What is the worst job you've ever had?

[Jehoshaphat Augustus]

TLDR: Capitalism has no moral base - feel free to share your awesome job experiences as we further contemplate exciting careers in homelessness.

like bob segar says: Immuna tell my tale c'mon---

Fresh out of high school, I had no plans for my life but GET FUCKED UP TONIGHT. I was out the door the day I turned 18, I've taken some pretty menial jobs between then and now.
 
I took a job as "leather crafter" as it was posted in the newspaper, but my friends knew it as "The Bondage Shop" or "Sally & LJ's." The business and owners have relocated but it still remains operational today as sub-shop.com (NSFW)
 
Working there: If you were a hot lady, you'd work in the sewing area with the other hot ladies who the owners would successfully court to become the various models you see ^ on that website.  If you were a regular ass human you were a leathercrafter/order picker/customer service. I was a leather crafter and worked in classroom size carpeted room that had pegboard workbenches with leather crafting tools. My friend had got me the job so I was with him with 15 other "peers"-- everybody skated & kicked it with each other, everybody got paid $8.00 per hour, facilitating various custom orders to various leather apparatuses. 
 
The words "ballstretcher" "buttplug" "ball gag" were common job lingo. The new guys would pull small leather straps using hemostats through ball gags that were center-excavated with razorblades. I've adorned 'titty torture clamps' onto leather neck cuffs using rivets and D rings. The seasoned dudes would be making sex hoods with ballgags and legit ass bodybags, complete with fuckin' body controlling ratchet straps and master padlocks. 

I've repaired a 60" thong held by rivets with a deep dry white stain lining the crotch to top of ass area, sent back because the rivets were tugged out of the intersectional parts of the thong. I have friends who worked the phones taking international orders from would-be customers requesting child sized bdsm items. 
 
The owners of this place were and are fucking riiiiich and gaudy as fuck. When they walked together, to assert his dominance, he would hold his wife by the wrist.  The male co-owner was always in True Religion jeans and Tapout shirts. The female co-owner only showed up when they fired people. She currently has a side career as a "psychic medium" but back when I worked for her, if you called out for bereavement: they'd make you bring in the funeral card as proof of your excuse for absence. The boss lady would later approach the recently bereaved employee and attempt to tell them "your bereaved loved ones are speaking through me and they want you to know...." They would hide pouches containing crystals and stones in every corner of the building and NO ONE WAS TO TOUCH THEM when we cleaned on Friday.  They drove a PROWLER, a  BMW 745, and Range Rover to work, sometimes all in 1 day. 
 
They always were on coke. You could always hear the bosses coming because the constant sniffing would precede them. They had private bathrooms meanwhile we had a single toilet next to a non-working urinal for a coed staff of 50 people. 
 
The owners collected kids, adopting them from various places around the world. The Christmas I worked there, they sent out a text on Christmas eve asking if anyone was willing to watch their kids. I was cool with the girl who ended up watching their kids that night. The 'parents' had spoiled each other so much that they wanted to spend their Christmas together, opening each other's gifts and didn't want to sit through 7 childrens' worth of Xmas gift opening, so they hired a girl to watch their kids open their presents. They paid her $15.00 per hour (time & a half.) 
 
Another thing they did that no one else I've ever been around did: they would bring in their extremely expired food from their pantry shelves and offer it to everyone like it was a pizza party. Twice there was green, moldy twinkies sitting next to years old cans of expired soda. It was almost "purposefully" demeaning.   
 
About a month before I quit, they decided to source all the hand work to China and all the current workers who were leather crafters and sewers became building maintenance & packers. They fired the office manager and basically the person who was there the longest became the leader until they quit or were fired for not doing their job good enough. Every week, the guy who was your homie the week before became your boss this week and knew he was going to get fired no matter what he did. They vibed everyone out of the job, making them choose hard ass compensatory-free labor (either at the shop or their personal homes) or unemployment.   
 
As mentioned, they are still open today. Both owners have changed their names and moved away from my state. I have heard that while in Africa, trying to source a child, the male owner was robbed and bludgeoned and has since had botched surgery to repair his face and he just keeps throwing money at his face but it will not restore as he desired. 

