Every job has its downsides. Even if you’re earning good money in the kind of role everyone dreams of, there are always parts of the work that are less than desirable. What these redditors had to put up with, however, takes the biscuit. From nightmarish bathroom clean-up operations to bizarre and abusive bosses, these are the worst things the people of Reddit have ever had to deal with at work.
1. A thankless job
The manager at a grocery store I worked in my teens refused to pay the waste management bill for several months. When they finally came and emptied the dumpster, there were still mounds of trash about around the area. He had me go out and clean all of it up alone.
I didn’t have any protective gear or supplies whatsoever and was out in 100+ degree weather. I was only given a bunch of trash bags to put it into, and when I went in to ask for help, I was just given a shovel. I worked one more day after that, and after just being given more work to do without so much as a “good job” or “thanks”, I never went back.
2. The DVD thief
I worked at Circuit City when I was around 17 years old. I heard a noise of packaging being opened in the movie section, found a guy crouched down cutting open DVD boxes & stealing the discs. He looked at me, held his knife out and said “Got a problem?”
I just replied, “I don’t get paid enough for this s***” & backed off. I went to the back room of the warehouse area to call a manager to tell them what happened. Never could get a hold of anyone so I just chilled in the warehouse area for a half-hour to decompress.
3. All you can eat
I used to work at Old Country Buffet, and there were kids who would eat until they threw up- like alllll the time. This one case that is seared into my mind was when I was once fixing up the salad bar and I heard ‘Billy Run!’ screamed from an ignorant parent and then I see this 12ish-year-old boy running to the bathroom, only he didn’t make it.
An unholy amount of undigested red Jello-O came exploded out of him like a f***ing volcano all over the Caesar salad, the floor next to the cash register, and on about five or six diners waiting in line to get in. It looked like he had literally vomited his guts out in an arc about 10 feet in diameter. I had to sweep up the chunks with a broom until a dishwasher with a mop could take care of the rest.
4. Lobsters on the run
My worst job ever was working as a fishmonger in a grocery store. We got a large number of lobsters in every day, soft-shelled and already dying. So my manager decided we could at least sell their tails, in order to make as much money back as we could.
Apparently, lobsters don’t really have a central nervous system, so when you sever the tails and put their tails on ice they freaking run away. So I had to chase these tails down because they’ve escaped into the rest of the display case, onto the floor, and hidden under our prep tables. Never again.
5. One album only
I used to work in a mall music store, back when that was a thing. There was a corporate policy to play new music regularly, y’know, because that’s the f***ing thing you’re trying to sell. My boss, every single day she worked, would play the entire Madonna album, Ray of Light.
Hours of the same eight f***ing songs. For most of a year, until it was either go mad, commit murder, or bail. I bailed. That music franchise went under a little over a year later. I hold Madonna and my old boss personally responsible, and I was glad to see it go.
6. Toilet trouble
The owner of a mobile home called and said they had a stinky yard. I could smell it when I pulled up. The mobile home was new and had only been set up for about 8 months. while setting it up, someone didn’t tighten a no-hub band of the toilet in the kid’s bathroom.
8 months of flushed toilet was all over the ground, under the home and had just started being noticed outside. I told the homeowner to call the guys that set it up to come and fix it. I wasn’t crawling under there. I definitely wasn’t being paid enough to get covered in waste first thing in the morning.
7. A not-so-sweet customer
One time a lady came through the drive-thru, ordered an ice tea- no sugar. It was just the manager and me so we were talking while I made it. I started to put sugar in it, realized my mistake and had to dump it out and start over- my manager watched me do. Give it to the customer and go about my life.
2 minutes later the customer is in the lobby complaining that I put sugar in her drink. My manager says no, I watched her make it, there is no sugar in it. Lady: I know what sugar tastes like, this definitely has sugar in it. Okay, whatever, the policy is to just remake the drink so I do. She takes a sip and says “mmm much better.” And walks out.
8. Snakes in the foundations
Back when I did plumbing went out to a job that required us to crawl into the crawl space of about a 200-year-old mill house. I opened up the crawl space and shined my light in there across the crawl space to see all the rafters and pipes just draped in snake skins.
It was like something out of a horror movie. Not only that, but there were some snakes slithering away into the darkness. I Noped the f*** out of that one. I’d rather crawl through s*** than snakes. The owners of the house saw no problem with the infestation either.
9. A musical power play
I worked in an architects office for two months. I had been laid off and was desperate for a job, a kid on the way and we just bought a house. So I took the first one available, didn’t question why there was an opening at this office when no one was hiring. Took the job, just me and the boss in the office. He plays ‘New York City Boys’ by the Pet Shop Boys. Ok cool. Then it repeats, then several times.
I mention it to my boss, he says it’s fine. Then the next day, the same thing, he doesn’t want to change it. I bring in headphones…no headphones allowed. For two straight months, I heard that song every day, all freakin’ day. I quit because my boss would play this song and not allow any changes or me listening to my own music, I told him this when I gave him my two weeks. He just said ‘ok’ with no reaction. Bolted as soon as someone else would hire me. I think it was some kind of evil experiment.
