Even people who love their jobs have bad days now and then. But not all of us are so lucky. For most of us, work is a drag—but then there are the truly unfortunate people whose jobs are a waking nightmare. Horrible bosses, unreasonable requests, insane coworkers, the list goes on. When your job is truly awful, there are only two things you can do: If you're lucky, you can quit. If not, at least you can share the nightmare online, like these people did!
1. Putting The “Fun” In “Funeral”
At work, I was once "asked" by my boss not to go to my uncle's funeral. I was told, and I quote, "Well, it’s not like he’ll know that you're not there!" I quit that job very shortly after that incident, and I reported the "manager" to executive management on my way out. That guy was a total jerk. And this was by far the most unreasonable thing I’ve ever been asked to do for a job.
2. Not High Enough
A co-worker of mine was flying back from a sales conference in Vegas and was able to upgrade to a first-class seat. Our dreadful sales VP was the snobby, entitled type with a full-time nanny and huge ugly McMansion in the suburbs, and she generally treated people who worked for her like servants. She was on the same flight.
She saw him in a first-class seat as she walked the path to coach and asked how he got there. As people were settling in, she made her way back to the first-class cabin and asked to speak with the lead flight attendant. She told him that one of her subordinates was sitting in first class and she needed to switch seats.
She told him it was because she was higher on the corporate ladder. The guy couldn't believe what he was hearing, but she would not take no for an answer. Finally, he said to her that she had to go back to her seat or she would be escorted from the plane. She made a complete fool of herself in front of all of first-class.
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3. Really Getting the Point Across
We had an anonymous feedback program. Our boss was mad with the feedback and the many comments about his short temper and how he would yell in meetings. The more he talked about how incorrect, unfair, and hurtful they were, the redder and angrier he got. He finally smacked the table and yelled, "I DO NOT! SCREAM! IN MEETINGS! OKAY?"
4. Clear Your Schedule
My boss got a smartphone to replace a flip phone. He came to me to learn how to use it. That became my job for the next week. With complete disregard for what either of us had to do, it was all about him learning his phone to the point where he was blowing off meetings and making excuses so I didn't have to go to mine.
The following week, he came to me because he discovered free online dating apps and asked if there was a setting where “fat chicks” couldn't message him.
5. Throwing The Baby Out With The Bathwater
I’m a retired paramedic. I've seen a lot of messed up stuff—but one moment was worse than all the rest. I was once told to immediately place a freshly delivered newborn baby back inside of its mother’s body. She delivered in a transport ambulance en route to the Weill Cornell Medical Center. She then lost her mind over the fact that her baby wasn't born in a hospital and, furthermore, not born in a good hospital.
As a result, the mother then told me to "hold the baby in with your freaking hand!" I explained that this wouldn't work and that we were having this child on 3rd Avenue. She completely flipped out and started yelling at me like a complete lunatic. Finally, she and I made an agreement that I would say that the baby was still inside her body until we backed up at the hospital driveway.
I guess this satisfied her requirement of her kid being born at a hospital versus next to a dry cleaner’s on 3rd Avenue. So, as far as that kid knows, she was born in the Weill Cornell Emergency Room Ambulance Bay. She will never have any idea how much turmoil surrounded her birth, and how unreasonable a request I was given in the process.
6. Two For The Price Of One
Once a week, my boss makes me go down to the nearest Carvel ice cream store, order an ice cream cake, and then sit down and eat it with her so that she doesn’t feel as bad about eating it herself when she is supposed to be on a diet. She says she can't fit into her clothes. I guess she wants me to not fit into my clothes either…
7. Never Want to Be Tangled in That Web
Long ago, my 80-year-old boss pulled me into his office. He said, “Paul, I've noticed that your shirts come untucked and that looks unprofessional.” I responded, “I'm sorry about that, Joel.” He went on, “I want you to start tucking your shirts into your underwear.” I didn’t know what to do and stood there mouth agape.
“Go ahead and try it now,” he said gesturing towards my pants. I said, “Joel, you know I have 15 women who report to me. I can't undo my pants in the office.” He stood up and said, “sure, you can,” and dropped his pants. My 80-year-old boss was standing there wearing a pair of Spiderman undies.
8. Not My Idea of a Vacation...
I once had a boss who refused to let me take an "unplanned vacation" to see my grandma on her deathbed. It was strange because, up until that incident, she had always been really cool and laid back. But when I asked for the weekend off to go visit my dying grandmother, she snapped and lectured me about how I needed to "plan" my "vacations" better. I quit on the spot.
9. On My Own Time
This old boss of mine was a complete and total jerk, and he was actually my boss’ boss and wasn’t supposed to interact with us unless it was through our boss. But he just loved trying to make everybody under him squirm. The company had already forced him to go to training twice because of how he was speaking to people.
One day, I got a call at home from him, and he started unloading, cursing, name-calling, insulting me over some technical issue he had just found out about. After a couple of minutes, I just looked at my phone and hung up on him. I was called into a meeting the next day with his boss who basically needed clarification.
He wanted to know exactly who I thought I was hanging up on this dude. I calmly explained that no one gets to yell at me on my time, in my home, on my phone. You have to wait for me to be on the clock to pay me for that privilege, and I’ll gladly take that money. If I’m busy being yelled at, I’m not busy with any work.
10. Constructive Criticism
I once got asked by my boss to walk over to the construction site next door and ask the builders to stop their construction, as they were being too loud. Not for a specific length of time, just to stop working. I had to ask him what he thought that this would actually achieve. But he insisted that I do it anyway. You can all probably guess whether they listened or not…
11. Chinese No Take-Out
Once I worked at a Chinese restaurant where if you forgot to put rice on each customer's table–white or brown rice that was free–the owner expected you to buy the entire table's meal. He implemented this rule by taking the money out of your paycheck. It happened to me once in the six months I was there.
The one time that it actually happened to me, they told me to pay the $50 tab for the table. Yeah, that’s not going to happen. That’s a crazy amount of money when you consider the job I was working. I told them if they enforce that rule, I'd walk out in the middle of service. They didn't enforce the rule. I continued my shift.
12. Underling-ering
At my work, we had this HR lady who was extremely power-hungry. She was walking around with the president of the company who flew in from Japan, acting like she owned the place. She hurried him through the warehouse spitting out, “Oh, these are just the warehouse guys. We don’t have to stop and talk to them.” Well, what he did next made her fume.
He stopped, came over, and asked me about my last vacation. Then he asked about how my new house was, and so on. You could just see her stewing behind him as we talked for about 45 minutes. In the past, I’d actually had multiple meetings with him, and we knew each other really well. She had no clue. I don’t think he liked her and I suspect that he dragged it out on purpose.
I was just thrilled to see her just standing there bored and angry.
13. 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 illicit 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.
14. Spoke Too Soon
I worked for eight years servicing communications equipment on-site with five employees under me as the department manager. When oil was found in our area, we got so busy that we could barely even think. Most of my team were pulling 12+ hour days, six days a week, and we were struggling to hire people quickly enough to help get all the work done.
Once, the CEO texted and said he hired an assistant manager for me, which was something I desperately needed. I was super dirty from my working at the site, and swung by the store to get him and bring him to one of our sites where he would be doing paperwork. As soon as he got in the truck, he immediately started bad-mouthing.
Every time he would say something wrong, I would try to politely correct him. He’d either backtrack or insist that I was wrong. When we got to the site in the desert, he complained about the layer of dust on everything and "ordered me" to clean up. I sat down and, the guy kept talking my ear off about everything wrong.
