What made your job unpleasant or toxic for you?

[HeyArnoldHey]

Leaving my job and handing in my notice tomorrow. Feel so relieved but still somewhat nervous. I feel this place will have really effected my mindset and hope it doesn't damage me in my next role .
I thought I'd start a thread of what made your job unpleasant or toxic to you and why you moved on or are planning to? So I know I'm not alone!

For me.......

• micromanagement to an inch of its life. Manager must know where we are constantly with high intense details of our personal life. Even wfh we have the message her when we go to the toilet Via messenger for no real reasoning . We must account for every task in our day and how long it took on a tracker . Multiple check ins a day even when off sick we will get a few texts , how are we? Are we back tomorrow? Have we been to the doctor?

• mixed feedback. Given feedback for x . Will action then told they no longer want me to do x . Then a month or two later. Why am I not doing x ?

• ideas are apparently encouraged but the minute you have one, manager will take over and tell you exactly how to do it until the fine detail allowing no room for your own creativity to flourish. It stopped me wanting to put forward ideas as you don't get to fully see through what you hoped.

There's more but I don't want to be too outing

In my first job it was manager. Taking me to task in front of people (for things that turned out not even to be problems), being super critical. Then when I eventually said I'd start looking for another role said she wouldn't recommend me for similar roles and after a few weeks insisted I give a leaving date (illegal - constrictive dismissal, but job was too low paid to be worth a fight). I am still in same field, thanks very much - luckily never had a similar experience since.

Omg you will feel an absolute breath of fresh air!
Mine is my boss’ son. Turns up at lunch, some days. Others not at all. Arrogant, disrespectful, disruptive to the functioning of the business. I’m pregnant and he tries to touch my bump on a weekly basis. Hacks me right off! X

Expected long hours, way over contracted hours, without overtime paid and wouldn't pay me extra on top of salary for the occasional weekend events we had to do. No pay rise for 4 years at one point.

"Boy's club" culture where the (male) business owner frequently socialised with male employees outside of work. Guess who always got the promotions and favourable treatment? When I made an informal complaint directly to the business owner about this, it was dismissed and I was told I was just imagining things.

Micromanagement. No freedom or permission to actually get on and do the job the way I wanted to, but then told that I lacked initiative when I asked for a pay rise.

David Brent-style manager who used to do stuff like tell me how he wanted something done, then I'd point out the flaws in the plan, he'd double down because he couldn't bear for a younger woman to have a better idea than him, then when it inevitably went wrong as I'd predicted a few weeks down the line he'd be pointing the finger and asking why on earth did I do it that way?? Conveniently could never seem to recall, even when I reminded him, previous conversations where it had been his idea and he'd dismissed my concerns.

Business owner bringing his personal problems to work and verbally attacking junior staff - only ever females - because he was going through a stressful divorce. This included swearing and shouting at one female employee in her early twenties which resulted in her crying in the toilets, feeling humiliated. Shocking to witness.

Final straw for me was when, after years of loyal service (what a mug I was), they only deemed me worthy of basic SMP and didn’t offer any kind of enhanced maternity package. This is whilst the owners are upgrading their cars every fives minutes and showing off their vast wealth (literally coming into the office and saying “check out my new Rolex”). The shit maternity pay was so typical of the way they treated females in the organisation. I finally just realised how little they valued me, that actually they needed me far more than I needed them, and that I needed to get out for my mental health.

Change of focus of job from 'Managing' a service to 'Selling' a service.

Being marked down for resistance to change when I pointed out that if that had been the job description when I was recruited I wouldn't have applied.

Constant pressure to meet weekly targets; no investment in the service; and management apparently unable to link lack of investment/marketing with failure to reach targets.

Charity sector.

I loved my job (NHS) but hated my manager. She was such a bitch.

My DF died totally unexpectedly and when I got the call I left work and went home. Manager said to a colleague 'Well, we'd all like to go home wouldn't we?'

Finishing at my contracted time (14.45) to go and collect DS from school she sarcastically shouted across the office 'Don't worry about us (the rest of the office) we'll carry on and do all the work'.
And on another occasion - 'Why don't you move your children to schools closer to work?' (I lived 15 miles away, school was close to where I lived).

After returning from an official tea break - 'Breaks aren't compulsory you know'.

