Worse job evar?

Got any stories about bad jobs? Do tell.

Worked for a servo recently, just opened. No interview (should of been a red flag.) Worked there 6 months, over 20 different workers (even his friends) came though and left. Zero training and get yelled at when things weren't done. (He settled after he learned I yell back, which was out of character, I was just over it). No stock in store for weeks then blamed us for lack of sales because they make squat of petrol. Turns out he never ran any business or had anyone work under him before, his very successful brother set him up. He sold it a few weeks after I left. It was awful. I just texted I quick to him one day after him having a go at me. Working at a driv-thur bottle-o now thats attached to a pub. The boss is great and so are the people I work with.

Also worked as a storeman without my fork lift ticket, so I had to walk everywhere with pallets. Odometer got to 58km in one day once, average was a 50km. Wasn't bad though just exhausting.

Bank of America. As soulless as you would imagine. The benefits were decent, but the culture is so toxic that attrition voids those benefits.

I worked retail for almost 4 years. Dealing with customers is the worst, especially in a store that's located in a retirement community.

Probably McDonald's. Did it for three years at the airport. Stole some of my soul, it did.

Worst ever was probably fast food (dunno if I should name names or not). The store manager was fired before I got there and the other managers were basically trying to take over his duties. Company left it that way for months, although from what I heard they were having a really hard time getting people to actually take the job (not a great sign). We were always short on staff, we probably turned over at least two entire shift's worth of employees in the seven or so months I was there. Managers were always trying to push us to do more work with fewer people, and because shifts were always short staffed we were always staying late. Didn't help that we were always training new people, or that the district manager was constantly telling us to do things a specific way with no discernible benefit other than to make things take longer. Also, they started cutting one position each night and having delivery drivers take over, which was me. So basically instead of being at the store until delivery stopped like I was supposed to I had to stay until close, which was often hours later than it should have been because we didn't have enough people. On top of that, I'd have to make up for not having my station staffed during delivery hours so I'd have even more work than if they had just made me do the station alone. Oh, and one of the managers was extremely abusive, constantly yelling and screaming, and he would bully this one employee and insult him in front of customers. Plus they didn't give any regard for my availability and just scheduled me whenever. I was supposed to be working around twenty hours a week and ended up around fifty most of the time. Things actually kind of got worse when we got a store manager. She basically just went around threatening to write people up for minor infractions. One of my managers complained because one of our better cashiers was going to get fired if she got written up a third time, at least one of the first two was for doing something she didn't know she wasn't supposed to do. No warning, just a write up. It was terrible.

Second worst was caddying. Carrying two thirty pound bags in blistering heat for a bunch of arrogant douches who go around saying things like "the world needs ditch diggers, too."

Actually, I don't mind the customers that much. There are maybe a handful I can remember being pretty terrible, but other than that they were fine. Even if they were returning a bunch of things at once with no receipt or making me go through a bunch of expired coupons, they were usually pretty pleasant to deal with. I've had worse experiences with managers in retail. My last one was a self-promoter who only cared about hitting goals his boss cared about, not to mention a control freak. He would literally sit there and explain to the entire staff, step by step, how to do things we all knew how to do. He literally ignored everybody's availability. Every student who worked there would be scheduled for hours they said they couldn't work, sometimes during their actual classes, and when we complained he would tell us to find someone to trade with. And he had no respect for anybody else's problems. I ran into trouble working late shifts and getting to early shifts on time the next day and when I complained he just talked about he woke up at four thirty or something to get to the store at six thirty. And the doing more work with fewer people was a problem there too. When I started we would have at least three people plus a manager each shift, often four. When I left it was down to two, one on register and one on the floor. The person on register was constantly running back and forth doing things other employees used to do. The one night I lost it they had me down on the floor fishing stuff out from under the shelves and I had to get back up and run to the register every time there was a customer (the customers were getting pretty upset at this, BTW), and then run back, get down on the floor again and keep fishing, rinse, repeat. When I didn't get everything from under the shelves put away they accused me of having poor time management skills, despite the fact that the amount of time I had was dictated by how many customers I had to deal with. I would much rather have to sit there and deal with a coupon hoarder than have to deal with that crap.

