Worked seven years as a homecare operative. It was a company run entirely by women, and I was one of only two in about 70 workers on the books. After a while, they started giving me the lousiest jobs, the worst clients (nasty, vicious alcoholics, psychotics, etc), kept all the clean/high-paying bonus jobs for the women at the company.
When I was being treated fairly, the job was OK. The clients liked me, and I got on well with some of the more difficult ones. Hell, I really bonded with a guy who had "Locked-In-Syndrome", and able to communicate with him when others couldn't. I was completely honest and refused to be part of the culture which cheated the hours whilst claiming full pay. But when you are struggling to pay the mortgage with shitting, diminished hours as one of the other workers spends January in Vegas every year, it really grates.
It was when they tried to get me to work consecutive Christmas days (when they knew damn well my father was gravely ill at the time, and I wanted to spend it with him) that I snapped and handed in my notice.
In the last couple of years, my wife ran into someone who used to work in the office there. I have no idea how she knew my wife, as they'd never met, but felt she had to clear her conscience. She said that she "really didn't like" what they did to me, elaborating that my hours were deliberately whittled down to unlivable numbers, the decent jobs were purposely denied and I was intentionally given the very worst, most unpleasant jobs. Why? Because the management decided that I was a square peg in their sea of holes. It was constructive dismissal, but kept very quite at the time. The whole experience left me with mental scars, as I was scrabbling in the shit for loose change to keep a roof over my head whilst everyone else was living high on the hog.
Sorry for the rant, but the whole thing really burns all these years later. |
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Although I love it really. 
It often feels relentless and both physically and mentally draining and as it's a case of needs must, the earning potential isn't there and the money to get by is awful. 