To ask what your worst ever jobs have been?

I was conned into a door-to-door charity sign-ups thing when I was 18 😅 Thought I was interviewing for a marketing role in an office, ended up being put on a bus with a 'trainer' (she'd been there about 6 months and fully drank the cool aid).

It was like a fever dream. Utterly soul destroying, knocking on doors in quite a deprived area trying to guilt people into signing up for regular donations. Apparently only about 30% went to the actual charity as well. She was so convinced that she was going to progress up this career ladder diagram they handed out though, 6 months more as a trainer, then management, then area manager... except all she did was go door to door, so quite how, where and when she'd be learning how to manage people and run a business, I couldn't figure out. I think she genuinely thought that because they'd made her a trainer after 6 months, that's how all promotions worked. Was fascinating to talk to mind.

Anyway, about three hours in she lied to an old woman (told her all her neighbors had signed up) and I lost my shit. Told the old lady to go back inside, gave the trainer an absolute roasting and went home. Got a free sandwich and a twix though🤷🏻‍♂️

A bookies when I was 20
Manager and only key holder to the safe would leave mid evening shift to go give her kids dinner. Customers who won would be having a go because they couldn’t collect their winnings.
It was also a venue that had been robbed a few times.
expected to translate betting slips very quickly.

I lasted 2 months.

I worked in a shop with a basement level for a summer and someone shat on the stairs. When we checked the CCTV it was a normal looking guy in a suit!

Aside from a few part-time student jobs (which were fine), all my jobs have been as a teacher. A couple have been pretty awful, mostly because of the kids' behaviour, some of which was truly appalling. Fortunately I work in a really nice school now.

Nanny for a very well off family, the kids were actually lovely but an odd mixture of extremely spoilt materially yet neglected by their parents emotionally. The father worked abroad permanently and the mother flew abroad for a three week holiday the day after I started leaving me in sole charge of two children, a huge house (it turned out that cleaning was also my job) and the car. They appeared baffled when I asked when my time off/days off were and couldn’t seem to grasp that I would need or be entitled to any sort of a break.
This is many years ago now and I was just too young for that level of responsibility. I cried often with the stress and looking back I feel incredibly sorry for the two kids who got lumbered with me.

For sure. He was a white collar dude as well, when I said it was him no one believed me. Suit and tie, the whole lot. Everyone else’s prime suspect was this really weird guy who stank, but the timing didn’t match up. In another life I am a detective.

Receptionist at a plastic surgery. Shockingly toxic work place. Spoken to badly by other members of staff and patients. Low paid, lots of work, long hours and a very short break. Felt burnt out and stressed constantly.

I do feel mean spirited towards that head teacher and SMT, completely losing sight of the needs of the children entrusted to them in a very poor area and absolutely failing them. Luckily a long time ago now.

This is a thread about the worst jobs we ever had, are we meant to be showing these former bosses kindness and understanding?

@Catsandcannedbeans the urinal shitter that is so gross! And he probably had a fetish imagining people cleaning it up!

My worst job was working for a local newspaper in the 90s. My friend and I were hired to sort out the archives in the basement. It was filthy, smelly and damp. We got covered in black mould and newspaper dust. You'd be required to wear protective equipment to do that job now, and I since found out all the basements of those old buildings are full of radon gas 😑

The word choice of ‘last laugh’ was a bit mean spirited, but I get what you mean.

I've just remembered another awful job I had as a student, trying to flog kitchens by cold-calling people. I was literally given a page out of the phone book and had to work my way down the list calling everyone. I got called every name under the sun, sworn at, I lasted one shift and never even went back to get my pay. Horrible! Huge respect to anyone who lasts in a call-centre job.

Worked at a pub chain from 16-21 and it was my best and worst job. I covered a few shifts at the airport branch and that was genuinely hell on earth. After that I would send people there as a punishment. If you were late consistently, airport, if you were skiving, airport, if you had cheek, airport. I did send one girl there because she flirted with my now husband… it wasn’t right, but I don’t regret it.

The customers were fucking vile. My career highlight was when I caught the urinal shitter and barred him for life. This guy used to come in, order a bitters and a chicken korma and then curl one out in the urinals. I knew it was him, but couldn’t prove it. So one day I followed him and caught him in the act. That job desensitised me to bodily fluid to be honest. That’s good now I’ve got the kids, I am unfazed by sick of anything else.

It was fun though… well sometimes. Also once you’re a manager you can just skive in the office. I was pretty well paid, and we got good bonuses. The staff nights out were also the stuff of legend. Sometimes me and DH still go out with the people who still work there, but we can’t hack it like we used to.

I was exhausted just reading your post op, good luck with the application!

Seriously, if you can handle care homes and call centres, you can do anything.

