11.
When I was 20 I had 3 jobs. I worked as a bank teller from 8-4, then as a closing shift manager at a coffee shop from 5-10, then as an overnight janitor from 11- 2 am.
This wasn’t every day but it was enough that it equated to about 80 hours a week between the 3 jobs, and yes you can imagine this would lead to burnout real fast.
So at the overnight janitor gig my “boss” comes over to me and asks me to come to the office for a review. This was weird, all I did was mop floors on a production line that made air train brakes. But whatever.
I go into his office and he closes the door behind me and pulls out a gay porn magazine and starts asking me about different d*cks and put his hand on my shoulder.
I was surprisingly calm and just said I don’t like d*cks and went back to work.
Then it hit me what happened. I called in sick the rest of the week and picked up my final paycheck when he wasn’t there.
It was a hard enough job without being sexually harassed for $8.50 an hour.
12.
I currently work at an escape room and an anti-masker came in refusing to play wearing a mask (which is currently protocol) – he was playing our Matrix themed room and after I refused to let him play without a mask he kept repeating about how this was “Just like the Matrix” and “Have you even seen The Matrix, it’s all about control, and what happens when they lose control? They send in Agent Smith”.
Sir I am not earning minimum wage to argue with you about a film from 1999. Wear a mask or get out.
13.
Plumber.
Owner of a mobile home called and said they had a stinky yard.
I could smell it when I pulled up.
the mobile home was new and had only been set up for about 8 months. while setting it up, someone didn’t tighten a no-hub band of the toilet in the kids bathroom.
8 months of flushed toilet was all over the ground, under the home and had just started being noticed outside.
I told the homeowner to call the guys that set it up to come fix it. I wasn’t crawling under there.
14.
Used to work at a gadget shop – loads of silly squeaky things, things that flew about, novelty gadgets etc. – you get the picture. We always had to wear something from the novelty clothing range. One day I wore an apron that depicted a buff guy (I’m female), and my male co-worker wore the female version. During that day I had so much abuse. I asked my manager if I could change into something else and she said that it was a talking point. I had people calling me all sorts – from fat to idiot, to questioning my true gender and sexuality. I had some teenage boys push me into some of the shelves and then made me fall into one the central box tub things we had that held lucky dip products. Still my manager wouldn’t let me change.
I quit. If she had said that I could change after the first few incidents, then I would have been ok. But seeing the abuse was reducing me to tears and still not doing anything about it? It wasn’t worth the pay cheque.
15.
I have an mildly irrational fear of spiders. I was asked to help clean out an old storage area/shed type building. It was covered in dust and a ton of these big black spiders but a big enough space that I felt fine. Until my supervisor handed me a leaf blower and asked me to go through a back hallway with it.
Opened the door to the hallway and it was cramped, just tall enough to be a little over my height and just wide enough for me to walk through. Except there was no light so it was pitch black, until I held up my phone flashlight and saw the largest mess of tangled webs filled to the absolute brim with thousands of the big black spiders. Straight up refused to walk down that thing, especially with a leaf blower. Like no thanks, I don’t want to create a spider tornado.
My supervisor was irritated with me that I refused to do this, but I would rather be fired than walk through the arachnid hell hallway for 10 dollars an hour.
16.
Bartender here. Grown man threw a lit cigarette at my face and threatened me with physical violence. This was a year or so ago but a 45 (maybe older) year old man behaving that way towards a 24 year old female was definitely one of those moments. Plus the people getting handsy and occasional cleaning of vomit I do not get paid enough.
17.
When I was doing 90% of my boss’ job in hopes of a full time promotion that I had been promised for three years and he took all the credit and told me my promotion wasn’t in the budget.
18.
I worked at McDonald’s when I was 16 and some crack head complained that her fries were too cold, so I made her a fresh batch which she proceeded to throw at the upper part of my chest/neck and gave me grease burns. She then spat at me and left. My manager told me to get over it. I’m 20 now and can still see the burns in the right lighting.
19.
I worked for a summer camp one year that was run by a stereotypically hippie-dippie organization. Now, I personally support this organization but they had some ridiculous idea about how to discipline children. In that they didn’t believe in discipline at all.
No time outs. No raising your voice (even just to be heard). No rewards to be earned or positive reinforcement. No loss of privileges. No warnings. No speaking to the parents about behavioral issues. Nothing.
Now, most of the kids were coming to this camp because their parents didn’t have the means to send them to more expensive camps and quite a lot of them had behavioral issues to start with. But none of the kids were monsters, in fact, they were all pretty great. They mostly just needed some understanding and solid boundaries.
Unfortunately, with no discipline, comes no boundaries, or at least no way to enforce boundaries. So the kids tended to run amok and there wasn’t a whole lot we as counselors could do.
So I surreptitiously gave a few time outs to some of the more wild kids and, guess what, their behavior immediately improved and I never had trouble with them again. In fact, they had a better time because they weren’t constantly getting into fights with their friends.
But, I guess the higher ups found out about it somehow and sat me down to talk about how “you just need to talk to them, find out why they are behaving badly and make them understand the correct way to behave”.
I knew why they were behaving badly – they were kids in a place away from their parent with no rules and no discipline – they were seeing what they could get away with.
In the end, I basically ignored the higher-ups. I wasn’t getting paid enough to deal with kids all day without having any way of keeping a bit of control. Regardless, the only problem kids had already had their time outs and, like I said, they were fine once they knew where the line was. Besides, I wasn’t worried about my job… they don’t believe in discipline.
20.
When a thick stream of sweat drained out of this girls cell phone case. I had to explain to her that her phone had water damage and that she shouldn’t work out with her phone in her bra, all the while trying to be professional and not gag while cleaning the mess. (I sold phones at Sprint).
