I had just graduated university and was looking for my first real job. A friend suggested I apply for a job at a local flooring store as an office worker, as her Dad knew the owners. I should have known right away that this wasn’t a good idea, but I really wanted to get started on my career. I applied and interviewed for the position and was thrilled when they offered me the job. The name of the store was so embarrassing I wouldn’t even tell people where I worked.

The shift started at a different time everyday ( I got all the bad shifts) which wasn’t ideal but beggars can’t be choosers so I sucked it up. Their daughter was about to have a baby and they needed someone to cover for her and then stay on afterwards. They asked me to promise that I would stay for at least one year, which I had no problem doing.

Right away the dynamics of the office seemed odd. It was made clear that they were family and I was an outsider.  The daughter (A) and her husband (B) worked there as did the mother (owner), I will call her P and her ex-husband’s new wife, T. She had bought her ex-husband (F) out of the company. Despite this F continued to come in all the time and acted like he owned the company, fine who was I to say anything. He was a local politician but was a shady character, the type of guy that just gives you the creeps. He used the staff to put up his campaign signs.

I got along with B really well and even got him free tickets for him and his son to see his favourite band. I liked everyone and things were fine for a while, although I did little office work and did a lot of cleaning, sales and other things.

They used an archaic system to store their business contacts and expected me to instantly grasp the way they filed, even though it made no logical sense, not alphabetical.

Then right before A had her baby I broke my ankle. I called to say I had to go to the hospital but that I would come in after I had my cast on, so I would be about an hour late. She told me to stay home and call the next day. They continued to tell me to stay home even though I said I could work because I had a walking cast. I came in to see them and brought A some really nice baby presents. P sent me home and said she would call me.

Eventually, after much begging on my part (I needed the money and I was ok to work) P allowed me to come back to work, but got angry if I made even the smallest mistake even though they didn’t have the time to properly train me. Then one day out of the blue P fired me, said it just wasn’t working out. Other then the occasional small mistake I had done nothing really wrong, was always dressed really well, on time and polite. I was confused as to why but then I figured it out. They had hired me only until the daughter could come back to work. She would now work under the table (while collecting maternity leave) and bring the baby to work everyday; she had been doing this a few days a week while I was still there.

I guess they wanted to see if it would work with the baby there and I was the back up plan. I had never been fired in my life. Getting fired from this place was the best thing that happened to me, I got offered a government job the next week for over double the pay. I figured I was better off anyways, since the whole dynamic of the place was odd. F and T even lived in the store for a while.

MVWJ was my childhood newspaper route. My brother (12 years old at the time) decided he and I could share our neighborhood route when I was 8 years old. Being young and naive, it never occurred to me that people would screw me over at every opportunity. The job started out well enough; I delivered the papers to 20 houses each morning before school.

The problems started happening when I had to collect the monthly fees from the customers who didn’t put their subscriptions on their credit cards. People would refuse to answer the door, slam their doors in my face, argue that they didn’t owe what I asked for, and short-changed me constantly. One woman didn’t answer her door for six full months. When I called the newspaper office to complain about her, they said that only the customer could cancel their subscription and I would just have to keep trying. When I finally got in touch with her, she asked me to come to her house at midnight on a school night to collect the money!

For three years, I would come home in tears and beg my parents and my brother to let me quit because customers would scream at me, other kids would tease me, and one time a group of teenage boys spat on me and shoved me in a snow bank while I was trying to collect money from one of their parents’ houses. Another time, a dog bit my leg, and the owner said it was my own fault for “showing fear.”

Maybe the worst part of all? My brother handled the money once we collected it, and only paid me $10/month for my work. I didn’t realize until years later that he was pocketing way more than his fair share.

I was sixteen and so excited to start my new job at the grocery store. My first day was reserved for training. Another girl and I were instructed to go pick things off the shelves that were misplaced and put them in a cart. Once we were finished we were told to scan them. This was a small grocery store, so at the most, we had 20 items. We scanned them on a register and one of the assistant managers showed us how to pay using the system. Then we were put on bagging duty. For two weeks I bagged groceries, and never got more training. It wasn’t terrible, but I would have enjoyed checking out customers. And there was one assistant manager, D, who complained about having to “babysit” the new employees, but overall I liked it.

