Stuff your younger self accepted at work (light hearted)

[HuzzahIndeed]

What silly things did you accept without questioning in your first job/s that you wouldn't now?

While at school/college. All shops.

1. The power tripping manager kept us waiting ages to let us out. So I often missed my bus and had to wait over an hour alone at midnight hoping the next bus turned up.
2. Another shop gave bonuses for upselling but the manager always logged mine against other staff. I only worked Saturdays and apparently it wasn't fair that I got bonuses instead of the staff who worked more.
3. Same place. My pay each week was £5 (😲). My wages literally covered my bus fair to and from work and tights to wear at work. One month I got a few lifts and used my saved bus fair to... buy a £3 body shop shampoo. I was so happy! 🤣
4. Another shop. If a smoker "needed" a cigarette during their shift they could just take a paid break. Non-smokers weren't allowed to take random breaks, paid or otherwise. They also smoked in the windowless staff room. 🤢

I say light hearted because I know some people would have had to (and still) endure really unacceptable things.

When I first started work in a graduate job with a large accounting firm, I had to get permission from senior management to wear trousers to work! Women were only allowed to wear trousers if we had to climb up ladders on a stock take. Otherwise we always had to wear skirt suits or dresses. If you did not dress properly you got sent to see a style consultant. My friend got sent because she wore peep toe shoes!

@FanSpamTastic I'm always shocked by stuff like that. I know I shouldn't be though.

Bullying. I had a job at a supermarket when I was 16 and had a lovely manager of department but then he left and his replacement was horrible. I can still remember two of the comments she made to me "are you ill or have just got no make up on today" and "you're skinny are you anorexic?" I left soon after but didn't feel I could say anything as the lady in personal wasn't much better. I remember my friend asking for a skirt in a smaller size and personal lady actually lifted he top up and said "yeah your skinny!" I can't imagine ever talking to someone like that!

I know it's not light-hearted but it just seemed to be accepted as normal!

@Cotswoldmama that sounds horrible. I'm sorry. I left my last job due to insidious bullying. I was managed out while the bully was given mentoring and additional training so they could improve their skills. Sigh.

Pervy comments off the men in the factory I worked at when i was 16. One of them put his hand up my dress and touched me on a night out 😔 My manager saw what happened and got me to a taxi to go home. He was sacked when he returned on the Monday.

Restaurant: I was frequently told by the chefs to fuck off
Eg me: table 3 said they'd like their toast now, they're really hungry, they don't want to wait til the fry arrives.
Chef: FUCK OFF

Me: table 7 have been waiting 45 minutes for fried egg on toast. Any sign of it?
Chef: FUCK OFF

I was being nice and asking quietly and hopefully . Chef was , on reflection, probably hungover and having marital problems. Different chefs BTW

It is horrible. I work with young people and can't imagine treating them that way. I feel really protective of them

Bullying by my co workers. It was horrible and I didn't know how to make it stop. They really were a nasty bunch. I should have got my coat and headed for the door, the first time it happened.

Being told by a staff member that the manager had told them all that I was too stupid to perform one aspect of my job. One which turned out to be pretty simple and I managed just fine in the two other similar establishments I worked in.

Funnily enough the man I worked with there was even " dumber" than I was and he got left in charge some times

Similar. I had a Saturday job in a department store cafe in my teens, and sometimes the kitchen staff would act like Rottweilers snarling about not having six pairs of hands if they were asked for something when they were busy. They didn't speak to older members of staff like that.

I remember standing on steps in the shop I worked in cleaning the windows when a friend of my boss put his hand up my skirt. I told him where to go and then narrowly avoided being sacked later that day as this pig rang my boss and complained. I was told it was only a joke and no harm meant but I’d overreacted and had behaved badly.
The good old days. 🙈

Was temping in an accounting firm covering for the PA of the two senior partners for this office. Obviously I made the tea and coffee. That isn't the weird bit. The weird bit is that in the office ONLY partners were allowed to drink the filter coffee. Everyone else had to have instant. "My" partner told me with a wink that if I wanted the good stuff to help myself and pretend it ws for him

So bizarre.

