#1 Boss From Your Nightmares
As a teenager, I worked as a carryout helper at a garden store. During that summer, I helped folks load up pounds of sod, river stones, soil, plants, stones, and, in the winter, Christmas trees. I enjoyed the first year but, during the second year, a new boss made my life a living hell.
Sales were down and she joked about laying people off. There was no sympathy for below-freezing shifts and “sick days” weren’t acceptable. She was generally mean to everyone and made it so miserable that I was the only full-time carryout left. After getting a groin strain diagnosis from straining a muscle on the job, my manager responded to the doctor’s note prohibiting physical activity by screaming at me for causing her more work. In the end, the whole company went bankrupt a few years later and I heard that the awful boss was fired after nearly 60 people quit between June and October that year.
#2 Shift Work
During the recession when companies were taking advantage of the desperately unemployed, I workedfor a temporary agency doing manual labor. We had to get there around 5 to get on the list early enough for work. One lucky day, I managed to get a gig and I drove myself to the spot to spool power cables onto giant pallets for eight hours. At the end of the day, we were told we’d receive a check. A week later, I received the check and it was for $2 under minimum wage. At that point, I gave up on that temp agency. A couple of years later, the company had a class action law suit filed against them and I was excited to get a payout from the case. When I received it, it was for $8.
#3 Underappreciated
I thought I was doing my supervisor a service by telling him there was a mistake on the website that I didn’t have permission to fix. While it would have only taken a simple phone call to get fixed, he decided to ignore me. Of course, when the site owner noticed the error, he publicly humiliated me in front of the department, saying I didn’t care about my job and took advantage of his kindness. Needless to say, I quit the next day.
#4 Sister Wins Every Time
When I worked at a gas station, I luckily wasn’t scheduled to work when my sister was in town for the first time in years. Naturally, my boss called me in because someone was sick. I had always been very accommodating but, thinking this was a special occasion, I told him I wouldn’t be able to cover the shift. To this, he replied: “What’s more important? Your sister or this job?”. I quit on the spot.
#5 Get Out Before It’s Too Late
I was on a hiking trip with my friends in Maine one summer when we stumbled upon a campsite. It was trashed, garbage was everywhere and a desk chair was sitting on some rocks. We decided to take a lot of the trash and chair with us and on our way back we saw a stream. After about five minutes of exploring the stream, the chair was gone. We hadn’t heard anyone but it was clear someone was on our trail. We high tailed it out of there.
#6 Weapons At The Party
On a vacation to visit my cousin in Phoenix, she took me to a party which was held in a third-floor apartment with about 30 other people. A girl showed up and people got all upset, guys who weren’t at the party said there was going to be a fight. Two of the guys in the apartment left to get guns and ammo from their car to get ready for this ‘fight’ and I noped out of there.
#7 Misplaced Punishment
One of my coworkers violently damaged a freezer when I told him to shut up after months of harassment of myself and other coworkers. Of course, I was reprimanded but I got back at him by sending the director a complaint report and he was fired a couple weeks later.
#8 She Cray
“You should get me and my sister pregnant at the same time so that they will be cousins AND siblings at the same time!”
#9 One Way to End a Friendship
One of my friends asked that I help her move to a new apartment, promising a nice dinner as payment. I drove her car, which she borrowed, and lifted all of her heavy stuff all day. At the end, she made me dinner, which ended up being a $1 tomato soup. Of course, she left me to drive the borrowed car 40 minutes away with no return transport. I waiting in the middle of the night for my dad to finally pick me up. Needless to say, we never spoke after that.
#10 Defying Logic
As a bartender in a busy city, I had an unfortunate occasion with my new manager. That morning was crazy busy, we were short staffed and it was miserable trying to keep up with everything. Once we were starting to catch up on orders, I took 30 seconds to grab a drink and greet a regular. Of course, that’s when the new area manager walks in an proceeds to reprimand me for ‘doing nothing’ while it was busy. I tried to explain but he gave me a disciplinary notice. I was livid and quit the next day.
#11 Nearly Fell For A Pyramid Scheme
During college, I went with a friend to interview for a “summer job”. Five minutes in, we realize something was off about the situation and after we saw others stand up in leave, we noticed what they meant when they said ““We’re not a pyramid scheme, we’re just, uh…vertical marketing!”. Yeah, right.
#12 Turning a Negative to a Positive
One time, my company was making boatloads of money yet denied me two or three percent merit salary increases. When I was in my boss’ office, he got an email and I saw that he was getting an increase when he already made 75% more than me. I immediately started another job.
#13 Nobody Likes Pettiness
I took a job opening a small wine shop for owners who lived in another state. I planned the entire operation, hired everyone, and built it from the ground up. After managing for about 8 months, I decided to take a cashier job instead of remaining a manager. The new manager I had personally interviewed, hired, and trained gave me a warning on my first day for placing a single bottle slightly off center and a second for “arguing with him”. I replied with a “Screw it, have fun running the place ithout me,” and left.
#14 Professor Dismissed
My professor attempted to require us to pay full-price tuition for a class at another university to get credit for “his” class. I dropped immediately.
#15 No, Thanks.
