What makes a job worth working? Is it the pay or the hours? Maybe it's how the employees are treated? Every job has its ups and downs, but jobs like these are all down and no up. I'm glad these people escaped what could have been a disaster and miserable conditions. They definitely learned what jobs not to go for in the future! Content edited for clarity.
She Made The Right Decision
“I took a job at a lockdown residential treatment center as I was desperate for a job. The interviewer said most of the kids were court-ordered and were a step away from juvie. The interview didn’t go well so I was honestly surprised when they called me offering me the job. The morning of training was going over all of the state and federal laws that governed the place, like resident rights and staff to resident ratios and the like. The afternoon was a tour of the facility where it became readily apparent that exactly none of the laws we’d just covered were being followed.
I left at the end of the day and never came back. I had a feeling something bad was going to happen at that place. A few months later they got shut down after a riot that results in several serious injuries to both residents and staff. Glad I wasn’t around for that.”
That Didn’t Take Long
“When I was 20 or so I got hired to be a temporary floor member for Forever21 during the holiday season. My training started a week before Black Friday, so the store was already kind of in chaos. On my first day of training, I walked in and the floor manager gave all the new hires a tour showing us the facility and layout of the store. After this, I was assigned to a veteran floor member to shadow and get an idea of what my job was and what my duties would be. As soon as I was assigned, the manager dipped, never to be seen again.
An hour and a half into my shift, my floor member got an emergency family call and had to take off for a week. When this happened I found some other floor manager and explained the situation and asked them who else I should shadow. The manager’s response was, ‘Just do what you can by yourself you’ll be fine, everyone else is busy.’
Figured well ok I’ll try. I don’t know if any of you have shopped in the women’s section of Forever21 but during seasonal sales, they will have multiple articles of clothing that all look almost exactly the same but with slight differences (ex. A white cardigan with four buttons that looked literally the same as a white cardigan with five buttons). The best part was these different items were often placed in completely separate parts of the store and it was the job of the dressing room to return the unpurchased items to the correct section so the employees could put them back on the shelves. Well, these employees freaking sucked and I didn’t know if they were a part of my section or not so I’d spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to find where they go before realizing wait this isn’t even my section I’ve checked literally every rack so I’d put it back on the sorting rack and move to the next item. More than 50% of the stuff I was told to reshelve wasn’t my section. I just did as best as I could and got ready for my next miserable day.
The next day I come in, and the store manager pulled me to her office and told me how slow I was the day before and if I want to keep working here I need to be very fast. I explained my lack of training and unfamiliarity with the store and she told me if I didn’t know where the clothes were in sections I should come in my free time and memorize where stuff was. I spent the rest of my shift putting clothes in random places then never came back for a third shift.”
“Dodged A Bullet”
“I got a summer job working for a landscape architect. I got to the job site and he asked me to dig a hole in some rocky dirt. I asked for a shovel. He didn’t have one. I asked for a hand spade. He didn’t have one. He told me to just dig the hole with my bare hands and then he drove off to another site leaving me completely alone. I dug for a bit and left.
Had the job specified that I needed to supply my own tools I could’ve. But it didn’t, and I wasn’t going to work for somebody that expected folks to dig through hard, rocky soil with their hands. I’ve worked with several landscape architects and all but this guy were highly professional. I had my own gloves but they made it hard to grip the dirt so I tried digging without them. It only took a few jagged rock pokes under my fingernails to get me to peace out.
He called me and I told him the job wasn’t for me. That was it. I did landscaping every summer in grad school. A guy I worked with was starting his own company. At first, he was working alone but he needed help so I just jumped on with him. Dodged a bullet.”
Red Flags
“I was a cashier at Lowe’s during college for less than a full day. I made it through the multiple-day training but there was so much stupid stuff going on I almost thought I was on a hidden camera show. All of the employees complained about how hard they had to work while simultaneously not getting enough hours. Nobody understood why they were hiring like four new people (I was one of those four).
