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My WTF Job



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It started at the interview…

I interviewed for a job at small gift shop in my town. I enjoyed going into this shop because they had unique items that I couldn’t find anywhere else. One day I noticed they had a help wanted sign up. So of course I applied! I had just graduated with my BA in psychology and had decided to take a year off before returning to grad school.

During the interview the owner of business told me that I’d be working only twenty hours a week—twenty-five max. She told me she needed someone to learn how to make the unique, one-of-a-kind gift baskets that the store was known for. I told her that I was more than willing to learn. That sounded fun!

On my first day of work, the owner told me to go upstairs with one of the employees so she could teach me how to make gift baskets. So I spent a few hours learning the basics of gift baskets. You wouldn’t think they were complicated, but they actually kinda were. Or maybe they were just super-picky.

The next day when I went in to work, the owner called me into her office. “I didn’t hire you to make gift baskets. You need to be down here on the floor working at all times.”

WTF?

I was so dumbfounded I was speechless. She told me in the interview she wanted me to learn how to make gift baskets, and she was the one who told me to go up there and learn how to make the gift baskets.

I decided to stay the hell away from gift baskets.

A few weeks later the owner called me into her office again and told me she was very disappointed that I hadn’t learned how to make gift baskets. That gift baskets were an essential element to my job and she thought I understood that from the interview.

WTF?

Another of my job duties was to price the new merchandise that came in to the shop. I was told to take the price that was paid by the shop, multiply by 2.5 and then round up to the nearest .99 cents. So I did. It wasn’t hard. After all I was a college graduate.

One day the owner wandered around the shop picking up some of the new merchandise that I’d
priced a few days before. She looked at a price and called me over. “Why did you put this price on here?”

“It’s 2.5 times the price, rounded up to the nearest .99 cents.”

“Well, you can just look at this and see that it’s worth more than the price you have on it. I want you to raise the price by six dollars.”

WTF?

She went through the store telling me the new prices she wanted on ALL the merchandise. I had to reprice the entire store! Just when I finished a new shipment came in. I went to her with a new item we’d gotten in. “2.5 times rounded up to the nearest .99 cents is this price. What would you like me to put on this?”

“That price.”

Okay. So I priced all those items and went to her with a new item. “Here is 2.5 times the price, rounded up to the nearest .99 cents. What price do you want me to put on this?

“Uh. That price.”

I finish pricing all those items and went back to her with a new item and the same question. “2.5 times the price, rounded up to the nearest .99 cents is this. What do you want me to put on here?”

“I don’t understand why you can’t get it. You price everything at 2.5 times the price and round up to the nearest .99 cents. This isn’t hard. You are a college graduate.”

WTF?

I confess, when a situation hits me out of left field, I’m not a think-on-my-feet kind of girl. I was absolutely dumbfounded at her statement. She’d just made me reprice the entire store two days previous, because she didn’t like the 2.5 times rounded up to the nearest .99 cent price.

The holidays were approaching and my hours in the store jumped from twenty a week to fifty a week for a month. Most days I opened and closed the store. I worked fifty hours a week, while she and her friends only came in a few hours a day. And it wasn’t like I was sitting around when they weren’t there. I had to check in all the new items, display all of it, keep the food and drink station stocked and pretty, check out customers, sweep, dust, clean the bathrooms.

The owner called me into her office. “I’m disappointed that you’re aren’t contributing enough to the business.”

WTF?

She said I wasn’t contributing enough?!

WTF?

I’d never walked off a job before and I never have since, but that day I think I was close to a limit: the throat-punch her or leave limit. I left. Walked out and never came back. And never gave that store my business ever again.

My only glee came from knowing that the owner and her friends were actually going to have to show up and do all my work since I wasn’t there.

What about you?

Have you ever had a WTF job?





Abbie Roads writes dark emotional novels featuring damaged characters, but always gives her hero and heroine a happy ending… after torturing them for more than three hundred pages.

Cursed with a terrible gift
Criminal investigator Xander Stone doesn’t have to question you—he can hear your thoughts. Scarred by lightning, burdened with a power that gives him no peace, Xander struggles to maintain his sanity against the voice that haunts him day and night—the voice of a woman begging him to save her.
A gift that threatens to engulf them...
Isleen Walker has long since given up hope of escape from the nightmare of captivity and torture that is draining her life, her mind, and her soul. Except…there is the man in her feverish dreams, the strangely beautiful man who beckons her to freedom and wholeness. And when he comes, if he comes, it will take all their combined fury and faith to overcome a madman bent on fulfilling a deadly prophecy.



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Comments

  1. WTF! Yes, I had one of those, it was a 'time share' job one week I was to work two days the next week three days. This would have been perfect for me but the other person who was having their 'full time' job reduced to the same hours didn't...and she was to teach me how to do the job. Needless to say things didn't work out and I bowed out of the job. Heard later they fired her when they caught on to what she'd been doing to all the trainees.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Paulette!

      Sounds like you dodged a bullet with that one!

      Delete
  2. That sounds awful. I don't think I ever had a job that bad...although for one of my college jobs I had to clean gum off the bottom of tables and chairs. Eew!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Amanda!

      Gum off the bottom of tables... Yuck.

      Delete
  3. Um, that owner sounds cuckoo. I would have been fired because I would have argued after the second WTF. She should have given you a raise and a promotion!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You know I was so young and naive back then it never occurred to me to question authority the way it would now.

      Delete
  4. Maybe they were twins running the store lol. I recently started a job at a dry cleaners - not rocket science but a lot more to it than I thought. I was to have 15 to 18 hrs. but it's been all over the place from 13 to 36. Mostly because of having to fill in for other employees because he doesn't hire enough and he doesn't pay much. At least it's only a few minutes from my home so not like the hour one way commute I had at one time.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Twins! That's it! That was definitely what was going on! lol!

      Delete

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