November 17, 2004

• home depot style hardware stores drove the neighborhood hardware store out of business. my previous job drove me to walk out at the beginning of my shift. i've turned in resignation letters at my current position 3 times an each time i've been offered insentives to stay.
• the first job i'd been there around 3 or so years. this second one i'm coming up on 3 years now
• Before moving to the US, my big job between quitting university (couldn't afford to study and live) and California was as an office manager for a concrete-cutting and demolition company. In general, I adored my job. I had free reign to set up office systems, I was basically in charge of about twenty very large and scary men who would bring me coffee without me needing to ask, and I could give myself a pay rise when the time came. My boss and I got on very well indeed and I was really sad to leave. One thing I did which I would never, ever do now was use my status as the Only Female to get things done. I'd play at being a bloke when necessary, rode a motorbike to work, learned to drive the trucks and swore like a sailor. But my wardrobe consisted almost purely of short skirts and tight shirts. I knew perfectly well that the guys were looking up my skirt when I ran up and down the stairs to the office, and I'd bat my lashes if one of the guys was in a particularly foul mood. It was a real feeling of power at the time but completely inappropriate in retrospect, on their part and mine. It also led to a lot of awkward moments, such as the time a friend of the boss told me he'd like to "have" me on my desk, and the night of our Christmas party when I was pulled into the mens' restroom for -- well, nothing, since I laughed my way out of it. Stupid, really. And then I grew up.
• I have quite a few stories of the games industry, both personal and neighborhoodmental. However, it's late, so I'll either add more tomorrow or feel free to email me. If you've seen the post on Electronic Arts floating around the past few days, yeah, there was a lot of that, since I worked at EA at one point. There was also the crazy Frenchman pointing at me and screaming "I'VE GOT YOUR NUMBER!" when the boss asked me to help him out and he apparently thought I was trying to take over his job.
• I knew this guy who moved to Toronto to work for IBM. It was incompetent hell -- they had all these design documents in UML, with cute drawings and stick men, but nobody EVER looked at them. They just used the "code stuff at random" methodology.
• I think everybody's got some work horror story, I've certainly had my share. The worst thing though is the way my job has made me relate to other people differently. I try very hard to keep work and home separate, but working in sales and marketing means I basically manipulate people for a living. It feels icky. I can sense myself changing, and I have to catch myself and make an effort to show the real me to people instead of just playing to their desires and expectations. It's the main reason I'm trying to get out of this job, I don't want to become the person I'm turning into.
• Starbucks fired my friend Ray with no notice or warning whatsoever because he hadn't made "significant improvement" with the store he managed. He pays child support for a 3 year old and our entire posse love him. Several petitions and many phonecalls later, he's... still fired.
• HW- I've got some stories that may fit what you're looking for. I moved from the frying pan to the fire in terms of corporate workplace horror stories, and I am now currently unemployed. Email me - it's in my profile. anybody wanna hire me?
• too many to mention.
• What's the "worst" one, Nostril?
• [please disregard the unnecessary quotation marks]
• I used to work in computer games as well. And yes that EA wife's lament is right on the money. It wasn't too bad the first company I worked for. I mean the hours still sucked but it was a small place with a boss/owner who was a good guy who really cared about the people he worked for, and employees who cared about the product. Then came the second job. A product that was obviously not going to be done on time. A new GM who had been told that if he could get the product out on time he'd get to move even higher. A team that hated them game they were working on. A horrible producer (though the executive producer was a good guy) who seemed to think everyone but him should be working more and more hours. 9 months of 60+ hour crunch (going up to 80-100 for the last 3-4.) It was hell. By the time I quit I had only been there year and yet I was barely sleeping, had gained 10-20 pounds, had broken up a relationship that really meant something, (not to mention a couple of close friendships) was angry all the time, and totally burnt out. I got out, and almost got out of tech entirely. But I've found a good job that is filled with people who work hard without working insane hours. It is amazing to remember that I actually like doing this stuff! Ahh. As to doing games? Never again. The industry is just too toxic, I'll keep it a hobby.
