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I apologise if this isn't the appropriate thread to ask in, I don't visit this part of SA very often but this didn't seem worthy of it's own thread and seems to loosely fit the content of the thread. So I work retail and I'm in my very early twenties, I work in customer service as a cashier operator and my place of an employment despite being part of a dual state franchise owned by a national corporation can be quite lax on giving their employees their entitlements or even informing them of them accurately as stated under our Enterprise Bargaining Agreement of which there is no copy made available in the workplace. The last time I requested one I was given an edition relevant to the other state the company operates in but I certainly haven't seen a copy in the work place in 2011. The specific issue I have is they have consistently misinformed myself and other employees about when they are entitled to their breaks. Under our EBA we're entitled to a ten minute paid rest break when working a four hour shift and an unpaid half hour meal break when working a shift of over five hours. What I've been told however and have been enforced whenever I query the issue with a Supervisor or Management is that we have to work over four hours for a rest break and that we are required to work five and a half hours for a meal break. Now this may seem like a small discrepancy but the store is quite busy and when you either work a four hour shift of repetitive manual labour without a rest break or a five and a quarter hour shift without a meal break it can feel incredibly taxing on your body and of course there's the principal of the matter. I work with a lot of school kids who are either totally unaware of their entitlements or would feel too intimidated to speak up about this as well as a lot of others who will not for their own reasons. I haven't myself thus far because I can all ready tell my manager does not trust me and thinks of me as a trouble maker because I have said 'no' to requests for things like staying later at work because someone has phoned in sick due to commitments outside work and having a workers compensation claim earlier in the year for an injury at work during which he treated me with great suspicion and frequently would watch me at work to see if I was 'faking it' which made me really uncomfortable during and subsequently. So I was wondering how other people would deal with this situation or if they had been through similar experiences and if anyone knows what kind of outcomes could be achieved by registering an official complaint. I myself don't feel it's unreasonable to pursue the matter since it's a clear case of employees being misinformed as to what their work place entitlements are. If it makes any difference I'm an Australian who lives in Victoria and am employed casually by Woolworths and I am covered under their Enterprise Bargaining Agreement.
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Oct 17, 2011 16:35
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Sue Denim posted:I apologise if this isn't the appropriate thread to ask in, I don't visit this part of SA very often but this didn't seem worthy of it's own thread and seems to loosely fit the content of the thread. I think it depends on exactly how your employment laws are set up over there, and what your contracted hours are. Call me a cynic, but there's nothing stopping them from picking you out as a troublemaker and scheduling you not only for your bare minimum contracted hours, but also spreading those hours as far across your availability as they can. Management will find ways that, while not illegal, are pretty lovely and will make your life crappy. I just looked up EBAs and it seems like you should be thoroughly covered to take it further if you think it's important to you, although (and correct me if I'm misreading here) you've only had sight of a copy pertaining to a different state. Finally, I suspect the best outcome you're going to get is that instead of 4 hour shifts you'll get 3.5 hour ones and instead of 5.25 hours you'll get 4.25. I suspect you'll still get shafted on it.
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Oct 17, 2011 17:31
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Sue Denim posted:If it makes any difference I'm an Australian who lives in Victoria and am employed casually by Woolworths and I am covered under their Enterprise Bargaining Agreement. Disclaimer - I worked for Woolies for nearly a year in another state. Are you with the union? If so, call them. Seriously, this kind of thing is their forte. If not, get a unionised buddy to call on your behalf (because this directly affects them). Do you have a union representative at your store? Not trying to spruik the union to you, but most retail places I worked had some sort of union rep who was used to dealing with these sorts of enquiries. I've never been through the process of lodging anything regarding conditions beyond filling out a form about how I got locked in an industrial freezer, however I do believe they are obliged to provide you with the EBA since it applies to you. Your direct supervisor may not have them - it's possible you may need to talk to a store or department manager depending on how large the Woolies you work at is. Hell, see if you can pick up a shift or two in another department and see if you can get a copy from the manager there. One thing I'd like to add is this - supervisors and line managers in retail tend to not have any training in personnel management at all. To them it sounds perfectly reasonable to ask you to stay late and cast suspicion on injuries and anybody who questions their little reign over the staff is seen as a threat. Man that reminds me how awful the management at my first job was. They'd call my home phone and ask my mum if I was home and if they could leave a message of 'hi froglet could you please come to work as soon as you get this message' which lead to me having to justify to my mum why I shouldn't just drop everything to go to work (the money was awful and they'd often call me when I was in the middle of something). Good luck! froglet fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Oct 17, 2011 |
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Oct 17, 2011 17:49
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I worked 5 hours out of my 8 hour shift so far and currently taking a 3 hour lunch and going back to work for another 3 hours and probably more. Got the total shaft today. Someone called out sick for a 7 hours shift tonight, and our helper from another store worked a whopping 90 minutes out of his 8 hour shift because he had to leave to help out his own store because someone called out there. So they are covered, but I'm screwed out of not just 1 shift, but 2 shifts. Can't wait till my day off...