I know this ain't the worst story out there, so as we used to say on here "IF YOU HAVE HATE IN YOUR HEART (towards a job) LET IT OUT!"

[Kielwasser]

I mean who the fuck is gonna top that in terms of story value?

I did summer factory jobs in my teens to be able to afford season tickets and snowboarding gear and one time I signed up too late and got the most hated job in the factory for the first two weeks. They manufactured ovens for big kitchens and I had to insulate the inner part of the oven with glass wool in a shitty protective suit that let the fibres in at several seams in a 40° C baking July factory. I've never been so itchy and sweaty again and I did that for 8 hours from early morning till late afternoon. I have no idea how I pulled through those two weeks but also,jumping into a lake in the afternoon has never felt so good again.

[TastyBurrito]

Manually masturbating caged animals for artifical insemenation.

[Chalupa]

Manually masturbating caged animals for artifical insemenation.

Damn, I would have to be homeless to agree to a job like that.

Packing trucks with packages for FedEx sucked. I was doing 1.5-1.75x the acceptable rate for boxes per hour, and I still had supervisors yelling at me to go faster. At some point, my back started hurting and I needed to put in 1000 hours total to get insurance since I was part time. There’s no way I could have afforded to pay for physical rehab or rent if I got injured. Before one of my back muscles tore, I quit on the spot and was instantly happier while walking out. I got a job at a grocery store after that that also sucked but didn’t have people hovering around me telling to work faster.

[Jehoshaphat Augustus]

Manually masturbating caged animals for artifical insemenation.

Having a job that makes a difference is important

[Jehoshaphat Augustus]

Expand Quote

Manually masturbating caged animals for artifical insemenation.

[close]

Damn, I would have to be homeless to agree to a job like that.

Packing trucks with packages for FedEx sucked. I was doing 1.5-1.75x the acceptable rate for boxes per hour, and I still had supervisors yelling at me to go faster. At some point, my back started hurting and I needed to put in 1000 hours total to get insurance since I was part time. There’s no way I could have afforded to pay for physical rehab or rent if I got injured. Before one of my back muscles tore, I quit on the spot and was instantly happier while walking out. I got a job at a grocery store after that that also sucked but didn’t have people hovering around me telling to work faster.

I have also packed & unloaded for UPS! Basically getting paid to work out, while in jail/boot camp. Especially in the HEAT.
Apple used to ship their shit in all white boxes to their stores and young men were getting over thanks to brand differentiation. 

[in love w/ fs shuvs]

most of them

[Tic-Tac God]

I was a landscaper for a few weeks, maybe longer. Big apartment properties and such. One day the guy handed me a weedeater at 7AM, I handed it back to him at 5PM and said I quit.

[TheBoognish]

Front desk of a very tacky hotel where people who like to pretend to have money used to stay. Horrible customers, bosses were even worse. Everyone was miserable and hated their jobs. The turnover rate was insane.

The assistant manager hated me the second I was hired and I don’t know why. She was a bitch to everyone and was on a serious power trip. 

Unfortunately for her I was in an “I don’t give a fuck” phase at this point in my life… so decided to fuck with her.

When she wasn’t around I’d go fart in her office, mess with the adjustments on her chair, take her pens, close her computer, put my fingers in her glasses when they were on her desk to grease them up etc… I straight up didn’t give a fuck about getting fired at that point.

Best part is she thought it was one of the janitors doing it.

One day I showed up, saw a giant line up at the front desk, saw the assistant manager was alone for the rush and I just said “fuck it”. Went to the back, left my clip-on tie on a desk and wrote on a piece of paper “I, *insert name* quit” and bounced.

She was FURIOUS. She even called me later that night to bitch me out, turns out she had to cover my shift.

I hate being an asshole but I made an exception for her. She was awful with everyone and the reason so many people quit/were unhappy.

I don’t even think I was there a full two months; this was over 10 years ago and I STILL think about it. Made me completely quit customer service work and go straight to factory work.

