There's nothing worse than having a scary boss, but also a boss that has UNREALISTIC expectations of you... Some of these stories completely destroyed these workers and their integrity.
Even More Reason To Not Shop There
“I was managing an Abercrombie & Fitch when it was considered ‘cool’ (during the early 2000s), and the worst thing they had me do was ‘Grade’ everyone on my staff on a scale from 1-4.
‘1’ being good looking with a great body.
‘2’ being good looking with an average body.
‘3’ being average with an average body.
‘4’ being average or below average looks with an average body
If you had a less than average figure and asked for a job application, we said we were out of applications.
Store managers, like myself, that had lots of ‘1’s and ‘2’s were rewarded for recruiting the best ‘talent’ with better bonuses and promotions.
Additionally, when it came to everyday business, I had to make sure that ‘1’s worked the front rooms, ‘2’s worked the middle and back rooms, ‘3’s worked the stock room and were used as filler reps when ‘1’s and ‘2’s were on break. And ‘4’s were only used during restocking and back office activity.
I happily quit that job and vowed to never shop at a store whose values were so blatantly superficial.”
Judgmental Mother And Her Negative Attitude
“As a retail photo manager, the most f—ed up thing I’ve ever had to do at work was retaking this poor fifth grader’s passport photo. Literally took the photos about thirty times because the kid’s f—ing insane mother was rejecting them and screaming at the poor girl for being ugly/hair too frizzy/teeth too big/eyes not big enough/nose too big/etc.
When mom went next door to get a jump start on her manicure appointment and left the kid with the money, I told her it would be okay.
She really was a pretty kid, and her mom’s hatred (perfectionism? idiocy?) was just disgusting.”
They Needed That Medication To Survive
“I used to work at a mail order pharmacy. Sometimes I would get people who were sobbing because they didn’t have money to order more medication – often times this medication was life supporting. It was so painful to tell them that there was nothing I could do, even though all I wanted was to pull out my debit card and have it shipped right away.
I can still hear some of their voices, mostly the husbands calling for their wives and begging for some type of payment plan in order to be able to get the meds shipped out. I didn’t stay at the job long, but it absolutely changed me…”
The Saddest Interview Of His Career
2p2play/Shutterstock
“As a former TV news cameraman, I’ve seen a lot — dead bodies lying in the street, people getting hit by cars, parents finding out their child is dead, but the worst has to be this…
A soldier from my state at the time was one of the first people killed in Afghanistan. My TV station had an in with our senator, who is very high-powered. Someone from his office called us and let us know we lost a soldier, gave us all the details. The reporter and I got the assignment to head to his family’s house and knock on the door.
We get to the house, there are several cars on the street. We walk up to the door and knock. An older woman answered and we introduced ourselves, gave the details of why we were there. The whole family was inside crying. Normally, people just tell us to f— off and slam the door in our face, but these folks invited us in.
We did the saddest interviews of my career with several family members, but what struck me the most was his mother, sitting in a chair, holding his picture, sobbing to herself. That day will be with me the rest of my life.”
The Boss Was In Actual Disbelief
“I was a shift manager at the Arby’s that happened to be right across the street from where I went to high school, and this was the summer right after senior year and before college. A group of dips—s came in one night and the head dips— disappeared off into the bathroom. Everyone ordered and got food, blah blah blah, and the head dips— comes back out of the bathroom, looks at me, laughs, and runs out the door as fast as he could. His friends followed.
I went into the bathroom and there was s— smeared on the walls and the mirror, just grossness everywhere! I had to clean this up. By myself. It took almost two hours because I had to keep leaving the bathroom for fear of throwing up.
Next morning I get to work after leaving the bathroom spotless and my boss gives me crap about the toilet not looking clean (It was the only f—ing thing in that entire room that wasn’t covered in s— in the first place), so my boss doesn’t believe me when I mention how f—ed up it was.
Two weeks later head dips— comes back and walks up to order from me like he doesn’t think I know who he is. I punched him over the counter, broke his nose, and walked out. Never went back to work.
Yes, I did actually punch him. Yes, I did actually quit. No, I never saw the kid again.
…And yes, he blocked me on facebook.”
