People's Best 'F—k This, I Don't Get Paid Enough' Work Experiences

In 1977, singer and songwriter Johnny Paycheck scored a mega hit with his working-class anthem, "Take This Job and Shove It."

The lyrics embodied the sentiments of workers and their ultimate fantasy of telling off their boss, as the chorus said:

"You better not try to stand in my way,"

"As I'm a-walking out the door,"

"Take this job and shove it,"

"I ain't working here no more!"

In modern times people refer to something being above their pay grade or not getting paid enough to do a specific task at their jobs.

Reddit user MidnightPandaX asked:

"What happened at your work that made you go 'F*ck this, I don't get paid enough'?"

Loyalty Test

"I’ve never received a review or raise in the 5+ years I’ve been at my current job. When brought up I received blank stares and they questioned my loyalty."

~ RickySpanish74

Unsafe

"I worked in book retail in the 1990s - 2004. A man in an Australian cork dangle Crocodile Dundee hat came in and asked me how many Harry Potter books had ever been sold."

"When I didn’t know the answer, he called me a stupid little c-word and swung at me closed fist over the counter. I ducked. And ran for the staff room."

"My manager wanted to ream me out for leaving a line of customers behind him. I was on £5.25 an hour."

~ DynestraKittenface

Scut Work

"I worked for a video distance learning program in the 80s-90s."

"I had a cool job doing some computer graphics and video production, but I also had to recycle hundreds (thousands?) of VHS tapes that had to be de-labeled, and the stickers did NOT come off easily.

"One day in frustration I just blurted out 'can't we hire somebody to do this‽‽.' My boss smiled at me and said 'we did'."

~ neoprenewedgie

Games

"When I was in college, I worked a retail job, and I always got stuck on the closing shift. The store had a policy that you needed 2 departments' worth of people there with the manager when they locked up the store."

"My department had the most individual items (lots of small components), so repricing and restocking always took forever, so we were basically always stuck there until the very end (generally about 3 hours after our scheduled clock off because there's always 1 other department that, for one reason or another, had a very long closing each day)."

"One day we decided we would work our a**es off getting everything ready so we can leave on time for once. We get to 15 minutes before the normal clock-out time, and our supervisor goes and gets the manager to do a walk-through and OK us to leave."

"He says there's something wrong, but when we ask him what it is, he refuses to tell us. We proceed to spend the next hour trying to find anything out of place, and find nothing."

"Finally, once we are the last department not finished, he tells us. Turns out literally 1 f*cking item on one of the end caps wasn't straight (it was slightly crooked)."

"I literally screamed in his face, chucked my badge at him, and walked out the emergency exit."

~ skavinger5882

No Pay

"I had a job that didn’t pay us during the holidays. Working a full time job that claimed they 'didn’t have the money right now to pay all of their employees'."

"It was a small 'mom and pop' type employer, so I get that times were hard, but damn that sucked. We went 3 weeks without a pay check."

"Caused me to fall behind on rent, car payment, and paying back my student loans. I left that place as quickly as I could land something else."

~ Throw-a-weigh5

Thief

"I had money stolen from my tip jar by a new employee multiple times. My boss said to wait for him to do it again so I'd have proof."

"I said f*ck that and quit. That same employee was fired two weeks later after having stolen from other employees, including the boss himself."

"The whole store shut down a few weeks later because other employees quit en masse. My new job pays twice as much with half the stress."

"If you're reading this, Austin, thanks for being a piece of sh*t. Turns out it made my life better."

~ Hereiampostingagain

Spies

"I worked at a preschool where my supervisor, who happened to be a good friend of two of the aides, had them spy on me. I decided to turn in my resignation."

"Before I did, she called me into a meeting with the HR director."

"While I held the letter behind my back, they said I was being laid off. After the meeting, I ran the letter through the paper shredder, and I was able to collect unemployment insurance!"

"I felt I had gotten even! I did go back to teaching, but I found a job that I loved in a public school. I went from the worst job I ever had to my favorite!"

~ Party_Sea3522

Incompetence

"Had a job out of college working for a subsidiary of an international telecommunications firm. The woman I worked for was 100% a political appointee and was flat-out incompetent."

