MVWJ was working at a certain buffet “steakhouse.” I took the job because I heard through the grapevine that some of the servers got really good tips. It was not the cleanest of places and everyone seemed kinda trashy to be honest. On the very first day, I learned that one of the managers was sleeping with a fellow waitress and that was why his wife was always coming by and staring us down. I couldn’t believe how much food would go to waste. People would pile on food just to leave it untouched. I just kept telling myself that I would make awesome tips. Yeah, those awesome tips were about $15 to $30 after eight hours.

There was a sink right next to the dish washing area where you were supposed to be able to wash your hands after dealing with filthy plates. For three weeks it had no soap or paper towels. Yet, we were not allowed to use the restaurants public restroom an we’d get written up if we did. So, one day at work, I got feverish. I remember having what I thought was a mosquito bite on my thigh. Well, I became delirious from the fever and was rushed to the ER where it turned out that I had a staph infection that they had to lance. My mom wound up buying me tons of hand sanitizers to keep on me at all times.

When I got back to work I just kept getting the crappiest customers. One table was filled with a bunch of punks who kept demanding refills even though they had plenty of drinks. They would laugh and thought they were so hilarious and cool. Another time there were four redneck guys with their sons. They were busy teaching them to call us crude names, telling us we had nice butts and tits. My final straw was during Father’s Day. We were extremely busy and I had one table that I thought maybe I’d get a decent tip from. After bringing the guy his steak, his wife wanted something specially made so I went to bring in her order. I had just cleaned off a table, washed my hands and was exiting the dish washing room, rubbing my neck. The guy comes up to me and asked if I cooked the food.

Me: “No, sir. I’m just the server. Is there anything you need?”

Him: “I’m just going to tell you something that you need to know. You should never touch your face or body while cooking food! It’s disgusting.”

Me: “I was rubbing my neck and I do not cook the food.” At this point I pull out my trusty hand sanitizer, “And I use this before and after I touch dirty plates or glasses. For my own health.”

Him: “Well I’m just telling you that it’s disgusting.”

Me: “Uh huh. Thanks.”

Naturally, I received no tip. I was more than happy when I quit.

MVWJ was a couple years ago at a florist. I love flowers and thought it would be an enjoyable job. It would have been were it not for The Office From Hell. The designers all attended church together. One of their husband was the pastor there and she was opposed to wearing any lower garment other than skirts as a religious conviction. Another’s husband was a deejay at the local Christian radio station, which they always listened to at work too. This would’ve been fine, except for the fact that I am an atheist and that wasn’t fine with them. The owner was like Ms. Swan, from MADtv, complete with insane clothes and incredibly rude, inappropriate comments. She would show up in her bedazzled jeans with gold and purple sequins and say things in a mocking tone.

Rachel, who hated Ms. Swan and totally lacked the social skills to acquire a job, was my supervisor, but fortunately for her she was leftover from when her sister’s rich husband had owned the place, and was therefore the only person there who could run it; even Ms. Swan could not. Rachel looked like Mariah Carey if she grew a beard, shaved it and covered the five o’clock shadow with creepy pancake makeup. What’s worse was that Rachel had the monopoly on the place and she knew it.

I spent six months kissing Rachel’s enormous ass and trying to read her mind. I would do something as she had previously instructed me to, only to be called stupid when she found out what I’d done. Bringing up the fact that I was following her directions would result in her explaining that I “should’ve known this was different” or denying she’d said it to begin with. I was terrified of screwing up, but when I did (always in a very minor way) Rachel would make sure I understood how stupid I was for it. In reality, I was very skilled at my job based on what the owner and other employees would tell me, but I always felt utterly inept and incompetent based on the abuse of my supervisor and spent my time at that job falling into bed at night and crying to my fiancé because the emotional stress was so much.

I mentioned before that I am an atheist, but I have no stickers on my car, no shirts, nothing displaying this information. I do nothing to advertise it, but of course, that wasn’t good enough for Rachel and the other ladies. Where I attended church and more importantly, would I attend church with them, became major focuses of our conversations. Gay people who came in ordering flowers for their partners were openly sneered at and declared “disgusting” by the employees (I’m also bisexual). African Americans who came in were made fun of as soon as they left the building. As the only one not partaking in their hate fest, I obviously didn’t fit in. Besides all of this (or maybe alongside it) was the fact that Rachel was almost definitely a painfully repressed 35 year old virgin and hated the fact that I had a love life. She would tell me how “cute” my fiancé was every opportunity she got, and even said at one point that she needed one of him for Christmas. This was not normal girl-to-girl flattery, but Single White Female-esque weirdness.

