so I'll tell hers.

My wife worked for a daycare about 30 minutes from our house. She graduated from college with me at the same time, and only got into child care because it was (quite literally) the only place that called her back for an interview - the job market sucked where we live. As a "bonus", though, she made $1 more per hour than a normal employee because she had a 4-year degree - bringing that grand total per hour to $9. Those of you who have kids, worked in the child care industry, or have been within 100 feet of a daycare center know what kind of work she did, and what she had to put up with.

One Saturday night, we're at home, and she keeps rubbing her eyes. I ask what's wrong, and she says her eyes are itchy, but she's fine. An hour later, her eyes are leaking goo and they're all red and nasty - a sure sign of pink eye (which is rampant among daycare centers). Of course, it's a Saturday, so both our doctor and urgent care is closed, so we head into the ER so she can get some antibiotics. After the typical long wait, we're taken to the back. The second the doctor steps in the door - a good 8 feet from where she's sitting - he says "You've got pink eye, I can see it from here!" - and not just in one eye, but both. He writes out the prescription and tells her not to go into work for 48 hours, since she works with kids.

Fast-forward to Monday morning. At her daycare center, the first chance an employee has of calling in is when one of the managers arrive, about 30 minutes before the center opens - and my wife's supposed to open. She explains the situation and that she won't be coming in, and the conversation goes a little like this:
Manager: "No, you're opening today, you're coming in - we can't spare you."
Wife: "But I've got pink eye, I'm infectious, the doctor said I can't work today."
M: "Well, your doctor's wrong. You're only infectious for the first 24 hours - only kids are infectious for 48 hours. Your doctor's wrong. Come in or don't come back at all."

She was furious but needed the job, so she went in. She left only a few hours later to see our regular doctor about an earache - it turns out, on top of the pink eye in both eyes, she had an ear infection in both ears. The daycare did let her stay home the next day, and I can assure you it wasn't long before she left there.

Without a doubt, the worst situation I had was about 15 years ago- working as an office nurse for a practice affiliated with a large public hospital.

I am a registered nurse and had an extensive history of working with cancer patients. The physician had a speciality in gyn-oncology, or "female cancers." He was 5 feet tall and maybe 120 lbs soaking wet- I was (and am) 5'10" and 250 lbs on a good day- so I am easily twice his size. He became very Napoleonic, often touting his power over me on dumb stuff. He loved to leave flyers about weight loss programs on my desk- but that's not even in the top 10 of terrible things he did.

One Christmas Eve, our department was "open"- some doctors in other offices had a few appointments, then let everyone go for the holiday. Not so in my office. Our doctor was busy in surgery during the morning and we were to restock rooms, file charts, etc- all busywork that could be done any time. He was back in the office at noontime and we all expected to be let go home. Nope. He instead came up with more busywork. At around 4 pm, my girlfriend at the time was ready to go to her folks and wanted me home, wondering why I was still there since every other physician office in the hospital had closed (she worked in one too). At 4:30, he came into my office and said I could go home early- when 5 was the time our office closed anyhow. Man was I mad!

The kicker was when he decided he wanted to go into private practice. His patients were not really his- they are a part of the hospital program/network. He wanted me to start ordering more stuff from the hospital dispensary (supplies, etc) and began making arrangements for renting a private office across town. He was talking about coming in one evening and basically stealing everything, including the patient records, for his practice. That's when my sense of ethics had to kick in and I left the job. You can jerk me around on a power trip and if I have to, I'll smile and get to payday as best I can. But don't make me break the law as well as potentially burn any bridges possible with the biggest hospital/employer in the area.

I was working on a small team of phone-based tech support for a financial services company. When I started, the pool of customers was small enough that we could verbally describe cases, and there wasn't a perceived need for call-tracking. As the team was growing, one manager left and a new one was hired. It was apparent from the beginning that the only reason he was hired was that he was working cheap. No management skills, much less leadership ones, no desire to become familiar with the software we supported, and he hired people who had no business even touching a keyboard.

After a failed attempt of implementing some call-tracking/knowledge-base software, we were instructed to start keeping track of our calls in Word, unless anyone came up with a better idea. Since I wanted to get into software development, I came up with a small program in Access to let us track and share cases. Very crude, but better than nothing (or Word).

