#punk with a camera | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

knightsndaze · 3 months ago

Text

Hi I used to work for Punk With A Camera and I need to get this off my chest

I changed the names of my coworkers, idk if their ok with me sharing their real names

So some prefacing, I worked at a warehouse for a shipping company for nearly five years. I had health and dental, a 401k, $19/hr. The only downside was I had been recently going through some health issues which were affecting my work. I had a lot of trouble doing heavy work but since it wasn't severe enough I couldn't get accommodations and there were days where I couldn't go in because I pushed myself too hard the day before. I had to go down to part time at some point as I wasn't making my full time hours. Enter my friend (that was like an older brother to me), who owns a small business that does some media work and screen prints t-shirts, patches, etc.

He offered me some part time work in his mailroom. I'd help with letter mail and packages a few days a week so I could make up for lost wages. I mean that sounds great right? I come in twice a week to fill envelopes with stickers and patches for $15/hr for 7 hours. I get to sit and I don't have to stand struggling to breath in a warehouse that's almost 100°F and humid. I had helped him out a couple times before to do events or clean screens in the printshop and it seemed like a pretty good work environment, even if he'd be a little condescending sometimes. So I accepted.

I started early August, I came in a couple hours early so he could show me the ropes. There were three other people that worked in the mailroom when I started, they came in around 11am. I'll call them Jake (the 'manager'), Dave, and the third guy I never got to actually meet because the moment he arrived Brandon pulled him outside to fire him. He had the dude drive all the way to work and waste gas just to be told by the way don't clock in you're fired. When Brandon and third guy came back in, Brandon had Jake go talk to him because "I'm bad at these things". It was super awkward and when I realized what had happened I felt really bad. Now this is from memory so I might be remembering the conversations wrong, but this was the guys side job while he was going through medical school. First red flag, not that big because I was led to believe he wasn't that good at his job.

Second red flag was at the end of August, I had quit my warehouse job by now and was working mon-thurs for Brandon. Around the time I started he had asked if I wanted to do an event in a neighboring state. For a thousand dollars. Fuck yeah, I'd done a couple events before, but this would be my first one fully on my own. I'd drive 10 hours on my own, in his car, and stay a days before driving back down home. It was my first solo trip. The drive there was a PITA but that was no one's fault, an 18 wheeler had flipped on its side and scattered a bunch of giant ass barrels in a field fully stopping traffic for about 40 minutes.

I get to the hotel at midnight text my fiance I'm safe, text Brandon I'm safe. I know nothing about this place except the address. I walk in and the lobby looks like they decorated forty years ago and haven't touched it since. Not even to clean. The wall the front door was attached to was all window and I'm pretty sure one of the ones at the top were broken. I go up to the front desk. There's a little bit of trouble with figuring out my booking but the guy was super nice.

I get my key card, I got one of the rooms you can drive up to, but when I get there lo and behold there's a guy and a girl in my room. I am too polite for my own good cause I go to leave like "oh I'm sorry, they must've given me the wrong room" but the dude goes wait no let's figure this out. I should've left then but I'm 1) a small women, 2) not very confrontational, and 3) super socially awkward. So I stay. Dude's asking all sorts of questions about who I am. I'm telling him I think they accidentally double booked the room without realising (not knowing that's something they would've been able to see in the system). And the chick is just sitting there. At some point the dude walks me out of the room and I mention who I work for and he starts freaking out thinking I said something about cameras everywhere. At this point I'm scared for my life cause the guy flashes a fucking gun at me. We go back to the room and I start bawling because what else am I supposed to do.

The girl, absolute angel that she was idk what she was doing with this guy, tells him to back off and that I'm obviously not a threat. She walks me back to the lobby apologising the whole way because dude had been smoking crack or something. She tells the front desk that there must've been a mixup or something. The girl goes back to the room and front desk guy says he's gonna give me a new room that I can get to through the lobby.

One new key card later and moving the car to the front, that's full of about a few hundred dollars worth of shirts btw, I'm in my new room. Thankfully unoccupied this time. I try calling Brandon to no answer. Then call my fiance because I'm freaking out still and I need someone to talk me through just having my life threatened. Brandon calls back at some point while I'm talking to my fiance and I tell him everything that happened. For the record he felt awful as far as I could tell, now that I know him better I'm not sure if it was self flagellating or if he was genuinely concerned for my safety, but he did put me up in a better hotel. A fancy Hilton actually. Although he didn't want me mentioning it too much or people on the Internet would be upset that a small punk business was spending so much on a hotel room.

But here's the thing, he told me he booked the first hotel in the middle of the night without checking anything. When I finally got somewhere safe I looked up reviews for the place and. They. Are. Bad. People are talking about bedbugs, cigarette burns in non-smoking rooms, BULLET HOLES?

How are you going to send a woman to an event on her own and not even check reviews for the hotel or if it's in a safe area?

I know what happened isn't really his fault, it could've been anyone that walked into that room, and maybe he as a large ass man would've been just fine in less than ideal accommodations. But jfc you should know that I am not as comfortable being in dangerous areas considering those leftist ideals you spout include how women are more likely to get assaulted.

Yes, there's more.

He constantly complained to me about other employees, especially Dave. Which put me in an awkward position because Dave was my coworker and had been there longer. Also it's not like he was fucking up everyday anyway. He made a few mistakes here and there. The thing that finally made Brandon fire him was because he forgot to put the recycling out. Mind you we were working out of this guy's house in a culdesac and he has a thing about the trash people.

