My first job was a simple classic, I was a barista at a local and quiet coffee shop. Overall it was a great job, but it had one significant downside, my manager was completely incompetent. Not one message went out without a typo or incoherent grammar, he was constantly messing up inventory, telling his staff—a bunch of teenagers—to fix things like the plumbing, and he even told one of his staff she was being selfish for not going into work and that she had to get her shifts covered, while she was in the emergency room after being in an accident. The thing was, he wasn’t around very much, and when he was, he never had any problems with me personally. For the most part, I just found his antics to be amusing, that is, until I got promoted to be his assistant manager.
The second I had to actually spend time with him my job became miserable, but I needed the money so I stayed. Looking back, I thought I was being subtle, but the shift in my behavior was clearly evident. I didn’t want to be there anymore, I avoided chatting as much with my colleagues, and I stopped doing all the extra work I would do before.
I think my compensation motivated this behavior because personally, I can easily deal with annoying people and can even I sometimes enjoy it, but this was such a basic, easily replaceable, low-paying job, that I couldn’t see the point in fighting as hard as I had been to keep it.
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