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!

Being a trainee solicitor- extremely toxic work environment.

Oh , I can imagine that the post office employ the worst kind of people , had a few problems with them and their general attitude towards customers when really no need. I know it’s not an easy job, but if someone is polite don’t be nasty back ( side eye the one I had the misfortune to deal with the other day, so condescending!)

As a teenager I got a job at a motorway service station. First thing I was given to do was putting porn mags into opaque plastic bags to cover the boobs. I didn’t go back for a second day.

My friend got a job in a scotch egg factory peeling eggs! All the experienced people could just sort of squish the egg and pop it out in one go, while she was picking off minuscule bits of shell one at a time. Definitely don’t fancy that one either!

Cleaning a warehouse. The gaffer kept pushing me under the storage cages to clean, and he was pushing me on my bottom so that I could get 'all the way under'. It's only years later I realised what was going on!

Planner for a multinational FMCG company. Role included production supply planning/production planning/production scheduling.

Long days and start to finish it was full on stress, never ending and never had the satisfaction of a task "finished".

Expectation to plan everything for a 2 year horizon on a weekly cycle, while getting constant pings and questions from market planners, production line managers, material planners, line engineers etc etc.

Data hungry systems and we were also responsible for ensuring data for our products were correct. When a product wasn't planning correctly never had time to problem solve, or with with the offshore IT to get help. Systems were inadequate for the users jobs so lots of work arounds to try to get them to work.

Constant firefighting, hated it.

It wasn't just me being a shit planner, all planners had the same issues - huge turn over of staff, I managed to get another role in another department after 9 months - never again! The only good thing about it was I lost 2st without even trying doing that job through stress and exhaustion and many missed lunches, coming home just too mentally exhausted to eat!

Customer assistant at a ‘naice’ supermarket until very recently. Worst job I’ve ever ever had. The management were awful and talked to grown adults like they were toddlers. Never met such a nasty bunch of people who deemed themselves better than us lowly shelf stackers because they were on 2 quid an hour more than us 😆. I’ve started in a lovely job now and can feel my self esteem slowly repairing!

That's awful, I had the exact same situation. A woman had soiled herself during dinner and so I helped her, I was told off for doing so?

I once worked in a day nursery
40 hours a week for £37.50 a week (it was an apprenticeship but they refused to let me go to the college one day a week)
Never worked somewhere so bitchy in my life
They would go mental if I needed the toilet and wouldn't give me my breaks

I worked nights in a factory
Checking for mouldy carrots and potatoes for their supermarket orders
I lasted a week-ive never worked somewhere that was so picky and micromanaging in my life
And they kept the lights so dim I could barely see anything

Where I am now
Think golden arches
I'm bloody good at my job but I'm always in the wrong
It's a case of my face doesn't fit and the manager hates me
I've been told to stay on dining area,which is fine,but then I'm getting screamed at because I'm out on dining area and they need me to put together orders or drop fries
I then get into trouble for putting orders together or I'm caught dropping fries
She wants me out-im staying until at least May (I'll have been there ten years and I get a tiny bonus) and then I'm off
They tell me I'm the best out of 5 of us (that do dining area) but the awards for doing a good job always go to someone else and two others have been promoted over me (manager laughed when my name was put forward)
I'm not having it and will be telling everyone why I'm leaving

I can’t understand why children’s nurseries seem to have such horrible people running it.
Is it the culture, the stress , the scrutiny?

I had a temporary job in a school as a year 3 teacher. I have taught in many schools but never one as dreadful as that. It was (just) pre-SATS and the head had been seconded elsewhere by the LA who were impressed by all the hand -made "topic books" the kids had on display with lino printed covers and sewn in pages. I was teaching the deputy head's intended class while he "acted up" to cover the secondment.

The kids were fine but the rules were appalling. Every display had to include no more than 3 colours and lino print had to be included. Staples had to be at right angles to corner. Every display had to include draping and no primary colours were allowed.

You were not allowed to teach ANYTHING that wasn't related to the topic, except maths and spelling tests. For example if the topic was World War 2 you could only teach about letter writing by doing a letter home from evacuees. You couldn't do any focused literacy skills building.

All exercise books were blank pages, the kids had to paperclip a line guide behind each page, and then had to do a 1cm deep coloured line margin, write the long date and title and underline in colour. Of course the lower ability kids spent the whole lesson doing this bit and never got to actually do the work. Then the icing on the cake - if it was a 6 week half term, the children spent 3 weeks actually working on the topic and then 3 weeks copying all the work out into those hand made books that so impressed the LA. It was criminal. Those kids were being terribly failed.

