I worked at a heating and air conditioning company doing bookkeeping. I was being trained by the companies accountant. If I made a mistake the owner would literally scream at me full voice. I overheard him talking to his brother and his brother had told him not to scream at me. The owner said, "you have to tear them down to build them up." I decided I wasn't going to take another day of his screaming after that.

I worked at walmart for less than a month in 2009. I scanned a big box fan for a guy and it didn't ring up, so I said "I gotta do a price check on this, I apologize." The guy said "It's $24.99 you f***ing idiot." I stared at him for a moment, then reached up and turned my little register light off, turned around, walked out to my car, and went home.

I was working in a grocery store one time, and as I was checking people out, one lady came up to me and the very first thing out of her mouth was: "You're a failure and an embarrassment to humanity. If you were my kid I'd beat your [arse] right here right now." I had done literally nothing but ask how she was. Like what. Then her card declined lmao.

I ran the entire company’s financials and general management for $14/hr. I had a meeting with the owner telling him I need a raise and to hire an assistant, he told me I wasn’t “business minded” and should be a stay at home mom. I quit the next day.

When I was doing 90% of my boss’ job in hopes of a full time promotion that I had been promised for three years and he took all the credit and told me my promotion wasn’t in the budget.

Plumber. Owner of a mobile home called and said they had a stinky yard. I could smell it when I pulled up. the mobile home was new and had only been set up for about 8 months. while setting it up, someone didn't tighten a no-hub band of the toilet in the kids bathroom. 8 months of flushed toilet was all over the ground, under the home and had just started being noticed outside. I told the homeowner to call the guys that set it up to come fix it. I wasn't crawling under there.

Grocery store cashier. The customer was angry because her cereal had rung up wrong. I called a price check and this lady berated me the whole time. I recall that she accused me of trying to steal from her. Said she was going to get me fired. I looked at her and said, “I make $7.25 per hour no matter how much you pay for this cereal, so I do not give a [damn] how this situation turns out.” She stared at me in shock. The price check comes back saying the price scanned correctly. Silence. I said, “So do you want the cereal or not?” She said, “Yes.” And that was that. She did not complain to the manager.

When I was 20 I had 3 jobs. I worked as a bank teller from 8-4, then as a closing shift manager at a coffee shop from 5-10, then as an overnight janitor from 11- 2 am. This wasn't every day but it was enough that it equated to about 80 hours a week between the 3 jobs, and yes you can imagine this would lead to burnout real fast. So at the overnight janitor gig my "boss" comes over to me and asks me to come to the office for a review. This was weird, all I did was mop floors on a production line that made air train brakes. But whatever. I go into his office and he closes the door behind me and pulls out a gay porn magazine and starts asking me about different d*cks and put his hand on my shoulder. I was surprisingly calm and just said I don't like d*cks and went back to work. Then it hit me what happened. I called in sick the rest of the week and picked up my final paycheck when he wasn't there. It was a hard enough job without being sexually harassed for $8.50 an hour.

We removed a fabric foreign body from a dog's small intestine. Owners wanted to see what it was. We cleaned it up and saw it was a pair of panties. We handed them over the the wife takes one look at them then goes red. "Those. Aren't. Mine." Husband apparently had a whole castle of lies that started crashing down then and there in our lobby. Eventually had to have security remove them because they were really going at it with no intention of taking it somewhere else, and we had other clients in the lobby getting really uncomfortable.

I'm a public librarian. I was helping someone in the computer room and turned to tell someone he needed to keep his exclamations at the video he was watching down. Just then, the woman I was helping leapt aside because the man I was shushing pissed himself. It ran down onto the jacket he had tied around his waist, down the chair, onto the ground. Turns out he'd snuck in alcohol and was totally black out drunk. I told him he had to leave. He put the piss covered jacket on and stumbled out. As I returned with gloves and cleaning supplies, another patron decided this was a good time to complain about some kids who were making noise. I took a deep breath and said "This is a good time for us all to appeal to our higher selves and do our best in the moment. Please just adapt for a minute". Then I thought about the student loans I took out for the master's degree as I scrubbed up piss.

I used to work in a mall music store, back when that was a thing. There was a corporate policy to play new music regularly, y'know, because that's the thing you're trying to sell. My boss, every single day she worked, would play the entire Madonna album, Ray of Light. Hours of the same eight [goddamn] songs. For most of a year, until it was either go mad, commit murder, or bail. I bailed. That music franchise went under a little over a year later. I hold Madonna and my old boss responsible.