I started working on an improved version, to make things even easier for us. At one point, this gem of a manager took me aside and told me that he had his own company (he had incorporated in a past career), and suggested that he and I join together. I could finish the application, and we could sell the improved software to our company, splitting the money. While I was thinking of the best way to get out of the dilemma, he took me aside again, and suggested that I make it "work, but not work too well." That way, we could sell upgrades to our company.

After finding my backbone, I went to his boss and reported both conversations. He was gone before the day was out, and things at the company improved dramatically.

My horror story is on going. I'm working on a website redesign project with my boss. We are adding open source frameworks into the application so that we can have core parts of the application that are well-tested and reliable (which is much better than the homemade code currently in place). We had to learn the new frameworks and how to use them, basically by reading the documentation, what there was of it, online.
My boss does not really know or understand java technologies well. He knows just enough to be dangerous. I was hired because I know them quite well. I worked in developing real-time java applications, client-side and server-side, in telecom for 6 years.

Upon trying to troubleshoot some bugs in my bosses' code, I was forced to tell him that his code was not working because the application design decisions were flawed (basically, you could not do what he was trying to do the way he wanted to do it). Upon hearing that, my 40+ year old manager went into a temper tantrum that would make a two year old ashamed. That tantrum lasted for THREE WEEKS.

Now, I can see design flaws in our web application but am so averse to invoking another tantrum of that magnitude, that I am forced to turn a blind eye to things that are inefficient or just plain wrong in order to try to maintain some pleasantness in my office, as I now know my manager's ego can not withstand any form of criticism (constructive or otherwise) or questioning.

I used to work for a company that gave me a couple dozen horror stories a month to share, but I'll go with the one that made me decide that a great job wasn't worth a crappy environment.

Even though my title was receptionist, I was actually an office manager/accounting support employee (they didn't want to give me the office manager title since they would have had to pay me more). At any rate, this company was ludicrously disorganized and I came up with systems that made the company run more smoothly. Or, they should have, had people been able to follow basic instructions, the most important of which was to never, ever refile something if they wanted to see it again. Another was that I had a LABELLED cubby-hole system for incoming and outgoing mail and I briefed my manager about where to go to find outgoing mail if he decided that something shouldn't go out after all (cue in horror music).

One day I came in to find my desk looking bizarre, with papers scattered all over. I suddenly realised that some of those papers had been in my LOCKED filing cabinet. Said cabinet's locks had been smashed. Some of the papers on the desk were PRIVATE papers from my PRIVATE and LOCKED office desk.

I thought we'd had a break in. Then the manager called me into his office.

He'd come in over the weekend and was looking for some mail he had given me Friday afternoon to mail out. It had been too late to go to the post office, so I had put it in the out going mail cubby.

Is first instinct was to check the top of my desk where I had a few neatly organized piles. When he didn't see his mail there, he felt that the only option was to check my filing cabinet, so he broke the lock and went in. There, he messed up all my files, but, of course, didn't find his letter. So, he went to the workshop, got a hammer, and used it to break into my desk. Needless to say, he didn't find his letter there, either, but he did find private papers (and my stash of tampons, but that's neither here nor there)....

The reason he called me into his office was to ream me out about my lack of organization....

With my jaw somewhere around my knees, I marched him back to my desk, pointed to the credenza with the neatly labelled cubbies, and pulled his mail from the hole marked 'mail--outgoing.' He said that he didn't realise the credenza was there and that I should have told him about my mail system....

He didn't apologize and I started a new job (paying 10K more) three weeks later.

