I worked at a daycare that overly catered to parents’ whims.

In the infant room, we often had kids up to twelve months old in the same space as three-month-olds. A couple happened to be watching their daughter play through our window when one of the older kids walked up behind her and started pushing on her. (She was sitting down, so she didn’t get hurt.)

It took me about ten seconds to set down the baby I had just liberated from the trash can — the other teacher had a kid on the changing table — and get over to them to get the older kid off.

I was written up for not paying attention to the children.

Later that week, we were told specifically that we should not sit on the floor with the kids; we had to be up and moving around the room. Two days later, we were told to make sure we had floor time with the kids and engage them in activities for at least twenty minutes.

I was there for two months and left as fast as I could get another job.

It’s tough being a termite technician during the summer. You work harder than the pest control techs, and you do follow-up work on their accounts for unpleasant jobs like checking rat traps and removing dead animals.

Boss: “[My Name], I know it’s late, but I need you to go to this customer’s house and check the rat traps in his attic.”

In my mind: “I was supposed to be off hours ago and it’s 1,000 degrees. I am so tired…”

I get to the house, and the owner is there and already has the attic ladder pulled down for me. He’s a nice guy; we talk for a minute and I feel better about being there. When I get into the attic, I notice that it is large and has flooring; it’s not that bad at all. I check the traps and they’re all set and nothing is caught. I come down and talk with the owner again and get to call it a day.

A couple of days later, the boss calls me into his office and tells me to shut the door.

Boss: “Remember that house I sent you to to check the traps in the attic? Did you take that gentleman’s hat?”

I laugh at first. Then, “Oh, wait. He’s serious?!”

Me: “What? No, I didn’t take any hat. The guy was standing there the whole time.”

Boss: “Well, he says that the hat was on a workbench by the attic ladder and now he can’t find it. He thinks you took it.”

Me: “[Boss], I swear that I have no idea what he’s talking about.”

I notice that people at the office start treating me differently. This bothers me for weeks.

A month passes, and one day while I am turning in some paperwork at our office, a secretary says loudly:

Secretary: “Here’s [My Name]. I think you owe him an apology, [Boss]. And you need to tell that man to call him and apologize, too!”

The man had called a few days before to tell my boss that he’d found his hat; it was in the trunk of his car and he’d forgotten that he had put it there. He did not apologize for the accusation, and for some reason, my boss didn’t tell me the man had called. Had the secretary not said anything, I never would’ve known. And [Boss] never apologized, either.

I used to work at a big chain pet store. One day, some horrible customer had used the bathroom and smeared their waste ALL OVER the walls, sink, door, and floor. It was everywhere.

I reported it to the manager.

Manager: “Well, go clean it.”

Me: “No. For one, we don’t have any of the OSHA-required safety equipment to clean up human waste. And for another, I’m a dog groomer, not a janitor.”

(OSHA is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.)

My manager blew a gasket and went off on me about being a team player and so forth. I thought he was going to have a heart attack; his face was turning purple! He wasn’t used to being told “no” because he was such a bully that he intimated everyone.

I turned my back on him while he was screaming at me and walked off, which made him even angrier. What he didn’t know was that I had started recording on my phone right before I reported the mess because I knew he’d try to bully me into cleaning it.

I left the store, and [Manager] called and screamed at my voicemail that I was fired.

I sent everything to Human Resources. Then, when they refused to do anything, I reported the company to OSHA.

I heard later from a friend that still worked there that the company totally threw [Manager] under the bus to save themselves, but they still got fined because of the email they’d sent me telling me I should have done what I was told, shouldn’t have just walked out, [Manager] was right, etc.

I used to drive a school bus route. My supervisor had never driven a bus and did not even have a Commercial Driver’s License.

She’d tell me one day to use my own judgment, and then the next day, she’d get angry because I’d used my own judgment. So, I did what she said.

The required route took me up a mountain on a narrow one-lane road. Of course, I got stuck behind a parked car sticking out a little in the road. I called [Supervisor] (as required), and she and the police had to come out to figure out who owned the car, knock on their door, and ask them to move it.

One route — a paper printout of the required route — just stopped before returning to school. I should have just parked the bus there for the night.

The last straw was when there was a fight at the high school as classes were being dismissed. There were no school staff members to be seen during this whole time. Kids were slamming each other up against my bus. The fight moved down the parking lot, and I let scared kids onto my bus to get safe. I did not drive them anywhere; I just let them in and shut the doors.

[Supervisor] called the school the next morning and had a fit because those students weren’t on the list to be on my bus, and I did not get their names.

I hope she found someone before the afternoon route; I left my keys in the office right then!

Where I live, we get snow in winter. At one point, the gutter at our store filled with water, froze solid, and literally ripped off the side of the building and crashed down into the parking lot. Now, this was obviously a huge chunk of ice weighing a few hundred pounds at least, with part of the weight being icicles that grew into a solid vertical slab hanging down. Bless all saints that neither cars nor people were under it when it dropped.

[Store Manager] saw it and told us we needed to move it — “we” being literally two female employees and the female store manager, none of us physically capable of carrying that thing safely through an iced-over parking lot, even working together.

[Store Manager] demanded to know where the guys were. They had gone home hours ago.

The store manager freaked out, going on a rant about how the ice chunk was dangerous laying where it was and that it needed to be moved “somewhere safe”. We told her repeatedly that we could not do it, and she keep yelling that it needed to be done.

She finally spun on her heel and stormed out of the building in a rage when we flat-out refused to her face to walk out into a dark parking lot to move something that could not be safely moved.

This was but one of her freak-out screaming tantrums done on the floor during business hours. I quit shortly after that.