'No one stayed longer than a year': 25+ Jobs that were the worst of the worst according to employees

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Feb 28, 2024 11:00 AM EST

It seems like everyone has had at least one job that made them dread going into work every day. It's the kind of job that gives you a pit in your stomach as you set your alarm clock for the next day. As you drive to work, you're gritting your teeth thinking about what irritating thing your boss or coworkers are going to do that day. 

Sometimes it takes a little while to realize you dislike your job. But once you realize, it gets harder and harder to be happy there. You might start daydreaming about other jobs with less responsibility and better pay. For a lot of folks, their coworkers and bosses make them feel drained, and dealing with that every day can become grating. The best time to start job hunting is the moment you realize you're dissatisfied…but a lot of people either need the money or have other reasons why they're forced to stay on. 

U/phillybride asked the internet to share "What made your worst job ever your worst job ever?" and the answers were quite wide-ranging. From blue-collar workers to white-collar workers, it seems like everyone has that one crazy story about their worst times on the job. Check them all out below. And then, this person refused to write false reviews about their company, so they decided to leave and let the company crumble behind them. 

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  • 01
    GEAR
    via Annie Spratt on Unsplash
  • 02
    What made your worst job ever your worst job ever?
    via u/phillybride
  • 03
    twinfyre I took the job because they were understaffed and needed more people. Well... They were understaffed and needed more people.
    via u/twinfyre
  • 04
    vinegarballs I had to pick tomatoes. It was so hot in the greenhouses and the wasps were everywhere. Seriously, do wasps bring anything to the table or are they useless, angry ?
    via u/vinegarballs
  • 05
    255 ellieellieoxenfree Power-tripping, micromanaging, unsupportive boss. Everything I did was wrong according to her, but she had to keep me on because there was nobody else who could do the job.
    via u/ellieellieoxenfree
  • 06
    SniperPoro McDonald's. They wouldn't really train you properly, but they would get mad at you for not knowing how to do things. One of the managers was also the type who would yell at crew members. She was ---- to both crew members and customers.
    via u/SniperPoro
  • 07
    Azaziel514 First real job after college. Boss was always giving contradictory requests then being extremely mad when things didn't go well. He also liked to give indications that went against good industry practices. Also the whole speech "ask me if you have any doubts" then when asked he'd send me to someone else. Forcing
    via u/Azaziel514
  • 08
    me to keep an explicit schedule for the projects I'm working on then being mad that I'm sticking to that schedule. The best moment was when we were so close to winning a huge contract but there was a somewhat serious problem in our proposal. I went to him and he was basically "that's your problem, you deal with it" and
    via u/Azaziel514
  • 09
    left for the weekend. I had been there a few months and it was his company, I had no idea how to fix that with the resources I had. I'm still convinced that he could've fixed it in a couple of hours tops after a few phone calls, since he is a far better connected guy than me. But nope. Just watch that ton of money and reputation go away because you're an
    via u/Azaziel514
  • 10
    Barfhelmet Boredom. I had a job that literally required me to do nothing for 90% of the day. Absolutely brutal beyond belief.
    via r/AskReddit
  • 11
    Golden-Sun Nothing is more awkward than being on stage with an audience and your co-worker doesn't know their lines. For sake Grant you had 4 months to memorize this and you've had 20 years of experience on top of that
    via u/Golden-Sun
  • 12
    HermoingoBoingo . 2 1/2 hour commute. So 5 hours commuting each day. And it was so fast-paced that we never had a minute to rest. And we would get yelled at if we needed to go to the bathroom.
    via u/HermoingoBoingo
  • 13
    sirdigbykittencaesar Shirley. This That was the job I had between undergrad and grad school, so I was only there for about 6 months. She was a complainer. There was no subject and no situation in which Shirley could not complain. People, weather, what was in the vending machines, it didn't matter,
    via u/sirdigbykittencaesar
  • 14
    because Shirley would find a way to about it. She also had a hobby of suing people. I know roughly the area she lives in, and every once in a while I'll Google her name just to see if she's still as insufferable as she used to be and the answer is yes.
    via u/sirdigbykittencaesar
  • 15
    hard_caulk They didn't have soap in any of the bathrooms. I was told to bring my own as there was no budget. Manager was also using the company as a front for selling stolen goods from out of the country. Coworkers confirmed all of this. I lasted 1 and 1/2 days
    via u/hard_caulk
  • 16
    [deleted] 50C temperatures for 8 hours at a time. It was a small coffee shop with greenhouse windows, 6 freezers and chiller cabinets (no external heat sink so they chill the food but dump that heat into the shop), 4 panini grills and a large espresso machine.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 17
    I wasn't allowed to turn the music down, even at customer request, because "we are a music and coffee shop, that's our thing, it should be loud enough that you can't have a conversation without raising your voice." The single most common request we has was for a bacon roll. We had rolls, we had bacon, but I wasn't
    via u/[deleted]
  • 18
