I was 36, and in the middle of a divorce. I loved my job, but needed 9-5 hours, so I took a job at a marketing/inspirational products company. I was to answer phones, ship all incoming orders, take care of office supplies, and I had a $200 per week budget to purchase snacks for the office. In addition, I was to keep the kitchens (there were two) stocked with supplies.

My first clue that something wasn’t right should have been when three people that I met the first day described the boss as “intense.” My first week there he called me in to his office to tell me that he went to the kitchen and there were no spoons in the drawer. He said that he knew they were right in the cabinet, but that would have taken him 2-3 seconds out if his work day. Then he told me that if all 20 people that worked at the company had to get a spoon out of the cabinet, that was potentially a full minute out of the work day that they would not be productive. Intense indeed.

Working hours were 8-5, but most everyone was there by 7 a.m. and worked until at least 7 p.m. at night, because that was expected. Leaving on time was cause for an “uncomfortable conversation” about your attitude. I had a review after six months, and my boss told me several things to work on, but said that overall, she was happy with my performance. Two days later, she noticed that I had placed the label on a shipment a little crooked, and she told me to start looking for another job. I worked there for another month, and then they fired half of the company, including me, ten days before Christmas. The kicker was that they asked me to work the whole day, because we were so busy, and then completely screamed at me for leaving at 5 p.m.

During the summer of 2007, I was fresh out of high school, and was excited to finally become an adult, and enter the working world. Fortunately for me, during high school I had taken quiet a few business management classes, which allowed me to apply for positions in an office situation. I thought that I was doing the smart thing, as people often times told me of their horror stories about working at fast food places, or grocery stores, but how wrong I was.

In July, I finally ended up getting my office job. It was for a shipping company, and I would be a data entry clerk. The job essentially had me taking bills which were scanned into our system, and then I would have to input those bills into our software, but more on that later. My first warning came when I began my training, and I should have realized right then and there that this was the wrong environment for me. When I walked into the building, and walked towards our training room I realized that I was the only male on the floor. There were rows of cubicles filled with middle aged woman.

My next warning came when we started to begin training. The bills I previously mentioned before? It was all by hand input, meaning that truck drivers were writing down all this information and scanning it to us, and no offense to truck drivers, but their hand writing makes a doctor’s signature look neat. How was I suppose to decrypt their crazy algorithmic hand writing? I dared not ask how ever, and continued with the job, eventually ending my training and getting on the floor.

This is when the hellish nightmare of this job truly began to settle in. There was a strict policy of no talking, no use of head phones, no distractions what so ever. It was kind of like one of those cool montage moments in a movie where you see a code-breaker sitting at a computer trying to decipher some cryptic message, and he has a swat team of other hackers around them, and they only have 60 seconds to decrypt this message. Except it didn’t have any cool music, and code breaking never stopped, after I’d complete one, another would come in right away,

So, we had crippling boredom, followed up by impossible hand writing, and the always awkward feeling I had of being surrounded by middle-aged woman, this was really starting to sound like my own personal hell, but hey at least I was inside a cool comfortable office building with air conditioning, right? Apparently it broke, the day I actually started. So I was stuck there, for eight hours a day in work-dress clothes in the sweat box of an office building.

Eventually I was let go, being told I was just not “It wasn’t the quality of your work, we just felt as though you didn’t fit in and were unhappy,” but that wasn’t the final straw. They ended up blocking me from getting unemployment, telling the office that they had offered me another job, and I had refused.

MVWJ was as a server in a restaurant that sold soup, salads, sandwiches, and espresso. All of which were overpriced. A husband and wife team, who claimed to be very religious, owned the joint. They always looked down on all the staff for not being the same religion as they were. In the dining room, they would play three CDs on repeat all day. Those CDs were Kenny G’s Greatest Hits, Whale Songs (noises whales use to communicate), and Ocean Sounds (seagull noises).

Whenever the owners came in, they would make a total wreck of the place as they had no business or restaurant experience. They would have their four kids do their homework in the kitchen and bar, and complain about crazy things like the soup ladles being too big or employees not cutting the sandwiches “the right way.” They never came in without their kids and would scream at them and make them cry. One of their kids they had just adopted from Romania and he spoke almost no English. This was cause for frequent yelling and subsequent crying. I knew a few words of Romanian and would try to calm this kid down and I would get yelled at for that. They didn’t want “the help” speaking to their children.