10. Spider hallway
I have a mildly irrational fear of spiders. I was asked to help clean out an old storage area/shed type building. It was covered in dust and a ton of these big black spiders but a big enough space that I felt fine. Until my supervisor handed me a leaf blower and asked me to go through a back hallway with it.
Opened the door to the hallway and it was cramped, just tall enough to be a little over my height and just wide enough for me to walk through. Except there was no light so it was pitch black, until I held up my phone flashlight and saw the largest mess of tangled webs filled to the absolute brim with thousands of the big black spiders. Straight up refused to walk down that thing, especially with a leaf blower. Like no thanks, I don’t want to create a spider tornado.
11. Swallowed the evidence
We removed a fabric foreign body from a dog’s small intestine. Owners wanted to see what it was. We cleaned it up and saw it was a pair of panties. We handed them over the wife takes one look at them then goes red.
“Those. Aren’t. Mine.”
The husband apparently had a whole castle of lies that started crashing down then and there in our lobby. Eventually had to have security remove them because they were really going at it with no intention of taking it somewhere else, and we had other clients in the lobby getting really uncomfortable.
12. Working for free
I was working at a small butcher shop/speciality grocery store that was going out of business. On the day we finally closed, one of the execs stopped in to tell us and let us know to file for unemployment etc. At this point, none of us had received payment for a couple of weeks. She asked us to take inventory of everything in the store and we could leave after that.
20 minutes into taking inventory, my coworker and I looked at each other and said “what the f*** are we doing, they just said they aren’t paying us.” Threw the paper down and walked out. Imagine having the b**** to tell your employees you can’t pay them for the past two weeks and won’t be able to pay them for that day, but you want them to stay and keep working.
13. Out of tortillas
I was working at a certain bougie build-your-own fake Mexican fast food place and myself and the rest of the staff was getting ready to be hit by an intense dinner rush due to a major professional sports game ending around that time. It was going to be a crazy rush, but I knew we’d get through it.
That’s when I heard the bad news: our manager had forgotten to order tortillas on the last shipment from corporate. We were completely out of tortillas. I spent the next 2 hours explaining to hundreds of people that we were out of tortillas. It was like if McDonald’s ran out of fries and burger buns. There were so many p***ed and intoxicated sports fans. I did not get paid enough for that bull****.
14. Bridal blues
Wedding planner/coordinator here. Had a bride have an early morning wedding per HER request. The ceremony started at 9 am, which meant we all needed to be up busting our a**** well before the sun came up. As she arrived at the venue I went to greet her and show her her beautiful bouquet. She must’ve had a terrible morning because the first thing she said was “that bouquet is NOTHING that I wanted, you suck as a person.” As if I was the person who created the bouquet… mind you, She HIRED her own florist. So, I shrugged it off.
Naturally, it just kept getting worse. She was freaking out about getting married and having a full-on breakdown in the bridal suite bathroom. I and the officiant are trying to console her through a solid wood door and provide her with options to just bail quietly.
She swung open the door and then just yelled explicit nonsense about a bunch of random stuff we had nothing to do with. (I mean, random— her coffee order mistake, the fact that she hasn’t paid her mortgage yet, her hair is frizzy, I mean it was WILD) Then she took a deep breath, wiped her red, swollen, mascara running eyes, yanked her ‘ugly’ bouquet from the vase on the dresser and then said “where’s my dad? I’m ready!!” With the biggest grin on her face.
15. Detailed instructions
I’m a mail carrier assistant and a pretty generous one at that. I will bring packages to the front door and ring the doorbell of course. I’ll even scream that your package is here if you leave a sign saying to do so, which multiple people have over the years.
But someone once left a sign that said some madness about “Bring the package to the backyard, look under turtle, get key that opens the back door, open back door, walk down the hall and go down the stairs to the basement and put it in the third closet from the left, on the bottom shelf.” Exsqueeze me? No. I’m not going to your basement. And stop telling the whole world how to get into your house.
16. A chocolate factory nightmare
Worked at a chocolate factory. They have these things called conches, basically giant cement mixers filled with chocolate. They need to be cleaned every week or so, so you have to transfer the chocolate from one conch to the other so you can get in and clean it. You transfer chocolate via a huge hose, and of course, a new worker hooked up the hose to the full conch… and forgot to hook the other end up to an empty one.
Thousands of gallons of molten chocolate were spilt onto the floor (did I mention it’s 110 degrees in the room?). The chocolate came up to my knees, and I lost a boot to the chocolate. Ate it up like quicksand. So it’s us, 110 degrees, with shovels scooping this stuff into totes to be hauled away. Took us a whole shift to get about a fourth of it, and by the end of our shift, I was coated head to toe in chocolate. Boss said the only thing you could see on us that wasn’t chocolate was our eyes, and only when our eyelids weren’t closed.
17. An extended trail shift
I applied to work for a retail store and at the end of the interview, the manager said she wanted to see how I work for 30 minutes. That 30 minutes ended up being 2 hours and she kept telling me what I did wrong. I was expected to talk to customers and tidy up, despite not knowing how the shop worked.
I have had zero training at that point and she wanted me to talk to ALL the customers. I basically worked for 2 hours for a minimum wage job that I wasn’t hired for yet and, of course, couldn’t get paid for. I definitely noped out of that real quick.