• I call my story "Why I'm in Graduate School." I worked for a small US defense contractor as a receptionist right after I graduated from college. The place included on-site engineering and manufacturing. Why my job sucked: 1. My chair was broken. They knew this, b/c when the engineer's chair broke they took mine and gave me his. 2. My immediate boss alternately screamed at me or refused to speak, asking me in "sign language" to do things. 3. My office (the lobby) had no heater. I was not allowed to plug in a space heater. It was about 45-50 degrees in there (it was winter). I was reprimanded for wearing my coat. 4. When the purchasing officer quit, they tried to make me learn and perform the job with no commensurate raise in title or pay. 5. I had to ask permission to go to the bathroom. --that's not all of it, but the post is getting long. I was there for 3.5 months, and I was there the longest of any receptionist in the history of the place. I guess I'm happy about it, though, because otherwise I may never have gone back to school. I also did data entry very briefly, but left when I realized that *every single person in the department* had carpal tunnel. Every single one. *shudder*
• This job came along a year and a half ago. The work itself is relatively benign, but I lack any sense of having a community of peers and can't help but despise with every khaki fiber of my business casual uniform the cubicle culture. I'm disappointed that I've become trapped in this pit, that I fool myself into feeling contentment despite constant stress and frustration, that I realize my false contentment manifests itself as the desire to fling dollars from my hand, and that it's much easier to foster hatred toward the perceived others that I fear I am on the verge of becoming rather than doing anything about my self-loathing. I need to get out of there. I'll probably do something about it this weekend, look for some jobs online or something. Or maybe the weekend after that. Actually, the pay's not so bad and all. Maybe I'll try to last just one more year to save up some cash.
• If you want corporate and community impact rolled into one, I've got something for you: San Francisco, 1995 - 2001. The dotcom years. Nothing like a few hundred million in freshly-cashed stock options to render an entire city uninhabitable (but the sushi was *fabulous*). I should know, I participated in it through various companies including the monster known as CNET. Started off with a boss that had a habit of snooping through the inter-office mail of all her new hires so she could keep track of how many options they were granted. Dealing with a flock of twentysomethings playing manager, in their standard-issue khaki pants and blue shirts, straight out of Doctom Central Casting, prone to hiring people not so much at talent but by how well they would fit in at the Friday night beer bust. I Working in a warehouse that doubled as a TV studio, having a psychotic director inches away from my face, screaming profanities because I "clicked too loud" with my mouse when working. The two co-workers who disappeared after filing claims for repetitive stress injury. Working with sparse resources and a shoestring budget while the thing known as Snap! Online received plush offices and staff hired to start at twice the salary we were making, all on revenue we were generating. Okay, it was mostly Paul Allen's VC money, but it still pissed me off. The constant bullying and intimidation from a project manager who would give me half the resources and one quarter of the information needed to complete a project, then drag me into conferences with HR when I didn't perform to whatever standards he had deemed applicable for that moment in time. This job finally ended when the above project manager, upon hearing that I had to leave due to a death in the immediate family, took it upon himself to call my mother and try to bully her into getting me not to go. He actually ended up screaming obscenities at her. I am many things, and I am especially a mama's boy. Not cool. I often wonder if that project manager ever realized I was the reason he had the shit beaten and kicked out of him about eight weeks later.
• I'm not interested in sharing beyond that, Hawthorne, but you're welcome to use any part of it that suits you.
• I dunno. The only really awful job I had was working for a state government rather than an evil corporation. And, the only corporate job that even stressed me to the max was in a startup, where I voluntarily worked more hours than I can now believe, but because I knew that they had underbudgeted for administrative costs and I was trying to make up for that, since it was my area of responsibilty. Every other job I had (over about 40 years)provided me with positions where I could not only excell, but could learn. And, since I was good at what I did, they kept giving me more money and promoting me without my ever asking for a raise. And, yes, I did work long hours, but it was my decision to do so - not because of the possibility of moving up, but because it was fun. The only real secret to my success was that I really only worked for myself,doing what I loved, and did well. And, yes, I dealt with pointy-haired bosses and unreasonable administrators, but I was grown up enough to deal/negotiate with them, or even to thunder loudly enough at them that they'd step aside if all else failed. I mean, really, you take a job, and if it takes more than you had imagined, your decision is stay or leave. And, another decision you have to make is whether you can make the job interesting for yourself. In my time, I saw so many people who put out no effort in that respect, but who went into sulks when they didn't get promotions within a few months of signing on, while they spent their time looking imposed upon while doing the job they'd agreed to to on being hired, but badly, with no enthusiam. I know they had another options, since I once made file clerking interesting for myself. So, what's the alternative to evil, corporate jobs? The government stuff is way worse.
