We’ve all had jobs we’ve hated, loved, or simply tolerated. My first long-term job began when I was 17—a dream role at a small, independent business. But what started as excitement devolved into an eight-year struggle with toxicity, exploitation, and broken promises. Why did I stay? Desperation, hope, and a misguided loyalty to a place that never valued me.

Early Days: Hope and Red Flags

The Dream Job That Wasn’t

On paper, this was my dream job. It was an independent, mom and pop, local business dealing with customer service, and I was so excited and lucky to be hired. I really wanted this place to succeed and thrive. I wanted to be the face of the business, make it my career and expand the business. It took me far too long to realize that these goals, at this location, were not going to happen.

I’m intentionally writing vaguely about the business because I still have some fond memories of the place and some friendships that have lasted. However, not all of my work memories are good ones.

It started in the fall of 2008, I was starting my senior year of high school and things were great. I was doing moderately well in school, I had pushed myself to overcome social anxiety, made a group of friends, had a girlfriend (now wife), and I had just landed my dream job. I had worked 2 other part-time jobs prior to this one, and they were merely money earners. This job was putting me in touch with the local community, I was good at it, it felt good to be involved. I was very excited by the prospects of meeting unique and interesting members of the art community at various events held at this job. It was going so well, that I was able to get my girlfriend a job there as well. We were both amped up and looking forward to where things would go from here.

Late 2009 into early 2010, became a difficult time for me and my girlfriend. I was struggling to find out what college I wanted to go to, what I wanted to study, etc. Our home lives started having some inner turmoil, and I was in a position where I felt that I would either need to abandon my girlfriend in one of the most depressing moments of our lives, or to move out and get an apartment. I chose the latter.

The First Sign

The job became more than just a part-time job, and we were now relying on it as our main source of income. I advised to my bosses that we now had a much wider availability to be scheduled. For a moment, I thought I had hit the jackpot, I was offered a management position. This is where the first red flag emerged that I should’ve heeded. I was accepting the position and asked about a raise since I was barely making more than minimum wage. The boss/owner that handled payroll at the time stated that I would get one, but the conversation didn’t go any further. After a few weeks with no update, I again inquired about the raise. The same boss instantly snapped at me and told me that I don’t deserve a raise because I have too many issues with my time cards. This was the first time I had been informed that there was a problem with the way I was clocking in/out.

I don’t believe that I was a bad employee, and I know that I was capable of handling this job in all of its aspects, in fairness, it’s a pretty simple part-time job that most high schoolers have probably held at one point. I questioned why they felt I deserved a promotion to manager, but didn’t deserve a raise for it, and asked why the time card issue was never brought to my attention before now. This boss was the type of woman that you cannot question. It was no longer a conversation, this is the way it is, so deal with it. Instead of quitting, I informed them that I no longer wanted the position of manager if they weren’t going to compensate me for it. They gave the position to somebody else, and I continued about my normal duties.

I still had faith in the business despite the bad management of this particular owner, but I knew that I needed extra income in order to survive. So I found additional part-time work in addition to this job.

The Owners

The business was compromised of 3 owners. A husband and wife, and their entrepreneur friend. The husband was largely absent except for randomly coming behind the counter occasionally to assist with customers. The wife already had a full-time job and was making up for the lack of management from her husband, to a certain extent, I can empathize with her and how stressed she must’ve been being a mother of 3 and having this extra responsibility. The entrepreneur friend was largely responsible for running the business. Paying the bills, marketing, ordering product etc. Generally, we all got along.

Part of me wishes that I had documented everything that happened to us during our time there, but I had no idea how things would pan out. I could probably write out several volumes of text going into all the chaos, toxicity, and blunders that occurred. For now, I’ll stick with what I remember.

Throughout my 8 years of tenure, by the end, I was only making 50 cents above minimum wage and I ended up being an unofficial manager anyway due to my expertise, tenure, reliability, and competence. The original vision of the business was abandoned within 1–2 years of opening because they simply were not making enough money, and they had to widen their scope, so it became a more mainstream entertainment business rather than a niche art business. I can now completely understand these financial struggles as a man who is 33 years of age. It was definitely the right call to widen the scope of the vision as we were making more money and had better foot traffic.

The Slow Unraveling

Naive Hope

One of my main ongoing issues was the fact that a raise was being dangled in front of me for a majority of the time there, and I kept believing I would get one. The owners had toxic traits, sure, but it was not limited to just them. During my time there, I had seen a lot of employees come and go. There were several talented people that came through there, but either moved on to college or new careers after a short stint. Unfortunately, some of the people who stayed on as long as I did, who at one point I considered to be friends, became increasingly catty and vengeful.