When I was about 17 I worked as a hygiene cleaner, where it was basically just me and a bunch of woman.

The work wasn't the problem it was the women. It was like watching modern day Roman Senators attempt to assassinate each other with smiles on a weekly basis. Just wanted to work, eat my sandwich and go home, but they kept trying to drag me into their nonsense.

Maybe this explains it, who knows.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/bering-in-mind/the-8220-bitch-8221-evolved-why-girls-are-so-cruel-to-each-other/

Mine was teaching a night school class: English as a secondary language. The kids didn't want to be there so it was rough going; and I was just filling in. I stood up there nervously wondering if anything was sticking on the wall and after an awkward hour, got out. The pay was pretty decent, but I didn't want to be a bad teacher and solely in it for the money. I decided to give up teaching once the semester was over. Quickly I had learned to admire a good teacher, even more.

I actually don't mind working retail as a whole mainly because the staff I work with are understanding, but oh dear god, some consumers can be the worst. It's a relief that there are some that understand the hell we face, but nevertheless. The "customer is always right" slogan is so EASILY abused and NEEDS TO GO. Because it was proven BS before it was even born:

"There are very honest people who do not think that they have had a bargain unless they have cheated a merchant." - Anatole France (when I heard this quote, I heard it in Sean Bean's voice, which he does in Civ VI)

As you brought up Retirement communities, most of the worst do seem to come from Elderly. Especially if you say work the self-checkouts and they pull you away from watching the full section and have you help JUST them. It's just as dangerous as having your phone out. Hell, one customer I had sounded like an organized crime boss by saying "If it weren't for me, you wouldn't have a job."

Of course, no matter what the age rate, they always ask questions that are already answered as well. "Are you open, sir?"

I agree. I had the "The customer is always right" line thrown in my face at least once a day. I was honestly trying to do the right thing at all times, but short of doing cartwheels while giving the customer a 50% discount, I was always 'wrong'. The staff I worked with always seemed to have my back though. I had a woman come in at 9pm on black Friday and threatened to sue me personally because I didn't have an item that sold out 10 hours before. The assistant store manager came to my rescue and told her to leave the store or he would call the police.

My very first job when I was 16/17 was working at a video rental store (remember those?)

on my first day they gave me some basic training, then on my second shift they left me to run the store by myself for 4 hours. it was a easy enough job but I found it terrifying and overwhelming at the time.

I recall one time going to the bathroom which was shared with another store, and somehow getting locked out of the store in the shared hallway behind them. I eventually found a way out into the alley and ran around the block to get back into the store which had several impatient people looking for someone who worked there.

I had to call people and tell them their rentals were due for return, which resulted in several people threatening to come in and beat me up, though they never did.

fun times.

But honestly, that's more of a management problem than a customer problem. If management continually does backflips to satisfy customers then customers will start to catch on and demand more. I had a customer who, for some reason, had a direct line to the district manager and would call him and complain if he didn't get the discounts he thought he was entitled to. The DM basically told us to give him what he wanted, and he proceeded to walk all over us. If our store manager would have just been allowed to stand by what she said in the first place, that he was wrong and she wasn't going to give him discounts just because he wanted them, it wouldn't have turned into that sort of problem. And, in my experience, most complaints about prices were because we either had something priced wrong on the shelf or because the placement of signs and products was blatantly confusing. I wouldn't want to punish customers who were legitimately confused just because every now and then some customer decides to act like a jerk to get what they want.

I will say, though, that I covered a shift at a store once that was right next to a retirement community. All day, like every other customer was complaining about prices. Doesn't help that we had certain coupons that could only be accessed in our app and they still demanded the discount if they didn't have/couldn't figure out how to use the app. So yeah, there are certain demographics that just cause problems because they can, but in my experience they're the exception and not the norm.

Do you really want to know? I had 2 worst jobs in my teenage life.

1. Selling speakers out of the back of a van. No, they were not stolen, but what I didn't like about it, it requires to drive in a Ghetto hood and the chance are, you likely to be rob and dealing with gangs is never a good sign. I needed the money at the time, so it was take it or leave it type of job.
2. Working at McDonalds in the city of Atlanta GA. It was cheap and dirty, I left that nasty joint 5 months after I got hired.