He chastised me for sitting at my desk when he had told me to clean up. That’s when I couldn’t take it anymore. I called a taxi, filled out a notice of termination, and gave it to him. He was shocked, and defiantly protested that only the manager could fire him. I asked, “[my name], right?” He sheepishly nodded. So, I stuck my hand out and introduced myself.
15. Open for No Business
Right after Hurricane Sandy, the bank I worked for had no power for several days, so obviously we couldn't do any banking. Rather than just closing, my manager insisted that the entire staff show up for shifts as usual, just so that we could sit in our normal seats in our uniforms and winter jackets to tell any customers who wandered in that we didn't have power and couldn't help them with anything at all.
Just about every single person who we spoke to asked us some variation of "Then what the heck are you doing here?" It sucked!
16. After Inconsiderations…
My boss only hired people he could, "get a drink with." He was grossly under-qualified to manage, but he was good at sales and kept getting promoted. He made awkward, distasteful jokes and comments like asking an employee if he and his twin brother "shared" a girlfriend. We’d always have just really wasteful, pointless meetings.
Nobody knew how he spent his days; his assistant manager did all the heavy lifting while he would wander around making conversation. He showed up to a meeting with his superiors having done zero preparation, and they kicked him out. He finally got fired for using the phrase "kung flu" with a Chinese employee back in March.
17. Cutting Ties
At my old office, the air-conditioner once broke down in the middle of a terrible heatwave. It was so bad that people started literally passing out at their desks from the heat. Do you know what our boss’s response to that situation was? He said we could temporarily take our ties off. We still had to keep the rest of our uniforms on, though. How generous of him!
18. Speak Now Or Forever Hold Your Peace
The first job that I ever had was in retail. On one occasion, I smelled something funky near my breakroom. I went to check it out—but I wasn't prepared for what I found: A pile of dried-up human waste on the ground. Naturally, I went and told my manager. He asked me why I was telling him about it and not busy cleaning it up.
Turns out everyone knew about it but didn't want to say anything because they didn't want to have to clean it.
19. Down The Drain
A manager once asked me to wrap my arm up in a big bag and stick my hand into a toilet to try and unblock it. I was a waiter and barman, taking food out to customers. I highlighted this point to him, yet he still insisted that I do it. I promptly told him to screw off, and I mentioned the words health and safety. He ended up doing it himself.
On a side note, he was fired two weeks later for making inappropriate comments to female staff members. He was just a terrible guy all around.
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20. Do Your Own Dirty Work
I was once asked to lay off a group of employees for another manager. She begged me to do it, and I initially refused. This manager selected and approved the list of people being let go and was 100% responsible for even needing a layoff. She overhired in her area because she misrepresented her projected needs and let her group's performance fall below standard.
No one wants to be part of a layoff, on the receiving or giving side, unless you're a total sadist. I also really believe if you are laying your people off, you need to at least have the guts to do it yourself. Period. I wound up doing it in the end. But only because everyone in the building already figured out that something was happening.
They could tell based on her behavior, and it seemed excessively cruel to postpone things once everyone was on edge. I felt like the Angel of Death that day. People couldn't even make eye contact with me as I walked the halls because if I stopped at someone's desk they knew they were losing their job. My people were terrified, and I still feel terrible about how that day went down because I couldn't say anything until it was done.
Layoffs are horrible, and this manager hiding from her responsibility made it even worse. Fortunately, my boss agreed with me on this and he eventually fired her for it.
21. Cornering The Cashiers
I worked at a grocery store in Missouri where we got a new front-end manager who was an absolute tyrant. We had to stand in front of our registers with our hands crossed and were not allowed to speak to any of the other cashiers (whether there were customers or not) and if we spoke to the baggers we were written up.
After about 5 write-ups (I treated the baggers like they were actually humans) I contacted the union and she was torn apart.
22. Look at What I Can Do
My old boss, who’s 70, said he invented Apple computers before Steve Jobs and that the computer he invented was more powerful than any other. He threw knives in the air and said if you could catch them, he’d give you money at a Christmas party. Once he came to work in nothing but leopard print underwear and a pink cowboy hat.
He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder but “not the bad kind.” It was the kind that “makes you super smart.” He got tipsy at work and gave some to whoever would take it. He actually needs to be institutionalized, but he’s rich, so he gets away with everything, and everyone is scared of him.
23. Saying the Right Thing
I had a manager who tried too hard to be everybody’s best friend. He loved pep talks and thought he could raise our abysmal morale by being Mr. Positivity. It was low because were always buried in work and paid dirt. He’d crack jokes, randomly burst into song, and sneak up behind you to yell “you’re doing a great job!”
He was also, obviously, super incompetent at his job. He relied heavily on a junior colleague who basically did his whole job helping with technical work and spent days on paperwork that should have only taken an hour or two. If you had a problem, his answer was to stare at you blankly until you said "nevermind" or pat you on the back and say, “Think positive, and it’ll work itself out!”
The thing he did that I hated most was whenever people applied to work at the company, he’d print out the stack of resumes, sit at his desk, and read aloud all of the parts he found “funny.” He’d laugh at people for working at McDonald’s or any fast food places. He loved finding grammar mistakes and making fun of them. This was all done loudly, and it was an open office so you couldn’t avoid hearing it. That definitely lowered morale too.
24. We Jammin
We are not allowed to refer to the Xerox Machine as "Bob Marley" anymore even though it still jams way more than it Xeroxes. This is because apparently, the CEO had a tween daughter come one day and she got very upset when she thought the staff was keeping her from seeing Bob Marley in real life. She did not know that Bob Marley is not alive.
This stressed out the CEO and he yelled at us about the nickname, no now, the Xerox machine is just "the Xerox machine."
25. This Is How We Do It
My boss at a pizza shop made getting raises a game and handed them out for the weirdest reasons. He liked a table my friend got so much that he gave my friend a raise. Another kid was playing with a penny at the end of the night, and he kicked it into the air, and it landed in a hat someone was holding. He got a raise for it. I was listed first on the timesheet. According to him, this meant I was "becoming number one" and thus got a raise.
He had food issues and would get really offended if we didn't eat as much as him. One time, he drove an hour away during our shift to get pizza we had not tried before because it was "best in the state." People who didn’t try it were shunned that day. He bought 100 tacos from Taco Bell and had us have an eating contest for our lunch. He was so happy when someone ate 7 and was basically going to puke. He paid one guy to eat a bag of dog treats and filmed it.
After a closing shift, he got back from the casino and won $4K from playing poker. He demanded we go to the club and drink with him even though we were 18 at the time. He never trained anyone and just expected everyone to know everything and anything about our pizza place. We always had to hire and train the people while he just sat there. He loved online poker and played during our shifts. It was all too common to hear, “Can you get the register? I’m in the middle of a hand.” My friend drove past the store at 1 AM many times and saw him playing poker with all the lights on.
26. Fear The Ghost
I work for a very superstitious man. He has quite a crazy set of rules. They go like this: No red pens, no shaking your legs, and no whistling after the sun goes down. These rules are not “official” but he gets stern and incredibly serious about these things. Oh yeah, and he also doesn't allow any joking about ghosts or the supernatural.
27. Usurpation Manager
I worked at a Walmart as a cashier, and the assistant manager there was an absolute jerk. He would insult everybody working there and forced us sometimes to do work above our pay grade. Six months later, he and I were transferred to another Walmart that had just opened that needed to pick a manager and assistant manager.
Some random got the manager position, but I got assistant manager. So, one day, he was ordering the other cashiers around, and then I pulled him to the side and told him that if he kept pulling the same act around me, he would be out of here. I haven't heard anything from him since.
