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June 11, 2019 | Christine Tran

Bullied Employees Share Their “I Don’t Get Paid Enough For This” Moments


What’s the cost of a hard day’s work? Too much, according to these beleaguered employees. From unstable customers to defecation in the strangest places, there’s all kinds of disrespect that can be (literally) flung at workers. Seriously—stop pooping in places we aren’t meant to go. Call the manager on these filthy stories of “I Don’t Get Paid Enough for This” moments.


1. Your Body, My Choice

Having to listen to a child scream his head off because the father insisted on a painful injection instead of the calming drug that we usually use for kids that small. Jerk father. That kid is going to be scared of the dentist for a long time, if not for life.

Experts Share The Cringey Moments People Insisted They Knew BetterShutterstock

2. Save the Drama for After Hours, Ma’am

I was working late, like 2 AM in the office. My manager said let's go to the convenience store to buy some snacks and smokes. She sits in the back and we drive there. After we get our stuff, she says can we swing by (this street intersection) real quick. When we get to that intersection, I guess she sees a car that belongs to someone she knows, parked in front of her boyfriend’s house.

She starts to wail, cry, and kick around in the backseat. While my bewildered self just holds the steering wheel, with a stupid look on my face. After 20 minutes of that drama, we drive back to the office, I drop her off and I go home.

Horrible Bosses FactsShutterstock

3. No, I’m Closed for Business

When I worked at McDonald's, I found out we didn't get paid for closing. We got paid until the store closed, so if it took us an extra hour or two to close, that was unpaid. I wish I knew what I know now, because that is an open and shut case, but at the time, I was young and dumb. My first paycheck, I noticed I had a ton of missing hours.

So, when I asked my boss about it, she told me we only get paid until the store closed. So that night, I walked out when the store closed. They tried to guilt me into staying, because "the other team members need me.” Screw that. I don't work for free, sorry. Especially when I'm already making minimum wage.

Not Paid Enough FactsWikimedia Commons

4. Bad Aim Hurts Everybody

Used to work as a dental nurse. The first patient of the day, the bloke said he felt sick after having a local anesthetic. He looked it. I grabbed the bin and told him if he needed to vomit, take the bin. He held it in his lap and turned, vomiting down the side of the chair and all over my pants and shoes. Of course, I had to clean it up, and of course, they wouldn't let me go home to change.

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5. The Red Does Not Mix Well With the Brown

When I walked into the room of a confused patient on blood thinners who had ripped out his IV and catheter and had poop and blood on every surface of his room. It looked like a murder had been committed. I've been through a lot as a nurse, but that was like going into a war zone.

Not Paid Enough FactsShutterstock

6. Never Do a Check on the Unlucky 13th

Software engineer. I had been working at this company for about a year. They produced industrial software for a very specialized industry. They were also terrible about proper testing, protecting data, etc. A few times while I was there, issues turned out to be a result of changes being made directly to customers' production environments!

Millions of dollars per hour resting on untested changes, madness. So eventually a customer demands that we be audited, shocking I know. One small part of passing the audit was having all of our documentation be up to date with the current software versions. But no one had been doing it in the entire time I'd been there (one year).

I was asked to review and update the docs for several pieces of software, some of which I'd been working on and some I'd never touched. So I pull up the most recent version of the documents, check the change-history and the last update was made 13 years ago. For 13 years, those documents hadn't been updated. I considered two possible approaches.

One was to pull the source control logs, official change requests, and bug reports, for the last 13 years for each program. Then meticulously record all of the changes made and collate those changes to determine what the net differences were. Then modify the documents to reflect those changes. Or I could start over from scratch: study and review the state of the programs as they exist today and document them as thoroughly as possible.

After thinking about how much work each approach would involve, I decided to resign and go get a better job. It was a good call. The company did not pass the audit.

Customers Asked To Speak To A Manager factsShutterstock

7. Isn’t Work Your Real Family?

My mother was moving interstate with my father and it was the last time I’d see either of my parents for months (I was 18 and just graduated school). I explained this to my boss, but he just said I would have to see her another time because he needed a fence put up over the weekend. I told him I was leaving either way, and he could put his own fence up I quit soon after that. He also accused me of lying and berated me multiple times for random things that I either didn’t do and refusing to pay me for weeks at a time.

Stopwatch. Time to quit.Getty Images

8. He Who Smelt It, Shouldn’t Be Dealt It

I was working retail right after high school. Minimum wage job ($5.15/hour) as a stockman for a retail company. When I took the job, I thought “stockman” was only dealing with the merchandise from the truck to the floor. Turns out, it was a code word for "Everything the managers, cashiers and people on the floor don't do", including janitorial work.

