What was your worst ever job?

[RinkeyDinkey]

And did you leave with a bang?

I've had quite a few jobs in the past. What I have found is that it is usually small indepedant business owners who believe they own you and have control over your life. Expected to work unpaid overtime by wanting you there 20 mins before shift starts and half an hour afterwards. Dictating when you can take time off, no empathy or tolerance for sickness, poor pay, scrimping on things/cutting corners to save money and no proper breaks. And it's not for the benefit of customers, it's to line their own pockets. Bad treatment of staff = low morale and no respect which I think creates a bad buisness/ company.
Oh and working in care or hospitals I've found it's usually the middle aged women who are bitchy and manipulative

Cleaning up after Leeds Festival. I was 19. Did one day, didn't go back.

Toss up between two weeks at Macdonald's and 2 nights flogging timeshare over the phone. I was let go from Macdonald's, and couldn't make myself go back for the third shift at the timeshare place.

respect to you, EarthboundMisfit. I've often wondered about the poor sods who have to clean up festival sites. It would sorely test my love for fellow humans.

Working in a greengrocers when I was 19. I was on minimum wage and had to work 6 days a week. It was dull, dull, dull. Also it was a family run business and me and the only other member of staff who wasn't family were treated very differently than the family members.

I had to stick it out for 3.5 months as I needed the money (I was living alone at that age and paying rent).

I have done telesales cold calling work and I even liked that better than the greengrocer job.

When i was 16 Saturday job in hotel laundry . Bleaching skid marks off towels and spraying vanish on spunk stained sheets and mattress protectors before washing them .

Was 19 and worked at a rough, going slowly out of business local pub. Think nicotine stained ceilings because the manager still smoked indoors (this was after smoking ban was in full force!) and a mix of old leery men and underage angry teens who we were encouraged to turn a blind eye to because they were mates with the owners son/kids of regular patrons. I didn't mind it so much until one night i was on my own locking up, just behind the bar and the owners brother appeared out of the dark really drunk spouting nonsense about how he didn't want to go home to his wife because their new baby kept crying and she wouldn't sleep with him. He came up to the bar and began saying all sorts of disgusting things about me and what he wanted me to do before suddenly trying to lunge over the top of the counter, demanding that I just give him one kiss. I screamed and ran. Luckily there was a lovely regular having a last fag on the steps outside who helped me get rid of him and then she helped me lock up. Next day I told my manager who begged me not to report him and said she'd have a word with him. Stupidly because i was young and this was my first job i thought id maybe what happened wasnt that bad and truusted that she'd soft it. He was still allowed in and every time he'd wait to make me serve him hed stare at me without saying anything, then very deliberately look me up and down and smile. Never said or did anything again but the whole thing just showed me that if you weren't part of the 'community' you weren't anything. I quit a month later. Still see him around when I visit home, makes me sick.

Mine was a care home, lasted 1 night. Poor sods, knowingly left in wet beds so they only had to be changed once to keep the laundry down and the chef feeding them spicy food every night because that's all he could cook.

NHS Office Manager job. Line manager was clueless but incredibly self-important. The Director asked me on my second day if I could type (no love, you've just appointed an office manager who can't use a keyboard OF COURSE I CAN SODDING TYPE).

Very odd working environment with weird pointless rules about who could or couldn't do certain things, and no one really spoke to each other.

Lasted four days then legged it for less pay but more sanity.

It wasn't actually bad, just boring but when I left the supermarket I worked at I was so annoyed the only thing to read in the break room was the daily star that I bought them £100 worth of books including Beyond Good and Evil by Frederick Nietzsche and a giant illustrated Art History book (I was in a big German Romanticism phase).

I'm a mental health nurse. My worse job was working for the Prison service. The inmates were actually ok, but the system was awful, many of the officers were ex services and still thought they still were, and saw the inmates as the enemy. Some of the inmates I had sympathy for. This was the mid 90s, and they were still getting people in for non payment of poll tax, which I'd never paid either. Another inmate had a good job as a trainee manager in Safeway as it was then, but had had a driving ban, cant remember whatvfor. One of his kids had had meningitis, and his other kid was showing symptoms. He jumped in the card with the child to take them to hospital, jumped a red light, and was stopped by the police and the book was flung at him and he ended up in prison on remand and lost his job. I was made to feel weird for feeling some empathy for him. The job was aĺl locking and unlocking doors and dishing out methadone.

I dreaded going in, couldn't enjoy my days off and annual leave cos I was dreading going in. I started sleepwalking and had migraines. I was under other stress to-got married, moved from a council flat to buy a place and my dad died suddenly. But the migraines and sleepwalking only stopped when I left the job.

Beyond horrible babysitting jobs for parents' friends or sister's friend's parents, it would have to be in a bakery of a small town store.

The bakery part was fine - happy to wash dishes or cut up the cakes after they'd been baked or do stock checking or get stock from the freezers or whatever - it was just that there was so little communication and unless the manager was on, people just messed around. I was repeatedly left alone on the counter when I was only legally old enough to give samples or hand over products, I couldn't use the cash register or the bread cutting machine so I was constantly having to get people who were messing around in the back.

I didn't leave with a bang, I was fired as one dude, who actually worked in the butcher's section but was covering, kept hanging out back badly flirting and would not respond to me or move out of my way even when carrying things unless I tapped him or nudged him & he claimed that I (half his age) was sexually harassing him and smacked his butt (I tapped his back because he was a lot taller than me). A continuation of the bad communication, I wasn't told this when I was fired, I was given this speech about employment being like a marriage and sometimes it doesn't work (really bad to do to a kid whose parents were in the middle of divorce), I only found that out because my father called them after I told him I'd been fired and wasn't sure why. It was probably best for my sanity.