Turns out it was because they were progressing through a harassment complaint that required restructuring of the store and firing off some employees. This was known to HR and explained to new hires (against company policy), but wasn’t known to the employees, apparently, some of whom still worked there, including the freaking person doing the training. She was really inappropriate and said not to worry about the harassment stuff, that everything would ‘go back to normal’ soon enough and we wouldn’t have to ‘be so uptight.’ They fired her the day before I started, along with one of the cashiers who trained me.
She also offered me terrible guidance for the application process. They were looking for part-time help and two of the three days they needed help on I had off from school. I told them I could work nights most nights, but if they needed daytime help it had to be on those days. She said if I was too restrictive they wouldn’t keep me on, lied to my boss about my availability to make me ‘even more attractive than I already was,’ winked at me, and told me to schmooze them a bit and I’d make it further. She said in the end it wouldn’t impact anything, and I’d get those days off.
In my first week’s schedule, I was working mornings every day that I was in school, and I wasn’t given any hours on my days off. Aside from the fact that I was given two times the hours the position called for (when other employees were shorted), my work schedule was literally impossible to consolidate with my school schedule.
I only went to work on my first day to tell them I was quitting and that their application process was a mess. They couldn’t figure out how so much went wrong and then they asked who trained me and everything made sense. They thanked me for at least showing up to quit unlike the other three they hired, who just stopped returning their calls and no-showed their first days.”
No One Wants To Know
“I got hired at a very small knock-off dollar store in an old, failing mall. I was 18 and this was going to be my first job. The owner was foreign with a very thick accent. He told me I’d get six bucks an hour but neglected to mention it was under the table. I spent about an hour stocking the very overly cluttered shelves before I was told to get more chips out of the back storage area. I walk back there and there were about a dozen men sitting on boxes all crammed into a small back room. I asked where the chips were and these guys all glared at me. They started speaking in another language and rapidly motioned towards me. Then one guy got up and asked what I needed. I told him I was supposed to get a box of chips and he got a box out of the pile and handed it to me. The entire time these guys were all staring at me. Everything back there looked shady as all heck and it was very uncomfortable.
A while later I had to use the restroom which was also in the back. These guys all just wordlessly glared at me while I went into the woman’s restroom. While I was in the restroom, someone tried to open the door. I was the only woman there. The owner told me he wanted me to come back that night late in the evening well after the mall closed. I didn’t show up. I came in the next morning and lied about why I couldn’t work there. He still gave me the few bucks from what little time I did work. I don’t know what in the heck that guy had going on there and I didn’t want to find out.”
Good Riddance
“I applied for a job at my longtime favorite restaurant (celebrated my birthday there every year).
The owner asked me to come in for basically a try-out, as I communicated I was looking at other job possibilities. I came in and they just stuck me on dishwashing for an hour, no biggie. Then their dishwasher didn’t show up, so the kitchen manager asked me to stay for their lunch rush, he said I would get paid for the hours. So I did. The kitchen staff was nice so I was happy to help out even though I figured I’d be taking a different job. I filled out a time card at the end of the shift and told the manager I probably wouldn’t be back, he understood and thanked me for the help.
Fast-forward a couple of weeks and he told me to email the owner after I asked him if I should pick up my measly paycheck. I did and she basically told me to frick off over text. She told me it was ‘staging’ and that she told me I wouldn’t be paid. I responded that I understood that but that I stayed an extra three hours which I was told I’d be paid for. She stopped responding so I decided I wanted to be petty over the 40 bucks so I got the state labor department involved. This guy went in there and made her pay me for the hours including the first ‘staging’ hour. A couple of weeks later I got my 40 bucks and never went back to that restaurant.
However, ‘petty’ is not how I see it two years later. I’m very glad I did this and sharing the story with others in my city I learned this practice was very common with local restaurants. Hopefully, others learned to stand up for their labor too from my small experience. I shared the story far and wide online. My family, friends, and even quite a few strangers online saying they wouldn’t be going there anymore. This restaurant closed down a couple of weeks after I got that paycheck. The owner made a long-winded complaint on the online page about how the food culture had ‘changed’ in the city and her restaurant didn’t fit in anymore (total baloney, they were always popular.) Most people theorized the terrible mismanagement and employee abuse had caught up to her.”