They only employed two servers for the 50 tables and at noon, the other server would leave no matter what. Most of the time we weren’t that busy, but every Sunday, we had this huge group come in and every table was full. This always happened right after the other server left. It is impossible for one person to wait on 50 tables by themselves. The owners always refused to help at first, then after I put in all the orders, the family would just start taking food out at random to all the wrong tables. Then they would get mad at me for “mixing up the orders.”

I was young, so I was really trying to make this nightmare work for some reason. But I was fired, because one day some of the customers complained to me about the Whale Songs CD being played. Sympathizing with them, I went and relayed this sentiment to the owner (I had never before voiced my dislike of these terrible CDs) and he completely lost it. He screamed that he doesn’t like the CD either, he liked ACDC and Metallica but you couldn’t play those bands in a restaurant! And on and on for about five minutes. Then after he finally calmed down, he said to me, “You know what? This isn’t working. Don’t come back!” He opened the till, cashed out my tips and gave me my hourly wages in cash.

The restaurant was shut down in the next two months. I can’t imagine why.

I had a lot a bad jobs but the worst was working in an office with my bad boss. She had obviously no managerial experience but because she married into the family-run business, she got a high position immediately. I was desperate for a job near my home, which it was, tired of long commutes, so I quickly accepted it.

Right from beginning she was a horrible boss. She took sides and made snide comments, especially of a coworker she would catch looking at porn websites. “E was looking a naked men instead or working. Hehe,” she  jokingly teased at our meetings before the store opened. The rest of us would stare at one another in WTF? fashion. Every morning was a different one, she would either snap or bitch at us randomly, or just start bitching from the get go. When we asked for our paychecks, since they were hardly ever on time, she would throw payroll papers at us and snap, “Well, you do the payroll then!” She would also inform us of her mensturation cycle, how much it hurt and that she was PMSing. Along with detailed accounts of her and her husband’s methods of making a baby through in vitro and others methods, it was all so nauseating. She would also moan and whine about how her husband made her move from Detroit, and how much she misses having girlfriends.

I avoided as much as I could because I needed the money and through lots of turnover, I had seven jobs: Front Desk Clerk, Receptionist, Warehouse Receiver, Trainer of New Employees, New Orientation Presenter, Sales Assistant and Merchandiser. I worked my butt off, and didn’t even have time to finish at the end of the day. She would turn off the light in the office room and when I would protest, she said unexpressively, “You’re still here?! Go home. Now.” Once she watched impassively as one mean girl kicked me on the butt while I was walking down the hall, laughing aloud when I tripped and stumbled.

Finally, I had enough and I told her that I couldn’t do everything. She said, “Well, what do I pay you for then?” I said she was unfair. She looked at me like I just called her the worst thing in the world. Like How Dare You, Peon?

I should’ve quit right then, but I REALLY needed the money. So stupidly I waited until she fired me, which was six months of this hell.

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…

I just quit/got fired from my very worst job about 30 minutes ago. It was one of those typical movie scenarios:  I said “Hey, I quit.” and they followed it up with “You can’t quit you’re fired!!”

Desperate for some extra money while I was completing my social work internship, I decided to accept a part-time job as a janitor for a community health center in my town. I was in charge of cleaning the gynecologist office as well at the family practice.  I could go into work whenever I wanted after the doctors left, so it fit my schedule perfectly. Sounds great, right?  Wrong.

Right away I got a lot of stares. A few of the nurses knew that I am openly gay so that quickly spread around the practice. Eventually I was called into the HR director’s office for a stern lecture about my dreadlocks and my love of only owning and wearing men jeans (I’m a girl), I was warned that if I didn’t basically fem it up, I would be written up. Did I mention that I worked completely alone at night, and the only time anyone saw me was when I was walking from my car into the building?

My first day at work had me on my hands and knees picking up the remnants of Taco Bell cheese and Subway lettuce that the nurses left behind at the gyno office. Did it hurt my pride? Sure. But, I was all about the $12 an hour I was making. The following week, the nurses at the gynecologist office decided to test my will by throwing away KFC chicken, leftover Jimmy John’s, and whatever fast food junk they happened to be eating that day into every single exam room. Even the ones that weren’t used that day, meaning that I wouldn’t usually have to clean them. But, once something is thrown in the trash, it’s considered used and the room had to be cleaned. Eventually fed up with all this food nonsense, I told my supervisor who confronted the nurses, and they were eventually given a verbal warning, and they admitted to everything.

