Since very few people now stay in the same workplace for their entire career, it's likely a person will work at least one unfulfilling or toxic job in their lives.
But for some people, there was that one job that especially left a scar.
Already cringing, Redditor TheJasonWiseman asked:
"What's the worst job you've ever had?"
Call Center
"I worked Sprint support. I was one of the top in my call center of 500+ people. I was good at it but hated it with a passion. Couldn’t wait to get out of there. Also, that’s when I learned that I lack empathy."
"There’s nothing like getting screamed at because some lady refused phone insurance and lost her phone the same afternoon."
- tatuado_
"Call center. Enough said."
"Call centers are peak late-stage capitalism. A place where all you do all day is get yelled at by customers who have run up against your company's labyrinth of bulls**t they've erected to keep anyone from squeezing an ounce of money from the shareholders."
- gogojack
House Cleaning
"I did ONE summer as a housekeeper in a Bed and Breakfast in a beach town, and it was foul! It was the kind of place with one bathroom per three bedrooms, and people would wait until you scrubbed everything and then take the most horrifying s**t in there. Worst job!"
- boatyboatwright
Wine Culture
"Bottling wine in southern France."
"Big wineries would pay an outfit like ours to do it in the summer after the grape harvest. The crew would show up in an 18-wheeler with an assembly line in the trailer. Pallets of empty wine bottles would be waiting for us."
"The n00b (me) would be placed at the start of the line to manually load bottles on the conveyor belt. The trick was to put a bottle between each finger of both hands and load as fast as possible. The shift started at 4:00 AM and wouldn't end until 10:00 PM, sometimes midnight."
"Bottles would shatter often on the line, wine spilling (something to do with the speed of the line; can't recall). The line would stop, the foreman would yell at me, and I had to sweep glass (sometimes without gloves, glass shards in hands, face, etc, no googles, to be expected), and start again. No OSHA in France."
"I sucked so bad at the beginning, the foreman hated my guts. He'd pull my slow a** off the line and assign me on 'box duty.' Basically to ready cardboard boxes to be packed. A pallet of cardboard boxes would take an hour. There were (sometimes) up to four pallets."
"I'd come home with messed up, bloody hands, covered in blisters. And reeking on wine. I did this for a whole summer. I was 18 and barely made enough to buy me a used car."
"I also have f**ked up stories about the grape harvest."
"When I hear people bloviate about wine, I have to grit my teeth and walk away. Brutal work. Thankless. Made me hate wine."
"Stay in school, kids."
- BatCommercial7523
Dishwashing
"I worked as a dishwasher for like five years or so, with three years at a hotel. On a Saturday, we would have two weddings going on in two rooms where I'd have to run between both to do the dishes all night. And then work brunch at 7:00 AM the following Sunday morning where we would go through 400 people in four hours. I remember the bus bins being piled 14 high in some kind of exhausting endless dish prison."
"I got paid the worst and at 18 had to endure the alcoholic older cooks. I'm in my 40s now and whenever I get sick I always have at least one stress dream about being a dishwasher."
- 1_art_please
Casino Dealer... Originally
"I think I win. My career was as a casino dealer and then management in table games."
"However, during the pandemic, my casino shut down and I found a job cleaning up homicide and suicide cases directly with the police department."
"The pay was good. The stories, the smell, the memories, and the visuals are extremely depressing, graphic, and can turn anyone into an alcoholic."
"People don't understand. People die all the time. People are sometimes found weeks or months after the fact."
- meowmeowsss
Medical Insurance Customer Service
"Customer service for a medical insurance company."
"The call center had a two-minute call limit, and you would be reprimanded for volunteering information that might be helpful beyond answering only the question that the customer asked you."
"Bathroom breaks were strictly scheduled unless you were pregnant."
"Never admit there might’ve been a mistake."
"The rules of the different Insurance policies, as well as of the company, were extremely complex, and the stress level for performance metrics was excessive."
"Competition between 'teams' of representatives to see who could get the better statistics each week and each day(!)."
"It’s the only job I ever walked out of!"
"You don’t go into customer service and have the boss basically telling you not to help the customer, or you will be fired (that was what Their paranoid rules amounted to)!"
- Live-Froyo-393
Stringing Tennis Rackets
"I strung Tennis Rackets. Hard on hands. I didn’t last long; I got strung out."
