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!

Working in a garden centre in mid Sussex (family owned) absolutely toxic environment from the top down. Never again!

Cleaner in secondary school 😆

Not myself, but a colleague. He worked at a clinical research company doing drug testing. They were trialling that Alli (orlistat), weight loss medication. It makes oily/fatty food pass through and not get absorbed. 1 side effect can be passing oily poo and oily seepage.

My colleague had to issue all the male participants with white Y fronts daily and his job was to inspect the underpants and measure the amount of oily seepage and shart in them. 🤢

No, I was making the point that the staff can be horrible in the post office ( well , the one I encountered the other day wasn’t particularly friendly or helpful Unfortunately! )

Years ago when I was a teenager. A bread factory, conveyor belt job. My job was to put 4 rolls on a piece of cardboard over and over again for 8 hours. I managed 1 day (which felt like 10 years!) and never went back.

Honestly? It was the job before my current one. A very well paid job as Head of HR in a Civil Service Department. The role was new when I was appliance they had clearly put zero thought into what was needed. I ended up with about 3 senior roles’ workloads and had a minor breakdown - first time I have ever been signed off sick in over 30 years in work.

After a review of the HR department they realised they needed 3 people at a slightly lower level than me and as a result couldn’t afford me too (I had actually told them this on several occasions). I snatched the offer of redundancy like it was a lifeline.

I now have a wonderful job, much more satisfying and much less money! Although I am about to get promoted so hopefully that will make a difference!

@AntikytheraMech bloody hell 🤮 was that for fishing bait ?

‘The last laugh’ sounds like you were happy that the children weren’t being taught properly…

My worst job was also a disability charity. I’ve never known behaviour like it. So many egos. It was my first graduate job and I was really keen to do well, but my Line Manager was constantly on my case and nothing was ever enough yet she also didn’t like it if I said or did the right thing.

There were 3 women nearing retirement who were just bitches and had a little clique going. Childish.

Absolute nightmare very glad to be made redundant.

No, I was happy that the management was brought to book over the way they were failing those children.

Its patently obvious throughout my post that I was horrified at the way the children were being failed.

Before I changed career, my last private industry job was in theory a step up to a middle management position. Managing a small sales team in an office associated with the industry and subject matter I was qualified in (Engineering.)

I made some very obvious in hindsight mistakes, but I do feel the situation was ridiculous.

The job involved building mind numbing complex quotations. Some of which could be up to hundreds of lines long. The sales team consisted of two young lads straight out of college in their first jobs and someone who had been there for a decade.

The previous manager was still there as a part of a handover, when I was out of earshot he was openly describing my failings to anyone in the office who would hear him. The worker who had been there for a decade was massively resentful at being passed up for promotion and simply wouldn't speak to me. (And, based on her knowledge and experience was too valuable to lose, she knew it too....)
The two young lads wouldn't dare contradict the more experienced staff member and initially were scared to speak to me or with her in earshot hostile/sarcastic towards me in order to curry favour. When they realised I wasn't as awful as the atmosphere was trying to imply they were actually fine.... but left the toxic environment fairly soon after.

Other people in the office, while initially friendly then also turned. It would go essentially silent every time I walked in. Communication was almost monosyllabic. The only people to treat me as a human being were a lovely woman in marketing, the receptionist and the manager of the other team in the office. Nice guy, seemed almost embarrassed by the situation.

I sweated this out for two and a half years as while the environment was destroying, it paid really well. I had left a perfectly good job to join this shit show, I was seeing it out.

They eventually realised at the top level that I was not going to quit. And as I was hitting my objectives set in annual reviews they couldn't fire/discipline me into leaving. They paid me off, more then enough to see me into Teaching and Parenthood.

The thing is, the resilience I gained from this actually really aided me in my teaching career. The acquired thick skin is rather useful.

Hairdressers after I left school. What a load of nasty, bitchy women worked there. I was only 16 and trying to keep in with everyone, but they were determined to be vile and horrible to me. Goodness knows why I stayed as long as I did (3 months of hell).

I once had a job in a theme park where I had the fun task of cleaning the rides after someone vomited on them - but other than that the job was good so I just got on with it. My worst job was actually an accounts assistant job for a company where the work environment was so toxic that I caused chaos because I made tea for the wrong people. I left that job after a month and went back to my old one!

