https://old.reddit.com/r/pettyrevenge/comments/15ygrrg/i_took_revenge_on_my_employees_for_abusing_my/
A bit of background information, I am in my early 40s and opened my shop about 10 years ago. I used to be one of the full-time mechanics but now...
My employees were eating too many fun sized bags of chips so now I make them front the expense of buying their own tools lol
Not trying to take away from your point at all because this guy is a mega douche, but it's standard to bring your own tools to work as a mechanic. I think it's standard in most trades.
I'm sure you're right, but I've not seen that to be true where I live in Europe. That makes absolutely no sense.
European here, if you're getting employed, it's expected that you're provided with everything necessary to work. Anything else is capitalist exploitation of the workers, and a systematic attempt to keep the impoverished poor.
The only time it's acceptable to be expected to bring your own tools is if someone is contracting you to do a specific job.
In other words, you don't need to provide the necessary tools if you're calling in a plumber to unclog your toilet, but it most certainly is if you're opening up a plumbing agency and hiring plumbers.
Pretty much just mechanics I don't know of any construction companies that make the employees buy specialty tools but it also doesn't make sense to have a half dozen of every specialized tool and also if you own your own tools in construction there's no reason to not just be an independent contractor.
That's the really insane part like, you're the capitalist here bud! your only "job" is to own the means of production! what the fuck are you even here for if the workers have to pay for everything too? at that point you're just rentseeking on the garage.
tbf that is the norm in many garages, and it sounds like it was already the case beforehand, just more strictly enforced after. but its still pretty ridiculous
I'm of two minds about it because I know a lot of those types of guys and I don't think they'd have it any other way, but it also kinda presents a pretty high barrier to joining the industry if a majority of the shops expect you to come with $10k+ of your own tools and toolboxes (unless you're a kid just starting out, then, at least where I've seen, there are like, some communal tools you can use as you build up your own collection, and you can borrow from coworkers).
Its just sort of this long tail remnant of a time when these sorts of guys were fully treated as semi or fully independent craftsmen not just cogs or "technicians", I think. Sort of an extension of this american yeoman farmer phenomenon into a different industry. And that was probably a better/more desirable position for those craftsmen to be in. But in a modern context idk if that holds up, and clinging onto the trappings of independence like that may not really be in their best interests anymore, in the way that it ties them to an employer lest they have to pay a pretty penny to move all of their tools, etc.
Being a full-on wage slave would give them more mobility in terms of job hopping but less ability to take their tools and go home and just operate out of their own garage independently.
Anyhow I'm really not the one to make this argument, and I think I've had it before on this very website, but I suspect you'd find most people (in the industry at least) do like it the way it is
i guess I can see the argument for it, but it just seems like a wildly impractical way to run a shop of any kind.
not too impractical if you hire mostly like, career-long master mechanics, and (this is key) don't treat them like such shit that you have crazy turnover. But it is weird for sure if you aren't familiar with the practice.
Ok when you lay it out like this it does kind of make sense and I get but my noodle is still pretty cooked that this is the norm lol
My employees were eating too many fun sized bags of chips so I started fucking with the temperature of the workplace
I assumed the people in the comments would at least be calling him a dick, but nope, someone seriously said he should've installed a camera to see who was taking too many bags of chips. Fucking r*dditors.
Yeah I was in disbelief at the 2k upvotes and concerningly low amount of comments calling him out. That's not petty revenge that's a power trip
The bootlicking is insane, the main takeaway is "yea fuck those workers"
Redditors are the most servile grubs in existence.
God so much "one guy probably ruined it for everyone else".... Yeah one guy did. The fucking asshole owner!
I love the part where he's mad about snacks, so he throws a tantrum and overhauls the whole workplace's amenities based on his "beliefs"
I know like six of this guy personally
At least his employees now know the kind of person he really is: he tried to portray himself as some chill guy who will buy them snacks, but in fact he'll go from zero to Hitler extremely quickly over some chips.
Very good self own that negates the whole point of buying the chips in the first place, lmao.
edit: I can't emphasize enough how stupid throwing a tantrum over the chips was. How much could they have cost him in a month? He even said they were bought in bulk. Even large corporations realize their refreshment funds are an expense whose point is to keep employees happy (well, to try to placate them with some trinkets or food, at least).
The last few companies I've worked at would schedule one day a year to go do 'community service'. There would usually be way too many people to have most of them be utilized. And even then, most of charities we did stuff for were religious based (a couple times literally a higher-ups church).
The HR people would spend the whole day staging photos. Then they would use this one day to brag about how much they give back. They would also post this all over social media and on their website. I think most of them honestly believed that they were some great asset to the community because of this.