"Thankfully, she did have the good sense to assemble a strong, knowledgeable team, but I reported directly to her and spent most of my time planning outings and lunches for her and her cronies and, occasionally, social events for the company."

"I learned:"

"a) I HATE event planning with the fire of 1000 suns."

"b) I would get nowhere at that job."

"Lasted just less than a year, found something far more in my wheelhouse, and skipped. As I was leaving on my last day, I felt like a 1000 lb weight had been lifted."

~ LovelyLilac73

No Training

"I started in a warehouse as the IT person. They wanted me to run drops across the entire facility on one of those lifts that drive."

No harness, no training, told me it's just like a car and I'll be fine."

"No thanks. Not driving this between a million dollar production line with no safety gear or training."

~ lunchbox1911

Beyond Scope

"I was a young professional at the time, and one of the older partners had me drive his wife to her hairdresser and wait for her to be done. I then had to take her grocery shopping, carry the groceries in and put them away for her."

"When she told me to vacuum her carpet before I left, I said no. By the time I got back to the office, my partner was red in the face and said that if his wife tells me to do something, it is like he was telling me to do something."

"I told him to write me up, which he did, and had HR present it to me that I was insubordinate for not vacuuming his wife's carpet."

"Small accounting firm with five partners, 3 of whom were probably 65+. HR consisted of the office manager who also was in charge of bookkeeping for the firm and making coffee. Her title believe it or not was VP of HR."

"I ended up leaving a few weeks later after a lateral move to a more progressive firm. I have that write up framed in my office as it is so ridiculous."

~ OkCastor

Greed

"I was working at a car dealership for a while. About a decade. I was the go-to in my department. Our job was to take all the incoming leads from our website, and incoming chats, and incoming calls, and answer the customers' questions."

"I got paid state minimum wage which, at the time was $12/hour. If I convinced them to come in for a test drive and talk numbers and options, I got paid $20 commission. If they bought the car from our sales team, I got an additional $20 commission. It was alright work. Easy in a physical sense, and I'm pretty good at talking to folks."

"Back in 2018 we had the busiest year the place ever had. We were far and away the busiest dealer for the region. It was the year I broke six figures for income, and I wasn't allowed any overtime pay. Just absolutely bananas. How were we all rewarded for our efforts?"

"All commissions were reduced to $0, and we were left to flounder at the state minimum wage. We were told this when the owner of the dealership called the entire sales, management, and Internet teams together and delivered a speech about how every single week, he viewed our earned paychecks as us stealing money from him."

"So I stopped working. I went in, sat down, did the bare minimum, and spent my days looking for a new job while at my old job."

"Greedy old bastard."

~ DaniFoxglove

Poor Planning

"A wiring closet was built on the 1st floor where a bathroom used to be. Guess what was on the 2nd floor above it?"

"There was a sewage leak from the 2nd floor."

"I was the IT guy. They thought it was my problem to clean it up."

~ Ferreteria

Do As I Say...

"Me and a coworker were doing our job, and talking because it had 0 effect on us getting our work done, and our supervisor came over and started talking with us and joined the conversation."

"Then at the end yelled at us for talking."

"Like, WTF, dude‽‽ We were working and you joined in the conversation then said stop talking‽‽ Didn’t make me quit but added to the list of things that made me wanna leave that place."

~ Maximum-Onion-9933

Over And Above

"I worked at a restaurant and my GM went out on emergency medical leave. I was next in line, so I basically took on all her duties, plus all my usual ones."

"My pay was not raised, I was still working hourly + tips. I was in charge of making the schedule, and I had myself scheduled for a shift I didn't usually work to cover for someone on vacation."

"I accidentally showed up two hours EARLY, for my normal shift. The owner got in my face and screamed at me that I was pushing his boundaries on labor and doing it to be defiant."

"I started looking for a new job that day."

~ stix-and-stones

Yelling

"I got red in the face, yelled at for chatting with my coworker, WHILE we were both fully working and the two of us were among the best performers on the site."

"My two weeks notice got put in within the week."

~ The_RabitSlayer

What was your last straw at a job?