Decades ago, when I was in college, I worked for a lady named L. She had a reputation for being a hard ass with a bad temper, but I thought I could handle it. I did shipping and invoices and clerical duties. I once took a horrible ass-chewing from her because I entered one piece of data wrong. I tried explaining to her that I used one of our software programs before invoices were printed to check all of my entries, but that didn’t matter, I wasn’t supposed to “make ANY mistakes WHATSOEVER.” She would throw paperwork on my desk and tell me she could not believe I had messed that up, that I had better fix it and fix it NOW, and actually stomp her little fat foot. She dragged me into the conference room once and chewed on me for 30 minutes for a mistake that, I found out later, she had made entering customer requirements.

She had the habit of standing behind me while I worked, making me a nervous wreck, watching my every move. One afternoon she grabbed my shoulder, gave me a shake, pointed her chubby finger at my screen and said “See! See that, you almost put the amount in the wrong field!!!” Her boss happened to walk in that time (she would never go overboard on the scolding if someone else was around) and he told me I was late for my lunch, to go ahead and go. Bless him, he could tell I was about to lose it and that L was out of line. I talked to our HR director about that incident the next day. He said he pitied me, that L was famous for her short temper, and did I know that she had fired the last two folks that had had my position? Nope, sure didn’t. He offered to place me in a different job, but it would be a significant cut in pay and I  couldn’t afford it.

She was a horrible racist. I heard her make many nasty comments about the Black and Hispanic workers at our plant, one directed toward a friend of mine that worked in our warehouse. He dared to mess  up one our trucking invoices, she wasn’t shocked, she said she was surprised he could read and write English, and she didn’t know why they bothered hiring “those people.” Early that next year, L was given a promotion at one of our sister facilities in another state. Less than six months after she sold her house and made her hen-pecked husband move 400 miles away from their families, she was shit canned. I heard from my counterpart at that plant that she was overheard telling one co-worker that another co-worker was a “stupid n-word.” She was terminated immediately, she wasn’t even allowed to go back to her desk, she was escorted to her car. This was just before Christmas that year, I told my now husband that he didn’t have to get me a gift, that that was the best present EVER.

After being unemployed for eight or so months, I got fed up of looking for jobs for what I really wanted to do and decided to simply get back into the working world one way or another. The unemployment check wasn’t cutting it and the indent I was getting on the couch certainly wasn’t helping my life at all. I began applying for any job I felt I could do well in order to get my resume beefed up a little more. I eventually landed a job as an Administrative Assistant that paid next to nothing, but offered more than unemployment and seemed like it would be a good step. On my first week working there, the individual who I was supposed to be directly working under was off because of his vacation. I was fitting right in and picking things up easily. At the end of that week, one of my coworkers gave me a warning regarding the person I was supposed to really be supporting and how this week as ‘easy’ and everything will go downhill from here. She then proceeded to tell me that I was the fourth person to be in my chair in 10 months and that they simply couldn’t get the right person for the job. I should have paid more attention to that warning but blew it off and figured nothing could be worse then a long stretch of unemployment and being completely broke.

The first day of D’s return from vacation, all hell broke loose. He would constantly be hovering over my desk watching me work which I said made me feel uncomfortable and slowed me down. He ignored that and would do it more. He would physically write full page emails he wanted me to send to people and ask me to type exactly as how he had written it. I was then to print out a copy, return it to him and wait for him to bring it back. He would bring these copies back full of red ink marks and exclamation points outlining mundane changes, like using a semicolon here instead of a period or introductory words like “hi there” needed to be “hey.” I made all changes and would return them to him and then he’d fine more problems with that and return it to be, full of red ink and corrections. These papers would go back and forth at least four times before he would finally be satisfied with whatever he had me change. I would waste hours upon hours doing this. A simple paragraph email would take nearly two hours to get to his satisfaction. I finally explained to him that I would be happy to type whatever he needed but it would be far more efficient if he would simply spend time on what he really wanted to say and keep it to a maximum of two revisions so I could focus on my work.

He got really heated and explained to me that he didn’t always know what he wanted to say and part of my job was to make sure he was getting out all the needed to be there. I took this issue to the boss and was ‘sat down’ and told that my problem was I expected perfection out of him and that I’m not perfect and I shouldn’t expect other people to do so. I looked at my boss completely in awe as to how he came to this conclusion and said I never said that nor do I believe that, but I think it is necessary to see where we can be more productive and efficient and this was a problem I recognized. I was yelled at for an hour and told my job was to be concerned with my work and typing emails and memos and I was too sensitive to do my job. One of my coworkers also asked me once to type something for him exactly as written. I did so and when I printed it out and returned it, he said it was garbage and incorrect. I asked what exactly did he see wrong and offered to correct it. He told me that he didn’t have time to babysit and train me (as he was playing on Mafia Wars) and balled the memo up and threw it at me. He said for me to go down to the local Barnes and Noble, purchase a book on how to do the job of an Administrative Assistant and figure it out.

