What is the worst job you have had?

[FoodLover36]

I would say sales assistant at a supermarket , too repetitive for me.

@funkypolar @PaperMonster - I work for the MoD these days. I mostly love it! I don't think I work in a typical set up though.

I used to stack the fridge shelves at Waitrose when I was 16. Has to wear a uniform but wasn’t supplied with anything ‘warm’. I was freezing all the time. Quite after a couple of months ...

Working on an outdoor market stall selling fruit & veg for £8 a day. It was my Saturday job when I was in sixth form. It was hard physical work and unbelievably cold in winter. I hated it.

Dinner lady in a private boys school. Nylon tabard, funny paper hat that my hair (spiky - this was the 1980s) stuck out of. I dished up the beans and stuff onto their plates and manned the enormous plastic bins they scraped their left overs into at the end, and wiped down their trays. It smelt pretty unpleasant and though some of the boys (many of whom were around my age) were nice, some were vile.

Support worker for people with learning difficulties. Got shouted at by the manager on my second day in front of all the staff because I did something wrong. A few months later, another staff member tried to kiss me twice. I didn't report it to the manager because they were family members. I stuck it out for a year as didn't want a short term job on my CV (it was a permanent position). I now regret staying for so long... 🙄

My Dh just reminded me I used to work in an old people's home kitchens. Mostly I used to work the dishwasher which was boring and hot. But sometimes I used to wait tables. Which would have been fine but one of the old lady residents used to give my bare leg a hard/playful slap as I went by in my mini skirt. I used to think wtf! But it was the 80s and not deemed inappropriate work wear!

Picking out the bad cornflakes on a conveyor belt all day.

We once visited a place making TVs, it was that long ago, and someone asked one of the women working the conveyor belt, fitting the same tiny componant all day, Do you not get bored doing that all day? Her reply was very telling, I'd find it fat more boring doing your job, just watching us do it!

Working as a receptionist in a posh, well known hotel in a popular tourist destination. Favouritism and bullying were rife, the day I got yelled at in front of guests by the hotel manager and then the restaurant manager was the day I should have walked out, but instead resigned.

Minimum wage, horrendous, dirty unhygenic working conditions, no lunch break, often no break at all, some shifts ending at 11pm and starting the next day at 7am. Truly awful.

All that glitters is not gold.

A position I was well qualified for and knew what I was doing, but went home every day feeling 1 inch tall because of the manager. Everything I did was wrong. Early on, I was warned by a colleague that a number of people had come before me and quit very quickly because of this person, and this colleague also left within weeks of me starting. I was one of 3 new people, all of us young women, in a small team working closely together, and this manager seemed to despise us all from the very start. It was the same every day. She expected absolute compliance to the point of mind-reading. Nothing any of us ever did was right. We had zero input. None of us were given a chance. I had to explain simple things to the one who started 6 weeks after me, because it wasn't explained by management. Couldn't complain because she was the owner's best friend. Quit after just over a year and didn't work again for another year because she affected my mental health so badly. And I hope she never has the satisfaction of knowing that she did that to me. I hope she only knows that we hated her.

I would take Sainsburys checkouts any day over working under that woman again. And I spent two years while at sixth form working weekends on Sainsburys checkouts. The workplace in question has since closed permanently and I would not be surprised to learn it was because they couldn't retain staff for any length of time.

Thankfully been in my current similar position 3 years and very happy, so there's always hope!

That was far more bitter than I intended to be honest but I've never written so much about it before. Take any shit boring job, there is nothing worse than a manager who hates you, someone whose standards you can never, ever meet.

I worked in a department store in the bed linen and towel department as a young teen. I spent the day folding towels and plumping pillows. It was so quiet in there, one Saturday went by with only a single customer, who was bringing something back

At 17 I also worked in a motorway service station. They sent a mini bus to our village to collect workers at 5.30. My first task was to sit in the stock room and put the porno magazines into a coloured plastic bag to hide the boobs. I lasted a week.

And too many places where the team leader was only a couple of years older than the casual staff, so they wanted to be mates with some of them. Like being back at school and not being one of the cool kids.

Working in a vegetable packhouse on Saturday mornings (to pay for my driving lessons when I was a teen).
It was cold, smelly (a lovely combo of slightly off cabbage and forklift truck exhaust fumes) and repetitive. Bagging the spring greens was particularly bad as they were always so wet and you'd end up soaked. £1.89 an hour. On the plus side I can still curd and floret a cauliflower in seconds.

I'm American, and worked as a tutor for a company which promised to boost kids' test scores in the standardised university admission tests. It paid very well and was easy.