That Guy Had Enough Morale To Not Return Back
“My roommate and I were desperate for cash so we decided to answer an ad for telemarketing. We show up and there are about 20 other ‘applicants’ waiting in the lobby. The Manager comes out and randomly picks about ten of us and the rest are told to come back the next day. I got in, my roommate didn’t. Lucky him…
All of the workers are then called into a staff meeting. The Manager introduces the new hires, blah blah blah. He then tells us all about the product: overpriced first aid kids that are assembled by the disabled. Then he says that he needs to remind us all of some rules. The last rule he states is that ‘Remember, you are not allowed to fabricate major mental issues when making a call.’ WTF. Then we break and go to the phones.
As people start calling I realize that ALL of the employees are pretending to have mental disabilities on the phone. Everyone that was not new was slurring speech and talking like they have mud in their mouths. I went out for a smoke to clear my head and passed by the inventory room. Inside I see guys back there unwrapping regular store bought first aid kits and repackaging them in ‘Made By Disabled Hands’ packaging.
I never came back from that smoke break…”
The IT Team Wasn’t Certified Enough For The Old Guy
“I used to be a system admin at a nursing home. One day I’m at a branch fixing a cart PC and there is this guy screaming at the top of his lungs in the room next door. All the nurses and doctors treated my IT team like they were human scum. So when I tried to tell a nurse about him, she told me to mind my own nerdy business and just get their computer fixed.
About half an hour goes by and he’s still screaming. I finally snap and yell at one of the nurses, she basically tells me to f— off and files a complaint that I have an issue. So I recruit a maintenance man and we got in there and pick this guy up and put him back on his bed. He’s covered in s— from laying on the floor for almost an hour. He thanks us profusely and explains that the help button was out of reach when he was on the floor, so all he could do was scream.
As I was washing the s— off my clothes, another nurse comes in and all hell breaks loose. She starts yelling about how she’s going to report us because we weren’t certified aids or nurses or something and by doing that, we violated some laws. Then some doctor comes in and joins in with her. He starts telling us that he’s going to have our jobs and all this other crap. I didn’t even try to make my case with the doctor. I just said f— it and left.
About a week later I get called into what I thought was a meeting. Little did I know it was a review board to go over my actions the week before. They explain to me how I put the company in a difficult place and they already had to let the maintenance man go because of it. I tried to make my case but they weren’t hearing it. I get put on third notice which is basically like strike three…even though I had never had any notices before that day. A week later I quit and mailed the maintenance guy my last paycheck.
Worst f—ing job ever!”
You Probably Should Pay More Attention To The Babies
“I grew up in Africa, as a teen I worked part-time in a day-care centre. I use the term ‘day-care’ in the nicest possible way. Things weren’t regulated at all back then, and it wasn’t unusual for a baby in the baby room to spend their entire day sitting in their cot. I used to get a stern talking to on a regular basis for paying the babies too much attention. People would say things like, ‘They’ll get used to it and cry when you leave.’
We had a baby start who was deaf and blind. I spent every spare minute with her, trying to show her somehow that someone was here who cared. I’d stroke her cheeks and talk to her, even though I knew she didn’t hear anything I said. Totally fell in love with her.
Walked into work one morning, went to her cot and she was just lying there not breathing, moving, she was dead. Nobody had noticed. She had come in at 8 AM, I started work at 9 AM…
I should have stayed on and improved conditions and all that heroic stuff, but I was just a kid and so traumatised, that I walked out and never went back.
The baby’s name was Isabelle, I have not forgotten her.”
The Disturbing Gift The Polish Man Left Behind
“I worked the counter in an Internet café a long time ago. One of the regulars was a weird Polish dude – some days he’d be really friendly (almost overly so), other days he was angry and irritable. So one night when I was closing, I realized that he’d come in earlier but I hadn’t seen him leave. ‘Well f—,’ I thought, ‘He’s skipped out without paying. Must mention that to the boss tomorrow.’
So about half an hour later, I’ve cashed up, locked up, set all the PCs to restore from a Ghost image, and go to complete my final task before home: clean the customer toilet. There was only one, I discovered the door locked from the inside.
So, I’m hammering on the door, I can hear Mr. WeirdPolishGuy inside kinda mumbling and moaning ‘One minute, aaah, one minute, one minute.’ Eventually, he stumbles out and runs, like literally SPRINTS, out of the shop.
I walk in. There’s s—, a little blood, and a lot of vomit all over the stall. The cleaning gear, shall we say, had not been stocked to handle an explosion of foulness of this magnitude. It took me over an hour to clean it up, and a good portion ended up on me…
Almost finished, I find the guys F—ING Drug Paraphernalia behind the sink pedestal. Yeah, had to get well and truly checked out after that.”
