The boss at My Very Worst Job had a habit of sharing too much information. I was at work one afternoon when the power when out. When it came back on, my boss returned and I was joking with him about how dark it is in the office when the lights are out. He laughed and said that he’d been in the bathroom when it went out and it’s really dark in there. We chuckled together and I thought that was the end of it.

“Yeah, it’s pretty funny,” he continued, like he was embarrassed but wanted to tell me something anyway. “I’ll tell you, because it’s just the two of us and I know you can keep a secret…

“So, I was in the bathroom and well, I’m of a certain age where doctors start checking for various illnesses and diseases by using stool samples. So, I was actually trying to collect my sample when the power went out. It was soooo dark! *chuckle chuckle* Anyway, I’ve got the collection stuff all ready and I don’t want to loose my opportunity…”

I lowered my face and covered my eyes. He charged on:

“Actually, you’ve probably never had to do this, but basically you collect the stool on a piece of cloth, then there’s this little scooper that you use to take the samples to send to the lab. Aaaanyway, I’m standing there, all of a sudden in the pitch black, all ready to collect my sample and I don’t know when I’ll get another chance, so I pull out my cell phone, open it up and set it on the counter, just for a little light. And when I’m right in the middle of things, someone calls and the ringer makes the phone vibrate right off the counter, because I’ve got my hands full and can’t answer it. Then, when it hits the floor, the battery pops off, so I’m in the pitch black again. But now, I’m crawling around with the scooper in one hand, trying to find my phone and the battery with the other. Hahaha! I’m glad the power came on when it did, because I might have been in there all day. I finally found the battery and it was clear over on the other side of the bathroom, under one of the urinals…”

At this point I was wishing the power would go off again so that I could escape under the cover of darkness.

“Anyway, pretty funny story, huh? Just don’t tell anyone. It’s way too embarrassing! Hahaha!”

Mercifully, the door opened and another employee entered. My boss accosted him in the doorway.

“Hey Keith! Want to hear a funny story? This happened just now when I was in the bathroom and the power went out. See, I was trying to collect a stool sample for…”

Yeah, it’s a pretty funny situation, just not one I want to share with my boss.

New in town with very little savings, I needed cash fast so I went to a temp agency. I was excited when they offered me a temp-to-hire position as a data entry clerk for a large mortgage company. I arrived for my first day at 7:45 a.m. at a sprawling corporate complex and got very confused as to exactly where I was supposed to be, as no one had told me there were multiple buildings. Finding my new supervisor at exactly 8 a.m., I was icily informed that “Eight a.m. means at your desk and working at 8am, not walking in the door at 8 a.m.” We were off to an excellent start.

My new boss brightened quickly however and began gushing about what a wonderful place this was to work, going on and on about the elaborate Christmas party the company held each year. It was early July, so I wasn’t sure why all the emphasis on Christmas, but whatever. We arrived at our area and I was shown a desk where a woman was already sitting. A second computer had been placed at the edge of the desk with a folding chair. I incorrectly assumed that this would be a temporary spot for me for training and/or until they found me a desk of my own, but oh no, I was to be permanently wedged into this tiny corner, on a chair that soon sent shooting pains through my lower back.

This was a mammoth mortgage company that did billions of dollars worth of business each year. My department’s job was to deal with one specific form that would be faxed over from brokers. We’d call up the loan number in the database and enter the information from the form. Simple enough, except there could not be any blanks. If there were blanks on the form, we had to call the broker to ask for the information. At least 80% of the forms had at least one question left blank, so there were a lot of phone calls to cranky brokers who tried to ask me questions I could not answer. When I said where I was calling from, it was very common to hear “Oh thank God! I’ve been on hold with your customer service people for an hour!” And then they’d ask a question I couldn’t possibly answer. It should be noted that not one single aspect of the mortgage industry was explained to me, so I didn’t actually understand what information I was asking for nor could I answer even the most basic question. Neither could I transfer calls to customer service as that was a separate phone number. The brokers I called got understandably very, very upset with me.

