You can watch the video here.
I avoid using adjectives that would make me look like a helpless victim when I tell a story, too, and I let the listener/reader decide.
I used to work at an electronics store in a different city, and I’ve never had any problem with any customer. In fact, a Moroccan-Spanish family literally said to me once, “We didn’t feel comfortable dealing with the other guy (boss).” Thing is, even though I was getting 3 dollars a day (and 50% for each hardware repair), working from 9-11AM to 9-11PM, interacting with customers from all over the world during summer was part of what made the time pass more quickly. Anyway, I caught a cold once, so my boss told me not come the next day, but later he changed his mind, because he needed to come to my city to buy some phones, and he wanted someone to hold the fort while he was away; I didn’t mind, of course. When I got to the store, all sneezing and sh*t, he was still interacting with some customers, then I got a call from a customer who bought a USB WiFi dongle from us the other day, and couldn’t figure out how to make it work; although it was plug-and-play, some shady software was preventing it from working. The customer lived near the store, so I went to their house to offer quick tech support, then a 10 or 15 minutes later, I got a Whatsapp message from my boss (who claimed I was his ‘partner’ many times) asking me what was taking so long, then I told him I was helping one of our customers, and he was, “We can’t just help these people for free. When you’re done, just go home, because the way I see it, you didn’t come to the store today.” Thing is, I had no money to go back home, and I thought I was going to get that 3 bucks, but after the sh*t he pulled, I was contacted by a friend that I only knew online, and lucky for me, he was selling jackets at a flea market nearby, and when I got there, he shook my hand, and stealthily placed the equivalent of $0.95 in my hand, so that I could make it home. I’ll never forget that, since I always appreciate those who decided to help me even when I did neither implicitly nor explicitly ask for it. On the next day, it was around 35C outside, and there were no taxis/buses, but because I was furious, I walked over 8 kilometers on foot, hoping that I’d calm down eventually. The minute I got into the store, I didn’t even say hi to him, I just picked up my PlayStation 2, my screwdrivers, and while reaching for my iPhone USB cable, he thought it was his, and then I reminded him that it wasn’t. On my way out, he was like, “What is this? Not even a “Peace be upon you”?” And I was like, “There is no ‘Peace’ between us. I made it to the store yesterday even though I was sick, and even though you said I should stay home, and then you tell me that I should just go back home only because I was helping a customer for a few minutes? And you call yourself a professional?!” Like a broken toy, he kept saying, “Are you done? Are you done?” While I was letting all my verbal diarrhea out, and all of a sudden, he was like, “Well, when you go home, don’t forget to give me back my Core 2 Quad PC (a PC without a case that I got from him in exchange for ‘indefinite’ work hours).” And I was like, “Dude, the time I spent here in the last 3 months, I deserve 10 more PCs like that, and 2 f*cking stores like this one. You’re not getting that PC back!” And he was like, “Fine.” And then I just left.
3 months later, an old friend introduced me to a gray-hat method of making money online, using Google AdSense ads, and some basic JS, CSS, and HTML code. One thing led to another, I ended up making enough money off of that trick that I decided to never work IRL ever again. I made $6K in less than 2 months, doing nothing but sharing short links on known FB pages like UNILAD, The LadBible, ABC News, CNN, MrTechnicalDifficult, etc. Although the method stopped working after like 6 months, it didn’t stop me from figuring out new ways to make money online.
Around the time LG G4 came out, my former boss contacted me via Whatsapp out of the blue like, “Hey, long time no see. Seems you’ve forgotten all about your big brother, huh?” And I was like, “Well, you know how it is.” Then I asked him whether he had any LG G4 cases for sale, and he was like, “WHAT?! HOW DID YOU GET YOUR HANDS ON AN LG G4?!” Since he was obsessed with LG G3 when it first came out, while he had LG G2, so the fact that I bought an LG G4 at the time, with money that had absolutely nothing to do with his business, well, let’s just say that some people think you’re going to end up homeless once you decide they’re not worth your time anymore. Anyway, he did ask me to set up a new used PC he bought, and I agreed. When we got to the store, there was a worker making a whole in a wall or something inside a pharmacy that’s literally an inch away from his store. The noise was so f*cking unbearable that I was like, “There’s no way in hell that I’m working here, bro.” And he started snickering as if to make me question my manhood or some shit, and I insisted that we take the computer somewhere else, and since he had another store in a super quiet neighborhood, had had no choice but to agree to my terms. Later that day, he asked me to work with him again, and based on what happened that day (there was a lot of hammering, sweat, and dust. Besides I got so used to working from home, and making a lot more money anyway), I was like, “Look, I have a much better job now, but if you need any of my tech services, you know where I live.” I remember him dropping by once; he needed to install the FreeMCBoot installer on some PS2 memory cards, and I did that for him for like 15 bucks.
I know many people who worry too much about losing their job, knowing that sometimes your current job might be the very thing slowing you down — take it from a guy who dropped out of university although I was top of my class, and then made a killing 6 months later. Personally, I’ve always made a career out of making my own luck, and never beating myself up over mundane stuff. Any negative feeling that I get, be it rage or disgust or a sense of betrayal, I find myself automatically turning all that into something productive, and I don’t have to watch or read any motivational crap to know that it’s one hell of a lifehack, and it’s even better when it comes naturally, so it doesn’t feel like a chore or a challenge of sorts.
And you’re right, Louis, bosses are people, too. However, in the name of looking out for numero uno, if I give a job my all, and I’m still not appreciated (at least by being cut some slack), I have every right to quit, and never look back. A second chance shouldn’t be given to those who had absolutely no valid reason to blow the first one; I learned that the hard way over the years.