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28. Don’t Do Your Job!
When I was in high school, I worked at a popular warehouse club selling computers on weekends. The store manager hired me via a friend’s referral. I loved computers, and they thought I would make a good salesman. So, they gave me the job, which was to stay in the computer department and just sell computers. Nothing else.
One of the shift managers did not like that and started insisting that I needed to go fold clothes for a while, as in, half of my shift. I told him that the store manager had instructed me never to leave the technology department, but he insisted. This went on for several weeks. The store manager showed up one weekend.
The power-tripping shift manager and I were both working. The store manager who had hired me slapped a stack of green bar paper down and pointed to some highlighted numbers. He looked at the shift manager and said, "Do you see this? These are our average technology sales numbers. These are for the weeks you are on shift. And this one?”
“It’s for weeks that you are not. By now, it’d be more cost-effective for me to fire you. What do you think of that?" He stuttered, but wasn't fired. The store manager made clear that I was not to leave the technology department unless I was on break or there was a fire. That shift manager never said another word to me.
29. Technically Incorrect
A client paid for me to come to their office and address an IT problem. It was an 8-hour minimum job. The issue was resolved in about 45 minutes because they had set up something incorrectly, and it was pretty obvious once I got into the system. I was packing up to leave and the client stopped me. "What are you doing?"
"The system is fixed, so I'm leaving," I said. "No, I paid for 8 hours. You'll do the 8 hours. If I tell you to wash my car for 8 hours, that's what you'll be doing." I responded, "Right…so anyway, I'm leaving. You’ll get the invoice, and we'll no longer be working with you and withdrawing your lease on our equipment."
30. Child’s Play
I worked at a children’s “Boys and Girls Club” where the boss HATED kids. Hated them. There are too many stories of her terrible behavior to pick just one for here, so I'll instead sum her up with a story of how the kids viewed her. After teaching a cooking class one time, I was washing dishes with a tiny little 7-year-old—who happened to be the smallest, most adorable girl at this place.
She was so sweet, with huge eyes that made her look like a Pixar character. Then, all of a sudden, while we were washing away, the second-in-command boss walked by and coughed. The little girl looked up at me and said, "He's sick." I responded with "I know, isn't that sad?" To which she replied, with the darkest, most ominous voice I had ever heard from this angel child, "I wish Ms. Boss Lady would get sick instead."
When a sweet kid is saying that, you know it’s bad…
31. French Revolution
I once had a French boss who claimed he was descended from the House of Bourbon. He nicknamed himself the Sun King and bragged that he was going to melt all of us special little snowflakes with the power of his rays. When I asked him why we didn't have an employee of the month award, appreciation days, or premium parking spots for top performers, there was a bit of a culture clash…
He lashed out and told me that these things were all just “American garbage” and that your paycheck is your reward. I always got stuck training the new hires, yet when I tried to explain that it might be simpler to retain workers with recognition rather than extra pay, he would dismiss me as some know-it-all college boy who didn't understand how the real world worked.
32. Impossible To Work With
I started working for a welding company as an engineering manager. We were selling an extremely complex weldment for $4.9K, and our costs were $9.3K. The owner got the bid "to get in with this big company." He actually said, "We'll make it up in volume." We weren't. On top of that, the buyer for the larger company was a terrible woman.
She was the type who’d regularly yell on phone calls. We sent a letter that said we’d honor the last five tanks on the current PO at the same price, even though I didn't even want to do that. After they’d go up to $10K per. She came with her boss the next day, demanded an explanation, and threatened to pull the business.
I replied that we were losing $5K per tank and couldn't do it anymore. She demanded evidence, which I’d already pulled up and simply turned on the projector. I said, “As you can see, we cannot continue at such a big loss, and no one can make it for the original price, so if you have to pull the business we understand."
Her boss tripped over himself cutting her off and said they weren't pulling out and actually thanked us for honoring the current PO. I didn't have many run-ins with her after that.
33. Hot Spot
I work at a hotel. It’s pretty high end, so we usually just appease guests no matter what. We have a very desirable parking lot. When people poach it, we boot them. I love enforcing this because I don't have to apologize since they aren't guests. Once, this girl parked and walked away. My general manager happened to be there.
He told her she couldn’t park there, and she cussed at him, flipped him off, and walked over to the neighbor hotel. So, he called me. With great joy, I grabbed the boot and slapped it on her car. She came back screaming and ranting. I said it’d cost $200. She called the authorities. They asked, "Is this a private lot?"
We confirmed, and they told her to pay us. She refused to pay us and left. I got a call for the manager. It was her mom. She said, "My daughter didn't know. It was actually for a job interview." I let her go on, and when she was done, I told her what her daughter had done to the general manager. There was no other way.
I said the boot was only coming off with her payment—but I didn’t stop there. Then I told her when she paid, she had better not come in swearing or shouting or else the price would go up to $300. She hung up. The daughter came back and silently handed me $200 with a look of intense rage on her face. I've never been so internally giddy before.
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34. Wake Up and Smell the Coffee
I used to work for a small café, doing a manager's amount of work while being paid minimum wage. When I contracted pink eye from caring for my sister, my boss got mad at me. After that, I applied and was hired at Starbucks. The other guy’s business fell apart without me there and closed within four months of me leaving.
35. Dog Days
At one point in my life, I was working at a pet store and, naturally, I had gotten used to being bitten by the various pets we sold from time to time. Usually, the bites were coming from small animals like hamsters, ferrets, birds, etc. No big deal. This one day, however, as I was helping a woman who had brought her big dog in, it attacked me.
Luckily, it was a small-ish to medium-sized dog, so it didn't get my face. Nevertheless, I had big bleeding holes all up and down one arm. The lady never even said sorry to me, and my manager told me to just go to the back, get cleaned up, and come back out to handle the cash register for her. So I did, with big blood splatters all over my yellow uniform shirt.
36. No Laughing Matter
My boss, who also happened to be the owner of the company I worked for, once made fun of a lady for her baby dying after birth. She had purchased an educational online course from us and it had expired during the time she was grieving. It had only been a few months, and she was asking for an extension. She even offered to pay extra for it.
My boss thought this was hilarious, and decided to call me and another co-worker into his office to have us stand there listening while he read dead baby jokes to us. It was horrific.
37. Out to Lunch
My supervisor at this nonprofit was maybe a couple of years older than me and, for the entire six months that I worked there, she never bothered to set me up with my own computer. I'd work in the mornings and she tended to show up around lunchtime, so she told me I could use hers. That was pretty annoying in and of itself.
But more often than not, she'd come in about an hour before I was scheduled to leave. She would then stand over me, eating her lunch, as I worked at her desk. I'd say things like, "Oh, I'll go find somewhere else to work" but she'd just say “No no, you're fine!” while continuing to stand over me as I sat at her desk.
She was also the Director of Marketing and, for about two weeks, she had me walk around the city and put up flyers in various cafes and buildings for this class that we were hosting. Two weeks later, she was extremely frustrated that no one had signed up for it. As an organization’s Director of Marketing, you should probably have some sort of better strategy than putting up flyers in coffee shops...
38. Bad Reception
I worked as a receptionist for a couple of months. If one thing was ever out of place in the entire lobby, my boss would yell at me and, for some reason, say that I was wasting money. She would do this repeatedly and I never understood why. Sometimes, when things were out of place in the lobby, I simply didn't have the energy to get up and fix them—especially since it wasn’t my job to begin with.
She would just keep saying that I was wasting money and I never understood it...until one week, I’d had enough and decided to grab chairs and purposely mess them up. I also tipped over trash cans to spill little bits of garbage out and so on. That week, I noticed on my paycheck that I had gotten paid $80 less than usual.