However, most of the young people were just not cut out for the universities to which they aspired. They were stressed out and fearful of disappointing their parents. I knew that if I did a good job of teaching them test technique and helped them memorise some of the common questions, the result would be that they would end up in over their heads at university.

My worst job was to pull staples out of the old paperwork before it was passed to someone else for checking and scanned into the computer.

My training consisted of being shown how to flick through a stack of paperwork and remove staples.

My legal traineeship. My boss was an absolute nutcase and a bully. He changed me as a person and not in a good way. I’d never had MH problems before but I had a breakdown when I worked there and been suffering on and off with depression and anxiety since, and I left nearly 15 years ago.

Oh and when I was at school I stupidly agreed to do a boy in my year’s cream round when he was on holiday. It was beyond horrific. The bag of stuff weighed a ton and so many of the customers were total arses. The money was awful as well. He asked me again the next year and I said no.

Wimpy. Working illegally aged 13/14. Sexual assault, terrible conditions and good hygiene- you don't what to know.

£7 a day, cash in hand. What were my parents thinking???

As a waitress.

As an administrator in a court. Managers treated people terribly and a particular member of my team meant to train me was a gaslighting bully. I went home every day in tears and dreaded going in because I felt so stupid and belittled. At least half of my team were signed off with stress because of the same 4 culprits but nothing was ever done. I quit without an onward plan and I've never regretted it.

Did teach me never to put a job above my own mental health though so there is that.

I managed 1 say at McDonald's when I was 15

I worked for a batshit crazy accountant when I was 18 and it was my first proper job. She would be absolutely lovely to me one minute, she would come down to reception where I worked and we would chat about stuff for an hour and then five minutes later she would be on the phone to me shouting and screaming about something minute I'd done wrong (a lot of the time it was her mistake not mine). On my lunch break I would lock the front door to the small office/converted house (at her request), sit in reception and eat my food but she would ring down and ask me to do this or that, make her a cup of tea or ask me to take her a clients file from the room right next to hers which was upstairs to where I was. The one day she was ringing down while I was on my break and I was talking to my ex in my mobile and I ignored her call, she then came storming down the stairs to get whatever she wanted and went stomping back up. In the end I would sit in my car for my break to get away from her.

Nobody ever lasted long doing my job as she was so awful and you could tell she was obviously unhinged. I would go home crying to my mother some days about how she has upset me that day. I lasted there two years somehow. It was a shame as I actually enjoyed the job and there was potential for her to train me through to being an accounts assistant but she was just so awful I had to get out.

Oh. And double glazing cold calling. To this day it has put me off phoning people!

Industrial laundry. Literally taking things off a hot hanger, folding it and pushing it to the end of the table. For 7 hours a day.
I've done tills, waitressing and washing up in a kitchen and this was by far the worst.

One where I came into contact with members of the public. I was sacked because I had visible scars which put customers off from coming.

Data entry assistant - working alone with the male wanker boss on a remote industrial estate, it was copying names and addresses from a phone book into a database, no adjustable chairs or ergonomic work areas, the book was balanced on the table edge between the desktop (it was massive) think mid 90s job while sitting on a cheap hard plastic chair, you know the type of moulded. Keyboard stuck to the table so couldn't move it for comfort.

He pointed out I wasn't dressed appropriately for work, I was wearing black trousers, blouse and black shoes and that I needed to wear a skirt at least above the knew and show a bit of cleavage. NOBODY was going to see me anyway.

I lasted 2 hours in all before I quit. Apart from the above, an hour in of sitting typing in silence, I wasn't to make small talk, I asked about the toilet and was told next floor up and opposite end of the building... But... I need not think of going yet as I hadn't "earned enough toilet break yet" so I asked what the policy was, for every hour worked I could "earn 30 seconds toilet time". He then informed me while smirking that it took 2 minutes to get as far as the loo and same back so I could go on my lunch break (30 mins), I Sat quietly for a few minutes and told him to shove the job and called a taxi from one of the reception areas of the nearest building straight to the agency who sent me and explained the whole thing in sobs, they paid for the taxi when I arrived and I was the first person they had put in there and he had stated he wanted a female but he had plans to expand quickly and would have work for many more staff. The agency were brilliant and refused to place anyone else in that situation and were very apologetic and my next job was much better. We reported what had happened re conditions to the police with all the info.

About a month later a friend who worked with another agency happened to say he was working with the same man now who when he turned up was very unhappy that he was male. He quit after 2 days.

The company folded less than a month later so it lasted less than 3 months in total as the owner was arrested on sex charges against 3 young women and a young male (all late teens early 20s) which we were, while it didn't happen on the premises it scared me lot and left me feeling vulnerable and was a contributory factor in a mh breakdown later that same year