Kate Hackett
We’ve all had that moment, right? The second you realize: oh god, I’m not getting compensated nearly enough for the way I’m being treated right now. I know I have! And with the world where it is right now and people quitting their crappy jobs in droves to demand better treatment and pay, let’s visit some stories about that realization.
u/indian_boy786 asked Reddit:
“What is your ‘I don’t get paid enough for this sh-t’ moment?”
And we combed through to get some of the best answers.
1. Plumber
Owner of a mobile home called and said they had a stinky yard.
I could smell it when I pulled up.
the mobile home was new and had only been set up for about 8 months. while setting it up, someone didn’t tighten a no-hub band of the toilet in the kids bathroom.
8 months of flushed toilet was all over the ground, under the home and had just started being noticed outside.
I told the homeowner to call the guys that set it up to come fix it. I wasn’t crawling under there.
2. Walmart
I worked at walmart for less than a month in 2009. I scanned a big box fan for a guy and it didn’t ring up, so I said “I gotta do a price check on this, I apologize.” The guy said “It’s $24.99 you f***ing idiot.” I stared at him for a moment, then reached up and turned my little register light off, turned around, walked out to my car, and went home.
3. Grocery
I was working in a grocery store one time, and as I was checking people out, one lady came up to me and the very first thing out of her mouth was: “You’re a failure and an embarrassment to humanity. If you were my kid I’d beat your [arse] right here right now.” I had done literally nothing but ask how she was. Like what. Then her card declined lmao.
4. Did his job
When I was doing 90% of my boss’ job in hopes of a full time promotion that I had been promised for three years and he took all the credit and told me my promotion wasn’t in the budget.
5. Librarian
I’m a public librarian. I was helping someone in the computer room and turned to tell someone he needed to keep his exclamations at the video he was watching down. Just then, the woman I was helping leapt aside because the man I was shushing pissed himself. It ran down onto the jacket he had tied around his waist, down the chair, onto the ground. Turns out he’d snuck in alcohol and was totally black out drunk. I told him he had to leave. He put the piss covered jacket on and stumbled out. As I returned with gloves and cleaning supplies, another patron decided this was a good time to complain about some kids who were making noise. I took a deep breath and said “This is a good time for us all to appeal to our higher selves and do our best in the moment. Please just adapt for a minute”. Then I thought about the student loans I took out for the master’s degree as I scrubbed up piss.
6. Screaming
I worked at a heating and air conditioning company doing bookkeeping. I was being trained by the companies accountant. If I made a mistake the owner would literally scream at me full voice. I overheard him talking to his brother and his brother had told him not to scream at me. The owner said, “you have to tear them down to build them up.” I decided I wasn’t going to take another day of his screaming after that.
7. I don’t care
Grocery store cashier. The customer was angry because her cereal had rung up wrong. I called a price check and this lady berated me the whole time. I recall that she accused me of trying to steal from her. Said she was going to get me fired.
I looked at her and said, “I make $7.25 per hour no matter how much you pay for this cereal, so I do not give a shit how this situation turns out.”
She stared at me in shock. The price check comes back saying the price scanned correctly. Silence.
I said, “So do you want the cereal or not?” She said, “Yes.” And that was that. She did not complain to the manager.
8. Be a mom
I ran the entire company’s financials and general management for $14/hr. I had a meeting with the owner telling him I need a raise and to hire an assistant, he told me I wasn’t “business minded” and should be a stay at home mom. I quit the next day.
9. Oh no
Bagging groceries at a major supermarket. The manager came over to tell me that I needed to clean up the bathroom. An elderly gentleman fell off the toilet while pooping and it was a literal shitshow. Apparently I was the most qualified because I was 16. I was handed a broom and a dustpan. I shit you not (sorry had to.) My reward for going above and beyond the call of duty? Five dollars in store coupons. Sometimes dreams really do come true.
10. WTF do you do there
First day at the health department, I’m left at the reception desk alone while literally everyone else in the office went out to a farewell lunch for the person I was replacing. As I was on 90 day probation, wasn’t yet licensed and badged, my pay was $7.96/hr.
I’m sitting at reception, and some redneck comes in with a leaking garbage bag and drops it on my desk. It contains a newly beheaded javelina head. His buddy had been bitten, and it needed to be tested for rabies ASAP.
I had no fucking clue what to do with a leaking garbage bag of javelina head. He couldn’t wait for others to return, so he left a number and split.
Turns out, we don’t do that sort of thing at the health department. Guy refused to come back.