She would also call me at home every day I was off to ask about things she could’ve figured out or things that I had left notes about. This was a passive-aggressive move that started after I’d called her at home quite a few times, because she’d freak out if I made any decision without asking first. One day, after months of explaining to me that we could use the internet whenever we wanted, I was on NPR’s website while Rachel was on FOX News. Within hours, it was being explained to me that the “internet was for home.” My employment ended when I asked Rachel for a certain day off, to which she agreed. Weeks passed and when the day arrived I was about to begin my daughter’s birthday party when she called to inform me that it was a busy day and they’d have to cut me down to one day a week. I told them no thank you.

A few years ago, when I was 20, I got a job working at a popular pizza chain answering the phone, placing orders and occasionally helping make pizzas. I got the job for extra money to help with college. The manager, “Chris,” seemed like a nice, cool guy. He was kinda cute and a little flirty, but I was a very naive 20 year-old, and didn’t think much of it. On my first day of work, a few of the fellow employees, Chris and I decided to head to a bar after work. At the bar, he was really fun and started flirting with me, but since he had a girlfriend, I just figured that he was just a flirty guy. A few weeks went by at work, I got into the routine of the job and became fairly good friends with everyone. I even got a job for one of my best friends. Chris and I would joke around at work, as would everyone else.

It all started falling into the drama category when one night, while everyone was at a bar for a fellow co-workers birthday, Chris started flirting with me and asked me on a date (oh, how I was so naive not to realize it was sexual harassment). I laughed it off, since he was drunk, and told him that I’m sure he is very happy with his girlfriend and he was just being silly. The next day, I pulled up into the parking lot and another car came squeeling to a stop at the spot next to me. I was a little taken aback and as I was grabbing my purse and hat, a woman knocked on my window. I realized it was Chris’s girlfriend, so I rolled it down. She looked like she’d been crying and proceeded to ask me if I was seeing him. I promised her I wasn’t and she asked if he had asked me out or had been hitting on me. I told her, honestly, that he had, but it was only when he had been drinking (how stupid was I?). She calmed down and thanked me for being honest with her.

I went into work and was a bit distraught. I went straight to Chris and told him I had to talk to him. I told him what happened and he just looked at me and said, “And?” I couldn’t believe that he saw there was nothing wrong with the situation. I told him that he needed to let his girlfriend know that he wants to be with her and maybe spend more time with her. He was just blase about it and said she needed to get over it. I emphasized that this made me uncomfortable and he needed to stop flirting with me. He seemed to get upset about this and then decided he was going home. One co-worker saw that I was upset and said, “Hey, I have a story that will make you laugh!” I am quoting this directly (it’s engraved in my mind, since I was shocked from how horrible it was): “My uncle worked at a school for ‘special people’ (he used a different word) and he took a girl into the janitor’s closet and had sex with her. She came out of the closet with her pants around her ankles, crying that her butt hurt.” He then began laughing like it was funny. I just stared at him in horror, excused myself and went outside to cry.

A few weeks went by without incident and I had begun to date a guy in one of my classes. One day he showed up while I was working and brought me a necklace that reminded him of me. I thought it was sweet, as did my best friend. But Chris told me that he didn’t approve of friends visiting employees while at work. Mind you, everyone had friends visiting and since we were attached to a gas station, everyone had people they knew coming in. Chris even said that the necklace looked cheap. I, stupidly, ignored him. About a week later, I got a phone call from work, while enjoying the day with my best friend. Chris said they were short on people and needed me to answer the phones. I told him I only had my shirt with me and had plans later. He said he only needed me to work for an hour and I could use his office to answer phones since I wasn’t dressed for work. My best friend decided to come with me and wait.

So, I went to work. When I got into his office he showed me how his phone worked and then went to make pizzas. Later he returned and suddenly closed the door, so it was just us in his office. He just stared at me and then this wonderful conversation happened:

Him: “So you have plans tonight?”