Us and Them

Most people who have worked retail or in restaurants are aware of the never-ending battle between the closers and the openers. This was a constant point of contention. We had a private Facebook group for the employees and owners, where most of the communications took place. This was meant to be for company updates, additional shift opportunities, and general comments. It very quickly devolved into a constant “bitch-fest”. I’m not proud of it, but I definitely criticized the closers on a regular basis. In my defense, there was plenty of work not done, and my goal wasn’t necessarily to shame anyone for doing a bad job, but to point these things out to the owners, so people would be held accountable and in turn do a better job and help contribute to the companies’ success. To my knowledge, they weren’t held accountable. It seemed like they just didn’t care.

Employees who were trying to swap shifts or get one of their shifts covered would be publicly harassed by the owner (the wife) and some managers for having the audacity to responsibly try and adjust their schedules. The same way that other employees had been doing for years.

Her?

The owner, who was the wife, was the main source of toxicity. Which was tricky to navigate, some days she would be in your corner, have your back and fight for you. Other days, she would yell and scream at you in front of customers. The one instance I remember was that I was talking to an old high school teacher of mine while I was taking out the trash. The owner came by and was very upset at where I had set the trash and interrupted me to yell that this is unprofessional, disgusting, and that I shouldn’t have trash visible to the customers. Keep in mind, I was doing the exact same process I would always do when changing out garbages, in the way that I was trained to do so years ago. This was the first time she had ever mentioned that she had a problem with this method. So I felt incredibly humiliated in front of one of my favorite high school teachers. Our conversation was cut short, my old teacher cringed, and I was left to take out the garbages feeling embarrassed.

Ambitions

At a very young age, I put together a large event that was to be held at the business. I was naive, and my main goal was just to put together a fun event. I agreed to a 60%/40% split from the ticket revenue that night. I would get 60 they would get 40. However, my 60% was also going to pay the people I had invited to perform at the event. They did practically no promotion for me from their business sites, luckily I was still in school at the time and had lots of connections, so the event was still a hit. Sold out show, lots of money made via tickets, drinks, alcohol, and snacks.

The business had merely added extra staff for the night and cancelled approximately 2–3 showings in one auditorium where the event was to be held and somehow felt 40% was fair. After paying the talent, I walked away with less than $100. That’s my own fault. But as I said, I was young, and didn’t think the local mom & pop shop I worked at was looking to screw one of their own employees over. No idea how much money they actually made that night compared to me. Side note: I don’t think any of the owners ever gave me any kind of thank you or acknowledgement from the success of the event.

We’re Cutting Hours and Increasing Your Workload

There was one year when the business’s budget was extremely tight and the owners announced they were having a meeting about cutting hours. In confidence, I had mentioned to a friend, one of the managers, that this isn’t the first time they’ve made that announcement and not followed through. During the meeting, they announced that they would be cutting the day staff shifts and only scheduling people at nights. The owners would be working the day shift. The toxic owner made a sarcastic comment and looked right at me when she said, “And we are serious this time. I know some of you think that it’s an empty promise. But it isn’t.” I glared over at the manager I confided in who did not meet my eyes and was smiling.

For quite awhile they did stick to this scheduling structure. However, every single day, the owners only did one aspect of the day time job. Work the counter. They didn’t clean up any messes at the counter, in the 6 event rooms, or the bathrooms. All of those tasks were left for the “real employees” who came in at night. So the first task of the evening was to clean up all the messes that piled up at the counter, bathrooms, and 6 event rooms. This was so incredibly aggravating to me. They cut our hours, then refused to do any of the work we were responsible for. Sometimes they weren’t even behind the counter, their kids would be. This lack of respect for the staff was unlike anything I had ever experienced.

Open Mic Night

At one point, I was missing the niche art community of the business and worked with the owners on establishing a once a month open mic night. This required the business to cancel the last showing in one event room per month. There were not many people attending when it first started, and my response was that it will take some time and consistency to get this off the ground and be profitable. Shortly after the open mic night had been established, the owners made a deal with a local college who would come in on the same night each month for a movie showing. This gave me a vision of a future with complications.

Almost every month, the (entrepreneur) owner completely forgot about open mic and neglected to cancel a show. That would leave me to have to beg him to cancel a different show and use a different room, even though those rooms didn’t have a stage like the room we would normally use. Every open mic either had to start late, use a different room, or be cancelled in general. It was heartbreaking to me that I would have these young performers show up and I’d have to inform them that it would be a couple hours after the official start time before I could have them on or I would just have to tell them that it’s cancelled again.

