Welcome to Work Sucks, the column where you get to complain about your most terrible, lousy, soul-sucking jobs. In this issue, we've brought you more of the best of your worst work stories from the past year.
I work in Apparel at a department store, and I usually have to take care of the fitting rooms, like making sure clothes get hung up and put back and such. So, last week I get to work and began to check the ladies fitting rooms, and I get to the big one that's supposed to be reserved for handicap and women with small children, but some of the other employees will let whoever in. When I open it, I see hangers everywhere, and 2 pairs of jeans stuffed underneath the bench. Assuming that someone had stolen jeans and left their old ones, I get down on my hands and knees and go to pick them up. Well, they were our jeans….and they were wet. Some lady who was trying on jeans peed in them and on the floor, and I got to discover it. I immediately dropped them and sprinted from the fitting rooms to the bathroom (that is on the other side of the store) to wash my hands. I washed them pretty much raw, but even so, I feel like they will never be clean.
- Anonymous
i work as a cashier in a supermarket and we get the occasional nutcase, last Thursday evening i sold 35 bottles of milk (6 pints each) to this odd gentleman. That's a total of about 210 litres. i asked him what it was for and he told me that he wished to bathe in it. After staring at him blankly, he continued with, 'you know, like Cleopatra?'
- Anonymous
In my first year of college I worked at Abercrombie and Fitch (kids) store. It was a pretty boring job. Folding clothes, setting up new sets of clothes, saying the crappy tag line, checking out and changing rooms. One day I had to work the changing rooms. I see three girls who are like 12 years old and a botox mom with them all carrying lots of victoria secret bags. (Why 12 year olds need to buy lots of stuff from victoria secret I do not know…) So this girl grabs probably 15 items and I told her she couldn't take all the items in the changing rooms. She starts getting hissy and calls her mom over saying how I wouldn't let her in the changing room. I had to explain to her mom why 15 items weren't allowed because you can only take 5 items of clothing into a changing room. Her mom tells her to give me the clothes she doesn't want to take into the changing room. Well the girl starts throwing the clothes at me! When she finished throwing the clothes at me. I asked her, "Is there anything else I can help you with little princess!" Her mom asked for the manager and complained about me. My manager took me to the back room. Right when we entered he busted out laughing. He said that was some funny shit you said but don't ever do that again. My manager told me to just stay in the back room till they left and do nothing.
- Justin B
I worked at a store for a few months, nothing out of the blue. As time went on tasks became more and more weirder. It used to 'Get stock'….'Thanks' then it was 'could you count the trolleys please? cheers' then I had to check a fuse, guess how that went. Soon time went on and I noticed they pay wasn't matching the agreed contract. 4.98 was meant to be my pay but I got 3.69. So I complained and they said it went well according to them, but I knew something was up. So I left and started bugging the company. Turned out it was the company's fault, wrong contract. So now im stuck with NOT getting the pay that I thought id be getting but now they owe me holiday pay AND compensation. Now they know how it feels to get fucked over. – - Connor H
A few summers ago I was assigned to work on an outdoor electrical panel in a park across the street from a very busy tire shop. Around 7:00 AM, I pulled my marked company truck on to the sidewalk about ten feet from the panel and went to work. With tools in my hands, wires sticking out from the panel, and elbow deep in circuit breakers, a man walks across the street from the tire shop and stands right next to the door of my truck watching what I'm doing. As soon as I noticed him I looked over my shoulder and said hi. He said hi back and then added "So…you're an electrician huh?" Without any hesitation I shot back "Nope, brain surgeon." After a moment of silence he genuinely asks "Really?" I turned around and saw that the guy had the most puzzled look on his face. I started laughing and pointed to the door of my truck. The guy read the whole company name out loud before it hit him that I wasn't really a brain surgeon.
- Anonymous
I absolutely fucking HATE hearing the following phrase when a customer's item either won't ring up or doesn't have a bar code: "If it doesn't ring up, it's free right?" Every fucking time.
- Anonymous
I work in customer service at a big name home improvement retailer. Every time I get a complaint on the phone the customer demands to know my name. I always tell them David, and only because there are more David's in our store than any other name. When they ask for a manager I call one of my friends from another department. He answers the call, gives the name of an actual manager and proceeds to act like an asshole before hanging up. Today I wondered, "How have either of us kept our jobs?"
- Anonymous
I used to work at the airport as a "meet and greeter" for passengers coming to take the cruse ships. As I was coming in for my shift to replace another co-worker, this frantic woman came at me, shook me by the shoulders, cussed me out and screamed about how we had been late to pick her up and how she was going to sue the entire company and made sure I was fired. Turns out the co-worker who I was to replace had ditched work to fool around with his girlfriend, thus, missing the lady. She was the captain's wife. I was still fired.
- Anonymous
I work at a gas station that still utilizes full-service. Typically, customers will have the attendant (me) pump gas, and at most check the air in the tires or wash the windshield. The overall process takes about 3-5 minutes. This particular guy (around 25) had me check essentially everything that can be checked not once, but twice. After pumping his $12 worth of gas (cheapskate), he literally flipped a nickel to me and said, "Go buy yourself a coke". Dick.
- Will U.
I worked part time at Best Buy once as a second job for extra cash. By and large, it was an enjoyable job, but every now and then we'd get irritating, condescending and downright rude customers. Being a job I didn't actually need, I never hesitated to fight fire with fire when it came to these people. I would routinely menace, intimidate and threaten rude customers. Because of this, my co-workers would sometimes pawn off their nightmare customers onto me because they knew I didn't give a second f*ck. I would then post the stories on Facebook for the amusement of my friends. My supervisor was one of my friends. While I'm sure he felt like he should speak to me about my behavior, he never did, because when I wasn't chasing rude customers out of the store, I was usually making big sales and exceeding store budget. Let this be a lesson, kids: If you make an asset of yourself, you can make an ass of yourself with no consequences.
- Anonymous
I am unemployed, so that kinda sucks.
- Sam Z
