What’s the worst job you have ever had?

[Floopyfloop]

What has been the most soul destroying job you have ever done ?

Amazingly, a couple of days working in Waterstones. My previous bookshop was the victim of a deranged takeover and Waterstones offered me a job. Dreadful manager, arcane IT , though I liked the chap I worked with. We were expected to stay on after the doors closed to cash up - not paid and the extra quarter of an hour meant I missed my hourly train home. Lasted two days then told manager I had made a mistake.

Working for Barclays. I would come home every day, sit down and cry. Dreadful company.

High pressure, high-flying job in advertising industry. I felt equally like a slave in that office than when I was an actual modern-day working slave passed around Irish pubs in London.

I think I'm lucky never to have had a permanent job that was bad. Worst I had was a holiday temping job as a teen, working in factory packing up radiator foil. Very noisy so couldn't chat to anyone just mind numbingly boring.

A bread roll factory. My job was placing the bread rolls onto pieces of card as they came along a conveyor belt. Over and over and over again! I lasted 1.5 days exactly. Made it to the break on day two and just had to walk out there and then before I lost my mind 😂That was decades ago now but I would do almost anything else before doing any work like that ever again.

I once walked out of a temporary Christmas job in M&S
4am start...supervisor on a power trip.
She gave me about 8 different tasks at one time. Each order was followed by "that's a priority!".
I said: "well, they can't ALL be priority..."
Her response through gritted teeth and some insane amount of rage for tasks related to hanging up bras and pants was "They ARE all priority!!"
Me: "Cool"....and I left.

I was about 23, it was too early in the morning and her tone was shit. Goodbye ✌

Six months on a ladies fashion concession in a department store it was very, very boring and the managers were vile.

Teaching English as a foreign language to a group of 12-year-old Spanish school pupils with no qualifications aged about 18. It paid a bit better than other seasonal work in my seaside town, but was massively exploitative as they were just avoiding paying qualified teachers. They gave me a textbook but it was nowhere near enough material to fill 3 hours and they didn't pay for preparation time. The owner of the language school said to try it out and see how I got on, so I lasted three days, said it wasn't working, and walked out. He was massively pissed off about it and I had to get my dad to write a stern letter to actually get paid. The kids were actually quite nice but they were understandably bored.

@2PintsOfCidernaBagofCrisps same for me - marks & spencer - terrible attitude from Management to staff

Topshop in Bath was only 8 hours a week as a teen but omg the management were so bitchy. I think they let the “power” of being managers get to them but it was a horrific place to work. Hates every second.

@whirlyhead It wasn't the Preston branch was it? If so, you have my sympathies. I worked there years ago when I was very young and they made my life a misery. The two older women I worked directly with were terrible bullies who made my life hell, calling me stupid and picking on me about everything from the contents of my packed lunch to laughing at my clothes. The married male office manager was a sex pest, who was having an affair with a junior who'd worked there previously and who was quickly moved to another branch. He ended up trying to kill himself one Christmas when his wife found out, but not before he had sexually harassed me and another young female colleague, once even calling us into his office and ordering us to wear black fishnet stockings to work and telling us we were expected to accompany the bank cricket team to an away match, where our role would be to "entertain" the players on the coach. We were terrified. We had both barely turned 18 and he was a man in his forties. When I tried to complain to HR at head office, I was told by another manager in no uncertain terms that it wasn't the done thing to "snitch" on colleagues. I sometimes wonder if it's too late to do a "me too" on them, I remember all the names. I'd never put up with that behaviour now.

BT call centre. The pay was very generous for call centre work but the environment was absolutely toxic. Horrendous management.

I worked in a cake factory in the summer between A Levels and starting uni. A group of us, all just finished with A Levels, were working on a machine that made fruit cakes for the Christmas period. We worked mornings only. It was a laugh, we talked and listened to the radio, and the lady who supervised us was firm but kind, very approachable and hardworking. We were finished by 12.30 and it was a hot summer so I’d be in the garden all afternoon before heading out with my mates or my boyfriend. Happy times.

