Changing Jobs When The Boss Is A Jerk

By John Dir

In a recent conversation with a young man who works in a restaurant, an all too familiar scenario was played out again. The young man recognized me as a frequent customer, and struck up a conversation that surprised me with the level of trust he had in confiding his situation. He said that he was trying to find a better job, because the place where he was working was low in pay and had no benefits. Unfortunately, he also stated that all the efforts he had recently tried in finding a better job were being thwarted by a negative reference from his current supervisor.

As this young man told me about his personal situation, it rapidly became clear that he needed some good advice on how to pursue a better opportunity, without suffering the negative interference from his current employer. By listening to his story, and applying what I knew about the young man’s work, it quickly became clear that his supervisor was trying to block his effort to improve himself by telling everyone who called for a reference that the young man was an unreliable worker, when in actuality, he demonstrated the exact opposite in his service to customers and his fellow employees. Since the restaurant position was obviously his first real job, the young man had no other experience to use in comparison with how he was being treated by his employer, and was becoming desperate to find someone willing to tell him how to approach his work situation. As his story unfolded, it was obvious that this establishment was exerting the same challenging influence on all the other workers in the place, and using bully tactics to keep employees in line. Whether companies will admit it or not, keeping low paid workers is a challenge, and some low paid supervisors use belittlement and intimidation to extract consistency from their staff, and keep them coming back for more. This tactic is factored into the hiring practices of these managers, and they use their experience to select employees who are susceptible to this kind of treatment. Rather than telling their employer to take their job and shove it, these people are convinced that they cannot easily find a different job, and when they are ridiculed for showing ambition, they remain in the position in an effort to prove to their supervisor that they are worthy employees.

Working long hours with little time allowed for outside activities, these workers remain at this type of job for far longer than most people would expect, finding it difficult to break free from the mind games their supervisors are playing on them. In my own acquaintance with this young man, I found him to be outgoing, friendly, genuinely concerned about providing excellent service, and a natural at responding with business practices that kept customers coming back to this place for the kind of customer relations he demonstrated naturally. He had been such an enthusiastic worker prior to this conversation that it caught me by surprise to learn what was really going on in this place.

The advice I gave him was to not allow potential new employers to contact his current supervisor, locate a trusted co-worker willing to give him a reliable and accurate reference, or to tell prospective employers nothing about his current position. I also told him to seek the advice of a lawyer to discuss what legal actions he might be able to pursue regarding the company’s business practices. In regard to the legal avenues, I cautioned him that this would likely be a last resort, and for practical purposes, the best advice would probably be to simply move on to a better opportunity, and put his experience in this place behind him. If this kind of work environment sounds familiar, it is important to realize that these practices are not worth fighting against as an individual. In the long run, these experiences are a guide for recognizing what kinds of jobs to leave behind, and learning the signs for employers who use these tactics.

John Dir Director of Software Concepts LittleTek Center jdir@bhotechnologists.com http://home.earthlink.net/~jdir/ Stop by my website or send an email if you need help to keep your career on track.

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