Working as a carer.

I hated every minute of it. I did domicillary care work which I didn't mind, but then when I worked in a care home... Honestly I am not exaggerating I think I would have had a nervous breakdown.

I was so happy when I got a new job! I worked almost all 4 weeks of my notice, and then I called in sick two days before I was due to leave because I just couldn't face going back there.

Stupidly, they asked me to do a shift when I worked at my new job and I said yes OK.

Biggest mistake ever! It was the most horrendous shift. There was 46 residents, most with complex and mental health needs and only 4 care staff to get them all ready, breakfast/lunch/dinner...

NEVER EVER AGAIN!

Marketing for a US company. The culture was vile. Colleagues were encouraged to try to make each other look as bad as possible during presentations to the directors. Asking the most obscure questions they could find. One of the agencies I used called it a nest of vipers.

My line manager managed a different product to me and was v competitive. He was v conflicted as it wasn't in his best interests for me and my product to shine. His boss was v supportive to me but sadly left so I floundered.

I left after a meeting with HR. Its telling that they offered me 6 months pay tax free and a good reference to leave. Luckily for me I was already applying for jobs in a different town so I could marry DH.

A few different ones spring to mind, all while I was at school /uni.
Daffodil picking. The juice in the stem really irritated my skin, if I got some on my forehead, which I did every day while trying to brush my hair out of the way, my face would be a red, blotchy, itchy, burning mess all day.
Pruning rosemary plants. It was in a giant greenhouse in the height of summer so was around 40 degrees. Plus the smell from the rosemary was so thick in the air it made me gag. I got paid 6p per 10.
Working in the bedding department of house of fraser. I've never been so bored in my life, I swear time moved backwards some days.

Not as bad as some, but a student summer job working in a hospital X-ray department developing the Xrays. A time before self developing film and the computer!
Two months of working in the dark, while the rest of the world enjoyed the sun.

In a factory when I was about 19. It was folding NHS bedsheets out of dryer.

I found out I am prone to static shocks as I spent the day being shocked every time I touched anything.

It was mind-numbingly boring too.

My supervisor told me I had a natural flair for folding sheets (is that even a thing?)

I did one shift and never went back!

cleaner

I have had horrible bosses since, but at least I was in a comfortable office and I never stayed long with them. Cleaning job was badly paid, boring, mind numbingly depressing, I hated it, but I needed the cash so had to stick with it until I ready could afford to leave.

Student job in a tiny fish and chip shop on campus. No proper ventilation so it was outrageously hot - constantly soaked in sweat and lightheaded even in winter. The boss was a dirty old bugger who used to drink a full bottle of whiskey as the evening went on. He'd brush past me and grab me by 'accident'. His joked would also get lewder as ehe got drunker, until his wife who served up would get pissed off with it all and whack him with a newspaper! I burnt my arms when he grabbed me and I dropped stuff causing hot oil to go everywhere. I also stank of chip fat all the time even after a shower/clothes wash.

I ended up telling him to fuck off one night and left mid shift. Then had to live on rice for weeks until I found another job.

Or maybe as a care assistant in a nursing home while I was at uni.

It was always understaffed, and there was an alcoholic man in his 50s placed there. He would urinate in his room. It absolutely stank. I'd change his bedding not breathing in his room at all.

He would start wanking when we showered him. Not really worth the £4.50 per hour!

I'd never been in a nursing home before and found it profoundly upsetting. I lasted about 3 months.

A job at a factory packing games CD’s, done it as a favour for a friends dad as they didn’t have enough staff, friend done it too. We were both in 6th form but took two weeks ‘unwell’ off to do it and get some cash for christmas. Last day was pay day and everyone was told they weren’t being paid until January because of finance problems. Me and friend went straight to the manager and asked for our money as we had done it as a favour. Manager took us to finance and infront of everyone complaining about no money (justified) said we had to be paid. It caused an uproar! We left with our money in amongst all the shouting.....

Thankfully I’ve never had to take a factory job etc in my career. But it was the worst ever. No one speaking to some individuals. Others bitching about some. Never again....

Accounts clerk in my early 20s. Total bitch of a manager who was a bully and smelt permanently of wet dog. Site merged with another site and my workload more than doubled but I got no extra help. I was drowning under the work and I'd go in at 7.30am every morning just to try and get ahead. Eventually I got so far behind that I was called in for a formal warning. I absolutely lost it, told them to fuck off but said I'd work till lunchtime. Stupidly they let me do that, which gave me enough time to enter a pile of fictitious invoices into their accounts system. Walked out at lunchtime with my head held high.

Learnt a couple of months later that bully manager had been made redundant and the general manager, who tried to discipline me got sacked for fraud. Karma is a bitch.

What I have found is that it is usually small indepedant business owners who believe they own you and have control over your life

That is often very true in my experience.

I think to run a smallish business takes a lot of dedication on the part of the owner, and a lot of working long hours for sod all. The owners often forget that we are employees and have no emotional investment in the Business. A few times they have actually been quite shocked when I point out that whilst I’m happy to be a diligent employee it is of no benefit to me whatsoever to put in hours of unpaid overtime to build the business up and line their pockets.