18. An extra pepperoni
Worked at a pizza place making minimum wage which at the time was $5.25 an hour. The company was running a national ad campaign advertising 60 pieces of pepperoni on a large pizza. A guy calls in complaining that we gave him 61 pieces. I think he’s joking and laughing I tell him to bring it in and I’ll remove the extra piece. He loses it, calls me all sorts of horrible names and demands to talk to a manager.
I hand the phone to my manager standing next to me. My manager gives the standard “I’m so sorry”, “you’re absolutely right!” lip service, hangs up the phone and starts yelling at me for screwing up the pizza and handing out “free” pepperoni. I took off my uniform, threw it on the ground and walked out. The only job I have ever walked out of and it was over one piece of pepperoni.
19. All sold out
When I was in college I picked up a seasonal position at a certain blue big-box electronics retailer. Black Friday hits and a gentleman comes in and wants to buy a camera that is on sale. I show it to him and things are going well until he asks about the return policy. I tell him if it is unopened then he gets a full refund, but if it is open it is subject to a restocking fee.
He flips his s*** and says he will just buy it from Walmart. I put the camera back and think that is the end of it. A few hours later he comes back and asks for the camera, but by now we are sold out. I tell him this and he swung at me and made contact. He swings again and I block and put him in a hold and yelled for LP. They drag him out of the store and I turned in my notice. I’ll never work retail ever again.
20. Have you tried charging it?
I worked in retail at an electronic store and an older guy came in to buy a wireless house phone. I told him to let it charge overnight and it should be good to go tomorrow. The guy comes in the next day, comes right up to the counter and I see his arm go back so I ducked right in time to see the wireless phone smash into the display where my head was.
I picked up the phone and started yelling at him and he yelled that I sold him a defective device and it didn’t turn on. So I open the back and realize he never plugged the battery in, I showed him that and he took the phone out of my hand and left the store without an apology or anything.
21. Waiting to be relieved
I worked as a cashier at a casino in the small state I live in. I was stationed at a restaurant that was supposed to be like a “gourmet fast food” place. Did very well in NY, did not do well in our state. Anyway, we were very low staffed, and I would often work 10-12 hour days. One day, my replacement just… never came. I sat there at that cashier counter for HOURS. It was just me and the cook.
I hadn’t eaten anything all day and had been there for 12 hours without so much as a 15-minute break. It was extremely slow. We weren’t supposed to eat or leave the cashier station until we got a replacement and I hadn’t seen the manager all day, but I was literally so hungry I was shaking. So I paid for something to eat and tried to eat it stealthily behind the counter. The manager of course just happens to walk by at that moment and proceeds to chew me out for eating behind the counter.
I explained to her that I hadn’t had a break all day and was literally starving. She basically told me “Too bad, you have to wait until someone relieves you.” And then proceeded to have the cook make her a cheeseburger, went into the back room and ate it while I was standing there starving to death.” I walked out and never looked back. Screw that place!
22. What’s my role again?
I had IT-manager responsibilities, did IT-manager work, I was referred to by my boss as the IT-manager. All this atop of my actual employment as a developer, because we didn’t have an IT-manager. Or anyone else in IT. I was young, so I wasn’t getting paid accordingly either. During a company meeting, I was even praised for “making it look to our clients like we have an entire IT department”.
Shortly after that meeting, there was a dispute on workflow, to which I replied “I never used my position as IT-manager to declare rules, but I must insist in this instance”. I was promptly educated on the fact that I was employed as a developer. Shortly after that, I informed them that I wasn’t employed at all.
23. Wrapped in plastic
My boyfriend was a dishwasher for a very large foodservice chain. Often, he stayed for up to three-four hours past what he was supposed to, because if not he’d get fired. One day, the managers freaked out because the higher-ups were gonna visit, so they had to bring in an exterminator just to make sure it was ‘perfect’ in there.
That meant deep cleaning and wrapping everything in plastic. He didn’t get home till 2 am. He was supposed to be home at 8 pm, and he started working at 3 pm the next day. They asked him to do it again a few weeks later and he noped out, he couldn’t bear to be so sleep deprived over again.
24. No item holds
I was working retail. It was Christmas time, and I had been working at that store on and off for years. One of our new hires who wasn’t familiar with our holiday policy (no holds), had promised to hold an item for a customer and put it on the back counter. Someone thought it was just a go-back, and put it back on the shelf. It then sold.
The customer arrived, after a two-hour drive, to find that the item had been sold and we didn’t have any more. I had the misfortune of being the one to break the news. He was understandably furious, called up his wife, handed me his phone and demanded that I speak to her and explain to her why he was going home emptyhanded. The $8.25/hour I was being paid definitely did not cover that s***.
25. A face for radio
I worked at a large theatre and music venue when a classical radio channel had a festival. I was wristband check for backstage when I stopped a lady who didn’t have a wristband or a ticket. She started shouting at me for being disrespectful because she didn’t need a ticket as I should have just recognized her. From the radio.
26. Writing the handbook
my boss’ boss was interviewing me for my bosses position because he was leaving. He handed me the “new” employee handbook and says “you’re going to need to be sure you read this front to back”. I was totally taken aback and confused, and it showed on my face.
I eventually found my voice and said, “I already have, I’m the one who wrote it”. My boss had passed it off to his boss as if he had written it. This was because he was supposed to be the one to write it but then failed to mention that part when he asked me to do it instead.