• Has anyone ever done any research on people who stay in toxic workplaces. I mean, lots of people realise that their job is driving them mad, making them ill, turning them into American Psycho, or whatever: then they leave. But what about all of the people who don't? Why don't they? Why aren't toxic workplaces evolved out of existence by sheer turnover of staff? Also, how far up does this toxicity spread? If working for corporation X is bad when you've just left school, is it still bad when you've 20 years executive experience? Maybe in some places, everyone is having a bad time, and no one is leaving for some really weird reason.
• Why aren't toxic workplaces evolved out of existence by sheer turnover of staff? Because the economy is complete ass, new jobs that are less toxic are nearly impossible to find, and people have bills to pay.
• people have bills to pay These things happen. Yeah.
• I don't want to think about it.
• I restored and sold furniture for a year. Unfortunately, I had to quit that job and go do my PhD. I really am so a furniture guy.
• Telemarketing. Where for the first two weeks three days without a sale was a talkin' to and five days was a firing. After your first two weeks, you fail quota twice and you were out the door. To be fair to them, the quota shifted depending on how everyone else was doing. Sure sure, everybody was supposed to get two sales an hour, but if nobody pulled it off then they'd turn a blind eye. Management was schizophrenic. Competing directives came down, sometimes on a daily basis, about what was and was not acceptable for personal grooming. Hourly pay depended on rate of sales. You'd always get minimum wage of course, but that isn't much. Why did I and others stay? No degree, no GED, nothing required beyond an ability to make sales and sixteen years of age. Easy work, in the sense of sitting in a chair rather than doing heavy lifting. Coworkers were either new or burned out. After the second week, I don't remember anybody looking happy, except during the breaks, which the company made sure we knew they were giving us out of the goodness of their black hearts.
• Oooh, I worked in telemarketing, too! It sucked pretty bad. Everyone was a chain smoker but me, so I had a little fan to try to keep my area somewhat clear. I was "giving away" vacations, which I thought was cool at first, so I did well, then later I realized that it really wasn't all that great, so my sales dropped and I left. It wasn't a terrible job, even though I was being Evil, but the chain smoking was pretty nasty.
• My first job out of college was working for a father & son team in sales. About a year later, the 1st son left to start his own business and made quite a success of it. All was well until the 2nd son showed up, with his 4th failed business trailing in his wake and his tail between his legs. Father hired him and his assistant and told me to pay for his failed company's leased equipment. This would have been okay if the 2nd son or father had done anything to increase revenues, but that didn't happen. I showed him a few months later how this was wrecking our carefully crafted budget. Father suggested we all take salary cuts. You can imagine how well that went over with the staff. Then I discovered the 2nd son was interviewing candidates for my job as soon as I left work each day. I promptly quit. Four months later, the new guy they hired told them the same thing I did, and then he quit. My lesson learned? Never, ever, ever work for a family business.
• I have to start a new office job next week to raise funds for my Canadian expedition. AAAaaaaaaargh eeeeechrrppllllt. I have had a bad experience with someone who wanted to be the alpha dickhead in the office. Sometimes there's not a lot you can do about it. You do what you have to get money.
