I’m sure I could think of more if I tried but I remember the first time during my first job that I realized customers will tell you to do things simply because they want a servant to perform arbitrary tasks for them and they’re willing to lie to or guilt trip strangers just for the rush of bossing somebody around.

I was working as a cashier and some lady went to pick up a bag and lifted it 3 inches before going “Ah” and her wrist gave out and dropped the bag. She wanted me to take some items out and put it in a separate bag because it was too heavy. At that moment it was no problem, I simply took half the stuff out and placed it in a separate bag. She then grabbed both bags in one hand and effortlessly lifted them into her cart.

It was such a short and meaningless interaction but I wanted to punch my register’s screen as hard as possible and quit right there but I just pretended like it didn’t happen because it was the end of the order. After that I started to notice all the little things people would do or say simply to get the feeling of having a servant and not because they actually need a task done

Just the entire COVID experience as a grocery worker. Being told I was a “hero” and “essential” and forced to be exposed to people who would frequently take off their masks to make their hyper-specific fish order with me. The company treated us like shit, giving us like one month of hazard pay before axing it, and meanwhile they were making record profits. They wanted to sell the company, so they were artificially inflating its value. I got COVID and the first time was told to stay away for two weeks, second time to come back once five days had passed and I was testing negative. Wearing the mask was horrible because they never gave me one that fit properly and I could never find a comfortable one. At the same time the store got noisier and noisier and I was just starting to understand my sensory issues.

And all the while the customers didn’t change their behavior at all. We’d frequently get people half-assing their masks and not being called on it. Some people would come back to the store every day. Literally EVERY DAY. During the height of a pandemic. I saw clearly how little my management cared about me. I fully understood the selfishness and stupidity of the average American. I became incredibly bitter and I’m still purging myself of that bitterness and trying to build a life out of nothing.

EDIT: Also forgot to mention the time I threw out like $1500 worth of lobsters that all died because the company decided to send them all at once even though we only had limited room in our tank. I threw them into the compactor, just thinking about all the fuel burned catching them, transporting them to processing and then to our store, refrigerating them, and then finally compacting them with the rest of the garbage.

Starting my first job ever, as a server, on my first day, there was a huge blow up because the manager, who was also married, had been sleeping with two different servers and they both found out at the same time. I guess not really jokerfying but I was like oh damn there’s a real power difference here

Worst job I ever had was in high school during the summer at a catering business in Chicago. I had to work in a walk in refrigerator opening boxes of raw chicken and toss the pcs into a large stainless cement mixer then open a bag of breading toss that in and run the mixer for 10 minutes. Then I had to reach in and pull the chicken parts out of the mixer and put them in stainless steel baskets and put them on a shelf in the cooler. There was a puddle of chicken blood on the floor and after the first hour of my shift my gym shoes and socks were soaked in blood and I could feel it squishing between my toes. By the end of shift my pants were also soaked with chicken blood and raw chicken juice and I had it all over my arms up to my pits. All I had on was a t-shirt and jeans so I would freeze my ass off for 8 hours and then I had to walk 2 miles in 90 degree summer heat and by the time I got home I smelled like a bio hazard.

Working at a machining/widget manufacturing plant on routing & part grinding. Generally do a good job of things for a couple months, good quality, good rate etc., the job sucks ofc but what are you gonna do (absolutely terrible for carpal tunnel & other hand/arm joint shit). Still, I get compliments on part quality, I get stuff done, and I at least make some (shit) cash. Management is starting to talk about mandatory overtime and all but yknow this is base level US manufacturing shit.

Now, to preface the real jokerfying event, this is the same job where I, as a lighter skinned black person with a fro get asked day one “So what are you? Must have some Indian in ya, wouldn’t guess by the hair though”. Same sort of question I have gotten at pretty much every job I’ve ever had though so I just file it away as another in a long list of the same shit in conservative hell USA. (anyway great guess dude! great grandfather actually was chickahominy - that’s 500pts!) Edit: in retrospect at least I didn’t get any slurs thrown at me that I know of, that’s the benefit of not looking exactly like what these chuds picture in their heads, they usually gotta ask first to precision target the slurs.