27. One lost glove
Waiting over an hour after stopping time because another department lost a tool. I’m in a machine shop. We search multiple times while under a lockdown – not even allowed to go to the bathroom. Eventually, security is involved. They line us all up and pat us down. No one has it.
So they decide to strip search everyone. Just as they’re deciding who and where, the supervisor in the tool crib calls off the search. He’d found it, lying on the floor under his desk where he’d dropped it. It’d been in his tool crib the whole time. The tool was a leather glove.
28. Art class water fight
1st grader tips over a table full of art supplies, throws full containers of water (the class was using watercolours) then starts throwing chairs. As I clear the room of the other students, he pours water on his one-on-one aid. She definitely didn’t get paid enough for that s***.
This poor kid essentially held our school hostage for 1/2 a year with his antics. He did have a horrible life story, but nobody in this kid’s wake got paid enough, and we all lived in terror of this tiny person who continually chose to make our lives miserable.
29. Put it on my tab
I was an admin working for a small but very successful body corporate company. About a year into the job, I asked my third performance review why I still wasn’t trusted to do a lot of my job roles, things like booking flights/hotels for business trips, purchasing office supplies, etc.
That’s when I found out the company didn’t have a corporate credit card or accounts with other companies, all those expenses went on the owner’s personal credit card. I noped the f*** out of there real quick, because that is what’s known as a seriously shady business practice.
30. Hold your breath
We have a massive building full of nitrogen. It’s so the dangerous flammable chemicals can’t ignite. All the containers are transported on a conveyor belt system. I’m an industrial mechanic and my job is to keep all the s*** running. There was a container stuck and the system wouldn’t convey it any further. So I had to take a deep breath and go in there and give it a massive tug so the container falls back into place again.
The feeling of being in this place and knowing one or 2 breaths is all I need to die. No one’s gonna be there quick enough to help is horrible. It feels like a scene in the Harry Potter films where Harry’s life is sucked out by the dementors. You can feel the life being sucked out of you. That’s when I said, nah, f*** that.
31. Label your food!
I worked in retail, and one of my jobs was to clean the staff refrigerators. Every two weeks I would announce I’d be going though the fridges and removing everything without a name and date (direct orders from my boss). Every two weeks, without fail, one of the cashiers would scream at me for throwing out several of her old, nearly empty Powerade bottles. And I mean SCREAM.
32. Endless angry customers
Many years ago, I worked for a telemarketing company that would get hired out for various campaigns from other companies. Usually, it wasn’t too bad, but the final campaign I worked was too much. Sears had decided that not enough of their customers were using their store credit cards and sent out pre-approved gold cards with higher credit limits ( and interest rates ) to a bunch of people along with a note stating that unless they called into our assistance line and cancelled the card, they would be charged higher fees.
As you can imagine, people weren’t happy. If we just had to answer the angry calls and process the cancellations it wouldn’t have been so bad, but we also had to try and flip each call into a sale for some kind of insurance policy. We had to keep pitching the sale until the caller said no three times or we would be docked points from the call… I walked after the first couple of hours.
33. Serious fire hazard
Worked in a petrol station in Ireland for years. One winter there was a particularly bad freeze, like -12/13° Celsius! There were loads of issues with radiators and pipes in peoples homes freezing. I worked the evening shift up until about 10pm and had to fill up people’s cars for them. While standing filling some guy’s car up, another man pulls up across the forecourt and tries to unlock the filler cap – it was one of those that you needed to insert the key to open the cap.
Judging by his reaction, the lock had frozen – no big deal, we usually just pour some hot water onto the lock and key and it’s done in seconds. I watched him take out his cigarette lighter. I presumed he was going to heat the key up a little. No, this guy thought the best thing to do would be to hold the flame to the petrol cap.
Had to sprint across and basically rugby tackle him away from it before he could succeed. Obviously quite shocked he asked what I was doing, to which I replied was he about to hold an open flame to where you put the flammable petrol into his car? Seemingly this hadn’t quite dawned on him
34. Sandwich riot
I was working at subway a couple of years ago. I had a woman come in with a screaming baby asking for 4 footlongs. I made them, with the baby screaming the whole time, and turns out she got the subs wrong and started over. We had a cue of over 15 people when we finished serving her, but we had run out of bread.
There was an uproar from the small crowd that had come together, and we had to call our boss to come and defuse the situation. Police were called, and one guy left us a broken window after being told we had run out. The fact that this all happened over sandwiches still amuses me though. The broken window doesn’t…
35. Paper or plastic?
A gas station, 11 o’clock at night, kinda tired. A dude comes in and gets 2 energy drinks. That’s it. I go through the transaction, and at the end, after I tell him he’s good to go, he just stares at me. After 4 seconds I ask if he wants a bag and he goes “well YEAAH”. I’m sorry I didn’t know you wanted a bag for two items but ok you don’t have to have an attitude.
After I get him a bag he starts to leave and says, “I’m telling Crystal (my boss) in the morning”. Sure enough, this adult man comes in the next day to complain about a tired 19-year-old who didn’t automatically get him a bag but did eventually get him a bag anyway. Idk man, some stuff is just so dumb, it makes you age a couple of months.