Me: “Um, yeah”

Him: “With that guy that came by a few weeks ago?”

Me: “No, me and my best friend are having a girls night out.”

Him: “I really don’t appreciate this.”

Me: “Wha-?”

Him: “You need to open your mind before you open your legs!!”

I sat there stunned for a second, then anger took over. I started screaming at him that he had no right to say that to me and that I quit. I took of the work shirt (I had a tank top underneath thankfully) and threw it at him. I stormed out of his office, told my friend that I needed to get the hell out of there. And that was the end of MVWJ. I actually saw Chris just a month ago at a local restaurant. He was there with some of the old fellow employees and they wanted me to come say hi. So, I went by and someone asked me if I was seeing anyone. I told them that I didn’t have time for a relationship. That’s when Chris said, “Oh, looks like she’s still a cold-hearted bitch.”  I didn’t even know what to say except “Go f*** yourself” and left.

I found out last week, that he had gotten fired because he is addicted to meth.

MVWJ was at a day care in the basement of a residence the summer after my freshman year of college. My boss, K, was infrequently down there with us (there were three of us looking after 13 children under the age of three), but had specific ideas about the way things ought to be done. For instance, we were forced to take our lunches at the exact times dictated, regardless of whether we were in the middle of something. At lunch time, food had to be prepared, kids needed to be fed and cleaned, diapers changed, beds made and everyone laid down for naps while no one was left unattended. Noon was when the first girl was supposed to take her lunch break and I was supposed to leave at 12:30pm, leaving the third girl essentially on her own during the busiest time of day. K viewed overtime as stealing her money and I was chastised for leaving half an hour late, though I was sorely needed.

K had a highly impractical schedule for each day. If she found us off-schedule, she lectured us. Of course, if she was with the kids, she deviated more than anyone, putting fussy kids down for naps because she didn’t want to listen to them cry. Two of the kids in our care were K’s children, who were by far the worst behaved. K became upset if she came downstairs and found her unruly son in time out, even though he often hit other children and called teachers names. He had been kicked out of several preschools and she left him with us when she got tired of dealing with him. At one point she told us we weren’t allowed to put him down for naps because he no longer needed them, leaving him up to pester us on our time off and the only chance we had to accomplish the huge cleaning tasks she left for us, which included bleaching toys and polishing the stairs of her home.

Worst of all, she was stingy. Halfway through the summer, she took to locking up the supply closet, where the cleaning materials and trash bags were stored, to prevent waste. She claimed to have lost the key, but she “found” it pretty quickly when she needed something. She bought the cheapest materials for the day care, but had nice things in her home upstairs. She eliminated morning snack time, saying the kids didn’t need to be fed between breakfast at 7:30am and lunch at noon, because she didn’t want to pay for food. We took to sneaking them snacks, because if we didn’t, they would completely break down around 10am. K also shorted our checks. She attributed it to the computer system she used “rounding” on our times, but often it was too big an error for that explanation. At any attempt to discuss it, she became belligerent and self-righteous. If pressed, she would print off the hours record and show it to you, then take it away with her, leaving you no chance to examine it closely.

I loved the children and the girls I worked with, but it was a toxic work environment. In my three months, five families left the center and four employees quit, not counting myself. I left at the end of the summer to return to school and I would never go back.

I was 16 and I needed money for social stuff, so I decided to search for a job. One of my Dad’s clients who ran a cafe said he had a job opening and I should come down. I was prepared for an interview, but they said as long as I could be polite and work hard I had the job. I thought this was golden so jumped at the opportunity. They said they didn’t contract any staff so we wouldn’t be taxed and they gave me okay money, better than some of my friends. But went downhill from there. They got this guy to train me, who was nice, but hopeless, so I had to make up stuff along the go. Everyone there seemed to have a stick up their arse and no matter how hard I tried to be social and friendly, I rarely had conversation back (except when one of the boys who worked there decided to tell me about how he and his friend “use each other” for sex). After about five months, someone nice started work and I noticed that her equally social nature seemed to make every other person there her friend. Slightly miffed about why I wasn’t treated the same, I thought, it is only a job and I can get through it.

