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Topic: How much have you taken?
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| Author | Message |
| AskingInfo | Posted – 4/25/2005 11:35:38 AM | show profile Just asking - how much abuse have you taken on the job? Type-A - talented - condescending blokes all mixed up and simmering in pot or cubicle as it where, has to equal some verbal if not almost! nearly! physical (God Forbid!) - abuse. What's the worst, most soul crushing, must walk away this instant and find an unoccupied bathroom so the tears can burst through my failing eyes with some privacy, abuse that you've suffered for a paycheck? |
| canasta | Posted – 4/25/2005 12:54:49 PM | show profile I got hit in the head with a Pepsi bottle full of tobacco juice once. |
| nonono | Posted – 4/25/2005 1:19:52 PM | show profile hahaha! that's excellent! Mostly just condescending bullshit. usually over stupid typos and shit. Stuff little people point out to make themselves feel better about themselves. The more talented you are the more you get. I did have someone reprimand me for not dressing professioanlly. This was as I was going into my fourth month of pregnancy and nothing fit. I had fun telling my boss that--it had a fine whiff o' pregnancy discrimination attached to it. Then I had fun telling her I meant to give notice sooner but I had actually found another job and my last day would be at the end of that month. |
| jmm | Posted – 4/27/2005 8:08:02 PM | show profile canasta must work at a daily. I worked with functional pyschotics. They made me physically ill. I never cried. I was too numb. I just didn't sleep. The coffee started to taste funny in the newsroom. Cars were vandalized. The editor had a glass shard throwing fit on someone. I left with them threatening to ''Get me.'' I kid you not. I found something positive in it though. I promised never to work for people I didn't respect and trust and that I didn't feel would back me up to the hilt. I give my all and am terribly loyal, ya know? So I deserve that. Oddly enough, it worked. I have turned down work because I didn't dig the people and the people I work with now are some of the best ever. That little policy really put me in the driver's seat. I feel so free. |
| westsidestory | Posted – 4/27/2005 9:42:03 PM | show profile I'm with jmm. Years ago my daddy said, ''never work for someone you don't respect.'' The few instances where I found myself in the cohort of abuse givers/abuse takers I got out as soon as decently possible. And, fyi, I never took shit from anybody. So I have no boo-hoo stories to share. Liked the one about the tobacco juice, though. Was this down south? |
| canasta | Posted – 4/28/2005 8:41:52 AM | show profile No, it was on the trading floor. I have many, many more incidents that are similar. Like the time a security guard looked at my shoes and called into his phone: ''open toe: code 944'' and I was not allowed to work that day. |
| skurczysyn | Posted – 4/28/2005 9:10:06 AM | show profile I had a boss who was a megalomanic. He also lacked the ability to feel compassion - by, say, moving a guy and his family from the west coast and letting him go a few weeks later when he realized his budget was off. But the megalomania was great. He described himself as a ''poet, screenwriter, artist, musician, philosopher... (blah blah blah) ...'' He used company funds to buy thousands of copies of his ''book'' to keep it in the local bestseller lists. He'd circulate memos around the office soliciting ideas for the next play/opera/screenplay/book/children's book/cartoon/TV show he intended to write. He'd come up with inane quotes, declare their genius, and have them framed and hung in the workplace - like some kind of retarded Successories poster. He was a complete hack, to boot. He cuts in front of lines and if called on it he'll say ''Do you know who I am?'' You don't. He's a nobody. In response to the usual dismal company morale, I heard he recently announced the hallway had to be ''filled with smiles'' or you risked being fired. He's very hateable, and very hated. Upon news of his death I will drink a nice champagne. |
| canasta | Posted – 4/28/2005 9:53:38 AM | show profile hee. Make it Moet. |
