Going back to work after 6 years as a SAHM, I got offered a pretty good job, so I thought, in the local authority in my town (10 min commute) at the same time as being offered a job in a big financial services firm which was an hour commute. The pay difference was about £10k but I decided being close to DC’s school and not having a long and expensive commute was a much better option.
I had only ever worked in the private sector (big firms) prior to that and I’ll never forget the agency who got me the financial services job telling me to be really careful about going into the public sector and she hoped I wouldn’t regret it!
Well I did, big time! On my first day, I was told I wouldn’t be working for the person I though I’d be working for (a Director, I was a PA) so had never met the person I would be working for (the Chief Executive) who turned out to be the biggest arsehole I’d ever met!
At first I though I thought it was a promotion only to find out shortly afterwards his last PA had resigned on the spot and he’d gone through 4 others in the preceding two years. Everyone hated him so therefore hated me! Constantly ignoring requests to do stuff that I needed to carry out my job, reports, budgets, agree to meeting requests etc. He would then get aggy with me. The staff were all nice and smiles to his face and swearing openly about him as soon as he was out of earshot. Telling they wanted to spit in his sandwiches which I had to go out and buy and put on a plate with a serviette!
Also on my first day, a colleague had a massive row on her phone in the office with her boyfriend who she’d recently split up with apparently. Full on shouting and calling him a fucking cunt. I was just 
. Colleagues told me she was diagnosed with MH issues so got away with it. She was constantly off sick and not doing her work and as she worked in parallel with me, I had to pick up the slack and deal with her outbursts. She actually made me cry one day which I was absolutely mortified about as I was definitely not someone who had ever cried at work!
No one could ever be sacked so it seemed. I put in grievances but they didn’t do anything about it. One time my boss screamed at me because I forgot to flip his desk calendar to the next month, literally turning the page. I raised a grievance but was told ‘well he’s the Chief Exec, what can we do about it?’ I asked to be moved to a different role but was refused.
I stuck it for 14 months. I don’t know how, then went sick with stress for a few weeks as I couldn’t face going back after annual leave. Then resigned. The job had a really good pension as well 
.
I have never known such unprofessionalism and incompetence in any other job. Absolutely shocking.