It was one Saturday, we were busy, and someone trashed the men's room. Clogged the toilet, then pooped in it again, and flushed it in the only stall we had. The walls, they had to have taken an ink pen, broke the ballpoint off and let it ooze out all over the walls. It was disgusting. I was the only stockman on duty because the store cut everyone's hours.

So, my manager told me that I had to clean that restroom up real fast and get back into the stockroom and do the rest of my other duties that day. I took a survey of that destroyed restroom and told the manager (he was a jerk anyway), "No. I don't think we have the tools to fix that toilet and I'm not doing that with my hands and if you tell me to do so I will quit."

He fired me for refusing to clean it up. The next day his boss, the store's actual manager (the one who fired me was just a co-manager) told me that such cleanups aren't store staff but should have been a call to a plumber and that the guy who fired me didn't actually have the authority to fire me. Then he asked me to come back to work because I was the only stockman scheduled for the weekend and no one else was either answering the phone or wanting to come into work. I didn't go back.

Not Paid Enough FactsShutterstock

9. Put a Lock on It (Your Mouth)

I worked at a gym and was given a task to cut the locks off of unpaid lockers. I didn't finish before people started coming in and a woman came into the locker room right when I was cutting her lock. She started screaming at me that I was racist, then emailed the VP of the gym about the HORRIBLE thing I did to her. After this happened the GM called me into his office and said he was going to put me on a week's paid leave. I said fine, but I'm never cutting locks again and I refuse to interact with that member ever again. Thankfully they recognized she was nuts, so they agreed.

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10. What’s the Price of Loyalty These Days

The psycho camp director lost her mind on all of the lifeguards because we said we weren’t coming back next summer. The reality was, we all had legit reasons. I was going to take summer courses to graduate early, another guard was moving to university and was going to work in that city, another guard got offered a head guard spot at a camp near her house, etc.

Nothing that said we hated the current camp, just other things going on. We were told in a group meeting if we weren’t happy there, we could leave, and she would find other guards. Following Friday, she calls us all in to tell us what a great job we are doing and how happy everyone is going to the lake. Tuesday after that she calls us in individually to tell us we aren’t working hard enough, and she sees us slacking off all the time.

Lunchtime Tuesday all the guards walked into her office, told her to go screw herself in front of the owner of the camp, and we all piled into my Ford Focus and went for a beer. Went home that night to message from the camp owner asking us to give him a callback (we all chatted and realized he had called all of us). Called him the following day, told him what went down.

He asked us to reconsider and that he would give us a $5 an hour raise and report directly to him. We discussed it and agreed on the condition that the psycho director apologized to us at a collective staff meeting. She refused and had a tantrum. The camp owner fired her on the spot, escorted her off the property and we opened the lake back up. Screw you, Barb.

Bad Feeling ExperiencesShutterstock

11. The “Car” in Daycare

Countless times at the go-kart place (summer job) where I work, I’ve had to put up with special needs kids whose caretakers or parents dropped them off and drove off because they wanted a break from them. These kids (and adults) have a mental age of anywhere from 3-15 and many times they are unable to follow the directions that we provide or even listen to us.

They are not only a danger to themselves but to the other riders and to us the staff.  An easy solution to this would be for their parents to ride with them in a double and to drive for them allowing them to have fun without having to put anyone in danger. However, that “costs more money” and “they don’t want to.” One parent even said, “Why can’t you just ride with him?” and when I asked if she would be comfortable with other people, she said he wasn’t.

I wanted to call her a bad parent, but I didn’t want to lose my job. We can’t deny them as they have the physical age to ride. But are hopefully putting rules in place to require parents of children with special needs to ride with their parents. I hold nothing against these kids, but the fact is that their parents are responsible for them.

If they want a break from them, they could hire a caretaker. Even then though I understand that bad parents do exist, however, it is the caretakers who refuse to take care of the kids who are unacceptable. YOU ARE GETTING PAID! Do your job!

Not Paid Enough FactsShutterstock

12. You’re Driving in My Blood, Sweat, and Tears

In short: Toyota Service Advisor working his bloody feet off alone. Quits after returning everything to the state is was in when I got there while Boss had to deal with the army of customers, who he allowed to set unlimited appointments. I worked at a Toyota Service Department for a few months...it was terrible in general but one day was the worst.

