Fast forward another month, and a last-minute emergency that they create means that I have to come in on a Saturday.
And a two-hour commitment becomes all day because I’m stuck on a forklift loading and unloading trucks when the rest of the forklift drivers don’t show up.
It ruined another weekend of family plans.
So I’ve had it. I turn in my notice.
As he’s still in the office, they bombarded him with unreasonable workloads and emails.
And then the trouble begins.
They pitch a fit that I’m leaving, so they shunt me into a corner and have someone else cover my desk.
I get bombarded with emails (around 250 a day), second-guessing every decision I make and demanding to know why they’re still in the dire situation they’ve been in.
“Why hasn’t this shipped yet?”
Because you jerks haven’t made it yet.
He finally decided to leave and never come back.
Then, the icing on the cake—they’re flying someone from another plant in to “assist” as I transition out.
It’s the battle axe that trained me, who hates our location and hates me.
So I just leave.
I send an email and tell them I won’t be back.
As revenge, he wrote negative reviews about company online.
I have a new job already lined up, so I’m updating all the job sites with my new information, and one of the sites asks me to write a review of my time at the employer from hell.
So I do. I write a brutal, scathing, incredibly honest, and documentable (I saved copies of EVERYTHING) review that makes its way up to corporate.
It’s so bad that they start harassing me to remove it.
I won’t.
He even published an honest review on his blog.
They try to pay the employees still there to write positive reviews to offset mine.
So I post on my blog, which has great search engine cred, a similar review with details about the company, the names of the idiot managers, and contact info if candidates want to know more.
It’s a top page rank if you Google the company, so they can’t silence it.
He also contacted various agencies to report the company’s violations.
Then they try to horse around my retirement and benefits (in the US, you get insurance for the rest of the month after you leave the employer).
I’ve had three people reach out since I posted.
Remember all the documentation I saved?
Yeah. I called OSHA, the EPA, and Homeland Security.
All these for not letting him go home early on his anniversary.
They don’t maintain their machines or forklifts, they don’t dispose of waste properly, and they don’t secure the aluminum paste according to regulations.
So now, they’re dealing with a half dozen agencies with acronyms.
And they still can’t find anyone to sit in my old desk.
All I wanted was to go home on my anniversary.
Wow! Talk about getting back at them. Now, let’s see how other people reacted to this story.
It’s the perfect revenge, says this one.
Here’s another fan.
This user suggests ways on how to handle the situation professionally.
This is exactly what it was.
And finally, this user shares their personal thoughts.
If they won’t listen, let the whole world know.
It’s the only way to make them pay.
If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.