| canasta | Posted – 4/28/2005 10:00:45 AM | show profile Wait, I have another one. Oh, I have so many. When I took the job I have now - which is one of those ''freelance to perm'' things - (I have lamented plenty of times about this on MB) - I was asked ''You aren't going to do anything that will make you unavailable to work soon, are you?'' Like, move out of town? I said. ''No, l can't legally say what I mean, but...'' Uh, GET PREGNANT? Is that what you mean? Yes, that is what they meant. I accepted the job, and then went home and....bit my pillow. |
| JimmyG | Posted – 4/28/2005 10:52:03 AM | show profile I once applied for a job under the heading ''managing editor'' for a publishing company to work on a specific publication and help with related book projects as available, interviewed for a ''managing editor'' position, got hired and began acting like a ''managing editor,'' only to find two weeks later when my business cards arrived that I was only an ''editor,'' and that someone else on staff who had never worked in publishing before was named ''managing editor.'' When I called the HR person on this, the Devil Lady Who Smoked Small Cigars told me that I had misunderstood the position, that all the editors in the company ''managed'' their projects, hence the title in the original ad. I soon found out that my supervisior did not want me hired--I was a direct hire by the publisher--and made my life a living Hell in which I could do no good no matter what I did. I worked long hours trying to revive projects others had mismanaged that got dropped into my lap, got up at 2 am to go on ress runs because the company was too cheap to hire a production manager, came in sick for two weeks because I was afraid to take a day off, actually saw my own job in the help-wanted ads, and got (mercifully) fired after seven months because I allegedly ''could not handle longer projects'' (never mind that in my previous job I had written several books). |
| JimmyG | Posted – 4/28/2005 10:53:47 AM | show profile ''Ress runs'' is, of course, Scooby-Doo speak for ''press runs.'' |
| AskingInfo | Posted – 4/28/2005 11:10:46 AM | show profile That's not so much ''abuse'' as it is misrepresentation by your employer...which is the luck of the draw. I'm sure most of us have experienced that at some level. Question is, where you escorted to the front door on your last day by a security guard plus one burly cafeteria worker and told ''NOBODY LIKES YOU!'' as the door hit you on your ass and the contents of your desk were shoved through those half opening anti-jumper windows? That's abuse. |
| canasta | Posted – 4/28/2005 11:43:44 AM | show profile open toe I should clarify....you can't wear open-toed shoes on the trading floor - because dudes are running around freaking out about their trades, and will therefore step on your feet - but also because many traders have foot fetishes. So, the ''944'' code got me expelled from the floor. |
| caitlinkelly | Posted – 4/28/2005 1:17:54 PM | show profile ''but also because many traders have foot fetishes'' This is not a joke?! By the same ''logic'', protecting those poor boys from drooling all over their John Lobbs in response to your CFM shoes, you should also have worn a burka, no? What if they'd seen -- a shoulder? A bit of cleavage? Imagine the effect on the Dow! Best, then, if we not mock other nations for forcing women to dress modestly to save men from their powerful urges... ------ Freelance writer Caitlin Kelly, has written for The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and other publications. You can read samples from her new book at blownawaythebook.com |
| canasta | Posted – 4/28/2005 1:31:56 PM | show profile Actually we were not allowed anything sleeveless either, because shoulders were too enticing. No joke. |
| caitlinkelly | Posted – 4/28/2005 4:20:44 PM | show profile This is too delicious! So if a bunch of women decided to show a little skin -- shoulder skin -- the market could crash from all that raging/misplaced testosterone? This is the funniest thing I have ever heard. You don't need some foreign terrorist to crash the market, just a few underdressed women? Did no women, ever, protest this sexist absurdity? Whose idea was this? And what equally-decorous concessions to unbridled female lust were the boys required to make? ------ Freelance writer Caitlin Kelly, has written for The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and other publications. You can read samples from her new book at blownawaythebook.com |