Hey, this story isn't mine so it can't qualify for any amenities but it's still worth mentioning in your list (I think)... Check it out..
If you don't laugh out loud after you read this you are in a coma! This is even funnier when you realize it's real! Next time you have a bad day at work... Think of this guy, Rob, a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers in Louisiana. He performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs. Below is an E-mail he sent to his sister. She then sent it to radio station 103.2 on FM dial in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, who was sponsoring a worst job experience contest. Needless to say, she won.
Hi, Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother. Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you've been feeling down lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you realize it's not so bad after all.
Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job. As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office. It's a wetsuit. This time of year the water is quite cool. So what we do to keep warm is this: We have a diesel powered industrial water heater. This $20,000 piece of equipment sucks the water out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful temperature. It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose, which is taped to the air hose. Now this sounds like a darn good plan, and I've used it several times with no complaints. What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is take the hose and stuff it down the back of my wetsuit. This floods my whole suit with warm water. It's like working in a Jacuzzi.
Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my butt started to itch. So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a few seconds my butt started to burn, I pulled the hose out from my back but the damage was done. In agony I realized what had happened. The hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit. Now, since I don't have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn't stick to it. However, the crack of my butt was not as fortunate. When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into the crack of my butt ... I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator. His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with five other divers, were all laughing hysterically!!!! Needless to say I aborted the dive. I was instructed to make three agonizing in-water decompression stops totaling thirty-five minutes before I could reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression. When I arrived at the surface, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet. As I climbed out of the water, the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my butt as soon as I got in the chamber. The cream put the fire out, but I couldn't poop for two days because my butt was swollen shut.
So, next time you're having a bad day at work...Think about how much worse it would be if you had a jellyfish shoved up your butt.
Now repeat THIS to yourself, "I LOVE my job, I LOVE my job, I LOVE my job."

These are great stories! I just thought of a few:
*There was this total douchebag manager at the drug company I worked for. He truly was not friendly to anyone, was very haughty, and obviously fancied himself hot s--t. He had a collection of monkey and gorillas stuff in his office, including a large stuffed gorilla. One day, a co-worker was walking by his office and there was yelling at the gorilla and punching it in the stomach!
*At the same office, there was this group of executives who apparently were getting down with each other and wanted to get down with me! I suspected there was some sort of liasion going on with several of them via rumour mill. I started getting weird emails inviting me to swingers get togethers, and stuff like "1 oclock parking lot do you think it is ok to make out?." I was pretty freaked out once I realized it wasn't spam, and no one else had gotten the message, plus there were details about my office in the email, but the IT dept said they couldn't do anything about it, at this point I didn't realize it was from the top brass until I finally confided someone who told me it was from this group. Oh and they'd all sit together at lunch every day, and they ate nothing but soup! BTW, only one of them was reasonably good looking, had I considered to join their soup and sex cult.

>>Not only was it demeaning (I graduated college in the top 1%, had an esteemed career in London)<<

Since when is cleaning a demeaning job? I smell a bit of conceit here...

In high school, I worked at a local pizzeria. For the most part, it was a pretty good job, even if the pay wasn't great. One of my co-workers was the owner's brother, a man in his late 40s who wasn't exactly the brightest bulb in the box.

Every night, right before we closed, one of us had to mop the floor. That night the boss' brother ended up doing it, so he filled the bucket and started mopping while I washed the utensils and dishes. A few minutes later, my eyes started to burn and my nose clogged up. It felt like an unusually severe version of my typical seasonal allergies, so I blew my nose and tried to ignore it. Unfortunately, it just got worse and worse, until I stepped away from the sink-- and the bucket-- to get something. Suddenly, I started to feel a lot better. "What did you put in the bucket?" I asked him, suspicious.

"Just some bleach and ammonia," he answered.

I quickly took the bucket outside, dumped it, and then explained to him why that combination of chemicals was a bad idea. The worst part? About a month later, on a night when I was off, he did the exact same thing....

Note on those neck drippings, I actually don't find that unappetizing at all. I'm Chinese, and we eat duck necks and think nothing of it. The meat is a little sparse and stringy, and it takes a good amount of effort to gnaw it off the bone, but its still meat. Go figure

When I worked at Robeks one summer I encountered many customers of varying degrees of annoyance. Some customers are allergic to certain fruits or don't like it, so they will substitute the fruits. That is perfectly fine, but there are some customers that will substitute without reading nor listening to the fact that their desired smoothie is on the menu. This was the case with one customer. I was working the cash register when I received an order for a smoothie. She said that she wanted a Strawnana Berry (which has apple juice, non-fat yogurt, strawberries, and bananas) but wanted the apple juice to be replaced by orange juice. Even after I explained that that is the Infinite Orange smoothie (which has orange juice, non-fat yogurt, strawberries, and bananas), she was still adamant on having the Strawnana Berry without the apple juice. I would have put Infinite Orange in the computer to make it easier for the co-workers, but she wanted to check it. Later I whispered that it was an Infinite Orange but to call it out as it says on the receipt. We all laughed after her departure.