36. A false all-clear
In college, I worked construction at a pharmaceutical plant over the summers for one of their subcontractors. We were demoing some pipes in one room after our safety guy said everything was good. Then the plant’s own employees come in wearing what look like hazmat suits. Noped out of there real quick.
37. Snake in a storm
Sent to help restore service at a petroleum tank farm after a hurricane. It’s pitch black I’m working under portable lights and using a flashlight. Opened up a 4160V switchgear. Floodwater and everything in it comes pouring out. Water is standing almost up to the bus bar. Some swimmy snake comes toddling out just kinda swimming and slithering along. Nope! This one will wait.
38. Cockroach cake
Working late after high-school as a dishwasher at a fancier restaurant in my area. I was getting paid .25 cents over minimum wage and working well into the nights regularly. One day about 2 months into this the restaurant is slammed with customers and a party (we were short-staffed too) I’m running around like crazy to keep up with clean dishes.
When I’m finally getting caught up and one of the waitresses pulls a cake pan off the top shelf over my freshly cleaned dished only to see said cake pan be filled with cockroaches that have now fallen now all over my clean dishes. Needless to say I didn’t get caught up and they got my 2 weeks that night.
39. An ocean of indifference
I was looking for a short term job before leaving later that summer for college. I signed up to work with Environment California, which is one of those companies that does canvassing and raising money for environmental organizations. No shade on the company itself, everyone who trained me that day was excellent.
It was just outside of downtown San Francisco, on the rainiest day of the year being turned down, ignored, yelled at, and bumped into for 8 hours. One time I gave the fundraising schpiel to a lady that was approaching: Me: “Excuse me, do you have a minute to talk about saving the ocean?” Her: “I hate the ocean.”
40. Insufficient equipment
I’m a retail worker that does early shipments every week. Waking up in the morning is fine. I get my coffee, drive to work and wait for the truck that comes in around 4:30 am. Warehouse decides to put a half a ton glass display case in the back of the truck. After unloading everything else, my coworkers and I gaze at this thing. No forklift, no nothing. The truck driver insisted that we took it out, but nah, not worth minimum wage.
41. Yelling over dirt
Worked at my parent’s used car shop. My Dad forgot to tell me to give the car he just sold a good washing. He actually never told me he even sold it. Well, the lady he sold it to came in to get it while he was out and I was the only one there, sees her new car still dirty, and proceeds to absolutely lay into me.
She was beyond enraged. I got my Dad on the line and she redirected her unholy wrath at him while I went into the back and washed her car. It wasn’t even that dirty. Washing it only took like 20 minutes, but knowing that she might shout again if it wasn’t good enough terrified me.
42. Facial hair offence
Worked as a butler at a castle. My boss, the owner of the castle, came to me one evening and said that one of the guests had complained to him that he didn’t like my facial hair. I was growing muttonchops at the time, and the guest had tried to demand that I shave it all off. My boss is really chill however and just told me not to worry about it.
43. Too many spinning plates
I worked at a certain burrito restaurant. I was the closing manager. I had a broken foot ( that I had broken there). I was left to close the store and expected to finish on time at 11 that day. With two new hires who could not roll burritos on the line. I had to count the inventory, complete two audits, run cash, grill and prep while running back and forth between rolling burritos.
The manager before me knew that I had no coverage did not tell me before I came in. He just expected me to deal with it. I never came back after that shift. Just did the bare minimum and closed the store. I left my key in the office and walked out. Never looked back!
44. Clean-up in aisle five
I used to work at a paint store, and one of the other employees rammed a walk behind forklift into a pallet of 5-gallon paint buckets, ended up breaking 6 of them open on the pallet and they all spilt out all over the floor and wall. It was like a horror movie, but with more paint.
it would not have been so bad but they were all oil-based, so we had to use mineral spirits to clean it all up. That wasn’t even the worst thing he did with the forklift. I couldn’t believe my boss let him still use it after that, but he was allowed to keep driving it until I left months later.
45. Muddy boot disaster
Guy walked across a freshly waxed floor with muddy boots…and by freshly I mean it was still wet. When I flipped s*** asking him what the f*** he was doing he offered to mop the wet wax and couldn’t understand why I was losing my mind at his stupidity (he had to matrix his way through a literal web of “Caution do not enter” tape and “WET WAX DO NOT ENTER” signs.
To elaborate: wet wax can’t be mopped, if you f*** up the wax before it is dried we have to re-strip the floor and start over from the beginning. Since waxing a floor right can take upwards of 8-10 hours for a fair-sized area….well we can see why having to do it over would p*** the person off I hope.
46. No real records
I work at a tax preparation office and I had a customer come in, acquiring a quote on a business tax return. I explained I can’t say because he did not bring in anything and it’s hard to guess a price when we don’t have all the details and paperwork. I’d likely get in trouble if I did quote him based on nothing.
He says “I don’t have any paperwork,” I ask “don’t you have a staff to pay? Income earned? Utility bills? Rent for the building? (Of course, this back and forth went on for quite a while). He goes “nope, I only have a logbook of the cash I take”. I then proceed to ask a series of questions about his business as I don’t believe he has not ONE single document to use. He then calls me some insult, says my job isn’t that hard and asks why I can’t just answer his question.