But the bullshit didn’t stop there.

The receptionist at the family practice took it upon herself to “throw away” scissors at the beginning up the day, and of course throughout the day dirty diapers and urine sample cups were piled upon these “broken” scissors at the bottom of the waste can.  Imagine my delight when I lifted up the trash only to have diapers, piss, and dirty latex gloves fall at my feet. This time when I told my supervisor, nothing was done.

The final straw was last week, when I threw away a week old, half-eaten cake that was starting to attract ants. Of course, the next day the nurses were in the mood for some coffee and cake, and were appalled to find that I had thrown it away. After spamming my work e-mail with their ridiculous complaints, I decided to purchase them a new cake. I had the baker write “Sorry about the old cake. From, J.” Obviously this action was completely rude on my part, so I got written up for it. Sick up the bullshit, I quit today.

Although, my supervisor made sure to add that I was going to get fired anyway because the picture frames were too dusty in the building.

My Very Worst Job was as a receptionist at an animal hospital.  The manager used to be a vet tech and obviously didn’t have very much in the ways of training for a manager.  She was pretty flaky and didn’t like to answer her messages. To top it all off, she went on maternity leave and somehow got away with not having to get a replacement while she was away.

Many of the other employees brought their pets to work and put them in the runs in the back. Two of the receptionist had Great Danes and would keep them in the reception office.  After one of these receptionists left and the other went on maternity leave, I decided to bring my dog to work. There was a lot of construction going on in my building and it was stressing him out.  I was told that my dog couldn’t be in reception even though Great Danes had been. When asked if these rules would be changing after the other receptionist came back, the manager said they would reevaluate the rules when she returned! And then she wrote me up for being “difficult.” A lot of other things happened too but I’m not writing a novel here.

In the end, they fired me because “I didn’t seem happy lately at work.” Why wasn’t I happy? A week to the day of my firing, I had to put down the horse that I’d had for 17 years. So yeah, I wasn’t very happy. And I had asked the other receptionists if they could please do the ‘put to sleep’ forms for customers that week since I didn’t think I would be able to handle it.

I found out later that she told the labour board she had fired me due to not getting along with the manager (i.e. her). Why?  Well, my personal opinion is that it was because while she was on maternity leave, I ended up doing a fair bit of her job and she was afraid that I was going to take her job. Which I wasn’t. Zeech.

My Very Worst Job started after I was laid off from my last job. I had been out of work for about six months and was getting desperate. My best friend told me that the family-owned organic grocery store that she had just been hired at was still looking for people, so I went and handed in my resume. After a quick interview, I was hired, and although they were minorly concerned that I never had any cashier experience before, they told me that they’d spend time training me and I assured them I was a quick learner.

I got into work the next day and was led on a tour by my manager, who had the world’s most rancid breath. I’m pretty sure something crawled in her mouth and died, there was no way a human could smell so disgusting naturally. The other manager liked to stand around and stare at the cashiers and yell anytime he noticed us being idle for a split second or talking and asking each other questions about work.  Thankfully, the rest of the day went by uneventfully.  However, at the end of the next day my manager called me into her office to tell me there was a scheduling conflict and I wouldn’t be working the next day and to expect a phone call from them at the end of the week telling me the time and date of my next shift.

I waited until the end of the week, with no phone call. I finally called them myself to find out was going on, and was told by one of my managers that she didn’t have my schedule on her and I would have to call back in an hour when the other manager was working to find out about my next shift. So, an hour later I called back only to be told that they had over-hired and I was fired. I’m sure the other manager knew I was fired, seeing as it was family-owned, but was just too chicken to tell me herself.

A week later, my best friend, who was still working there, was told a secret by the manager (who had no idea we were best friends, as we thought it best to keep our friendship secret while working there) – he did not fire me because they over-hired, I was fired because “I had no cashier experience and it was unacceptable.” I was completely upfront about my lack of cashier skills in the interview and they told me they had no issues with training me at my first cashier job. The manager also said a slew of negative things about me to my best friend, which was pretty impressive considering I had only worked there and known the manager for two days.

Two weeks after that, my best friend was fired for taking too much time off (five days).  Why did she take so much time off?  To go to her grandmother’s funeral halfway across the country.

Luckily, I’m now working at a great cashier job where I am told that I was the easiest to train cashier they’ve ever had, so I’m still not sure what the cashier skills drama was about.