I once worked for a major consulting firm (pre-Enron, when I think it was one of the "Big 5"). My boss was, shall we say, *unusual* and his boss was even worse. Cases in point:

- My boss and I had a shared calendar on the computer system, in addition to our own personal calendars. He and his wife were attempting to conceive and every time they had sex he'd make the notation "sex" in our shared calendar. One day it was "sex, but no penet." Yum.
- He was furnishing his 1950s era house with period furnishings that he'd bid for on ebay. He'd often send me the links to the auctions asking what I thought of this chair or that table or whatever. I'm sure he wasn't the only one cruising auctions during work because one day there came a memo from IT letting us know that ebay'd been blocked from the firm's computer system. He forwarded the memo to me (although it was a firmwide distribution) with the note, "Thanks. I guess you clicked my links too often and now what? If I lose an auction because of this I'm coming after you. Are you prepared to buy stuff for my house?"
- When we shared a "collaboration desk" (read: extra wide desk with drawers on both sides) he'd be on the phone with his wife and they'd talk about the quality of the most recent activity he'd placed on the calendar.

And then there was his boss, who was less eccentric but more toxic in terms of my career:
- The year I was pregnant and received ALL "exceeds expectations" from my peers, subordinates and immediate boss, he refused to sign and finalize my performance review, stating, "You're locked in for at least a year, don't look at me for a raise when I don't have to do a thing for you - you're knocked up!" He was later the target of an EEOC action.
- At a time when I was routinely working 12-14 hours days as part of the team putting together the S-1. Once I was away from my desk for 15 minutes to take my laptop to the help desk to exchange it for another (had to pull MAJOR favors in to get a new laptop without going through channels) since mine had some problem he happened to ring. When he didn't get me he spent 20 minutes calling everyone he knew that I knew at the firm asking if I was at those peoples' desks. When I finally reached me at my own desk - with new computer in hand and ready to get back to work - he conferenced in HIS boss to listen to him yell at me about not pulling my weight.
- Took my name off of a document to hand it in to the CEO as his own. I had the last laugh on this one, though, because although he took my name out of the footer he hadn't thought to check for a watermark. The mark on that baby had my initials, cube number and a date. Man, he was furious. So worth it, though. I quit the next week.

Oddly, both these men were stunned into silence when I quit. I think they must have thought that I'd take it forever.

Retail anyone??

I worked for a major retailer for 18 years. It was quite enough. When I look back on the whole experience, I know I need a shrink. During that time I worked in 5 different locations. I worked my way up from flunky sales person to (as my store manager said) the "ONLY female manager for my box of business in the district". At S*ars it was known as 700-7 and consisted of hardware, lawn and garden, paint, sporting goods, and a wealth of seasonal shops. I worked my butt off to get that job and I knew a good 90% of what to do when I was promoted. What I did not do well was suck up to men who were intimidated by me.

There were no less than 1001 incidents in those 18 years that gave me nightmares, depressed me or somehow ruined my physical and emotional health. I was smashing glass ceilings all the way to area manager as if it were a trek to be president of the company or CEO. It was bad enough I had to put up with the store manager and the district manager (boo for vertical management). The store manager told me I should be ashamed because I made more than the other 26 area managers who were all men. Uhhhh excuse me! I WORKED to earn the salary I was paid. I brought home all the awards for the district, met all the goals, had the highest employee retention in the entire store AND had the best inventory out of all the other areas. That equals bonuses for me and him but he would rather have seen me fail than to earn him a bonus too. I did it all honestly and without playing with the books. He hated me because I was not a liar.

Following my divorce he had the audacity to tell me I needed to work longer hours now that I did not have a family to go home to anymore. He demanded that I work 70 hours a week because I was salary. He was notorious for changing my days off and the one weekend off I had every 9 weeks. Like the rest of you, I finally had a gut full and left, taking a demotion and relocating to a store 250 miles away all at my expense.

Now let me tell you of some of the customers....

- The woman that brought in a large zip lock bag full of dead newborn puppies. She slammed them on the counter and yelled at me that her brand new A/C had gone out in the hot August sun. She ran a kennel. I called in an emergency repair call for her and got word back that the A/C was clogged up with pet hair. I did not refund her money.

-The man who ran over a stump with his new lawn mower who came in drunk to THROW it at me. I told him the sign over the door did not mean he could assault me. I had him banned from the mall.