I have an mildly irrational fear of spiders. I was asked to help clean out an old storage area/shed type building. It was covered in dust and a ton of these big black spiders but a big enough space that I felt fine. Until my supervisor handed me a leaf blower and asked me to go through a back hallway with it. Opened the door to the hallway and it was cramped, just tall enough to be a little over my height and just wide enough for me to walk through. Except there was no light so it was pitch black, until I held up my phone flashlight and saw the largest mess of tangled webs filled to the absolute brim with thousands of the big black spiders. Straight up refused to walk down that thing, especially with a leaf blower. Like no thanks, I don’t want to create a spider tornado. My supervisor was irritated with me that I refused to do this, but I would rather be fired than walk through the arachnid hell hallway for 10 dollars an hour.

When a thick stream of sweat drained out of this girls cell phone case. I had to explain to her that her phone had water damage and that she shouldn't work out with her phone in her bra, all the while trying to be professional and not gag while cleaning the mess. (I sold phones at Sprint).

Bartender here. Grown man threw a lit cigarette at my face and threatened me with physical violence. This was a year or so ago but a 45 (maybe older) year old man behaving that way towards a 24 year old female was definitely one of those moments. Plus the people getting handsy and occasional cleaning of vomit I do not get paid enough.

Bagging groceries at a major supermarket. The manager came over to tell me that I needed to clean up the bathroom. An elderly gentleman fell off the toilet while pooping and it was a literal s**tshow. Apparently I was the most qualified because I was 16. I was handed a broom and a dustpan. I s**t you not (sorry had to.) My reward for going above and beyond the call of duty? Five dollars in store coupons. Sometimes dreams really do come true.

I used to be a counselor at a methadone clinic. Had a client who was going to prison for slitting the throats of his ex-wive's beloved rottweilers because "I couldn't kill her and it was the best way to hurt her. " The day he was supposed to go to prison, he showed up at the clinic, after dosing hours, demanding his dose. He was no longer on the clinic so, legally, there was no way to do this. I stood behind the counter and tried to explain the situation to him. He grew more and more irate and then called his lawyer and put me on the phone with him. His lawyer explained dude didn't show up for prison, was now a fugitive and had pulled a knife on his own sister in her car just outside my clinic. So, dude had a knife. Lawyer told me not to piss dude off. He was violent and to call the cops. By this point, every other therapist and office worker had mosied out. So, I told the lawyer thanks, hung up the phone and mosied out of the front office and called the cops from the break room. Dude hopped over the counter and trashed the place and left. The bosses asked why I didn't stay and make sure he didn't trash the place. I explained they paid me $10.50 an hour and refused my raise. I was the only man in the building and was left alone with an armed violent felon. [Screw] their stuff.

Doing volunteer work and some busybody started bossing me around like they were in charge (a neighborhood association type person). I told them to back the [hell] off. It took a couple of seconds for people to realize that the person barking orders wasn’t a boss, but an a-hole that was used to being in control.

Worked at a retail store. Fiends would come in occasionally looking to steal stuff and the worst we could do legally was ask them to leave but my boss insisted we get physical with them, to which I obviously told her [hell] no. I watched her chase one out of the store one day and she screams at me since I’m standing by the door like “TACKLE HIM” and I’m like uh no lmao

Manager at a grocery store I worked in my teens refused to pay the waste management bill for several months. When they finally came and emptied the dumpster, there were still mounds of trash laying about around the area. He had me go out and clean all of it up alone. I didn't have any protective gear or supplies whatsoever, and was out in 100+ degree weather. I was only given a bunch of trash bags to put it into, and when I went in to ask for help, I was just given a shovel. I worked one more day after that, and after just being given more work to do without so much as a "good job" or "thanks", I never went back.

Working at a large chain retail store, come across a spot of s**t in the toy aisle. Oh, look! A mess for me to clean! And what’s that over yonder? Another one not far away! Nice little trail of brown nuggets left behind and leading me on the worst scavenger hunt ever all the way across the store to the bathrooms. What do I find waiting for me inside? The mothership turd, sitting proudly in a small heap on the floor in the corner. Merely a few feet away from an actual, factual, functioning toilet. Turns out a kid was in the toy aisle with their parent, and couldn’t hold it in any longer, followed by a mad dash to the bathroom. My supervisor literally said they felt bad for me, and I didn’t get paid enough by corporate. Raise? No. 5$ gift card? Yeah.

Used to work at a gadget shop - loads of silly squeaky things, things that flew about, novelty gadgets etc. - you get the picture. We always had to wear something from the novelty clothing range. One day I wore an apron that depicted a buff guy (I'm female), and my male co-worker wore the female version. During that day I had so much abuse. I asked my manager if I could change into something else and she said that it was a talking point. I had people calling me all sorts - from fat to idiot, to questioning my true gender and sexuality. I had some teenage boys push me into some of the shelves and then made me fall into one the central box tub things we had that held lucky dip products. Still my manager wouldn't let me change. I quit. If she had said that I could change after the first few incidents, then I would have been ok. But seeing the abuse was reducing me to tears and still not doing anything about it? It wasn't worth the pay cheque.