One day I came in and D told me I was going to be on the register. Excited, I arrived to work for the next shift, only to notice he wasn’t around. I checked out people without too many problems, impressed that I even remember how to use the system. But then my first mistake came when a man was trying to buy some green onions. Green onions were something my mother had never cooked with and I wasn’t familiar with them. I counted six green onions in the bunch and put it in as six green onions. The man told me that was too much so I went to find D to clear it out. He grumbled about how I should have known that it was only one. I apologized and went back to work.

Soon we got a crowd and D came and worked in the register behind me. I checked out an older man with a bunch of groceries and a giant bag of dog food I could barely get it over the scanner. I had to drag it over multiple times before the bag even scanned. The old man came back in, I had accidentally scanned it twice. D unhappily gave the nice old man his refund.

Again I got back to work. Several customers later, I got a man who wanted to pay for his groceries with a pay check. I had never been taught to do this. Knowing D was annoyed already I looked for it myself on the screen. Cash a check was an option and I chose it. And gave the man back his extra money, minus the $2.50 check cashing fee. The man told me that he never got charged a fee, so I went to go ask D. D told me I did it wrong, I just put it in like a normal check and give him cash back.

I checked out more people out but after awhile, I noticed I had a rope across my lane. I went to D about it and he angrily yelled at me, “You’re stupid, lazy and don’t know what you’re doing! You’re back on sacking groceries again.”

So I went  back to sacking groceries for about an hour before my shift ended. I went home and cried. I had never had an older person say anything like that to me. I hated going to work to bag groceries. I finally got the courage to give my two weeks notice, and the manager told me not to worry about it and to just finish out the week.

Shortly after I got a job at my town’s local bank where I became the fastest teller in a few months. During my school breaks I would work at different locations for extra hours. About a year later I was at the branch the grocery store went to make their deposits. D came in and hit on me, he didn’t remember his former stupid and lazy employee he had to babysit.

My Very Worst Job happened a long time ago. I was still a good summer or two away from mowing lawns for cash, and my Garbage Pail Kids addiction wasn’t satisfied through my measly allowance, so when a friend asked if I’d deliver papers on his afternoon route while he was away for a week I was extremely excited. We went over the paper route for a couple days before he left and when the day arrived I was ready to go.

I must have looked quite the sight: chubby little blond kid with socks pulled up to his knees and shorts that barely went halfway down his thigh, pedaling his bitchin red dirt bike with the plastic grocery bags full of papers up the street. Any mental image of that day, however, should include a very untied right tennis shoe.

A slob? Sure. But that’s not why I mention it. I mention it because shortly into the route I suddenly found that I couldn’t pedal the bike. At all. I also couldn’t move my right foot. The lace had wound tightly up in the pedaling mechanism and not only was making any forward progress impossible, it was making it impossible to get off the bike.

I promptly panicked and fell over. This had a dual effect of breaking the plastic bags the papers were in and bloodied my knees and elbows. Here’s another mental picture: this time the chubby blond kid is bleeding, way-too-short shorts dirty, crying on the ground with one foot tied to a bitchin red dirt bike with papers strewn around him. I somehow managed to get my foot out of the shoe, but couldn’t unwind it at all and the back wheel still wouldn’t turn. I ended up gathering as many papers I could and limped away, dragging the bitchin red dirt bike behind me to a house on the corner where I could call my mom to come get me. She did and we spent the rest of the week delivering out of her car. I’m pretty sure she ended up spending more on gas than I got for delivering.

I was 15 and worked nights at a fried chicken take-out store after school. My bosses were a husband and wife with enormous chips on their shoulders (as you often encounter in the food service business). They would alternate nights.

One of the employees was a deliveryman named Amos: sweet, fat, jovial guy with six kids and meager income. After work one night, Amos returned to order a combination dinner for his family (the combination was 12 chicken pieces, two sides and two dinner rolls). The rolls came in sheets of six, each no bigger than a wallet-sized photograph.

