25 Times A Job Made People So Miserable They Lost The Will To Go Back

Most people are willing to tolerate a lot for their paycheck. A job allows them to afford responsibilities, pay bills, and cover the essentials. However, some work experiences can become so unpleasant that people lose the motivation to return to the office. Whether it’s difficult customers in retail, poor management in small businesses, or incompetent coworkers, Redditors online have been venting about the frustrating aspects of their jobs that pushed them to realise they needed to get out post-haste!

#1

Image source: The_RabitSlayer, Getty Images

I got red in the face yelled at for chatting with my coworker, WHILE we were both fully working and the two of us were among the best performers on the site. Two weeks notice got put in within the week.

#2

Image source: cdsbigsby, Hrant Khachatryan

There was a girl who I had the biggest crush on ever since we met in kindergarten. She moved away for college, and we got to talking, and I found out she had a crush on me, too. She came back home for a spring break from college and we hung out the entire time. I was scheduled to work (as a cashier at Meijer, for like $7.25/hr) on her last day home. I called and quit so I could spend one more day with her. Worth it.

#3

Image source: Brattney985, Getty Images

Boss said lesbians are a waste of a life because they’re not doing their duty to men in bearing children. I’m not even gay but it was more than enough to get me to leave.

#4

Image source: Party_Sea3522, Curated Lifestyle

I worked at a preschool where my supervisor, who happened to be a good friend of two of the aides, had them spy on me. I decided to turn in my resignation. Before I did, she called me into a meeting with the HR director. While I held the letter behind my back, they said I was being laid off. After the meeting, I ran the letter through the paper shredder, and I was able to collect unemployment insurance! I felt I had gotten even! I did go back to teaching, but I found a job that I loved in a public school. I went from the worst job I ever had to my favorite!

#5

Image source: ShutUpLiver, Natilyn Hicks Photography

Listening to my maga boss rant about politics while we have 3 undocumented employees that he RELIES on to run his business.

#6

Image source: OkCastor, Getty Images

I was a young professional at the time and one of the older partners had me drive his wife to her hair dresser and wait for her to be done, i then had to take her grocery shopping, carry the groceries in and put them away for her and when she told me to vacuum her carpet before i left, i said no. By the time i got back to the office my partner was red in the face and said that if his wife tells me to do something, it is like he was telling me to do something. I told him to write me up, which he did and had HR present it to me that i was insubordinate for not vacuuming his wifes carpet.

I ended up leaving a few weeks later after a lateral move to a more progressive firm. I have that write up framed in my office as it is so ridiculous.

#7

Image source: RickySpanish74, Getty Images

I had a job that didn’t pay us during the holidays. Working a full time job that claimed they “didn’t have the money right now to pay all of their employees”. It was a small “mom and pop” type employer so I get that times were hard but d**n that sucked. We went 3 weeks without a pay check. Caused me to fall behind on rent, car payment and paying back my student loans. I left that place as quick as I could land something else.

#8

Image source: Unusual_Purpose_7185, Vitaly Gariev

Passed over for promotion then tasked with training up the external hire who got the job, as I was one of the most competent people on the team. Notice was handed in and I walked less than 2 months later.

#9

Image source: Sufficient-Wafer-244, Adam Winger

Working in a library, having to deal with parents not understanding that the library is NOT a daycare. Do not leave your kids behind…

#10

Image source: Throw-a-weigh5, Getty Images

That I’ve never received a review or raise in the 5+ years I’ve been at my current job. When brought up I received blank stares and they questioned my loyalty?

#11

Image source: skavinger5882, Getty Images

When I was in college I worked a retail job, I always got stuck on the closing shift. The store had a policy that you needed 2 departments worth of people there with the manager when they locked up the store. My department had the most individual items (lots of small components) so repriced and restocks always took forever, so we were basically always stuck there until the very end (generally about 3 hours after our scheduled clock off because there’s always 1 other department that for one reason or another had a very long closing each day).

