Back in November I looked at my bank account and had a panic attack. I had taken nearly a year off from working, went on a vacation to Europe, and now was looking at being completely broke. Almost any criteria I had while job hunting was thrown out the window. Surfing Monster.com and clicking “Apply Now!” to anything remotely topical my body was tearing itself apart inside.

By lunch time I got a call back from Public Storage. Talking to the recruiter there was some urgency on their part as well. An interview was set-up for the next day. I interviewed with the District Manager who seemed straightforward and likable. Not 24 hours from applying I was offered a position. I couldn’t say no. I took a drug test the next day and a week later I had a starting date. I planned a huge dinner party to celebrate.

I never intended my tenure with Public Storage to be long term. I was hoping by now I would get some sort of return from my resume at a publishing company. It hasn’t happened that way, but I thought PS would be good enough to make some money while I did more real job searching. My first day on the job I was working with two other people. Both were actively looking for other jobs. How do I know this? During lunch they had the classifieds out and were circling prospects.

The job wasn’t horrible, and at first I just thought it was boring. A mostly retail/customer service job paying $12 that had some autonomy. Location wise it was farther than I was hoping, but overall I was happy. I wouldn’t have to work nights and it was more money than I’d previously made. The people I was working with weren’t horrible and the tasks weren’t hard. Getting back into the rhythm of waking up every morning was the most difficult thing. I failed at that on a pretty regular basis. When my body isn’t happy it’s hard to do anything, and I generally don’t force the issue. Calling out didn’t put me on great footing, however there was no established attendance policy, and I didn’t care enough to place the job over my own health. Still, the job was tolerable.

The only malaise I had came from being off-schedule with my friends. I would frequently get off work when everyone was already meeting up doing stuff. As well as working weekends I would frequently get split days off for the week. For the most part though I had a fairly set schedule and worked at one property.

At the start of February that started changing. I was frequently scheduled farther from my house as well as getting a different schedule every week. I had a request for time off to go to Mammoth, but ended up being scheduled during that time anyway. This both continued and worsened until I quit. Once I had gotten through the Whistler trip without bankrupting myself I thought of continuing, but that changed as it became all too clear the company had no respect for the employees, and in some cases the law.

For the majority of my last two months with PS I was scheduled at a property in Santa Ana off Grand and 1st. The only good thing about the place is that it’s busy for the most part. The bad thing is that most of the clientèle only speaks Spanish, and the job I did there could more accurately be titled Janitor/Maintenance. I would spend the entire day cleaning out units, and while mostly dust they also contained various trash, half-eaten food, and even feces (human or otherwise I couldn’t tell).

On top of this the Regional Manager, whom coincidentally looks and acts like Delores Umbridge from the Harry Potter movie, was giving special attention to the property. This included denying a break area for employees and the ability to eat lunch there, taking away a water cooler and denying the right to have drinks in the office. Ideas of questionable legality. To add to discontent a new lunch policy meant I was regularly forced to take my lunch earlier than I wanted. When questioned about these policies the Regional Manager actually got in yelling matches with the employees and threatened their tenure with the company.

I thought it funny that someone so obsessed with the appearance of professionalism would act in a manner completely the opposite. The issue was enough to make my desire to quit into an action. For a job which I couldn’t care less about it worked for saving money, but I won’t put up with the bullshit and lack of respect for the employees. There are other jobs. There are other things worth my time.