47. Hurricane drill
Worked at a movie theatre in high school. We had a tornado warning and had to evacuate people out of the theatres and into the hallways. Some guy was hot and bothered that his movie was interrupted and said he wanted a refund and was going to leave. I told him that for his safety he should stay inside because there was a tornado warning and that his movie would start right where it left off since it was a digital movie.
He made demanded to speak to the manager so I said fine ill go get the manager. My manager walked over, she told him the same thing I did. He kept arguing so my manager was like “fine you want to leave during a tornado warning and possibly get killed by a tornado, fine be my guest. But if you walk out you won’t get a refund”. It was the most incredible thing I’d ever seen my manager say to a customer.
48. Not dressed for the weather
I used to work at a large event centre as a cloakroom helper and cashier. All of the cashier work I did was behind the counter, inside, in mostly a comfortable setting. One time I got asked to do some cashier work from 6 till 1 at night, and I told them I would be there. I show up to find that the event that evening was Thunderdome, a large hardcore music event.
No problem; it’s just that they forgot to tell me that I would be working outside that evening, making sure that every car paid 20 euros upfront for parking. It was raining, it was 4 degrees, and they never mentioned to dress accordingly. They let us stand outside with massive amounts of cash (thousands) as we received 20 euro per car.
49. Movie day
I was a teacher for 5 years. One year, my planning period was first thing in the morning from 8-8:45. The day ended at 3:15. All the teachers got an email at 2:00 with a three page, double-sided form attached to it. The email stated that we had to turn the form in to the office by the end of THAT day or be written up (so we had an hour)
I still had the kids. I was supposed to be teaching, but I can’t teach and fill out a multi-page form at the same time. I put on an educational video and started filling it out. The principal came in to observe me while the kids are watching this video, and I’m dutifully filling out this ridiculous form that I’m sure no one will read. She had the gall to say, “Aren’t you supposed to be teaching right now?”
I slowly set down my pen, look up at her, and say, “I would be, but you decided to send out this form last minute. Which would you rather me do right now? Because I can’t do both.” She just looked at me for a moment and said, “I’ll come back another time.” I muttered, “Sounds great.”
50. Too many fries
When I worked at Wendy’s, it was my first day learning to make fries. I was told we had a big rush coming, therefore they wanted me to make a lot of fries. Well apparently I made too much (my 1st day remember) and the manager started yelling at me. Like screaming.
I refuse to be yelled at, and I simply can’t get that worked up about fries. So in the middle of her yelling at me, I took my hat off and walked out. It was the worst first day I had ever had at a job, and it definitely motivated me to work hard to find somewhere better so I wouldn’t have to go back.
51. Doughnut disaster
When I was 20 I worked at a doughnut shop (midnight shift) and called in sick because I had the stomach flu (who wants someone with the flu serving them food?!) but my boss insisted I come in, even sent his daughter to come get me. I didn’t get all of my chores done so he threw a trash can at me and I was like “ya I’m done”.
His wife begged me not to quit and because I was stupid and young I was still helping customers and one lady in the drive-through said “are you okay?” I just gave her the coffee and bagel and then I quit. The best part is, I gave two weeks notice and at the end of my two weeks, on my last shift my boss told me I had to work the following Tuesday. I did not show up for that shift.
52. Bees in the car park
I was a cart pusher at Walmart which was the lowest pay and had probably the hardest work but it was fine. One of my friends tried to pull into a spot in the parking lot and it was full of bees because some awesome person spilt a ton of mountain dew there. I go and tell the manager, and ask if I can get bee spray (if he said yes I probably would have gone to town).
Instead, he hands me a box and tells me to put it over the bees and then try to put carts in the spot so no one will park in it. I said nope but he insisted this was how it had to be done, so I took the box and then just threw it in the parking spot from 10 feet away. The next day he “talked with me” but didn’t write me up probably because he knew he was an idiot. About a month later I ended up quitting since it was summer and I got my factory job back during my summer break.
53. Management miscommunication
Worked at McDonald’s in high school. Called in sick for the first time after months. Came into work and was asked for my doctor’s note. Was unaware I needed one so I was suspended for 2 days. Got a call while I was in class saying I’m missing my shift.
Called them back during lunch and told them I’m in school and it’s not in my availability to work during the mornings and early afternoon AND that I was suspended for two days. Got another call for the same thing the following day. Went to the drive-through after work and tossed my uniform through the window.
54. A restaurant love triangle
I used to work at Lime Fresh Mexican Grill. So this girl found her BF cheating on her at the restaurant. The dude immediately booked it and his GF and his side chick had it out. They were screaming at each other in the middle of the restaurant, while everyone watched.
To the point where his GF threw her sandal at the other girl and ripped her wig off. My managers told me to tell them to leave. Needless to say I enjoyed the show but I didn’t wanna get decked at work, so I just let them finish fighting and leave of their own accord.
55. A failed experiment
I was transporting about 140 broth cultures of E. coli that had been in an incubator for a few days. While trying to take them into the other room, I caught my arm on the door handle and dropped all of the tubes, many of which shattered on the floor and sprayed E. coli all over the room, walls, and of course, me.