One day we decided we would work our a**es off getting everything ready so we can leave on time for once, we get to 15 minutes before the normal clock out time and our supervisor goes and gets the manager to do a walk through and ok us to leave. He says there’s something wrong, when we ask him what it is he refuses to tell us. We proceed to spend the next hour trying to find anything out of place, and find nothing. Finally once we are the last department not finished he tells us, turns out literally 1 item on one of the end caps wasn’t straight (it was slightly crocked). I literally screamed in his face chucked my badge at him and walked out the emergency exit.

#12

Image source: a_valetine, Getty Images

Witnessing my boss having an affair *in the office* with someone. He’s married with kids, and the woman is like. Sort of the worst person you can imagine in a workplace (unreliable, irresponsible, unorganized, immature, unprofessional, unkind, the whole shebang). The woman came up to me afterwards and begged me to keep their secret, and my boss couldn’t look me in the eye for WEEKS but never brought it up and never apologized to me. Afterwards, the woman tried to get me fired.

#13

Image source: LPNMP, Kristine Wook

Cleaning bodily fluids for $7.25 an hour.

#14

Image source: Ferreteria, Sammyayot254

A wiring closet was built on the 1st floor where a bathroom used to be. Guess what was on the 2nd floor above it?

There was a sewage leak from the 2nd floor.

I was the IT guy. They thought it was my problem to clean it up.

#15

Image source: not2freaky

I was told the oily stains on my work shirt were highly toxic dioxins.

In my 20s, went to work replacing the “mung” lines of a plastics plant. We were given yellow rain suits, rubber boots, and face shields and told to power wash the 3 ft diameter pipes, taking the tar-like substances and putting them in special metal barrels for disposal.

When we need to get a new barrel, I had to go to the safety office to sign it out. The dude there freaked out when he saw the tiny black specs on my shirt.

Needless to say, after his explanation of how very very bad this was, I took the barrel over to my supervisor, took off my shirt and put it in the barrel, AS PER SAFETY GUY INSTRUCTIONS. Walked over to my car. Kicked off my boots and jeans and drove away in my underwear.

That was how I quit.

#16

Image source: LariRed, kevin laminto

About 26 years ago I was working at a video store and a customer threw change at my head when I had to validate her birthday. My boss had to stop me from punching her in the face.

My appendix blew up two days later and I lost the job anyway. Boss didn’t care that I was having a medical emergency so I walked through the door via an ER. About a year later, his store was taken over by Blockbuster. Karma.

#17

Image source: HumanNipple, Curated Lifestyle

Retail jobs, multiple of them. One that really put me over the edge. Guy paid for something on layaway. Once you pay it off you get the item but it’s not on site and is shipped in. Out of my control as an associate, out of store managers control too. We did not have the item yet, impossible to get it that minute he wanted it. This guy berated me for 30+ minutes like it was my fault. Store manager was almost zero help. He just let me get yelled at me over and over. I finally got the situation sorted and the dude left without his item. Afterwards I nearly cried in the parking lot sitting in my full motorcycle gear beside my bike. A friend I hadnt seen in years happened to see me and say Hi. Normally I would have talked to him forever. But I was absolutely destroyed by that customer, I basically just said “hey” and that was pretty much the extent of it. That was basically the moment I decided to go back to school, got an internship and worked myself into technology. Retail is FINE 95% of the time but it’s the 5% that eats your soul alive. I hope that guy chokes on a rock. .

#18

Image source: asskickinlibrarian, Vitaly Gariev

My coworker asked why her emails weren’t being sent and others weren’t receiving them. She was writing them in Microsoft word.

#19

Image source: Wide_Cockroach9762

Worked at a fast casual restaurant as the kitchen manager. Open-line restaurant, and during busy times I would jump on the line with my staff to push food and service.

