What is the worst job you have had?

[FoodLover36]

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

A temp job at a debt collection agency. It was a smoking office and even though I smoked at the time, it was vile. Overflowing ashtrays everywhere. Nasty atmosphere too, the job was to research addresses to pass to the debt collectors. It felt unethical.

I also once worked in an inner city pub where it was usual for all the blinds to be drawn and the doors to be locked if someone was flashing a gun... risk getting shot for minimum wage? No thanks!

OfTheNight. I have respect for anyone in teaching at the moment doing an incredible job under immensely stressful circumstances.

Short student holiday job as a chambermaid in a local hotel. Pay was crap, work was mind-numbingly dull, rest of the staff had huge chips on their shoulder about "snobby posh students". Lasted a week.

Holiday job as a student changing the packaging of smoke alarms. I had to peel off stickers for 8 hours a day.
To save for my wedding I took some weekend night shifts in a Nursing home near me. It was huge, over three floors and I was newly qualified and the nurse in charge. My first shift there were three falls, three suspected fractures and three ambulances. I'd never worked in the private sector and just felt their weren't enough staff in this particular establishment for it to feel safe.

NHS Direct. Callers were fine, but a call centre, with the constant surveillance of staff was horrendous. I'd say call centres in general are awful places to work.

Waitressing in one of the restaurants at Center Parcs Elvedon...full of middle class twats complaining about the food...one woman complained about me as I didnt know what coins the cigarette machine took....I am a non smoker and when she asked me i replied with 'im not sure but will find out for you'...she then complained at the bar....stupid bitch.

Also Hotel Receptionist years ago....had guests coming to the front desk to throw dirty sheets at me...do i look like the fucking housekeeper???

During a summer break before I went to university I had a job folding paper.

I worked at the international student services office at a major US university in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. A very toxic work environment. A culture of mistrust and mistreatment of foreign students was nauseating. I lasted 3 months.

@Clarencesmum I did the exact same job, wouldn't surprise me if it's the same place. I barely made any money at all and I absolutely hated it! There was a weekly "celebration" that was embarrassing and cringe worthy.

@tobee literally selling tubs of cream door to door! It used to be a thing. It expanded to include things like bacon and sausages as well but it was principally cream! Sounds mad now doesn’t it!

Working in the accounts department of a large group of care homes. Despite their company logo including words like, care, commitment, family, and trust they were penny pinching bastards who tried to suck every penny from both their residents and their staff.

Working in kmart (aus) 1980s. They decided to be all new age....my new job in manchester was swapped with the new (boy) hire in technics.

Every day before the store opened my job was to set up every tv/vcr/ on the same channel/volume. This was for over 50 different setups. My understanding of each how to do the turn it on button was minimal .I had no chance of making all these tvs look the same before store start time. I have a lot more horror stories about this time. !!

I was regularly called into talks with management because i could not explain to customers abt uhf etc (customers would want to come in....going off caravanning for a year with a tv....what did they need). I had zero training. Zero aptitude.And I was always gotten into trouble for it. No training. But how the hell dare i not know the answer. !!!

Retail assistant at A concession in Debenhams. I'll never buy from that place again. Nasty staff, nasty managers.

@BonnieTellyLass sounds like we may have worked at the same place

I once worked in marketing for a d list celebrity.

Worst 3 months ever!

Mine was making holly wreaths, by hand, in the run up to Christmas. Unheated glasshouse so very cold premises. We wore fingerless gloves but it was still freezing and our fingers were like pincushions. Every time I see holly wreaths outside greengrocers I shudder a little.

My colleagues were nice though, so I guess it wasn't that bad. What your colleagues are like is one of the major factors in whether a job is bearable or not.

I used to work in a supermarket deli counties during the weekend and evenings when I was a teenager.
My main job was to clean the rotisserie oven, it would have cooked 100+ chickens During the day and had to be spotless.
The fat from the chickens collected in the fat drawer under the main unit and I had to drain that into a big bucket of the previous few days fat. Warm runny fat, hitting semi congealed fat. Grim.

Ohh and Gateway Foodmarkets on the till when i was 14/15...i loved that job.

Envelope stuffing, the paper cuts were unreal!!

I worked as temporary agency staff in factories in school holidays from when I was 16.
A lot of the perm staff were vile to the temp staff if they were students. I just kept my head down and cracked on. I was lucky that a friend used to do it too so we often worked the same shifts which made it bearable.

As a previous poster said, in some food factories you'd have to use wellies and suchlike from a communal pile the previous shift had just taken off. Some of the perm staff would have their own stuff earmarked with a name in sharpie or a coloured mark or something. God forbid if the equipment in your size "belonged" to someone's mates/daughter/mum on a previous shift. They would be nasty to you until you took it off and swapped it with some shit stuff which didn't fit.
If I was on my own the staff would routinely ignore you. I'd not be spoken to unless it was work related and I'd sit and eat lunch on my own.
I'm not sure many 16 year olds these days would be able to do it!
Weirdly I think it was quite good for me to experience a bit of the real world. It taught me resilience and I certainly appreciated the money I had earned!

I worked in a gaming shop when I was 16 doing the steam shrink wrap thingy. The machine meant the room was boiling and I was close to fainting. They gave me my first break at half 2 when i was barely standing and told me that would be my lunch from then on. When they gave me my uniform I said if you don't mind I might not.

Papergirl was particularly bad. Up at 5.45am every weekday (when a teen, so more in need of sleep than ever), and the utter misery of waking to the rain battering down on a freezing, dark winter morning. All for about £1 an hour.

I have done so many shitty jobs for the lowest possible wage; pre NMW I had a job that paid £1.78 an hour. But the job I hated most was working for a drug and alcohol recovery charity which collapsed a few years ago. The frontline offices and teams were fine. I still feel ill if I think about the people, atmosphere and practices in locality management. I'd rather have gone back to 12 hour shifts picking bad bits out of frozen sweetcorn than stuck that place much longer, it was so awful it was like a bad 80s film about how to be shit in the workplace.

I used to work as a receptionist for an agency. They'd get us working in very posh parts of London e.g big investment banks. Absolutely awful. Sometimes no-one would come for hours and hours so the boredom was ridiculous. And when people did come a lot of them were very rude and sexual comments were common ("I'll give you my room number" 🤢) I told my manager about the comments and she said that tolerating them was just part of the job. Oh and the appearance inspections were demoralising. Making sure my hair was in a 'perfect bun' ffs. This was all nearly ten years' ago now and I still haven't worn my hair in a doughnut-style bun once ever since as it just brings back memories!

@Bluesheep8

Call centre. Had to wear a headset and as soon as a call ended, another came through. There was no option to finish the notes on the previous call. Toilet breaks were strictly timed and you were questioned if you took too long. One of the managers came and banged on the door and asked me why I was taking so long once when I was in a toilet cubicle. I was actually having a private cry.

Was it a well known energy supplier, by any chance? This is exactly the same a the call centre I worked in once. I did really well in sales (unbelievably) but still got demoted for taking more than 6 minutes off the phones per hour (that 6 minutes had to cover toilet breaks, processing sales, refreshment breaks, everything).