I also had a bunch of students throw away their test tubes that were full of broth and bacteria in the glove trash can. A few weeks ago. I spent about an hour going through the bags and picking out the test tubes that survived and trying not to breathe and/or gag.
56. Professional shoplifter
A woman who was a regular at the shop I worked at for over the year came in as she usually did at least twice a week. She was in a car accident a couple years beforehand which had left her unable to walk and in a wheelchair. She had her usual friendly chat with me behind the till then went for a wander to browse the new stuff we had in stock. My manager comes up to me and says “I think she’s stealing”. I was shocked. She was a lovely woman who was a regular for years and was so friendly.
But I decided to watch her and low and behold she put stuff under her seat. After 10 – 15 minutes of arguing that she did indeed have our stuff and I would call the cops she gave up. She stood up out of her chair and gave us back our stuff. Turns out she could walk and was perfectly fine and she had been stealing from us using her chair for years. I was the youngest, least paid there and felt way out of my depth dealing with such a confrontation.
57. Playing in tar
One of my third-grade students played in the still gooey tar they used to patch the playground. I sent him to wash his hands in the bathroom and he got tar all over it. I was working on my master’s degree at the time, and as I scrubbed tar off the soap dispenser I thought to myself “they’re making me get a master’s degree for THIS?!”
58. Too many shrimp
After a busy morning harvesting prawns (shrimp) on the farm, we go back after lunch to start a fresh pond. The traps usually catch between 50-150kg at this time of year and we had 8 in each pond (4 ponds set). We make our way out to the first trap…it feels weird like we have set it wrong or it got twisted or something.
Turns out it had over 500kg of prawn in it, which we had to lift (2 of us chest-deep in water), empty into 50kg buckets and walk out of the pond. of course, we only have 6 buckets, so we return to the shed, deliver them and go back. By now its back to near 500kg, so we fill it again and go back. 3rd time of asking we go back and manage to empty it. Never had anyone there seen so much prawn end up in one trap…….until we went to the 2nd one, then the 3rd one and the 4th one and so on.
59. Flyering in the grocery store
I was young and naive and took a “marketing job” with a credit card company. Day 1 I find out the job is actually just walking around a grocery store like an asshole and asking people if they want to sign up for a credit card. It was awkward as f***. I asked this one guy if he was interested, he said “please just let me do my shopping”. I apologized and left – not being paid to be an annoying s***.
60. When’s my raise?
I was a mechanic for an independent shop for a little less than a month. The agreed rate was 11/hr for a week, I guess just to prove I wasn’t a complete dullard, then my pay would be raised to 15 the next week and 18 the next. Week 2. No raise “well you didn’t get that motor swapped in a day”.
(He opened the shop two hours late and wouldn’t give me a key.) Week 3. No raise “well it’s been slow”. I asked if I was getting a raise at the end of that week. He said no again, because he could find someone who would work for less. I said, “f**king do it then”. And walked out. Turns out he couldn’t find anyone to work for less.
61. Wheelbarrow lifting
A couple of weeks ago, I was cleaning up a mess of sawdust that spilled out of an auger shute (I burn biomass in my boiler). I had to run all of this to the back door of the boiler room, in a wheelbarrow, and dump it into a loader bucket. The loader operator didn’t want to keep dumping it, so he brought me a huge waste bin. I asked for the bucket back, because I can’t dump a wheelbarrow into a bin.
In surprise, he asked: “You can’t lift it?” and I had to reply, “You want me to lift a wheelbarrow full of fuel over my head a few dozen times?” No one pays me enough to use a f**king wheelbarrow like that, and the job wasn’t paying me much to begin with.
62. Never work with children
When I was a soccer referee when I was in middle/high school making like $15 a game and grown-ass adults would threaten me over some call I made. Like bro your 9-year-old kid isn’t gonna be a professional soccer player and this game isn’t gonna change that.
63. Throwing food
Worked at a hospital as a FSW Grilled cheese that a patient ordered wasn’t hot enough so I offered to get them a new one made. They said “you should’ve got it right the first time b***h” then he throws his grilled cheese on the desk right into my face. As it falls into the floor I start to laugh and that makes the patient even madder.
I offer to go get my manager so they can discuss a way to fix the problem. He throws his tea on me (about 8oz) I’m standing there just fuming at that point. I slowly back out of the room and with my best customer service voice I go “you have a BLESSED day sir” then turned in my 2 weeks notice that day.
64. Who’s in charge?
I worked for a news company as a website developer and had just given my two weeks notice for joining a new company. My boss, recently joined a week before I gave my notice, filling a long unoccupied position. The news editor of the company asked me to update their website, so I started right away.
My boss came in complaining about me picking up adhoc work and asked me ‘This is not how you do things. Do you know you work for me?’. I apologized in the moment, told him I would stop the work, waited for him to go away, and I drove off. I had been doing the work as a favour, and it really wasn’t worth the trouble.
65. No more discounts
I used to work for a bookstore. A customer assaulted me and screamed in my face because I couldn’t apply a discount to his gun magazine. (Magazines didn’t GET discounts. Period.) After he stormed out, I fled to the back, sobbing. The managers asked me what happened, then proceeded to give me a formal write up for “provoking the customer.”