Then there was my desk mate: A loud, harried woman who wore heavy perfume and proffered the opinion that it was “disgraceful” that I was unmarried at my age (I was 25) and tried to fix me up with her 19-year-old son. I declined. This woman never, ever, ever shut up and had a loud, braying laugh like a donkey. When I asked if we could move our single telephone so it was between us so I wouldn’t have to stand and reach awkwardly over here to make those horrible phone calls, she barked “No!” and proceeded to complain about having to share her desk with me, as if it was my fault.

Then there were the breaks. Or rather, the lack of breaks. Several times a week we were given the “opportunity” to work through lunch and then get lunch for free. “Lunch” consisted of a single slice of plain cheese pizza, which was cold by the time it got to you. Technically, you could insist on taking your proper lunch break, which I did once, but I was the only one who did not take them up on their oh-so-generous cold pizza and they acted as if I had spat in the CEO’s face. Also, we had to get permission from our team leader to use the bathroom, which was humiliating and ridiculous.

All this was for a whopping $8 per hour–barely above minimum wage. Eventually I found a retail job offering $10 per hour and quit the evil mortgage company via voicemail without giving notice.

MVWJ was a subset of one of my best jobs which was in a professional office setting. I had to train a new kid to do my job before I could move on to my next assignment within the company. I looked forward to getting him off to a good start, but what a waste it turned out to be. This guy, who was in his mid-twenties, was a major loser. He left his job as a high school math teacher because the students made fun of him. I should have taken that as a sign. When I explained something to him, he didn’t write anything down (even when I handed him a pen) and would come back a few days later so I could explain it again. Meanwhile, he’d sit at his desk and do absolutely nothing. He often overslept and missed important meetings.

His first major assignment was to create some important documentation. He put off the task for as long as possible, did a terrible job, then took the next day off to go to the department golf tournament. While I rewrote the documentation, he got wasted and passed out on the golf course with a boner. On a personal level, this guy repeatedly told annoying stories and was incapable of living in the real world. He put his paycheck into an account from which his mother would pay his bills. He feebly bemoaned when he ran out of plastic dishware at home. He once proudly confided that he didn’t own an iron; I pretended I hadn’t already figured that out. The icing on the cake was his apartment was flea-ridden and he got fleas which he passed on to me. Shortly after I’d moved on, management asked him to leave the company.

I was eight months pregnant in November of 2007, so I was quite huge. I work at a job that requires you to be on the phone all day long and we were approaching our busy season. You get two, 15 minute breaks and one hour long lunch and of course if you need to use the restroom during those off times you can take a personal break. With me being the size of a small whale and having a bowling ball sitting on my bladder all day long I had to use the restroom a little more often than normal. Go figure. My manager knew that I took mini personal breaks to go use the restroom and I would quickly go back to my desk. But towards the end of November my manager’s boss sent me a message stating I was taking way to many personal breaks and that from now on I can only take my two, 15 minute breaks and my one hour lunch break. I explained to him that I take the personal breaks to go and use the restroom due to the fact that I have a child using my bladder as his personal drum set.

He said that wasn’t a good excuse and I can wait to use the restroom only during my set breaks and lunch. I couldn’t believe this! He then said if I had an issue with this I could take it up with my manager or go to HR about this issue, so I took it up with HR. My HR manager called me in and I explained to her what he had said and showed her the conversation. She then said she would talk to my manager and get back to me. Next day she called me back in her office and explained I am not doing anything wrong and to continue to use as many personal breaks as needed. Funny thing is after our busy season was over he got fired! And I was told that he was chewed out by my HR manager for what he had said to me. Sad thing? I’m still here.

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.

No one liked the VP of HR, except for her own assistant and the President’s Assistant (she used to buy them stuff, including lunch daily–and even took them on vacation with her and her husband). One day she and the President’s Assistant had an argument and falling-out. One week later, two police officers showed up at our office and arrested the Assistant–right at her desk in front of everyone. The VP claimed the Assistant had stolen her credit card. Then the VP threatened the President (her boss) with a lawsuit if he did not fire his Assistant–so he did.