    allowed to make them because "we're premium, and bacon rolls aren't premium". The company was entirely based on opening new shops with investors' money so they could show growth to the next set of investors. My outlet certainly didn't make money. They went bankrupt a year after I left.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 19
    GreatJanitor Toss up: Retail and it was the customers, hours, poor pay, and manager. Warehouse order pulling. Dull, mindlessly repetitive, mandatory overtime of two hours every day plus weekends
    via u/GreatJanitor
  • 20
    [deleted] My boss' temperament. Very successful interior designer I was project managing for. When she was cool. She was the coolest. When she sucked. She dyson. She was a would throw TANTRUMS slamming windows. Throwing desk objects. Screaming. Making
    via u/[deleted]
  • 21
    insane and useless demands like "I want to know how much we've spent on coffee for the last threeyears." Worse, according to her, no one is ever competent at their jobs, whether it's $1 million+ builder or her own staff. She was always the ONLY person who knew what she was doing. No one stayed longer than a year.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 22
    drphyz Management. The lower workers can manage schedules better than management themselves. A bad schedule can make the whole day and for it to repeat constantly can be tiring and demotivated the out of you and every other worker.
    via u/drphyz
  • 23
    TTTyrant Went for the interview. Seemed nice enough. Small business with only 5-6 other guys. Well...figured out real quick why I was the youngest guy they got in awhile. Toxic boss who se sole purpose of existence was the company. The other guys had all been there for 20+ years so they were toxic know it alls that took every chance
    via u/TTTyrant
  • 24
    to exercise their seniority. Was hired for the day shift. Got put on nights soon after I started. Boss expected me to show up an hour early and then stay until the truck was loaded for the next day which could literally have been whenever. Have 2 young kids at home so i said i should be put on days since thats what i agreed to when i
    via u/TTTyrant
  • 25
    was hired. Boss said thats not what he said and moved my hours back even later. Grabbed my stuff and walked out that minute. place. that Have anxiety/ over from the army and this place seriously made me miserable. left
    via u/TTTyrant
  • 26
    Current job is the polar Took a $4 an opposite. hour pay cut but is it ever worth it. I work to live not live to work. Work/Life balance is everything to me so I can see my kids more. More money isn't worth it if you're seriously considering swerving off a bridge on your way to work everyday, people.
    via u/TTTyrant
  • 27
    ✪ [deleted] The boss was also the HR department. Enough said.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 28
    Piano ManGidley Call center work. People are orders of magnitude more likely to verbally assault you over the phone than in person. And at the time, my social anxiety and were undiagnosed and untreated. I eventually had a nervous breakdown and quit.
    via u/Piano ManGidley
  • 29
    [deleted] I wasnt trained. I shadowed someone in a cramped kitchen for one shift and then everyone assumed i knew what i was doing, in the height of summer selling ice cream. I didnt know the recipes and was slow because i was new. I quit after 3
    via u/[deleted]
  • 30
    weeks when i overheard a manager openly complain about my incompetence when they thought i had already left.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 31
    ConfuciusSan Being forced to work 13 days straight, half of which were splits (8am- 12pm then 4pm- 11:30pm) also, the commute took about 40 minutes each way, meaning on my split I had about 2 hours spare for free time (the extra half hour taken from free time was because I rode a motorbike and it took
    via u/ConfuciusSan
  • 32
    time to get bike gear on and get ready to leave) then when I finally did get a day off, my boss would have the nerve to phone me on my ONE DAY OFF IN 2 WEEKS to ask if I could come in and cover someone with a passive aggressive Boss: Hey, could you cover someone today? Me: Ummm, no not re... Boss: Ok great, see you in an hour, thanks bye hangs up
    via u/ConfuciusSan
  • 33
    Plus my boss was a Gordon Ramsay wannabe tool of a man, constantly throwing insults in an attempt-to-be-funny- way, as if he was a big man, he would also walk off mid-shift and go nap in the office for an hour at a time and take 10 smoke breaks, all of which were 10-15 minutes long, even when it was super busy, but refuse to give
    via u/ConfuciusSan
  • 34
    anyone else one, and make a point of shouting his refusal in a way that ALL the other staff could hear. Plus, whenever he was called into HIS bosses office to receive a warning based on all the written complaints he had recieved, he would turn on the crocodile tears and plead innocence.
    via u/ConfuciusSan
  • 35
    This was just one of the many problems there, I have more from that same place but it's already pretty long as it is. tl;dr boss was a collosal ......-biscuit.
    via u/ConfuciusSan
  • 36
    loopy23101 My current job, by far. Imma rant now. My boss is the kind to write me up for everything, even for things he told me to do. I work security, there are 4 of us that share the same office, but due to shifts, there is only one of us working at a time. Office policy says morning ahift takes out
    via u/loopy23101
  • 37
    the trash, since the dumpster is far enough away to need a vehicle to get to. Said vehicle gets taken for other use after my shift. So i have to take out, every morning without fail. Well, after taking out empty bags due to noone throwing anything away, lead said to use my judgement and try not to waste supplies.
    via u/loopy23101
  • 38
    What does he do? Write me up because i didnt take out a bag with 2 water and an empty toilet paper roll. Cant fight it when he denies what he said. I have received 6 write ups like this in the last year that he has been lead.
