What has been your worst job?

[Pinkblush]

In north queensland, I worked on an avocado farm putting stickers on avocados from 6am - 6pm. The farmer was an irishman who was always so bad tempered. Always screaming orders. One day I'd missed a few avocados in my batch and he threw one at me leaving me with a black eye.
I packed up and left that evening making sure I let down the tyres on his truck on my way out.

 

[under the ivy]

I applied for a job in marketing (or so I thought) prior to going to university. It turned out it was one of those jobs where people try and sell you internet , sky TV etc in the street. I didn’t know it was this and got set up with the stall. Said to the guy I was with I was just nipping into Boots to get a bottle of water... and never came back

 

[ShondyLife]

I did one shift as a pole dancer when I was 19, genuinely one of the worst experiences of my life. The club chose my stage name and it was 'Chardonnay-Porsha'. Jesus wept I left after an hour.

 

[DanaScully]

Working 12hr shifts in a café. People are fucking gormless and I'd be standing holding hot plates shouting "FULL ENGLISH, NO BEANS, EXTRA BLACK PUDDING?" and they'd all sit looking at me like

One time I tripped and threw a full English into the lap of an older boy I knew vaguely from school.

Being on my hands and knees wiping bean juice off someone's jeans in front of a packed café isn't something I fondly reminise on.

 

[Brunetteem]

My current job....I've just reached the end of the road. Been applying for other things not in the same work environment but covid obviously makes it harder. I used to like it, it just changed with bad management, staff and people. Each time I go I think I'm closer to just quitting on the spot. I spend my entire time filled with anger and hate its the only bane of my life

 

[lozzapaloozza]

Boots. If you asked me what my dream first job was at 13 this was it. Nailed the interview, first day... oh are you here for work experience? Rude! The woman who hired me went on holiday for two weeks didn’t she so nobody had a clue what to do with me. I just did what the staff told me to do and the next day the manager said I wasn’t doing what I was meant to be doing? Nobody told me you silly bint when I asked yesterday! I had to stand on the NYX counter which was new back then and I had no clue what I was doing. The women that work there are like a cult, if you’re not 50+ they basically hate you. My nan came in on my second day at lunch time and said “shall we just go?” I came home both days crying so she took me over the road to the M&S cafe for lunch and the next day I rang to say I wasn’t coming back because I passed away

 

[Belulah]

Mine was door to door sales when I was travelling. I’m naturally a very timid and reserved person to the idea of knocking on strangers’ doors were literal hell. It used to be 6 days a week- in a mini bus and dropped off in some random Melbourne suburb with a list of doors to knock on. I was terrified at each door and pray they wouldn’t answer. People could be very rude (one person set their dog on me!) but most people were polite.
It was a typical backpacker job where they sold it as “marketing” and hyped up parties in exclusive clubs with free alcohol (most of which was gone by the time any of the sales people got there) and chants in the morning. It was hell. So many people would come for one day and then we would never see them again.
One week they drove us out to the sticks and I knocked on this Englishman’s door- he invited me in (I sat in SO many stranger’s houses, luckily they were all nice and would feed me!) and told me to go back to Melbourne he could see how miserable I was. I just left and took two buses and three trains back to Flinders Street. I felt so relieved.
Even 10 years later when I’m having a shitty day at work I think back on that awful job and I still feel I want to apply for any jobs I see advertised as if I’m still trying to escape it!

 

[Meh]

I thought it would have been the years of outbound debt collection I did whilst at Uni.

Until I got a job doing mortgage repossessions for a sub-prime lender. A few years after the financial crash. So, you can imagine how grim it was to speak to people who have provided all their medical histories by letter so you know they are genuine. And still have to inform them of the next steps following court. Cancer sufferers and people bereaved from suicide etc.

absolutely heart breaking and soul destroying. I always remind myself of those days whenever I think I’m having a tough shift.

