Yep I'm done working for a lying scumbag who basically enforces slave labor.
For those of you wondering, this summer I worked for a local painting business. I normally work landscaping in the summer but last year the landscaping company I worked for went out of business.
Anyways, this summer, my boss had way more employees than he thought he would get and he made a lot of promises that he couldn't keep. He has been running this company for 2 years (this is his third) and up until this year he had only done exterior painting on houses. This year, since he had so many employees, he decided to try to do interior as well as exterior. As I said before, he had only done exterior until now and his estimates for how long it should take to paint interior were way off. Sadly, my crew and I were an interior crew and we had to deal with it and try to still get it done on time and also do the best job we could.
When I first got interviewed for this job, he talked about 100-hour jobs like they were extremely common and it was rare to get one that is supposed to take less than that. This year, the highest number of hours we had to complete a house was 62.6. This was on a house that was about 1850 square feet and all the walls, baseboards, ceilings, crown molding, windows and doors in every single room had to be painted with 2 coats of paint. Anyone here who is a painter would know that is absolutely ridiculous.
Another thing I was told when I was hired was that it would be easy to make $20,000 this summer. All we had to do was be done in less hours than expected. And I was also promised a minimum of $10.50 per hour for every hour that it should have taken to do the job (so if we had 10 hours and we were done in 12 we were supposed to get a minimum of $10.50 for 10 hours). However, instead of getting $10.50, we were only getting minimum wage which is $8.60 right now.
I knew that this job would require a lot of work considering that there was a minimum of 40 hours a week. However, up until last week, my crew had to work 14 hours a day, seven days a week just to try to get the jobs done by the day they should be done. Then last week we finally got a break. We didn't have much to do and we had a lot of time to do it. We were planing to be done it on Monday (2 days ago) when it didn't need to be done until today but instead we got reassigned.
On Monday, we were sent out of town to paint 3 grain silos. We were told that they were 25 feet high and so we didn't think they would take too long (which is a good thing because they had to be done by Tuesday). But when we got there, we found out that they are not 25 feet tall, but 75 feet tall. Now, we start work at 8:00 in the morning everyday. At midnight, (so we had been working for 16 hours) we called our boss to see if we could get an extension so we could go home. He said we had to finish it tonight. So we worked until 4:00, Tuesday morning. We had to work for 20 hours to get it done. Then yesterday, after less than 4 hours of sleep, we had to go out of town again to paint 2 more silos. These two "30 foot" silos turned out to be 80 feet. And once again, they had to be done by today. That was the last or his crap we were going to take and so we called him and we quit right there.
Normally, I'd be mad that I'd have to go look for another job, but after getting done with all of these lies and everything, I couldn't be happier.
Sorry for such a long post.
For those of you wondering, this summer I worked for a local painting business. I normally work landscaping in the summer but last year the landscaping company I worked for went out of business.
Anyways, this summer, my boss had way more employees than he thought he would get and he made a lot of promises that he couldn't keep. He has been running this company for 2 years (this is his third) and up until this year he had only done exterior painting on houses. This year, since he had so many employees, he decided to try to do interior as well as exterior. As I said before, he had only done exterior until now and his estimates for how long it should take to paint interior were way off. Sadly, my crew and I were an interior crew and we had to deal with it and try to still get it done on time and also do the best job we could.
When I first got interviewed for this job, he talked about 100-hour jobs like they were extremely common and it was rare to get one that is supposed to take less than that. This year, the highest number of hours we had to complete a house was 62.6. This was on a house that was about 1850 square feet and all the walls, baseboards, ceilings, crown molding, windows and doors in every single room had to be painted with 2 coats of paint. Anyone here who is a painter would know that is absolutely ridiculous.
Another thing I was told when I was hired was that it would be easy to make $20,000 this summer. All we had to do was be done in less hours than expected. And I was also promised a minimum of $10.50 per hour for every hour that it should have taken to do the job (so if we had 10 hours and we were done in 12 we were supposed to get a minimum of $10.50 for 10 hours). However, instead of getting $10.50, we were only getting minimum wage which is $8.60 right now.
I knew that this job would require a lot of work considering that there was a minimum of 40 hours a week. However, up until last week, my crew had to work 14 hours a day, seven days a week just to try to get the jobs done by the day they should be done. Then last week we finally got a break. We didn't have much to do and we had a lot of time to do it. We were planing to be done it on Monday (2 days ago) when it didn't need to be done until today but instead we got reassigned.
On Monday, we were sent out of town to paint 3 grain silos. We were told that they were 25 feet high and so we didn't think they would take too long (which is a good thing because they had to be done by Tuesday). But when we got there, we found out that they are not 25 feet tall, but 75 feet tall. Now, we start work at 8:00 in the morning everyday. At midnight, (so we had been working for 16 hours) we called our boss to see if we could get an extension so we could go home. He said we had to finish it tonight. So we worked until 4:00, Tuesday morning. We had to work for 20 hours to get it done. Then yesterday, after less than 4 hours of sleep, we had to go out of town again to paint 2 more silos. These two "30 foot" silos turned out to be 80 feet. And once again, they had to be done by today. That was the last or his crap we were going to take and so we called him and we quit right there.
Normally, I'd be mad that I'd have to go look for another job, but after getting done with all of these lies and everything, I couldn't be happier.
Sorry for such a long post.
