I started a new job yesterday and I think I made a mistake

So, I just started a job yesterday that I was really excited about. I was most recently a small business owner, but I found a great opportunity to go back to full-time work in my previous industry as food technologist in a lab setting. My small business had been doing poorly recently (along with the usual ups and downs of running a business) so I was really interested in working for someone else and enjoying a steady gig/income.

So far, I love the job itself. It’s creating recipes, talking with people, solving problems, and learning a ton about ingredients and the food manufacturing process. I don’t have a food science degree, so this could be a way to learn more about the industry and move my way up. And it’s not fast-paced at all, which I enjoy.

But what do you all think of what I’ve experienced in the past few days? I’m just developing a bad feeling about this. For reference, I directly report to the owner of the company (let’s call him Manny). I have another person in my department who is training me (let’s call him Steve).

• The owner of the company swears a lot. If he doesn’t like something he’ll use the f-word to various employees. (the company is small, fewer than 30 employees, so no HR department)
• When I was interviewing for the job, and over the past couple of days, Manny has told stories about how the people before me were bad at their job. For example he might say something like “Oh and Suzie, I had to fire her, she was awful. Can you believe she had a Master’s Degree in Food Science. And look at the work she did.” Then he showed me some of the bad examples of her work. There is another employee he has talked about like this that he fired as well. This second employee kept making mistakes and wasn’t learning how to do his job correctly. I feel like based on the work I saw, they both tried hard to do a good job for him. I feel bad for both of them.
• Steve (my coworker in the lab) was out sick today. It was only my second day, but he taught me a lot yesterday, so I was doing my best. It was overwhelming at times but I made it through and I’m proud of that. And I made a good product that the owner was happy with.
  • Since Steve was out, Manny had the chance to tell me today how unhappy he is with Steve’s work (this makes Steve the third employee he has talked about like this). He said “I’m going to take my owner hat off now” and said that Steve is an alcoholic, he has been divorced three times due to his alcoholism, and he was getting better, but then he relapsed and he had to go to an alcohol treatment program. He said his health is not good. I think he mentioned wanting to fire him. Manny then went on to say “this is the reason I hired you. Our systems are awful here. I’ll watch Steve at his desk on the security camera and I’ll just see he’s going through papers, stacks of papers. We have a system here for him to follow to stay organized, and he doesn’t do it. We waste so much time. And we need better systems. So that’s why we hired you.” I see Steve as my superior, but Manny wants me to work directly with him (bypassing Steve) to design and set new rules/SOPs and make sure we’re all following them.
  • Manny did say to me “I think you’re doing a great job so far. You’re heads and shoulders above the people before you at this point”.

My personal feelings: since he has mentioned firing, or wanting to fire, 3 people, it makes me worry that eventually I’m going to be in trouble and fired. Whether or not that’s true I don’t know, but it’s the feeling I get. At the very least, it has me on edge and makes me worried he’ll tell others about examples of my poor work performance when I’m not in the room.

I am also very concerned with the fact that Manny felt comfortable telling me about Steve’s health problems in such detail. It makes me want to protect any personal information about myself at work, which isn’t fun.

Also, the last full-time job I had was a very toxic workplace, and in some ways it left me traumatized. It’s one of the reasons I started my own business, to avoid workplaces and avoid having that happen again. I wanted to give it another shot by taking this job. I’m just worried about what I might have gotten myself into.

My small business is still technically “in-business”, and I’ve had a good amount of interest lately from potential clients, so I can always quit this job and go back to that (though my income would be about 1/3 of what it is as a food technologist). But I don’t personally care about a lot of money. I don’t have any debt, and I love being frugal and keeping my expenses low.

Sorry if I rambled on with all of this. I’m just feeling a bit lost and confused about what to make of everything. Thank you so much, everyone – I really appreciate you all. I’d love any thoughts or insights you have on this.