Definitely A Smart Move
“I was a waitress, the only waitress, at a recently opened diner. The boss didn’t have me sign any paperwork. Everything was under the table. But that wasn’t what made me quit at the end of the night. In order to get me where he wanted me to go, he would pinch my skirt at my upper thigh, not quite the butt but very close, and pull me around like it was a leash. Needed me in the kitchen? Rather than call me, he would come out, pinch my skirt and pull me to the kitchen. Needed me at the cash machine? Again, he would come over to where ever I was, didn’t matter if I was serving a customer, and would grab my skirt to pull me.
That act in itself made some customers uncomfortable. Mind you, one couple left an almost 50% tip in the end. But I think it was more out of pity and embarrassment on my behalf. I was supposed to come in the next day but I called that night and said the job wasn’t for me. I came in a couple of days later to turn in my apron and he just took a wad of cash out of his pocket and paid me then and there. He was so creepy. I think it was a smart move to quit.”
Toxic Kitchen
“Back in the day, I had dreams of becoming a chef and so I decided to pursue the education. Turns out there’s a system here where your education essentially starts with you working for a year or so under a head chef as your mentor. So, I ended up at an interview at this fancier restaurant where the head chef introduced me to everything and we ended up deciding I would come in for my trial shift on the following Friday. We shook hands and I left. Then Friday rolled around and I showed up outside the restaurant at 9:00 in the morning where I barely get to exchange a word with my ‘mentor’ before she assigned a different more experienced student chef to essentially take care of me. He seemed like a chill dude. He assigned me to the task of preparing/cleaning lobster for a few hours, which kind of sucked but I was eager to learn, so I didn’t complain one bit. At noon, there was a huge group of people that came in, and our lunchtime was pushed back by a couple of hours. I didn’t mind until it rolled around and it turned out they had made a dish of some sorts and all the staff was joined inside eating. Meanwhile, I guess they forgot about me in the prepping area across the street from the kitchen, where I stood prepping lobster for the night, starving myself. They came back downstairs and realize they forgot and were all apologetic, and I basically told them I wasn’t hungry (Assuming my shift would be over soon and I’d be able to go eat anyways since it was about 3:00 pm).
Around this time, the head chef who I had seen only one or two times in my already six-hour first trial shift came up to me and said that she was leaving, and told me I’m working tomorrow as well. I did not want to disrespect my head chef/mentor, so I nodded my head and said yeah of course. Without getting into more detail about how stressful the dinner service was for me as someone who had no idea how kitchens even operated when I showed up in the morning, I’ll make it short. I was working with three other people the entire night in the kitchen, the angry under-chef who lead the kitchen, another girl chef who was cool, and the other experienced student chef. I was given the responsibility of preparing the starters for this hectic dinner service, I was bossed around and yelled at for my mistakes and lack of knowledge by the new head chef, to which I frequently responded that this was literally my first trial day. The kitchen was extremely understaffed and toxic. The shift didn’t end till 1:30 AM, meaning that I had worked 16 plus hours for this restaurant without any salary or food breaks. I didn’t come back the second day and sent them a long email explaining how awful my experience was.”
“Sports Marketing”
“My experience was in sports marketing, and I was duped into door-to-door selling those coupon books to people. They had one coupon for a discount on tickets to a minor league baseball team, hence ‘sports marketing.’ This was in January in the midwest, and as it was part of an interview process I was dressed in a suit and tie and dress shoes. The guy I was with was dressed as if he were going ice fishing. I was told even if I didn’t get or take the job, I’d be paid for whatever I sold. I outsold the guy I was with and never saw a dime. I told the guy at the end of the day I wouldn’t be back and I still remember him yelling, ‘You’re throwing away a chance to make big money!’ from his rusted-out Ford Explorer.
This job had been posted on the recommended employers registry with my business school, so I reported it to them that it wasn’t what it was claiming to be. Turns out the company was run by the son of someone from another department at the university so no one bothered to look into it. I remember looking it up a year or so later and it was no longer in business. Shocking.
There were at least a dozen red flags about that job that now I would have never even clicked on the posting, but being a young kid just looking for a job out of college I didn’t know any better. I really feel for the people that get sucked into that stuff. I remember them all trying to convince me I’d be making six figures within a year. Selling $40 coupon books with 20% commission, sure. Only need to sell 12,500 of those every year!
