Something Fishy

One of Mama Kat’s Writing Prompts for this week is:  your least favourite job you’ve ever had….

This one is SO easy that the post practically writes itself!  I ended up in the worst job when I was twenty years old.  It was at a fish market where my brother-in-law was the manager.  He’s the one that got me the job as a cashier and, I think, felt a little bad for it for many years afterward. 

This place had a frozen and canned good sections as well as a store-wide counter of fresh fish.  Of course, in many cases, I’m using the word “fresh” very loosely.  My co-workers were a cool bunch, including both of my BIL’s.  The person that made this job a little piece of hell-on-earth was the owner of the store. 

He was a volatile bugger!  If you made a mistake, he would literally scream at you right there in the middle of the store in front of your coworkers and customers.  It wasn’t like you could learn what he liked and didn’t like to be able to navigate the minefield either.  You would do things a certain way for a while and then, one day, BOOM, you’re getting yelled at for it.  This guy would even make his own mother cry!  (she worked there a couple of days a week)  Looking back now, I realize that he was nothing but a big bully who desperately needed to get stomped on by somebody bigger and meaner than he was.

He would also screw literally Every. Single. Customer who walked into the store.  Either the numbers being entered into the scale when weighing the fish would be messed with or the fish was half-way bad.  A lot of customers were lucky enough to get both treatments.  Of course, this was back in the days before the scales all went digital with printed labels.  They would throw the fish on, punch in a few numbers and whisk that thing off all so quickly that half the customers had no idea what was happening.  As for the freshness factor…… to this day, I can’t even look as scallops without feeling a little nauseous. 

Being the shy, soft (perhaps a little naïve) young thing that I was at the time, I took his crap for two years before I found the “balls” to quit.  I knocked around in a couple of part-time and temporary gigs for almost two years before I ended up where I am now.  As a matter of fact, the end of May is my twenty year anniversary with this company.  Can you believe that?!  Thankfully, I have a much better boss in this job.

Kat