One day, I came in early, did my work with no break for eight hours straight. That same day I had been teased by the guy who had told me about using his friend for sex. Only paid seven and a half hours and annoyed by him, I snapped at the guy and told him to “stop being such a douche and leave me alone so I can do my work without interuption the next week.” Since I had started the undeserved attack, according to my boss, and they shouldn’t pay me for that day, to which I replied, “I work really hard here and I do my job well whilst he slacks off talking about his sexual activites and I’m getting my pay docked? Really?” They left me alone with my seven and a half hours pay, but he got away scott free.

I worked harder than anyone else there and was often given extra shifts as they knew this. I was always 15 minutes early and never paid for it. But I thought this would build up a good rep. I rarely asked for days off and when I did, it would be for legit reasons. But they always seemed a bit arsey whenever I did saying, “We did this as a favour to your Dad seeing as you had no interview” in front of the other interviewed members of staff (the reason for their cold shoulder is now apparent). I said to my boss politely later that day that I was expecting an interview and that my father should have had nothing to do with my employment and should I have an interview to keep my job. I was told, “Keep your attitude out of the work place or you wont have one.” I liked having the money so I ignored it and stuck at it.

I then asked for two days off as I had important A level exams the following day. They said I might as well take the next few work days off as they were over staffed and come back at the end of my exams. I then returned and was told come back at the end of the month. This continued for two months until I gave up. I’m technically still employed as they never fired me.
It has been a year since, and I finally got a great full time job before my uni course starts. I never go in that cafe anymore and I have given it 1/5 stars on every website I could find (I wasn’t the only one) and often see comments saying, “Where is the tall fellow?” or “What happened to the lovely curly haired boy? He was always so nice and chatty.”

When I got a job at a swanky fine dining restaurant as a waitress, I was thrilled. Though I only had experience serving at diners and nightclubs and knew nothing about fine dining, I figured they would teach me. During the interview, the manager only asked if I had restaurant experience then hired me. In no way did I indicate that I had fine dining experience. On my first day, there was a meeting before the first shift started to try some of the foods. I had to memorize everything I tried on the spot and what it tasted like. This was exotic food that I had never had before. Then we had to detail the tables, setting out the forks, knives, plates, etc. We had to make sure all 30 tables in the dining room and all of the utensils, plates and glasses were perfectly aligned on the tables. Then came the serving. I witnessed the waiter giving detailed descriptions of all of the exotic foods that he brought out. I was nervous, but figured I would receive adequate training and time to memorize everything.

They also had an extensive wine list, but I had no wine knowledge at all and did not know how to properly serve a bottle of wine. I trained for three days and stressfully memorized as many menu items as I could, at home and at work. During those three days I ended up working a lot taking orders, refilling water, clearing plates and running drinks. Then I found out I would need to take a test on the food before I could officially work there. I started studying my butt off and preparing. On the fourth day of work I showed up and started detailing the tables. The manager, who made me extremely nervous because of his constant testing (he would say, “Quick, tell me that table number and position” and if I answered wrong would shake his head or yell at me) started asking me where I had worked before. I told him a diner and a nightclub and he finally realized I had no fine dining experience. When I finished detailing the tables, he asked me to serve wine to another waitress (who was pretty snobby) as practice. I tried, but was fumbling and struggling with opening the bottle. I had no idea how to read the wine and year off of the bottle (they had never showed me), but did my best.

The manager just shook his head. “That was atrocious,” he said in front of the other waitress. He continued to belittle me in front of the other waitress, including telling me how I held the wine was even wrong. I started crying and ran to the bathroom to get myself together, then came back out. “So what do you want me to do? The customers here expect the wine to be served correctly. You do not know how to do that,” he said. I finally couldn’t take anymore and told him I would leave. I got my things and ran out of there. The best part? I didn’t get paid a penny for those three days of hard work and humiliation.

My Very Worst Job actually started out as my best job. In the summer of 2005, I had just finished my second year of university and I found a job working in a formal wear store. Ours was the main store with about 10 satellite stores and we were the “tuxedo factory,” preparing and shipping out 600 tuxes a week for weddings, grads and proms. My first year in the store was amazing. I loved the production floor manager and my co-workers were a lot of fun. I was a hard worker and I was reliable, so when the summer rush ended, they offered me Saturday work throughout the school year.