Amos’s order was at the height of dinner rush. Wife boss was on. I was in charge of preparing the sides and packing. Knowing that Amos had a large family and was a colleague, instead of the usual two dinner rolls, I decided to pack six. I gave him a smile and packed the next order.

Next thing I knew, wife boss sharply turned her head to meet my eyes and hissed, “I saw what you did. Go home now!”

Frightened and unsure if the extra rolls meant my job, I removed my apron and walked home, her words still ringing in my ears, the look on her face etched in my mind.

The next afternoon, however, I received a call from wife boss asking me to cover another employee who called out. Although it was Saturday, I happily complied, figuring that she had come to her senses about this pettiness and all was forgiven.

When I walked in, Amos was standing there, tail between his legs. Amos didn’t work Saturdays.

Before I added it all up, husband boss raged in from the back, “You stole from me!”

He was talking to both of us!

“All you had to do was ask! I’d give you anything!” he shouted and threw a wad of money he had prepared for this speech on the floor and it scattered all over the place (nice touch).

My adolescent 15-year-old mind was too timid to react.

“You steal from me again, I’ll put a bullet in your fucking head and throw you through the fucking window!”

Scared and in disbelief, my lower jaw and chin snapped back and tightened,  I thought that I was going to cry. I knew that if I spoke just one word, tears would have burst forth. I slowly pulled my apron off over my head, and began to walk out.

“You’re leaving?!” husband boss asked incredulously.

I still couldn’t talk. Amos stayed. He had to.

“This is what separates the men from the boys!” husband boss yelled ineffectually to the back of my head.

I was free.

MVWJ was when I was 14 years old. It was at a fish market in a farm stand that was a bike ride away from my parents’ house. A friend worked there also, and it started out gross but ok. We would cook some dishes to sell, sell raw fish, and had to clean up before and after opening hours.

After about two weeks, I realized the boss was completely insane. She would come in, accuse us of “writing off’” items we needed to prepare the fish and really stealing them (what 14-year-old covets parsley so much that they would steal 5 bunches?). She would have enormous cases of frozen fish delivered, or fresh fish on ice, and would always conveniently not be there for the delivery. This soon left me (weighing barely 90 pounds at the time) to try and drag 40 and 50 pounds crates of fish through the entire stand and to the back room, unpack them, store them, all the while tending the counter and cooking the prepared foods in back. I strained my neck so badly one afternoon I couldn’t turn my head to the left for two days.

Because fish can be nasty, there were heavy duty chemical cleaners also, I started wheezing badly after about a month and asked my boss if the chemicals might be irritating my asthma. The boss scoffed and told me to “toughen up.” I finally had to tell my parents how awful it was when I couldn’t carry in a huge crate with 75 pounds of expensive salmon inside, and had to beg my mom to drive down and help me carry it in. She saw the container of cleaner, clearly indicating on the side that a fume mask was required, and told me to quit. That night before closing, the owner gave me a form to sign indicating that I was an “independent contractor” and was therefore not covered by her liability insurance, she insisted I sign before I left.

My mom is a legal genius, and later told me the form was null anyway because I was a minor. I quit via telephone after I told my mom about the form and she refused to let me go back.

On top of the nightmare boss? I smelled like fish for an entire summer.

MVWJ was my first full time job after I finished school. I took a year out before university to save some money and was rather excited when I was offered a job as a receptionist at a hotel/pub/restaurant. I learned within the first day that breaks were cigarette breaks reserved for the smokers and as I was the only non smoker working there I was expected to cover for those on breaks. I was also working shifts, so I would be working 10 hour days, six days a week for an £8000 salary with no breaks. At my interview I was told I’d be on the equivalent of £5 per hour. My maths is not perfect, but that does not add up to me.

