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Steven R. Haba AKA Steve Haba Abusive, liar, psychopathic behavior Santa Cruz California
My boyfriend and I came to work with Steven Haba for the purposes of living and helping out on a farm. We worked with him for one day, which was about all we could tolerate of his abusive, psychopathic behavior. Though we were living on the farm about 70 yards from the work space, he told us we were not allowed to return to the house during the day, as we were 'here to work,' something he insisted on mentioning countless times throughout the day despite the fact that we were doing just that. He continued, for the entirety of our 8.5 hour shift, to verbally harass and disrespect us to an unbelievable extent. Beginning immediately, he pounded out technical terms and jargon despite knowing it was my first day and that I had no experience. When he questioned whether or not I understood it, I glanced at my boyfriend and Steven ordered me, "You look at me when I ask you a question, not him." The reason I had turned to my boyfriend was due to his level of experience over mine, in a way hoping he could help me should the need arise. This was nothing but a look, and as I looked at my boyfriend I also replied to Steven, giving him absolutely no reason to speak to me that way. Minutes later, when writing out labels, he watched me closely and told me to make my 4's more rigid. He repeatedly asked me if I had any experience at all in the field, and asked my boyfriend impossible questions about his previous work - which he responded to snidely by questioning how long my partner had actually been in the field for. We were never offered appropriate breaks; California law states employees must be given 10-minute breaks for every 4 hours worked.
Later, he told us that maybe we could leave the greenhouse - but only during our unpaid lunch, a complete departure from his rigid order of no foot traffic between the two. After we asked to go, my partner questioned whether 4:30 was the correct time for us to leave. Steven challenged this sarcastically, asking, "who told you that?? Your other boss?" Instead of professionally letting us know what time we could expect to leave, and in line with the rest of his behavior that day, he was vague, uninformative, and downright disrespectful of the both of us. He asked my partner about the amount of his student loans. He scoffed at me for asking about the other operations in the company (out of curiosity, and accurately so, based on what my partner had told me). My partner said there were a few things about the previous job (he had transferred within the company) that he found stressful, and Steven took the liberty to dig deeper and ask about specifics. When my partner mentioned the solitary nature of it and the accompanying loneliness, Steven proceeded to - as he apparently does best - scoff and reply snidely with "Oh, well we're not here to talk, we're here to work," even as he continued to chat and very personally interrogate us. He told us he had 20 years of experience in the business, even though his age checked out later as 30. So he started working at 10? He mentioned another manager getting sick 'for the first time in 2 years,' a) as if we shouldn't dare get sick and b) the impossibility of this was strong as this particular manager had, for certain, only been working there a year.
When we finally asked if we could leave after 8.5 hours to simply let our dog out (remember: 70 yards away), Steven responded by asking if our dog would be a handicap to the job. Absolutely insane! How dare someone, especially on a professional level, speak to us in this manner? If anything, this job was a handicap to our dog. I would never dream of neglecting an animal for the sake of a job, least of all one that abuses our own rights as workers. This was not the end of it - not even close.
As we tried to leave, Steven caught us and asked us to finish something, adding to it, "...since you guys are in such a rush to leave." When we asked about the hours for upcoming days, despite our contract specifying 7 am to 4 pm, he told us we would be working 6 am to sundown through the rest of the week and on both Saturday and Sunday. The next morning he texted, telling us to pack lunch because there would be no going back to the house.
After promptly leaving the premises and quitting this insanely abusive job, speaking with Steven's boss - a more respectable man who had invested a lot of faith in my hardworking partner - we learned not only had he told a completely different story to this boss (likely in an effort to personally slander our actually very good work ethic) - but also that we had the liberty to clock out whenever we wanted to, and we could absolutely return during an unpaid break to the house to walk our dog. This paints Steven R. Haba not only as a cold and calculating boss with a personal agenda against us, but a complete and absolute liar. In addition to publicly exposing him by name here, I plan to report him for breach of California labor laws, in the hope that his corrupt treatment of innocent employees (no doubt in an effort to bring them to down to his own personal level of misery) will be put to an end. I can also only hope that karma will one day sentence this man to the same torturous abuse he has inflicted on others.