During the week I had a nail go straight through my foot, so I'm bandaged up and have to walk around to get everything. Probably 100 yards to the car wash, 40 yards to the shop, etc. My team for Saturday (four people) had one person quit on Wednesday and one person had a funeral to leave early for. The other guy was new, so he was slow to get stuff done.

My boss says he'll come in and help. Wednesday we lock it at 60 appointments since we have short staff up front and back. We do take walk-ins too. Thursday it's at 80, and we tell our boss to lock it. Again, on Friday before closing, we see 110 appointments. He never locked it. Come Saturday morning we had 130 appointments from 7am-4pm.

I'm having to walk around a lot and ended up bleeding through three pairs of socks and bandages. I had to chase down about 80% of our customers’ cars because our porters were goofing off. I had 53 opened tickets at 12 pm, we had a four-hour wait for walk-ins, and two with appointments. Haven't had lunch or a snack since they banned food/drinks at our desks.

My friend is about to leave for the funeral, so I cover his work. and my boss leaves for lunch throwing his 20ish tickets on my desk. So, I'm now 110 tickets deep, helping the new guy with stuff, moving cars, and trying not to pass out. Oh, did I mention 95F outside, no AC in our covered area (not inside) and 90% humidity? We didn't even get a breeze.

Can't have snacks/drinks at our desks either. It gets to 3 pm and I'm rescheduling people, trying to get everyone out when their cars are done but have to limp them down to pull them in front to leave after they pay. My boss still isn't back, and the new guy quits. I end up getting in one car and blood from my sock drips onto our paper mats in the car.

I cleaned everything out, vacuumed the car, washed it, and pulled it up. The customer went APE CRAZY that she saw blood on the disposable paper mat, about the wait, not getting a discount for her non-appointment service, and demanded to speak to my manager. That was it. Called him up and sent to voicemail. I explained it to his mailbox then called the GM to explain that I have been alone for about three hours dealing with an uncapped amount of customers, five technicians walked out, I'm still not recovered from my workplace injury, and that I'm finishing my paperwork to take my lunch break at 4:00 PM.

Boss shows up when I'm about to leave to eat my lunch I brought knowing their "provided lunch" would be gone before I could set foot in the break room. He told me that in our state I'm not legally allowed a lunch break during a shift & I have to stay to finish out the customers on my tickets. I mentioned being here since 6 am pre-printing everything saying I just need to relax, and he said, "You didn't even clock in this morning so unless you do what I say, you aren't getting paid."

Service advisors are paid commission here, and % of parts profit for stuff sold. I don't even get $0.10 an hour. So, I walked to my station, removed all of everyone's login copies of my permissions, deleted all of my notes, deleted all of my warranty macros, all the spreadsheets, and reset every custom line I added to our programs before I removed my admin permissions.

Walked out & got a call when I got to my car asking, "Why isn't your login able to collect credit cards?" so he had to either write down credit card info, take cash/checks, or let them go. My GM asked me to come back at a pay raise and fewer hours, but I knew it was bs. My boss ended up getting let go the following month since he couldn't get things back up to speed. My good friend moved to Mercedes parts so he's happy. I ended up going to BMW for a bit after that and handled a few other franchises later.

Not Paid Enough FactsShutterstock

13. I Won’t Feel the Burn, Especially for These Wages

I work in disability support, and there isn’t much I haven’t dealt with, but when a client threw a cup of boiling hot soup at me because I wouldn’t give her bread (which we were told explicitly not to give her by a dietician and management—a fact that was explained to her multiple times) I just walked out and called my boss to deal with it.

I don’t care about verbal abuse but I’m not risking second-degree burns for minimum wage.

Not Paid Enough FactsShutterstock

14. No Pride in Wasting Room Service

Worked at a hotel. We were hosting some junior high baseball traveling team. I was in the back, folding towels, and saw something weird on the security cameras. Three boys were carrying a roll of towels and looking shifty. They shoved the towels in the trash and then took off down the hall. I went up to the trashcan to investigate, unrolled the towels, and found an ice bucket from one of the rooms.

It smelled. I knew what I smelled like. But I had to know. So, I lifted the lid and sure enough...HUGE PILE OF POOP in an ice bucket in the trash right next to the elevator. I called the coach, who was out eating lunch and had left the kids unattended (great idea!) and he lost his mind and hung up on me. Soon, all the coaches are running through the lobby, apologizing and saying that they'll be right back down with the ENTIRE team.