Dave got to work later than usual idk why, but Brandon told him it was alright not to worry about it. Then the recycling happened that day and Brandon wanted Dave to drive an hour across town to drop the recycling off at the property where all the screen printing was done. There was a school not even five minutes down the road that he could've dropped it at instead. But no Brandodn wanted him to drive all the way to the other property because he has cameras there and he wanted to make sure Dave actually dropped off the recycling.

Oh my God, the micromanaging. The only time I felt like I could fully relax and get work done was when Brandon was out all day doing other shit.

Now Brandon had been talking for a few weeks about how he was bringing down a couple to work for him, Mark to help with social media and Lane to help in the mailroom. I met Lane before when I went to an event with Brandon, which is another story lol.

Lane told me that she was led to believe that she'd also be helping with events.

They were gonna be living in a house by the new printshop that Brandon just closed on, they just had to cover bills. A house that had no running water btw. The moment they got into town Brandon was already telling me shit I didn't need to know about them, about how they had relationship problems or whatever. It wasn't my business. But this was where I started to realise that my friend was kind of shady.

This next part is my impression of what happened tbh some of it is probably extrapolated and there are other sides to the story; this is just what I witnessed.

Brandon started playing couples therapy between Mark and Lane, which felt super weird because he's not even close to a licensed therapist. Also he's got his own relationship issues. But you cannot put yourself in the position of someones boss, landlord, therapist, and friend all at the same time. He had too much power over them in that situation.

So I'm gonna pause here real quick to talk about Jake, the 'manager'. If you notice the quotes around 'manager', good eye. Because anytime he tried to implement something that would actually help Bradnon would shut it down. (There's that micromanaging again.) Now there's quite a a few things I could say here but I think the best way I can get my point across is with The Print Queue.

The Print Queue is a doc that whenever we get new orders in, we would go through and anything that needed to be printed would be added to The Print Queue. At least once a day I would hear Jake tell someone to 'fucking get off The Print Queue'. There were three people that were usually on it. Jake, trying to update it. Our screen printer, who was checking off what he was currently printing. And the person Archer was talking to, Brandon.

Brandon was constantly on Jake about updating The Print Queue. And instead of trusting Jake to do his job, he would watch him while he was adding to it. Even when Brandon was out of town he would hop on his phone or whatever and check The Print Queue. And then he would also add when Jake wasn't adding stuff. But Brandon tends to focus more on being quick than being thorough so there were always things that would be printed wrong or not be printed at all and we'd have to wait forever to send out a single order because he'd keep fucking it up.

I wouldn't be surprised if Jake would get vietnam-esque flashbacks of asked 'Why hasn't The Print Queue been updated yet?'

One of the problems plaguing the mailroom was the way it was set up. We were in the dining room/breakfast area of the house. It was pretty open concept. The table I worked at, and Lane now that Dave was gone, took up a big portion of the space and was smack dab in the middle of the room. We had to squeeze by each other to get around, so on a day we had almost no work Jake decided to rearrange the room to be more efficient.

The large work table was pushed against the wall. On one end, a shelf with the printer and other stuff. The heat presses we used for tags, koozies, hats, etc sat on that end. In the middle was Lanes workstation with all the stickers and patches for letter mail. And on the other end was the button station. My stupid wobbly desk sandwiched between that and the shelves we kept all the shirts on. We had so much more space and a much easier time getting around.

Brandon threw such a hissy fit when he got home. I wasn't there for it but Lane told me all about it. How he was screaming and throwing things because 'they spent all day moving shit around they didn't get anything done'. Jake spent half the day moving things around and the other half answering emails. Lane and I were filling out orders as usual. I think that was the day Brandon decided he was gonna find some reason to get rid of Jake.

Which happened a few weeks later when Brandon demoted him and Jake got so pissed (understandably) that he left for the day. And instead of letting him cool down and then have a normal adult conversation, Brandon fired Jake through his girlfriend. And then had the audacity to complain to me about how Jake was being disrespectful for refusing to talk to him.

Now at some point another event was coming up, and Brandon informed Lane that he was only taking Mark. Which came as a shock to Lane cause, if you remember, she was under the impression she'd also be going to events. This upset both Mark and Lane because they had basically said they were a package deal.

Mark and Lane had a private conversation where they came to a mutual agreement that Mark would not be going without Lane. Which I get, they had heard gunshots in there neighborhood recently and Lane can't drive. So she'd be home alone all weekend with no protection.

Brandon fired Lane through her husband and gave them 30 days to get out of the house. They left their lives behind to come work for him for like two months and he just kicks them out like that?

Yeah, I quit that same day. I tried talking to him like a week later and he spent most of the time talking out of his ass dismissing shit I was trying to tell him.

I can't keep this to myself anymore, people need to know what he's like. He put my life in danger and he's screwed over me and my friends. I don't care anymore if he sees this. He "lost" the forms I filled out when he hired me I should've gotten a 1099 so I could file taxes but I haven't. Not to mention from the way my job worked I feel I should've been filed as an employee not an independent contractor. He's doing some tax dodging bullshit big corporations do to avoid paying taxes on their employees and he knows what he's doing because as he likes to brag he has a degree in business.

#punk with a camera #fuck you brandon #at least at fedex i had health insurance

0 notes