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!

Receptionist at a plastic surgery. Shockingly toxic work place. Spoken to badly by other members of staff and patients. Low paid, lots of work, long hours and a very short break. Felt burnt out and stressed constantly.

For sure. He was a white collar dude as well, when I said it was him no one believed me. Suit and tie, the whole lot. Everyone else’s prime suspect was this really weird guy who stank, but the timing didn’t match up. In another life I am a detective.

Nanny for a very well off family, the kids were actually lovely but an odd mixture of extremely spoilt materially yet neglected by their parents emotionally. The father worked abroad permanently and the mother flew abroad for a three week holiday the day after I started leaving me in sole charge of two children, a huge house (it turned out that cleaning was also my job) and the car. They appeared baffled when I asked when my time off/days off were and couldn’t seem to grasp that I would need or be entitled to any sort of a break.
This is many years ago now and I was just too young for that level of responsibility. I cried often with the stress and looking back I feel incredibly sorry for the two kids who got lumbered with me.

Aside from a few part-time student jobs (which were fine), all my jobs have been as a teacher. A couple have been pretty awful, mostly because of the kids' behaviour, some of which was truly appalling. Fortunately I work in a really nice school now.

I worked in a shop with a basement level for a summer and someone shat on the stairs. When we checked the CCTV it was a normal looking guy in a suit!

A bookies when I was 20
Manager and only key holder to the safe would leave mid evening shift to go give her kids dinner. Customers who won would be having a go because they couldn’t collect their winnings.
It was also a venue that had been robbed a few times.
expected to translate betting slips very quickly.

I lasted 2 months.

I was conned into a door-to-door charity sign-ups thing when I was 18 😅 Thought I was interviewing for a marketing role in an office, ended up being put on a bus with a 'trainer' (she'd been there about 6 months and fully drank the cool aid).

It was like a fever dream. Utterly soul destroying, knocking on doors in quite a deprived area trying to guilt people into signing up for regular donations. Apparently only about 30% went to the actual charity as well. She was so convinced that she was going to progress up this career ladder diagram they handed out though, 6 months more as a trainer, then management, then area manager... except all she did was go door to door, so quite how, where and when she'd be learning how to manage people and run a business, I couldn't figure out. I think she genuinely thought that because they'd made her a trainer after 6 months, that's how all promotions worked. Was fascinating to talk to mind.

Anyway, about three hours in she lied to an old woman (told her all her neighbors had signed up) and I lost my shit. Told the old lady to go back inside, gave the trainer an absolute roasting and went home. Got a free sandwich and a twix though🤷🏻‍♂️

Working in a number of old-style phone fascia/knockoff bag lock-ups in the early 00s. Very long days, on your feet all the time and the manager of one of the shops swore at us and insulted us all day long. He did it in front of the customers too, so much so that one day a nice, well-meaning but clueless customer asked us all what we were still doing working there. It wasn't the type of job you did if you had lots of other options! It was a holiday job for me and I got a better one after a few weeks, but the others were stuck there and I really felt for them.

Have only really fully worked in Hong Kong.
Working in restaurants. Wanted to kill myself.
Standing till feet hurt and being screamed at.
Dirty environments.

I worked in jewellery at one point, that was horrible, no idea what to do and no one trained me or explained anything. Spent ages picking up gems from carpet.

Taught at a learning centre, it was disgustingly dirty and only cleaned once weekly, there was fine dropping from the ceiling, damp mould and ripped seating. The hours were long, it was toxic and lunchtime meant being locked out of the centre and sitting in 30°C+ heat.
The really bad one was order fulfilment above a restaurant. Filthy place, no pay until I left and threatened legal action, had to work in the dark, staircase was a death trap with no lighting and filled with products.

Working for a Domestic Abuse charity.
The actual job felt like it was more to do with navigating office politics and cliques instead of helping anyone. There were 3 different recording systems to put information, so sensitive or timely information you’d need could be anywhere.
The focus was on ‘added value’ to prove something to funders so you’d have workers running ridiculous groups and then not doing anything related to helping make women safe.
The whole thing felt like a con and very badly run.
I wouldn’t work for the Third sector again.

