Cheapest Company You Have Ever Worked For?

[I-Hate-Hulse]

When I was articling (this was not that long ago), the firm gave all Staff a horrific bonus of $100* (gross I might add). This was in a year when most of us had worked 200 or so hours of OT. The little asterisk next to the $100 was a for a footnote that said.

* - your actual bonus was $46. Due to your hard work this year, the Partners of CheapFirm LLP have elected to increase your bonus to the revised amount in thanks.

A bunch of us ended up pooling our meagre bonuses and having a raffle to make it actually worth something. Partners got wind of this and next year - no bonus! (though economy played a role in that too)

However, cheapest, crappiest employer was when I was a parts monkey at Crappy Tire. Like Fotze said, sure did reinforce to me that I had better start paying attention in class.

[burn_this_city]

My first job when I was 14 I worked at a failing grocery store that eventually closed. They couldnt afford me many hours so at first they only gave me 4 hours a week. I made $6/hr at the time and paid $5 a week in union dues.

[krynski]

... A watch repair company. Been there 3 years, I've had one raise of 50c and im a f***ing good worker. Although...it is part time and easy to study, but still! give me a goddamn break! A good worker should at the least recieve $1.50 in raises in 3 years.

[Starfishy]

Originally Posted by krynski

Company X... A repair company. Been there 3 years, I've had one raise of 50c and im a f***ing good worker. Although...it is part time and easy to study, but still! give me a goddamn break! A good worker should at the least recieve $1.50 in raises in 3 years.

I think if I was you I would edit out the name of the company.

[krynski]

Well, if anyone from that company was on there forums, I would be surprised. Thanks though. Its a pretty small company, but does manage to span to the majority of large cities in Canada.

[Sylvanfan]

The first drafting company I worked for in Prince George was brutally cheap. Run by some born again Christian German guy. But I think his wife was the real issue there. Granted that 15 years ago computer technology wasn't that great, but having a 386 computer with a 14 inch monitor trying to do detail drafting made me blind. In those days AutoCAD often had a tablet and puck, and mine was set up like a phone key board were the pick button was 0 and that gave me carpel tunnel. Any time I asked about upgrading that machine, even if it meant me getting the second oldest one in the office, I heard about how that computer cost more than the other machines when they bought it.....Yeah as technology improves the price goes down. It wasn't until 1999 when I got a Pentium after 4 other staff had quit, a good 4 plus years after they had been out.

But the worst was the pay sucked, the environment sucked, with a drafting office of 12 employees when the printer got low on toner they told us to take it out and shake the cartridge and put it back in and than it would print.

I remember the satisfaction the day I quit as after he offered me a $7 an hour raise which would have been like a 40% pay raise and a dollar more than the place I was going to work for, I said no thanks. He than threw his hands up in the air and said why doesn't anyone want to work here anymore! I could barely keep a straight face.

[alan21]

It has to be when I was 16 working at Toys R Us. $7.40 an hour. They didn't want to pay for a cleaning staff so we had all to take turns cleaning the washrooms. They gave out whopping .14 raises semi-annually. Of course barely anyone would make it to that generous raise. Why must they have so much misery in a place that would make kids happy?

[dj_patm]

Oh and to put my rage in perspective, I have worked at Calaway Park, Tim Hortons, Footlocker and Shell (Head office not gas station, that was an awesome job, made a lot of cash)

Every single one of those places was 10x better towards the bottom end staff. Yes the store I work at now was worse then being a 14 year old CALAWAY PARK GROUNDSKEEPER. The first 3 all payed roughly the same if you adjust for the times....

[burnin_vernon]

There's a few Canadian Tire bashers here but I had a good experience at one time.

The 21 stores in the lower mainland were owned by a couple guys and one of the coolest things they ever did was an Ignition program that paid their workers $2000 towards school.

Every Christmas the 21 stores were all judged for appearance and bonuses were given out. The best performing store gave all their employees 50cents (worth more then than now) for every hour worked that year.