I then took a closer look at all of my recent paychecks, and suddenly realized that the more the lobby had been messed up, the less I had been getting paid each week. I was totally shocked. As soon as I made this discovery, I confronted her about it and she gave me the money back. But the whole situation was still pretty messed up. She was also extremely rude when dealing with it...
39. Weathering the Storm
Hurricane Katrina was going to make landfall that day, and the owner of the restaurant I was managing at the time got super angry when I said I wasn't coming in. He wouldn't accept my reasoning and kept bargaining with me. "Okay,” he said, “you can go in for four hours, and I can get [other manager] to come relieve you.” Umm, no.
He finally agreed to let me take time off as long as I hid my key somewhere so that a substitute could come to pick it up. I, of course, accepted this deal. After the storm hit and devastated New Orleans, the owner called me up because he wanted me to return to town immediately. He needed people to open the restaurant for him.
Now, the roof had just blown completely off of my house and there was no way I could live in it until it was fixed. I asked my boss where he expected me to live while I was working for him if I returned right away. He said to just get a hotel as if he was paying me enough to afford such a thing. I also think hotels in the area were pretty well full at that time...
40. The Consequences Of A Nap
We weren't allowed to sit at my old job. That is ridiculous enough, but even more when you understand that our job didn't require us to walk, or stand for any particular reason. We weren't allowed to sit because a worker in the past once pushed two chairs together and took a nap. Luckily for him it was a glorious nap.
41. Winter Wonder Classroom
We couldn’t wear winter clothing in class—whether it was coats, gloves, hats. All the same. The thing was, even with the heat on, it got cold inside the school during the winter because we lived in a farm town in Wisconsin. So, we just had to freeze. They said it was because winter clothing was gang clothing. Again, this was a farm town in Wisconsin.
42. Word Trauma
I used to work at a Frisch’s, and the manager there was a total witch. She would nitpick every little thing, but one thing in specific comes to mind. She would not allow anyone to call a hand towel a rag. She policed the usage of the term religiously and if you called a towel a rag, you better be ready to get chewed out.
43. Breaking The Rules
At my job, when working overtime or even a regular eight-hour day, our break is only fifteen minutes long. And it’s timed down to the second. We are also expected to only use the bathroom during these timed breaks. So we spend our only break of the day running back and forth to the bathroom and trying to beat each other out in getting there. That’s not my idea of a darn break!
44. Taking Video Games Seriously
We were told we could not place stuffed dolls (video game characters mostly) on top of our cubicles because it looks "unprofessional" and "people might be able to see them through the windows from outside." You would imagine that I work in a professional, corporate office. Nope. I work at a video game company.
45. Feeling Powerless
The power once went out in our office at around 8 in the morning, yet we weren't allowed to go home. We sat around doing nothing for nearly eight hours, "just in case" the power would come back on. Eventually, our boss said that if it didn't come on by 4 PM, then we could all go home and delay our work schedules by a full day.
Lo and behold, the power came on at 3:50 PM and we were expected to complete our full day’s workloads in just one hour!
46. Getting Stubbed
A while back, I got a job as a popcorn monkey at the local cinema. There was a supervisor who worked there since the site had opened, about five years, and was a total pain with numerous complaints about her from countless staff. In the first week, I nearly quit because of her attitude. One night, I was working a closing.
I had basically cleaned the entirety of the front of house on my own. I stopped to get a drink of water, and she marched up to me yelling, "We don’t pay you to stand around drinking you, know!” I calmly responded that I was thirsty, and if she wanted to tell me I wasn't allowed to have a glass of water, then good luck.
I told her health and safety would have something to say about that. She huffed about not having had a break all day, which I ignored because not my problem, but internally I was put out about it because it was totally pointless to be such a twit about things. Around my first two weeks, I was promoted to be supervisor.
She also got promoted to Floor Manager, so she continued her little power trips and lorded over everyone. And four weeks after, I got another promotion to Floor Manager. We were equals, and she could not boss me around anymore. Instead, she tried a different tactic, which was to use her superior knowledge of processes. I knew exactly what to say to crush her.
My response was: "Oh thanks! That's so helpful. I mean you know how things work so much better than me, because you've been here five years, and I've only been here six weeks..." She had the saddest face. It was delightful.
47. Funding the Operation
I worked as a cashier at a public swimming pool. Some guy robbed us once and took more than $1,000 from my cash register. Note: According to my boss, employees were responsible for the money in the register. So, while the police were sorting things out with management and insurance, I was expected to go to the bank, get $1,000 of my own money for them, and then come back to work and finish off my shift as usual.
I quit on the spot.
48. Playing Hard to Get
The vice president of my company once told me I was being disrespectful during a conversation. I asked her how and she told me that I "knew what I was doing." I asked again, stating that I had asked because I didn't actually know. I was told that she didn't have time for me because “I know what you're doing and I don't have time for this." You're the vice president of a company, not a 15-year-old who’s angry at her boyfriend!
49. A Shortage Of Supplies
In the early 1990s, I worked at a well-known US depot for office supplies. One time, for reasons I never really understood, an edict came down that a certain class of inventory was to be destroyed and discarded. That meant that perfectly good merchandise was to be taken out back and literally smashed to pieces with a hammer, then thrown into the garbage bin.
This merchandise included tons of perfectly good office furniture, lamps, computers, printers, copiers, fax machines, and some other random bits here and there. The most amazing part was that they made clear to us that under no circumstances was this stuff allowed to be given away, sold, or otherwise allowed to survive and benefit anyone. It was absolutely infuriating.
Several of our employees begged and pleaded with the bosses to be allowed to buy some of the things before they got destroyed, but nope. They insisted that it was better to destroy it and get nothing in return. And they were not interested in considering any other alternatives. It wasn't a huge number of items, but it was easily at least $10,000 worth of stuff.
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50. Did You Say Something?
I told my employer that I was moving across the country and that my last day was in two weeks. When the day arrived, they called me as I was on the road asking if I was going to be coming in that day. It made me glad to finally be getting away from a place that cared so little about its employees that they didn’t even pay attention to a thing they said…
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51. Getting in the Same Headspace
When I first interviewed for my job as a receptionist/assistant, my boss started telling me about the company's four pillars, but he could only remember three. I later found out the one he forgot was knowledge. That was when I realized that this man was not the sharpest tool in the shed. Fast forward a year later, I learn the extent of his ignorance.
He’s terrible with the English language in general and will mangle phrases and descriptions to no end. Back when we were prepping for a conference, he was on a group call and mentioned using a “golden hamster ball” for giveaways. He raved about how great it’d be spinning around while people passed it, all the while everyone on the call listened in confused silence.
At the time, I had become so good at decoding his nonsense that I knew he was referring to a gold raffle cage and sent him an image privately asking if that was what he was thinking. He constantly talks about how I can read his mind and must be psychic. Even though he still refers to a raffle cage as a "hamster ball" he’s actually a good boss. He hired me based on a gut feeling and has been decent to me ever since.
52. Learning from History
I worked for a nonprofit. My last boss there was the absolute worst, and she even got investigated later on. She pitted us against each other and routinely blamed us for stuff that was out of our control. When I quit, I left some little surprises hidden around my office for my replacement to find. Things like printouts of emails in which she verbally abused people in the office...that sorta thing.
53. This Paints an Ugly Picture
I worked in automotive painting. I had been complaining about my mask parts needing replacing for a few weeks. Finally, my mask broke and I refused to paint because toxic fumes were coming into my mask. Being the only automotive painter, this meant work came to a halt. I was told to get in there and paint or else.
