My first job was at a local fast food franchise in my hometown. The management there was.... awful. They were hostile and rude to employees, and regularly threw their weight around for no reason. They made working fast food way more stressful than necessary because they treated people like shit. For example, there were multiple instances while I worked there where employees blew up into shouting matches at one another over basically nothing. I’m pretty sure they were also violating labor laws, since you only got a 15-minute break no matter how long your shift was. I was in marching band at the time, and Texas high school marching bands are super competitive, so I often had hours of rehearsals before and after school, as well as a football game on Fridays, and competitions that lasted all day on Saturdays. On top of that, I was in my local youth orchestra which had 2.5 hour rehearsals every Sunday evening. Adding AP courses, practicing audition material for All-State band, and practicing for college auditions (I wanted to be a music performance major at the time), I had very little free time for months.

So, I couldn’t work very many hours. However, due to the aforementioned shitty management, the restaurant was constantly having issues with being understaffed, so they scheduled me for as many hours as they could. This meant my free time went from very little to completely non-existent. My days were long and filled with work from start to finish. I was wearing myself thin, and the more the job went on, the more exhausted and depressed I was getting. However, I still worked the fewest hours of any other employee there, and the managers reminded me of this constantly. Any time I made any semblance of a complaint, they reminded me I wasn’t working many hours, so I had no room to complain. They regularly pressured me to work more even though that was literally impossible for me. I think they assumed I was a spoiled brat who just didn’t like to work despite that I explained my situation multiple times. They constantly gave me shit, constantly accused me of being lazy, etc. If I ever asked off work for any reason, they gave me all sorts of shit for it. I got continuously more resentful of working there, especially because all of this was for $7.35/hour (it started with $7.25 before they gave me a whopping 10 cent raise).

So comes the final month of the job. My late grandma had been suffering for cancer in multiple parts of her body for about a year. When she suddenly experienced a stroke, my family dropped everything and drove the 6 hours to Houston where her hospital was. It was depressing and stressful for my whole family to see her on what was probably going to be her deathbed. I remember calling one of my managers when I left to tell him why I wasn’t going to be at work, and he seemingly understood (surprisingly). However, a few days later I suddenly get a phone call from my head manager where she screamed at me, demanding that I show up to work. Apparently, those dipshits had scheduled me for work despite that I had told them my circumstances. And, ofc, they would never communicate with employees about when they were scheduled, as it was supposed to be our responsibility to check the paper schedule in-person. Problem was, I was six hours away in Houston when they posted it, just like I had explained I was going to be. I asked if she had been told why I was gone, and she said she knew, but she simply didn’t care. I was absolutely appalled that she actually had to guts to tell me that a shitty fast food job was more important than me visiting my grandma on her deathbed. I instantly told her that I was giving my two weeks notice right then and there. Truthfully, they didn’t even deserve that. I probably should have just hung up on her and never shown up again, but my mom pressured me to “handle things the right way”. It’s honestly no wonder they have issues with being understaffed when they treat employees like that.