I was given the same responsibilities as the duty managers, which included banking, having access to the expensive alcohol and clocking in and out the employees who had a wage rather than a salary. That was on top of the receptionist work, cleaning, waitressing, cooking and barmen roles. The manager had only been working there two weeks longer than me, but he was deeply unpopular and people started calling in sick. He had two “favourites,” one of which was me. This was not a good thing. I am not a fan of people invading my personal space, but he took it too far for me by constantly holding on to the back of my neck. One day Id had enough so as soon as he put his hand there I moved away jerkily from him and he asked if I had a sore neck. For an easy life I just said yes.

Off point slightly, the hotel was also haunted. I am normally quite a rational person when it comes to these sorts of things, but one day I was opening up. It was 5.30am, dark,and quiet. I stepped outside to open the main doors and when I walked back in the jukebox started playing. I was so scared I ran out the building and was late starting breakfast. This was just pure silliness but after all the stories my imagination overtook my sensible part of my brain. Another story I love telling is when a couple came in one night. I checked them in to their room. They came down a little later to get a drink in the pub and I served them. Later that night they came to reception to ask where they could get dinner as our restaurant was closed, so I gave them some directions to a nice restaurant in walking distance. The next morning they came down to breakfast and I was their waitress (and cook) and then I checked them out. They asked me quite seriously if I was the only person who worked there, which I found deeply amusing. They gave me a tip, but I was silly and asked the manager what we do with tips (in case we shared them) and I was told all tips go to the cleaning staff. Doh!

I only survived there two weeks. I turned up to work one day really ill. I was told on arrival that the manager would be late in and that all except one barman had called in sick. I closed the restaurant, sat shivering in reception and was constantly running to the bathroom to be ill. Finally the manager came in hours later and I told him I was really unwell. He asked me to try and stay longer and to come and get him if I’m still bad in a few hours, which seemed reasonable to me. I had been at work for five hours and could barely move when I finally called his office, but there was no reply. He had left to go to the pub down the road. All of my punters were telling me I shouldn’t be there, even the only other employee working. The next day I rang in and said I would not be returning (I didn’t have a contract after all). Turns out five people quit that week with me.

The thing that gets me the most though happened afterward. A few months later I met a friend in that pub. We were sat chatting and having a drink, when one of the employees saw me and ran over and said, “What are you doing in here, don’t you know you’re barred?” I asked why I was barred. Apparently the week I left £2000 worth of booze was stolen and this was blamed on me. I wonder why I never had a visit from the police then? I now have a lot of respect for people who work in the hospitality industry. It is not an easy job.

MVWJ was at an after school center. I thought working for a centre aligned to a religious community would be a nicer place to work, but it wasn’t. It was awful. My job was to work two to three hours per day picking kids up from school, feeding them a snack, supervising homework and a clean up. There were 50 children to three staff (legal in my country) and they ran the show. They were allowed to do whatever they wanted. They abused staff, destroyed property and hit and bullied each other — it was complete chaos. They were not allowed to play with whatever they wanted (some just wanted to play chess all afternoon I still don’t understand why this was an issue), they had to play with whatever toys were “programmed,” which they had no interest in at all. So they spent the afternoon throwing toys, food and each other around the large room.

The senior staff member alternated between complaining to the director about me as I attempted to bring some sort of order to this (resulting in her following me around to watch me as I worked. She didn’t bother to restore order, but just stared) and hiding in the kitchen because there were no children in there. The final straw was the Christmas party. It was a hot day (I live in the Southern Hemisphere) and the children were all inside. They were given food to eat and the 12 year olds spent their time taking bites out of their food and throwing it onto the carpet. The senior staff member and the director let them, as I was on clean up and they were leaving an hour before close. I was in the kitchen furiously washing up as hundreds of items were given to me and a volunteer, who was the only one interested in helping with this fiasco at all.

The director periodically would come into the kitchen to abuse me about the chaos outside and demand that I play with these children. I would quietly apologise to the volunteer who was now doing my job and attempted to do the jobs of the three others while they watched. I spent 60 minutes cleaning a room the size of a half tennis court and later it was just  that bad. I unbelievably lasted another couple of weeks when I told off a 12 year old who desperately deserved it after he screamed abuse at me all afternoon and was complained about by a parent. I never went back, never gave notice and officially still work there.