My 1st job was at Subway, "Eat Fresh." It was pretty easy but it's the dummy/nasty customers you gotta watch out for! Anyways, the smell of vinegar and oil stayed with you even after a nice warm shower. I think the worst job involves taking care of the customer's complaints.. "Customers are ALWAYS right, right?!

WoW, people really hate working at McDonalds? What do they do? Beat you or something? My Brother works at McDonalds and he loves it.

@evil_loli: With Macca's it's different for every store, some are great and the people you work with make the job decent but other stores they suck out you're soul. No one talks or does anything but stare at their station.

Depends on who you're working with and what the clientele is like. As I said, I worked at the airport, so a lot of customers were generally more rude because of being stressed out over flights. Most of my friends that I started with also left, and when I became a manager, I just had all these extra responsibilities dumped on me. It also takes a special person to really enjoy working in fast food, and that was just never me.

@evil_loli: @npiet1: @JustPlainLucas: I'll also add my 2 cents. depending on the salary, you get paid 4 bucks an hour for being covered in a fine layer of grease and dealing with screaming kids and mopping up puke... and then, the big bosses come in, and your boss gets flipped out and yells at you for everything you do. Like PlainLucas said, it all depends on the location/area but in my area, it was a nasty place to work and how they pass the health inspector is beyond me. I never became the manager but I did got promoted to Supervisor but even then, that wasn't enough and the pay increase was pathetic. This was all during my teenage high school cause I needed the money to get ready to go into nursing school and it paid off. Got myself a dream career but fortunate for me, I only stayed at McDonalds 5 months before I call it quit. Never bother to leave a notification either.

@davillain-: You only got paid four bucks an hour? Dear god, please tell me this was in like 1960 or something.

Never worked McDonald's, but witnessing how fast food works, it can get BAD. First off, you've constantly got this timer that shows how fast you're getting orders out and if it starts going red you're getting chewed out. This is because the manager on duty is getting evaluated at the end of the month on their average wait times and their raises depend on it. Not that it matters to you, though, because what the **** is a raise? You've never gotten one, and probably never will. At my job they kept telling us that if we wanted raises we needed to hit a certain number for food waste, which is like good luck with that when we always have to replace customer orders when they're wrong. Doesn't matter if the customer got it wrong or we did, or if the chef got it right but the cashier entered it wrong, or if we had to remake it because we were following company practice to make it but that takes too long so we just rushed it and hoped for the best (if you want details about this I'll give them, but there was no possibility of food poisoning here). Either way, there goes our raise.

Oh, and the meal rushes are insane. People hustling non-stop moving here to there as fast as they can trying to get food out, cashiers standing in one spot for hours at a time dealing with customers who are growing more and more impatient, customers complaining because the thing they want isn't on hand right that second because we're too busy serving other customers, kids absolutely wrecking the dining area (I know this last one can't be helped, but I can't describe the feeling of helplessness you have when a group of kids leaves and you just see a train wreck at their table). They're getting even worse now too because companies are using computer based metrics to determine the absolute minimum number of employees we need at any given time, which means that instead of having extra employees for a full shift most stores now have rush-like conditions from open to close, which is a truly horrifying thought to me. Literally, it keeps me awake at night.

Not to mention that some customers can be downright nasty. They will literally throw things at employees and they're supposed to sit there and take it. Now usually the customer is banned from the store after, but if the employee loses it and yells or lays hands on the customer, even in an attempt to defend themselves, they get disciplined. I've actually developed a strange fascination with stories about employees who've been fired or disciplined after reacting in a fairly understandable manner (usually screaming what the **** or something like that) after being literally assaulted by customers. In a lot of these scenarios, if I owned the store I'd be throwing the customer through the goddamned window for what they did, not lecturing my employees about keeping their cool.

Beyond that, there's the usual bullcrap. Getting scheduled outside your availability, getting kept late, not getting any recognition for volunteering to come in when other people call off (I had a coworker who was doing this constantly and never got more than a thank you. When you're putting in like sixty extra hours a month, I think something a little more than a thanks is warranted). Oh, and the writeups. For the smallest of things. What are warnings? I think it varies a lot from location to location and definitely a good manager can make a difference, but fast food in general is a nightmare I would NOT want to make a career out of.