Had a couple black coworkers come up to me one lunch break a day or two later and say “oh yeah this place is racist as fuck, we gotta stick together here yknow?”. Good signs no red flags

Status: initial

Later on, my section gets a new part order for several hundred of the same widgets we usually work on, but the shift manager says it’s high priority and to drop everything else and switch over to these. This is a pain in the ass when you’re in the middle of a 600 part order ofc but whatever, I shift the grinding machine over to working on these. I notice they’re the same parts but of noticeably lower quality metal than the usual, which we’re going to auto manufacturers iirc.

I didn’t see the specifics of the contracts unless I asked, and I was curious this time. So they tell me these are part of a contract with General Dynamics! Not only that, but a coworker, ancient old white dude (as it seemed 50-60% of the employees were), tells me they get those specific orders all the time, and they’re being used in M61 Vulcan rotary guns! This mummified fuck then claps me on the shoulder and says “How’s it feel knowing you’re helping protect a lot of people - or kill a lot haha!”

Status: terminal

Quit when I learned that about 50%+ of their manufacturing was military contracted, couldn’t do it. I had to cite “deeply held personal/religious beliefs” when asked for form purposes lol. Ngl I’m still fucked up about unwittingly building parts to killing machines. Shit that’s been used since Vietnam for massacres and imperialist power grabs. Feel like I should’ve idk, looked at their contracts or some shit before taking the job?! But everything here is linked to the MIC, fuck man. Should expect everything in this hell country to be suffused with white supremacy and linked intrinsically to the slaughter engine but fuck was it concentrated there.

Still feel guilty but now I kinda laugh too, it’s just so evil here. Anyway big crisis of faith yadda yadda, I helped the slaughter engine and kinda hate myself for it yadda yadda, I am currently heading to Arkham in the back seat of the Batmobile. Fuck this country

I waited tables in my past life. The one experience that sticks out above all the others was a time when I worked for a retired professional sports player. They owned the restraunt and would seldomly host parties in the back room for all of their friends and business associates.

One other server and I were assigned that room one night and since the room was reserved for the owners party, it didn’t have any traffic until the party arrived. So we waited for a few hours helping out other servers and generally not making any money. The party arrives and we start busting our tails getting everything for 20+ people. The party eats and then closes the room for the next few hours, not really wanting anything. We get told to stop bothering them so we go back to helping other servers.

The party finally ends and the attendees start leaving. I ask my supervisor about the bill and they say it’s been waived by the owner. I ask about the tip and my supervisor just said maybe the guests left it on the tables.

There wasn’t a dime on the tables. My coworker and I essentially worked for free for an entire shift and the owner couldn’t be bothered to tip their employees. The supervisor could only manage a half hearted shrug.

Makes my skin crawl just thinking about that place.

idk if this is working class but one time i was doing what was essentially bootleg girl scout cookie selling when i was a kid and i was the cashier. i had a guy yell at me for not being fast enough with the buttons lmao. imagine yelling at a cute 8 year old working for a charity as a random 60 year old

thats when i learned that id rather die than work retail. i have other jokerfying experiences, but those were mostly numbers things where i happened to know exactly how much our boss was making profit wise and were screwing us out of x amount of money

Not sure if this counts but just LOOKING for a job and ALWAYS getting told “no”, if not ghosted.

No one wants to hire anymore. You’ll see “now hiring signs” everywhere, but they’ll snobbishly blow you off if you actually apply. Who the hell are they looking for? Jeff Bezos to step down and work for their shitty bank franchise for 15 an hour pushing papers? Since when did finding something I literally require for my survival have to be such a big deal? Why are jobs only for a small elite of overachievers these days?

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I am a software dev. My first company was a dumpsterfire that I continued working at for way too long due to being young and high on impostor syndrome. What drove me to finally quit was a one-two punch of bad experiences.

I was being paid significantly below the market average for my position and seniority. Company gets a big contract and the owner calls a big meeting with all hands when he boasts about how amazing it will be for our growth. Manager on my section has a meeting with me and my teammates telling us about how our next raises will be significant and how our division will have a booming expansion. In a 1 on 1 meeting, calls me their top performer. Two months later my raise comes in. It ends up being smaller than the one I received the previous year and still puts me way below average.

Context for part two: my company was doing outsourcing. I am also a woman who up to that point had somehow avoided the general shittyness of the tech industry towards us.

I quit at the end of that month and almost doubled my salary.

I missed out on an entire night’s sleep because a co-worker of mine ran over and killed two people with his car. The day after that, my boss immediately made me go try and track down another former employee that he didn’t trust.