I pointed at the security camera and asked him to say that again but a little louder. He fired two people that day, but I wasn't one of them.
54. We’re Sick of Garbage Like This
I was working at McDonald’s and I was supposed to do the overnight shift, but I was sick. And I mean couldn't get out of bed and throwing up sick. So, I called in that day, several hours in advance, to say that I couldn't make it in. I had been working there for quite a few years by that point, so they knew that I was competent and trustworthy.
They also knew that I would never call in sick unless it was absolutely necessary. I got written up because “they needed me” that day. Why? Because apparently the freakin’ hygiene inspector was coming in that morning, and therefore they required all employees to be present. I couldn't believe it. I quit not long after.
55. Unfinished Business
In the middle of work, I got a call one day from my cousin saying that our house had been broken into and robbed. I immediately went home to deal with it and file a police report, and it was honestly so stressful. My supervisor then rang me to ask what time I was planning on coming back to work at later in the day because she still had some paperwork for me to finish.
56. Most Vocal Supporter
A boss I had made Chewbacca noises regularly because he thought a co-worker’s name vaguely sounded like Chewbacca. (It did not). He used voice-to-text extremely loudly in his office, but only to send really personal messages. He shouted the same 7 references to old movies and awkward hip-hop song lines 100 times a day. He insisted on greeting all our international coworkers who, by the way spoke perfect English loudly, in "their language" and would then look around for approval afterward, even though he almost always messed this up.
That said, he had good sides too. He never hesitated to go to the mat for us whether we deserved it or not, and he gave really sage business advice. He even came to each community play I did in the four years I worked for him and told everyone else in the office how good I was in it for the following month and chastised them for not coming. When things really got serious or bad in my life, he couldn’t have been more accommodating. He was a weird guy, but he may be the best boss I’ve ever had.
57. Doesn’t Hold Water Glasses
I had a boss who would stop us in the middle of our work and hold company-wide meetings talking about his crazy conspiracy theories. Aliens, Illuminati, whatever, we were in the conference room watching his ridiculous Powerpoint slideshows. Mind you, we were a freaking furniture-making company. One month he got so caught up in his deranged theories that he didn't order wood to make any furniture for an entire month. I don't know how he hasn't been fired.
58. Crossing The Line
Back when I was studying, I worked part-time in retail. My boss was a terrible guy. On one occasion, he wanted to talk me into helping him commit insurance fraud. When I refused, he threatened to fire me if I told anyone about it. This incident was too much for me to deal with and I ultimately quit my job a week later. I will not be missing that guy any time soon…
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59. Above Your Pay Grade
When I was 18 years old, I worked part-time at UPS and also part-time at Burger King, which was more of a way for me to eat for free every day than anything else. This was in 2000 or 2001, so the minimum wage was still something like just $4.25 or $5.15 per hour. I really wasn't making much more than that at my job at Burger King.
One night, I'm working the drive-thru window when a visibly intoxicated couple comes into the dining room and orders some food. My manager was working the cash register, and one other guy was there "cooking" the food. The couple ordered a bunch of deep-fried stuff and we didn't have enough chicken tenders on hold, so the manager told them it would be a couple minutes while the tenders and fries cooked.
No problem, they were going to use the restroom anyway. The restrooms were down a hall and the doors faced each other, so we didn't think anything of it when they went down the hall together. After a few minutes, their order comes up and they're not back yet. So we bag it up and leave it under the heat lamps while we wait for them.
Two minutes quickly turns into five, and I'm busy on the drive-thru window this whole time so I pretty much forgot about them. An indeterminate amount of time goes by. Probably somewhere between fifteen minutes and half an hour. Finally, my manager asks me if I had taken care of that order and given the couple their food.
I told her no, they never came back for their food after going to the bathroom. She goes into the women's room and doesn't see anyone. Then, she opens the door to the men's room. That’s when things took a turn for the worse. I heard an extremely loud dry heave from my station at the window, which was at least a good twenty yards away.
My manager then came charging in from around the wall that separated the dining area from the work area, and it looked like she had just seen a ghost or a dead body. I asked her what was wrong and she just shook her head, telling me that she would take over the drive-thru window because I had to go and clean the bathroom immediately.
I geared up with my elbow-length gloves, goggles, dust mask, and slickers, not knowing what kind of a nightmare had been unleashed in that stall that I was about to walk into. Nothing, and I mean nothing, could have prepared me for what I saw in there. It looked like they had hooked up a colostomy bag full of mostly-liquid poop and semi-chunky vomit to a paint-sprayer and then blasted every single surface in there with the disgusting mixture.
The stall was totally encrusted. The door handle had poop smeared all over it. There was vomit in the sink, next to the sink, in the trash can, next to the trash can; just freaking everywhere I looked there was poop, puke, or both. I didn't even make it three steps into the room before my gag reflex reminded me that it existed.
My eyes were watering, my stomach was doing somersaults, and I was choking back my own barrage of puke when it hit me: Hey, screw this! "Nope. Not a freaking chance," I heard myself say. I choked out through gasps of air, "Not a freaking chance in your wildest dreams am I cleaning that up. Call HazMat." I was half-joking, not thinking that my manager would actually expect me to clean that up.
Boy, was I ever wrong. She immediately said, "Listen here. If that bathroom isn't clean by the end of your shift, then don't bother coming ba-" She didn't get to finish the sentence. I had already thrown my hat and shirt on the floor. "Sorry, Jill, but you don't pay me nearly enough for this garbage. I can find another lousy minimum wage job tomorrow. Good luck with that debacle in there!"
And with that, just like the phantom pukers, I was gone.
60. Soul Train
The most reasonable thing that I have ever been asked to do on a job was to train a guy, who was making more money than I was, to become my boss. Why on earth would I want to do that? It was so awkward and disrespectful that it made me strongly consider just quitting on the spot. Some people really need to learn how to keep their employees happy…
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61. Jailbreak
At one of the places where I used to work, federal agents swarmed the office with a search warrant one afternoon before shutting down all our computers in order to inspect the hard drives as part of some kind of investigation. Believe it or not, according to my boss, we were still all expected to stay at work for the rest of that day!
We all just puttered around for the next few hours without computers before we finally got sent home at the regular time.
62. A Sonic Boom
I recently experienced one of my worst migraines of all time. I was literally sobbing and vomiting out of control. I happened to have been working my shift at Sonic at the time, and my manager said that we were too busy for me to be allowed to leave. That’s right, this manager saw no issue with an employee vomiting in front of potential customers.
Let that sink in…
63. Doing a Bang-Up Job
I once slammed my head on a forklift and suffered a concussion while working at a summer job during high school. My boss sent me to urgent care to get stitched up; but as soon as that was done, he expected me to come back to work and finish the day. I thought nothing of it at the time, but now I realize that he was a serious piece of garbage.
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64. Showing His True Colors
At an office job that I once had, I was asked by my boss one day to organize a set of folders according to color. The only problem was that I’m completely colorblind. So, as you’d expect in that situation, I told my boss, “Yo, I’m colorblind!” and expected him to understand. Nope! He thought that this was me trying to get out of work, and threatened to fire me.
65. Giving New Meaning to “Swept Under the Rug”
A customer once accidentally spilled—or intentionally poured out, for all we know—an entire bottle of deer attractant on the floor under the shelves in the sporting goods section of the Wal-Mart where I used to work. My boss could not be bothered to ever clean it up. The whole store stank of deer urine for...well, actually, it probably still does!