Was working as a chef for a startup company trying to do pre-made gourmet meals.

Long story short, my boss was terrible and lacked any sort of leadership skills, we couldn't retain people and they came and went like crazy.

The worst part was the hours; I pretty much worked 12+ hours (often closer to 16 hours) per day, six days per week. I had to drive about 40 minutes to work and start at 5 AM, so the sun was not up when I got in to work. My place of work had no windows and we rarely got breaks. When I got off work, the sun was usually down.

It wasn't uncommon for me to not see the sun for almost a week at a time. That does things to people, you know? Bad things.

On my one day off I'd sleep the entire day.

Anyway I lasted just under a year which was pretty impressive if I say so myself :P

The one good part? I was 25 years old and making close to 100k per year. I was living with my folks, so I was able to pay off my loans pretty well.

The bad part is a job like that is just not sustainable. I only stuck around that long because I don't give up easily; it finally took my boss being a complete dick for me to quit. First job I've ever quit due to a negative reason.

I worked construction in a retirement community, among other places, and yeah old people can be dicks.

I was raised to respect our elders, as they have often lived through a lot, have wise advice, and deserve respect.

Bullshit. There are as many old assholes as there are middle-aged assholes and young assholes. If you're a cynic, you might even argue there are more old assholes because they're the only ones tough enough to live that long.

How is it possible to get paid $4/hour?
Minimum wage here for an adult is $19/hour

@theone86: @THUMPTABLE: This was back in 2005 (before I graduated within that year) when I was still in high school. The Pay was really poor back in my days, not sure how that's change now. McDonalds salary was always meant for teenage pay though, if the salary increase is that high now, I'm shock they skyrocket the increase.

Worked for a large japanese company in automotive industry for few years, as procurement officer. The most brain dead job I have ever had, the attrition is just not worth it even if the benefit is decent. Years later I am still in the automotive industry but more freedom and dare. Even if the benefit is not as good as the previous one but I will take this job in a heartbeat over that.

Auditor, I did it for three and a half years to get my qualification. I quit the day I received my certificate.

It’s such a dull job, I spent most of my first year either photocopying, standing in car parks counting the number of company cars, chasing down receipts to run my tests. Plus studying in the evenings and exams often on Saturdays.

The second and third year was less leg work but essentially the same thing, run audit tests and make a conclusion. The third year involved a lot of mingling with finance directors, they try their best to be nice to you and of course you have to be nice back to them.

You never really use your brain at all. There is little difference whether you’re auditing a feather factory or an oil company, the tests are basically the same process.

The industry is awful, a lot of people take a hell of a lot of coke and the culture is very similar to Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. Everyone spends considerable time seeking out the best tailors for suits and shirts to look their best.

Although the pay was good, it increased substantially every year and doubled when I qualified, I just could not stand the monotony of the work and the worst was the culture of the industry.

One of the female seniors cried the day she made partner in her office when I was studying after work. She cried not out of joy, but the fact she spent 20 years putting up with assholes everyday and pretending to be someone she is not. I think she still works there.

Back when I started in '96, I think it was around 6.25, but that's because we were in the airport, and we were privately operated. We did far more business than a street McDonalds, (we did over 25k one day), so that's why we were earning more than street stores.

I worked part time for almost 10 years in the same grocery store, small one with about 12-15 people working there. Part time and full time. It's honestly a good pick for both best and worst place I have worked at. My first boss was decent. Hearth in the right place, but the head not always following. With help from two full time workers that together were responsible for the store, it worked well. Couple of years later another guy takes over. Demands a little more of us, but also very willing to help us improve. Overall great. Some chain policy changes after he left made it not so great. Still good. 4th guy to come in. Guy does not have the personality to lead. Refusing to handle problems before they get big among other things led to a culture change among us. People cared less. Why should we handle problems when the one at the top does nothing to deal with problems?

Granted this became very general. I guess the TL;DR version of the latter part is: Last boss didn't lead by example.

That's probably a local minimum wage. I looked it up, because I could have sworn I got paid more back around that time, and the federal minimum wage was under four dollars until 2009 when they raised it to 7.25. So yeah, not great.