Sure enough, within five minutes a very scared looking group of 13-year-old boys is in my lobby. The head coach proceeds to scream at them for 15 minutes about how in his 40+ years of coaching he's never had "a crime so heinous" committed under his watch. At this point, I'm actually starting to feel bad for the kids, most of whom are crying.

He then made the kid responsible for the poop filled bucket call his parents (on speaker phone so that I could hear it) and explain to them, in detail, what they'd done. Poor boy's dad hung up on him too! Then called him back and yelled at him even more. Kid then had to apologize to me (written and verbal) all while bawling his poor eyes out.

I got him a box of tissues and forgave him. He came down to my desk three more times that night to keep apologizing. Writing up that incident report for my boss was the most ridiculous thing I'd ever done, and my boss had to review the tapes because he could not believe this was real. The kids had been pulling pranks on each other all season, and apparently leaving a poop filled bucket in the other kid's room was the finale.

While it was absolutely disgusting, it was also funny as hell looking back on it now. Also, mad respect to the coach and parents for taking responsibility for their kid's actions. There were plenty of other groups that would have just told me to clean it up and denied the whole thing.

Not Paid Enough FactsShutterstock

15. Not Paid Enough to Care

I used to work five 11-hour shifts a week. One week, we were so short-handed I worked 17-hour shifts three days in a row. I was only being paid an entry-level 9-5 salary. We were all stressed, but when my boss called me out for 'lack of commitment,' I stood up from my desk and walked out. We weren't exactly saving the world either, it was a recruitment role in England.

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16. The Long Arm of Innocence

I work at a daycare making about 15 cents above minimum wage. Poop, pee, vomit, it’s all familiar. As the kids are napping, I’m eating lunch, I smell a putrid diarrhea smell coming from a kid that’s napping about 6 feet away from me. So, I go over and check him and sure enough, it’s him. So, I wait just to make sure he’s done because I don’t want to change his pull-up for him to do it all over the place while I change him.

I take a seat right next to him and about a second after I look at him again his eyes SHOOT OPEN extremely wide, and he projectile vomits about 5 feet across the room. At that moment I just look at the ground and think, “Why?”

Not Paid Enough FactsShutterstock

17. You Can Eat My Hat

I was working the drive-thru at a kick during the lunch rush. A woman came through with all of her coworker’s orders. She wanted me to take them one at a time. So. Ring up nine separate orders for one car while my line backs up out of the lot. I explained to her numerous times she'd have to come inside or place it as one order and do the math herself when she got back to her work.

She spent five minutes straight calling me things that would make Tarantino blush, then pulled around to the window, and threw trash from her car at me as she left. This wasn't my moment though. The next day I get to work, and the general manager is there. He gives me two options. I ride with him to her work and apologize to her in front of her co-workers, or I am fired.

He didn't ask for my side of the story. It didn't matter my manager told me to not take her order. It didn't matter how abusive she was. She called and I was going to apologize. We get there and the smug look on her face broke something inside me. I flipped her off, tossed my hat at him, told them to kiss my butt, and went home.

Not even two weeks later, the location went franchise and the manager they kept, (the one who told me to refuse the woman), hired me back. Within a few months, I was promoted to a shift supervisor and I was able to send the woman who got me fired a letter of disinvite. To clarify something, I'm getting asked a lot, a letter of disinvite is just a letter explaining to the recipient that they aren't welcome back on the property and if they come back it will be considered trespassing. You're basically exercising your right to refuse service before service is requested.

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18. Go Back to Whence You Came!

My very first shift working non-emergent patient transfer, I was bringing a bedbound nursing home patient to a facility to be treated for his C. Diff. This particular treatment was a fecal transplant—where they stick a large syringe filled with someone else’s poo up your butthole in hopes of introducing healthy gut bacteria back into your system.

This poor soul shat himself with rancid diarrhea at least twice in the 30min drive there. At the facility, I had to gown up and help keep him rolled on his side as they went at it with the poop syringe up his anus. Immediately after, he farted, and it sent poop splattering up the wall behind him. So, they had to cram another syringe up there too.

Then we rolled him back over, wrapped him up in the blankets again, and brought him back home. He kept pooping along the way. All for the wonderfully generous pay of $12/hr. The minimum wage was $10.25 at the time in Ontario.

Not Paid Enough FactsShutterstock

 

19. 2 to 5 Reasons Why Not

It's happening now at work. For years, we've needed more help and have only lost co-workers. Our work is just piling up and only now have they begun trying to find ways to offload our work. This is fine but when I told my boss I plan on switching careers, she then gives me this 2-5-year plan upper management came up with. Like yeah, I'm not putting my mental health on hold for 2-5 more years.

