Exploitation at Work: What Are Your Limits?

Two of my dear friends work in a used bookstore. One is the owner, the other, the manager and they are sisters. They hired me a while back to bring some order to the overrun chaos that had taken over their store. Not a problem, as they both agreed to work around my class schedule and my cat rescue responsibilities.

Within two weeks, I began to see the sibling relationship between the two in an entirely new dynamic than what had always been presented to me before.

The owner exploited the manager to the point where the manager would cringe prior to ever accepting any of her sister's telephone calls from home.

The owner flat out quit coming in to work and only wanted to hear good things...read profit... about the business- nothing else, read bills and expenses.

When she did have to hear about expenses, she would miscommunicate poorly through verbal abuse that could be heard by others.

Within another week, the manager up and quit, without notice (and they are sisters) and have not spoken to one another since.

Exploitation is a dirty business and not healthy in any way.

People can and will only take so much before... something will happen. Whether it be implosive or explosive, the bottom line remains that is not and will not be good for any business.

After the fiasco at work... the owner began to try and treat the other remaining employees, myself included, with the same exploitation tendencies she had done with her sister. After all to her, since she had been treating her sister that way for so long, she was no longer aware of the negativity associated with exploitation. To her it became the status quo and was easy.

Since she is my friend, I took it upon myself to talk with her. I explained that is was ultimately her responsibility to make sure the store was covered, and that if she were short staffed, she would have to start coming in to fill time slots as she cannot expect other employees to work overtime for free, as her sister did for years. Employees have lives outside the bookstore and intend to live them.

I am not willing to work for free and it is not my store. Once I explained that to her, in a very nice but succinct way, she has begun showing up to work again.

In my case, it was simply a matter of putting it out there to her, so to speak. By not verbalizing her stress and unhappiness with the job, her manager became burned out to the point where even the sibling relationship is damaged.

I am not willing to remain quiet at all after having witnessed that.

I further explained to her that even though she is aware she is not the best manager, it would be in her and the store's best interest to look at getting some help or some knowledge on how best to build a rapport with staff, especially if she has any hope of keeping good employees.

Good, hard working employees do not come easily and the only way to keep them is to respect them, not exploit them.

In the words of the eternal Barney Fife... the best way to handle being exploited at work is to ... "Nip it in the Bud!"

Believe me, there are always other jobs out there.