Cynical Outlook.

I appear to have developed a cynical outlook on most aspects of every day life. Of people. Of work. Of myself. The negativity doesn’t seem to be ending or getting any better. And I want to talk about it. I feel like I need to talk to all of you about it because I think this is what has led me to refresh my blog. I feel like a complete and total mess, and I appear to be getting worse. Bad things keep happening. Bad people keep happening.

Constant Tongue Biting.

I have had multiple jobs this year. And let me tell you. They have all been god awful. The government sold a horrendous idea to the UK, clapped their hands together to congratulate themselves on another successful trick pulled off, and now people are taking advantage of this idea. That horrendous idea has a name. Zero hour contracts. No worker/employee rights and the employers are loving it. Want to know how? They snap their fingers and if the employee or worker doesn’t jump to that snap of the fingers that’s it, no job. Oh no, but wait they do not directly fire you. Oh no, that is the legal part of it. They just simply keep you on the books and just cut your shifts until you have so little or none that you are forced to leave by yourself.

Now, I was working in a new shop in Leyland. It is roughly just under two months open. Tuesday was supposed to be my payday. When I messaged the group asking what time we were to expect it into our accounts, would you like to know what that employer’s response was? You can probably guess. Here it is –

Hopefully tonight or tomorrow. Thanks

My Employer.

That is all he said on it. Well I have two things in mind that I would like to say about this one sentence. “Hopefully” should never be in a sentence when talking about pay. And tomorrow is not payday. The second one I would like to reply to him with. I am angry and annoyed. He had a discussion with me about trust the other day because of a mistake I had made. I really want to spit in his face and tell him that trust goes both ways. However, because I know that this man is a nasty man and if he feels so inclined will withhold my pay if he deems it necessary that my tongue is bitten down so hard.

This isn’t the only time I have had to bite my tongue over in order to make sure that my pay doesn’t just disappear. But this is a pretty good fresh example. And I am exhausted. Right now, I am being careful not to outright mention the name of this particular business. Even though I could rip it to shreds right now with the practices of this employer.

I’m a nice person.

I’m a nice person. I consider other peoples feelings when I say something. Usually if I say something awful to or about someone or something it has to get to the point in which I just can’t deal with it anymore. I know from talking to my manager that some religions believe that when you do bad things that bad things will happen to you in return. I am unfortunately here to tell you that if you believe this… I’m sorry but that just isn’t right. Bad things happen to good people. Bad people take advantage of good people. And that is how the world is functioning because only bad people are in power right now. You want to know why?

Bad people, do anything and everything to get on top. So, when they come across a nice person, or a good person. They are probably standing there calculating their epic fortune because being good apparently means taking the high road. There is nothing on that high road. Nothing. Actually, they call it the high road and being the bigger person to help people like us to continue to be a good or nice person. Even when we have achieved absolutely nothing.

Sometimes I wish I was Denzel Washington from the Equalizer films Robert McCall. Only I would target employers who exploit the good graces of their employees. Because I have had enough.

Being laughed at or waved off.

I approached this very same employer regarding the contract that he brought in one day for us all to sign. Well at first glance I could tell that this was a bad contract if I ever saw one. There was nothing specific to the job role. There was nothing about how much we were going to be paid. For the job role it stated that we had all been hired as shop assistants and if necessary we were expected to take on extra responsibilities. No holiday pay. No sick pay. No pension. No benefits at all to this job. Actually, to add to that he didn’t even mention pay on that very contract. He wanted to claim ownership rights over all and anything we make while in his employment. Nothing specific, just all of it. There was no disciplinary policies, it was just a list of conditions that would get you fired without notice. One of them was ‘failure to follow an instruction given by your superior’. I don’t know about you, but I know if there was something horrendously dangerous and I decided I wasn’t going to do it. Like… Let’s say for example try and clean a machine that is over 200 degrees hot. I am fired without notice because I failed to follow an instruction…

I messaged this employer asking to talk about it. I had read it and wanted to discuss it on the Friday that I was next in. He had not expected me to read it. When the manager asked him what that meant he responded with ‘I don’t know, I have read it and it’s not bad I don’t know why she is making so much fuss over it’. I am making a fuss you arsehole because this is a working contract. This is him asking me to sign any rights I have as a worker away to him. Who in their right mind would do that without reading or discussing the contract if they don’t feel comfortable with it? Young people… that is who. He stated that the young girls in Lancaster had already signed it. He also stated to the manager after I brought up that I wanted to discuss it that he would fire anyone that didn’t sign it.

Late Payment outcome.

I am going to continue my story regarding the late payment because more happened after his reply ‘Hopefully tonight or tomorrow, thanks’ message. We weren’t paid on the Tuesday. He made no mention of it what so ever actually. I had to bring it up. Multiple times. The first was Wednesday morning. I had woken up, my phone had died Tuesday night before my shift had finished so I was greeted with multiple messages from the owner of the shop with requests for how many products there was left in the shop. I answered him, with a message of the list and a reminder that I had checked my account and we still had not been paid yet. He simply stated that it ‘should’ be in that day. Should? That is also a horrendous word to use with regards to pay. It should have been paid the previous day.

I was not about to trust his word on that.