After all, who has time to clean? We had ammo to sell!
66. Got It In The Bag
The most unreasonable thing that I was ever asked to do at work was to "hide" my breast milk after pumping it. I had the audacity to once carry it from the room I pumped it in over to the freezer area as if it wasn't a bag full of shame milk. This offended my boss very greatly, and he immediately stormed right up to me to make this demand.
67. Knows What He’s Doing
I worked for a boss who rarely thought about what he said before he said it. During my interview, he asked what my weight was. When he was thinking of selling the company and was walking Japanese investors around the building, someone heard him saying, “We really blew you guys up, huh?” And his foot-in-mouth issues didn’t only happen in one-on-one conversations.
I have video of him telling a really cringy joke during a sales meeting. You could see at least one person covering their face in embarrassment. For three weeks, he was mysteriously gone and then came back with a beard after his “secret” facelift. I have a box of pictures from the 70s of an exotic dancer giving him a lap dance. In the conference room. Same furniture.
68. Needle In A Haystack
Oh, where do I begin! I was once ordered by my boss to rake up some pine needles off of the ground. Actually, I was ordered to rake up "all of the pine needles." This job was on a campground. A campground named “Pinewoods.” A name which very accurately describes the scenery and atmosphere of the campground. Let’s just say that was a very long day for me…
69. Full Body Workout
I worked for a woman as her “personal assistant/cat sitter.” She was quite rich and off the deep end nuts. She had me order a mannequin online and then paid me to take one of the legs to Nordstrom to see which suitcase to buy that would fit the dismembered mannequin body because she wanted to fly with it to Pittsburgh.
She was going to display it “as her daughter” dressed in her daughter’s clothes at that daughter’s graduation celebration. Buying the actual mannequin was a whole thing too. She kept trying to get me to order from “adult doll” websites because she didn’t understand what they were actually selling. Yeah, I left that job as fast as I could.
70. Excuses, Excuses
You want to know the story of my worst boss? All I can say is...Jerry. Jerry wouldn't let me leave work to go to the emergency room after the heavy bleeding I had been experiencing suddenly got way worse. I went over his head and got permission to go from the higher-ups. I then called my mom and told her to meet me at the ER.
The ER nurse said he had never seen so much blood in his entire career. An ER nurse said this. It was then determined that I would need a couple of blood transfusions and would then be admitted to the hospital. My mom calls Jerry to inform him of all this. Jerry then proceeds to tell her that it's probably just stress and that I NEED TO GET BACK TO WORK RIGHT AWAY.
At this point, I couldn't even lift my own head up, but sure, I can take a bus across town and go back to work. I ended up needing another hospital stay later for a follow-up operation. They found a large growth on me that needed a biopsy. Jerry kept insisting that it couldn't be cancer because, if it was, I “would be tired and losing weight.”
What he hadn’t been aware of was that I had lost about eight pounds in under a week, and had been going to bed the minute I got home every day. I was still recovering from the procedure when Jerry called to let me know that I was being fired for taking too much time off. Five days later, I was diagnosed with cancer.
Screw you Jerry.
71. Not Very Appetizing
When I was 17 years old, I worked at our local Chipotle. My manager was cool sometimes, but when things got busy—and, keep in mind, Chipotle is almost always busy—she would sweat a ton. I didn’t have a problem with that, because I knew it was obviously not something that she could control. It was one particular habit of hers that was the issue…
Whenever she would sweat, she smelled really bad...and her idea of encouraging people would be to go up to them, give them a big hug, and say, "Here, have some of my sweat!" Now, Chipotle is a very open restaurant, as in you can see almost every employee while getting your food. This means that customers could see her doing this.
I saw customers leave on multiple occasions as a result.
72. No Active Thinking
My boss and I were hired around the same time. We had to do a safety training together. We were partnered together to discuss active danger scenarios. He told me he wanted security to dress like active attackers and surprise the staff of our branch. I told him he couldn’t do that. His face was completely serious as he asked me why not.
73. Do Your Job
He was a department head for a group of adults ranging from mid-20s to mid-60s, and in staff meetings, he said on a number of occasions that he needed to go "potty." He usually wouldn’t bother actually managing or coordinating but instead would take on some of the tech's jobs in IT like preparing new laptops for staff.
Problem was, he had no idea how to do this stuff. Often, if he did something, we'd have to redo everything because he ruined the machinery.
Also on casual Fridays, he would come to work dressed in these very puffy white long sleeve shirts as if he'd just walked off the set of Pirates of Penzance. Worst of all, he accessorized his prate shirts with puka shell necklaces.
74. Leaving You in Charge
I had just started working as an assistant at a daycare when the teacher in charge of the classroom got a call saying that her daughter had gotten into a car accident. She immediately left, and the boss told me that I was in charge of the whole classroom by myself for the rest of that day. As intimidating as that already was for me, it quickly turned out to be much worse.
The teacher ended up staying with her daughter all throughout her recovery process and then immediately took her vacation time for the year. This meant that beginning with that horrifying day, she was away for two full months straight. Naturally, you would think that they brought in a new teacher to take her place for all that time, right? Nope!
Little old me, with zero qualifications, was forced by my boss to look after the class on my own for two entire months—all the while being paid as an assistant!
75. The Early Bird Gets the Worm
I once had a boss who absolutely hated me. But after realizing that she wasn't qualified for the position and had already slept with two different guys at the company, I came to the conclusion that she was a joke and to just be dismissed. From that point on, I never paid much attention to her and when she'd show up at my building once every blue moon, I kind of just ignored her.
I was busy and didn't have time to play her stupid games. Then I learned that she had written me up for being late on three separate occasions. The first time I had been one minute late, the second time three minutes late, and the third time six minutes late. I lived an hour away from work and had to deal with traffic.
I left my house two hours early most days to account for this; but when there's a wreck on the road, there's not much you can do as the freeway is backed up and the side roads are clogged. Each time I got stuck in traffic, I called ahead of time to let her know. She still wrote me up each time in the hopes of eventually firing me.
But I had a plan. I started leaving the house crazy early. I'd get into work super early and then leave early in the afternoon. She haaaated it. Eventually, her behavior got her fired and people to this day remember her and laugh at what a horrible person she was. The best part? I also had that write up removed from my file, as it was recognized that she was treating many of her employees unfairly.
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76. Going Hungry
I work in a restaurant. One day, our oven broke; so we couldn’t cook any food. You’d think that would be viewed as a pretty big deal when your business is a restaurant! Nevertheless, the manager made us continue on with our jobs as normal, arguing that we could still sell salads (without the cooked elements), drinks, and cheesecakes. Our total sales for the day came out to $4.59.
That amount was from the cheesecake the manager bought for himself.
77. Not a People Person
My weirdest boss was a dentist. Once, he bought a mini basketball net for the staff room. He was so excited about it that he pretended the next patient’s tooth was miraculously repaired and sent her home. He had an hour free to play alone in between the table and our bags. Another time, he hired a company that made profitable efficiency strategies.
But when they were there, he spent the entire meeting interrupting them, saying how good he was and how he knew better than these guys. Still, as an exercise with the efficiency people, everybody in the team had to take a personality test. He was upset when he didn’t get the results he wanted. He made everyone wait as he took the quiz over and over until he got what he wanted.
78. Little Rearranging
My boss decided the reason we were struggling to keep to time frames was that our checklist wasn’t right. However, he had no experience in our field of work, so he didn’t know what we actually needed, which was more staff. But once he got it stuck in his head, and there was no talking him out of it. That's when I came up with a brilliant plan.
