To ask what your worst ever jobs have been?

[Waspshaveavendetta]

One of mine was working in a care home which I feel awful saying as it's not the residents' fault. It was the staff and management, the role itself was minimum wage or maybe 4 pence an hour more.
Zero benefits except for the Wagestream thing where you could access earnings before payday. On my contract I was told I would be entitled to a free meal on shift except this never happened once. I was able to take some of the residents' leftovers if there were enough left.

Because of the high-pressure environment, it brought out the worst in people and I had to tell some staff members not to raise their voice at me. Could be a very two-faced environment with backstabbing. Long days, I know it's 24 hour care but 12 hour days are too much. Seniors/team leaders on a power trip who spoke to staff like naughty children, very physically demanding work which caused me back pain, zero time to sit and speak to residents, literally did not stop all day.
Something to do every minute of the day, having to do all sorts of domestic and laundry tasks which were not in the job description.

Second one is my current call centre role. It thankfully pays a bit over min wage but it's still a relatively poor salary. Every single minute of the day is monitored, if you were in the wrong queue for 1 minute you are pulled up on it, very target-heavy, if you go to the toilet outside of allocated breaks your percentage goes down.

Sent cringey motivational messages by our team leader every morning. I have ear pain from wearing the headset every day, zero flexibility in hours, the good thing is it's hybrid remote and the lunch break is generous (unpaid though). No guarantee of finishing or taking breaks on time if you get stuck in a call. Constantly pressured to make a certain number of calls per day and expected to write after call notes in lighting speed, luckily I can do then quickly but many in my team especially older are struggling and being pulled up on it. Luckily I've got an interview for the Civil Service and really hope I get it!

Trainee recruitment consultant, placing temps in logistics and warehousing roles. Culture was horrendous (lunchtime coke in the loos anyone?), there was 0 training and 9 times out of 10 the temp didn’t show up to the job so spent 90% of the time being shouted at by pissed off clients. I lasted 2 weeks

I’d have to say probably Games Workshop. Oh my god the smell! The smell of unwashed man is vile. I had someone try and return a game for some credit and the case of the game was full to the brim with pubes and he was wondering why we wouldn’t accept it 🤮. See also game nights, we had to ban someone for leaving giant poo stains on the chair, he hadn’t wiped (at all) had jeans that were like a builders bum = giant skid mark. We binned the chair and he kicked off saying we had no right to ban him 🙃

Delivering telephone directories. Very heavy . It was cold and we spent all our wages getting a brew to warm up !

Selling gas and electricity for N-Power door to door in 2002 when I was at uni. I lasted about 3 weeks and sacked it off. If I recall rightly, I didn’t even tell them I wasn’t coming back, mid shift, I left my folder of forms and all that bollocks, on top of the car that had driven the four of us to the area we were covering that day, and then I got the bus home.

Don’t blame you

Mine was strawberry picking in Australia years ago when I was backpacking. I lasted about a week, in which we had 3 or 4 days of torrential rain where I was soaked to the bone. It was so miserable, and the pay was shite.
I quit that job, and found work in a bar a couple of weeks later, which was great because we got good tips.

Used to work in a burger king/little chef restaurant combination in the 80's. Late shift I always always ended up cleaning the gents toilet's. Guaranteed that someone would always walk in with his tackle out despite the sign saying toilet closed for cleaning.. Also worked at Cheltenham race course washing pots. I lost most of my wages because the gold rimmed plates kept sliding off the rack 😂😂

A holiday job inputting numbers into spreadsheets for eight hours a day, five days a week for six weeks after I finished my A levels.

All my previous jobs had been in pubs or shops and I was looking forward to doing a "white collar" job. It was fairly well paid (for 1991) but so boring I literally cried after most of my shifts.

Some dodgy sales thing where you phone and tell people they've won a holiday if they have a kitchen quote or something.
Truly awful. Think I did a couple of 3 hour shifts and left.

Fortunately it was temporary - filing for MAFF. That was all I did for 3 weeks.
Vets receptionist as I was bullied by a senior colleague.
Dental receptionist as you have to do about a million things at once & get yelled at by patients in a lot of pain.
Receptionist at another dentist which wasn’t computerised plus the building was haunted!