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20. Lay Your Life Down on the Line for Moolah

When I was a teller, I worked in a branch that catered to wealthy folks. Habitually, I was expected to walk them out to their car after they pulled out large sums of money (just so you know, you have to order it ahead of time) just in case they got robbed I was supposed to, I don’t know, fight off their attacker? Also, FYI, bank tellers don’t make what you think. You get paid nothing to handle money, not a lot.

Customers Asked To Speak To A Manager factsShutterstock

21. That’s Not the Standard Uniform…

When my 70-year-old boss handed me a magazine with Amy Schumer in a red velvet teddy on the cover and asked me to figure out how to get it for her. She was married but cheating with a client. Buying sex lingerie is a bit out of my job description.

Correcting Experts FactsShutterstock

22. Looking Sharp

When a patient's family member pulled a lipstick shank on another family member. My first thought was "screw this, I'm not getting stabbed over this job, I'm out". My second thought was to call security—which I did. I'm a nurse.

Not Paid Enough FactsShutterstock

23. You Can’t Take It With You, But I Have To Take It Out of You

Back when I was a contractor that did body transports for funeral homes, I had a LOT of these moments. We were paid $20 per body. One particular moment that stands out is when I had to untangle a rosary from a man's exploded head and wash the remaining brain matter off the beads so the rosary could be returned to the family. Nope. Not doing that again.

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24. Customers Aren’t Villains In All of These

When I was working at a bar back about 12 years ago, I was running to cold storage to grab a few cases of beer during a busy shift. When I went back, the hallway leading to the bathrooms absolutely reeked of poop. I was in charge of all the male door and floor staff, but we were shorthanded this particular night, and I've always told my guys I would never ask them to do something I wasn't willing to do myself.

I donned some rubber gloves and went to investigate. I quickly narrowed the smell coming from the men's room. The bathroom was really small; one stall with no door for pooping, and a long trough for playing pee swords with your bros. I assumed someone had simply taken a monstrous dookie in the stall and didn’t flush.

Boy was I freaking wrong. Some freaking jerk had decided to take a dump on the BACK of the toilet seat. One solid, glistening chestnut colored fudge dragon. Not a crack in the glorious bastard, and easily a foot long. I was as impressed as I was disgusted. My plan of attack was to put trash bags on both of my arms, and simply roll the basking gator into its watery grave using some toilet paper.

There was a flaw in my plan, though. The jerk didn't roll, it just spread like margarine. As soon as I broke the surface tension by moving it, an even more ghastly aroma that had once been contained by the skin of the monster shot directly into my nostrils. This caused me to vomit, luckily all into the bowl. A customer was peeing in the trough outside the stall and laughed when he heard me puke. "Drink too much, buddy?"

"I haven’t drank anything, I'm trying to clean up some jerk’s poop." He leaned into the stall and saw the horrid scene I was attempting to clean. "Holy moly, man you deserve a freaking raise!" I went and grabbed a bottle of bleach and proceeded to go scorched earth on the entire stall. Puked a couple more times as the odor was still pungent as heck.

By the time I finished, it was pretty much closing time. I gathered my team around and told them about the unholy act I had just performed and ended with "...so if any of you freaking dudes ever whine that I ask you to mop up some beer, I'll slap you." The guy who had witnessed the crime scene talked to my general manager and ended up getting me a raise. He was a bro.

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25. Lost and Found (on My Face)

Worked at a fast food place about 13 years ago. This lady in the drive-thru claimed she was missing a sandwich. Our policy was to ask for the bags back to verify. I asked to see the bags (3 or 4, decent sized order) and instead of handing them back like a civilized human being, she instantly started raging and throwing the food into the window while cussing me out! Guess what one of the items that she threw at me was? Yep, said missing sandwich.

Not Paid Enough FactsShutterstock

26. Save It For the Changeroom, Sir

This was back in the late '90s. I was working at Wal-Mart as my first job as a teenager. I was floated to the garden department one day, and there was a guy looking at lawn fertilizer. I walked over and asked if he needs help, he said "Not now, just looking at the different kinds you have." Pretty standard reply from the guy, so I said: "Okay, let me know."

I walk away, and then swing back about 5 minutes later. The same guy has proceeded to rip open about 10 different kinds of fertilizer all over the ground and is rolling around in the stuff. He is also taste sampling the stuff. I called my manager because I did not want to deal with it. Security escorted the guy out the store and called an ambulance in case the ingestion of the fertilizer hurt him.