- The drunk sitting on top of the ladder one Saturday night in the Electronics department. He crawled up there to yell he needed help even though he could clearly see my co-worker and I each had a line of about 10 people each making their Christmas purchases.

-The man who came to buy his wife a sewing machine and pulled a stack of bills from inside his shirt and under his arm pit. EWWW!

-The cross-dresser who filled out a size 13 woman's shoe easily, wore gloves to cover his huge hairy knuckles and had on the same Aunt Bea dress every time he/she/it sauntered through the store.

- The whistler who walked the store daily for exercise and never ever stopped whistling.

-The man who had such foul breath we all decided he was rotting on the inside.

-The incessant line of men over the years that wanted to see the MANAGER. When I arrived in a business suit and asked what I could do for them they demanded to see a MANager. I told them I was it. &"W-o-MAN-ager"! Oh please, did I really look that ignorant? I know how to size up a well pump for a well, a water heater, tell you about the welds or the transmission in a lawn tractor! Anyone that thinks working retail is easy needs their heads examined. Retail is not for the faint of heart. I dare anyone to clean a paint machine, uncrate a semi-load of lawn tractors and assemble them in 6 hours and a host of other things like inventorying 900 pages of hand-written items w/ 36 items to a page, work 14 hour days at Christmas and walk the store to the tune of about 10 miles a day dressed in pantyhose and high heels.

Yeah, smile. You ARE S*ars. Where America Shops for Value.

Back when I was in college I worked part time as an office assistant for a delivery company. The company was run by one guy so when he hired me, it was just the two of us.

The first week was fine and we got along fairly well but then his normal questions like "what did you do for the weekend" started going down a personal path. He asked me if I had a boyfriend and what did we do for the weekend... he asked if my boyfriend stayed over night with me... then one day he started asking me about my menstrual cycle. He started asking me how long did it last, what time of the month did I have it...etc. CREEPY!!!!!!!!!!!

Because I couldn't afford to just quit my job, I started to feverishly look for a new job and every day dreaded coming in for fear of what he would ask me.

Then a few days later, one of the drivers came in (a woman)and she and my boss started arguing. The next thing I know, my boss lunged over his desk and he and the delivery woman were all out having a physical brawl on the floor.

I called 911, the cops came and arrested him. Needless to say, I never went back.

When I was 19 I punched a kid in the nose at work. He had been harassing me and I had enough. I stormed out, fully expecting to get a call from my boss saying I was fired. He did call, but instead he said, "It's about time someone did that to him." I think I broke his nose, lol.

My former boss could have been a partial inspiration for "The Office"'s Michael Scott. Let's call her Michaela.

Michaela owns a small software company. Aside from her controlling nature, Michaela's worst attribute is her inability to separate her personal life from her business. During company meetings she'd brief us on how the construction of her second home was progressing. Once she called a meeting to tell us how her sister was injured in a horseback riding accident.

Inappropriateness jumped to outright insanity when Michaela broke her leg. She broke it spectacularly enough to warrant surgery. Despite my loathing of the woman I didn't wish that sort of pain and weeks of physical therapy on her.

Most everyone was shocked when her son-in-law* announced that Michaela would recoup IN THE OFFICE. She had a hospital bed delivered to the small, one-floor office building. One employee was moved out of her office to convert the room into Michaela's new bedroom. To my astonishment some of the employees that weren't family members helped set up Michaela's room. Although I wondered if my non-participation in the proceedings would come back to haunt me, I refrained.

My jaw hit the ground when one non-family employee went from office to office asking for food donations to stock the kitchen for Michaela's recovery. I refused.

Michaela arrived with much kowtowing and wringing of hands. Everyone visited her hospital bed with get well wishes. I made sure that I was one of the last. After all, I deliberately hadn't helped set up her convalescent room or stocked her pantry.

Michaela's cat also moved into the office. This didn't bother me a bit. It did bother the employees with allergies. The allergy-suffering employee who dared to protest the cat's presence was accused of "trying to form a union." The matter was dropped. I'm amazed that no one sued.

As luck would have it my office was on the opposite side of the building from Michaela's new bedroom. The employees on the same side got to hear her wails of agony when she started physical therapy.

People started quitting during this time. Coincidence? I think not.

* In the few years that I worked there Michaela hired her husband, daughter, and son-in-law.