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!

Not me (mine haven't been too bad just hard), but I friend worked in Primark for a summer during uni and said she used to rage every time people riffled through the t shirts as it was her job to fold then properly again. Said she would spend 8 hours a day just folding t shirts over and over.

Next sale warehouse, around 2003!

Shift leader was a complete fucking jobsworth, approximately 18m older than the rest of the staff (who were all 17/18) and was on a massive power trip. Would insist you do stupid stuff. You were worked like a dog, your main job was to tag clothes but all the kimble guns were constantly jamming/breaking. Zero perks, minimum wage, long hours, boring as fuck.

I was a nursery nurse for a few months in a setting without any real outdoors space. The children had nowhere to blow off steam, and some of them were with us 50 hours a week! It was so claustrophobic! We were right across from a school so I don't know why they didn't come to some sort of arrangement where we could use their playground outside of set playtimes. I hope the place has been shut down now.

A holiday job in the 1980 working in a rock making factory (as in sticks of rock sold in seaside towns).

fascinating how it’s made but working conditions vile. Management vile. Breathing in powdered sugar all day every day and by Friday it was hard to walk as the floor was sugar coated glue. So no rock making Friday afternoon and instead we had to pretty much boil the floor (and your feet) to get rid of the sugar glue.

I was so fed up with the treatment I deliberately put a label for Brighton rock where the rock itself had Blackpool running through it.

Holiday job between school and college working for a small video rental company. My pay cheque bounced! I did get paid in the end though.

excatly

Housekeeper for a posh holiday reserve in the countryside. Absolute shit show of a place. Looks lovely and posh for guests but horrendous to work for. Back breaking cleaning and getting houses ready in ridiculous time frames, set by a sales team on commission who gave no shits that there literally weren’t enough staff to manage. Led by an incompetent, patronising housekeeping manager and a crazy little head housekeeper who has clearly done nothing else in her life but clean up after other people and turn it into an art form. I aimed a little higher and walked.

I forgot a job I had for all of 4 hours as a young single mum in the 90s.

Fabric store called Zoom The Loom. Never had any customers. Listened to the supervisor tell me she didn't want kids and the gory details of her abortion.

Toilets were vile and I m no stranger to squalor. Flies, used sanitary towels left on the floor, unflushed and stinking.

No parking facilities so would have had to pay for the shopping centre car park on minimum wage.

Bored and disgusted.

Did my one starter shift and never went back citing child care issues (was too embarrassed to tell the truth and say I hated every micro second).

@howrudeforme was that at Parr’s ? 🍬

A bloody awful telesales job trying to book mortgage advice appointments. I lasted one day. I had a trial shift in a care home where the person I was shadowing removed shit from a patient’s arse. The patient was clearly in pain but she was far too rough. The manager called afterwards to offer me shifts and I declined.

@CalzoneOnLegs

no idea - was in Southend in 1987

McDonald's, Trafford centre, Christmas. Before online shopping had taken off.

Lasted 2 days.

The customers were awful! Staff were awful. Travel was awful. Was just awful.

I’m at 18 years total call centre work…
plus care work and retail before that
think I deserve a medal by now

For me it was a care home. Back in the day you could do this aged 15 straight from school. I was treated like a slave amd the YTS scheme was a joke with no training whatsoever. We had to wash the residents clothes along with the managers dirty underwear. She spoke to us like we were scum. It was horrible and she wasn't much better to the patients. I encouraged my kids to get good educations and avoid these schemes.

Care work should be more valued.

I don’t know but I taught at an FE College and the Childscare students were notorious for being horrendous. I was very surprised. I didn’t teach them.

Name changed; I don’t tell anyone what I do.

Asylum decision maker for the Home Office. I have the best colleagues. I wouldn’t have survived this long without them. But it’s not easy, for a million different reasons.

you deserve a medal for your work. I court do your job

That’s really kind of you, and not something I hear that often, so thank you.

You win!

Love that comment about the Blackpool/ Brighton rock!

😂

A long term temporary PA role for Southern Water in my mid 20s.

It was well paid but I’d never experienced such a grey, boring work culture before. No one seemed to ever speak to each other.

I gave in my notice after six weeks and the Job Centre seemed so vibrant in comparison - it was full of tanned young people who’d finished travelling and were claiming benefits while looking for work.

Luckily I found my dream job just weeks later.

Work in a care home 20 years ago not enough of anything gloves, towels, face washers etc. regular staff would hide equipment for themselves. Had to use a pillow case to wash residents sometimes due to lack of alternatives. We were not allowed to talk to the managers. They would just tell you the tasks you hadn’t done and then sit in their office. Kitchen locked in the evening so if a resident wanted a cup of tea you could not get them one. Backbreaking work the whole shift and I would finish my shift in tears. All staff were from another country and so would spend the break speaking in their own language in the tea room and would not acknowledge me. I still am traumatised by it even now.

Housekeeping in a posh hotel was the worst one for me. We were given 20 minutes to clean a room fully and 10 minutes for a remake (where the customer was staying another night). That’s really tight when you consider all you have to do but you could make it work in those timescales. Problem was, you were given so many rooms to do within your shift that even if you skipped your breaks you still would have time to do them all. The reality was, you had 10 minutes per room and 5 for a remake. It really was horrendous, especially if a guest had been particularly messy (think child with sticky fingers and mirrors, party poppers, food trodden into the floor and worse). I left after 2 months once I had another job secured. It’s made me more mindful when staying in hotels myself, I’ll sometimes strip the bed and leave the bedding stacked with the used towels by the door, I use a carrier bag for rubbish so they don’t have to empty the bins and also make sure to wash any cups/glasses before leaving.

Pharmaceutical industry. Toxic insecurity and micromanagement.

Cold calling people trying to sell them mobile contract upgrades for Orange.

Lasted three days. It was awful.