When Teens Encounter Bad Managers on the Job
April 30, 2025 — Earlier I wrote about my admiration for an exemplary store manager and her young employees, illustrating how and why employers and managers are, indeed, adolescent service providers. The adults in the work world are instrumental in shaping how young people perceive work, employment, work ethics, managerial and leadership skills, workplace communication, responsibility, and accountability.
This week I want to shift focus to bad managers—and explore how the adults in the young person’s life can support them when they encounter abuse in the workplace. I also write in hopes that those who are in managerial positions can take note.
The Stories
Within the span of two weeks, both 18-year-olds who are currently house-sharing with me experienced blatantly verbal abuse from older managers in their workplace. I share their stories here with permission from the boys.
G and J worked at the same grocery store for slightly above minimum wage, each on different shifts. Both were new to the grocery industry and to their roles. G endured weeks of verbal abuse, being yelled at, berated, and humiliated in front of others. The situation escalated one night when he confronted his shift leader, an older man who disparagingly remarked, “You look like a prostitute on a street corner waiting to be fucked.” G returned home, filled with anger and shock, declaring he would take the next day off and was seriously contemplating quitting.
Similarly, J faced a traumatic experience when a customer verbally attacked him and spit on him. The real betrayal came during the follow up interaction with his manager. When J explained that he was defending a co-worker from the customer's verbal abuse, the manager's response was to advise him to show more respect, adding, “No wonder that woman spit on you.” Without waiting to return home, J called me immediately, angry and deeply distressed.
What we did
I’ve heard from parents and other well-meaning folks that when life gets tough for our kids, then we need to be tough with our kids, so they can be tough in the face of life. Life was certainly tough for G and J this month. Their goals over the next year are ambitious: obtain steady, decent-paying jobs; buy a good-enough car; afford first and last months’ rent and a deposit for an apartment; be able to pay for their monthly car insurance payments; and have medical coverage. That’s a lot for two young men!
While the temptation was to tell them to “tough it out,” that they needed to have thicker skin when dealing with people like their managers, and to wait until they’d found other work before quitting, my advice to them was “Resign today. Let human resources know. File a formal report and complaint. And quit.”
Why?
Because the last thing in the world I want to teach them is that verbal abuse, abuse of power, being disrespected, and sacrificing their self-respect for the sake of a job is normal. I recognize this choice comes with privilege. For kids who need to work, are financially contributing to/supporting their family with their wages, or work in areas where work is scarce, then a different kind of support is needed. But G and J thankfully were able to walk away from their jobs within 24 hours.
We spent a great deal of time at home unpacking it all. We discussed the overall work environment, the store’s corporate culture, and how those things influence what happens on the ground. They looked at different scenarios, entertaining different responses and outcomes. They shared their fantasies of justice, of getting back, of what it would have been like if their managers understood young people were on sometimes steep learning curves, and their wish that managers would teach and apprentice them. (Not their words but the sentiment of their words.) I mostly listened, reflected, and joined them in their outrage and their wish for better. At no time did I tell them what they should have done differently. When they suggested responses, I gave feedback—sometimes agreeing, sometimes offering alternative views about what might have helped or made things worse.
The Takeaways
As they began to apply and interview for different jobs, they wanted to tell the story to prospective managers and employers. They got some coaching from their uncle, who cautioned them that this might interfere with their chances of being hired. We started talking about more long-range goals and how to get there. They began pondering what they might need to move into career-oriented jobs. They’ve beaten the pavement both literally and figuratively as they look for another job. They have a better sense of what to look for in a company and in their superiors on the job. We continue to hash out responsibilities, equity, and how to contribute to the household in other ways.
I am tempted to write to the company myself—not as a relative but as a professional who works with young people to express my dismay at the treatment these young people received. I want to let them know that those who manage teenagers and very young adults are in positions of privilege and great responsibility. Young people don’t need to be coddled or treated with kid gloves. They need:
patience;
reminding;
structure;
clear expectations;
respectful, relevant, and reasonable consequences articulated well in advance;
follow through on those consequences;
directions and instructions;
humor;
and to be treated like a human being deserving of respect.
We can create a formidable workforce, a citizenry with a healthy work ethic, and a generation of people who know how to create work environments with a validating ecology. Maybe that work begins with something as simple as a single, respectful interaction between a shift manager and a grocery store stock boy.
Photo by: Ingus Evertovskis