This is really a terrible story -- and terribly familiar. Just reading it is enough to give me PTSD flashbacks. A couple of times in my college career I worked "retail" for a few months. Nothing as awful as what you went through in terms of physical working conditions, but the attitudes of the managers, the way they treated their workers, the unbelievable boredom and sense of imprisonment and oppression ... it's all cut from the same cloth.

From that experience came my entire dread of "business" in general ... and my resolve to off myself before ever agreeing to go back to it. Through the years, people thought it was hyperbole when I would say that with conviction, but I was totally serious. Nothing in my life, with the one exception of my pets, was so precious to me that I would buy it at that price. I would do pretty much anything to avoid going through that again.