To ask what your worst ever jobs have been?

Working making handbags for Mulberry. Shit job, shit management, shit wages. Never known a place as bad for bullying and nepotism.

I had an absolutely toxic boss in a PR agency. She was an utter narcissist and made my life hell. I considered suicide to try and escape.

She was insanely jealous that I a mere minion, had a baby and she was going through infertility treatment.

She has now reinvented herself as some sort of guru, new age coach. She is an utter monster.

Topshop in the 90s- so boring, exhausting and bitchy
I also worked in The Works and the tolls were like giant calculators and a recipe for disaster- the tills were always all over the place at cash up and the work was unbelievably mind numbing, plus running up and down three flights of stairs from the stock room. The manager was a self important bitch too, she was vile. One day during their busiest back to school time I just didn’t turn up for a shift and didn’t go back.

Having experienced a lot of that, I have thought long and hard:

• low self esteem - they make themselves feel better by trying to push others down
• need to be in control - they want to maintain status or improve their chances of promotion and they feel the way to make themselves stand out is by pushing everyone else down
• bad upbringing - their parents treated them badly and they never leant any other way to behave
• toxic culture - they've seen others behave badly and get rewarded for it rather then get into trouble
• stress - very stressed people can behave very badly

When I was a teenager, I worked at McDonald's. It was hot, greasy and diirty work but I could cope with that. The store manager was awfull. He decided to give me a performance review which consisted of a long questionnaire which he marked me on. It was full of subjective questions like "attitude to the store's success". He decided to give me 1 point less than I needed for a 5p per hour pay rise. That wasn't a lot even then. What a dickhead. He could easily have found another point. I handed my notice in on the next shift.

Years ago I worked at a yard where I would do 12 hours a day 6 days a week and was spoken to like absolute shit by the yard owner. I was on my own and was expected to look after the horses, also all her dogs, her sheep and go to her house at lunchtime and do her gardening, bring in coal and peel potatoes. It was like working in Victorian times! I realised just how evil she was when I was trying to leave a bit earlier (all jobs done) to go and see my mum who was very poorly and at that time lived 100 miles away. She saw everything was done and insisted I went round the whole yard removing cobwebs and taking bales of hay out the barn, sweeping the floor and putting them back in. Didn't leave till nearly 9pm. She wouldn't pay until I'd done all the extras. I never went back after that night. Left her completely in the lurch which is what she deserved.

Legal Aid in the 1990s. I'd left a job which I'd really enjoyed but was temp/agency, to work for LA.
Two things that stood out were one of the department managers saying "we had issues with staff, but it's all sorted out now" (when it obviously hadn't because nobody seemed happy). The second was being told off for talking while I worked.
I left about 3 days in ...and before my contract had arrived from Legal Aid head office!
The same day I rang my supervisor at my old job and said "Gissa job!" . He had a chat with the manager and he said "how soon can you start? This afternoon?"
I actually started the following Monday and ended up going permanent and stayed 7 years.

I really don’t understand why people are so hostile to other employees at work. I know you can’t get on with everyone etc, but why be bitchy and nasty for no reason ! Drives me mad.

Airline stewardess for Dan Air. I did it for 6 months then gave up. Absolute bitches I had to work with, horrible abusive passengers, endless work and no fun at all.

Pot washer at 17. I survived one night. (I was too meticulous and totally unable to keep up)

Sales assistant for Oasis. The manager had gone to school with my sibling and hated them so… hated me. She made me wear high heels and a mini dress to work when everyone else was in flats and trousers. I was 16 and so uncomfortable. She then made me ask the customers loads of weird intrusive questions when they wanted me to leave them alone. God I hated that job.

The job itself wasn't too bad, but I was based in a porta cabin in a field. I had to drive to a local supermarket to use the toilets.

working in a call centre for a kitchen company in my teens. Had to make unsolicited phone calls (given a page from the phone book) and make appointments for kitchen designers. Sales person used to walk around the office with a baseball bat slapping it into his hand to motivate us! Think I lasted less than a month.

Pressing keys on church organ for the bloke to tune it .
🤯

just thought it a peculiar way to phase it, that’s all.

This is why I run my tutoring business online. Lessons via Google Meet, Have them back to back. Works brilliantly.