    via u/loopy23101
  • 39
    -----Kyle----- The slippery floor. Deli clerk. Actually loved my coworkers and enjoyed the process of things and making people and kids happy, but that floor was treacherous and made my knees sore having to carefully tread on it.
    via u/-----Kyle-----
  • 40
    schnit123 I worked for a company that digitally archived military technical orders (ie: instruction manuals). My job was to compare the original to the scanned copy to make sure Z's didn't come in as 2's or 1's as I's, etc. it was miserable, tedious work, made all the worse by the fact that TO's, as anyone in the military will tell you,
    via u/schnit123
  • 41
    are some of the most dry, boring documents you'll ever read. But that wasn't the end of it because the office also had a strict silence policy. They didn't want us talking to each other except for business related work and we were only allowed to listen to music on headphones, and only music. Talk shows were forbidden because we might
    via u/schnit123
  • 42
    laugh and distract our coworkers. I only wish I was joking. I would listen to talk shows anyway and got called into HR because they'd received complaints that I was "laughing quietly to myself" and that that was unacceptable and that I would be in serious trouble if I was caught again. Basically you were never allowed to do anything except stare at your monitor.
    via u/schnit123
  • 43
    Oh and did I mention I got paid $9 an hour for this job and had to start work at 7 AM? If I was given the choice between going back to that job or being homeless I'd take the cardboard box.
    via u/schnit123
  • 44
    Cracked_Rose My worst job was at a Subway. My boss didn't want to give me a review, so he kept cutting back my hours to the point that I only worked 4 hours per week.
    via u/Cracked_Rose
  • 45
    Leatherneck55 I was a furnace helper in a steel factory. I pulled red hot parts from a 2500 degree electric furnace with a pair of tongs. I would catch on fire a couple times a day. I lifted between 2.5 and 4 tons a steel a day. 1975, first steady job in nearly 2 years. Glad to have any work but I moved out of state to escape that one.
    via u/Leatherneck55
  • 46
    -eDgAR- Horrible manager, like really awful. Her name was Carol and she was one of the owners of the Japanese reataurant where I worked in college. They had two locations and they would start you at one location with Cindy, the other owner. She was nice and very patient, so you got a false sense of what to
    via u/-eDgAR-
  • 47
    expect when you worked your first shift at the other location. A lot of people quit after the first day over there, this place had permanant help wanted signs on doors because of it. Carol was mean and liked screaming at people when they didn't do something right. She would also watch the cameras when she wasn't there and it she
    via u/-eDgAR-
  • 48
    saw you not doing anything she would call the restaurant and chew you out about it. There was one trick that she liked doing where when you were in the back washing dishes she would stand next to you and sharpen the sushi knife. Then she would suddenly slap you on the arm with the dull side of the knife.
    via u/-eDgAR-
  • 49
    She knew very well that she was the reason why people kept leaving, but she didn't care. In her eyes they were weak and she didn't want them to work there anyway.
    via u/-eDgAR-
  • 50
    07 010 Whalebombed My manager at a very popular coffee store stole our tips and changed the books so that we never earned overtime despite working 50-60 hours a week. The employees hired an investigator.
    via u/Whalebombed
  • 51
    We found out that our boss was having an affair with the GM and then we where handed fat checks and told to shut up. I got out of there asap.
    via u/Whalebombed
  • 52
    halfcow Micromanagement. When someone controls or corrects every little thing that you do, it makes you feel like you can't do anything right. You are never good enough. It creates anxiety.
    via u/halfcow
  • 53
    In fact, this explanation about micromanagement is probably not as good as it could have been, if only my manager would step in and tell me how to explain it better.
    via u/halfcow
  • 54
    [deleted] I worked for one summer in the packaging dept of a hot dog/deli meats factory. Not a national brand, just a Midwest regional one. Well I just happened to work on the 50th anniversary year of the company. So the powers that be decided every package needed a 50th anniversary sticker on
    via u/[deleted]
  • 55
    it, but didn't want to buy a machine to do it. So I got to do it. Every. Single. Package. Of. Hot dogs. Also, the room was 33 degrees. For 10 hours a day. Standing there as the conveyer belt went by. At least it kind of paid well.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 56
    lespaulstrat2 I stood in a 2 ft ditch and shoveled wet cement into 3 ft high hopper. Every night, 11pm to 7am for 8 hours.
    via u/lespaulstrat2
  • 57
    Dunderchief98 Encapsulating cayenne pepper powder in gel capsules for some BS vitamin company. It was constantly 100 degrees in the clean room, the streaks of sweat would start burning your skin, touching any part of your body was not advised and regardless of goggles your eyes would burn...Lasted 6 long months.
    via u/Dunderchief98
  • 58
    CrateDane Does being a conscript soldier count? The pay was beyond terrible. I would have gotten more money for being a student. And the food on base was ridiculous, you could buy a breakfast menu where the included glass of juice was one of those little medicine cups. It was like a shot of orange juice, come
    via u/CrateDane
  • 59
    on, how cheap can you be. Also lugging around a heavy backpack and rifle, being wet and miserable. And always the hurry up and wait routine.
    via u/CrateDane

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