• My first real job after suffering through retail hell was a job as a tape librarian for a mid-sized company. The job at first was supposed to be a part time job, but they made it a full time job by adding in some mundane tasks (managing printer paper, keeping an inventory of stores, etc). That didn't help. For the first six months or so, the total amount of work amounted to about three hours a day. And being the internet addict that I was, I spent the rest of the time reading and writing for various websites. I spent the majority of the time writing weekly columns, since I had the hours to pour into multiple 1000 word researched pieces. My boss, however, had less work to do. Or at least, that was my impression, since he would come by my desk every half an hour or so and ask me what I was up to. This job was prior to Office Space coming out, and when I saw the movie, I swore the boss in that movie was modeled after him. He carried a coffee cup with him everywhere, wore golf outfits to work, and say things like, "So... Shawn, what's happening?" and kept bugging me about why I wasn't doing work. No matter how much I explained to him that I needed more work, he would respond, "Yeah... so why aren't you doing work right now?" I learned later that the last three people that had my position had quit because he became toxic. Two of them had breakdowns at work, and left in a crying fit. After a few month of this, he became hostile, and started to become louder and more assertive. We had screaming matches in the server rooms, and yet I stayed, not wanting to quit because at the time I thought it was good money. A couple months later, the amount of work that my job entailed tripled, and I was forced to fit nine hours of work in an eight hour day, causing things to fall behind. This made things even worse, since he did not comprehend that my job had suddenly gotten more complicated due to a larger number of tapes being used per day and the complex filing system that I needed to use. Later that year, I was laid off in the first round of cuts, since my job, no matter how vital it may have been for disaster recovery, was deemed unnecessary overhead. I was unbillable, so therefore there was no purpose for my job. The boss, however, is still there after now seven cuts since I left. From what I hear from friends who still work there, he routinely has people quit under him, and is down to only two people under him doing the work of what used to be five people's jobs. How he kept his job despite not having much responsiblity beyond managing a small group is beyond me.
• I used to work at ATT Wireless. When I started, it was changing over from Cellular One and everyone was very, very happy. One of the first things they said to us when they took over was "Let's throw out everything and start from square one as if this were a brand new cell phone company." Big, big mistake... It went from being voted one of the best places to work at in the area to the worst. This was over 7 years. There was also a habit of aloofness to problems that ultimatly led to the company's downfall. "I and my teammates are having problems with the CRM software the company bought. I've surveyed employees all across the company, they have confirmed these issues." Company response: "There are no problems, it's all in your head." Then customer satisfaction dropped through the floor into the basement and ocntinued to dig... I estimate as much as 40% of the workforce was on stress-related leave and on anti-depressants. Ultimatly I was 'fired' because of a lack of improvement on my job after coming back from stress-related leave. I had requested re-training over a six-month period after I came back without success, the excuses were "Oh, it's to busy, too many calls." Then it was "Oh, it's too slow, not enough calls." Then when I was fired they tried to deny my unemployment benefits and succeeded, which was reversed on appeal (most appeals lose). I found out a month after I left there was an article in the local paper on how the company was reducing it's workforce not through layoffs but deliberate firings. They used the word 'fire' in the article. I imagine so they have an excuse to deny unemployment. I found out the software that led so many people into so much stress had endemic problems across the industry. I found this out within 15 minutes of doing research on the net. The IT manager got a gift of a new Ferrari 360 Modena for agreeing to the use of the software for our company. It was later keyed in the parking lot. $60,000 damage, apparently. Obviosly he wasn't liked very much. My attitude towards corporations these days? As much as possible I try to buy locally whenever I can and utilize corporations as little as possible, and wherever possible encourage others to do the same. Corporations really *are* a blight on society, and the sooner we consign them to the dustbin of history, the sooner civilization as a whole can move forward. As long as corporations exist, civilization and society will be retarded by them. This is the short form of my experience with corporations, I've got a few more stories as well.
• as others have said - please feel free to email me the address is in my profile. I work in broadcasting so rampant egos and poor management are the norm ... Some of the stories I have also relate to extremely high profile organisations so I'd also rather not commit to them online!
