Dealing with a Lousy Boss

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So a few months ago my husband told me to text a friend of a coworker to talk about an available job. I did against my better judgment, unfortunately, and now I'm in quite a mess.

This woman offered me a job in a retail position, but promised I would work in the back and would have no contact with people. I was promised a Monday through Friday work week from 7 AM to about 1 or 2 PM. She also mentioned she has a relative in my field of work and will put her in touch with me (two months later, that hasn't happened). I thought that, if I was going to get a job in retail, this was the place to do it.

This lasted all of about two weeks. After week two, I was placed in the fitting rooms because I was found to be fluent in Spanish and we have a lot of Spanish speaking folks coming down from nearby wealthy towns to shop because we don't profile. I also begam to be scheduled closing shifts and inconsistent hours.

When I had my first breakdown about six weeks ago and confronted my boss about it, she said that I'm oh, so good at working the fitting rooms, completely ignoring the fact that it takes every ounce not to run into the stock room and bang my head into the wall, especially on Saturdays. She outright laughed when I said that I don't understand humans and that there's a reason my field of study (archaeology) involves highly limited interactions with living humans. I decided to set up an availability in order to help make my schedule a little more consistent.

Fast forward to today. My availability was ignored, so once again I'm married to a job I hate. I've seen what talking to her does, and I learned from research that the HR department at corporate is a complete joke; they rarely, if ever, respond and are overall very ableist. What on earth am I supposed to do?

Well, the first thing I would do in your position is start perusing the postings on ShovelBums. I have no idea how to deal with that situation, but at least the dislike seems to be one-sided.

I subscribed to ShovelBums, but there isn't anything currently available in my state, let alone my region. I'll keep my hopes up. I don't know if she's intentionally trying to drive me to suicide, but she's definitely doing a good job. I actually dread going to work, and am ready to have to default on my student loans because I can't hack this job.

Well, if you are the only Spanish speaker at work, that does give me an idea. How about mentioning your desire for better work to your customers because you want regular hours. In Spanish.

Unfortunately I'm not the only Spanish speaker, so I'm not sure how well that would work. I also am pretty white, so I'm largely patronized by most Spanish speaking customers, despite my accent being pretty good (I minored in Spanish because I live in a region with a strong Spanish influence, but because of my fair skin and red hair, I'm often not taken seriously).

What most of them think doesn't matter. You only need one person to give you a good lead on another job. And, who knows, maybe you might even get something that has nothing to do with retail.

Are you good enough with Spanish that you could be a translator?

Ex: by phone for law enforcement and others

I'm semifluent, owing to three and a half years' worth of university classes. Unfortunately, I live in a town of 60,000 where there just aren't many jobs. I did get brave, though, and apply for a lab tech in a smaller town three and a half hours south of my town. I would have to leave home super early and come home super late, but a job in my field is a job at this point. I also changed up my resume to reflect my formatting and data entry abilities so that I can apply for a couple jobs with data entry and document formatting at a local engineering firm.

I know an editor, she's now on the masthead, that got started in data entry where she worked. She left the workforce to raise kids and took an entry level job to get in the door. Didn't take long for her to get promoted.