The End of My First Job

Originally this post was going to be about how I was planning to quit my job and why. Well things got pushed up a bit and now this post is just going to be about why I quit.

For those who don't know, I worked at a pizza joint. It was a part time hourly job that I worked in between school and other day to day things. It was a nice fit because the place was really close to where I lived and my boss was pretty flexible about letting you take days off when you really had to.

While that all sounds nice there were more cons and pros at this job. Some were ridiculous, like the cooks constantly being assholes or the fact that we weren't allowed to take tips. This is despite the fact that we actually serve the food to people at their tables and there are tip jars right near our registers. Customers think they're giving us a tip when in fact my bosses just empty the jar each night and pocket all the cash.

The real kicker though is that my boss skims money off checks. I'd heard about this a few months ago from coworker of mine who said she was out nearly $200 one check and had to call in her parents to fight Joe for the money. She got it in the end and after that I starting comparing my timestamps to my overall hours worked on my pay stub.

At first there were little discrepancies like ten minutes off here, fifteen there. Little amounts I wasn't going to bitch about. Then one of my checks came in missing nearly an hour. I decided to say something to my boss and he said he'd fix it. He didn't fight me on it, my guess is because he knew he was caught. And strangely enough when my next check came in, everything was in order.

And yet a new problem had arisen. My brother (who had only been at the place a month) was missing a little over five hours from his pay check. That's about $40 missing and for someone who'd just started making money, that's a big deal.

Too bad my boss didn't think so. When my brother went to confront him, he refused to give him the money, saying he was tired of "this shit" and how he thought everyone was accusing him of docking their pay (no one ever said it out loud but he all knew he was doing it). He refused to check my brother's time stamps against the times he had and said he'd taken the money out of his check for not charging a customer extra for something more they wanted. Let's remember here that my brother is missing $40. Nothing extra at a pizza place amounts to that.

I'd also heard that my boss wasn't too happy about having to give me my money back as well. So when I found out about this exchange my brother and my boss had, I decided that enough was enough. I talked to my parents about it (just to make sure I wasn't being hotheaded or anything) and they both said that quitting was the best choice for both my brother and I.

So I called my boss to tell him I wasn't coming in anymore. He was calm about it at first, asking why I was quitting and whatnot. I lied and said I'd found a better job (which is technically true, I've found several better jobs). This somehow set him off - I'm still not sure why - and he started ranting about how I wasn't a "real man" for telling him like this and how in the real world people thank their boss for the opportunity they gave them.

My boss seemed to have forgotten that it was his father who hired me. Anyways, he then continued to yell at me about he'd had enough of "our shit" and he was done having patience. I proceeded to ask him what the hell he was talking about because before today everything was smooth sailing at my job. My boss didn't seem to have an answer for that and just kept yelling nonsense into the phone. Eventually I just hung up and went on with the rest of my day.

TL,DR: My boss was taking money from both my checks and my brother's so we quit. He threw a tantrum and I went on with my day without a care in the world.