My first job ever was (initially) computer lab attendant for a low-incoming housing complex. Initially it was basic shit: I sit there, fuck around on the computer, and make sure people aren't looking at porn or blaring music. I guess there had been a dude who set up this computer lab and handled it for a while until he got another job, leaving the old folk running the place with no idea how to deal with it, so they contracted work-study people from the community college I was going to and that was how I ended up with such a weird first job.
Anyway, I worked there three years, and by the end of that three years, despite being essentially an intern, I was the senior employee in the entire office. Now before I explain why, I guess I should say that the office was split into two parts: the business side, where they dealt with leasing and rent and all that fun shit, and the "Resident services" side, where they had a few social workers and ran community programs. Computer Lab was a community program, so I was on the Resident Services side. And these sides, despite being in a building only somewhat bigger than a decent size house, was split pretty strongly, so I think I went to the leasing side a total of three times in the three years I worked there.
So, going back to where we were, the reason there was bad turnover was that the Property Manager sucked. She was petty, nepotistic, and fired people for random shit. But she also stayed on the leasing office side, so maybe met her twice and have no stories to tell about her. My experiences came from the Resident Services supervisor, who was fucking nuts.
Okay, so to get a basic picture of this Supervisor, imagine a stout version of Oprah who talks exactly like every business-speak office stereotype, and talks down to basically everyone. Then there is me, at this age looking like the fat white kid from basically every high school movie.
But that ain't shit, so here is some stories. Early on, she had the Boys and Girls club invited up to use the computers on a pretty much daily basis, which in itself isn't objectively bad, though this was awkward for me because I was 17, so I was put in the weird position of playing stuffy adult to people my own age. But again, they were paying me, so not that big of a deal. The problem was that, any time I tried to enforce a rule, she waived the rule in that moment because she didn't want to deal with it. So I, to the annoyance of the non-teenager patrons of the computer lab, stopped enforcing the rules. Because fuck it, why would I? Supervisors won't back me up, I'll sit here and play flash games.
She did have a major problem with anything sexual however, and that is the rule she would take a stand on. Again, fine, it was weird when we had some teen boys printing porn anyway, so I was cool with that, even when I told some thirteen year old boy to stop looking at porn and he responded by taking his shirt of and going on this dumb speech about how he was a teenager with hormones to deal with. Sometimes, however, she went weird directions with this concern about sex. So once a few of the kids are playing this slasher flash game where you tear a dude apart with a chainsaw. That was kind of it really; there is a dude tied up in a dungeon setting, you drag the chainsaw over him, and he flies apart, with blood and guts going all over the place. Well she sees this and charges at these kids, and I think fuck, imma hear about this. She gets right up on them, looks at them, and asks "Is that guy naked?" as this flash character's limbs come apart and spray blood. They say "No, he has underwear, see?" And she is like "Oh, okay, that's fine." This is the one that sticks out, but this is the sort of weird and random shit she was totally about all the time. She was arbitrary. That was her problem. She was arbitrary...
...and kinda dumb. So, another story, we had a dude who would come in and masturbate. Yeh, people do this in public computer labs, fuck if I know what type of dude wakes up and decides that's how he wants to present himself. I only worked in the afternoons, so when I came in around 1PM, he would be sitting in the corner with the computer aimed toward him (these are laptops held to the computer by a cord), his hands in his pants, anybody else there completely aware of what is happening and moved away as far as they can be. And I would tell him to move his computer forward since it's my job to see what the fuck people are looking at, at which point he would mumble and leave. We all knew what he was about, and me and a geeky kid even found what he was looking at (upskirts. no self awareness that one). When news finally reached are supervisor, she was livid, and she blamed me for it, even though he was doing this before I came in. So she told me to look at his computer, and if I found any porn, she would fire me.
She told me to look for the evidence to fire myself. Well, I like getting paid, so I decided I had found no porn and told her all was good. That was the end of that, like nothing had ever fucking happened. Another piece of evidence about her being incompetent came when I decided I was annoyed by all these teenagers causing shit, so I convinced her that Myspace (im old) was a super dangerous site and we should ban it entirely for the safety of everyone. She agreed. That took care of the teenagers, or at least the ones I didn't like.
From these you probably get the quality of her ability to do her job in general. Everybody else saw her as a whacko incompetent too, and because of it the place had an insane turnover. We had a social worker that looked like Steve Harvey, I think he was there for three months before giving up on his ability to do anything. They couldn't keep programs running because her behaviors put off the residents too so nobody liked to come in.
But finally, she screwed herself and did so big time. She was caught at a real-estate convention giving a presentation on her own start-up company, which lead to a series of questions that revealed that, like a genius, she embezzled government grant money given to our complex in order to start her own company. Legend has it she got hella prison time. We then went about six months without a supervisor, with myself and a few volunteers kinda-sorta running things (the stuff we were qualified to do at least, which wasn't much.) When we got a new supervisor, she was horrified to find that our old supervisor hadn't done any of the paperwork she was supposed to do. There were no records, none of that. Our old supervisor had just been embezzling money and saying stupid shit those two years.
Like, i've had managers I didn't like, or who were dicks, or whatever. But this woman was sitcom stupid. One of the most bizarre people I ever worked with.
