I worked for 5 years for an old guy who owned his own business, but was getting to old to continue to operate it himself. The business was a distributor (warehouse in back) and retail store in the front. I worked 45 hours a week.

At first, he refused to consider the hours over 40 as overtime. I kept track of my hours and made a deal that he could just give me time off with pay instead of paying out the overtime portion of the hours worked. He begrudgingly accepted but would often give me a hard time about any time off I took from the 6 day per week schedule.

I liked the old guy at first, and wanted to be an easy employee to get along with, so at first I went along with all his questionable requests. Stuff like replacing warehouse light bulbs 30 ft in the air from a pallet on the forklift with no harness or railings. Or allowing him to have friends in the back smoking a cloud of cigarettes while I was trying to get some labour done in the same area.

Eventually the above and a lot more became too much, but he refused all requests for safe working conditions. I eventually had workplace health and safety show up and tell him how it was, and they issued notices on a dozen violations.

Once that got squared away, things were good for a while. One day I noticed the owner taking product out of packages already sold to customers under the explanation that it would go unnoticed. At first I tried to get him to stop, but later simply replaced anything he took. I thought that would work.

One day I saw him undoing my fix on an order and had had enough. He stole from his customers, and if he saw me correcting for it, would simply undo my correction. I gave him an ultimatum, which he ignored. The next time I found him stealing from his customers, I quit on the spot and left him with no one to run the business.

I should not have put up with it for so long.