I also once worked in a theme park. Didn't love cleaning vomit but fortunately didn't have to do it often as worked on the slow kiddy rides. The kids themselves were generally lovely, but the worst bit was the parents, some of whom were surprisingly aggressive.
That wasn't my worst job. My worst was working as a software tester (not so bad, I do that now at a different company) at a company that provided no training, barely talked to me unless they had to and expected the moon on a stick. I took the job as it was a significant pay rise, ended up going back to my previous job within a year.

Doing piecework in 1992 sticking inserts into magazines - a penny a magazine with piles of 4 or 5 different inserts for each one. I earned about 80 pence (which I never claimed!) before walking out.

NHS Service Development Manager. As well as being totally overloaded I was constantly being lied to by consultants and other managers, and directed to lie on documents used for investment decision-making.

Nine months in I quit without another job to go to. I was replaced by three people and none of them lasted a month.

The pandemic has made rudeness worse. Have asked customers what do they try to achieve from being rude towards staff. They can’t reply as they can’t think of anything.

Treat others as you want to be treated yourself

I had lots of awful jobs when I was young and skint. I started working in the early 90s in my school/uni holidays and a lot of companies back then needed to get all their files uploaded to computer from old, paper-based systems, so lots of mind-numbingly tedious data entry, old-fashioned secretarial/typist roles, which have largely disappeared in most industries, and filing (OMG how I hated filing!!!).

But the worst one was a summer job I had one year working in a company that photographed other companies' documents onto microfilm. All day every day you had to unload boxes of company documents, remove the staples and paperclips then put the pile on side of your camera, move the pieces of paper one at a time onto the plate, press the camera button, and then move the piece of paper onto a pile on the other side of the plate ... for 8 hours a day. Within two weeks I had a repetitive strain injury that still sometimes flares up 30 years later!! There were women there though who'd been there for years, for whom it was their FT job. I wanted to kill myself from the tedium after the first couple of hours and how I lasted for eight weeks I'll never know.

I once had a job in a theme park where I had the fun task of cleaning the rides after someone vomited on them - but other than that the job was good so I just got on with it. My worst job was actually an accounts assistant job for a company where the work environment was so toxic that I caused chaos because I made tea for the wrong people. I left that job after a month and went back to my old one!

Hairdressers after I left school. What a load of nasty, bitchy women worked there. I was only 16 and trying to keep in with everyone, but they were determined to be vile and horrible to me. Goodness knows why I stayed as long as I did (3 months of hell).

Before I changed career, my last private industry job was in theory a step up to a middle management position. Managing a small sales team in an office associated with the industry and subject matter I was qualified in (Engineering.)

I made some very obvious in hindsight mistakes, but I do feel the situation was ridiculous.

The job involved building mind numbing complex quotations. Some of which could be up to hundreds of lines long. The sales team consisted of two young lads straight out of college in their first jobs and someone who had been there for a decade.

The previous manager was still there as a part of a handover, when I was out of earshot he was openly describing my failings to anyone in the office who would hear him. The worker who had been there for a decade was massively resentful at being passed up for promotion and simply wouldn't speak to me. (And, based on her knowledge and experience was too valuable to lose, she knew it too....)
The two young lads wouldn't dare contradict the more experienced staff member and initially were scared to speak to me or with her in earshot hostile/sarcastic towards me in order to curry favour. When they realised I wasn't as awful as the atmosphere was trying to imply they were actually fine.... but left the toxic environment fairly soon after.

Other people in the office, while initially friendly then also turned. It would go essentially silent every time I walked in. Communication was almost monosyllabic. The only people to treat me as a human being were a lovely woman in marketing, the receptionist and the manager of the other team in the office. Nice guy, seemed almost embarrassed by the situation.

I sweated this out for two and a half years as while the environment was destroying, it paid really well. I had left a perfectly good job to join this shit show, I was seeing it out.

They eventually realised at the top level that I was not going to quit. And as I was hitting my objectives set in annual reviews they couldn't fire/discipline me into leaving. They paid me off, more then enough to see me into Teaching and Parenthood.

The thing is, the resilience I gained from this actually really aided me in my teaching career. The acquired thick skin is rather useful.

No, I was happy that the management was brought to book over the way they were failing those children.

Its patently obvious throughout my post that I was horrified at the way the children were being failed.

My worst job was also a disability charity. I’ve never known behaviour like it. So many egos. It was my first graduate job and I was really keen to do well, but my Line Manager was constantly on my case and nothing was ever enough yet she also didn’t like it if I said or did the right thing.

There were 3 women nearing retirement who were just bitches and had a little clique going. Childish.

Absolute nightmare very glad to be made redundant.

‘The last laugh’ sounds like you were happy that the children weren’t being taught properly…