Stress Center Peer Support

Hi,

I recently posted about a new job that I would be starting this past Monday. Well I started the job on Monday and discovered that the boss is a complete jerk. For the past couple of days at this new job I've been so stressed and tense that when I come home I just feel like lying down. My new boss is the owner of the company and he and his brother, who also works there, are very verbally abusive and curse out anybody and everybody who works there. Yesterday the boss told me that he would shoot me if I messed up on something he had given me to do. I was warned on Monday by one of the employees that they both can be explosive when they're angry and also that the main boss calls her disrespectful names all the time. I feel so tense and am anticipating the main boss getting angry at me because I'm new and I have not been trained at all and I don't know anything about the products we deal with yet I'm supposed to already know everything and be handling all these things I know nothing about. I don't know what to do because I need to be working but I don't want to feel all tense and stressed all day over my bosses and their behavior. It's just a tough situation. Thanks for letting me vent.

Rose

Rose,
WOW - I'm sorry to read about your new job. I know how that can be, the excitement/anticipation of starting a new job, then when you start, you find out that your boss or bosses are losers.

I once worked for a small company owned by a very evil and greedy woman (who shall remain nameless), but she seemed real cool during the interview, but from the first day, I knew it was going to be like hell to work with her. She went as far as throwing a stapler through a plate glass window in the office (aiming for me but she missed fortunately). The woman was a lunatic.

From the sounds of it, and I am no lawyer, but the threats about 'shooting you' if you mess up something - that is kind of harassment or threatening.

Ultimately you will need to decide what you want to do. If you cannot afford to quit right now, start looking and try to find a job and then leave. Just vent as much as you can with the people on here and do the best you can. Good luck!

Hi Rose,

I'm sorry to hear about your new job being such a disappointment. I can understand and relate to all you are saying.

It is a family-owned company and the owner is an abusive jerk. You have no human resources department to go to in the case that he says anything inappropriate to you. You are already feeling stress from anticipating what might happen and, odds are, these very things will come to pass.

What you have to assess is, why is the business being run in such a dysfunctional way? Is the boss really trying to motivate people and the only way he knows how to accomplish getting people to perform is through negative means? How successful is this company in the marketplace? Do they have a high turnover rate of employees? What is different now that you are actually in the job versus when you applied and interviewed for it? Were you given a different impression at interview time? Are you financially prepared to handle being unemployed if you decide to quit this job? What can you learn to live with and what is simply not going to work for you in this job situation?

I'm hitting you with all these questions because you are going to have to start considering here & now the suitability of this job for you. Only you can do this. The only thing you can control in this is yourself and how you take what goes on at work. You won't be able to change your employer, but maybe there's a way to learn to live with this if it is a job worth staying with for the long term.

Best of luck to you!

There are words for what your boss did when he said that he would shoot you.....terroristic threatening. That is against the law as we do still live in the United States of America.

I am sorry that you are not happy at this job (who would be). I pray that you will get a different job and that when you do before you leave you tell the jerk you work for now that threatening his employees is against the law!

Best wishes to you.

Have you thought about a placement agency? A lot of the time the company will pick up the fee. You could even try a temp agency to have some work until you find something permanent.