I redid the checklist with the same layout. I just changed the order of the items. He didn't notice the change, took one look, and decided that nope, that’s not it. I used the original version and put the checkboxes on the left instead of the right. That’s all I did. It was perfect because of his idea to “fix” it.
79. Stage No Coop
My first boss in America was a...strange man. He had an open-door policy and drank in his office. He started a small chicken farm in the back of the building and handed out live chickens to staff. One day, he had me and a co-worker try to slaughter one. All I could bear to do was nick it just a little bit and then shriek as it sprayed all three of us with blood.
He ran around the place with a wig on his head imitating me. He’d talk to Black people in a “Black” way. He would say, “wassup, shorty” to the ladies and call all the office's Black guys "Tyrone." He’d regularly fall asleep under his desk. The snoring was so loud that you could hear it in the front. Once, a client asked what the noise was, and I told her it was the plumbing.
His office is full of the weirdest things like feathers from his favorite chickens (that he had since consumed), a goat’s hoof, and a framed quote I told him a very high homeless person told me. One time, he dove head first into the wall while asleep and needed three stitches on his busted lip. He still insisted on snacking as usual. At one point, he sipped ketchup with a straw.
Even so, he’s one of the nicest bosses I’ve ever had—well-meaning, if a bit insensitive, all the while really fascinated by other cultures. He’d buy different cuisines for us to try weekly. He gave bonuses since he knew the job didn’t pay much, which was always a nice surprise. He paid my former co-worker who had to stay home caring for her husband when he got ill.
He still sends me photos of his sketchy farm and recently asked me to post his cucumbers online even though I stopped working for him three years ago.
80. Catch Me Nowhere Near That
I used to work for a family-owned company where my boss often had loud fights in the halls with her husband, mother, and sister who had issues with petty larceny and illicit substances. Once, for somebody’s birthday, my boss decided it'd be fun to buy an anatomically correct, male blow-up doll. She brought this doll into the office.
Then she blew him up and dressed him in a construction vest since the company was a contractor. When I walked by, my boss was trying to manipulate the position of the blow-up parts and asked me if I wanted to be the “fluffer.”
81. Movie Night
Back when I was the manager of a local movie theater, I had just got done working fourteen hours straight because someone had called in sick. I tried to submit payroll to accounting, but the fax wouldn't go through. I asked the accountant to go to the office, about two blocks away from her home, and see if she could fix it.
She said that she was too tired and that I should instead drive the fifty miles myself to hand-deliver it. I ended up doing so, because if I didn't then my staff wouldn't have gotten paid. However, I made sure that there were about eight nasty emails sent afterward to various higher-ups in our organization. A few weeks later, I quit that job to become a busboy. Single best career move I've ever made.
82. High Up There
I have a co-worker friend in a hospitality company that was giant. My co-worker had great experience and skills, and as a result, many executives wanted him for their department projects. When it was time for a raise, our manager, director, and executive director rejected him and low-balled him with an insultingly low counter offer.
So, he began looking for jobs outside of the company. The CFO and other senior VPs heard about said move, and reached out to him to get him to stay, and they worked it out amongst each other so they could share him in their special projects along with a hefty compensation package. Respectfully, he put in a transfer request.
The current manager, director, and executive director had to sign it, but they promptly refused. To make matters worse, they went ahead and wrote him up for "attendance" problems from months before. We're all salary and for the most part, project-based. Throughout it all, I was a fly on the wall as we shared an office.
Here I was laughing with him while he was in phone calls with the literal people who ran the company. He was told to ignore all that. They apologized to him and got the VP of Human Relations in on the meeting and explained the situation, which then launched an internal investigation unbeknownst to the three dumb jerks.
The ensuing storm that came down onto the three clowns is more than enough to make this story awesome, but the cherry on top? He is now their boss.
83. Causing McTrouble
I used to work for a super awful manager when I was working at McDonald's. This dude was horrible to us. He was constantly rude to us, bad-mouthing us to customers, and doing everything in his power to make us miserable. Well, so many people complained about him that he ended up getting fired. The new manager was great.
He was chill and understanding. A couple of weeks after he took over, the old manager came in and started going off about how terrible the store looked, how our service was worse than ever, and how much the store needed him. The new manager looked at him and said, "If you do not leave, then somebody is going to make you."
When he didn't move, the new awesome manager stuck to his word and called the authorities. The jerk is no longer allowed on any Mcdonald's property in the city and has a restraining order against him.
84. Elite Existence
I was waiting for a friend to finish work. She worked at a restaurant so fancy that they had someone vetting guests at a podium outside. The place was glitzy, and the folks were glam, so the great and good would descend in droves. Those with a reservation were sent in; prospective walk-ins had to queue. A car drove up.
The driver jumped out and held the door open to unleash a hat and dress. The woman accompanying said finery was a C-list actress from a regional daytime TV show, looked through everyone present, and moved to enter. She froze, appalled when the guest-vetter intercepted asking, "Did you have a reservation?" No response.
She mustn't have heard the question, but instead, drew herself up to the full height of her couture and demanded, "Do you know who I am?!" The maître d' replied: "Yes…back of the queue."
85. Could Ask You The Same
I was the food production supervisor when a guy came to the production floor with no facemask on. I approached and gave him an extra one I always carried. He got all huffy and refused to put it on, and he asked, "Do you know who I am?" I just said, "The guy who will be escorted out by security if you don't follow Good Manufacturing Practice."
I then radioed for security. He was the new operations manager, who I had never met. He stormed away, and I followed. He went straight to the plant manager’s office and ranted about me being out of line. The plant manager informed him that I was only doing my job and that everybody had to follow GMP on the production floor.
He wasn't satisfied and wanted me to be written up, but the plant manager said no. The operations manager said he would write it and did. I submitted a request for review with the HR director and regional manager. That was when he learned that the regional manager was my father-in-law, who mandated what constituted GMP. Sorry not sorry!
86. Nothing Personal
I was a property manager, and the owner was an absolute jerk. He was heartless and rude, and I loathed him. I hated going to the job every day, but I needed the money. I was applying daily to my dream company in hopes that eventually I’d get it. In the meantime, my supervisor would tell me to shut up when I complained.
If I mentioned anything to my supervisor, he’d tell me to shut up and to just get on with it because, “he was paying me too much to have opinions.” Three years after, we were a small office, and the receptionist and assistant managers had quit. My dream company finally hired me, and I happily put in my two-week notice.
In desperation, he offered more money, a higher position, and better benefits, which were laughable. When I said no, he asked why. I have never felt happier than that moment when I replied to him. I said, “I don’t know. I’m not paid to have opinions here.” That was a year ago, and even now, the look on his dumb old face gives me joy.
87. Can’t Keep Up
During an insanely busy weekend before Christmas, a Karen was complaining to every associate about how messy our store was. The manager had relieved the girl at the fitting room and was helping to hang up the clothes. Karen pulled her stunt and was trying to make a point that we were messy and a horrible place to shop.
The manager’s response was legendary. She told her, "Ma'am, we're messy at the moment because we're a popular store. And the biggest reason is because of women like you who can't be bothered to pick up after themselves. It's not the associates making the mess. Your type has us outnumbered." That’s when I witnessed someone deflate.
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88. Can’t Catch A Break
The most unreasonable thing I’ve ever been asked to do at work was to not have to go to the bathroom. I wish I was joking, but I'm not. My boss recently told all of the employees that there will be no more bathroom breaks. Considering we already don't get a second break and some of us don't get a lunch break either, I don’t know what they expect us to do. I also don’t think this is even allowed…
89. Thinking Inside The Box
I was making twelve dollars an hour as an office temp at a government office. My boss filled a box full of pepper spray, flares, and flashbangs. Then she labeled it "toiletries" and told me to take it to air cargo and send it on a passenger flight to one of our sites. I didn't want to face a potential prosecution for causing a mid-air accident.
