What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?

[Finallybreathe]

I no longer get Sunday blues which I’m so happy about but was just thinking in my old job, Sunday blues would start Saturday night! Only lasted 3-4 months before quitting

What’s the worst job you’ve had? How long did you work there?

What job was it, OP? Bit strange asking everyone else for details of theirs when you don’t give any details of yours.

Telesales. No computer or email. Depressing office on an industrial estate. Selling ads into a crappy magazine. Literally just phoning people and faxing them info. Would usually have called through all my leads by 945 then sit going through newspapers to find new leads. Then repeat in the afternoon. So unbelievably boring. That was a long time ago, love my job now!

I've got two.

Firstly working in a quite niche role in local government in a team who were really awful. Lazy bullies. Got out of that for the sake of my own mental health.

Second one, call centre for a housing association. The residents were actually not the problem, it was the management. It was the most rigid, soulless, dead behind the eyes place I've ever worked. The training manager was the worst. Would literally walk the floor listening in on any non-work conversation or deviation from what she (badly) taught you. She was an 'I'm from London and I worked on a market stall so I know how to talk to everyone' type. Awful woman.

Oh, I worked at the first one for two years, the second less than a year.

GP's receptionist. Four months. It was the management and bullying of other staff. When I complained about it, I was treated like a trouble maker. No issues with patients.

I temped for years, I'm spoilt for choice. I've often wondered why, when there's so much information around about how to be a good manager that there are still so many useless ones.

Hotel
and on change over day I did the laundry spent many a Saturday afternoon bleaching skid marks off towel and spunk stains off mattress covers

Tesco checkout. Did the training, did one shift then quit immediately after.

Was dreadful.

Comms job for a housing association. The management team were sexist bullies who wouldn’t take any advice, there was no budget and not enough work. I lasted three months.

I worked in a wine cellar turning bottles of wine a quarter of an inch using a calliper for 8 hours a day. The dude in charge looked like a mole. He hadn't seen daylight in years. Lasted 2 weeks.

Also as a student I took a job selling textured wall coverings door to door. Lasted a day.

Another student job trying to get quick cash for a holiday. Blackcurrant picking. Google how tiny those fuckers are. 30p a punnet. Lasted 2 hours.

McDonalds as a student.

Working in a DIY shop in my youth, fuck me it was boring.

Have been a nurse for over 25 years now but by far the hardest job I had was working in a nursing home just before I started my training it was brutal, such hard work.

Lol!

Why is the first reply so often really arsey? It’s like people jump on an OP and try and see the tone for a pile on.

When I was about 16 or 17 I went for what Id been told was a job interview for a sales position at 9am.

I wasn't very experienced in job interviews, but even I knew something felt off during this so called interview. They were giving positive quotes about success and hard work, being over the top with friendliness and told me I had the job which would start that same day.

The only problem was I still didn't know exactly what the job would involve. They said we wouldn't be working in our city, but that we'd be getting the train to the next town. I asked if it was door to door sales and was told no. I kept asking all the way to the station, and on the train, no, no, no I was told.

We got off the train and they split us into a few groups to work on an estate in what felt like the middle of no where and guess what, it was door to door sales!

To make it worse my period started and as there were no pubs or shops in sight I had to ask a stranger could I use their bathroom. Luckily the lady kindly agreed. She could probably tell I was young and upset as I was on the verge of tears at this point.

I told the group leader I didn't want the job and they just gave me the return ticket and said whatever!

I remember feeling so scared at the time as I didn't have a clue where I was, how to get out of this estate or where the train station was when I got out. I also had no money and only the return train ticket and this was in the days before mobile phones. Luckily enough a lot of kind people on the way helped me to find my way to the station.

If that was today if have told them no after the interview, but I was young, inexperienced and naive.

Cashier in Zara. I lasted 3 months there, the worst 3 months of my life. I hate this store so much I don’t go there and I quit in 2014.

Working at a meat processing plant.

I had no proper training. Just told to stand there and do this..

Nearly dropped a heavy box on top of my head. A woman manages to just stop it.

Walked out after that. I didn’t even finish the shift.

If they weren’t going to give me proper training so I don’t harm myself, I’m not risking being there.

chambermaid at a local holiday camp when I was 17. I have never forgotten the smell from the third room. I only lasted the morning.

Opening thousands of packets of out of date peanuts in a factory that made peanut butter. Literally soul destroying. Mind you, that Christmas the Harrods peanuts sold in expensive little jars were actually the out of date KP and supermarket brands that had been bought by the factory for peanut butter. I know this as I saw the bottling line ladies take our sacks and put them in the filler machine.

Cleaned planes at an airport in my university summer hols, a few decades ago. God it was dreadful.

I’ve worked on a checkout for years and love it but I can understand it’s not for everyone.

As a student, working in a dry cleaner’s. The chemicals didn’t help my asthma.

My current one. Started 3 weeks ago and hopefully leaving asap.

a call centre back in the late nineties. Smoking room where all the gossip happened. Cliques. Bullying. The managers were in a relationship and made loads of awful mistakes, but got away with it. Treated some of us like shit, but not the ones they smoked with in the (tiny smelly, sticky walled) smoking room. There's a facebook group where a fair few ex employees wax lyrical about what a great place to work it was.
I'm either being gaslit or was working in a different place!

Doing festival clean ups, after university and before getting a real job. (1998).

I was horrible work, long hours bending down to pick stuff up and put it in bin bags. Leeds, Reading, Warwick. Every tiny piece had to be cleared, every fag but, cocktail stick, bottle top etc.

Every bit of glass had to be dug out of the soil; who knew that so many people like to hammer bottles into the ground and smash them?

A particularly horrible aspect was the number of abusive, arrogant shitheads, calling us slaves and nobodies, deliberately dumping litter next to us, slashing the piles of bin bags.

The single worst thing was the disabled area, at Reading. There were pads and cardboard piss bottles and shit pans everywhere. They even put them in bags and threw them into trees - the gaffer came and made us take it all down.

Fucking horrible.