Driving in front of that building makes me mad to this day.

They almost shut down during Covid. I was so bummed to learn they were bailed out by the government.

Ps: Fuck you Anny you miserable bitch. Hope your glasses are still greasy.

[CrumblingInfrastructure]

Ha, one of my favorite jobs was at a gay leather store from 18-20. Super interesting people, lots of friends always stopping by to shoot the shit, and since I couldnt go to bars yet it was a great way to meet people.

Worst job might have to have been as a kitchen cleaner/duct worker in Chicago. The hours always changed every day so I could have a monday job that started at 8-9pm and by friday be having to get up at 6-7am to do an early shift. Crawling through greasy duct working with a little scraper just chipping (or scooping if it was liquid) grease out, sitting on top of buildings in the middle of the night with just a shitty headlamp and no harness or anything working on the exhaust fans, etc. The company itself was located outside of Chicago too so they were able to pay me $1 less an hour since the city had a different minimum wage then the rest of cook county.

One of my last jobs was in an industrial building and I had to take a scissor lift up to the duct opening then stand on both the rails and crawl in. It was mid july and so fucking hot in that metal box. Maybe 30 yards in the ducting was all warped and it turns out it was falling apart and I got told I needed to stick to the edges so I didnt fall through and splat on the concrete below. The dumb shit you’ll do for next to nothing when your still young.

I did get to clean the kitchens at Wrigley field and the aquarium though so it was cool to explore those with little to no supervision when no one was there. One time I had to clean a chute for an oven at a bakery and it was legit just being a chimney sweeper and at the end the company gave me a bunch of free bread and other baked goods.

[GnarAlarm]

When the 2008 recession hit I lost a job I really loved and had to find something to stay afloat when the unemployment started to run out. I needed something fast and took the first offer I got, doing inventory at a brake parts warehouse.
It was relatively small as far as warehouses go, had horrible ventilation and no climate control. I'd spend all day either sweating or freezing while inhaling copious amounts of dust from off-brand Chinese brake pads.
Luckily I was only there a few months before getting a much better job, but I'm convinced that someday when I'm on my deathbed, the dust I inhaled all day in that warehouse will be at least partially responsible. 

[lamfordie]

Door to door home security salesman. Did it for a day and a half and hated it. Never paid me for my training. Went out of business pretty quickly. Looking back I'm pretty sure they were all scammers.

[fall colors]

When she wasn’t around I’d go fart in her office...

[tuesday]

Expand Quote

Manually masturbating caged animals for artifical insemenation.

[close]

Having a hand job that makes a difference is important

Fixed it for you

[TheLurper]

My most recent job was probably the worst.

My manager had said out loud, "I have to be the smartest person in the room." Like, she wasn't joking. She honestly thought she was smarter than everyone. She thought that highly of herself. I drive people like this insane and, of course, we instantly hated one another.

It was difficult to hide my contempt for her bad practices, her lack of contextual knowledge of what was going on, and her love of doughnut charts.

The day I completely lost any ability to pretend I didn't hate every second of the job was when she told me, "At [terrible company], we write introductions first. You will write your introductions first." lol, no. Introductions are written last. I will not write one first. She then proceeded to gaslight me about how "we operate like a start-up" in order convince me that I should be running around like crazy and burning myself out for a silly job. 

The job would have been ok but her and my skip manager were both arrogant idiots in different ways. The company I worked for prior to this worked us super hard--no vacations allowed--but most of my peers and most of the managers were actually smart. And, we were well compensated. It was weird to go from working at a company that had really smart people doing impressive things to working in a place full of people who thought that they were smart and were producing garbage.

I'm so happy to be out.

-----

My first job after graduating was really rewarding, but it was just in a terrible location and underpaid me quite a bit. I pretty much lived in poverty for the sake of a "calling." It took a while, but I've learned an enjoyable-ish job is less important than making money. The best job in the world isn't worth shit if it doesn't provide enough for comfortable existence.

-----

Work sucks. It is weird we live in a society that hands those who are already wealthy more money for no labor (stocks/interest) and screams about "hand-outs" to the poor.