66. Crying over spilt milk
Worked at a warehouse for a large grocery chain. Supervisor picked me and the other most recent hire and told us we had a special project. They had “some” buttermilk that was past its date and we were to dispose of it. Said method of disposal was to open a carton, set it by a floor drain to empty, throw the empty carton into a box and take the box to the compactor when full.
He then led us to a room that was literally full of crates of this out-of-stock buttermilk. Me and the guy spent the next 11 hours disposing of rancid buttermilk. The smell was indescribable. By the end my jeans were coated with a smelly white crust and so stiff I could barely walk (I had to throw them out).
67. No more free sandwiches
I worked at Subway when I was a kid. They had just decided to get rid of the free sandwich stamps because people were stealing them all the time. We put signs up all over the place for like 6 months to warn people. But we had some crazy old man flip out and actually picketed the store calling us thieves.
He stood outside holding a sign. I ended up getting into a huge fight with the guy even though he was like 60 years older than me. My district manager ended up sitting down with the guy and later he brought him into the store and forced me to shake the guy’s hand and apologize.
68. Digging yourself a hole
I was working for the state and was told to dig down to a pipe to locate the leak in the pipe. I dig straight to where the water pipe was leaking. But they didn’t know how deep the pipe was initially so they didn’t want to use a backhoe. After digging an approximately 8’ deep hole I located the pipe.
Then my boss told me to dig the trench above the pipe for 10ft in each direction. Which is when I crawled out of the non osha approved hole and threw my shovel as I proceeded to get in my car and left. I could have gotten seriously hurt, and nothing’s worth that.
69. Not above mopping
I worked in org development – I am a learning and development professional. We had our annual staff retreat. I was responsible for a spa party event. Got awesome vendors, coordinated an insane schedule of each individual to have different services, ordered lovely decor, etc.
We set up the decor and my boss declared that the floor at our venue was filthy (it was slightly dusty; mind you, in a room for massages that would be dimly lit) – and made me mop it. Twice. Then I had to get on my hands and knees and dry it by hand to ensure it was dry in time. I’m not above mopping, but didn’t get paid enough for her tyranny, of which this is but one example.
70. Sensible shoes
I produce standup comedy specials and a comedian came in and started berating me for wearing sandals on a warm day. He kept saying things like, “look at this guy’s feet! what an idiot to wear sandals! they’re disgusting!” Keep in mind that it was 75+ degrees Fahrenheit outside and my coworkers assured me that I do in fact have normal feet. Some people just think they’re really funny I guess.
71. Nail clipping at the deli counter
Working at a grocery store deli (meat n cheese) and I heard this mysterious clicking sound. Jk, it wasn’t mysterious because everyone knows what a nail clipper sounds like. This guy is standing at the counter clipping his nails. It was completely disgusting.
I look him in the eye and say, “that is disgusting. For public health reasons you need to stop.” He deadass kept clipping and said, “I can do whatever I want it’s my right.” So I refused to help him. He decided to get upset and I left the counter to find my manager. I don’t really remember what happened with the guy because the next lady asked if I was gonna clean up after him. Went to the walk in to… cool down.
72. Swinging from the chandelier
I was working as an AV technician, it was in Calgary during the stampede. To give some context they had just given all of the Tim Hortons staff a raise to $14 an hour, and I was making 12. So I show up to this ballroom and the client wants to decorate the room with cowboy themed whatnot. One of the items they wanted was a huge chandelier hung at the top of the ballroom we’re talking 50 feet in the air.
Totally fine just they needed the chandelier to be wrapped in barbed wire, you know cuz Cowboys, so I’m left with this huge chandelier there’s no space for me in it I’m getting poked with barbed wire. And as I’m plugging the chandelier in with the stage pins the electricity starts arcing and zapping the barbed wire. Yeah f*** that… I plugged it in nothing happened and I quit immediately.
73. Running the whole show
I worked at Yonkers for the holidays in 2012. I tried giving my 2 weeks notice twice but both times they kept scheduling me – everyone else quit. I ended up staying until April. This Yonkers had two stories. Men’s, children’s, home, and undergarments were upstairs. We needed 3-5 people up there to function.
One day I was the only one upstairs and I was told to run every department. For $7.25 an hour 3 months after giving my first 2-week notice. A customer yelled at me for not being able to find an associate. I grabbed my purse, clocked out and left. I never went back.
74. Set up to fail
Got paid 10 dollars an hour to “manage “a company that was a side gig for a larger company I was working for doing other things. Within months I brought the side company out of debt and into a situation that was profitable. I was selling like crazy and collecting old debt, making new friends in the biz, making customers happy.
Turns out they were using the smaller company as a tax write off and put me in charge cause they thought I would either toe the line or fail. Had one of the bosses tell me to have “pride in my work” after asking why they were denying a request that would have got us a few thousand dollars off one sale. Anyway, I lost my s*** and quit, wrote a letter explaining why, they tried to hire me back, didn’t like it. Own my own business now.
75. Doing it all
Worked at a 7-11 and the owner’s daughter was working a shift with me. I was getting paid $8 an hour. Manager walks in and tells me to leave the register, stock the fridge, stock the aisles, cook the food, mop the floor, sweep the outside parking lot, clean the glass, and then work the register with the daughter if it gets busy. I had to do all that while the daughter was on her phone drinking coffee and using her phone. I quit the next day.