Each store had a Gold, Silver, Bronze award program where a Gold winner would walk away with $1000 at the Xmas party. I think the Silver and Bronze was $500 and $250. I won a few of these and it was nice to be recognized for hard work at a young age.

The the owners got out of the franchise and each store was run separately...that's when the cheapness took over here. Big difference.

[Pinner]

Sometimes companies just don't think about the workers who actually make the money for the company....

As an oil field trucker I'm amazed that a company would have a very nice catered office party when all of the truckers are still in the field working...

Nothing says appreciation like coming back to the office to a big mess of empty bottles and heaps of unrefrigerated left over food that could have been put in the fridge with a couple boxes of beer as a small gesture of appreciation.

Then they wonder why they lost all their seasoned drivers and now have a dismal safety record that has cost them huge amounts of money and lost them most of their business... But at least they still have good office staff.

[CaramonLS]

Originally Posted by blankall

Earls. I was in the kitchen.

Staff discount: 50% up to $10. Once per shift. Did not apply if I was not working.

I was paid .25 above minimum wage and told I would get a .25 raise for every new station I learned. I had to twist arms to get that raise.

I was constantly put on split shifts... ie work for 2 hours get a 3 hour break and then come back and work for 4 more hours. What the hell am I supposed to do in a three hour break? That is barely enough time to get home and back on transit.

The kicker was they expected me to be responsible for my own uniform. I was only given one chef's jacket, which was expected to be clean. At the time I was not living in a place with access to a laundry machine. So I had to go to the laundramat 2 times a week to wash this thing.

We also had "staff parties" that the kitchen had to work during.

Edit: I should probably ad as disclaimer some people have had good experiences with this company. I think policie vary from restaurant to restaurant.

Weird. I had exactly the same experience in the kitchen with these guys. Begging for raises and all. You forgot the best part. No breaks whatsoever, unless it was unpaid.

Which I'm fairly sure is illegal.

But what made it worse on top of that is that smokers were allowed to have 5 minute "smoke breaks".

[Flamesfan74]

Some of the stuff that everybody says is wrong in the workplace is illegal. I've been in a management position with the 2 employers ( one being unionized) and they trained us on this stuff. You're not suppose to work more then 12 hours day without at least 2 coffee breaks and a hour lunch. No more then 10 days in a row without 24 hours between the next shift. And so on, and so on.


Everybody need to familarize themselves with labour laws in Alberta.

[Flamesfan74]

Originally Posted by CaramonLS

Weird. I had exactly the same experience in the kitchen with these guys. Begging for raises and all. You forgot the best part. No breaks whatsoever, unless it was unpaid.

Which I'm fairly sure is illegal.

But what made it worse on top of that is that smokers were allowed to have 5 minute "smoke breaks".

We have a lot of smokers at work and I can see them leave the main office when they go out. So I like to play around on the computer when I see the same person go out about every 90mins or so.

[CaramonLS]

Originally Posted by Flamesfan74

Some of the stuff that everybody says is wrong in the workplace is illegal. I've been in a management position with the 2 employers ( one being unionized) and they trained us on this stuff. You're not suppose to work more then 12 hours day without at least 2 coffee breaks and a hour lunch. No more then 10 days in a row without 24 hours between the next shift. And so on, and so on.


Everybody need to familarize themselves with labour laws in Alberta.

Companies like these became much more familiar with Labour laws when the boom hit, but I think that a lot of us (especially myself), I was 19/20 at the time and didn't know better.

If I had gone to my employers, I probably would have been let go within the next week for some performance issue.

[Mr.Coffee]

Originally Posted by Pinner

Sometimes companies just don't think about the workers who actually make the money for the company....

As an oil field trucker I'm amazed that a company would have a very nice catered office party when all of the truckers are still in the field working...

Nothing says appreciation like coming back to the office to a big mess of empty bottles and heaps of unrefrigerated left over food that could have been put in the fridge with a couple boxes of beer as a small gesture of appreciation.