• I have worked for two different Long Term Care corporations, never again. The first, wasn't bad at all, at first. After three years we had a change in administration. Then resident care didn't matter anymore. The only thing that mattered was the bottom line. Corners were cut, staff started quitting and were not replaced with qualified people. The new administration was rude to the staff, loud and obnoxious. Since I have the ability to speak out to others about what is right and wrong and have no fear of being fired, I was elected to meet with administration to try and negotiate for a better work environment and to try to ensure good resident care. That didn't work. Six months after the new administration took over we were in big trouble concerning resident care. Several family members of the residents came to me, wanting to know why the faciility had taken such a turn. I explained the new administrations views and the staff efforts to remedy the problem, which were to no avail. They asked what they should do for their loved ones. I did what most in the industry would consider traitorous. I advised them to get all the family members who had complaints or concerns and have a meeting. Then after they decided what the main issues were, call the state inspectors and complain. Not just one call, but one call from each family. They did and the next day the facility was put under full blown survey and failed big time. The facility was placed on a stop placement order, no admits allowed until all problems were fixed. I was called into the Directors office the next day. I was told I was too smart for my own good and not a team player. I was told that since I knew so much I had 30 days to fix the problems in the facility so we would pass reinspection. Not my responsibility at the time, but not hard to do so I did fix the problems. First I told the Director, she would have to hire qualified people to even begin the process. Also that she would have to buy supplies and not cut corners, etc. Anyway, the state inspectors came back a month later and we passed inspection. The next day I was terminated for not being a team player. The second time I worked for a corporate home I quit after three weeks, turning down a 3000 dollar sign on bonus. Why? There were no supplies for me to do wound care on all the decubs in the place. I told the administrator, when he tried to convince me to stay, that if he wanted to keep good nurses he would have to buy supplies, and that perhaps he should use the 3000 dollars to do so.
• Oh my god. Yes. And thank you for providing this wonderful outlet to vent. Must compose myself first.
• Pick up either a copy of, or the book of, TempSlave Magazine. Run by a guy named Jeff Kelly (I think he writes under the name Keffo). And my terrible jobs are all in service (food, or Kinkos, or managing a hippy grocery store). You can get ahold of me through my profile if you wanna hear me whine, but Kinko's is the only corporate hellhole I've worked for, and that's only because it was so good for so long that when it started to suck the contrast was amazing. (I also got fired and was fine with it...)
• I have a couple of views of and into corporate culture because I am a consultant and run IT projects for lots of well-known ("Fortune 500" as they so fondly like to repeat and repeat and repeat) companies. So there are the clients and then there is my own company. My company is a survivor of the .com crash, managing to stay afloat when the Scients and Viants were either merging to survive or simply throwing in the towel. Surviving necessitated selecting those to be thrown out of the life raft over two very painful years. This created a mood of fear and paranoia that the company's eventual recovery has not really alleviated in any significant way. The company culture is decidely odd: male-dominated with a minimum of formally set HR guidelines, it's a "flat organization" (none of us have titles) hiding all sorts of shifting hierarchies you'd better know if you want to be successful and considered a "team player." I am usually the only woman in the room at any given time. This month I will have been there four years, which astonishes me. What dickdotcom said about commiting to stories online... email in profile.
• Fifteen years ago I crashed and burned out of a Ph.D. program and the exigiencies of life compelled me to slink with my tail between my legs into Corporate America. For the first few years, I told myself I was not really one of "Them", that I was just doing it until "something better" came along, but eventually I could not keep up the pretense. I have squandered my most productive years in a series of pointless jobs, though with each step towards utter mediocrity and meaninglessness I have been rewarded with bigger and bigger paychecks. I have let go of almost everything that was important to me as an individual, trading the substance of my life for days spent twiddling away as much time as possible on anything that could relieve the boredom. The arrival of the Internet was like a godsend for me, as it was for millions of other people confined to cubicles with little overt supervision but little motivation to be productive. Eventually, the rotted-out core of my life became undeniable. Five months ago I had a minor heart attack and quadruple bypass surgery, and I could no longer pretend that the sham existence I had led all these years was worth one more day. My horror stories are mild compared to the tales told by some people in this thread, but the gradual snuffing out of my soul is just as complete. One month from today I am leaving this job, and I hope to be leaving this corporate world once and for all. Early next year I am beginning a new path by going to culinary school to train to become a chef. You're welcome to read along as I write about that experience. I only hope that I have not taken this step too late.