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Oct 17, 2011 22:04
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At least once per day, someone gets mad at me because I did not give them back the denomination they wanted. I work at a grocery store, not a bank. Just because you asked for $20 back when you slid your card, does not mean you are guaranteed to get back the denomination you want. Please ask ahead of time, that way you don't leave all in a huff. Also, if you don't buy anything, I am not going to give you change. I do not have unlimited rolls of quarters in the register/safe and I must save them. Stop acting entitled to it, and just go to the bank that is literally right there in the same parking lot.
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Oct 18, 2011 07:09
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I'm not a union member and as such I don't believe my store has either a representative or any union members. Thanks for the advice Fil5000 and froglet. I am a casual worker with no protected hours but I'm also in a position in my life where I'm not going to be thrust into poverty if they chose to stop giving me weekly hours and this is something I feel strongly about so I'm prepared to take the risk, thanks for the advice it was a helpful starting point. I have been given the non-relivant EBA but I've been doing some research and the one that I believe should apply (The Woolworths 2009 National EBA) dictates the provisions I believe to be correct. Plus knowing that my colleagues are getting the entitlements they deserve would be enough satisfaction for me to put up with being shafted in some way. I know that's not very pragmatic, but I guess I'm an idealist. Even though my job is extremely basic I do excel at it and quite honestly give it 100% all of the time and am always willing to go above and beyond to help a customer and as such I feel I should receive honest treatment from the company for honest work. The one thing I do have going for me in this situation is I work for a small division of Woolworths and I have only dealt with our singular H/R representative once or twice but in my experience they have been extremely fair and helpful whenever I've needed their assistance. If all else fails I guess I'll just go running to A Current Affair and tell them I'm an aussie battler trying to get a 'fair go''.... No not really, my pride couldn't take that. Sue Denim fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Oct 18, 2011 |
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Oct 18, 2011 16:31
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This week I have been helping clear out isles for the new Christmas stuff. Why this is such a chore is we are a district 1 store. This means as soon as a season is over another one starts. Garden center was killed to make room for Halloween and a clearance isle. According to the mod we are suppose to have double the amount of space we have just for Halloween, we don't. Now we are doing our best to pack as much Christmas as we can into the little space we have. Some times I wonder if corporate has any idea how our store looks and works. On the plus side, I found out today our discount cards work on guns. Hello .357 Winchester carbine as soon as our bonus comes in!
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Oct 20, 2011 03:36
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Darth Freddy posted:On the plus side, I found out today our discount cards work on guns. Hello .357 Winchester carbine as soon as our bonus comes in! Man, I hope this doesn't end the way it sounds like it will.
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Oct 20, 2011 09:07
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Fil5000 posted:Man, I hope this doesn't end the way it sounds like it will. I'm so glad I'm not the only one who thought this. Seriously... just, at the end of all that, it's hilarious!
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Oct 20, 2011 09:29
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Oh good, it wasn't just me then. 
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Oct 20, 2011 11:21
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Fil5000 posted:Man, I hope this doesn't end the way it sounds like it will. If he was going to shoot himself with it, surely he wouldn't care how much it cost, because you don't need money when you're dead.
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Oct 20, 2011 11:40
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marshmallard posted:If he was going to shoot himself with it, surely he wouldn't care how much it cost, because you don't need money when you're dead. I didn't think he was going to shoot HIMSELF. This is a thread about hating customers, remember?
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Oct 20, 2011 11:54
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Sue Denim posted:The one thing I do have going for me in this situation is I work for a small division of Woolworths and I have only dealt with our singular H/R representative once or twice but in my experience they have been extremely fair and helpful whenever I've needed their assistance. In my experience HR always does a good job of seeming that way. And as soon as you leave the room they work with management to do everything possible to screw you over. I've never had a good experience with them and as far as I'm concerned the only reason they exist is to protect the companies interests. Not yours.