[botefdunn]

once did some translation work only to find out i'd been an unwitting and extremely minor participant in the war on terror. Still, that.

[Sincerity]

When I was 16, I spent a day and half in a call farm in Anaheim trying to scam seniors into buying "coupon books." That's not how the job was advertised. I was naive and confused by the four-hour training. I didn't understand what I was supposed to do, and the trainers were sketchy. After lunch, I tried to make a few calls and failed. I went home feeling uncomfortable. The next day, I tried again and realized how fucked up it all was when I almost got an old woman to buy. I went out for a smoke and never came back. Didn't get paid. Later, I saw on the news that the place got raided.

[brycickle]

Expand Quote

Manually masturbating caged animals for artifical insemenation.

[close]

Damn, I would have to be homeless to agree to a job like that.

Or an actor...

[Bupstop]

I worked in produce sales for a few horrible years. Everything about it was stressful because it’s a commodity that rots if it sits around and there was always troubles with the supply chain.
I dealt with the buyers (who were all super big assholes) and truckers (who were sometimes assholes) and people in charge of production (also assholes). The only decent people were the workers doing all the labor in wet freezing cold for minimal pay.
The stress from that job gave me the worst heart palpitations. Felt so good to quit and leave that shit hole.

[busey]

never quit anything in my life until years ago working on a show with this power tripping show runner. turns out i was like the 4th or 5th producer they hired because the turn around rate was so insane working with this idiot. after a week or two i called her up one morning and told her to fuck right off and find someone else. some of the best things happened to my career after quitting like it was some sort of karmic reward.

[GardenSkater77]

Telemarketing 2003-07

Selling fundraiser programs and then test preparation software.

‘Needle in a haystack’
‘Smile and dial’
‘Pause, listen’

I wasn’t calling people at home but even the majority of people at work don’t want to talk to you.

The only good part is I made my own calls and was allowed to create my own script. It did teach me how to avoid sounding like a total sleaze bag.

[Síota]

I moved to this absolute shit hole town in the middle of nowhere to get away from meth, mates of a mate lived there and had just harvested a big crop of weed, I got a job as a highschool janitor and just sold weed, and pretend to work. I was only a year older than the last year kids, was dope till the weed ran out. Fucking job was ass. I quite and got a job at a dog food factory, fuck me that was even worse. I split and moved soon after. Fuck High River AB. Shit hole.

[SupremePizza]

I worked at a call center for 2-3 days. It was for that company that prints ads on the back of supermarket receipts. I was going through some legal troubles and needed a job bad. I've worked for some shitty companies in my life and this was by far the worst job ever. You'd be cold calling business owners who were always pissed when you'd call them. On my last day there I took an extended break and walked into neighboring businesses applying to jobs there

[matty_c]

Man years ago I needed some money real bad and I knew my mate had worked at this factory before so I got the number and they said start tomorrow

They had this industrial mixer maybe 15 metres long and 3 metres wide. Massive. The job was to throw all these different bags of shit in the mixer, mix it up and bag up the mix.

Sometimes the mixes had this shit called pork protein. It was like all grains of sand except it used to be pigs. It would stick to everything and get everywhere. It stank.

When my mate worked there the supervisor was this chill cunt and not much got done

When I worked there they had this big kiwi cunt, huge strong man. He was constantly running and he would try get the other workers to run, too.

I think it was my second day and he jogs past me and he goes ‘quicker Matty! Fast hands fast feet!’

I told him to go and get fucked and I clocked out and left. No cunts telling me to hurry up at work get fucked. Rather be broke.

[Anderdingus]

I've walked out of every job I've had
 

[chuckles]

Too many to count. My current job has been a shit show for the past year but I’m trying not to dwell on it. Just trying to get out. One of the more memorable ones was a temp job breaking down old gas pumps to salvage parts when I was 18. I ended up getting such bad poison ivy in their yard and then got fired when I called off because of it.

[matty_c]

Man years ago when I was at university I used to work in a cinema. It was a shit job but it wasn’t too bad. I was a supervisor there and I would sell weed all day out of the back dock. I’d just have all these quarters done up in my backpack ready to go.