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27. Never Too Old for Roll Call

My boss insisted that everybody be at their desks at 8:30 sharp. She made me take roll on an attendance sheet and hand it into her every day. She also made me do it at lunchtime (when everybody left and came back) and when they left at night. Took roll for a bunch of adults three times a day. I don't work there anymore.

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28. Out of the Mouths of Babes

I work in security, and a bit under a year ago, I worked at some kind of public TV event. My job was to keep people without passes out of a specific area, which was intended for those working behind the scenes to kick back and relax and get their lunches and all that. Anyway, only ones I was allowed entrance were people with passes and other security folks.

But then word from above came that the exception was to be made for some kind of supposedly famous child music group. I had no clue what they looked like, so 4 kids and their parents walk up, and I stop them. "DON'T YOU KNOW WHO THESE ARE" quickly followed, eventually it got cleared up... ...and every time after they kept bringing in more friends and family members and the same song and dance continued. Eugh.

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29. I’m an Indoor Kind of Neigh-Sayer

I worked for the university's horse barn as a teenager. They had some pretty strict rules that I was not used to at other places. Like the horses were only allowed outside for two hours, no matter what. Could be the most beautiful day, and we would have to stop everything we're doing to bring them into their stalls. They were only ever allowed two squirts of fly spray, which didn't cover their butts.

Required to have their halters on 24/7, even when in the stalls at night.  Our "boss" had clearly zero experience with animals or if he did, he just didn't care. One day while one of the horses was having his feet trimmed my boss went to pull out a weed whacker from the bottom of the shelf directly next to where the horse was standing.

A lot like Jenga the entire closet of machinery fell onto the horse, causing him to kick the farrier and run. Ever since that incident, the horse was a mess, so instead of hiring a trainer to fix the problem, they just locked him in the stall. All day 24/7. I quit shortly after that; I still wonder how that horse is doing.

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30. Not On My Time

"I don't think you understand what a contract means, besides, this is an opportunity for you!" –when the new manager tried to move me to night shifts-weekend from my day shifts-working days, despite my contract being very specific about when I worked. "Hey, you were right, this is a big opportunity for me!" was how I opened when I told her I was quitting. The look of shock and 15 mins of silence on her part were hilarious and the best feeling interval of my entire life when she realized I had thrown her own stupid words back at her.

31. Not Worth What It Takes From You

The time I went to sleep under my desk at work at 5 am because I needed to be back at my desk for an 8 am call. I had promised myself a long time ago that I would never sleep under my desk. I would go home, or just work straight through, but I wouldn't do that. I only lived a 12-minute walk home, but that night I realized that getting those extra 24 minutes of sleep were worth not going home.

I was so sad about it. I am a corporate lawyer. We had been working (literally) around the clock for days on a deal that was going sideways. This was a Wednesday to Thursday morning, but I had been there until 3 am Sunday night, 5 am Monday night, 6 am Tuesday night, and had been back in the office by 9 am every day. That's when I knew I needed to quit ...but I'm still here a year and change later, oops.

32. You Don’t Like My Parting Gifts?

I had to tell a customer over the phone that the dry cleaners had to throw out her bed sheets because they were covered in human poop. Not just a little bit of poop, but enough that they had to spend the whole day cleaning and sanitizing everything the sheet had touched, including the machines. I was dreading it and thinking how best to handle it sensitively because she must have been ill and embarrassed.

Wrong. She. Was. Furious! and demanded compensation arguing that they were the expensive, high thread count cotton linen. Do you know what I don’t do on expensive bed sheets lady? Poop on them and then make someone else clean it.

33. Punished for Taking Initiative

I worked for the Disneyland Hotel. It was against company policy for the bell desk to call a cab since that was the parking departments job. On this particular morning, our phones were ringing off the hook, and there was no way I could have placed an outgoing call if I wanted to. So, following both company policy and the fact that I literally had no other choice, I sent someone another 15 feet to parking to have a cab called for them. I got written up for following the policy stating that I wasn’t allowed to do someone else’s job.

34. We’re Not a Salon

I am a vet tech. We had a very fractious dog in the back that we were trying to get samples from. This dog was rolling so much that it took 3 technicians to hold it still. Meanwhile, the dog is defecating and peeing everywhere. Throw in an explosive anal gland expression to top it all off.  We managed to draw the blood and clean the patient off.