Local banks and businesses constantly donate to do-nothing charities which they themselves control and then brag about it in the local real estate and car dealership advertisement bundles newspapers even though every penny they give is tax-deductible.
He literally says it's a few hundred per year.
Hope every employee walks down the road and fills out an application.
Almost every small business owner I've met is like this, along with most mid level managers I've dealt with.
I have known exactly one good restaurant owner in my life. He cooked free meals for his staff at the end of each night, and the food was excellent. He had two restaurants (one after the other) which were really considered by everyone to be the best in town. Within a few years he had gone out of business and moved away. Dude was far from perfect but the system itself disadvantages those rare capitalists who are not raving lunatic psychopaths.
I genuinely thought you must have editorialized the title, but nope, this guy is just that much of a fuckhead, he's actually proud of what he's done.
His smug attitude about how nobody will leave over this really bothers me, because I'm pretty sure he's probably right. So many people would rather keep on working for the devil they know than risk trying out a new job. The lack of a social safety net is the best thing going for small business tyrants.
I just switched from a contract job to an actual employed position after a year of my boss trying to get cheap labor out of a fresh college grad and not knowing what he's talking about. Ive had like $200 in my account for like 2 weeks now waiting for my first paycheck, I'd be screwed if my gf wasn't helping me in the meantime
I had a job where my boss literally stopped paying us for a month because he couldn't afford it and I was the only one who quit after 1 missed paycheck. I called to get some tax stuff from them and literally everyone who was there is still working there. People need to be educated on their worth and rights.
So many nasty bits to this story. Even if someone was taking a bunch of extra chips, why should he care? He can have his own private reserve of chips in his office if that's the problem.
The whole story reads fake to me but even in the imagination of this borderline sociopath, he's trying to say that communal goods can't work because of the workers taking too much. All he ends up proving is that communal goods can't be relied on when they're in the hands of the capital owners.
The most telling part of it is how he presents it. He accuses and says someone is lying to him. The real response would be to say something like "Hey maybe someone is taking too many chips, does that bother any of you?" My guess would be no because chips are shit food anyways, but if it did the workers would figure it out amongst themselves.
At my last work we had a Keurig and coffee pods, and people started hoarding pods at their desk because there was never enough. The hoarding was a symptom. Rather than address the underlying issue they stopped providing them all together and sent out a tone deaf email about how it was our fellow workers faults abusing the great company's magnanimous generosity.
The end of that story - that he'd lug in MASSIVE vending machines and go through the pain of stocking them (it takes like a half hour) for pocket change returns squeezed out of the paychecks he gives to his own employees is just 🦹
Everything on reddit is the disturbing fake fantasy of a 15 year old loser with chat gpt
Socialism is when I buy chip and workers steal them all and I get no chip 😢
Alt: any laborer born after 1983 can't work. All they want is eat my chip, watch my cable, and lie
*I get no chip when I occasionally show up to the shop once a week to make life harder for my employees
What’s a bet one of his employees is struggling to put food on the table for his kids.
This is one of those moments where a bit of humanity could have really improved someone’s life but instead this cunts ego got hurt over some chips
The gang gets together while Dennis does fuckin chip math that devolves in to him screaming.
"I don't get it, why can't I have the chips"
"YOU CANT HAVE THE CHIPS BECAUSE YOURE EATING TOO MANY CHIPS"
"Well did you want some of the chips? I'm sorry"
"NO I DIDNT WANT ANY OF THOSE DISGUSTING CHIPS. ARE YOU AWARE HOW CHEAP THEY ARE? They cost me a cent per bag, they cannot be good for you."
"Well can I have a bag of chips then?"
"NO YOU CANT, because you KEEP EATING THE CHIPS. I can't go buying all these boxes"
"Don't you just get one box a ymonth? Why does it matter when you buy it?"
"IT'S A WASTEFUL EXPENSE"
"Hey Mac check it out I just found a box of chips in the dumpster, completely fine, someone just threw it out, can you believe it?"
Mine serfs did sup too greedily upon the charitie of their Lord, so henceforth their corvée shall no longer be met with free gruel and cast-off trenchers
I used to be one of the full-time mechanics but now entered more of an entrepreneur role, owning more properties and businesses.
There’s probably one guy taking a bunch home that ruined it for everybody.
yeah it was op dude
Sometimes I have to stop myself and wonder if this is just someone making up something. If I'm just mad at words on a screen. Who knows.
Small business owners are usually all freaks with a fragile ego though. I'm always reminded of the time I went to dinner and our waiter told us that he's also a 'military veteran and a small business owner. I just kind of stared off and was like '... that's pretty cool'.
Charlie did you break in to my home again I keep telling you don't touch my stuff
in savings