I undertook a five-week stint in a call centre when I was between jobs after moving to a new area. The manager was a deeply unpleasant, unfriendly woman who would bark at people; 'Haven't you any work to do'? if she saw anyone taking even the briefest of seconds between calls to share a sentence or two of conversation with the person sitting next to them.
Then, ten minutes later, you'd see her having loud, extended conversations with other members of staff, laughing uproariously and talking about non-work-related stuff. It made me want to shout across the room at her; 'Haven't YOU any work to do'?
The whole place had an air of deep sadness, regret and desperation about it - largely owing to the shit wages, long hours and unrealistic management expectations of how many phone calls any one human could handle in a twelve-hour shift (yes, twelve hour shifts were the norm in this hellish, tube-lit den where dreams went to die).
It was a massive office on a scruffy trading estate in the arse-end of nowhere, with stained old carpets, chipped paintwork, a run-down kitchen and the meanest, most-depressing staff room you've ever seen - that some previous employee(s) had gamely tried to cheer up by installing a borrowing library (full of depressing crime and murder novels), a few plastic pot plants and an old battered sofa that looked as though it was trying to melt itself through the floor in order to escape the hell in which it had somehow managed to find itself.
The lighting was those dull fluorescent tubes that give off a sickly, greenish glow that always reminds me of inner city minicab offices at night and the toilets were down a warren of corridors that always made me think of scenes from 'The Walking Dead' or some other zombie apocalypse scenario - I was always expecting the desiccated, shuffling visage of some long-dead former employee to greet me at every turn.
When the horrible manager wasn't there, the staff would moan CONSTANTLY about how much they hated her, hated their jobs and would do anything else rather than work there.... but some of them had been there for years and years. Conversely, there were also plenty of people who only lasted a day there, and the staff turnover was MASSIVE, unsurprisingly.
It was, hands down, THE most depressing job I've ever had. I still shudder thinking about it now. Luckily, after five weeks, I found a lovely job and I'm still there now.