 

[Bitofthebubbly]

Boots. If you asked me what my dream first job was at 13 this was it. Nailed the interview, first day... oh are you here for work experience? Rude! The woman who hired me went on holiday for two weeks didn’t she so nobody had a clue what to do with me. I just did what the staff told me to do and the next day the manager said I wasn’t doing what I was meant to be doing? Nobody told me you silly bint when I asked yesterday! I had to stand on the NYX counter which was new back then and I had no clue what I was doing. The women that work there are like a cult, if you’re not 50+ they basically hate you. My nan came in on my second day at lunch time and said “shall we just go?” I came home both days crying so she took me over the road to the M&S cafe for lunch and the next day I rang to say I wasn’t coming back because I passed away

Wasn’t expecting that last line

 

[DuckDuck]

Pretty much all of them .. ( bar one which was my dream job but I had to give it up );the one I have at the moment is fucking disgraceful .. the manager swears at me and she’s a narcissist cunt .. I want to kick her in the fanny but it’s not allowed apparently

 

[Ohflogoff]

Sorting the jewellery in Matalan. Fuck me it was bad. I left after one shift.

 

[Nolongerjustalurker]

Worked in a cafe when I was 14. So many laws were broken in that establishment.. All of the waitresses were under 16, and we got paid pennies, I think I got £3.20 an hour there was this lovely Polish lady who worked as a dish washer - she didn’t speak much English and was always crying, we’d ask her what was wrong but she couldn’t tell us. There was this batty old lady who did the cooking and she was always ranting loudly and swearing at everyone.. The cakes would get shoved in a cupboard every night they must have been soooo stale. And the owner’s father was a really really old man who would come in and try to grope us all. He died while I still worked there and we were all so pleased...
however my best friend also worked there and we do fondly reminisce on our time there and all the ridiculous things that happened (minus the sexual harassment) I think it got burnt down in an insurance job a few years after we left.

 

[Aceofspades]

I went to work in procurement after being made redundant. I had no experience but they assured me full training would be provided. Of course it wasn’t, and my boss was a pure arsehole when I needed help. Tbf just an arsehole in general. I could hold my own against him, but then I started getting bullied by two grown women. I would go into meetings and they would leave vile messages on my desk about my weight (I was/am overweight) hidden in notebooks etc. Would harass me outside of work too on SM. I took it to HR, because I was miserable. But they said I couldn’t prove it was them and just wouldn’t tackle it. After days and days of crying before work, during my lunch breaks and after, I just walked out and never looked back

 

[TwooTwooTwitTwitTwoo]

Trainee hairdresser. It was via an apprenticeship, rather than a "placement" via college etc, and I was a grown adult age 21 at the time. So I was an adult in a full time job and being paid. Yet I was still treated exactly the same as you'd imagine a teenager would be. I learned sod all while I was there, I did a whole year and I still haven't got a clue how to do a basic haircut. All I did was shampoo ALL day to the point where I had awful dermatitis on my hands from never having dry hands 10 hours a day. And if I wasn't shampooing, I was cleaning.

One day, the salon boss stopped me trying to practise on a doll head, handed me a spray bottle of Flash and a toothbrush and asked me to scrub the grout of the floor tiles. I went out for my lunch break and never went back!

I have a similar story. I worked as a junior very briefly when I was a teenager and a lot of the hairdressers were really bitchy and used to spend their breaks in the kitchen snorting coke. There was another junior who they used to spend all day taking the mickey out of.
I was asked to clean the toilet. Not a problem, seemed a reasonable request as a junior. Only when I'd done it one of them shoved the toilet brush into my hands and told me to do it again as it wasn't good enough. It had been very clean before I cleaned it, so there was nothing more that needed doing. She was just on a power trip. It was a really horrible environment to work in so I walked out the fire exit at the back of the salon one day and never returned.