Oh God, some of these stories are horrendous. The shitstain man in the Games shop! 😫🤢

I worked at Gatwick for one summer while I was a student, cleaning planes. It was actually quite a laugh except for the fact I had to be there at 4am and that we had to work VERY QUICKLY and got shouted at if we didn’t work fast enough. And finding dirty nappies and used tissues in the seat pockets was never pleasant.

Also: secondary school teacher. I made it though my NQT year, left to have a baby and then never taught again apart from a bit of supply. I actually preferred supply to a permanent role cause you expected bad behaviour and knew the kids probably wouldn’t get much work done so it felt less pressured. But as someone who is prone to anxiety at the best of times, I’ve never had so many sleepless nights as I did in my NQT year, and such awful dread about going to work. Friday nights were when I got to relax but the fear of the following week was beginning to creep back in by Saturday afternoon. I have huge respect for anyone who can command the respect and attention of a bottom set Year 9 while ploughing through Macbeth😂

Some kind of Christmas emping work selling makeup off those popup counters you see in department stores. I was 17 and lasted about a week. This customer said "I'll think about it" and the woman said "Well don't think too long because we haven't got many sets left" AND I SAID "Yeah we have, there's millions in the back". Woosh.

I will never ever go back to private tutoring. The thing I've seen in people's homes, no standards, homes look like bomb sites, endless travelling and worthless pay. Waste of time and travel.

I worked on a ride called the Turkish twist which was notorious for vomiters- I'd get one most days! Still had a great time working there- we had free accommodation provided and every night was a party. They made me a supervisor by the end of the summer and I used to spend the day wandering round with the supervisor from another secton going on all the rides for free!

Piece work - running the strings through JD Sports bags.

Absolutely mind-breakingly horrific - house rammed with boxes, we were expected to do several boxes a day and the man who came to collect them was really nasty if you hadn't done your quota.

The metal prong thing you had to use to shove the strings through was rough on your fingers and whilst the strings themselves felt soft enough after forty or fifty they shredded your fingers, being a very fine abrasive. After the hundreds you needed to do to meet quota, fingers would be bleeding (and woe betide you if you got blood on any of them). You could NOT do it wearing gloves though - I tried! Thick gloves meant you could not get the strings through at all, thin nitrile type gloves tore in seconds.

I lasted a week, I think I earned about £4. I told the collection man to fuck off when he laughed at the state of my hands.

I did a 5 week stint in a factory (as a temp) that made furniture. I was put in the section that had to attach the padded seats of sofas to a giant air blower thingy that filled them with shredded foam rubber type stuff. It sounds easy - it wasn't. Most of the other workers were old hands and did around 50 seats an hour. I, on the other hand, managed about 5 if I was lucky. And even they were far from perfect. On top of that, the female supervisor was barking mad. She really was. She'd swig vodka throughout the day (don't blame her actually) and get increasingly more eccentic and sometimes bordering on violent. I'd like to say I'm stronger for it, but .............

This is why I run my tutoring business online. Lessons via Google Meet, Have them back to back. Works brilliantly.

just thought it a peculiar way to phase it, that’s all.

Pressing keys on church organ for the bloke to tune it .
🤯

working in a call centre for a kitchen company in my teens. Had to make unsolicited phone calls (given a page from the phone book) and make appointments for kitchen designers. Sales person used to walk around the office with a baseball bat slapping it into his hand to motivate us! Think I lasted less than a month.

The job itself wasn't too bad, but I was based in a porta cabin in a field. I had to drive to a local supermarket to use the toilets.

Sales assistant for Oasis. The manager had gone to school with my sibling and hated them so… hated me. She made me wear high heels and a mini dress to work when everyone else was in flats and trousers. I was 16 and so uncomfortable. She then made me ask the customers loads of weird intrusive questions when they wanted me to leave them alone. God I hated that job.

Pot washer at 17. I survived one night. (I was too meticulous and totally unable to keep up)

Airline stewardess for Dan Air. I did it for 6 months then gave up. Absolute bitches I had to work with, horrible abusive passengers, endless work and no fun at all.

I really don’t understand why people are so hostile to other employees at work. I know you can’t get on with everyone etc, but why be bitchy and nasty for no reason ! Drives me mad.