I quit without a second back up plan, but that’s ok! I’m out of the toxic environment.

I know how that feels. Good for you! And way to go saving yourself up a safety net (also called “fuck you money” ;). Best of luck!

I really need to resign from my present job and i need you to get me a polite resignation letter.

Thanks,

Kenneth

As time went on, it became clearer and clearer that the owner (let’s call her Jennifer) hated me. In a sense, her harshness created a work ethic in me where I always work the hardest I can… but at the same time, it caused a huge amount of unneeded stress in my life. “If you have time to lean, you have time to clean” was the mantra. Every spare moment I had, I would search for something to do, particularly when Jennifer was on the clock. If I wasn’t busy at the precise moment Jennifer looked in my direction, I would be bombarded with a long lecture about how lazy I was, or i would have a new order barked in my face.

I became so nervous during the first few months, that I would feel physically sick on the drive to work. I was nervous. I was afraid of Jennifer. I didn’t want to deal with her.

But it was my first job, and I needed to make rent. Unfortunately, my rent was 250 dollars a month, and i wasn’t even making that pitiful amount. “Part time”, in Jennifer’s eyes, was 15 hours or less. If someone was working “full time”, they had 30 hours in a week. Only the managers had the benefit of 40-hour workweeks, effectively cutting everyone else out of any worthwhile health benefits and so forth.

Jennifer’s husband had a heart attack. She left the job for nearly 6 months, putting temporary managers in her place. My nervous panic went away.

Usually, I was scheduled for 2 or 3 four-hour shifts a week, answering phones and taking orders. I often asked for more hours, but it was never given when Jennifer was in control. One week, my hours were cut to the legal minimum, 3 for the week. I inquired about the abrupt change two weeks later, wanting to avoid a confrontation and thinking it’d been a minor fluke. The answer was “there are complaints about the quality of service”. I asked if they were about my service, directly — it was “everyone’s” fault.

But I was several hundred dollars in debt to my forgiving landlady and no one else was hiring. So I stayed with the pizza restaurant, making poverty wage.

When no one else was available to cover the shifts of the server who’d quit, I was immediately shuttled to 5 days a week because Jennifer had no other choice. I was finally making decent money and i was starting to pay off my rent. I started college and my hours were modified per my request.

Later, I noticed that my hours were being cut again. I didn’t want to confront her, so I let them slide… after all, I did need some time to study. When summer break came — an entire 5 weeks of time I could devote to the job came around, I gave two weeks notice and informed Jennifer I could come in “whenever she needed me”. The request was never honored.

Towards the end of my time at the restaurant, we got a call from someone wanting to know if we needed “counter help”. Knowing we’d just lost a few servers, I asked Jennifer to confirm. She looked me straight in the eyes and said, “yes, we need counter help”. This was when I was working only one day a week.

I quit two months later, when Jennifer took a week of vacation and an assistant manager who favored me did the schedule. I was assigned every day of the week, and because i was not used to the work load any more, by day four I found myself physically exhausted and worn down mentally and physically.

In addition to the sudden overwork, I grew tired of the complaints of spoiled food, poor salad bar quality, and the slow service that comes from a crew of people that hates the store manager and just don’t care about their job. There was the bribery with coupons and free food that was the standard response to complaints (when there really should have been policy changes made). I was told not to tell people to call the hotline if they had a complaint about the service. The final straw was the milk carton in the refrigerator that should have been good for (if I remember right) a month more, but still “tasted funny”.

Now the assistant manager is leaving and only four members of the staff I knew when I started remain. I am glad I left when I did, even though I was unemployed for three months. But I really should have left much, much sooner. I drive by the store every so often, and on a recent Friday night at 8 PM, when there should have been a good amount of leftover dinner rush, there were only one or two cars that didn’t belong to staff.

I feel sorry for my friends.