 

[Hodgies]

I had just moved to the other end of the country with my husband who had got a new job, I didn't know a soul and I couldn't find a job that was equivalent to what I had been doing so was bored and miserable at home. I'd always has a notion about becoming a nurse so thought this might well be the time to actually get some experience and go for it. Phoned round lots of nursing homes for care assistant posts and managed to get a job at one really close to me. It was awful. The manager made a big thing to all the staff about how I was wanting experience to go into nursing so people who had been care assistants for years hated me as they thought I was stuck up, they would pretend they couldn't make out what I was saying as I'm Scottish (in a place where they had about 20 different nationalities working!) and wouldn't show me how to do anything, I got given all the shit shifts over the weekends so I was still bored and miserable at home then my husband would be off and I was working the whole time. The absolute worst thing though was the smell of wee I lasted a month and unsurprisingly didn't go into nursing!

 

[LinaLamont]

I worked as a hotel receptionist when I was about 18 and in between jobs and it was horrendous. Zero training and minimum wage but expected ‘perfection’. My manager was a sleazy, balding middle aged man who would constantly make sexual innuendos. The head waitress had a face like a slapped arse and would throw the new menu at me every day and bark at me to type it up. And the GUESTS omg the guests! Absolutely rude and stupid. There was also an elderly couple who called down saying there was a problem with their room. I went up to be faced with them in robes and a bath that wouldn’t drain and they very upset that I, a receptionist, couldn’t fix it there and then?! The man asked could I not just try. No I fucking couldn’t! Nowhere in my contract did it state I had to root around in someone’s dirty bath water! I lasted 3 weeks.

 

[HitchhikingGhost]

Cleaning caravans at a holiday resort when I was around 16/17 just for extra spending money.
Just the state people leave them in . Food, rubbish, used nappies, sanitary products left out all on the side in full view.

 

[Crunky_Snack]

I worked less than a week in a Michelin starred restaurant. I’d been a bar manager previously but wanted a job with better pay; the restaurant offered a full time, salaried bar position. I turned up for the trial shift and one of the managers told me I’d be waitressing? Obviously for the 4 years I worked in the bar I’d waitressed (mainly as a supervisor) but it wasn’t what I signed up for with this job and I absolutely am NOT cut out for Michelin star service. They barely attempted to train me, I made a million mistakes because I was given 0 guidance and 0 time to learn the menu. Any time I asked a question/asked for help I’d be met with sighs and eye rolls. On my second day I was left alone with a full dining room despite not having a clue about the order of the menu, the POS system or service cycle. I’m a fairly resilient gal but working 9am-midnight (with a 3 hour break) alongside boring, unhelpful and judgmental people broke me in a matter of days. I walked out during the break on a Saturday and never looked back. It was hideous.

 

[lime]

I did the call centre thing during uni as well. Charities, banks, phone providers. I used to do the classic call centre thing of muting the phone to talk to people while there was dead air and once muted it to call the customer a cunt but didn't do it properly lmao. I will NEVER forget the "what did you call me?!" followed by having to escalate the call to my team leader and explain that I'd called the customer a cunt and she'd like to speak to a manager.

 

[Jg182]

After I was made redundant from a job I loved. We had just moved and we needed me to quickly find a job.... so I took on a cleaning job at a holiday park. Cleaning the accomdation. We got paired we a “experienced” cleaner, we were suppose to clean the chalets together all that day. The girl I was paired with decided she would rather sit out front and chat to her mates then help. She even shut me in a tiny sweaty (was a hot July) hot bathroom until it was done. All the equipment was crappy and broken making the job harder. They didn’t even have proper cloths and cleaning products so you had to scrub the showers with the dirty towels from the guests before.
it got to lunch time, and everyone but we went into a big courtyard to smoke. I went and sat in my car alone, disgusting and sweaty. Don’t know what came over me, but I just drove home. Without even letting them know I was going. Was so worried about telling my husband as we needed the money... but he was great.... and a few weeks later I found a job which I loved again!