Psycho Boss

Several years ago I went to work for a mom'n'pop (literally) business that repaired bar code scanners. I was hired as an admin person - ordering parts, shipping and receiving scanners, answering phones, etc. At first everything was great, the business was close to the beach and the dress code was casual- we went to the beach and swam during our lunches. Also, the owners stocked the fridge with free sodas and were pretty good about raises- I got one every six months and it was never less than .50 an hour.

After I'd been there about a year and a half I was talking to the woman owner and she asked me about college. I had an AA and the GI Bill available, but I hadn't made any plans because of our work hours. We worked from 8 to 6 Monday through Friday, and that left no time to get to night school, which started at 6.
She told me that if I knew what I wanted to major in to go ahead and apply, I could always come in at 7 and leave at 5 on the nights I had class. I told her I wanted to major in Education and that eventually I'd have to be gone occasionally during the day for field work. She said that was okay, just clear it with her before I signed up for one of those classes.

Everything went okay for the first two semesters, and then towards the end of the second semester I was told that I needed to do an internship class where I would go to a school and work with a mentor teaching every Wednesday for about 4 hours. I went to my boss and told her what was involved and she agreed to it so I signed up. I started taking the class, and about 6 weeks in the problems started.

I got called in to the owners' office one day and told that two shipments of scanners had gotten totally screwed up, and that it was my fault for rushing (since I had to go to class at night). I asked which ones and they couldn't answer me. I checked all my shipments and nothing seemed to be out of line. Then I checked everything I had in the queue and found out that the female boss had shipped out scanners - unrepaired - to the wrong customer. I tried to point this out but was told that it was all my fault, that I should have stayed and made sure the scanners went out correctly. The scanner wasn't even fixed!!! It wasn't even due to be fixed until that afternoon and I had already talked to the customer and they were okay with that. Apparently Mrs. Boss had just decided to randomly pick up a scanner and send it to some random customer. I never did find out who the other customer supposedly was as everything else was in order.

Then Mrs. Boss tells me that I need to stop coming in early, that it's screwing up their payroll. What?!? I'm doing the same time as everyone else, just coming in an hour earlier and leaving an hour earlier. So now I have to come in at 8 and leave at 5 and loose 5 hours of "mandatory" overtime, which made a HUGE difference in my paycheck. Her next decision was to tell me that I couldn't open the shipments of scanners downstairs, I had to take them upstairs by my desk to open and log them. Her excuse was that I and the other admin person were talking too much and not getting enough done. Her example was from 3 months prior during the Christmas season, when we were massively overloaded with work. So now instead of it taking me about an hour to open boxes, log everything on paper, and get the scanners into the queue it now takes me twice as long because I have to lug all the boxes up the stairs and then make multiple trips downstairs with the scanners to where all the technicians are.

The last straw came about half way through the semester - after add/drop. I got called into the owners' office and dressed down for multiple screwups (and yet mysteriously all the customers are happy and I have no complaints), slow job performance (everything was done, I was even able to do low priority jobs like organizing the parts room and setting up a better training program for new techs), poor work attendance, and all kinds of other nonexistent problems. After listening to this crap for about 20 minutes I was told that I needed to quit school. Now.
What?!? I told them that I couldn't, that I only had 3 more days of that internship class and I would be done and that I only had 4 more weeks of school and if they wanted me to I'd quit school then. Nope, either quit now or I was fired. I couldn't quit- I'd loose my financial assistance and would have to pay back tuition for that semester on top of it. I asked again if they could please wait and if it was that bad I'd come in on Saturday unpaid and finish anything I didn't have done on Friday (an empty promise, I always had everything done before I left on Friday). No sirree, I was fired.

I filed at the unemployment office and was told that since I was fired for poor work performance I couldn't get unemployment. I tried to fight it but since I didn't have any documentation I couldn't. They didn't have any documentation either, but it was my word against theirs and I lost.

I also found out that this was a normal pattern of behavior for Mrs. Boss, and that's why our tech turnover was so high (yes, I knew about it but I had the "that couldn't happen to me" blinders on). A couple of years later I found out that she was diagnosed with bipolar and put on some heavy meds. No wonder!!!