Worked in supermarket. New manager came in and decided to change everything, everybody hated it. So as a good 23 year old I decided to start harassing him by ordering free magazines, free stuff, furniture, kitchens etc etc online and get it delivered to his house.

This was years ago at a job I don’t add to my resume.

I was the incident. I worked at a plastic bottle factory as a packer, and I had gotten this job through a friend. The 2 of us got along with the manager pretty well. Had common interests and about the same mindset about being employed there. A few positions opened up and he came to us and asked if we’d like to move up to one of them. I chose to move up to forklift operator, he chose machine operator. We both liked the jobs a lot more after that. Of course with a promotion comes a raise right?

The manager that had us promoted actually found a new job shortly after we had been trained and were starting to handle our jobs independently, he brought us into the office along with his replacement that he was currently training and told us that we were due raises and he had started the ball rolling on that. The new manager said he was informed of everything and would follow up on it to make sure we were taken care of.

3 months go by, our old manager is long gone, and we were still making the same pay. We approached the new manager about this. “I just need you to bear with me, I’m still working on that”

Ok fine whatever…3 more months go by and we don’t see a dime. 6 months we’ve been making less than we should be now. Hell people are being hired at a higher rate than we make at this point. We confront him again. “Bear with me” he says again. I beared with him until about noon that day. I parked my forklift. I got in my car and left. All afternoon I’m getting calls and texts from people. My buddy tells me “you have no idea how many people days you just fucked up”.

I gently reminded him that we were getting taken advantage of. That we’ve been working for a lower wage than new hires after getting a promotion for 6 months. I also spilled these beans to other coworkers texting me about what happened. It didn’t take long…my buddy left mid day, 2 other machine operators left mid day. A string of packers stopped showing up, all but one daytime forklift driver either quit or walked out. They lost 10 people of varying positions in a month.

I couldn’t help but grin when my buddy told me he was done and one of my coworkers told me how many people quit before they left. I felt like my walkout made a difference that time.

I left on holiday for 3 weeks from the bakery I used to work at where I was the main line guy and handled the ordering and scheduling.

A few days before another line guy left as he was moving so this meant that between the 2 of us we used to do 6 days and the weekend so now the other 3 people trained on the line were going to have to do that some more.

I come back and in week 1 one guy quit as he literally couldn’t handle the heat (the AC wasn’t great so the line would easily get to about 100 F after being open for a few hours), week 2 another was fired because he wasn’t keeping up with prep (but he was on the line 5 days so how was he supposed to), and then once I get back after another few days they fire number 3 who was also the kitchen manager because of how poorly the last few weeks had been.

I put my notice in there and then.

And that’s how they lost 80% of their kitchen team in less than a month.

Not me but a friend worked at a start up that was acquired by a bigger competitor. The new CEO stated in their first company wide meeting that he believes the ideal employee is a ‘unicorn’. One who eats, sleeps and lives in the office working long hours. CEO laughed at people who asked about their benefits which were being reduced to the minimum (this is the UK so we have minimums but the startup originally had unlimited holidays etc). The CEO took over the board with a misogynistic vibe, all women left and then the guys followed.

I am a union member so this isn’t a thing that happens. If management does something unacceptable, we do a strike authorization vote which, if passed by the membership, starts a clock ticking down to strike time and management knows that they are on notice and need to start negotiations.

All of which is just to say that unions are good for workers, regardless of what kind of bullshit you may have been led to believe.

They drastically altered the shift patterns from a relatively simple 2 day, 2 night, 4 off to a pretty complicated 5 on 3 off with 7 start times that you would cycle through each week. (5 straight 2100-0700 shifts suuuucked.) They also made us bid for team assignments. The real wtf moment was when they didn’t bother posting enough vacancies for everyone to bid on because of the anticipated attrition.

I was expecting most issues would be the result of senior management making stupid decisions, and was not disappointed. At our local office someone decided to randomly raise salaries. Instead of choosing the most talented people, it was like they did it on purpose to choose the ones that did the least. It broke not only the individual’s willingness to work, as it made a joke of the performance evaluation. It was bad: top performers and team leaders left, morale took a deep dive (because why make an effort if it doesn’t matter) and I am sure management still doesn’t see it was a stupid decision to pay more to keep useless developers and lose top talent. Brilliant.