When I get in the room and apologize for the delay, the client says, "Would you trim her nails while we are here. She won't let us touch her feet at home." Luckily the veterinarian said we would not be able to because we didn't want to stress her out more. Always keep a spare set of scrubs in your locker, kids.

35. The Littlest Woman-Hater

I've worked with children in care and I feel as a disclosure that many come from severely dysfunctional families, and it’s our job to raise these children. I trained, tested and got a degree in this so I knew what I was getting myself into. There was one child who was particularly violent towards women; kicking, biting, spitting and inappropriate touching.

We were all paid minimum wage and severely unsupported by management. On one occasion, this particular child overpowered me. I just could not contain the behavior and I was alone (which should not have happened anyway) I did my best to protect myself, but I was absolutely covered in bruises, scratches and bitten on my arm. After shakily writing up my report I vowed never to be in a situation like that again. I left a week later.

36. Cooked to the Bone

It wasn't really a moment. I worked for about 9 or 10 months as a line cook. I was just recently married, and we needed all the money we could get. Over those several months, my knees and back where slowly deteriorating and causing me more and more pain. My wife eventually told me that no job and no money was ever worth my health. Took me a month to quit after that but I'm happy I did.

37. The Commute Is More Than She Could Chew

I drive special needs children to and from school. A little girl unbuckled on the interstate and was trying to open the door to jump out. Grabbed her arm as I was slowly headed to the side of the road and she bit me.... losing a baby tooth in the process. After this, she was given an aide to keep both her and everyone else in the van safe.

38. The World Is Not Your Coatrack

Gosh, mine’s tame by comparison. Most recent was when a woman started cussing me out when I asked her husband to move his jacket off a railing. (We don’t really allow anything to be set on the railings.) Fortunately, that literally is outside of my pay grade. I flagged down a nearby security guard and let them handle it. Overall, my company treats us pretty well, but people are absolutely crazy.

Hate Someone FactsShutterstock

39. Taking You All Down With Me

Big box retail: Customer wants to return something we don't even carry. In fastball fashion, she launches the product directly towards my head. I duck and it shatters against the wall behind me. Customer continues her tantrum by clearing everything off the counter and knocking over a catalog rack. This is just one of the hundreds of events like this while I was there. Please respect all retail workers. Their day is probably going much worse than yours.

Not Paid Enough FactsShutterstock

40. Egg on Your Face

Was working the registers at a grocery store. About an hour before closing, a customer comes to my lane with two 48-ct egg cartons. Stumbles a bit putting them onto the belt, and before I can react the entire thing was on the ground. Best part? Apparently, the janitor had left already, so I got to spend the next hour cleaning up 96 broken eggs with nothing but paper towels.

Not Paid Enough FactsShutterstock

41. Watch Out from Below!

I am a caregiver for the elderly. Now cleaning up poo and pee is part of my job, I do it every day, but last week was a whole new level. I woke a lady up to give her personal care (shower and whatnot). She goes to the bathroom and sits on the toilet first. Stands up and wipes and then instead of putting the tissue in the toilet and flushing, she puts it in the sink.

Okay. No big deal, I'll put it in the toilet for her. Then she takes her clothes off and sits in the shower. I start washing her. I ask her to stand so I can do her bum and back of her legs. She stands and I kneel down to do what I need to do, as I'm cleaning her bum, she decides it's a great time to take a dump. All over my arm and the floor.

I then have to clean all this up, all the while she's moaning at me, “What's taking so long, I'm cold.”

Not Paid Enough FactsShutterstock

42. Number 2 Is a Job for Number 1

I work at a McDonald’s. Someone pooped on the floor, liquid, in the men’s bathroom. Thankfully, I remembered a story a manager once said about THEM having to clean it, by policy, because it’s a health hazard to have untrained crew clean feces, apparently. Guess which manager had to clean the stuff up?

Not Paid Enough FactsShutterstock

43. Disappear This Miss, Please

I may or may not have carried a heavily intoxicated girlfriend and a large amount of substances out of my boss's house (CEO of a very large company) while she was covered in her own filth so his wife wouldn't catch him as she arrived home from her sister's house a day early. How did this happen, you ask?

My old boss regularly cheated on his wife with any number of women. Well, he calls me one day, because we are friends away from work, and asks me to come to his apartment ASAP. I drive over there, and he's blitzed, and this chick is laying naked in her own filth mumbling about something. He says he has to shower and clean up because his wife is ten minutes away so please "Get that out of here."