11. Sexy store
I was a manager for a well known lingerie store. Our location was in a failing suburban mall. The store was giant and shaped oddly. There were dressing rooms in odd hidden corners and a few blind spots. The store was located at the end of the mall next to other stores no one really went to, so there wasn’t much foot traffic. We were also always short staffed because no one wanted to work out there. All of those factors made us a prime location for thieves and weirdos.
I would have to do laps around the store due to its layout, and I would regularly come across people doing sex stuff in this one secluded little dressing room. The dressing room was in a sort of alcove and was the least visible spot in the store, so it was prime real estate for all kinds of shenanigans. It ranged from women doing strip teases for men, to catching couples having oral sex, to catching couples having penetrative sex, to catching men masturbating. The final straw was catching a man at closing time, masturbating into a pile of cotton panties with the dressing room door wide open. I couldn’t take it anymore. I put in my notice the next day.
And what was crazy was that corporate always shrugged or laughed it off when I would call and complain that we needed a security guard. I was 21 at the time, and every woman that worked their was between 19-30; it was a safety issue, and they’d also blame us for all the merchandise theft, which we were unable to prevent because their weren’t enough bodies in that gigantic store to prevent it.
I was also dating a guy who also worked in the mall, and he told me that they finally closed up that one dressing room not long after I left. He said a lot of folks were pissed because apparently that one little dressing room was a well-known open secret spot for hooking up.
12. Harassment
When I was 20 I had 3 jobs. I worked as a bank teller from 8-4, then as a closing shift manager at a coffee shop from 5-10, then as an overnight janitor from 11- 2 am.
This wasn’t every day but it was enough that it equated to about 80 hours a week between the 3 jobs, and yes you can imagine this would lead to burnout real fast.
So at the overnight janitor gig my “boss” comes over to me and asks me to come to the office for a review. This was weird, all I did was mop floors on a production line that made air train brakes. But whatever.
I go into his office and he closes the door behind me and pulls out a gay porn magazine and starts asking me about different dicks and put his hand on my shoulder.
I was surprisingly calm and just said I don’t like dicks and went back to work.
Then it hit me what happened. I called in sick the rest of the week and picked up my final paycheck when he wasn’t there.
It was a hard enough job without being sexually harassed for $8.50 an hour.
13. Volunteer work
Doing volunteer work and some busybody started bossing me around like they were in charge (a neighborhood association type person). I told them to back the fuck off. It took a couple of seconds for people to realize that the person barking orders wasn’t a boss, but an asshole that was used to being in control.
14. Nope
I worked at walmart for less than a month in 2009. I scanned a big box fan for a guy and it didn’t ring up, so I said “I gotta do a price check on this, I apologize.” The guy said “It’s $24.99 you fucking idiot.” I stared at him for a moment, then reached up and turned my little register light off, turned around, walked out to my car, and went home.
15. Too many Madonna
I used to work in a mall music store, back when that was a thing. There was a corporate policy to play new music regularly, y’know, because that’s the fucking thing you’re trying to sell.
My boss, every single day she worked, would play the entire Madonna album, Ray of Light. Hours of the same eight fucking songs. For most of a year, until it was either go mad, commit murder, or bail. I bailed.
That music franchise went under a little over a year later. I hold Madonna and my old boss responsible.
16. Retail
Worked at a retail store. Fiends would come in occasionally looking to steal shit and the worst we could do legally was ask them to leave but my boss insisted we get physical with them, to which I obviously told her fuck no.
I watched her chase one out of the store one day and she screams at me since I’m standing by the door like “TACKLE HIM” and I’m like uh no lmao
17. Meat Dept
Working in a grocery store meat department during Thanksgiving, when every third customer asks if you have any larger turkeys in the back. And insists you go back to the walk-in freezer and sift through multiple pallets of frozen turkeys for the 80th time today.
18. Sweat Phone
When a thick stream of sweat drained out of this girls cell phone case. I had to explain to her that her phone had water damage and that she shouldn’t work out with her phone in her bra, all the while trying to be professional and not gag while cleaning the mess. (I sold phones at Sprint).
19. Bartender
Bartender here. Grown man threw a lit cigarette at my face and threatened me with physical violence. This was a year or so ago but a 45 (maybe older) year old man behaving that way towards a 24 year old female was definitely one of those moments. Plus the people getting handsy and occasional cleaning of vomit I do not get paid enough.
20. Oh no.
When I had to stop someone from fucking their cat.