• I think the question you should be asking is, have you ever not worked in an emotionally toxic workplace? I have, three times, including the current job. The two worst places: call center, and major airline. Call centers are yoo gee el why. The conventional wisdom is that people last an average of six months in a call center. I've read that's also true in India, where call center work pays very well compared to other jobs, and you know, I'm not surprised.
• If I didn't have diabetes, or if I lived somewhere with national health so that not having a good benefits job did not mean instant poverty followed by slow death, I would not be a cubicle slave. But you DO, Blanche, you DO have diabetes. So you put up with the existential crux briank delineated so ably, and hope that someday you might find yourself in a position to chuck it all and follow your dream. But of course the prospects of meaningful motion toward a cure in the US are remote given the administration's antipathy toward science and research. That's why I'm hoping Canada or Europe will make strides, since their health care systems actually have a financial interest in curing disease, whereas here, curing diabetes would cut into profits. Of course I can also pin hope on privately funded research by philanthropists like Lee Iacocca. Float 'em a fiver, tell 'em TP sent you.
• Reminds me of a story about a father I heard a long while back. He said that every morning, as he stood on the platform waiting for the morning train, he died a little bit inside. "But I do it because I love my family," he said. As TP pointed out, health care can be THE issue that keeps you working for the man. My wife is just about uninsurable except through an employer, as she has an extensive (and expensive) medical history, the high point of which was an unbelievably expensive quadruple laminectomy. As a result, there is nearly no scenario that will allow her to be a full-time mother and covered for medical bills that doesn't involve me sitting in a cubicle and grinding code/etc. So now I'm grinding away at a CS degree (my second college degree, and I'm 29) while working full time at a job that requires nothing more than a high school diploma and a little cash-handling experience. I'm the second-oldest employee at my branch -- and at the risk of coming off arrogant, a pretty damned smart man -- and I occupy the lowest rung. I used to want to do something creative and fulfilling for a living, but now I think I'd pretty much settle for something that requires just a little bit of intellect.
• briank: Lots of luck with your dream. I like to think that it's never too late.
• continued sabotage and sexual harassment of coworkers so bad that HR actually had the 1st boss resign... petty power fights that got so nasty and personal that the 2nd boss quit on the spot... hiring people intended to be permanent employees as contractors to avoid paying any benefits, and making them take unpaid time off to avoid breaking the law if they wanted to keep their job. how about firing the one black employee on martin luther king, jr. day? having the president of the company, whose office was just down the hall, not understand what your division was there for? email in profile. thanks for taking this up!
• how about firing the one black employee on martin luther king, jr. day? Classic. "Don't think of this as us firing you, Bill. Think of it like we're 'letting your freedom ring' "
• ...aaaaand there went my coffee.
• I once had a job where I was forced to sign a statement saying I would not discuss the job at all with anyone, including family members and licensed psychiatrists. And it paid a whole $10.50 an hour. Email me for more. jeanettev@gmail.com
• And how was it, working at the Justice Department? I kid, I kid...