- thandrax
"I’ve done this on the side and part-time at a club for years. Never thought it was that bad. Then I got set up to string at the Canadian Open (as it was then known) for a couple of years."
"It was eight to ten hours a day with your back just ever so slightly bent and various other uncomfortable positions… teaching tennis in the blazing Sun was easier than this for more than eight hours a day. Even though you burn many more calories, you can move around. That single stationary stance is killer."
"The tournament started on Wednesday or Thursday and was supposed to run to the following Sunday. Luckily, by Tuesday the need for 'extra stringers' was usually gone as enough people had been knocked out and the top 10 pros usually had their own dedicated stringer."
- Randomquestions12947
Assistant Manager Life
"Assistant Manager at Walgreens. Lord!! This was a few years ago but you work days, midnights, and afternoons and they switch almost weekly."
"You never feel rested. You work holidays and weekends. You deal with all the complaints, and you fill in for employees who call in. And, they transfer you a lot."
"I lasted a little over a year. It was the only time I quit a job with no notice and no job lined up. Gives me the Willys just thinking about it."
- Birdy304
Elderly Care Environment
"The job I'm at now. I serve food to old people at an assisted living home. Most of them are cranky a**holes, though I can't blame them, it all sucks so much."
- Sensual22Queen
"I’ve literally had that same job! I was a server and was promoted to cook after six months. The place I was working for was super cheap and didn’t hide the fact that they were cutting corners."
"They refused to give me my one-dollar raise after one year of employment because the minimum wage in my state went up fifty cents. One of the few jobs that I didn’t give a two-week notice."
"The old people themselves were either the sweetest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing or they were literally the devil."
- Key_Bank_3904
"Those places creep me out, especially memory care. The workers are so jaded that I literally heard a supervisor tell a worker to just push them up against the table so they couldn’t get up. It’s just a sad place."
- Ambush_24
"When I was seventeen (late '80's) I worked at a personal care home, after school and on the weekends. I would come in and most of the residents were in gerry chairs with the trays up and strapped to the chairs. I would go around and release them. They were capable of walking but the other workers didn't want to deal with them."
- mycatlovescatnip
Assisting Wealthy Families
"Personal assistant to an incredibly rich family. Their 'we can do whatever the h**l we want because we own everything and everyone' attitudes went far beyond what I’m comfortable disclosing."
- autasty
"It was a nannying job for a wealthy family for me. The mother was condescending and insanely critical. I quit after two weeks."
- LabExpensive4764
Physically Demanding
"Picking Daffodils. Bent over all day with your feet bent at awkward angles because of the mounds on either side of the row you were currently picking."
"I could barely walk after two weeks. Thankfully another job called and I never went back."
- Rythameen
Teacher Burnout
"Student teaching. Put me right out of the business. I see why so many new teachers break so quickly. Parents, kids, endless paperwork, worthless administration, and never any respite."
- AdorableMadam15
"I got through student teaching, but my first year broke me. I was a middle school band director in the middle of nowhere, the admin was worse than useless, my mentor teacher only reprimanded me and told me horror stories, I had no planning period and helped with marching band after school, parents wanted nothing to do with me. I was put on antidepressants one month in and was having regular panic attacks by Christmas. Definitely my worst job."
- ComplexWest8790
On Fire
"I was a furnace helper in a steel factory. We made bumper mounts and hinges for truck hoods and other heavy steel parts. I unloaded red hot parts from the furnace with a pair of tongs, I used to catch fire two or three times a day. I hated that."
- Scary_Leader_6690
The Final Days
"Working at Circuit City during its death spiral in 2008. Imagine watching a company actively decompose while you're still required to sell extended warranties on products that might outlive the actual store. Management got increasingly desperate and unhinged as the end approached."
"The best/worst part was when they made us put up 'EVERYTHING MUST GO!' signs but told us to keep telling customers we weren't closing. Like, my brother in Christ, there's literally a guy with a clipboard inventorying our ceiling tiles for liquidation."
- Survival_man
Eye-Opening
"Every job. I've never had a job that I've liked."
- iasip1986
"Same. I can't understand the concept of a 'dream job.' I'm happy for people who have found their calling, but I just can't ever imagine being happy at any job."
- fouxdefafa
There's no question why these were the worst possible jobs in history for these Redditors. From physical turmoil to emotional trauma, these jobs would not be worth working again, no matter the pay raise.