But things turned sour when my manager quit. She chose to do so less than a month before the summer rush was to begin and the production floor was left with three employees: T, a seamstress, me and B, a general production worker. B was in his 40s, and had worked there for ages, but had never been given any opportunities for advancement. He told the company that he would quit unless they made him the new floor manager, so he became my boss. From that moment, he turned on me. I think he might have felt like I wouldn’t listen to him, since I had been so close to the old manager. He immediately made a number of unnecessary changes, just for the sake of showing us that he was the boss and he could change things if he wanted to. They made things much less efficient and then he would tell the owner that it was my fault that work had slowed down or if I did things the old way, he would tell the owner that I was undermining him. He also would change things and not tell me, so that he could get me in trouble for not doing things his way.

He hired on a number of summer employees, mostly from the college nearby. They were all grossly incompetent and I found myself re-doing a lot of the work they did, because even after sending a garment back to be fixed, it would come back just as bad, or worse. B then told the owner that my work had slowed way down, and that I obviously hated him and was trying to sabotage him. I got called into a meeting with B and the owner, where they confronted me. I told the owner that the rest of the summer staff were incapable of doing their work and that I felt like I had taken on about four employees’ worth of work on my own, and in light of that, I was actually working incredibly fast. The owner made some fleeting comment about communication between B and I, and left it at that. I confronted B later about the staff and he told me that he had to hire bad workers, because if he hired good workers, they would quit when they were offered something better.

B’s campaign against me finally did see me fired from the job. In August, after four months of this abuse, I was hit by a car on my way to work. My foot was injured and I was unable to work for a few weeks. When I called in to say that I would be able to start working again, the owner came on the phone to say that in light of how things weren’t working out, they’d found someone else to replace me and that “we’d better just call it a day, hmm?” Talk about adding insult to injury.

I just quit MVWJ today. After a long job search in this crappy economy, I took a job at a really cool-looking little restaurant that sold comfort food. The staff all seemed really nice, but a lot of the customers were a different story. Since it was a cheap place it attracted cheap people, and despite providing great service I would usually get crappy tips (or, on five occasions in one month, no tip at all). Also, I noticed that the manager, a fat bearded hipster type who thought he was ultra cool, would nit pick every little thing I did. He expected me to pick up the food the very second it came out and would scream for me to get the food, even if I was taking a table’s order.

One of the owners was even worse, criticizing everything I did even though I worked very hard, always cleaning tables, picking up dirty napkins as customers ate, etc. One night, many people were ordering beer and of course I ID’d people who looked to be on the young side. A couple who looked to be in their mid twenties came in and ordered beer. I didn’t ID them, and the owner was there. He asked if I ID’d them specifically and I told him I did not, so he ordered me to ID them after giving me a lengthy lecture, even though I had been ID’ing all night. Turns out they were both 25.

Another time, the owner held a meeting that I had to go to on my day off (unpaid, of course). One of the issues he addressed was that he wanted every server working at least four days a week. When I told him I could only work three because I had to look for a second job to supplement the measly money I made, he replied, “Then go because we don’t want people just passing though.” Meanwhile, the manager who did scheduling (and always seemed nice) kind of hushed him and continued to give me three days a week.

The last straw was when the manager gave me a shift working until three in the morning, then a morning shift the very next day. I sent her a very nice, polite email telling her that I was sorry for the little notice but that I would not be working there anymore. I thanked her for giving me the job. When I got a reply back, I expected it to be a nice email. Instead, she wrote, “Thanks for the notice. I do hope you’re more professional at your next job.” To which I responded, “I am as professional as I am treated.” Way to be appreciated for busting my behind for so little money.

I applied for MVWJ at a certain heated sandwich fast-food chain the summer before I was going away to college. I should have known better than to take the job when the fat greasy manager said he’d hire me even though I didn’t have any experience and “didn’t know anything.” It was close enough for me to ride my bike to work though and I wanted the extra money for school, so I showed up 20 minutes early on my first day only to get yelled at for 20 minutes about being hours late. My manager wouldn’t let me get a word in edgewise though, literally not stopping long enough for me to tell him my shift didn’t start at 9am like he insisted it did. He insisted that I was supposed to be there early enough to open up the store, even though it was my first day. Confused I decided to just go with it and did my best at working.