| canasta | Posted – 4/28/2005 4:30:31 PM | show profile Oh, it's terrific fodder for stories, which I have never written. It is the weirdest subculture, and best witnessed in my situation - an outsider, a journalist, not there to trade but to watch it happen. A dress code is enforced for everyone - males too - but of course, they are much more stringent with females. You can't do drugs on the floor, either, but that doesn't stop anyone. Nothing beats ''Open Toe'' however. |
| keltoi | Posted – 4/28/2005 5:23:19 PM | show profile I've worked under two megalomaniacs in the mag world, but both times there was an editor between myself and maniacal boss-man, so they bore the brunt, not I. The last buffer is paid quite well for his acceptance of abuse, but at the time I've always wondered what the toll is on his psyche. |
| jmm | Posted – 4/28/2005 7:18:24 PM | show profile This thread is so entertaining. Do you know who I am!? So Canasta, I think you should go to work with a pillow stuffed in your shirt. I think we all got the open toe thing. the floor is a like a bullpen. To Westside - my daddy told me some good things, but wish he had mentioned that. Would have saved me some grief. I guess I wanted to learn the hard way. I did work for one publisher I didn't respect that only makes me laugh now. He was a born again who received channeled instructions from god through his hairdresser. To get him to approve a story investigating a rogue cop, say, all you had to do is convince him god wanted it. He liked to go about the newsroom and say to you, ''You are blessed.'' I kind of liked that part. He sold the paper after being sued to death by mormons and a pagan because he wrote them notes warning them they were going to hell unless they converted to gosh, i don't know, Family Haircutters? Never thought to ask. This is a true story. Would I lie? It was my first paying job. The rural adventure I so wanted. |
| jmm | Posted – 4/28/2005 7:21:07 PM | show profile PS to Canasta -- I think a first-person story about your life on the trading floor would be great. I already want to read it. |
| canasta | Posted – 4/28/2005 8:32:09 PM | show profile JMM - I do not know who you are. If you know what I'm talkin' 'bout, then maybe we can collaborate. Hee, this is a mystery that will be fun to solve.... |
| jmm | Posted – 4/28/2005 9:35:12 PM | show profile My humor writing tends to be too dry. I think your story can stand on its own. It's not only hilarious, nobody knows about that stuff. I have thought about doing a book of short stories from my beat at the Daily Gospel though. I have one about a feud between Larry and Larry, two neighbors at war. Larry would piss on Larry's flowers and Larry would videotape him and call the police. I think this battle continues to this day. I should do a followup: There are still two Larrys. Then there were the wanted posters with my face on them all over the county buildings. That was fun. But there are more serious vignettes too from that time. |
| jmm | Posted – 4/28/2005 9:37:23 PM | show profile oh, mystery as to knowing who I am? That was a reference to skurz's post: ''He cuts in front of lines and if called on it he'll say ''Do you know who I am?'' You don't. He's a nobody.'' That would be wierd, eh? We could be sitting next to each other at the biz mag. |
| canasta | Posted – 4/29/2005 8:25:25 AM | show profile Sorry, I was in too truthful a mood yesterday. A little paranoid. Larry and Larry. Terrific. |
| clark | Posted – 4/29/2005 10:42:33 AM | show profile Got so many I can't remember Got told on my first day I was a bad hire(big fat hr chick who hated all women)...next job, when the floor plan in the office changed my desk was set in the middle of the press kit library where all the editors spent 1/2 their days(wouldn't get intimate with my editor and ended up in counseling taking anti anxiety drugs so I wouldn't crack)...next job, got told my 10 cover concepts were ''pure shit''. Got called in and reemed/ripped till I cracked and cried like a baby, for calling in sick the day my boyfriend shipped out for Iraq, only to have the whole company fold 3 days later. Next job, told that if I kept my staff motivated to finish some huge projects after we were layed off I would get my yearly bonus(not) this included keeping a junior designer that threatened us physically and we were scared of around. Next job, told upon hire that they would never lay me off (Whole company folded 4 months later after the most excruciating torture possible)....I could go on and on.... |
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