A guy I had dated for years busted through the front door and yelled “Honey, I know you don’t approve of illicit substances, but I just did some and it was AWESOME.”
#16 Good Advice
I thought it would be a nice idea to explore a semi-abandoned mall in my town. In one of the empty restaurants, I went to the dark back room and on the wall was written “GET OUT” in red. I did.
#17 Dodged a Bullet
I had an interview once where it was obvious multiple interviews were scheduled at the same time as mine. The problem was that because there were only two interviewers, I was going to have to wait over an hour for my interview even though I had agreed on a specific time with the recruiter. I walked out. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to work at a company where they treat applicants so badly.
#18 A Game of Hookie
I once worked as a stock boy in a grocery store while in school. After I had submitted my availability three times, I was assigned shifts during class. After not coming in during my class periods, they suspended me and said that I’d have to meet with my boss. I left and never came back.
#19 Missing Information
The owner of a restaurant where I worked offered me a couple hundred dollars to move an evicted tenant’s stuff from an apartment he rented out. He failed to mention the person was a horarder. I left as soon as I opened the door.
#20 A Slap in the Face
I worked evenings a few days a week in a Safeway store’s produce department and would routinely help the night manager with his duties when I had finished mine. About two months in, I requested the store manager give me more hours and she said “If you worked harder I would consider it”. I turned around, clocked out, and never went back.
#21 The Wrong Kind of Friend
I once attended a friend’s birthday party at a club. I was oblivious that he had invited my abusive ex-girlfriend and paid for her train ticket. Once I knew she would be there, my friend driving us said “Nope, screw this. We’re out,” And we went home.
#22 Deception
I went with some friends to a house party in college and walked into a completely silent house with a bunch of guys handing out applications for their fraternity. No thanks.
#23 Know Your Weaknesses
As a brilliant, experienced 18 year old right out of high school, I saw an ad in the newspaper offering $18/hour for no experience. It ended up being for Rainbow Vacuums. I went to the information session, along with a group of defeated looking 30-somethings. When it was lunchtime, they gave us pizza and I pondered life: I said to myself: “you suck at talking to people, you have no sales experience, and this is probably a pyramid scheme,”. I grabbed another slice of pizza and ran to my car, never to return.
#24 Car Jacking Averted
I was sitting at a light in Baltimore in a shady neighborhood when a group of young men gathered around my heavily modified car. One guy walked up to my slightly opened window and started asking about my car to distract me while another guy started opening the passenger side door. When I turned around to see what he was doing, the guy grabbed me from the drivers’ side window and I stomped on the gas and flew through the red light, not stopping until I got out of the neighborhood.
#25 Worst Job Training
I was in a Christmas job in a call center for a delivery company, a terrible idea in retrospect. All the calls I received were about late or missing packages for Christmas. The training was 95% about the company’s history and we knew nothing about how to actually check for packages. I left the job on my first lunch break.
#26 Standing Up For What’s Right
I was a nanny for a family during the day in high school. Since I couldn’t drive yet, the mom would later drop me off at Cold Stone, my first real job, to be harassed by the young 20-something “manager” of the store during my shifts. Looking back, she probably had it out for me because I was a first-time employee who was overly keen on doing a great job! She routinely threatened firing me or doing other things to get me fired all the while having sketchy young men visit her during her shifts. One time the mom dropped me off late for my shift and escorted me into the store to apologize for being late because it was her fault. Shockingly, the young manager proceeded to scream at the lady and call her names to her face. Without a second thought, the mom turned to me and said “You done here? I think you’re done here.” Then she said to the manager, “You are the rudest person I’ve ever met. I’m sorry for how insecure you must be to act like this. She quits!” She grabbed my arm and we left never to be seen by her again. At the time, I thought I had ruined my career since I quit my first job. Looking back, it’s hilarious.
#27 Catfished
I went on a date with a 33 year old girl I met online. We had chatted for weeks and spoken on the phone before meeting in a bigger town between us since she lived na hour away. As one could expect, she didn’t look like her pictures at all but I decided to wait out the lunch with her before leaving. After ordering, I excused myself to the bathroom and came back to see another table joined to ours with her grandma, brother, and three friends who had “just happened to show up”. She had told them I was her boyfriend. I sat through 15 minutes of the meal and then gave the waiter a hefty tip and left.
#28 Asking For Too Much
A job interview I once had at the police headquarters for a secretarial position was more than I had planned for. They strapped me into a lie detector test and asked everything, basically if I had ever made a mistake in my life. They asked if I had ever stolen or used illicit subtances, everything. It wasn’t until they asked me to write down names of my friends who I suspect did illegal things that I said “bye”.
#29 DUI Averted
I used a scooter as an undergrad to get around. One time, I used it to meet a coworker for drinks and couldn’t make it the five miles home in the dark. I posted an ad on Craigslist for somebody with a truck to get my tipsy self and my scooter across town for $25. I sat on the sidewalk until another college student came and saved me. I like to think he invented Uber.
#30 Honest is Hottest
My ex fiancee wouldn’t share his financial situation with me. I knew that was a red flag but I never would have imagined marrying someone, which requires full trust, without being on the same page about something as important as finances. I ended it before we married.