The following summer, I applied again. They took me on but it was evening work, cleaning a huge ancient machine that had made some sort of syrup products all day. I was on my own and the work was hard, sticky, smelly and boring. My boss was unpleasant and watched me constantly. I lasted two weeks, gave them a couple of days’ notice and finished.

It's a toss up between a very dry finance admin job I had and a primary school TA. Hated both! The school was probably the issue though tbh.

Security at a well known sporting event working for G4S. 13 hour shifts on your feet, not allowed to
take jackets off in the height of summer, not allowed to speak to anyone unless you were spoken to.

I had a holiday job as a student doing what was called “tray set up” on airline food. It was mostly quite fun, there were loads of young staff, the radio was on, we chatted all day. But then one day I was put on the cutlery team. The cutlery team sat in a circle in the warehouse polishing cutlery and putting it into packets with a paper napkin and sachets of salt and pepper. All day. I was the only student and the others were deeply suspicious of me. Every other sentence was “so you’re not from round here then” or “so you’re at college then”. At the end of the shift the supervisor said he was prepared to give me another chance as I was good at polishing cutlery but he didn’t like clock watchers so I’d need to show more enthusiasm next time.

Definitely working in a care home.. this is what I'm doing now and I absolutely hate it, manager is so rude and horrible! The staff are amazing though be sure we all know how shit it is we all pull together to get everything done. One home by us closed down recently and we only found out by day staff that we was having dementia residents from there but the manager said nothing to us night staff about it at all and none of us are trained in dementia awareness too as we all nurse Parkinson's, stokes and we have residential residents there too.
We are so unbelievably short staffed and so much is expected of night staff too for when days come in, there's 35+ residents with 3 carers and some nights 1 nurse when there should be 2

I'm currently on the sick finding a new job. Rather clap shit in my hands than work there again

temp placement as a PA...

The boss was HORRIBLE

I started at 8.30 and by 9am I'd been screamed at because his coffee wasn't ready on his desk, I'd not done the audio typing and I hadn't booked his flight!! Id not been asked to do any of these things and the audio tape was locked in a drawer in his office... and oddly enough I didn't know anything about the trip scheduled a month later let alone that he needed a flight booked!!

things carried on in this vein until he terminatinated the placement at noon...shouting "you're f*cking useless you're terminated"

Wheni called agency they admitted i was his 3rd PA that week.... it was Wednesday!!! seems the woman who had permanent post resigned after 2 month... he owned the company.. really hope it went out of business!!

otherwise it was working in a sandwich factory .. i stood there by a conveyer belt for about 8nweeks putting bits of lettuce on slices of bread

Worked in Ravel shoe shop. Manager was always on a power trip. Shagging the area manager out the back. Used to flounce around with her Princess Diana haircut thinking she was the bomb.

I was on my breaktime, came out briefly to use the toilet and she literally screamed in my face as to why I was walking past all the shoe boxes that were waiting to be put away. I explained I was still on my break but she carried on screeching at me.
I just picked up my bag and walked out the front door. Shame as the other staff were all really nice.
The head office telephoned me the next day and asked me to go back. I politely declined.

I didn't enjoy working for DWP, I found some of the circumstances people were forced to disclose upsetting. It wasn't helped by the attitude of some colleagues either who had the majority pegged as liars or wasters.

Door to door surveyor/interviewer (think Ipsos Mori type thing) of:

On a scale of 1 to 10 what do you think of the current government?

Cutlery washing
Worked in a 4 star hotel washing the cutlery from 4 course weddings for 300 people on a Saturday and 500 sitting at Sunday lunch.
It was back breaking the waitresses were bitches just used to dump the cutlery in the nearest space which was my space to place trays up to dry and they were paying me £1.50 punt an hour. Lasted a summer and got a better job at a tiny guest house

Paper boy. Got up at 5.45, whatever the weather to deliver two rounds before school. One of the rounds was for companies, so all the broadsheet papers which were very heavy. Also, I had to deal with numerous perverts who tried it on a few times. By far the most difficult job I've ever had!

A Saturday job in a sportswear shop when I was a Goth. I was in charge of the Farrah slacks and Speedo underwear and was shite at it. Didn't turn up one Saturday and got fired lol

Jesus!! 😮