5 Businesses That Went Above And Beyond To Screw Employees
Here's something to ask yourself: How would your employer treat you if A) there were no laws and B) they knew you couldn't quit and get another job? In other words, if you were just relying on the basic humanity of the people in charge? We can get horrifying little glimpses of what it would be like for some of us, considering that even with these supposed protections in place, we get things like ...
Basic Bodily Functions Are A Luxury At Many Workplaces
A company that posted an "EMPLOYEES NOT ALLOWED TO PISS" sign on the wall would presumably get sued out of existence pretty fast. But that just means they have to be more subtle about it, usually by making sure you can't hit your required goals unless you hold it in for 12 hours. Can you guess what sterling company we're going to hear about first? It's Walmart, making what will absolutely not be their last appearance on this list. They have been sued over and over again for denying their employees the time to take restroom breaks -- or any kind of breaks -- while they're working.
Not to be outdone, the warehouses for Amazon (aka The Walmart Of The Future) are known for being littered with piss bottles because employees are afraid to leave the floor. Meanwhile, Amazon delivery drivers will also piss in a bottle for your convenience, and apparently shit right in the back of the delivery van as well.
And speaking of drivers, next time you're in an Uber, make sure to never, ever put your hands under a seat, just in case the driver left his pee-filled Gatorade bottle there. Likewise, buses are just roving piss pots, thanks to drivers who are afraid of being late for scheduled arrival times. Drivers "all across the country" forgo normal bathroom breaks, and have taken to pissing on their buses, some of them resorting to diapers.
Meanwhile, American Future Systems Inc, a business letter publisher, was ordered by a judge to pay back $1.75 million to thousands of its employees. This ruling came after the company was caught forcing employees to clock out before they pissed. It's also really worth noting that this company employed 6,000 people and this went on for four years.
Honestly, this is so common that the whole column could be entirely about this. A report on the poultry industry by Oxfam detailed how employees in the United States are so routinely denied the right to use the bathroom that they either just avoid drinking during the day to prevent the need or (again) wear a diaper at work so they can go home at night covered in chicken shit on the outside and their own shit on the inside. But there's no need for unions or anything here, let's not get crazy.
Related: 5 Rights That New Adults Think They Have On The Job
SunTrust Laid Off People And Still Expected Them To Work
Layoffs suck. As a writer, I know that just about better than anyone. However, if you desperately wanted to find a silver lining to this cloud of shit, you could say that at least you'll have a few days to anxiously relax in your sweatpants. But dozens of IT employees for SunTrust Bank didn't even get that, as they were crotch-punched right into a zone of being both laid off and expected to keep working.
About 100 IT employees were laid off from SunTrust in 2015 because the company was moving the work "offshore," which is corporate speak for "We found a way to exploit someone else for way cheaper." Those 100 workers were offered a severance package, but it did come with some stipulations. If they wanted their severance, they had to make themselves available for two whole years after they were let go to do work, either over the phone or in person, with no additional compensation. What a deal!
If you're not familiar with fancy employment terms and laws, requiring someone to work for no money is called "illegal." Thus, when the story went public, SunTrust dropped the clause like it was a smoking gun that had just been thrown into their hands. As it turns out, few things make a business grow a conscience faster than being accused of trying to pull off literal slavery in 2015.
Related: 7 WTF Ways Seemingly Innocent Companies Screw Their Workers
Companies Direct Their Hungry Employees To Food Banks
After non-medical staff at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center went public about their desire to unionize with tales of low wages, one particular employee mentioned she needed to use a food bank to help feed her family. UPMC apparently only heard the "food bank" part of her statement, because they responded by making sure that the employee was first to know about the new food bank that they'd set up just in time for Thanksgiving! Most importantly, the food bank is one that asks other poor employees for donations.
I mean, how else can a huge organization make sure their employees can buy food? Isn't that what second jobs are for? Not that this is an isolated incident. No bad practice can be isolated as long as Walmart exists. One of their Ohio stores put on a canned food drive to help their employees, producing that double-edged sword of "It's good that I'll have food when I need it, but it's bad that I have to rely on my employer arranging charity for me to get it instead of paying me a living wage."
Some naive reader out there might think this is outrageous coming from a $386 billion company, but you must understand. They got to be worth that much because their employees make shit. And really, have you seen how much company money these people waste by pissing? It's an outrage!
Walmart Tried To Turn Its Employees Into Delivery Drivers
Might as well stick with Walmart for the moment. The corporate overlords there couldn't help but notice how Amazon is finding new and innovative ways to cut costs by screwing its employees. So why not just leech off their home delivery system? Problem: Walmart isn't set up to copy something like that on a massive scale. Solution: something really fucking stupid and mean.
The Walmart cabal was quick to deduce two very important facts. For one, there's a Walmart within ten miles of 90 percent of the entire population of the United States, and for two, all of their employees, despite Walmart's best efforts, are allowed to go home at night. That means people are constantly driving away from Walmart toward potential customers. So why not just get them to drop shit off on the way?
Walmart's plan was that their employees, at the end of their usual shift, would use their own cars and their own insurance to deliver shit other people had ordered that was more or less on their way home from work. Shockingly, workers hated the dogshit idea of doing extra work for nearly no additional pay, with no clear idea of what would happen if an accident occurred. Luckily the plan was soon shuttered, presumably after a Walmart executive woke up covered in sweat, shocked to find that all of the Christmas ghosts had visited in a single night.
Related: 6 Ways Companies Are Secretly Screwing Job Applicants
A Company Tried To Illegally Use Its Employees' DNA
Everyone likes workplace drama, as it's what stops you from lighting your hair on fire and headbutting coworkers until they have a your-face-shaped bruise on their face. But what happens when shit goes down at work and you get blamed for it, even though it wasn't your fault? And what if the shit that went down was a literal shit? If you're Atlas Logistics Group Retail Services, you become Shit Detectives.
Jack Lowe and Dennis Reynolds had to sue Atlas Logistics after the company forced both men to undergo a cheek swab in order to have their DNA tested against a sample the company already had on hand. And where did the company get the aforementioned sample? From the loaves of poop someone left on the floor of a warehouse. Some phantom ass bandit was pooping around the workplace, and because both Lowe and Reynolds' schedules matched up with the Time of Turd, the amateur Poop Constables had both men swabbed.
Of course, the tests didn't provide a match, and both employees sued the company, because there's actually a law that prevents businesses from using your DNA against you in hiring and firing. The company offered $200,000 to each wrongly accused shit shooter, but they ended up winning over $2 million. The lesson here is that no, your boss does not have the right to harvest your genetic material just because someone baked some biscuits on the loading dock.
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