That Woman Didn’t Even Understand What She Was Receiving
“Pushed through a telemarketing call with a roughly 80-year-old woman with Alzheimer’s who couldn’t remember: her last name, her birthday, her social security number, her address, or any relevant income information. Meanwhile, I had my supervisor standing over my shoulder and patched into the call. Had to remind the old woman on the phone, three times, that I wasn’t her son. She was immediately approved for a $5000 MasterCard she absolutely didn’t want or need, and I made an extra $75 that month in incentives.
Then, a few years later, banks began folding because they’d given out way too much credit with way too little vetting… go figure…”
She Desperately Needed The Financial Aid
“My Mum worked for WINZ (New Zealand welfare thing) a long time ago. One day she had a woman come in and ask for financial assistance for a medical treatment for her two kids with spina bifida. Her supervisor and other higher-ups deemed it ‘unneccessary’ and so denied the financial aid.
A month later the same woman comes in and asks for financial aid again, for funeral costs. Both her children had died. My Mum basically took her supervisor into the hallway, gave her a cold stare and said something like, ‘This could have been prevented. You will give her all the financial aid you can and then some. I hope you’re happy.’
Mum processed the paperwork and walked out.”
She Couldn’t Even Contact The Police
“I worked for ADT as a call center representative. Most of the time it’s routine BS, like somebody forgot to turn off their alarm when they let their dog out. One time I called a house expecting the same old s—, and the first thing I hear is a woman say, ‘Call the police! Someone is in my house!’ She said she was in her bedroom closet and someone had busted her back door down to get in. I told her to sit tight and be quiet, the police will be there soon.
When I tried to call the police, the computer told me that I have to call another internal dispatch group first. The number of the PD has been replaced with this dispatch group’s number. The dispatch group member tells me that ‘under no circumstances are we allowed to call the police in this district’ and then tells me I should call her back and tell her to call the police herself.”
Those People Did NOT Deserve To Get Cheated
“I tried selling vacuum cleaners for a while, because the economy here was just that bad, and that was the only thing I could get. Now I’m no salesperson but I figured, what the hell, I’ll give it a shot. Now before I go into this, no it wasn’t a Kirby, it wasn’t a rainbow, but damn if it wasn’t THE best vacuum cleaner I have ever seen in my ENTIRE LIFE. I absolutely would have bought one myself… if they weren’t a thousand dollars. Now that being said…
I was paid commission but if I didn’t make a sale I got paid just for going in and doing demos, but I had to hit a certain amount a week. A few demos were for rich people who were interested in the product but I didn’t have the sales technique to push it on them, nor did I want those skills.
Then there was this old couple. We gave promos for sitting through the demo, like grocery coupons and stuff. So I go into this old couple’s house and they apparently didn’t realize the coupons must be redeemed online. Well, they don’t have the internet. Finally, I talk them into going to the library and using their internet to redeem them. Then, during the demo, they start going into this elaborate story about how they didn’t have money to eat and they got scammed by some water softener company into telling them they ‘needed’ it, just the same way I was having to do with this vacuum cleaner.
I got through my demo and I had to call my supervisor to have him clear it before I could leave. I knew these people couldn’t afford it, so it was a lost cause in my mind. But my supervisor was a scumbag. He tells me to ask them for their name, so I ask for their name and write it down. Then their phone number. Then he says ‘Ask for their social. Don’t hesitate.’ I said ‘uh…’ and he said, ‘you just hesitated.’ I wanted to say, ‘Yes, you f—ing scumbag, I’m not scamming these elderly people.’
So, because I was so desperate for a job, I asked. They denied, of course. Then he asked me to ask them ‘would $40 a month literally be taking food off your table?’ Now since we had discussed this earlier, I KNEW the answer to this question. He kept pushing. There was this big deliberation in my mind about how much I needed this job to put food on my OWN table. I hung up the call, gave the elderly couple all the coupons I had been given for demos, told them never to buy from this company, thanked them for their time, and walked out the door. I went back to the office and quit immediately afterward.”
Assumptions Always Lead To Disappointments
Ollyy/Shutterstock
“Directly out of college I got a job with a Class I Railroad, as a low-level manager at a small rail terminal. I didn’t know much about the industry at the time and assumed it would be like any other office job. That assumption ended one evening when my phone rang and I was informed one of my trains had struck a pickup truck that had 4 children in the bed.