My boss also decided one day, without telling me, that I was no longer hourly and I was instead a salaried worker. He said any overtime I did would not be paid any further (I had been putting in three or four hours a week of overtime) and I needed to be prepared to simply ‘work for free’ since they were doing me a favor by providing me a job. When it came time to discuss a raise, they refused to give me a dollar amount and instead offered to give me a ‘reduced tax payment’ which they simply moved my withholding status from a ‘0’ to a ‘2’ so I’d see more money per check. I eventually gained employment elsewhere doing what I love. When I gave my two weeks, my boss kept asking what my new role would be and was very pushy regarding my reasons for leaving. I explained I didn’t feel the need to tell him where I was going, that was between me and my new employers, but I was unhappy here.

On my last day of work, I deleted all of my emails and tried my best to wrap everything up. When it was time to receive my final paycheck, the money never arrived. When I called to inquire about it, they said by deleting emails I had destroyed company property and therefore vandalized their system and they were holding my last check as compensation of that. I explained that I never saw nor signed a computer policy while working there and that I had access to very sensitive information (credit card numbers, personal accounts, etc.) and that I felt by deleting those things I was removing liability from myself and the company. They insisted I was out to get them and so I had to have the state sue them for my check. Since then, they haven’t bothered me aside from tracking down where I work now and have called me once at my new job, but hung up as soon as I answered.

My Very Worst Job was in a department where I was a part-timer with a boss and another full-timer above me, who I’ll call M. The boss was pretty meek, the type who will avoid anything that might potentially cause a problem. M was, quite frankly, a bitch who had it out for me. My problems with her started when she would conveniently take off on days of major events — events she was responsible for — and have me run the show for her.  Then it moved into her taking projects I was working on and claiming them as her own. Finally, she started making up things about me to get me in trouble with the boss. I tried to offer proof that these things weren’t true but I still received “strikes” against me; meanwhile, she was caught falsifying her time card, with no repercussions.

The final straw came when my department received a grant and I volunteered to do the initial research that had to be completed before we could start spending money. I complied a long report with demographic and school district information and emailed to the boss and to M. The boss told me it was good work. M came in a few hours later and immediately sent out an email saying that my research was all wrong. My boss wrote the both of us back reiterating that it was fine. M sent out another email tearing my work to shreds. At that point I felt I couldn’t stay quiet and sent out an email. The first paragraph was carefully worded and I logically defended why my work wasn’t garbage. The second paragraph was one sentence: “However, if you feel that the time I put into this research wasn’t well spent, please feel free to do your own research.”

I hit send and a minute later, I hear her storm out of her office, say to the boss, “I need to speak to you” and slam his door shut. After talking with him she banged the door open and stomped out the front door. The boss then came to me and asked me to apologize to M. I refused – although my email was a little sarcastic, I hadn’t said anything truly offensive and I was trying to defend myself from what felt was an undue attack. I thought I was going to be fired the next day, since I had previous strikes against me. But a few days went by and nothing happened, so I thought I was in the clear. That Friday, the boss came and asked for a favor. We had a school group coming in on Monday and he wanted me to take charge. This was usually his and M’s responsibility, but M was “very religious” and insisted on taking that day off since it was the day after Easter. He, meanwhile, had tickets to our city’s opening day baseball game. I thought that doing this favor would get me back into his graces so I said yes.

Now normally when we have a school group we have volunteers so that one person doesn’t get overwhelmed by 50 urban schoolchildren. We looked at the department calendar but found no volunteers scheduled. The boss called M, who had forgotten to schedule any volunteers. So I showed up on Monday and spent 3 ½ hours by myself with 50 first graders. Then I showed up on Tuesday and got fired. During the speech I got from the boss, I figured out that they wanted to fire me earlier, but decided to wait until I could cover their asses on the day they both wanted off.

July 2009:
I was working in a cinema company and was ready to quit my job because my manager was clueless, underperformed and he made me do my colleagues’ and his work because he knew that I was the only person in that department who would get things done.

August 2009:
That manager got sacked so I spoke to my CFO regarding me getting promoted and he seemed to keen with the idea. I was jumping in excitement thinking that this might be the time for me to shine. Until that CFO quit his job and the new CFO, AA, came for replacement.

October 2009:
In the beginning, AA seemed to support me with the whole promotion idea.
Me: So how and when do we start the probation? Have you discuss this with the HR Department?
AA: Who needs the HR Department when we have the CEO to back us up?

He added some extra work to the job, such as being his messenger to the COO, who he didn’t want to talk to, and spying on several people in the office on his behalf. It was outrageous, but I took it on my shoulder anyways because I wanted the promotion. I finished the probation after three months in January 2010.