So, I took the stuff for myself and distributed it to other projects within the same government department. A few weeks went by as they tried to determine what had happened to their stuff. Finally, my boss came into my office and said, "This is theft of over $1,000. We'll have to get the federal authorities involved."
I told her, "You can't do that without implicating yourself in a far worse crime. You should just forget about the whole matter." She was fuming at that point. Just about a week or so later, they suddenly canceled my contract with the temp agency and hired me directly at $24 per hour plus benefits. That was definitely not the result I had expected, but I’ll take it!
90. The Garden Of Eatin’
I was once working as a deskside technician for an IT company a couple of years back. One day, when things were quiet and we didn't have much to do on the job, my boss had me drive over to his house to pick grapes for several hours from a plant in his personal garden. I am quite certain that this was not part of my job description…
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91. Tending To Her Needs
I used to work as a bartender. On Good Friday, at 9:00 at night, a lady in the bar had the nerve to ask me to tell another customer to quit swearing because it was Good Friday. I told her as nicely as I possibly could that we're all adults and that I simply wouldn't feel okay with telling another paying customer to stop swearing.
My boss saw the conversation and then me walking away while the customer had a sour expression on her face. He asked me what that was all about, so I told him. He actually had the nerve to tell me that I needed to go and ask the guy to watch his mouth. Now, keep in mind that my boss was a cool guy, so I could generally speak openly to him.
Not the best bar manager, he was a banker before and got the job because he was the owner's friend and had just gotten tired of banking. So I responded to him like I wish I could've responded to her. Which was something along the lines of, “If the sanctimonious crazy woman is so freaking worried about swearing on Good Friday, then what the heck is she doing in a sports bar drinking?”
I added that I would literally walk right off of this job and quit on the spot before I would impose some random person’s will on another paying customer, who was just minding his own business and having a good time, all because of one individual’s personal beliefs. To which my manager said: "Good point. Screw her!" And that was the end of that little incident.
92. Not Believing In The Power Of Women
Women aren't allowed to lift anything at my job. Literally, anything. I was going to dump a trash can full of shredded paper in the dumpster last week and my boss caught me, made me put the trash can down, and go find someone to dump it for me. I was lifting the thing with one hand. It was all so ridiculous and patronizing.
As my job requires a lot of lifting and I hate asking for help constantly, I have mastered the art of picking up 50-plus pound boxes and running with them so no one catches me.
93. Please Be Warned
I work construction. We're not allowed to tell the new guys how many newbies tragically lost their lives in their first week. I hate it. Young guys don't naturally think about safety, many of them think that they'll live forever. Yeah, gravity doesn't care what you think, please stay away from the ledges, and open elevator shafts.
94. Gaslighting
My worst boss was the one who insisted I was imagining things when I told him there was a gas leak. He then told me to just keep working when I later told him I was getting lightheaded. When it turned out the next day that there WAS a gas leak—I reported it since I knew he wouldn't—and I confronted him about it, his reply was utterly chilling.
He told me that I should've just walked out on my job if I knew there was a problem.
95. There Will Be Blood
After dropping out of school, I had an evening job at the cinema for a brief little while. One day while on the job, I was physically attacked by a patron in the middle of the theater...and my boss still expected to carry on with my shift for another four hours. This despite my bleeding everywhere. Let’s just say I didn’t come in for another shift after that!
96. Car Trouble
I once worked at a company where the CIO (Chief Information Officer) sideswiped a woman's car as she pulled into a parking space. The woman who had the car that got hit got out and stood beside her car to see what damage was done. The CIO’s reaction made my blood run cold. She got out of her Mercedes and brushed right past the woman without so much as stopping to speak to her.
She completely ignored the employee and just walked away. Even with a ton of witnesses standing right there. The woman who had her car damaged had to go to the HR department, and the company cut her a check for damages—i.e. the actual business paid for it, not the CIO. She got away scot-free without ever admitting anything or paying anything.
97. Burn Baby Burn
I worked at the deli in a grocery store and we had to empty the oil from the chicken fryers. But we didn't have time to wait until they cooled down. So, we had to drain very hot grease and oil into huge buckets and walk those buckets a few yards over to the sink to dump them out. Yes, we actually dumped grease and oil into a sink by the gallon. This place sucked.
Here's the kicker, though: The floor was insanely slippery from all of the spilled oil. My greatest fear in life is being horribly burned, and here I am transporting almost-boiling grease over basically a 4-yard ice rink. I could have gotten badly injured. Thankfully, the last bucket was almost all water. But we didn’t all realize that at first.
When I took it up to the sink and dumped it, the contents splashed back up on me. The whole deli went completely silent for a second while everyone was looking at me, ready to go into emergency mode in case I was seriously burned. But luckily, like I said, it was mostly water. I was really shaken up by the incident and how close I came to having my whole life altered forever.
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98. My Boss Is a Heartbreaker
I had a doctor who constantly ignored patients in serious pain. He thought all of them were faking it to get pain killers. After a senior director at Microsoft, who he refused to do an EKG on and we lost to a heart attack in our ER, it was the last straw. I went to management and told them what I had seen. Thank God they fired him. I couldn't take it anymore.
99. What A Beautiful Sight
Over the course of six months, through countless phone calls to different union offices and the department of labor, I eventually got my boss fired for changing people's time-keeping information to steal overtime from them. During those months I was treated like dirt by this guy, but I never actually did anything wrong so I couldn't be punished.
At one point, management—against contract rules—denied my time off request to be at my best friend’s wedding and my boss brought me into his office and threatened to fire me. At this point, I had called the northeast district business associate on him, and I will never forget the look on my boss’s face when he realized I knew he couldn't do anything to me.
100. Mic Drop
I worked with an awful boss. He would always flirt with the young female staff and make us all uncomfortable, even though he was 50 years old. We all knew his wife and two young children, but about six months into me working there he began to “date” a 22-year-old customer. By date, I mean he used to go downstairs to his office and sleep with her—all while he was on shift.
No one was allowed to talk about it but we all knew. He knocked her up quite quickly and ended up breaking up with his wife, but he still flirted with his staff relentlessly even when his new baby was born. He once told a male employee that he liked asking female staff to pick up things from low shelves so we would bend over and he could check out our butts.
He always broke health and safety rules if he could get out of doing a task he didn’t want to. He was prolific at asking staff to clean human waste—vomit/poop customers had done on the floor—even though legally anyone cleaning that stuff needed to have passed a certain health and safety qualification. I spoke to my assistant manager about this and she confirmed that only management can do it, and I should refuse next time.
One day he demanded I cleaned up vomit in the male toilets, and I refused, repeating what the assistant manager told me. My boss went absolutely mad—he wasn’t used to people standing up to him. He told me to come downstairs to his office to speak about it. At that moment I knew I wanted to quit, so I told him I won’t be going downstairs with him.
He asked me why, and I replied: “The last girl who went down there with you ended up getting pregnant.” I lost my job instantly but it was totally worth it.
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101. Bait and Switch
I used to be a hostess in a pizzeria chain, and I worked with the worst waitress of all time. I'll never forget this family of eight who gave me—THE HOSTESS—a $25 tip on a $50 bill, all because they hated their waitress and I was the one who kept refilling their drinks. The waitress was beyond peeved, but my manager said to her: "Should have been paying more attention…the tip is hers." Best day ever.
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