21.
Leaving my previous position that hired three people and an intern to replace me.
22.
Two specific cases.
One was when I was working retail. I was sick as a dog, throwing up, completely lost my voice. Got a call from the manager that even though I had called out sick I needed to come in that day because the district manager was there. Was told in no uncertain terms that if I didn’t show up I could expect to lose my job. So I got dressed, came in, and within the hour proceeded to get absolutely reamed out by the aforementioned DM for making a mistake on a receipt. I saw red, resigned on the spot and never looked back.
Second case was when I was working in construction a decade later. I was told to visit a vacant apartment in the Bronx to take measurements and provide an estimate for carpet removal. Nothing out of the ordinary, visited a ton of apartments before. It wasn’t until the super let me in and immediately left that I realized something was off. I walked into the bedroom to find a blood-stained mattress and splatter all over the wall. Apparently this apartment had been the site of a murder-suicide a few days earlier. I did the job, drove back to the office, and proceeded to tell my boss that if they ever sent me into a job like that blind without informing me that I would be walking into the middle of a crime scene, they would have to find a new estimator. Thankfully they did not.
23.
Worked in recruitment, my phone would start around 6am and stop around 10pm, go off at weekends and even got calls on my personal phone when I was out of the country on holiday. I lasted 2 years and left, even now, when I hear the Apple ringtone, I still get an ill feeling in my belly.
24.
I enjoyed my job, but it could have been better. There were certain aspects of it that were making it hard to work there. Then, in a span of 3 months, half of my coworkers quit (2 of then resigned within 2 weeks of each other). So I started cleaning up my resume and was ready to get back out there. I figured I’d ask for a raise to see what would happen. I mean I was picking up the slack from 3 different people and other departments were seeing people resign for similar reasons (people were being given tasks that weren’t anywhere near their job descriptions).
Suddenly, I see my very own role posted on the company website. Word for word what I was currently doing, with the same exact title. I had already submitted my request for a raise the week before, so this seemed like they were giving me the boot. The next morning my boss was scrambling. Turns out they didn’t mean to post that job yet and they were reformatting the team and giving me a promotion. I was honest with him that it’s been an absolute mess lately and I wasn’t enjoying the direction we were heading.
I got a 20% raise and have been given some room to make higher level decisions, so I guess now I’m paid enough for this s**t.
25.
Telling a grown ass man that he shouldn’t be sh***ing in a customers parking lot.
26.
When the public school system told me to either risk my life or leave. Bye.
27.
Lying in intensive care, reading a text from my manager that said I should have really phoned in – not texted – to advise I was in intensive care and would not be in work that day. Also instructions to phone every day until I was back in the office. Nurse took my phone off me and literally said they weren’t paying me to do that.
When I got back (two operations and two months later) work had just been piled on my desk with management telling me “well, we didn’t know when you’d be back”. Put my notice in around 3 weeks after that. While working my notice I was suddenly made “office contact” for a department in another country and one day found myself covering for our IT support team.
28.
I was on a royal navy warship and we’d pulled into Hull UK for a visit. Their dockyard regulations prevented the ship from discharging solids overboard so the total of all the crews toilet flushings were diverted to a holding tank so we could discharge it overboard when back at sea. After the crew had been in port for two days, which for most involved copious drinking and then finishing off with a large curry or spicy kebab, the additional load on the system was too much for the circulating pump inside tank. The pump was also used pump the contents overboard so needed to be fixed before we went back to sea. Unfortunately I was duty electrician the day the pump failed. The contents of the tank was about a foot and half deep! I suited up with waterproofs and copious amounts of duct tape to seal the seams and descended. The pump was bolted in place and to free it I had to work with my face about four inches from the liquid curry and beer smoothies as I bent over. I definitely want getting paid enough… But I was given an order and it was my job, so I just got on and did it.
29.
Being paid $13/hr to be a one-on-one Para to a 10 year old who swore, ran away, tried to stab me and other kids with pencils, scissors, etc. AND having to listen to the parents blame me for not getting their child to behave. I felt bad for the kid – seriously damaged, in a less than great home. He’s in an fortified school now.
30.
Coming in to afternoon shifts as a cook at KFC and finding that the morning cook didn’t clean anything before leaving (and left everything particularly trashed) and prepped nothing. And this was a normal occurrence. I’d leave morning shifts stocked up and perfectly clean every morning I worked. I think the GM there quit not long after I left.