I didn’t know any of the sandwiches, but he insisted I should have memorized them by now, and he kept putting me on the line so that when people asked me for a certain number or named sandwich I’d have to look up at the menu and try and read all the ingredients and then do my best. There was literally no training; no one had shown me how to properly make these sandwiches at all. They also didn’t show me how to remove the sandwiches from the toaster, so I was burning my hands on these hot sandwiches for three days before a coworker noticed I was doing it wrong and showed me how to do it right.

The worst part of the job was not cleaning out the rotting mayo bins or being laughed at by my manager and co-workers because I was going to college. The worst part was standing on the line and listening to the manager flirt with this one particular woman — a nurse who worked in a practice near our store — every time she came in. He sounded like a creepy stalker, saying, “Oh I saw you at the store the other day” or “I saw you at the baseball game,” and he somehow never picked up on her constantly telling him that she had a boyfriend with a disgusted look on her face.

After about a month of being constantly yelled at for not knowing the rules or how to do things and being late when I never was, I finally got fed up and yelled back. Turns out that he had been getting me confused for ANOTHER girl he’d hired at the same time and actually shown the training videos to and you know, trained! She worked a different shift than me and even to the very end he insisted that I was the one that was supposed to know how to open and close up shop and do everything despite never having been trained. I finally got fed up with him being a complete power-tripping asshole who acted like being the manager of a pathetic sandwich store was the most awesome thing ever and lied, saying that college started a month before it actually did. Not like he’d know the difference.

I was unemployed and about to start a job search when a broke my foot. The cast came off after 10 weeks, I then spent another week relearning to walk. By this point I was destitute and had to find a job pronto. I answered an ad for a restaurant hostess, though I had no previous experience. I limped to the restaurant at 4:00pm, as instructed. The bartender instructed me to fill out an application; I was told to wait until the manager had a chance to meet me. I had lots of time to take in the surroundings—an ostentatiously-fancy joint named after the European chef (whose name I had no idea how to pronounce), an ornate display case near the door hawking signed copies of the chef’s autobiography. The manager finally breezed into the bar after 45 minutes. He looked at me and my application, said little, then darted away. I stood near the entry waiting for him to reappear, wondering if I’d been excused. The phone at the hostess station began to ring, by the forth ring the manager abruptly stuck his head through a doorway and gestured toward the phone, implying I should answer it. Then he disappeared.

I did my best, under the circumstances— I accepted a reservation for the following evening, writing the name in the reservation book, though I’d no idea if there’d actually be a table available or any idea how one determined this. The phone continued to ring, I continued to answer, mispronouncing the restaurant’s name with a different variant each time. More reservations, idle queries about a menu I knew nothing about, requests to speak to numerous people who presumably worked there. I was able to figure out how to put calls on hold, but was lost when determining how to transfer calls or to where they should be transferred. I accidentally disconnected the manager’s South American girlfriend twice within 10 minutes—when I asked “who may I say is calling?” the third time, she unleashed her fury in an ear-piercing Brazilian accent. I kept expecting somebody to relieve me of the constantly ringing phone. What sort of established three-star New York restaurant gives an untrained 24 year old stranger total dominion over their reservation book and incoming calls? Maybe I’d been hired, but nobody remembered to tell me?

The manager was no where to be found, and everyone else was too busy to assist me, rolling their eyes or glaring whenever I asked a question. Before I knew it, several hours had passed. Finally, around 10:00pm, the manager reappeared and told me I could leave. I was exhausted, unsteady on my barely-healed foot and frazzled after several hours of unprepared hostessing. I bolted without confirming that I’d been hired—freedom! No more ringing phone, no more screeching Brazilian battle-ax, no more standing, no more nauseating post-modern decor. I limped home exhausted but happy that I’d at least found a job. Apparently. The next day I phoned to see when they wanted me to come back. The short answer was “never.” Outraged that I’d answered their phone for five hours as some sort of unspecified audition, I limped back the next day and demanded payment for my time. The disdainful manager at first tried to give me the brush-off, but finally gave me a few twenties to get rid of me. I spent the $60 on a comfortable pair of cheap shoes, and continued my job search.