It all came to a head in the facebook group, publicly for everyone to see. At this point I was fed up, I remember responding to a comment that was asking me to switch open mic to a different night or change the time of the open mic night. Snottily, I replied, “Why should I?” Probably not the best way to handle it, but this had been after so many months of failed open mic nights. The (wife) owner immediately started laying into me that the open mic nights don’t make any money and It’s starting to disrupt their normal business operations. It wasn’t worded that way. That’s a nice way I’m phrasing it.

It felt so incredibly aggravating to have to explain to adults that were more than 20 years my senior, that I never had the chance to establish the open mic night nor the opportunity to build a consistent audience or performers due to the inconsistencies of the date & time. I purposely picked a day in the middle of the week and only once a month because I already was aware that the open mic would take time to cultivate and I didn’t want that to harm the regular business operations.

This was a completely solo project I was taking on. I wasn’t being paid for it and had no support from the rest of the business. I made my own fliers, distributed them around town, shared the event on my own socials. That night I expressed that this venture was no longer worth pursuing and I would not be attempting to host any future open mic nights. Dream dashed.

Scapegoats and Sabotage

Another time, we had a really popular event that was audio & visual, had multiple daily showings, and would likely be ongoing for a few months. The auditorium this was held in started having major sound issues on the first day. I, being maybe 19 years old at the time, called up the owners to inform them of the issue and that we needed to move this into a different auditiorium. I was told that I was not allowed to move it to a different auditorium because the one that it was in had the most seats and we were selling approximately 300-400 tickets for each showing. I received no further direction or support.

If I had been a paying customer, I would’ve walked into that auditorium, heard the sound issues for about 5-10 minutes and then would walk out and demand a refund. Surprisingly, not many people did that, although there were some. Since I was one of the only people at the counter, I was the face that got yelled and screamed at by angry customers. Why? Because I did what was instructed of me and given no other options or solutions.

Towards the last few years of my time at this job, the business had shifted it’s managerial duties to someone else. I would consider them to be the lead manager of the business. This was the fellow employee who had blabbed to the owner about them not being serious when cutting our hours.

Occasionally, on extremely busy nights, we would have a giant line of customers waiting to be helped. Like a good employee, myself and other staff had attempted to open up a 2nd register to help get through the line faster and reduce wait times. This manager really did not want to count a 2nd register of money and would threaten every employee who attempted to open the register. This example of poor customer service was not an issue to the owners.

Another person who, at the time, I would’ve considered a best friend, once left the country to visit family and was extremely vague with everyone on whether he would come back to the states and/or the job. While they were absent, my wife was offered a manager position with a small raise and she gladly accepted. When this “friend” returned, they were extraordinarilly angry at my wife. I was confused why he was angry at my wife who merely accepted a position while he was gone. I told him that if he was going to be angry with anyone, it should either be the owners who offered the position to her, or blame himself since he gave no indication on whether he would be coming back to this job.

From that day forward, my “friend” cultivated and harbored a grudge against my wife. He sought any opportunity he could to trashtalk and undermine her to other employees. Especially the more younger and impressionable ones. The animosity towards her grew and grew and she was treated poorly by several staff members. The business was more toxic than it had ever been before.

Was my wife the perfect manager? No. But there wasn’t anything that she was doing that warranted the animosity against her. The mastermind behind this scheme was someone who was habitually late, no-showed, and often left messes for me on the closing shift. All of the above factors were not a concern of the business owners who were kept informed.

The Final Straws

Surveillance and Humiliation

At one point, a manager, who would work under the table for a month here and there, had an incident with a customer sometime during the day where the police had to be called. They decided to install a camera system in the lobby. Only the lobby, nowhere else and it was pointed directly at the counter where we worked. The (wife) owner made such a big show about now being able to watch her employees on a live feed whenever she wanted.

So it never felt like it was there for security purposes. It was there to watch employees. She would send passive aggressive text messages to you if she didn’t think you were working hard enough. She would publicly shame you in the facebook groups for the rest of the employees to see. I heard from another employee that she would put the live feed on large screen while she was teaching her classes at school. So now we had an audience of teenagers that watched us work, who knows how much she embarassed us to her students.

Exploited Passion

Towards the last few years of working there, I actually got cut a little slack by the (entrepreneur) owner. He gave me a gig where I could edit multimedia projects for local businesses to be showcased in the auditoriums. The ads would run inbetween a “pre-show” designed to enterain customers as they waited for shows to start. I was promised a raise, but never actually got it. But I was happy because I was able to clock in and work on the videos. I created graphics, worked with customers on designing their ad, recorded and sourced music.