When I was pregnant - 'Why don't you book all your antenatal appointments at a hospital closer to work?'

Those are just a few examples, it went on and on. She was horrible and had no empathy or sympathy and treated everyone like that, not just me and she always did it in front of everyone else. She got away with it because the General Manager was an even bigger bitch (I was a band 5 - 'I expect you to be available to me at all times, even when you're on holiday').

Oh god. Some I can't repeat because they are probably outing to anyone who has ever met me!

Weird micro managing to the nth degree. eg, agreed a strategy/message for a call. I'd make the call with him literally standing over me listening. If I used a slightly different word, he'd make me call back. And I mean a WORD. eg, message is that we have a lot of xx widgets. If I said we have "many" widgets, he would have a meltdown and I'd have to call back and correct myself.

He didn't like that the team liked each other and supported each other and did his best to get us to screw each other over (eg taking people aside and trying to get them to badmouth their boss or whatever). He also tried to stop us talking to each other by banning, for example, saying "how are you?" in the morning (this is a real example. I promise).

Once on his way to a meeting, he got lost. This was when google maps on phones was still a bit erratic. He rang his PA and wanted her to "walk him" through it using google maps on her computer. But couldn't explain where he was. Called her a "F*ing moron". She was a temp, put the phone down and walked out. We LOVED her.

I was quite senior and v experienced and in my role I was expected to have a certain amount of technical skill/knowledge in order to interact with the specialists within the business. I had an unofficial role as mentor/trainer for the rest of the team who had less knowledge than me. Previous bosses saw this as one of the most important things about me and our team's ability to service internal clients. He would refuse to believe me when I said that x or y was because of a or b. Would insist I called the internal client or would do so himself etc. Mortifying.

Two major plus sides 1. when he advertised my job.... while I was still in it, and refused to let me actually APPLY for it I walked away with an absolutely MASSIVE cheque.

1. He now has an absolutely toxic reputation within our industry. Had to leave the country to get a job but returned a year later, tail between his legs and while he's working now, he's a single-person operator and it took him a year to get the job.

OP - it will be life changing when you leave!

Oh, and 3rd positive: those of us who worked for him are now like post-war buddies. Honestly, we're like a SEAL team who were parachuted into a major engagement and saved each other's lives 1000 times. Any one of us could, today, nearly 10 years later, ask for a favour and the rest of us would drop everything and turn up. These people aren't necessarily my best friends, but they are absolutely the ones I'd call if I needed help burying a body!

Being more experienced than the management and having to deal with their mistakes, lack of experience and ignorance.

Being micromanaged.

Too much 'training', bureaucracy and paperwork.

Stupid rules and regulations.

Pressure to do extra shifts.

The fact that the record keeping wasn't computerised, so having to deal with files that weighed so much you could barely pick them up - far too antiquated and inefficient.

Had a new boss who was straight out the army and wouldn't be questioned about his decisions.

Shouted at me that it wasn't important if what I was doing was right or wrong, what was important was that I did what he told me because he was my boss.
He made a complaint with the directors about me for not making his tea abs various other snidey things.

Complete inability by management to make a decision in a timely manner. Drive me mad. That and a toxic colleague who upset everyone and was not managed.

The general public! Man, I hated working in retail.
Having said that, there were some lovely people as well as awful and it was bearable when we had a good manager and we knew he had our backs. One example of his brilliance was mysteriously misplacing the CD of awful Christmas music that we were expected to use from October. It finally made its way from the bottom of his desk drawer out on December 1st and was ditched as soon as possible.

Once he left the shop went from and OK place to work to a hell hole. We had a series of temporary managers who insisted on changing absolutely everything only to leave after a couple of months and then everything would change again. Ended up with a man who would regularly get a bit handsy with certain female members of staff. Then our sick pay was taken away. Or rather, we were told we'd only be paid on day 3 (consecutively) of any sickness and given all the floor staff were on a variety of part time contracts that meant none of us worked three days on the trot so this meant that even if you ended up seriously ill in hospital you wouldn't get any pay.
Then head office were all puzzled that staff morale was low and staff turnover was increasing. They also took away the special staff evening where we'd get 50% off everything. Gits.
When I had my second child I took every day of paid maternity leave and then quit.