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.

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.

My evil boss attended the annual global sales meeting held in Spain at some beach resort. Even before my boss got back – I had received numerous emails and phone calls about her.  When the sales force returned to the office first–they could not stop making snide remarks about my “Dumb Barbie Boss”.

Apparently while in Spain, she took the term “pool-side mixer” quite literally and decided to show up at the mixer–hosted by our chairman and the board of directors and attended by managers from around the world—wearing 5-inch heels and an itsy bitsy bikini. She was the vice president for the company’s America operations. Everyone else was wearing shorts with tees or polos.

The story goes that she pranced around the mixer and then even got drunk. Now don’t get me wrong–the evil thing had a fab shape–so I am sure that she looked amazing in a bikini. But that is the point. When a bunch of horny sales guys complain about a chick in a bikini, you know that really means some serious boundaries were crossed.

They called her “Bimbo Boss” until she finally got fired.

MVWJ was at a place that sold exotic birds. There were hundreds of them, and I had to take care of them AND sell them. I had to feed them and change their water, which involved emptying all of their poop-filled water and food bowls into a huge bucket, which turned into the most nauseating smelling concoction ever. I also had to clean their living spaces, which just meant grabbing the poop-covered wood shavings with my hands and dumping it into the garbage. I also wasn’t allowed to remove the birds from their living spaces when I did this, and most of them were extremely territorial. They would scream and bite my hands and arms while I was covered in their poop.

There was this guy that worked there in his 70s who wore the most awful toupee I’ve ever seen. He was very nice to me when I started working there, but I quickly realized that it was because he was a total perv. He would go into the back room with this other older woman who worked there and have sex, leaving me to take care of the entire store. He also had a wife in the hospital. One time he grabbed my waist and told me I had a flat stomach in front of this older woman (who he was trying to make jealous). I snapped and told him he was creepy. After that he told me he hated me (mature) and that he wished he didn’t have to work with me because I wasn’t “nice.”

I finally had enough and gave my two weeks notice, telling the store’s boss everything about this guy and why I couldn’t work with him anymore. A few months later, I learned that he was fired because he was caught on the security camera stealing thousands of dollars over the many years that he worked there

I struggled to get a job in my second year of university and desperately applied to a seedy new adult video store on the bohemian hub street near my apartment. The manager readily took me, saying he’d had no other applicants and he was just as desperate as I was.  This should have been a warning, but I needed to make rent.

Here’s what happened: It didn’t matter if I (a girl) went into work wearing a stained sweatshirt and baseball cap or didn’t bother taking a shower… the customer base were all people who had been blackballed from other adult stores in town and were constantly asking me how much I charged (for me, not for the videos) and thinking they could rope me into threesomes with their wives and girlfriends. Children would tire of street hockey and come into the store swinging sticks, knocking down all the teetering shelves of merchandise. I won’t even go into detail what people thought they could get up to around corners where they thought they couldn’t be seen!

The worst was the owner, not the manager. He would reel in drunk from the blues bar around the corner, clean out the till and blow the entire takings and float on booze. Conveniently for him he never remembered this and accused me of stealing. Alarmed, I hastily quit before he could press charges because I had long suspected that the “security” camera was a decoy and I couldn’t prove a thing. I immediately applied to the hip indie video store down the street and begged the owner for a job, telling her what had happened at the adult store, and, luckily, she agreed to hire me.

Like anyone who works in restaurant service I saw my fair share of insanity. There was the bartender/manager who drank away the profits, the line cooks who popped pills and juggled knives and the fellow waitstaff who stole tips. But at this plastic-plate, greasy-everything joint, the worst of the worst was far and away the customers. On Valentine’s Day, because I was the only single waitress on staff, I got tapped to pull doubles. Alone. After 12 hours of serving crappy food to cheap couples, enduing endless jokes about being dateless and watching several couples break up and storm out, leaving their checks unpaid, I finally took my last table.

At first, the group of 15 obese diners seemed like a godsend. They were polite, calm, orderly and friendly. I muscled up my last smile and gave them the best service I could manage, hoping for a tip big enough to cover the dine-and-dashers. But when the orders started to arrive, it all went to heck. The shrimp-to-catfish ratio on the fry plate was off; the burger buns were too small; the lettuce wasn’t crunchy enough; the Sprite tasted like 7up and it was all my fault. When all was said and done and all 15 lumbered off into the night, I searched the table for my tip. They had left me 37 cents. I ran out after them and saw them laughing and exchanging high-fives as they walked away.

Other tales of greatness include: the puker who, after vomiting onto the table next to him, wiped his mouth and ordered another basket of onion rings; the prostitute who stretched one cup of coffee for four hours while trolling unsuccessfully for dates; the belligerent who arrived at 5pm every Friday for cocktails and was forcibly removed by 6pm, drunk and swinging fists; and my favorite, the flash-n-grabber who would hang his member out of his pants under the table and, when he caught a waitress noticing, would reach up and goose her while she was still immobilized in shock while yelling, “Caught you lookin’!”

I was fired from this job when, after getting food poising from my employee meal, I missed two days of work. The manager actually sent one of the line cooks to my house to retrieve my apron. I told him I had lost it and later ritually burned it along with my left-over order slips.

I thought I’d share My Very Worst Job ever with you, since I haven’t ever met anyone with a worse story than this one. I found myself looking for work last year, after the economy had tanked. Unemployment in my part of the country had jumped, so when I finally got an interview with a local hotel chain, I was pretty excited. I was hired right away, and asked to start the next day.

My first indication that this would not work out occurred at about 10 a.m. on my first day, when a homeless man, reeking of alcohol, stumbled up to the desk and asked for a room. Since he couldn’t afford one we sent him away, but a few minutes later the janitor came in to tell us he’d found him in the bushes outside – with a hooker.  That’s when I realized who the parade of slutty women paying monthly rates in cash were.

Later on I was shown the emergency procedures book, which included policies in case of drug raids, suicide attempts, rapes, assaults, hostage situations, and bomb threats. I was told that I likely wouldn’t need to use most of them, but last week there was that guy who overdosed, and on Thursday there was a major assault in the lobby, and some guy died in his room a few weeks back.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, I then found a note about a spate of car robberies happening in the parking lot.  I basically spent the rest of the shift watching my own car through the front window. I quit over the phone that night and never came back, not even to pick up my paycheck.

Fortunately, I haven’t had anything nearly as bad since.  I moved to Australia a few months later, and wound up in a couple of great jobs. Since I’ve been back in Canada the job market has really picked up again, so I’m hopeful that I will never, ever need to work in the kind of hotel that caters mostly to prostitutes, drug addicts, and one room that was either about illegal labourers or human trafficking – I left before I found out which one.

I used to work for a landscape architecture firm as an intern. One time my boss came over to ask me a question and while doing so he took some Vaseline out and rubbed it in his nose. It was weird and gross. At this office we had one AOL email account (shared by the five person staff) that we used as the main business email. Apparently my boss would also use that account during and after business hours to chat on AIM with chicks.  In the mornings the project manager would find random emails from chicks telling my boss how much they enjoyed chatting with him and some even sent inappropriate pictures.  Finally, we convinced him to get a more functional business email account so that each of us had our own separate email, but I have to admit that reading some of those emails was very funny.