I grab the girl and help her to her feet and cover her up with a t-shirt. As I'm walking her out, he yells for me to grab the party bag. The only bag is a Dopp kit. I grab it, jump in my car and drive off. This girl is blasted! She doesn't know where she lives and is sure she's having a heart attack. So, I calm her down somewhat and reach in her purse and find her ID.

Luckily, she has her current address on it, and I take her home. I drive back to my house and pull into the driveway and remember the Dopp kit. I open it up and there's a LOT of illegal substances in there. I got a steak dinner and a few beers later that week from the boss. Needless to say, I no longer work there.

Fyre Festival factsShutterstock

44. An Inconvenient Store

I worked at a convenience store. My coworker and I were classmates, and we were 16 or 17 years old at the time. The place got broken into, food and drinks were stolen, and when I came to work, the owner and his daughter were yelling at my coworker. He was angry and wanted us two to be liable for the damages. So he threatened to fire me and my coworker—but when my coworker told him that he'll have to clean up the mess with only his daughter, the owner suddenly mellowed out.

We quit a week later anyway, when we found out that it was the daughter who had let her friends in to steal stuff, and then roughed the place up to make it look like a break in. The place shut down a few years later because of violations.

Fire Me, I Dare You factsShutterstock

45. Your Safety Is Our Number Two Priority

I told my supervisors, manager, and safety department about severe issues at work, including broken equipment and more. They didn't do anything. I told the union and they didn't do anything either. I reported the issues for SEVERAL months—nothing. So, I finally said forget it, and reported them to the government. Suddenly, I had my supervisor freak out and ask if I called them. I told him straight up, "Yes, you're darn right I did." He threatened to fire me. I told him about the whistleblower laws and how that would be the stupidest decision he could ever make. I told him to please do it, as I would love the easy $200k I would easily win from the lawsuit. I haven’t had any issues at work since.

Fire Me, I Dare You factsShutterstock

46. Big Pharma

I was promoted to VP of my company. The company was in trouble, and the CEO had asked me to figure out why and fix it. I arranged for a random drug test. All employees, the CEO, me, everyone. All on the same day and everyone went down at the same time. Even said I would ignore weed but anyone with anything stronger would be gone. We get the results back and I fired everyone who had tested positive for any drug other than weed. The CEO and myself were the only two people left working for the company.

anon_admin_1

Workplace StoriesShutterstock

47. Lady, Get Over Him Already

I used to manage a group home for developmentally disabled adults. I was in charge of hiring the staff that we needed to make the house run properly. I saw a name come across my desk that I had to interview and I instantly looked them up. Turns out, this was a girl that had an obsessive crush on me from years ago and, based on her social media, she still did.

I was in a panic, because she was basically stalking everything I did, and I really couldn't back out because it was five minutes before the interview. She came in, and it was so weird... she acted normal. We interviewed in a professional manner for about 15 minutes, I showed her around, and I thought, "Wow, maybe she has done some maturing and just let it go."

Then we got back to my office. I started a sentence like, "Well, (name), it's been a pleasure having you here and I-......" "Oh, no no no, we aren't done yet. You think you can ignore everything like you don't know what's going on?! I know where you work, now. I know where you live, and I'm going to keep calling." There was more she was saying along the lines of me telling her to kindly leave, but a phone call to the police, as well as a restraining order, kept her away from work and my life.

Workplace StoriesShutterstock

48. Sometimes It’s Best to Keep Your Mouth Shut

Company consisted of something like 1,200 employees at the time, and rented out a big conference center for a Christmas party. At the opening of the party, the CFO was giving opening remarks, and asked—expecting cheers—if everyone liked their Christmas bonuses. He got booed. See, of that 1,200 people, a bit over a thousand were in customer service.

No one in customer service got bonuses, only people in the "corporate" departments got bonuses. And our awesome CFO decided to rub everyone's noses in it, because clearly the Chief Financial Officer of a company would have no idea that 80%+ of his company didn't get bonuses. At the same party, the CEO made an announcement that the company would be closed on Friday (Christmas that year was on a Thursday), and everyone got a day off.

Now, he had literally just finished making a speech about how everyone was important, and everyone was part of the company, no matter the department. He had shoveled crap hard, trying to make CS happier. The next day, we all got a memo that Customer Service still had to work on that Friday. We apparently didn't count as "everyone" and the CEO just hadn't realized that the announcement wouldn't apply to anyone. January saw a 60% attrition rate.

Employees Share Horrible Things factsNguonSongMoi

Sources: Reddit,


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