The Assistant had a new job elsewhere within one week…

What the VP did not know was that I was dating a cop at the time and found out that the officers that came to “arrest” her had no charges to file and simply let her go once they got to the station–no paperwork was even filed! You see the VP’s husband was a detective. The whole thing was showboated just to embarrass the President’s Assistant and get her fired!

Suffice it to say the VP of HR was eventually fired herself – for oh so many reasons…

At first this job was a dream solely because of the dramatically improved hours. I had been working the graveyard shift for five years and had had enough. I found a mid-level job with a local insurance company to be perfect for me as did the person who hired me. Three people including me were doing the same job which allowed us to split up the work in a manageable fashion. I quickly excelled in the job and was even awarded employee of the year!  Then things went bad. My boss went on maternity leave. The three of us were expected to pitch in to cover her workload. With the help of a temp, we were able to get it all done with four people. Apparently, we did so good of a job that when my boss came back from leave, it was decided that one of my fellow worker’s positions was no longer necessary and he was fired.

The “ghost work” that was left behind was split up between the remaining two people. From then on, there was never enough time to get our daily tasks done. And to make matters worse, they no longer approved overtime hours.  So it was either work until your 40 hours are up and get written up for not finishing or work overtime to finish the work and not get paid for it. My boss began making comments when we left to go out for lunch too so I began working through lunch in my cubicle. That year, my week long vacation request was rejected. My boss said they needed me there and that I shouldn’t ask for that much time off. Instead, I requested a few Fridays off a month until my vacation time was exhausted. I got yelled at for ruining everyone’s weekends because no one else could take long weekends.

During this time, my coworker’s position was a revolving door. Since the third coworker position was eliminated, I saw three people leave me and I was tasked with training the new person. It was hard not to warn them of things to come. No one stayed longer than four months except me. I was closing in on two years with the company. I had become accustomed to heading into work two hours before my boss or coworker did, so that I could put in an 11 hour day (eight hours paid)  and still be able to leave in time for the night classes I was taking. I would leave each day thinking that my boss’s audacity could not be topped. She was pregnant again and preparing for maternity leave. Surely, she’d hire some temps to help. We waited.

Two days before my boss went out on leave, she strolled into my cubicle to formally tell me that they were not hiring a temp while she was away. I couldn’t even tell you what my face looked like, but my boss must have noticed my discouragement. In her best management speech to date, she told me, “You won’t need a temp!  I was on maternity leave over a year ago. In that time, I’m sure you learned how to do your job even quicker!” She was serious. I put in my two week notice the next morning.

My Very Worst Job was working for a New York architect. I was planning to move to NYC with my best friend and needed a well paying job to pay the rent so I was pretty much willing to take anything. When I went in for the interview the office was beautiful and I met with the office manager who seemed really nice. She said the position would be assisting the owner/head partner of the firm, but she did warn me that he could sometimes be difficult and that would be the toughest part of the job. Having worked for difficult people in the past I thought it wouldn’t be a problem. I started a few weeks later and the girl who trained me hinted at the fact that he was impossible to work for, comparing him to Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada. After working there for a few months I soon realized that even the people who hired him hated him because he was such an asshole. I am pretty sure his wife hated him too considering she lived on the complete opposite side of the country from him.

He was an angry old man and always screamed at people in the office calling them a “f-ing moron” in front of the entire staff. He lived off of cigarettes and cappuccinos (yes he smoked in the office and yes this was only a couple years ago). One time he demanded that I find the phone number of one of the wealthiest men in the world. It didn’t help that he couldn’t really remember his name. He was in a rage when I told him I couldn’t find it, he suggested calling 411 (thanks for the tip but he wasn’t listed). He said, “Fine, I’ll have one of the architects do it!” And of course they weren’t able to find it either. After dealing with his crazy requests, wild mood swings (one day I came back from lunch and the office was vibrating with crazy music and he was rocking out) and his general lack of respect for everyone I decided to put in my notice. I stayed for nine months, the girl before me lasted six and the two before her only lasted three months each.