Anyway I used to do night shift and the close there. I don’t know why I did this but we had these cleaners that would come in and clean the cinemas at night. We didn’t have to clean the cinemas.

I’m not proud of this but some nights I’d just go in and trash the cinemas so the cleaners would have more work to do. I don’t know why I did this.

Sometimes I’d go in the cinemas when nobody was there and I’d piss on the carpet. I’m not sure why.

We had rats in the walls there too.

The gm got sacked for fucking a teenager and the assistant gm went like a day later for not telling head office.

For like a week there was nobody there that gave a fuck. Nobody came to collect the money from the safe for days. There was a shitload in there.
 
One of the other supervisors and I discussed staging a robbery but firstly that type of theft isn’t my style and also that guy was not a criminal.
I think we would have got caught for sure.

[cum]

Rim 

[Benicio El Toro]

Chipped out 6000 psi concrete with a 50/70lb jack hammer from a man basket for a couple weeks. Just fucking littered with rebar.

Chipped out the bottom of an elevator shaft (18" thick), and had to throw/shovel concrete 5' out of the hole, climb out of the hole and shovel it into a wheel barrow. Wheel barrow it out of the building. 3-12 hr days

Setting life line on I beams over a live highway. Pretty sure that was illegal but didn't know better at the time. One day

Worked on the renovation for one of the oldest hotels west of the Mississippi which doubles as a museum now. Had to chip out a cubic yard of the original foundation, wheel barrow it out of the basement, form up the hole, wheel barrow in new concrete and shovel it into the form. All in the same day, for 2 months.

The thing about concrete demolition is that it just grows and grows the more you break it up.

[Slave IV]

I wouldn’t t say any were the worst since they all had pros and cons but I got three worth sharing.

My first job was at Wild Rivers Water Park at 14. I wasn’t even thinking of getting a job but went with a friend who was applying and figured we would play in the park after. While I was waiting during his interview the manager asked me if I wanted a job too so I was like whatever, sure. So we both got hired. We worked the food service and basically served park food and bussed tables, so typical shit work. The main part of this was to share that we served the typical nachos with the orange cheese sauce and being at a water park during summer, flies everywhere. We had one of those sticky flytrap rolls hanging above the nacho cheese vat and one time, it fell in the cheese. I asked the manager what to do and he said to just take it out and keep serving the nachos. Never forgot about that and always suspicious about eating those kinds of nachos to this day but still love them. Pros at this job were being able to use the park anytime we weren’t working and constant eye candy for a 14 yr old kid.

Next one was when I was in college, I got a job at Circuit City. I worked at another electronics shop before and was a big audiophile and car guy by this point so I enjoyed selling car audio. My old job was really chill and focused on customer service since it was a PX. This one, not so much. Everything was purely about profits and basically, I ended up getting fired because I preferred to work with customers to sell them what they really wanted and needed instead of selling them whatever crap I could with the highest profit margins. All my customers appreciated me and I made good money while I was there but apparently that’s not what they wanted and I’m glad they went out of business shortly after. Only time I’ve ever been fired. Fuck them, lol.

Last one was during a transition time after college, I was trying different temp jobs and ended up at Hitachi just doing office filing work. The part that sucked here was again, the manager, who was the most negative person I’ve ever met. We are just dealing with paperwork here, nothing changing the world here but he was always acting like the world was ending. His favorite line he used everyday was, “we have big problems now”. I would think, what? Oh I have to file these papers over there instead of here or in some different order now? Oh shit, it’s going down now, lol! Dude was whacked as shit and a major stress case so I quit pretty quickly but the cool thing was this was during the time HDTV was getting launched and I got to see the first over the air HD signal of a space shuttle launching on one of their big screen tvs at the time. It was like a “giant” 50” rear projection.

Anyways, I look at these experiences along with everything I learned about business and marketing in school and other jobs and it has really shaped part of who I am today. I realize what a joke most of our system is based on and the shit it puts people through just to keep up with creating profit for profit sake.