I worked at circuit city when I was 17. Heard a noise of packaging being opened in the movie section, found a guy crouched down cutting open dvd boxes & stealing the discs. He looked at me, held his knife out and said "Got a problem?" I just replied "I don't get paid enough for this" & backed off. I went to the back room of the warehouse area to call a manager to tell them what happened. Never could get a hold of anyone so I just chilled in the warehouse area for a half hour to decompress.

First day at the health department, I'm left at the reception desk alone while literally everyone else in the office went out to a farewell lunch for the person I was replacing. As I was on 90 day probation, wasn't yet licensed and badged, my pay was $7.96/hr. I'm sitting at reception, and some redneck comes in with a leaking garbage bag and drops it on my desk. It contains a newly beheaded javelina head. His buddy had been bitten, and it needed to be tested for rabies ASAP. I had no [damn] clue what to do with a leaking garbage bag of javelina head. He couldn't wait for others to return, so he left a number and split. Turns out, we don't do that sort of thing at the health department. Guy refused to come back.

I was a manager for a well known lingerie store. Our location was in a failing suburban mall. The store was giant and shaped oddly. There were dressing rooms in odd hidden corners and a few blind spots. The store was located at the end of the mall next to other stores no one really went to, so there wasn’t much foot traffic. We were also always short staffed because no one wanted to work out there. All of those factors made us a prime location for thieves and weirdos. I would have to do laps around the store due to its layout, and I would regularly come across people doing sex stuff in this one secluded little dressing room. The dressing room was in a sort of alcove and was the least visible spot in the store, so it was prime real estate for all kinds of shenanigans. It ranged from women doing strip teases for men, to catching couples having oral sex, to catching couples having penetrative sex, to catching men masturbating. The final straw was catching a man at closing time, masturbating into a pile of cotton panties with the dressing room door wide open. I couldn’t take it anymore. I put in my notice the next day. And what was crazy was that corporate always shrugged or laughed it off when I would call and complain that we needed a security guard. I was 21 at the time, and every woman that worked their was between 19-30; it was a safety issue, and they’d also blame us for all the merchandise theft, which we were unable to prevent because their weren’t enough bodies in that gigantic store to prevent it. I was also dating a guy who also worked in the mall, and he told me that they finally closed up that one dressing room not long after I left. He said a lot of folks were pissed because apparently that one little dressing room was a well-known open secret spot for hooking up.

I used to work at Old Country Buffet, and there were kids who would eat until they threw up- like alllll the time- This one case that is seared into my mind was when I was once fixing up the salad bar and I heard ‘Billy Run!’ screamed from an ignorant parent and then I see this 12ish year old boy running to the bathroom, only he didn’t make it. An unholy amount of undigested red Jello-O came exploded out of him like a volcano all over the Caesar Salad, the floor next to the cash register, and on about 5 or 6 diners waiting in line to get in. It looked like he had literally vomited his guts out in an arc about 10 feet in diameter. I had to sweep up the chunks with a broom until a dishwasher with a mop could take care of the rest.

Working in a grocery store meat department during Thanksgiving, when every third customer asks if you have any larger turkeys in the back. And insists you go back to the walk-in freezer and sift through multiple pallets of frozen turkeys for the 80th time today.

Fish monger in a grocery store. We got a large number of lobsters in, soft-shelled and already dying. So my manager decided we could at least sell their tails. Apparently lobsters don't really have a central nervous system, so when you sever the tails and put their tails on ice they freaking run away. So I had to chase these tails down because they've escaped into the rest of the display case, onto the floor, and hidden under our prep tables. Never again.

Working in a psychiatric hospital (19F), extremely psychotic, pregnant w twins young woman would only talk to the “girl in the cactus scrub top” (me). Naive me wanted to help this women, the only way she said she would cooperate is if we were behind closed doors, which would NOT happen, obviously, but we did the best to make her comfortable within protocol. She was also completely naked. Anyways, security in the door, two staff outside and me trying to console this psychotic women who LOVED my cactus scrub top. She decides she finally wants to get dressed and wear my shirt so she pushes me up against the way and tried to take it off. Security was on her quick and I was out the door. $15 entry level job, pretty much fresh out of high school, one of many stories.

After 4 months of not seeing my family because I was working full-time and only getting one day off a week, I finally quit without notice when they were gonna make me close last Thanksgiving. I had already requested and approved the day off a month prior. I left and never came back. The GM even tried pulling the “you can’t quit you’re fired” ahaha