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!

CAMHS. I wouldn't have anticipated that clinical psychologists would be so difficult, entitled, useless at communicating and socially incompetent.

both 6th form. Wallis - was told I needed to wear makeup as I wasn’t showing the clothes very well. Another clothes shop, they kept changing shifts without communicating and said I was supposed to ‘pop in and check the board!’

id have had something strong to say now but nowhere near enough confidence then to do anything but leave :-(

fortunatrly my next retail job I found awesome people and stayed several years while at uni, they were ace.

Harvesting asparagus. Bent double walking along the rows in the blazing summer sun for 8 hours a day. Paid by weight which worked out to about $4 an hour (mind you I was 12 and it was the 90s!)

Working at at Trade Union. Sexist, nepotism, cloak and dagger bosses, in-fighting, workplace politics, the lost goes on.

Luckily wages, holiday, final salary pension, combined with a lack of ambition to climb the extremely greasy pole, and some lovely colleagues, means all of the above doesn't really affect me. So I will live out my days here.

H Samuel. The manager was an arse. It was supposed to be a 8 hour contract. I was at uni and often did 24 hours a week. I hit all sales targets. Then my grandfather died. I asked for time off and was given a hard time. I had done 8 hours already that week and so was only asking for 3 days off. He was an arse. I never went back.

Left school at 16 (mid 80s) and went straight to work at a sewing factory making trousers for M&S, my job was sewing ‘box ends’ on the waistband, a real tricky little job for the inexperienced! it was piecework too, so the pressure was on to complete your targets.

Once you completed your quota the bundle went off to quality control! I remember those first few weeks of dread when it felt like every single pair of trousers were returned with red arrows pointing at my mistakes. Awful. Could never catch up.

When you became quite good at your specific role and could easily meet your targets, they’d put you on another section.

The day I managed to catch my little finger under the needle and it broke off, taken to A&E, to get the bits removed, was the day I decided this really wasn’t for me. I only went there because my DB’s GF at the time worked there, plus I wanted money in my hand every week. It made me realise how easy we had it at school 🤣

I also worked at pizza express and the amount of families who would just let their kids smush pizza into the carpet was unbelievable