Autism and Employment (another PennSilverTaco thread)!

Once again, this has turned into another job that is too good to be true. The lazy of sack of shit who is supposed to be helping me on my weekend shifts quite often never shows up, and when he does, he is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. My direct supervisor is not budging on the back-to-back double shifts; I had been told that I would be working the exact same hours as Amanda.

This a Jewish nursing home (most of the residents are not Jews, but the owners are and the way the place is run centers around Judaism). As such, the place is supposed to have a kosher kitchen which includes dual dish rooms for meat and dairy. The sink in the meat dish room is not working and nobody knows when’s it’s getting fixed.

As such, the owners are allowing us to use the dairy dish room for everything. The weekday shifts are awesome because I have another seasoned dishwasher working the whole shift with me. Unfortunately, he is off on the weekends that I work, and a third full-timer is not in the budget.

At the time Amanda was told to beg me to take the job, another guy had been hired; I don’t know if this guy was full-time or part-time. Sometime between Amanda coming to me with the job offer from the executive chef and my first day, this other guy decided he couldn’t take it and decided to shop showing up after two days on the job. Another guy who applied for the job didn’t pass the background check because he had a felony conviction.

So, I am getting assistance on weekends, but have found out that I will ultimately be expected to do the job on my own. That was not part of the deal in my opinion, and Amanda was told that I would be working the same hours as her.

Tomorrow, I am talking to my boss about switching to Amanda’s department (dietary) because she an easier day and no forced 12-hour shifts. My secondary plan is to switch to part time. If neither of these requests are excepted, and I don’t get part-time help on the weekends that I do work, I will be putting in my two weeks at the beginning of August.

My plan is to use some of the money I make at this job and pay for the online EPA certification course from Penn Foster. I will devote the next month or so after leaving the dishwashing job to studying, and I will apply to work part-time at Spirit Halloween, where some of you may remember that I worked in 2021. In December or January I will then apply for a full-time job someplace that I actually want to work, like Home Depot or Lowe’s, and work there until I finish the HVAC training.

As stated above, I got no sympathy whatsoever on the back-to-back twelve hour shifts. I feel like the responsibilities of the job were misrepresented to both my girlfriend and myself to get me in the door. One of the reasons I’m told the other guy stopped showing up after two days is because he said “the job isn’t what he expected”. Uh, ya think?!?!

This is another one of those situations where rather than change their business practices to accommodate genuinely good employees like myself who just want some work/life balance, they will just keep hiring until they find someone who is willing to tolerate the bullshit hours.

 

Are looking at getting the 608 Certification?
I think I seen where you can get it online for like $300
I actually thought about getting the 609 (Automotive). But I don't need it. Although I did just to an AC job on a 2000 Tahoe.
But I have no plan to ever do HVAC of any type.

 

That's just it. I don't live to work, I work to live.

I find a lot of places act like this, some more than others and some sooner than later. Though in time it can blow back at them, and if you get to give them that reality that will be glorious.

 

They’ve actually listened to reason and among other things are willing to give me Fridays and Mondays off on the weekends that I work. For those of you just tuning in, my girlfriend @Stitchgirl90 works in the dietary department serving residents, and my boss is in okay with paying her to come in with me on weekend mornings to help take the load off. I take back what I said about my employers being deceptive and about the job being too good to be true, but I will be gone by the middle of August if they do not find a part-time dishwasher soon!

 

@ABA180
@ColoradoTJ
@Just_A_Guy
@Lt. Dangle
@shakerhood
@steelcity2
@TnShooter

I don’t know if anybody remembers, but @Stitchgirl90 worked at Moe’s Southwest Grill from about April 2023 to October 2023. One of the reasons she left Moe’s is that they wouldn’t make her a full-time employee. The other part was that one of the managers and two teenage coworkers who were creeps and hit on my girlfriend. At least one of the teenagers made no attempt to hide the fact that he wanted to bang my girlfriend!