• Since I got out of school & restaurant work I have worked in arts management - the last 10 years in museums - non profit, but just as FUBAR. The non profit world has taken hints from the corporate world, so whereas it used to be that the tradeoff was a better work environment for lousy pay, now you get both: horrible conditions AND no money! It's also not secure like it used to be - museum staff in past generations could go quietly nuts and keep their jobs for 50 years anyway, but that happy eccentric atmosphere is gone. They fire people now, and it's ugly. The job I have is insane, completely crazy. I have two official titles and about four unofficial ones, my job is so scattered and completely reactive that it makes very little sense at all. Fortunately I like multi tasking, work well under pressure and I've learned to take my time where I find it - like sitting online when it's miraculously slow, and coming in late every day. And, for the most part, I like my coworkers. That counts for a lot - oh, and we get to drink like fish during receptions. So that is all good - but I cried every day for the first 6 months I had this job, I couldn't believe how awful it was. What gets me here mostly, besides the disorganization and the uneasy knowledge that I am the slave of an occasionally psychotic dictator who has noone over her and nothing holding her madness at bay, is the total abuse of our time. We get hardly any time off: 5, count them FIVE, holidays a year, vacation accrued at the princely rate of 6.6 hours per month (6.66, to be exact, think that's a coincidence? Cos I don't.) and we are allowed to accrue & take 40 hours of comp time per calendar year. To put that into perspective I routinely have those 40 hours accrued by March, and I usually have about 300 hours of completely uncompensated overtime at the end of each year. Mostly parties. The Director loves to throw parties, and her professional staff get to heft tables, tend bar, tote trash. Good damn thing I went to college, otherwise I'd sure have trouble serving cheap wine to rich people. We're understaffed, overworked, and we get nothing back, because it is assumed that we are working in the arts for the joy and love of it. Sure, I love the arts. But not 60 hours a week worth, not working 7 days a week. I am still not making here what I was making in Baltimore 4 years ago - and I was poor as dirt in Baltimore. Why do I stay? I live in Western North Carolina -the highest cost of living and the lowest wages in the state - but I'm here for family reasons and I can't really leave. I can't find anything else, even though I look like crazy, and I'm not alone. I've just watched two of my close friends leave the area, give up, decide that the tradeoff of a great quality of life (if you can afford it, which fewer and fewer of us can) for total underemployment or no job at all isn't worth it. Here, if you can find an actual job, with health insurance, you hang on to it like grim death. Email's in profile, feel free to email if you want any more insight into nonprofits - where it is not profitable to work, that's for sure.
• As I look over web sites detailing the graduate programs of various schools and try to decide what direction the next step in my life should take me, I read this thread, and I panic.
• My horror story is pretty mundane. My first job out of college was as a research assistant in a lab. I almost never saw the professor, and instead reported to a supervisor. The job part was fine, but over a few months, my supervisor grew to hate me for some reason I never figured out. Eventually, I ended up in the professor's office in tears, and he had to put me on another project in an entirely different lab. When I went to ask for a recommendation, he pulled out my original resume and was shocked at my standardized test scores. Apparently, the supervisor had been telling him I was a moron who didn't do my work. In reality, I worked far more than she did, and my work was of notably higher quality. Since I had records to back up my side, I ended up with an excellent recommendation - after only a year of persecution I would have known never to put up with if it hadn't been my first job. I guess the moral is that you should always go out of your way to check in with the people at the top - just so they have an accurate idea of who you are and why you are important to the company/lab/whatever. I also have a Starbucks story, but it is not mine. One of my co-worker's mother is a textile artist. A Starbucks opened in the space next to her office, and they broke through the sewer line while doing renovations. It flooded her office and ruined a bunch of her pieces. She contacted Starbucks, and they said they would pay for the damages - over $10,000. They never did, and once the Starbucks was built, denied ever talking to her. She tried to take them to small claims court to recoup some of the money, but apparently, Starbucks got out of it by saying that a lawsuit was to be filed about the same case, and that takes precedent. She was told it would take $40,000 to effectively sue Starbucks, so she had to let it go, since Starbucks has a team of lawyers just sitting around waiting for cases. She tried to talk to the landlord, but he valued the business from Starbucks more than her office rent. So, she ended up just eating the cost of the damage. I don't know if she'd want her story to be included, but if it suits your purposes, I have her contact info.
• I have a Starbuck story...remember that time Starbuck was making out with that chick in the fighter bays or something, and a steam pipe burst giving him steam burns all over? Then he had to explain to the captain how he got burned, and it was soo funny...and then this wicked bad Centurion gunslinger showed up and... Oh. Never mind.
• I don't know if my story fits your premise, but my worst job experience was at a small, liberal non-profit think tank which worked on issues of local community self-reliance. This is not a knee-jerk reaction to the politics - I shared and share their principles. But the working environment was horrible. The president was a driven, monomaniacal workaholic and he expected just that from his staff. The organization was his baby and though it had a governance board, they were all hand-picked and he and another cofounder ran the show. They worked me ragged for very shoddy compensation and there was little employee support of any sort. I was a wreck when I quit and long refused to take any kind of long term job, doing 1-3 month temp jobs below my level of ability for 2.5 years just for the relief of being able to leave forever on a regular basis. You may contact me if you like.