It was a passion of mine and I enjoyed doing that type of stuff. The downside was that I was only paid my hourly wage for the time I took to edit the pre-show and after awhile, I was getting complaints that I was spending too much time on it. So I would essentially only be paid $20-$30 total for creating an ad or updating a new monthly pre-show. I imagine the business had to be making at least a couple hundred dollars per ad. I saw none of that revenue.

In order for the pre-show and the ads to play. The manager on-duty would be required to go to the specific auditorium and press play on a device 15-20 minutes before the start of the actual show. This was ignored and not done a majority of the time. It didn’t matter what boss I told, how often I would tell the employees that we need to make sure these ads play. It just wouldn’t get done if I was not the one working that day.

All of these customers who paid good money to have their ads featured in our pre-show were missing out on a lot of potential customers simply because the staff was lazy and forgetful. Eventually, an ad company came in and worked with the owners and I was no longer in charge of any multimedia products and never received the raise I had been promised.

The Last Insult

The absolute last final straw was just ridiculous. I had to have been 7-8 years into my tenure as an un-official manager. I utilized the facebook group chat to advise that we were out of a certain product and needed to order/purchase more. The (wife) owner, slid into my personal DM’s and began to verbally abuse me.

She was saying things to the effect of “why are you so stupid and clueless and lazy that you have to post that in the group? Just pull money out of the register and go to Sam’s club and buy the product.” Which I could’ve let slide at first. Keep in mind that in my time there, I have never once pulled money out of the register, gone somewhere, and purchased product for the business. I had never been asked to do that before. I didn’t know that that was expected of me. I don’t have a Sam’s Club membership card, and didn’t know where I would find the business’s member card either.

Something else was going on with her that day, and for some reason, she decided to take it out on me for requesting additional product for the business. I was called names and insulted unapologetically from her. That day I didn’t want to lose my job. I was trying to calmly explain that I was just asking for product and nobody has ever sent me on an errand like that before. She would not hear me, it was just insult after insult. Stupid me was even apologizing to her when I had done absolutely nothing wrong. I was almost ready to walk out, but I was impoverished and had no other job prospects at the time.

I confided in the (entrepreneur) owner what she had been saying to me and showed him the messages. I somewhat trusted him still because he was the most honest and open with me, which isn’t saying much since I never got that raise. The only comment he had to make was that she was PMSing. My feelings were completely dismissed. This was the day I committed to put all my resources into a job search. I was not staying here any longer than I had to be.

I was completely gobsmacked that after all this time and effort I’ve put into trying to make the business a success, I realized that I was not valued, not respected, and that the owners had no intentions of giving me any important position or raise. I always knew that I was capable of way more than what I was doing in this job. So to recognize the fact that they really didn’t care about me was just to aggravating to ignore anymore.

Why I Stayed (And Why I Left)

You’re probably wondering why I stuck around for so long. Why I took the abuse. Why I accepted being treated as less-than and taken advantage of. And there are a few reasons.

One reason is that, despite everything, this business was me and my wifes home essentially. We were practically there all the time even if we weren’t working. Home life at the time wasn’t good and it was preferable to be here. Two, I enjoyed the artistic environment in which I worked and the perks I received. Three, the friends that I meant and held since then. Four, after moving out of my childhood home and living in poverty, I craved stability and comfort. Even though I was barely scraping by and being treated poorly by my bosses and my co-workers. I had a job and I wanted to stay afloat.

And five, I genuinely had hope. I had hope for the business. I wanted to see it succeed, I wanted to be a part of the bigger vision, I wanted to help bring the business to it’s peak and have that be my career. I held out hope for years in spite of all the evidence I had seen that it was not going to happen.

This job eroded my self-worth, crushed my spirit, and disillusioned me. Despite everything, I do still have some fond memories of that place. I met a lot of cool people, was able to network with the local communities, I got to experience free shows and events there. Sometimes even private midnight shows with friends. Afterhours jam sessions with my friends, on stage when everyone was gone. These are some powerful core memories for me. I will miss that. A co-worker I met there is still one of my best buddies and we still visit and hangout on occasion despite him living in another state.

If I were to take away any positives from my experience at this job, I would say that it taught me resilience and how to spot red flags early – exploitative pay, chaotic management, and workplaces that thrive on drama.

I’m now more confident in my abilities than ever. I have a simple life with my wife and my kitties in a humble house in my hometown. I have the comfort and stability that I craved. I’ll always cherish the good memories, but I’ll never again mistake loyalty for self-sacrifice.