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Oct 20, 2011 14:22
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Long time since I've been in this thread... and it's been a while since this happened, but I always wanted to share it and never got around it. So the higher up guys at Bed, Bath, and Beyond really wanted to save a lot of money earlier this year. One of their ideas for how we would do this was by limiting store supplies to a cripplingly low number. I can only assume they based what our incredibly high traffic store needed through a low traffic store. I go up to the office one day to copy my schedule. The guy in charge of ordering things starts complaining to me. Apparently BBB has decided we can only order 2 boxes of toilet paper a month or so. So the last time he ordered supplies, they cut down his order to 2 boxes and notified him of this change. Four days later it is the weekend, we are in a huge mall. Midday we run out of toilet paper. We have to send someone off to Walmart to buy more toilet paper. Three weeks later we run out of toilet paper again and I have to be sent to Walmart, in the middle of Saturday, to get more paper. Basically I'm given $20 by the manager and he says: "Just get as much as you can with this and hurry." Apparently this nice toilet paper practice was dropped soon after because I don't recall running out of it again. Though we've ran out of gift package supplies and large bags a few times since.
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Oct 20, 2011 16:47
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Darth Freddy posted:On the plus side, I found out today our discount cards work on guns. Hello .357 Winchester carbine as soon as our bonus comes in! Shop Smart - Shop S-Mart! 
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Oct 20, 2011 19:00
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MaxDuo posted:Long time since I've been in this thread... and it's been a while since this happened, but I always wanted to share it and never got around it. I remember this crap. At GAME we had to order supplies from head office by scanning barcodes out of a ring binder through the till and ringing them up like a zero value purchase. Perfectly decent idea, means no order forms, no need for someone to man a phone to take our orders, etc - the problem was that half the poo poo you ordered never showed up. Name badges? Nope, you get none. Paper? Sure, have a ream of it! Plastic bags? No large ones for you this week, see if you can cram that XBOX into a medium! I wouldn't have minded if we ever got any indication that something was out of stock but we never did -st stuff just didn't show up. After getting poo poo from the district manager for not having name badges for the fourth time and getting no joy speaking to the supplies people, I just started ordering useless poo poo to see what would show up. Rubber gloves? Here's a dozen pairs! Giant can of coffee there is no way your ten man store could get through in a month? Have one a week! I just stockpiled poo poo in the staff room for no good reason. Tl;dr : head office/corporate is dumb, I am a wasteful child.
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Oct 20, 2011 19:23
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Any sort of corporate store I've worked for has always been awful with getting supplies. When I worked at the movie theatre I had to beg for anything I needed, even every day stuff like brooms or cloths. I love working for a small office and being able to get basically whatever I want.
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Oct 20, 2011 20:01
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Fil5000 posted:I didn't think he was going to shoot HIMSELF. This is a thread about hating customers, remember? Ah. Well I guess you don't have much use for money when you're in prison for life, either.
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Oct 20, 2011 20:07
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Never thought how bad that last part sounded till now, oops. Fear not, no customers or co workers will be harmed. I have no plans to go postal at work.Ygolonac posted:Shop Smart - Shop S-Mart! Mostly this. Always wanted a cowboy repeater to go with my revolver.
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Oct 20, 2011 21:03
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My supply problem is mostly my manager, who never orders anything unless she absolutely has to, and my general manager, who is a fearsome woman hell-bent on getting her numbers down. I've been told I'm basically not allowed to use petty cash anymore, and not really given a reason. My manager has mostly been paying for supplies out of her own pocket, but when we ran out of register tape midday on a Friday, that was the first time I'd tapped into it in months. I haven't seen toilet seat covers in months. Soap refill cartridges are almost never in stock. Since my company is too cheap to buy enough radio headsets for everybody, they provide alcohol pads to clean one before you use it. My manager refuses to actually order them through the store, so I always have to go to Wal-mart and buy more. Recently found a small stockpile of them because my coworker had been hiding the extra boxes. Corporate has also deigned that, in an effort to eliminate overstock, they will send us less product so that we just won't have as much in the store. We get trucks on Wednesday, and with this new system we're out of product by Friday afternoon! 
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Oct 20, 2011 21:17
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There are two things in this world causing me to constantly lose faith in humanity: politics and working retail. Today we had a woman come in who was screaming and yelling at her kid, snatching him around and hitting him. Actually hitting him. She was screaming so loud that the entire store went dead silent. The little kid kept trying to run away from her (understandably!) and she would run after him and grab his neck and push him down. He was running towards the bathrooms when another customer looks at her and goes, "Really?" and the woman just screams back "YES REALLY!!" and drags the kid back to where she has her groceries. And of course management didn't say poo poo because that would be "bad customer service". I loving hate my job. I hate this store. I hate this world.
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Oct 24, 2011 01:01
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 : "Negative reinforcement is the only thing that works!!"It seems like it's always them either ignoring their screaming child, or abusing the gently caress out of them beyond what is necessary. There's never an inbetween at most retail establishments.