I’ve actually prevented a few people from taking similar jobs, including a younger cousin who just graduated last year. The internet is a much more useful tool in sniffing these things out than it was back then.”
Above My Pay Grade
“It was my first day working at EB(Electronics Boutique) games. I was super excited to be there! The first half of my shift was basically ‘tidy up the shelves.’ It was a high-traffic location so the shelves ALWAYS need tidying.
After five hours of following kids around and putting things away, I went on break. When I came back, my manager was standing in his strangely empty store absolutely aghast. He was staring at a huge steaming pile of poo on the carpeted floor. Apparently, a homeless person had walked in. Without saying a single word he dropped trou and emptied his bowls.
My boss looked at me and said, ‘Oh good, you’re back. Just in time. Clean that up, I’m going for lunch.’
I laughed at him and told him, ‘You can’t be serious. I’m not going near that.’
He responded with ‘It’s your job, I’m taking a break. I want it gone before I get back.’
I told him he was going to have to deal with it on his own because I didn’t need this job that bad. So I quit. I grabbed my coat and went home. A week later the district manager called me up to apologize and offer me my job back.”
Don’t Answer Craigslist Ads!
“I answered a Craigslist ad and went in for a morning interview. He asked if I was OK going on an all-day kind of interview and like a dummy, I said yes.
We went to a larger room where everyone was in a circle doing these stupid whoops and hollers and clapping for every little thing. I noticed the most beautiful girl in a pencil skirt. It turned out she had the most sales. Anyways. I got sent with a team. It was one Hindu guy that had graduated from USC and an Asian girl with a thick Asian accent. We jumped in her car and drove 20 minutes to another part of town. We parked and looked around on a printout and saw them looking at addresses and divided up these business neighborhoods. One would take one side of the street and someone else the other.
Honestly, I still didn’t know at this point know what we were doing. Finally, we landed at the first office and got greeted by a receptionist. Then the dude I was shadowing started talking about office supplies. He got shooed away. That went on a few times and I kind of realized we were just going to sell stuff.
At one point security caught wind of us and was called. Instead of going floor by floor and eventually getting caught, we were going to take the elevator and confuse security by bouncing to random floors. On our way out, I saw the ‘no solicitors allowed’ sign and found out that’s what we were. I felt like scum right then and there. And this was the point the nightmare continued. Because now I was stuck. This guy was doing this to make money. I wanted to go home but they drove me out there and left my car behind. He saw how unenthused I was and asked if I wanted to go back, but I felt bad that this was his job and decided to stay.
Here I was. A college dropout feeling sad for a USC grad. I remember that perked me up a bit because I knew I was going to go home soon and never be part of this again. I even helped sell a few things. Well, that was a lie cause it was almost like a six-hour day. We had lunch and did it again. I finally got home and told the head guy it wasn’t for me. I knew sales but not rejection. I thanked him and left and felt like a failure. At least now my wife and I pull over 100k a year and we’re grateful for it.”
“I Should Have Been Taken To The Hospital”
“It was my first ever job. I was thirteen and I would be delivering phone books from the back of a van through people’s letterboxes. So I was in the back of the van with the phone books and there was an older guy driving slowly while I went back and forth to the van/houses with the books. At one point the van was getting quite empty so there was more space to move around and we had finished the delivery in the street we were paid to deliver to and he drove to another.
While driving there he drove, let’s say, aggressively and I fell inside the back where the books were. I wasn’t sitting in a seat as the van had no seats in the back. As I put my hand out to steady myself I accidentally laid it across a portable radio that had its antenna extended but the antenna was also broken halfway and razer sharp.
It sliced the palm of my hand clean open three or four inches. I can only describe what I saw as gruesome. I said to him to pull the van over and I needed help. He saw my hand and just threw me a plastic bag, the kind you’d get at a supermarket, and told me to wrap my hand in it. Then, he continued with the deliveries, at least he delivered the remaining books himself. I should have been taken to a hospital or at least home to my parents. I quit after that and never showed up again. As you can imagine my parents were quite angry at him.”