Amanda was 33 at this time, and the teenagers were 18 and 19 I believe. The one manager was either in his late 30s or early 40s, and supposedly was engaged.

Amanda told me, after telling me that one of the teenagers made a pass at her, was that she was not a cougar and had no interest in hooking up with a guy that young even if she was single.

The manager reportedly sang a Boston song called Amanda in front of my girlfriend, but changed the words of one line to “why don’t you leave your boyfriend”…

Weeks, or possibly a month or two after Amanda left Moe’s, one of of the teenagers texted her out of the blue saying “Hi Amanda, it’s Kyle from Moe’s”. She ignored the text and hasn’t heard from him since. By coincidence, both of the teenage employees were named Kyle. The other Kyle ended up being pretty cool after I gave him a piece of my mind, and ultimately left when he found a better job opportunity.

The Kyle who wanted to get with Amanda was also a weasel who would ask his coworkers, including Amanda, to give them their shifts. All employees exchanged cell phone numbers for this purpose. A lot of employees complained to the managers about Kyle asking for their shifts, and were told to just ignore him.

I was actually offered a job by the manager who hit on Amanda, but I was working at NAVMAR and earning $19 per hour. Moe’s was paying like $12 per hour if I remember correctly…

 

So, the problem with this specific Moe’s location is that the manager kept hiring people, and ended up with more workers than he needed. This led to more workers than shifts, and people were fighting each other for shifts.

I’ve been friends with a girl named Colleen (who also has Aspergers) since 2008. She and Amanda have become BFFs, and Colleen went to Moe’s to visit Amanda on her break a couple times. Colleen is attractive, and the manager offered a job on the spot; Colleen declined because she already has a job, and after Amanda told her how the boss acted with her, she definitely wasn’t interested.

 

@ABA180
@6 gearT444E
@ColoradoTJ
@Just_A_Guy
@shakerhood
@steelcity2
@TnShooter

After Moe’s, Amanda worked for a food service company Aramark at two different elementary schools. This turned out to be the perfect job for her at first, but while it was billed as full-time, she only worked from 9am to 2:30pm on weekdays.

Whenever there was a snow day, she couldn’t come in and wasn’t paid. She also didn’t come in on early dismissal days or the “teacher in-service days”.

I did my best, but sometimes I brought her in late due to traffic or road work. There was one week where I brought her in about five minutes late maybe three days in a row. A couple times, she overslept.

One of her coworkers was a typical grumpy old man named John, who wasn’t her boss, but decided to confront her about being late. When he found out I was sometimes the reason she was late, he said he would go out to my truck and “have a talk with me”. Amanda mentioned this to me, and I told her to tell John that if he took one step towards my truck to confront me, it would not end well for him. Luckily, nothing ever happened…

They let the kids out early on the day of the eclipse earlier this year, and of course Amanda didn’t work.

About this time, Amanda hurt her foot and had to take time off from work. The doctor at Urgent Care wrote her a note, which screwed her in two ways. First off, the doctor wrote to stay off it for a week if so remember correctly, or maybe ten days. She was ready to come back to work and they wouldn’t let her without another doctor’s note for liability reasons.

Amanda had also been told that she could collect unemployment, but the doctor filled out the note as if she were sick instead of injured. Using a technically, they refused to pay her unemployment because she was supposedly sick rather than hurt.

This was also about the time Amanda put in her two weeks, and they were already understaffed, so we suspect they were being vindictive. Luckily, I helped Amanda with rent until she got the job at the nursing home, and she paid me back.

 

No need for him to confront you. It's her job and she was late.
15 mins early is on time for me. I'll sit in the truck and wait if I have to.

 

Tough one b/c you need to have some people to call upon if people get sick, go on vacation, etc..but there's such a thing as too many cooks as well

 

@6 gearT444E
@ColoradoTJ
@Just_A_Guy
@shakerhood
@Speedytech7

What's that one job you had that you absolutely HATED?