I had an agreement with the one coworker I was actual friends with to push carts inside while he bagged groceries (both stuff I wish customers would do themselves) but our middle-manager wanted our tasks to be the other way around. He got into an argument with her, resigned, and she told all the other employees that he was to blame for it all.

I’ve worked a lot of jobs, and have obviously become over time, but the current one i have, which involves water and wasterwater utilities, is beyond just the human element. It’s put me in the perspective that the capitalist class does not care about even their own health, just the almighty dollar. Some of the things i have to inspect on a daily basis violates nearly every code written about maintenance practices, and the owners just respond “we’ll get around to it”. YOU ARE POISONING YOURSELVE’S AND EVERYTHING AROUND YOU

My first job as a teen was dreadful. I’m socially anxious and was incredibly awkward when I was younger, but I was always polite and patient with people. The real problem was my parents. They made me get a job, which you’d think is pretty normal for a teen, learn the value of money and all, but my step-siblings didn’t have to work and got new computers and cars from their other parents, so here I was with no car, expected to get to work and back everyday. I had to go to school, get dropped off from the bus at the church, cross two roads, and go to the other end of a stripmall to the dollar store I worked at. Then I’d work until dark and have to wait in the parking lot for them to pick me up because while they wanted me to have the job, they didn’t want to help me get a car, so they’d consistently come an hour late, pretend like they forgot, and act annoyed that they had to go out of their way to drive me home. And I didn’t have a phone to call and was too anxious to ask to use a phone. So then I’d come home and do all the chores in the house while my step-siblings just did whatever I guess. I was literally the red headed stepchild trope but without the red hair. And the real kicker was, I never saw a dime of the money I made working. My stepmom took the card I got paid on and I never got any of it. One day she accused me of getting a new card to access the money because she had somehow lost track of a few hundred dollars. My money that she lost, I don’t know how you even manage that, it’s on the damn card, you should be able to track where the money goes. Not that I would have seen it anyway. Eventually dealing with my stepmom had me so sick with anxiety and depression everyday I started messing up change and stuff and got fired.

Another time when I was older and not living with those people, I had a nightshift at a walmart where I’d get home, go to sleep, and be so worn out I’d only wake up just in time to go to work again. It was so bad that once they fired me for calling out too much I literally cheered in my car. I wasn’t sure how I’d pay for food or rent but I was just so happy not to have to work there any more.

Then there was a fast food place I worked, Sonic I think.

Then there was the bakery where we were literally working 12 hour days 7 days a week, and I had a 40 minute commute living in a disgusting, moldy, rat infested trailer with my mom and her husband and getting giardia or some shit. When I saved up from the bakery I got my own place, but I couldn’t take working that much for long.

Then I worked at a Food City where I didn’t get paid enough to afford the food I was stocking. I was literally having to live off of 10 dollars a week for food.

I was actually at my wits end again a year or more ago when I lost my car and was coasting on Covid rent relief to not be homeless. Luckily, there was a place within walking distance where I work now. I don’t have to work too much, I don’t have to interact with too many people, I get to dick around a lot and my boss is pretty cool as far as bosses go. So who the fuck knows where I’d be now if not for pure dumb luck. I’m pathetically allergic to work and I know full well there’s no assistance for people here, so I don’t know what I’d do if this job stops working out for me.

I work in software. There were a good few at my last job.

• A coworker in the cubicle next to me insulting my job performance to another coworker as though I weren’t there.
• Another coworker describing a problem to me. I was looking down at my hand thinking about what he was saying. Because I wasn’t looking at him, he assumed I wasn’t paying attention and started lecturing me as if I were a child.
• Upper management making us squeeze six months of work into a three month window and then yelling at us when the resulting code was buggy and unstable.
• Coworkers shitting on me because I didn’t want to work unpaid overtime.
• A coworker bragging about getting a janitor in trouble for sleeping in the restroom.
• Getting strung along for a year and a half on a contract-to-hire that was supposed to last a year before telling me they wouldn’t be hiring me and they would not renew my contract at the end of the month
• On my last day of work, a coworker getting snotty with me because I was surfing the internet an hour before I clocked out (I’d been left to sit on my hands because, of course, it was my last day there so there was no point in giving me anything to do)

Easily the worst job I ever had. Thankfully, my current one is much better.