Company was trying to squeeze profits and the GM started cutting my prep cook staff early, leaving me with more work (I was salaried). Was happening every day for months. Longer hours, no extra pay.

One day I’m on the line during a rush helping push service. Owner of company is sitting with his son in a table right in front of. Son is 18, just graduated high school. The owner handed his son the keys to a Jimmy John’s franchise as a graduation gift. Kid had never worked a day in his life.

And it hit me, that all these extra hours, and penny pinching, and labor cost for the last year, just went into the hands of this pimple faced dude who has probably never bagged his own lunch. This was 5 years ago.

I quit the next day. Told myself I would never work a job where my wage was not directly tied to my effort and performance. Got into sales.

Made $150k last year in a LCOL area. Coming up on 1 year in the house I bought with my fiance. Getting married in June.

#20

Image source: SeniorTailor1127, Jeff James

There was a piece of equipment in a crawlspace that needed replaced. I opened the door to the crawlspace and saw the device about 50 feet away, through a forest of spider webs.

That piece of equipment is still there, still broken, and won’t be replaced.

#21

Image source: CharacterSuccotash5, Ahmet Kurt

When a girl pissed herself while in an interview with me, soaking her chair, the floor and there was so much that we could see her path when she left.
Turns out she had also pissed on all our waiting room couches.
I was told that because I was health & safety rep, I had to clean it up. As H&S rep I had the place closed to be decontaminated. Honestly, eff them.

#22

Image source: Scabeater420

I worked for a construction company where they paid me every week. Then switched to every other week. Then the pay checks started bouncing. I started cashing my pay checks immediately after I received them. One day the owner called me in and questioned why I was cashing my paychecks and questioned me if I this was just a job or a career blah blah blah. I told him what I do with my paycheck is none of his business. Two days later I was laid off. Kept me from having to quit and I got unemployment.

#23

Image source: neoprenewedgie, Curated Lifestyle

I worked for a video distance learning program in the 80s-90s. I had a cool job doing some computer graphics and video production, but I also had to recycle hundreds (thousands?) of VHS tapes that had to be de-labeled, and the stickers did NOT come off easily. One day in frustration I just blurted out “can’t we hire somebody to do this?!” My boss smiled at me and said “we did.”.

#24

Image source: Cyanide-candy, Vitaly Gariev

There were multiple moments that made me realize I definitely wasn’t getting paid enough getting yelled at, insulted, and even reprimanded for asking why I had to make up hours as an exempt employee just because I went to a medical appointment.

But the breaking point was when my boss, who was also an attorney, advised a client to hide money from the local tax department to avoid a lien. That’s the kind of thing that can get us disbarred, and yet it was treated like nothing.

The next day, I left a three-page resignation letter on his desk and my coworkers’ desks and walked out before he even got to the office. By the end of the summer, the rest of my coworkers followed and left the firm too.

#25

Image source: Arbiter_89, Stem List

I was a QA tester for a video game.

I submitted a critical bug for a piece of content made by a designer for an expansion to our MMO. That designer came over from across the building to yell at me, saying my bug was invalid. I didn’t argue. I didn’t do anything when they closed the bug as invalid. I didn’t complain to my boss. Some co-workers came to see if I was ok.

A few weeks later they were having a public reveal on a test server where people could try out the content for free for like 3 days. This designer’s content was the first level of the expansion content and because it was broken, players couldn’t access anything.

I swung by her desk and saw her with her head in her hands as the lead producer and senior producer were standing over her.

About 2 months later she was laid off.

Our team had this weird tradition where if someone was fired or laid off people who didn’t like them would collect their name tags. It was sort of a trophy to say “I outlasted this person.” Some people would also grab the name tags to “protect them” from someone else keeping it as a trophy. It started with our boss at his previous game studio, and he brought it to our company. It was a very weird and macabre tradition that largely existed because layoffs were frequent. I tried to avoid it as much as I could because I felt it was a little infantile.

But I made sure that I collected her name tag when she was laid off.