After I made up a lie about “going back to grad school” I gave him six weeks’ notice and he told me I was unethical. When I started there were 15 employees, by the time I left there were only seven people left, because they either quit or he fired them in one of his rages. After I left I heard from one of my friends that my old boss had recently been on an international business trip and got into a physical fight with the client he was visiting. By the way he was in his 70s. Thank god I got out of there.

In 2005, got a job as a graphic designer for a well known print company in my area. I even bought a baby gift for the designer I would be temporarily replacing while she was on maternity leave. My work day ran from 5:45 AM to supposedly 4:00PM, but often I went home at 6:00PM or later. I was Designer, Secretary, Printer/Copy Person, Press Film Developer, Front Desk Clerk, Press Order Taker, Janitor, and cut/folded/scored paper products like business cards and brochures as well. I made $10 an hour and got a half an hour lunch break. This is actually not the bad part. My boss was the bad part. Never mind the numbing job of deleting of 200+ porn spam messages in the email inbox each day, never mind that we did not recycle anything, never mind that my boss was often called on by the town for dumping developing chemicals down the drain (well, actually do mind that).

We still made film and plates in 2005. The shop ran Mac OS 9 on candy colored iMacs and “beige boxes” from the late 90s. They used gigantic file folders because everything was on film and paper. This was all livable though. The horrible part of this job was my boorish boss. He had an air of superiority about him, but was very cheap. So, when he brought us a new computer it was actually a beige box with Mac OSX 10.1 running on it (by third party software), proudly declaring, “This isn’t supposed to run on these but I got this software – so it does!” I’m afraid I actually laughed. Abashed, he later bought a Mac Mini and a software set. Unfortunately I had already given my notice by that time. All because of old computers, you ask?

Oh no. Because of the extremist talk show he played at high volume. Because of loud rude phone calls: “Wait, this is American Express, right? THEN I WANT TO SPEAK TO AN AMERICAN.” He would later walk around the shop gloating to everyone about his wit. The last straw, however, was Hurricane Katrina. He said, “Nothing but the dregs of society live there. We should just leave all the blacks to drown and then build up a good city.” He was completely, dead serious. It’s 2010 and I still have nightmares about this job.

I had a one-year government subsidized (grant) job working for a charitable organization that was raising money for a shelter. It was three other women and myself and my job was ostensibly PR and Media relations. Those in charge were wealthy women who had never had jobs in their lives and their attitude was that if you were from the same “community” and had to actually work for a living, instead of having a rich husband and living in a mansion, then you were total garbage and deserved to be treated as such. I was 28 years old, had been looking for a job for quite some time and needed the money. The main problem was that no one seemed to have the slightest idea what I was supposed to do, so I had to come up with all the ideas for publicity, but they would then reject all my ideas. I was told that they would have to take it up with “The Organization,” but nothing ever materialized. I was mostly given really idiotic jobs like putting pictures in a scrapbook and going to the shelter to wait for furniture deliveries. They seemed to think that because I had applied for this job, I was such a moron that I probably didn’t even know the alphabet.

After a while, I just gave up and sat in the other office reading novels. It was obvious that the only reason they wanted me there was for the money I brought into their project (if I quit, they lost part of a subsidy). When they did bitch at me I’d say, “Fine, give me something to do.” One woman who worked there in particular (a volunteer bookkeeper) was a mean, miserable gossip who was always telling me how her taxes supported me and that I sat around and did nothing. Everyone apologized for her because she was a “volunteer” who “was valuable to the community.” After six months I was getting very depressed, drinking every night to get to sleep and had to drag myself out of bed every day for another day of novel-reading and abuse. I was looking for another job, but it was a bad recession and jobs were scarce. One day, the Gossipy Bitch saw me reading a novel and started railing at me about how her taxes paid for me, how I was a freeloader and how I was useless. She was going on and on and finally I had enough. I got up and walked into the bathroom to prevent myself from killing her. Then I called my supervisor at home and told her that I was not coming back after that day. A few months later they made the news with a huge embezzlement scandal involving their national director.