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Oct 24, 2011 01:27
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In ALDI recently, a young boy (5-ish) was playing with the slide-across freezer doors. His mum rushed across, raised her hand to him and said: You'll hurt yourself on those things! Leave it alone now or I'll hit you.
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Oct 24, 2011 09:08
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modeski posted:In ALDI recently, a young boy (5-ish) was playing with the slide-across freezer doors. His mum rushed across, raised her hand to him and said: ... "Don't you dare hurt yourself on these appliances or I'll hurt you myself"?  In what universe does that make any loving sense?
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Oct 24, 2011 11:30
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Going that route, it would be better to let the kid hurt himself, because he would then learn not to do that poo poo, especially if the mother is already using pain as a behaviour modifier.
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Oct 24, 2011 12:55
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Heaven save me, I'll likely be joining you all soon enough, if being a barista counts. Any recommendations on what I should/shouldn't do, things that will help me acclimate better, that sort of thing? vvvI'm well-medicated, the likelihood of me doing that is well within the acceptable 20%.vvv Angry Guacamole fucked around with this message at 23:43 on Oct 24, 2011 |
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Oct 24, 2011 23:11
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If you mean Starbucks Barista, resist the urge to dump hot coffee onto the heads of assholes who feel they are entitled to make impossible demands. With age comes responsibility and the threat of lawsuits.
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Oct 24, 2011 23:22
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Angry Guacamole posted:Heaven save me, I'll likely be joining you all soon enough, if being a barista counts. Any recommendations on what I should/shouldn't do, things that will help me acclimate better, that sort of thing? Be prepared for people to make up names for drinks instead of calling it what it is on the menu board or what you've been told it's called by your trainer, and then get pissy that you have no idea what they are talking about.
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Oct 25, 2011 00:32
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Angry Guacamole posted:Heaven save me, I'll likely be joining you all soon enough, if being a barista counts. Any recommendations on what I should/shouldn't do, things that will help me acclimate better, that sort of thing? A friend of mine works at a starbucks in DC. It never stops being busy, ever. Open to close there is a line of people. I immensely hope your location has some kind of down time, he's often sick with stress. 
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Oct 25, 2011 01:15
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The great thing about corporate refusing to let us order supplies is also that if we are out of toilet paper or seat covers for one of the stalls in the bathroom, we lose something like 10-15 points (out of 100) on our secret shopper if they go into the restroom and we're out. Speaking of secret shoppers, I love how some of them apparently aren't doing anything for their paycheck. I was looking at our most recently submitted report, and the person didn't bother to write down any names. Every single person (out of the 7 they saw, including the cashier) had "nametag was covered by clothing" listed as their name. Then again I seem to recall another secret shopper reporting names that weren't used by any of the staff of our store ever. And another one who apparently was on drugs while they did the report.... there was something in there like: "there were 2 midget employees that ignored me, and also an employee who was talking to five other employees instead of me." Er... there are no midget employees in my whole district that I know of. Also considering this was on a weekday night I doubt that there were six employees in one area... We barely even have four people on the floor on weekdays. I think this person also made up employee names, and all the other employees (midgets and the six others) weren't wearing nametags. The only description was I think that one of them was wearing a blue shirt.
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Oct 26, 2011 14:50
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Angry Guacamole posted:Heaven save me, I'll likely be joining you all soon enough, if being a barista counts. Any recommendations on what I should/shouldn't do, things that will help me acclimate better, that sort of thing? My girlfriend works at a Starbucks. If you're female or a small male, carry mace (REAL mace) when you walk to your car. You will get stalkers. You will get old men and creepy neckbeards who hang out in the store waiting for you to talk to them. You will get the homeless population hanging out there. And not the new homeless who just need someplace warm, but the older alcoholic homeless with mental issues. You will get idiot coworkers, that for the life of them, will never get your drink right. Your tips will be divided amongst everyone else. The list goes on.
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Oct 26, 2011 20:52
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Thanks Loss Prevention! I love having a whole new step, involving getting a manager of which there's about to be only one, just to do my loving job. Go ahead and hang that sign on the trash compactor telling people to use it sparingly because it's expensive. I'll just be over here.
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Oct 27, 2011 03:24
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Have any of you ever been literally driven insane by your job, to the point where your health both mental and physical is being affected? I keep getting these migraines where my eyes won't stop twitching and I have these mini-seizure type things where I kind of freeze up for a minute or so. It only happens at work and it's just killing me. Maybe it's just the stress of being understaffed and being treated like absolute poo poo at the restaurant, but it's just really freaking me out lately.