I realised that things were bad when my temporary job was made permanent and advertised in the bulletin and nobody mentioned it to me! I didn't apply for it, I have some dignity!

I got the last laugh as the SATs results in that school at the end of that year, after I left, were the worst in the whole LA, and there were half as many passes at level 4 in maths and English as the next worst school (iirc it was something like 15 percent). It was the worst case of "all fur coat and no knickers" teaching I ever came across. I moved to a normal school where teachers were allowed to actually teach and there were no lovely topic books on display, and was very happy there.

I worked in county linen for a while when I was a student.
Sorting the dirty laundry when it came in was by far the worst thing I have ever done! I could not believe how awful and how many bodily fluids stained the laundry 🤮 plus they gave us no gloves or ppe at all.
I also discovered that I was allergic to the washing detergent, the skin on my face went red raw and eyes swelled up! So I didn’t stay for long.

Receptionist at a car dealership in the early 90s. The manager was a bully and hiding from a disgruntled customer so I led the customer to his office on my way out the door.

I was made to feel bad for walking out of a job within another one lined up ( early 80s) but it was the best thing to do. Easier because I didn’t have any bills to pay and lived at home and only young. It’s much harder to do when you rely on that income and you know getting another job won’t necessarily be easy to do so many people must be stuck in jobs they hate :(
it must be so soul destroying.

Jane Norman, Oxford St in the early 2000s - arsehole manager, horrible customers and horrible clothes!

It’s always retail , hospitality, nurseries and care homes that crop up on threads like this and I feel that anything customer facing seems to attract the worst kind of managers or owners who look down their noses at the ones actually doing the work. I know that customers can be horrible and it’s hard going, but no need to be nasty to staff. It’s a real bug bear of mine and I’ve worked in a few jobs like this myself.

I don’t know, I lasted one morning in a call centre selling insurance when I had left school. Looked around as I was approaching my lunch break and saw everyone looking as dead as I felt, went for lunch and never returned. It was soul destroying and I only did it for 4 hours, my worst ever job!!

Checkout at one of the big supermarkets.
It was in the eighties, we had to ring up every item with one hand. Pass the goods and pack them into the trolley with the other hand. Then count back the change into the customers hand coin by note ( 10 pounds 46 pence, you gave me twenty here's your change 10. 48, 10.50, 11, 12 ,13, 14, 15, 20 pounds... nightmare!)
We had cameras on us and any till discrepancies at end of day were hauled before managers.

There was shoplifting galore, sticker changing, and we were supposed to confront any suspiciously priced goods. This was a tough inner city area and some customers were really intimidating.

And a nasty nylon dress uniform to cap it all off.

Hated every minute of it.

A temp in a hospital, unloading the industrial steriliser dishwashers, you had to count up the pieces for each set, which was labelled for the operation. If there was a piece missing I had to tell my boss. I’ve never forgot what the D&C surgical tools look like.

Hotel receptionist, working min wage, dealing with drunk obnoxious people, no breaks, work nine days in a row to get a weekend off.

Saturday job hotel laundry bleaching skid marks off towels

I didn’t understand why it’s 8 to 12 hour shifts for so many jobs when they could split it up. Probably lots of reasons why it’s not the case, but now we have to work till our 70s how do they expect people to do such long shifts on your feet all day.

A care at home agency. Not enough time with clients to give proper care to them and Literally no travel time between clients. So even if it was a 3 mile journey to your next client, you were expected to do it in zero minutes. Dunno, teleport or something. I was chasing my tail and so stressed. The final nail in the coffin came when my colleague said I was to follow her in my car to the next client, she got on the motorway and bombed off at about 100mph. I couldn’t keep up at all so lost her. My manager then called me screaming at me about being late and not keeping up. So I quit there and then. Think in all I lasted one weekend.

Working for a large cleaning company, cleaning a school. I was supposed to spend only ten minutes per classroom in order to clean the entire school within my shift - I just could not do it that quickly so I ended up working late every day to get the job finished. Then I got pig flu and was off sick for two weeks and they fired me, which was a relief tbh.

I didn’t mind the pot wash part for a restaurant I worked in once , but the cleaning was a nightmare and they wanted it spotless with just one cleaner to do everything. It really needed two.
Was an eye opener as to how places are not that clean because they don’t hire enough staff to do properly.

Well obviously I wasn’t referring to the polite customers 🙄