So, I waited. I kept in contact with the other girls that work in the shop and they let me know if they had been paid or not as well. The same as me, they had not. The disgusting thing about this whole entire scenario is that he still expected and demanded that we continue to work as normal. Now, I had to open the shop that day, I was due to work on my own for the whole day, and then lock up at night once the shop was closed. I promised myself that I wasn’t going to take this treatment and continue as if I wasn’t angry, as if not being paid was acceptable. The owner called me when I was supposed to be at the shop asking if I was opening up. I told him I will go in, once the money is in my account. He was like it’ll be in by tonight. I told him his word was no guarantee. Obviously, he took offence to this, and he kept trying to sell me some excuse of a story as to why the payment was late. He also stated that he would make sure that I was sorted first. I held my ground and said I will go in, once that money is in my account. He turned after that – ‘I’ll just get someone else in then’. Fine, I told him fine, that wasn’t about to change my point.

Time is not free, and time is something that once gone is gone. You don’t get it back. He can make as many food products over and over, he can’t make time. And I wasn’t about to give him another minute of mine until I was paid for the time I had already given him. Would you believe me if I told you that after that declaration of finding someone else, he was messaging the girls asking them to come in, and messaging the manager that he was going to cut my hours and force me out so that I would leave on my own. The girls told him that they couldn’t go in. Would you now also believe me when I say that that money turned up in my account thirty minutes later?

Oh yes, he got that money into my account quite quickly when he realised that he didn’t have anyone to go in instead of me. The Only issue now was that he hadn’t paid me what we had agreed. I was assistant manager. I had a set of keys I was opening up, closing the shop, and I was doing complete shifts by myself. It wasn’t like that I was just a shop assistant asking for a raise, I was doing all of the same jobs as the manager was doing and yet I was getting my minimum wage. Excuse me?

The owner called me afterwards and asked me if I was going in. I told him yes, but I had still been paid minimum wage. This wasn’t what we had agreed. He goes… Oh, I know. Then he kept trying to throw excuses at me about it. While in my head there were two words bouncing around; Unreliable, Liar. Well, never mind, I had agreed that I would go in once the money was in my account. I went in.

Resigning.

This story ends as you could probably guess. And by the fact that I have labelled this section of this post as what happens. I resigned. I went in to do my last shift. Understanding full well that I was not going to be paid for this shift. When the owner called me for the last time I told him that once I closed up that was it, I’ll post the key through the door and I’m not coming back. He told me that I couldn’t do that, when I told him I disagreed, his later response after trying to make out that my reason for leaving were silly, that he wasn’t someone that was going to beg. Well… I shouldn’t have had to beg for my wages… Plus, I already knew at that point that he had been contacting the manager to begin cutting my hours until I am forced to leave anyway. He was only upset at this moment because he did not have control over when I was leaving. Which he denied by the way. But, of course he would. He likes to fool young girls under the age of eighteen that he is a nice employer. (Creepy, yes I know).

Building resentment.

This sort of thing is happening constantly. Not specifically just to me, but I could literally predict all of these scenarios whenever I get into a zero hour contract job like the ones I have had so far. Each time this kind of crappy treatment happens a little piece of me just grows darker and darker. Right now, I would love for that owner’s business to just fail. I think he deserves that much. However, I know that that thought has multiple things wrong with it. 1. Most people would tell me that that is not a very nice though to have. 2. It probably won’t happen anyway because bad things generally don’t happen to bad people. These are the two main points that are wrong with this thought and because of those two main points my mood becomes darker. Resentment is the result of all of this foulness. I don’t want to be that person.

I can’t help it though. I can’t control other people, like in the sims, and unfortunately these horrible people are everywhere. There is no escaping them.

Which is why the cynical outlook is starting to take over my life. Zero hour contracts are god awful and should have never graced the UK. However, they had graced us with their miserable presence and unfortunately are here to stay because as far as our government is concerned they did a great job. Both thumbs sarcastically thrown up with the most pissed off smile a human can produce. Yay!

A Fight.

I am hoping to fight this negative outlook. I am going to try to bring myself back to myself. I was never particularly positive about myself or my prospects but I was at least a little less like ‘people like that business owner should have been culled at birth’. I don’t really know how to fight this feeling. While the drama of the above story was happening what I really wanted to do was scream at the bastard and tell him how horrible of a scum he was. I wanted to do it so badly that it felt like it was bursting at the seams of my body. I couldn’t calm down. The only thing that stopped me from doing that was my partner, who was a very unwelcome voice of reason. But I am going to start with looking after myself. Maybe taking a five minute break every day to just sit in silence and breathe. Not really meditation, but just to give myself five minutes before I face the world. I don’t know. All I know is… it is going to be a hard fight, and a long healing process before I come back to my not so wishing for murder mindset.

Thank you so much for reading. I apologise that it became more of a rant about my crappy employer than it was anything particularly productive. As you can probably see, I have cleared my blog of all of my previous posts. I am in the middle of resetting it. New categories. New tags. New posts. More specific. Neater. I can’t promise that it will stay that way but it is a start. Hope you all have a lovely week. I will write again soon! Bye!

Affiliate

Before I go for the day I wanted to add this to my post. I haven’t really read anything lately, but I plan to get back into it tonight once I have returned from teaching my pole and aerial classes. At the moment, I am not reading anything particularly festive, I am reading ‘Incendiary’ by Zoraida Cordova which I am enjoying. However, if a festive read is what you are looking for then Waterstones has a large variety designed for all ages to enjoy. Following the link below would help me out greatly. Thank you!