Then they wonder why they lost all their seasoned drivers and now have a dismal safety record that has cost them huge amounts of money and lost them most of their business... But at least they still have good office staff.

That's a super good point and something that, as an office guy for an oil company, I think about quite a bit. There's a big disconnect between our theories in office and what actually happens in the field sometimes and it's up to both sides to have good communication to bridge the gap. You should maybe mention this issue to somebody in the office so they understand?

Originally Posted by Flamesfan74

We have a lot of smokers at work and I can see them leave the main office when they go out. So I like to play around on the computer when I see the same person go out about every 90mins or so.

I hear this all the time at work and just don't like the excuse. Just because somebody else does something doesn't justify slacking off yourself does it? Does the company benefit? Do you? I'm not saying I don't take breaks, I'll grab a coffee most days because I am heavily addicted but I just never liked that excuse.

I worked for a pizza place when I was younger that was kinda cheap but they were all really good people and the business was awesome so I would never want to throw them under the bus.

If a place is cheap and you don't like it, why not try and find somewhere else to work that will appreciate your efforts?

[STeeLy]

I worked at a Tim Hortons for 3 years... a year and a half or so after I started, I got promoted to Supervisor, and was only paid an $1 extra than regular staff at $8.50

Then a place I volunteered with offered me a paid position starting at $12, I took it and left Tims.

[_Q_]

To the OP... you work for Sport Check don't you?

Anyways I worked for Chili's in South Centre when they first opened. Probably the worst place to ever work. They were too cheap to hire enough staff so there were days where I would have to be in to do prep work at around 9 am and work until close and then clean up. For some reason clean up there used to take around 4 hours, so I would literally be in there till around 2 am. Only got paid some overtime as the store manager used to take us off the clock about 2 hours before the clean up was done. So my 16 hours of work was counted as 14. All this for only $7.25/hour. After about 2 months of working there I picked the busiest day of the week, Friday, and decided to just call in and quit. The funniest was my manager saying "Do you know how badly you are screwing us right now?" To which I replied "Yup... good luck".

[wooohooo]

For these reasons I refuse to work at fast food places, grocery markets, large chain stores... places that can easily screw you over.

I worked for the Flames back in the day when I was still in Jr. High/High school and it was pretty good. I got 'promoted' (if you can call it that) to being a vendor. So I was the guy that brought those malts and popcorn up and down the rows. Pretty sweet job as I got to see all the Flames games for free. But they were anal that after you were done your shift, you couldn't go and catch the last bit of the game. Al though, they were very nice about eating left over ice cream and popcorn and whatever else they had. Tips were also very awesome...

Unlike the time I worked at Callaway park in Jr high. That place was ffing horrible. The people I worked with were fine, but the team leaders were pretty anal. There was an EXTREMELY strict rule about drinking pop and the food. On the extremely hot days, we could only drink tap water. Pathetic. If you ever got caught, they would write you up. It was so stupid that they even have people in 'disguise' to walk around and see if the workers were drinking or eating anything. Like give us a frikking break when it's +30 outside and there's no air con and the closet thing we have is luke warm tap water.
Their pay stamp thing also is ridiculous. They timed it so you only get paid in every 1/4 hours and they timed it so the bus leaves right before that 1/4 hour so if you would lose some time. Sure it was only 10 minutes here and there, but 10 minutes in the mornings and after work for every day adds up.
How anyone can work there is beyond me. That place is close to a sweat-shop factory. I haven't visited there since. Classical conditioning right there.

[Incinerator]

Originally Posted by Flames4LifeFLA

Tampa Bay Lightning hockey club. Easily the cheapest company I've ever worked for.

You've obviously never worked for the Calgary Flames hockey club then.

[dj_patm]

Originally Posted by _Q_

To the OP... you work for Sport Check don't you?

Nope.Worse. I know people who work at sportcheck. They just started and make more money then me after 3 years.

I don't know why I put up with this. I think im going to demand a raise soon. I just don't want to be let go till after the semester is over...