I did a 5 week stint in a factory (as a temp) that made furniture. I was put in the section that had to attach the padded seats of sofas to a giant air blower thingy that filled them with shredded foam rubber type stuff. It sounds easy - it wasn't. Most of the other workers were old hands and did around 50 seats an hour. I, on the other hand, managed about 5 if I was lucky. And even they were far from perfect. On top of that, the female supervisor was barking mad. She really was. She'd swig vodka throughout the day (don't blame her actually) and get increasingly more eccentic and sometimes bordering on violent. I'd like to say I'm stronger for it, but .............

Piece work - running the strings through JD Sports bags.

Absolutely mind-breakingly horrific - house rammed with boxes, we were expected to do several boxes a day and the man who came to collect them was really nasty if you hadn't done your quota.

The metal prong thing you had to use to shove the strings through was rough on your fingers and whilst the strings themselves felt soft enough after forty or fifty they shredded your fingers, being a very fine abrasive. After the hundreds you needed to do to meet quota, fingers would be bleeding (and woe betide you if you got blood on any of them). You could NOT do it wearing gloves though - I tried! Thick gloves meant you could not get the strings through at all, thin nitrile type gloves tore in seconds.

I lasted a week, I think I earned about £4. I told the collection man to fuck off when he laughed at the state of my hands.

I worked on a ride called the Turkish twist which was notorious for vomiters- I'd get one most days! Still had a great time working there- we had free accommodation provided and every night was a party. They made me a supervisor by the end of the summer and I used to spend the day wandering round with the supervisor from another secton going on all the rides for free!

I will never ever go back to private tutoring. The thing I've seen in people's homes, no standards, homes look like bomb sites, endless travelling and worthless pay. Waste of time and travel.

Some kind of Christmas emping work selling makeup off those popup counters you see in department stores. I was 17 and lasted about a week. This customer said "I'll think about it" and the woman said "Well don't think too long because we haven't got many sets left" AND I SAID "Yeah we have, there's millions in the back". Woosh.

Oh God, some of these stories are horrendous. The shitstain man in the Games shop! 😫🤢

I worked at Gatwick for one summer while I was a student, cleaning planes. It was actually quite a laugh except for the fact I had to be there at 4am and that we had to work VERY QUICKLY and got shouted at if we didn’t work fast enough. And finding dirty nappies and used tissues in the seat pockets was never pleasant.

Also: secondary school teacher. I made it though my NQT year, left to have a baby and then never taught again apart from a bit of supply. I actually preferred supply to a permanent role cause you expected bad behaviour and knew the kids probably wouldn’t get much work done so it felt less pressured. But as someone who is prone to anxiety at the best of times, I’ve never had so many sleepless nights as I did in my NQT year, and such awful dread about going to work. Friday nights were when I got to relax but the fear of the following week was beginning to creep back in by Saturday afternoon. I have huge respect for anyone who can command the respect and attention of a bottom set Year 9 while ploughing through Macbeth😂

Working for a Domestic Abuse charity.
The actual job felt like it was more to do with navigating office politics and cliques instead of helping anyone. There were 3 different recording systems to put information, so sensitive or timely information you’d need could be anywhere.
The focus was on ‘added value’ to prove something to funders so you’d have workers running ridiculous groups and then not doing anything related to helping make women safe.
The whole thing felt like a con and very badly run.
I wouldn’t work for the Third sector again.

Have only really fully worked in Hong Kong.
Working in restaurants. Wanted to kill myself.
Standing till feet hurt and being screamed at.
Dirty environments.

I worked in jewellery at one point, that was horrible, no idea what to do and no one trained me or explained anything. Spent ages picking up gems from carpet.

Taught at a learning centre, it was disgustingly dirty and only cleaned once weekly, there was fine dropping from the ceiling, damp mould and ripped seating. The hours were long, it was toxic and lunchtime meant being locked out of the centre and sitting in 30°C+ heat.
The really bad one was order fulfilment above a restaurant. Filthy place, no pay until I left and threatened legal action, had to work in the dark, staircase was a death trap with no lighting and filled with products.

Working in a number of old-style phone fascia/knockoff bag lock-ups in the early 00s. Very long days, on your feet all the time and the manager of one of the shops swore at us and insulted us all day long. He did it in front of the customers too, so much so that one day a nice, well-meaning but clueless customer asked us all what we were still doing working there. It wasn't the type of job you did if you had lots of other options! It was a holiday job for me and I got a better one after a few weeks, but the others were stuck there and I really felt for them.