These sound awful! Maybe I should be grateful

Filing for some bank or credit company back in the 70s. Great big trays of file cards in a rotating file card store the size of a small car. Just monumentally dull for 40 hrs a week in summer break while at uni.

CD packing factory (just so boring)
Plant nursery where I spent an 8 hour shift moving individual seeds from one tub to another with tweezers (my back was screaming at me after an hour)
Selling mortgage consolidation and kitchens via cold calling (two different jobs)
Glass collecting at a working men's club up north. The job was fine but I got an early introduction to how disgusting men could be (i was 15 getting hit on by losers in their 30s and beyond)

Wherever there has been a toxic clique. It only takes one!

It was a temp assignment during the long student vacation. I went to a warehouse and was given a load of pieces of pre cut thin cardboard. We had to fold the small bit to make a basket (basket design printed) to stick on the larger bit in the right position - there was an image of a basket on there. In the basket, put a free sample of washing tablets and a money off coupon. Fiddly and tedious why bother to put this effort for people to rip off the tablets and coupon?

We went on break and I didn't return. More fool the temp agency who paid me 2 full days, not the hour and a half I worked.

Then got a sales job a couple of weeks after uni and it was just going round the various office blocks in Leeds city centre in groups of 4 (one being the experienced guy) and trying to sell plastic crap. One of the things I remember was a battery operated hand fan. The guy said to us, we are going on a 20 min break and meet up at the bottom of Park Row. The three of us agreed not to bother to return.

Working on the Post Office counter. Customers were absolutely vile. I have had various retail jobs and never came across such nasty behaviour as when I worked for PO.

Having to use a pitchfork in a warehouse that was a maggot factory turning over rotting chicken carcasses for the flies to consume and lay eggs on.
Had to use deep heat under my nostrils every day.
The smell would not wash out even after two or three showers.

Saturday boy W H Smith do it all. Started great busy and always something different....then competition opened and I was basically in charge of the timber section... tidying the same area over and over. Occasional ordering when we actually sold something. Dull as ditch water.

On the knock for a double glazing company for a week

Demolition of a large industrial building for £40.a week, no h&s just lots of blokes with no previous experience smashing things with sledge hammers

Now I work for a funeral director and collect people who have passed out of hours... which is actually quite a rewarding thing to do (except when you are rung in the early hours to collect someone who died hours before and you could have been called at a reasonable time)

I worked for a disabled children's charity run by a CEO who micro managed every second. She also didnt like any of the children, and those who needed one to one support were not allowed to join any of the activities ie youth groups. They held one of their fundraiser balls at a venue that did not have wheelchair access which meant some of the young service users couldn't attend. It was awful. I was miserable from start to finish. Things came yo a head with the CEO and I quit. Very happy now in my current job.

I did a nightshift in a frozen food factory putting the cardboard covers on the meals. One shitty 12 hour shift, I never went back.

Filing telephone numbers in these giant filing machines. So so so boring and the woman I worked with hated my guts.

I also didn't last very long at an aged care job. I was the only staff member present and when I was supposed to be serving dinner and cleaning up someone who had shit her pants at the same time, I apparently should have just left her to it and served dinner. Awful place.

Someone I know works in a children’s nursery and it’s the same there too op. It seems the jobs where you’re caring for the more vulnerable in society are treated badly and paid a pittance. It is sad especially as some owners are able to treat the staff appallingly and get away with it and some just want the profits.

Oh I just remembered another shocker. I was doing a couple of shifts a week at a childcare centre and someone brought her child in to be weaned. She wanted us to wean him to a bottle. I was still breastfeeding so smelled of milk and they decided I was the best one to do it. That poor poor baby.

Good luck with the job interview op. Hope you get on ok.
No wonder nurseries and care homes have such a high turn over of staff.

My first ever job at 17 I had an awful manager who made it clear she didn’t want me there at all and I really messed up everything because she hated me so much.
I ended up leaving and a bit of a breakdown over it all.
I was lucky to find another job after a month or so.
It was a bad time , but workplaces can be toxic.