Memoir of an unhappy employee

“I quit,“ I calmly told my boss in a serious voice, he had never heard me use before. The old white fella laughed, as it to think I was joking. But surely I wasn’t, because from the eight months of working as his sales representative, I had nothing but bad experiences in that space of time. The ladies in the reception all fell quiet, and were anxiously waiting for the next play I had. But I just stood there in the front office, with my boss standing in front of me, while his neck brace was supporting his now red turning face.

 “Tell me you’re joking,“ he asked me in his friendly but uncaring tone of voice. I rested my hands behind my back, and replied in a calm voice, “as you always complain that you have to raise your voice, for people to hear you the second time, I wouldn’t like to do so myself. So I’ll say it slowly—I -quit!“ One of the ladies placed her hand on her mouth and exclaimed, “Kassan! That’s so rude.“

I turned to her, and responded, “it was never my intention to seem rude, but I think its time I speak my mind in this company for once.“ Just then, my boss cut in with a raised voice, “no, no, you wanted to be rude. Clearly you have no respect or consideration for people, and old people for that matter. “

“Respect, and consideration,“ two words in this clothing factory I never felt were founding points during its conception. It seemed today I was the only person to use those two words, in the entirety of this company’s run time. Out of the respect of not shouting my deep frustrations of working like a slave in my eight months of employment, and the consideration for my boss to not start a scene—I truly displayed those words well today.

One without such a calm manner would have brought past experiences of their bosses ill treatment of them. And in my case, I’d have a list of experiences to air out in that moment.

The very first experience being, the first sales trip I went out with my boss, and fellow colleague. It was a two hour drive into another town, as I rode in the open back of a two sitter pick-up. With only a limited sitting space, as there were four larger plastic containers filled with the reject clothing we planned to sell. At the time I witnessed my boss’s few moments of compassion for people, as he did provide a few pieces of leftover fabric to make my sitting area a little more bearable. The trip had started early hours of the morning, around 5am—with the morning air feeling heavy with the cold of any early morning’s whispering of breezes. We arrived at our destination around 7.30am, and by that time the sun was at full affect. The blazing temperature, with a mix of hot steel of the car on my buttocks, was a constant kick to my ass. I was told I would be on car watching duty; meaning I had to remain in the back of that pick-up, enduring the sun while keeping guard of the containers. We were parked in the middle of town, with close to nothing of shading, and my boss and colleague were going around town with samples to sell at hand.

The idea of keeping guard of the pick-up seemed easy enough, but the sun hitting the back of my neck said otherwise. And after five hours of keeping guard, my boss came back to the car, with the proposal of taking me around town for some training. This would become an opening phrase I’d later learn he constantly uses, to convince someone of doing a task they wouldn’t agree to do at a given. At the time I seemed to be doing well ahead of my training; getting along with customers, keeping a friendly smile and having energy throughout. The initial payment plan was me getting 30% commission out of all sales. So you could imagine how constant my calculations in my head were, after every successful sale I made. And by the end of that two day sales trip, I had calculated my final pay being around 60USD.

But how wrong was I, as all I got was 20USD, and a cheap bus ride back home, while my boss drove off by himself to the capital city to spend the weekend drinking. Though at the time I was still hopeful of there being better payment treatment, as I became a longer term employee in my bosses company. And I was especially thankful that I even got the 20USD, as my colleague riding with me in the bus only got 10USD. And he actually worked harder, and was four months ahead of me in being an employee of my boss.

All those hopes soon started to fade, as on the next sales trip my colleague and I went on our own, with the same car. Our boss told us plainly, “you guys are going to be out of town for a whole week. All your food, and lodging expenses will come from the clothes you both sell out there.“ Such fools we were, to agree to such an arrangement from the somewhat encouraging smile of our sarcastic boss. And he failed to mention the finer details of what we’d have to face along the way. From being given a pick-up with a quarter fuel left in the tank, while the entire dashboard wasn’t working, so we couldn’t track our fuel consumption, and being sent into a rural town at a time when its residents had no funds to be buying clothing. And the icing on the cake was, our boss sent us out to this suicide mission before he was headed to Paris for a month on holiday.

Long story short—we broke down in the middle of two towns, as we eventually ran out of fuel on our way back. So one of us had to hitch a ride to the closest town with a jerry can at hand. It was me. The funds needed to buy the fuel came out of our pockets, and that was after the same pockets had covered food and lodging expenses throughout the trip. My colleague and I soon met the evil side of our boss; as he ignored all our countless messages of a cry of help to make a plan of rescue.

We had to be the ones to formulate a plan of our own rescue, and made it back home by the skin of our teeth, and a pick-up on it’s last life.

You’d expect that would be the worst we’d get out of my boss. But he was a man of many surprises. As after he came back from his holiday, he seemed to have left the memory of our tragic sales trip in the middle of the ocean. We never spoke about it once, and all pretended it never happened. Oh—and we were never reimbursed for the money we took out of our own pockets.

The next few months were just constant jabs at us, of not knowing how to drive, being lazy, inconsiderate, careless, irresponsible, not learning from our mistakes, and being reminded of all the smallest things. But all those comments my boss would make, were just descriptions of his own character. And after all that shouting, he’d use he’s favourite phrase, “I’m training you,“ to get you to do odd jobs, not part of your job description. One day you were a driver, the next a plumber, or tree feller, and if you were lucky as I was, a tour guide for a guest at his own Airbnb. Yet your pay remained the same, or was even cut less after doing such jobs.

My boss was cheap—really cheap, and spent a little extra money on pursuing younger girls at work or out. So I always got the short end of his generosity.

Now back to the present moment, of my boss turning red out of disbelief of my sudden decision to quit. I held my tongue tightly from reminiscing on all the ill I had to face while working for him. His neck rose from the neck brace he wore to get attention and pity from others; and he said bluntly to me, “you won’t get any other opportunity for a good job like this, out there in the world.“

Still keeping my calm, I walked past to head out of the office, and replied with a smile, “I’ll try my luck as a freelancer out there in the world. All I know is, whatever I’ll face out there, is going to be better and make a whole lot of sense than this.”

Despite being anxious, and fearful of now having to go into a new career; I knew I had grown a tougher skin to face it all with a smile. And all it took for this final decision, was my boss mentioning a possible sales trip out of the country, he wanted me to go on, alone.