For me, it was detailing cars at a dealership called Fred Beans; I started working there in early September 2018 and was ready to quit before the end of the year, but Puck closed unexpectedly in January 2019 and I stuck it out until June 2019. I put in my two weeks mid-month and was gone by the end of the month.

 

At least that job probably had you getting paid hourly or a set salary...

At this particular job, I got paid per vehicle. Detailers got paid the equivalent of $10 per hour, with the amount of hours depending on what kind of vehicle it was. SUVs, trucks, and vans were the most profitable. These ranged from 1.6 to like 2.2 hours if I remember correctly, and it was doubled if the customer requested the add-ons like paint and fabric sealant. Larger sedans were like 1.5 if I remember correctly, but compact cars were only 1.2 hours. If someone bought an Impreza and requested the sealant, that jumped to 2.4 hours...

The absolute worst jobs were the fleet vehicles, because those ranged from 0.8 hours for a sedan to 1.1 for a truck or SUV. Everybody hated doing fleet vehicles. The reason for the smaller payout was because fleet vehicles were only washed and vacuumed, and not waxed. If a fleet vehicle was nice and clean, it wasn't an issue. Unfortunately, a lot of new the fleet vehicles were kept in an old quarry and ended up covered in dust; I ended up with a white Silverado HD on at least two different occasions that was covered in gray dust, and when I hit those trucks with the pressure I ended up with gray sludge in the bed that was royal pain in the ass to get rid of...



The detail shop did not have air-conditioning; I started working there in September and stay until June. The lack of A/C is one of the things that ultimately drove me to quit...

 

@shakerhood

And then last February, I backed out of the deal at Domino's before I even went to work; I had worked as a delivery driver at a pizzeria years earlier and should have known from prior experience that I would be expected to do more than just delivering pizzas without getting an extra pay. That wasn't a huge deal, but what scared me away was the prospect of doing not only an 11-hour shift on my first day, but working until midnight.

 

Program coordinator for a marketing agency. Paid really well but was a huge racket. Basically just herding cats and trying to fence in liquid. It was a ton of work and it never had a defined set of hours so I basically just felt like I was on call 100% of the time and decided it wasn't worth the money. It was kind of hard to turn down, but I couldn't find a way to make it where it was long-term tenable for me it needed somebody that doesn't give a fuck about having a personal life. I found out that I really prefer a job that ends when I leave for the day. And so now I work in a prison, which is surprisingly pretty neat. I'm a department of 1 and my boss isn't on site, actually I haven't seen my boss in 2 months and we don't talk much.

 

first line supervisor at a nuclear power plant. Management and your direct reports shit on you from both sides.

 

@Lt. Dangle
@shakerhood

The first time I worked a weekend at the nursing home, I worked back-to-back 12-hour shifts and it did not go well. I worked shifts that exceeded 10 hours at Puck once in a blue moon, but remember last winter I basically told Domino’s to shove it before I even started work because they wanted me to work 11 hours on my first day.

So, I basically threw a fit, saying that it wasn’t fair that I was being forced to work back-to-back double shifts. I work with this guy named Felix who is almost 60 and can run circles around me when it comes to washing dishes. My supervisors’ initial excuses were “Felix can do it…”

I was up front and said that I wasn’t Felix; Felix is seriously the Superman of dishwashing and routinely pulls doubles. They also wanted me to work a double on Monday a couple weeks ago, and I basically said no. I reached a compromise with one of my supervisors and was allowed to come in at 10am rather than 7am on the Monday in question.

Well, they listened to me because my second weekend shift, I was scheduled to work 12pm to 8pm; I am working my third weekend shift and, yet again, it’s a normal 8-hour shift.

Amanda and I are going to Carlisle next weekend, and it turns out that both of us would have had that weekend off already; I had no idea back in April or May that I would be working here too, and I miscounted which weekends Amanda had off when I was helping her pick which days to take off. So, it turns out that we only would have needed to take Friday (August 2nd, 2024) off. The promise of having that whole weekend off is the only reason I took this job when I did; I have given up a lot of car shows and a spontaneous family gathering in the interest of holding down this job and making money, but I made it clear from the beginning getting off for the Carlisle Truck Nationals was absolutely non-negotiable!