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Oct 27, 2011 05:26
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I just get really loving horrible indigestion and heartburn at work.
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Oct 27, 2011 08:35
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MAO TSE-TUNGACUNT posted:Have any of you ever been literally driven insane by your job, to the point where your health both mental and physical is being affected? I keep getting these migraines where my eyes won't stop twitching and I have these mini-seizure type things where I kind of freeze up for a minute or so. It only happens at work and it's just killing me. Retail never affected me much becasue it was always such petty annoyances, but I literally went insane at a bullshit stressful office job (institutionalised and medicated literal schizophrenia/depression insane). I lost my job, girlfriend, and basically my life for 6 years and am just starting to get into a position where I might be able to go back to work part time. If it's affecting your mental health, get the gently caress out right now. Go do day laboring or something instead. Seriously. I never had migraines, but the "freezing up for a minute" sounds like it could be the start of something terrible.
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Oct 27, 2011 11:13
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My job is doing that to me right now. Can't sleep...peroid cramps that make me shake and cry, and general psychosis. Seriously I can't keep that happy retail face anymore and it's because of working 14 to 32 days straight since March. But I still get poo poo for not doing enough cleaning or getting complaints. UGghh. I am hoping for two days off this week...but it'll probably be only one and of course I get made to feel like poo poo for even asking because the only person that can cover me has an issue with her mom getting surgery and needing to be at home. This is where I just stop caring which I already have, there is not poo poo for jobs out here so I put an online app in at McDonalds..I have to get the gently caress out of here I am turning into this horrid person that just can't cope anymore. Uggh sorry guys here I go again. I really liked my job, but they've broken me to the point where I just don't care anymore.
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Oct 27, 2011 11:43
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MAO TSE-TUNGACUNT posted:Have any of you ever been literally driven insane by your job, to the point where your health both mental and physical is being affected? I keep getting these migraines where my eyes won't stop twitching and I have these mini-seizure type things where I kind of freeze up for a minute or so. It only happens at work and it's just killing me. Yes. I spent 5 years working retail for Apple. Once the iPhone came out, I started developing fairly extreme claustrophobia/agoraphobia and would randomly start hyperventilating at work, or even just out in public if I felt too crowded in. The twitching/mini-migraine type things definitely happened to me as well, and were definitely stress related. It took a good year of not having that job to learn to calm down and interact with a crowd again, and the not quite panic attacks basically killed my desire/ability to transition from retail into either of the other fields in which I had any actual experience or skills.
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Oct 27, 2011 17:41
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I already have severe anxiety issues and my job just makes it millions of times worse. My physical health is circling the drain and I praise the days that don't end with me in tears from a migraine. I'm also almost always suffering from stomach issues, whether it be making GBS threads too much or not being able to poo poo at all. But I can't quit because then I wouldn't have any money and that would be stress in and of itself.
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Oct 27, 2011 17:57
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SlaveToTheGrinds posted:My job is doing that to me right now. Can't sleep...peroid cramps that make me shake and cry, and general psychosis. Seriously I can't keep that happy retail face anymore and it's because of working 14 to 32 days straight since March. But I still get poo poo for not doing enough cleaning or getting complaints. UGghh. I am hoping for two days off this week...but it'll probably be only one and of course I get made to feel like poo poo for even asking because the only person that can cover me has an issue with her mom getting surgery and needing to be at home. This is where I just stop caring which I already have, there is not poo poo for jobs out here so I put an online app in at McDonalds..I have to get the gently caress out of here I am turning into this horrid person that just can't cope anymore. Uggh sorry guys here I go again. I really liked my job, but they've broken me to the point where I just don't care anymore. I think I've said this before, but I'll say it again: you do not need someone to "cover" you. "Covering" you is for when you call in sick or have to get someone else to pick up one of your shifts. You NEED two days off a week or you'll go batshit insane - what are the labour laws like where you are? God in heaven, please tell me that if you're in a first world country there is something about a minimum amount of downtime required and a maximum number of working hours per week?
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Oct 27, 2011 22:47
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Well I got the weekend off so yay me...guilts abound of course but this is me giving no shits. And there isn't any labor laws about this kind of thing, the insanity has already set in in the form of hyper emotion and just general anxiety and stress about every little thing. poo poo I think I had these exact same posts 32 days ago uggh. I only have to put up with this poo poo until May or so then we're buying a house and I am getting the gently caress out of here. It's been 8 years and it's beyond time to move on. The lesson here is working for a nameless faceless entity is FAR better than working for an owner due to every loving thing being personal. Just have to get through tonight then it's over until 10 pm Sunday then back to it until I lose my marbles completely again.
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Oct 27, 2011 23:17
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