AA: There’s a problem with your probation. I’m having difficulties with the HR Department and they want you to have another three months probation.
Me: WTF?!! I thought the CEO would back us up?
AA: See, the problem is you’re not the only one who’s getting promoted. There are several people from another department and they deserve to be promoted as well. And the HRD have decided that all of you will get promoted altogether by April 2010.
Me: How much will I be getting anyway?
AA: Ummm…20% from your initial salary.
Me: But that is not the standard salary of managerial position (head of department) and that wasn’t even half of the former manager’s salary.
AA: Well, we’re not really looking for the managerial position. What we wanted is you to “act” as a head department like what you’ve been doing so far.
Me: But the work itself is “real?”
AA: Don’t be childish. Sometimes things aren’t always fair.
Me: (*swearing inside my brain)

A week later, I gave him my resignation letter and gave one month’s notice. After I quit, I found out that he lied to my CEO when my CEO asked him of what has happened.  He told him that he tried to lure me with a bigger package, but that I just wanted out. I knew that because I got the forward email he sent to my CEO by a person who was also cc’d in the email.

I worked at a call centre for travel insurance in the UK. I was there for a few years and went beyond my duties. Not only did I do the job I was paid for, but I also did my supervisor’s job when she wasn’t in, trained new employees, monitored colleagues’ calls to see if they were saying the proper things, organized things in the office to lift morale, such as “for every five insurances you sell, you get a raffle ticket for a new iPod” and so on. I also went in on my non-scheduled days to attend training courses to get more things under my belt. I did all of this without getting paid extra.

My annual review was always perfect and I received a pay raise each year because of it. So when a new supervisor’s assistant position came up I knew that I was more then qualified for it. I put in my application for it and sold myself pretty well on why I should get the job. There was only a handful of people who applied, because the supervisor had to approve you before you could do it. So I was almost certain I was going to get it since I was more qualified then anyone else who applied. I waited…and waited…and waited, but heard nothing and didn’t even get an interview.

I came to find out that someone else (who had way less expierence then me and often left early because she had hip problems) got the job. When I asked why I was over looked for this position, I found out the reason was because I am tattooed. Mind you, this is a call centre, so there was no face-to-face interaction with customers. And at the time I worked there, I didnt have any tattoos on my hands or neck. But because the higher ups didnt like tattoos on females, my application was tossed away. I left a couple months later and I now work in a tattoo shop as a body piercer. And yes, now my hands and neck are tattooed.

My Very Worst Job was at a copier company when I was 20. My boyfriend and I were a bit poor back then, so I didn’t have much in the way of proper business attire. As such, I showed up for the interview in a sundress. The two brothers who owned the place barely asked me anything and then hired me on the spot.

I was the office manager, answering phones, taking complaints from customers (of which there were several) and trying to appease them, typing, filing, interacting with the techs and doing their accounts payable and receivable. I was also forced to call the customers and harass them when their payments were late.

The accounts almost never balanced. And we’re not talking a few dollars here and there; they would be missing thousands at a time. Thinking I might be making a mistake at first, I would check and double check my work, but the results were always the same. Luckily I had no actual access to the money itself so no one could blame me, but I was still afraid of the wrath of the younger brother (who we’ll get to in a bit).

Much of the time, I was left completely alone. The techs would be out in the field, and the two brothers were out doing god knows what. They were rather lazy and didn’t seem to understand how to run a business. When the older of the two did come in (which was more often than the younger) he would tell me stories about stealing his wife’s credit card and racking up charges on it at brothels in Vegas where he would sleep with other women. When I expressed my disgust, he acted like he couldn’t understand what was wrong with that. Once he brought in a porn CD and sat there watching it right in front of me on my own computer. At one point he asked me why I never wore sundresses to the office anymore and admitted it was the reason they hired me.

The younger brother was even worse. He was a total pig regarding women as well, and an a-hole besides. He made it clear that I wasn’t allowed to do anything at all in the office besides my exact work (not even Solitaire or something to pass the time), despite the fact that on most days I would finish my job duties in an hour or two and have no one to even talk to. Whenever his fiancé would call, he would yell all sorts of rude things at her and cuss her out and tell her to stop bothering him. When he hung up, he would call her names and make fun of her.

Despite the fact that he was almost never in the office, when he DID make it in, he would strut around like he was God’s gift to the world and try his best to be intimidating. He liked to stand right behind me and stare over my shoulder as I worked (and criticize and nitpick whenever he could). He would get into rages and yell all the time and put me down. He also made a way bigger deal about the accounts receivable discrepancy than his brother. All while sniffing continually as if he had a perpetually runny nose.

Things got so bad that I would cry every morning when I woke up, just knowing that I had to go back to that place. There was a huge turnover because the techs would get fed up and leave. The younger brother took a liking to one tech, S, who started later than many of the others. S got tons of special treatment, and instead of working, he spent most of his time hanging out with the younger brother doing god knows what away from the office. Eventually, S came in one day when no one else was around and told me what was really going on. It turned out he actually couldn’t stand the younger brother who had been stealing tons of money from the company to support his cocaine habit. That explained the missing money and the constant sniffling.

Right after that, I searched extra hard and found a great job to go to. I gave them only one week’s notice, and they were lucky to have gotten that.

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.