The owner and manager discussing whether they thought I was a virgin or not (in front of me).

I kept getting sent on the buttie run when the van came close to work.

Not only did I always have to pay for it all for about 5/7 prople ( usually breakfast type barms) but by the time I got back and had found everyone to give them there food I kept getting told me break time had finished do I had to wolf down my food and dash back to work .

My ace dad found out what was going on and we worked out roughly who owned me how much and ( he worked at a printers ) printed some very official looking bills and gave me the confidence to go into work a few days later snd demand the bills were paid .
Most were very sheepish and paid up though 1 arse never did .

Having it explained to me (and all the other young, childless staff) that we were not allowed to put in a request for any time off during school holidays as those dates were reserved for people with kids. Other times were not first come first served, the most senior staff got first dibs. So for several years running I had to take my summer holiday during November or February whether I liked it or not.

Calendars of topless women.
Smoking in the office.
Being told by one manager that "I didn't want you on my team, I wanted a man."
Lewd comments being made about the appearance/desirability/availability of women on the team.

I was told at my interview (first job after leaving school) that all staff rotated around the four different sections of that department, spending two months in each one. This really sold me on the job as I have a low boredom threshold.

The first two months came and went, I didn’t get moved. The next two ditto. And the next and the next. By this time I was tied into a two year training scheme and, just out of school, did not have the confidence or life skills to approach the manager or HR.

I spent the whole two years in that one section missing out on gaining practical skills from the others in the department I needed for some of my course. I hated that job and left as soon as I qualified.

I can’t imagine my children (or me actually!!) putting up with that sort of thing these days thankfully!

A pompous, condescending, ugly woman gave me feedback on a lesson observation that was unfair, and I accepted it because I was new to the teaching profession. Later that year, I got a job at a new school, and within 3 weeks Ofsted came in and I was deemed Outstanding.
I should have told her she could come and teach my class if she was so knowledgeable. And that she had lipstick on her teeth.

Toxic culture. Bullying managers. Wouldn't take that shut these days.

I applied for a job in a library when I was 20 years old. The fashion was for layered dresses very much like the ubiquitous gingham dresses of the last few summers.
mine had a neckline that stopped just above my cleavage.
In my interview with the librarian, an older man, in charge of the Central Library, I was alone in a room with him.
He talked to my breasts the entire time. He never once looked at my face or in my eyes.
I doubt he would have recognised me with a coat on.

I started my career with that job and I soon learned that every other woman was treated the same. He was very socially awkward indeed and was seen as a joke by most of us. I wasn’t scared of him in any way, just really irked at his blatant obsession with breasts.
Why someone in a senior role didn’t speak to him and offer him some guidance I don’t know!
At least he didn’t try to grope anyone, unlike the lad with additional learning needs who would try to trap you in the shelves or stacks and get far too close to you and far too handsy!
A warning cry would go up when he came in and we would try to make sure we weren’t alone.

In various workplaces, as a professional in an industry with lots of female staff but very few women in top level management:

• All (or at least most of) the men in the office openly rated the legs of all female staff and management treated this a something we should be flattered by
• Department boss who would shout 'Fuck off' if you came near his office door and he wasn't in the mood for speaking to you- even if he had asked you to take him something or called you for a meeting. But if he asked for something/called a meeting and you didn't go to his office he ask his secretary to send for you then scream at you for wasting his time.
• Different boss who (married and in his 40s) gave himself the role of mentor for attractive new female graduates and used it to take them out, get them drunk and try it on with them. It was treated as a big joke and referred to by some of the more junior male managers as a 'perk' of promotion.
• As part of a team of relatively junior female staff I was sent to work at a client's premises and warned that the man I would be working with there kept a stash of porn in the one shared toilet that was used by all staff, and was likely to announce his decision to 'go in there and knock one out' if he like the look of female visitors. Unfortunately this was true. Female staff visiting this client were just told to be careful what we wore and to wash out hands after shaking his. This client always specifically requested that we sent female staff and none of the bosses ever challenged this or refused.

None of this was as long ago as it sounds like it should be