So, while I am pretty sure that my stress levels at having to work back-to-back 12-hour shifts was a major deciding factor here, I suspect that there are budgetary issues as well and my employer isn’t wanting to pay overtime if they can avoid it.

I will work 12-hour shifts every once in a while if they really need it, but I am just not tuned to do it regularly, at least not yet; I once got mad at Amanda for voluntarily taking a double shift on a weekday, before I had even been offered a job if I remember correctly; I had to wake up at like 5am to get Amanda to work by 7am.

Again, this was before I was even offered the job at the nursing home. I had absolutely no problem with Amanda working doubles, and in fact I was proud of her for taking the initiative. I told her that if she wanted to work doubles, that she should only do it on weekends because then I didn’t mind getting up early since I was usually going to a car show.

After working three double shifts a couple weeks apart voluntarily, Amanda deemed it to be too stressful to work them that often. It ended up being a moot point because right now it seems like they are discouraging double shifts to save money.

 

@6 gearT444E
@ABA180
@ColoradoTJ
@Just_A_Guy
@Lt. Dangle
@shakerhood
@Speedytech7
@steelcity2
@TnShooter

My best friend John was born in October 1986 and I was born in March 1989. A couple months ago, John made a very good and quite accurate point about the perceived notion that “our generation” is “lazy and does not want to work.”

Some people from our generation are lazy and do not want to work, but that isn’t us. John has been continuously employed since he was a teenager, and has been a certified peer mentor for over a decade. He works with individuals who intellectual disabilities and other special needs. It’s a full-time job and he makes decent money.

In our main circle of friends, there are only three of us who work full-time (Amanda, John, and myself).

John said that the reason “our generation doesn’t want to work” is because the available jobs expect employees to do too much work for too little pay. The average salary has not caught up with the record inflation we are presently experiencing.

The golden years of my annual income were from approximately the summer of 2015 to the beginning of 2019.

Barbacking at Puck and working as the general manager’s personal assistant was primary source of income, and I made $10 per hour; I also got a decent chunk of the bartenders’ tips on really busy nights. I also delivered pizzas at a pizzeria right around the corner from Puck, and for $30 a week plus free lunch, I made a weekly Costco run for the owner of a a sandwich shop in town that was also near Puck.

I got my first credit card, with help from my dad as co-signer, in the summer of 2016; I will admit that I spent most of my hard-earned money on stupid shit, I was always able to pay my credit card and other bills with no assistance from my parents until early 2021.

In September 2018, I started working at Fred Beans detailing cars; Sam (my boss at Puck for those who don’t know) took me aside in October 2018 and told me that Puck would be closing indefinitely in January 2019 due to structural issues that needed to be addressed. Before the end of 2018, I was ready to quit Fred Beans, but what the hell was I supposed to do?!?! I did not feel like looking for another job…

I stuck it out until the middle of June 2019, before finally giving my two weeks’ notice in the middle of that month. My very last day was Saturday, June 29th; I delivered food for DoorDash from early July until the end of August, when my dad said that his boss wanted to hire me at NAVMAR. I worked at NAVMAR from September 2019 until I was laid off in October 2023, with a three-month furlough from March to June of 2020 due to COVID. My parents didn’t want me getting a new job where I could potentially get COVID and infect them, so I kid you not, my dad actually paid me my monthly salary from NAVMAR out of his own pocket so I could have gas money and shit!

Anyway, one of the first things I look at when applying for a job is what I call the “Pay-to-Bullshit ratio”. Obviously, a job with reasonable pay and minimal bullshit is ideal. Jobs with low pay but low bullshit, like the seasonal job I had at Spirit Halloween in the fall of 2021, are tolerable. Jobs with high bullshit but high pay are also okay, depending on the job. Detailing cars at Fred Beans was an example of high bullshit and low pay, and I refuse to work such a job ever again!

 

Make a decision on where to move?