I had lots of awful jobs when I was young and skint. I started working in the early 90s in my school/uni holidays and a lot of companies back then needed to get all their files uploaded to computer from old, paper-based systems, so lots of mind-numbingly tedious data entry, old-fashioned secretarial/typist roles, which have largely disappeared in most industries, and filing (OMG how I hated filing!!!).

But the worst one was a summer job I had one year working in a company that photographed other companies' documents onto microfilm. All day every day you had to unload boxes of company documents, remove the staples and paperclips then put the pile on side of your camera, move the pieces of paper one at a time onto the plate, press the camera button, and then move the piece of paper onto a pile on the other side of the plate ... for 8 hours a day. Within two weeks I had a repetitive strain injury that still sometimes flares up 30 years later!! There were women there though who'd been there for years, for whom it was their FT job. I wanted to kill myself from the tedium after the first couple of hours and how I lasted for eight weeks I'll never know.

The pandemic has made rudeness worse. Have asked customers what do they try to achieve from being rude towards staff. They can’t reply as they can’t think of anything.

Treat others as you want to be treated yourself

NHS Service Development Manager. As well as being totally overloaded I was constantly being lied to by consultants and other managers, and directed to lie on documents used for investment decision-making.

Nine months in I quit without another job to go to. I was replaced by three people and none of them lasted a month.

Doing piecework in 1992 sticking inserts into magazines - a penny a magazine with piles of 4 or 5 different inserts for each one. I earned about 80 pence (which I never claimed!) before walking out.

I also once worked in a theme park. Didn't love cleaning vomit but fortunately didn't have to do it often as worked on the slow kiddy rides. The kids themselves were generally lovely, but the worst bit was the parents, some of whom were surprisingly aggressive.
That wasn't my worst job. My worst was working as a software tester (not so bad, I do that now at a different company) at a company that provided no training, barely talked to me unless they had to and expected the moon on a stick. I took the job as it was a significant pay rise, ended up going back to my previous job within a year.

I was exhausted just reading your post op, good luck with the application!

Seriously, if you can handle care homes and call centres, you can do anything.

Worked at a pub chain from 16-21 and it was my best and worst job. I covered a few shifts at the airport branch and that was genuinely hell on earth. After that I would send people there as a punishment. If you were late consistently, airport, if you were skiving, airport, if you had cheek, airport. I did send one girl there because she flirted with my now husband… it wasn’t right, but I don’t regret it.

The customers were fucking vile. My career highlight was when I caught the urinal shitter and barred him for life. This guy used to come in, order a bitters and a chicken korma and then curl one out in the urinals. I knew it was him, but couldn’t prove it. So one day I followed him and caught him in the act. That job desensitised me to bodily fluid to be honest. That’s good now I’ve got the kids, I am unfazed by sick of anything else.

It was fun though… well sometimes. Also once you’re a manager you can just skive in the office. I was pretty well paid, and we got good bonuses. The staff nights out were also the stuff of legend. Sometimes me and DH still go out with the people who still work there, but we can’t hack it like we used to.

I've just remembered another awful job I had as a student, trying to flog kitchens by cold-calling people. I was literally given a page out of the phone book and had to work my way down the list calling everyone. I got called every name under the sun, sworn at, I lasted one shift and never even went back to get my pay. Horrible! Huge respect to anyone who lasts in a call-centre job.

The word choice of ‘last laugh’ was a bit mean spirited, but I get what you mean.

My worst job was working for a local newspaper in the 90s. My friend and I were hired to sort out the archives in the basement. It was filthy, smelly and damp. We got covered in black mould and newspaper dust. You'd be required to wear protective equipment to do that job now, and I since found out all the basements of those old buildings are full of radon gas 😑

@Catsandcannedbeans the urinal shitter that is so gross! And he probably had a fetish imagining people cleaning it up!

I do feel mean spirited towards that head teacher and SMT, completely losing sight of the needs of the children entrusted to them in a very poor area and absolutely failing them. Luckily a long time ago now.

This is a thread about the worst jobs we ever had, are we meant to be showing these former bosses kindness and understanding?