I was told to get to the scene to protect the company’s interest and assist the train crew. When I arrived, the police had only been there for a few minutes. We found the bodies of 4 young children all around and under the train. The parents were still in the cab of the truck, the mother was dead and the father was dying. I’ll never forget those horrific images.”
Apparently Balloons Are Dangerous Fire Hazards
“I was dressed up in a bear costume…handing out candy and balloons to little children… It was in a shopping center to advertise for our restaurant. Felt good to make these little kids day. Later on, a security guard tells me that the balloons are a fire hazard if they get caught in the ceiling and that they can press charges. So he demanded that I found every balloon I handed out and popped it on the spot.
I have never seen so many children cry!”
Completely Unsanitary And Ridiculously Cheap Owner
“I worked at a fancy restaurant and it was about an hour before we closed, but no one was in there so the owner said ‘start breaking the kitchen down.’ About 45 minutes later, a family of 8 walks in and gets seated by the host. Instead of telling them to leave he has us pull most of what they order OUT OF THE TRASH and heat it back up. The only fresh stuff they got was whatever protein they ordered. These people were paying $50+ a plate to eat food out of the trash. I felt horrible and quit the next day…”
Welcome To The Cruel Land Of Debt
AbelHalasz/Shutterstock
“I was tasked to harass newly arrived African refugees for payment. I worked for a former U.S. Senator turned lobbyist, corporate board member, and expert witness. I served as a translator for their asylum cases. He justified charging them thousands of dollars because his kids were starting college in an ivy. What started out as pro bono work, using a skill I worked hard to gain, turned into no more than debt collection. These people survived the civil war, torture, horrible atrocities and now a big f— you, welcome to America, land of the indebted, was in their future…”
She Should’ve Maintained Full-Time Hours
“I had to fight a benefits/labor claim against an employee who had given birth a few days before and was on the conference call from a hospital bed.
I was a retail manager at the time. To maintain full-time status and benefits, employees had to average 32 hours per week over a calendar quarter. We had a pregnant employee who kept missing work. We modified her assignments, let her pick her start times to help with the morning sickness, and made sure she was scheduled for 40 hours per week…basically everything we could do but she still kept calling in sick. One week, she pulled 5 no call, no shows in a row which would have been an automatic termination after 3 days. We told her that if she could bring in a doctor’s note saying she was unable to work those days, we’d let it slide and would put her back on the schedule. She didn’t bring the note until 3 weeks later.
I calculated her hours and told her that she was going to fall under the 32 hours for the quarter and that when HR noticed, they would suspend her health insurance and change her to a part-time employee. I offered her all of the information on FMLA and maternity leave. If she went out on FMLA or maternity leave, it would stop the average hour’s calculation and preserve her full-time status. She refused.
HR changed her to part time a few days before her baby was born and suspended her insurance…which she discovered at the hospital. She immediately filed a labor claim to have her benefits reinstated and I had to produce all of her attendance records and notes from the discussions I’d had with her about maintaining full-time hours. It sucked.”
Definition Of Public Embarrassment
“I work in commercial casting. We were doing a project whereby young men at a wedding had to make out with cougarish women. Well during the callback we ran out of young men, so the director comes to the office and pulls me into the audition room to fill in.
You would think this is awesome. It was for the first two women. The third? Well, let’s say her headshot was a little out of date, in that it did not reflect her age or the plastic surgery she had done. The room was, of course, full of my coworkers, producers and ad agency creatives. The director (an Oscar winner) insisted that I make out with these women, mostly for the amusement of himself and others.
So many tears cried that night…”
A Staff Sergeant And The Terrible Bait And Switch
“I had to unofficially confirm for an elderly man that his military officer son had been arrested for selling drugs. The man was in his 70’s, a retired doctor, and proud of his son. He had not been told of the charges officially (the son was being detained, but hadn’t been charged yet), and I couldn’t tell him (both because the son had not in fact been charged, and because it wasn’t my role). But I couldn’t outright deny it, either.
He was basically begging me on the phone to tell him it wasn’t true, then just to tell him anything for sure. I later met the man when he visited for part of the trial. He was very understanding. Then he went home and promptly died.
I also had to once send for a guy without telling him why I needed him. Once he got there I had to tell him I did it so that the police could take him away. Until 15 minutes before that, I would have said he was in the top 5 out of the 175 sergeants working for me.”