MVWJ was actually kind of pathetic, but thankfully short. I was 17, had absolutely zero job experience, and needed money. There was a small, trendy coffee shop in our neighborhood that had bounced from owner to owner for the past decade. I went in to interview with the latest owner, who seemed like a nice, professional guy. However, he would not be running the café. He’d bought the café so his wife, who spoke poor English, would have something to do. I spent most of my “training” helping a few of their friends lug huge refrigeration units and scraping the scum from the floor with a butterknife. It was on this day that the couple decided I would be paid national minimum wage, which was actually over two dollars less than state minimum wage. Joy. They paid me with straight cash and told me to come back the next day. I was their single employee, as they thought it was too much money to hire even one more person.

I had to arrive at four thirty to get ready for our five a.m. opening rush, which was a total joke. Maybe three people came in before seven thirty, but I was too busy preparing breakfast stuff to complain. The mammoth cleaning effort hadn’t been extended to the cooking/food handling equipment, which looked like they had been bought in the mid-eighties and hadn’t been cleaned since. I got to leave that greasy horror and run the till later that morning, and another problem became apparent. I had gotten very little training at the till, and they hadn’t briefed me on the drink names at all. So an order would consist of me stammering out “uh, hi” and the customer rattling off their drink order, which I would have to get the wife for. She would snap the drink names at me and get them all herself, skulking off to the back as soon as she was done.(I found out later she was watching me on the security video feed)

Enter a new customer, lather, rinse repeat. I eventually got a little better at orders, but then she would storm out and scold me for not including tax in the total. She didn’t know how to either, and so when she took the till to show me she just spent a half hour fiddling with it. After a few hours of stimulating conversation with our resident crazy homeless guy, I got paid for my shift in cash and was told to call in the next day if I could work. I went home and slept for a few hours, decided that the little money I was given really wasn’t worth it, and didn’t call.

The day after that, she called and chewed me out for not wanting to work, passive-aggressively hinting that I was just lazy and wanted to get money for doing nothing. I hung up after being verbally abused for a few minutes and that was the end of it. Six months later their little café experiment went belly up, and they just locked the doors and walked away, leaving all their equipment and the work of a few local artists (who still haven’t gotten their paintings back) inside.

After graduating from college with a mechanical engineering degree, I got my very first job at a medium-sized firm as a junior draftsperson. The several interviewers were charming and polite, remarking that all the employees (about 50) had excellent rapport and were “like a family.” Turns out that was code for cliquish and petty. The employees who weren’t related by marriage all had extensive social contact outside of the business so nepotism and preferential treatment were the rule. I was given nonsensical tasks that did not befit my training. I had no gripes with earning my stripes as the new girl, but making coffee and sending faxes while the receptionist screamed at her fiancé in the office or chatted for twenty minutes on the phone about her manicure made no sense to me.

The quality control system was completely broken and every missing document and inspection sheet was blamed on me, even though they’d been lost before I even started the job. Military specifications were ignored, whited out and annotated with no signatures, dates or reference material. Schematics dating back to the seventies were stored in waterlogged boxes that bloomed with black mold and made my asthma attacks near-daily occurrences. HR ( and I use the term loosely) used my drug-test pee for a surreptitious pregnancy test and threatened me with loss of my job if I refused to get an abortion. I was sexually harassed by the head engineer on my day off and was told by HR not to bother complaining because his brother was a cop and no one would believe me. Vacation time could only be taken in one hour increments and couldn’t be used to come in late or stay early, so essentially I just got really long breaks.

I was an hourly employee and was only paid for forty hours even when I worked upwards of sixty per week. No time and a half, not even straight time. The final straw was when I hurt myself at work. A wooden stair collapsed under me and I fell down a flight of stairs, breaking my arm. After I left the hospital, I was told to come in to the office and was faced by a tribunal of higher-ups, who told me grimly that I should not even think of workers comp or disability pay, because I clearly broke my arm on purpose to get time off, and I would be sued and go to jail if I tried. I told them as politely as I could that I was leaving. Two years later I wound up with a modest settlement and a resulting job offer from an amazing firm that I’m still with, eight years later.