• Wow. Lots of good stuff to work my way through, here. Thank you all. And you monkeys who are looking at this thread for the first time: Keep the stories coming! [again, many thanks]
• Not to offend, HW, but your research method--starting with your conclusions and then soliciting evidence to support them--might, um, skew your argument just a tad. Starbucks brought the first decent coffee ever to my little corner of the midwest, I am drinking a cup right now. Walmart and the chain bookstores offer a greater selection of goods than would otherwise be available here. Yeah, it sucks to be the owner of the local bookstore that went out of business, but the place did smell of cat pee. Change is destructive as well as creative, it takes a ledger with two columns to figure out if it is good or not. But thanks for starting such an readable thread!
• I worked for a company that contracted technical support for other companies, back when "outsourcing" did not mean "India". I started out in a department that did end-user support for software that all of you have heard of, and many of you have used. It wasn't too bad at the start, even though the phone queue lengths were insane, the problems were easily solved, the department supervisors were reasonable and understanding, and the call center management had other things to worry about and paid no attention to us. Then, I got "promoted" for being good at what I did. Cue ominous music. I was transferred into a department that supported a proprietary, antiquated super-server/mainframe, presented with a towering stack of dry technical manuals, and dumped right into the phone queue with zero training or warning that I was going to be dealing with hysterical corporate users shrieking obscenities into the phone, while watching my cow-orkers popping antidepressants all around me. Three days, and I cracked right down the middle, but I didn't quit because I needed the paycheck badly. Instead, I was transferred into yet another department providing three completely disparate types of support to three companies - a network hardware manufacturer, a corporate help desk, and a company that made cheap plug'n'pray servers for small office environments. It wasn't too bad, until the department dwindled from six employees to four, and I discovered that my company had an unwritten policy of never replacing anyone in this department, ever. None of the three companies we were supporting knew about the other two, and we were even instructed to lie and say "so and so is away from his desk" to make it seem like there were more than four people working there. The company ran periodic incentive drives, which consisted of - no shit - gold stars that you were supposed to hang on the walls of your cube and xeroxed coupons that could be spent on items printed with the company logo. The bestest thing was the announced Christmas bonuses, which came in the form of coffee mugs purchased at the dollar store, festooned with a vaguely holiday-themed sticker and one single candy cane. To answer your main question, physical fallout from the work environment was rampant there. Non-smokers took up the habit to cope, and smokers turned into chain-smokers on breaks. I wound up in the ER one morning puffed up like a balloon with a blood pressure of 190/140, and I am still coping with the after-effects years later. The final straw was when I was supposed to be getting an "official" promotion with a new title, but more importantly a small raise and a boost up to the full benefits package offered by the company. While I was sitting at my desk simultaneously taking calls, answering support email for two companies, running reports on the number and type of calls taken, and watching my lunch congeal in a tupperware container I was informed that management had not only vetoed my promotion, as far as they were concerned I was still on the books as an employee of the first department... the one I'd been hired into, but hadn't worked in for two years. Because that department was understaffed as well, and they needed as many names as possible on the books in order to keep the contract. And, because I already had the maximum pay and benefits package for that department, no official promotion was coming. Ever. Contacting my via the email in my profile is fine.
• smallish bear, all I can say is talk to alumni of the programs you're considering before you take the plunge. Look for job listings in the field for starting positions, positions requiring 3-5 years experience, etc. to see what kind of growth you can expect. I managed to get out of my horrible situation into one that's downright keen. My bad-situation-ender wasn't as dramatic as briank's, but it did put me in a place I didn't want to be with lots of time to think about where I did want to be.
• LarryC, I hear you, but I'm not doing scientific research by any means. I'm doing journalistic research. (Don't worry, though -- there'll be more-scientifically gathered research cited in the finished product.)
• Wow. Just transfered this thread into Word (12-point time, Times font, single-spaced), and it's 35 PAGES LONG! Again, thanks to all.