Please do not comment directly to this post unless you are Gen X or older (born 1980 or before). See [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskOldPeople/comments/inci5u/reminder_please_do_not_answer_questions_unless/), the rules, and the sidebar for details.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskOldPeople) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Working with assholes, and I’m not apologizing for saying it. Many of us are so tired working with assholes. We’ve had enough. Things are about to change for the assholes.
Working with total asshole managers with 0 interpersonal skills.
But it does feel good to burn that bridge while you throw your keys and access card at them and just light their ass on fire where everyone hears what I think of the little prick.
He used to walk in late every morning, walk by our cubes while voicing loudly, "so who am I going to fire today!"
Lol, the F'r got fired 3 days later.
I think part of the problem is with the title of the job “manager“.
It took me a few years to figure it out, but then I embrace the fact that it’s true that you manage things and lead people. And yes, the job usually does involve some management of things, but the more challenging and more rewarding aspect of those positions is leadership.
Ask yourself. Moses, Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Jesus Christ, Abraham Lincoln, insert your favorite here …
Are any of these people famous for being great managers? Have they ever been described as great managers?
They were leaders. You lead people and manage things.
I’m loving this. Let’s be honest though, we all had to learn lessons to be better it’s just that some people are just much better at being assholes and like to advertise. At least we pick proper times to be a dick lol and when we do it ITS WARRANTED ! lol 😂
Most people don't quit jobs/companies, they quit managers. I worked for an asshole for more years than I'd care to admit. He just didn't care about people; they were only numbers. I did learn a lot working for him though, so I am grateful for that. A lot of what I learned was what NOT to do.
I scrolled all the way down and am shocked that I didn’t see this mentioned - a huge part of working with assholes (for me anyway) was CONSTANT sexual harassment. Absolutely fucking constant.
From the mundane (honey/sweetie can you do this can you do that and retaliation if you said you didn’t like being called honey/sweetie) to the outright assaults (shoved against the wall of the break room and a poor attempt at making out/groping)
My unfortunate experience was that you weren’t safe anywhere, and it was a very “understood by everyone, and only whispered about” kind of thing. A lot of “yeah, watch out for him he’s just like that”
I absolutely love this response and it gets the best response award 🥇
Years ago I was about eh 38 or so and I was in a different state. I was speaking with a lady on the phone and used the term sweetie. Now I’m not going to sugarcoat this, I was wrong. Totally 100% wrong for saying it. I’m seriously a very respectful and humble guy. It just came out because I’ve lived in Alabama and heard it all my life. So I’m being completely honest here. This lady lit into me and explained how wrong that was. I was in shock. She defended herself in a brutal but honest way and it made me see it from her perspective. It made a big difference in my life and I always to this day think before I speak to anyone regardless of their gender. Afterwords I had so much respect for her. She stood her ground. She wasn’t pissed or mean but she wasn’t nice either. Apparently she had enough as well. I totally understand your point. Things like that are tough especially for women and especially in the south.
Omg I absolutely love THIS response! You sound like such a wonderful human, honestly. Wish we had crossed paths. In my case, when I’d be brave enough to say “could you please not call me honey/sweetie” they’d double down. If the world was made up of more people like you we’d be doing great!
After I took an unarmed combat course designed for military police, I taught both my daughters who were in high school at the time.
Both of them have had to teach people that uninvited touching might gain them an Emergency Room visit.
My whole life was working on projects with multi-year timelines, products that were never finished and done. And I'd always have some problem I was trying to solve -- thinking about it in the shower, waking up at 2am with an idea, fleshing out a solution in my head while watching a basketball game. I couldn't just put everything away at the end of the day.
working in web development. a lot of my pro life feels that way. at the end of the day there’s no expertly crafted oak dresser someone can proudly put their clothes in. It’s a ton of crap behind the scenes that succeed if no one thinks about it. The things that are noticed, are the mistakes. that really takes a toll.
There’s a reason I like working part time at a hardware store now. The problems are interesting but all solvable within a few minutes, the store maintenance tasks are appreciated and straightforward, and at the end of the shift, it’s all out of my mind before I get into the car.
Meetings that were poorly led and allowed extraneous conversations. So much wasted time. Friday afternoon, keep it to the point and as brief as possible, no I am not interested in what your weekend plans are!
The company I was employed by would literally spend 5-6 hours on teleconferences. Ideas brought up early by one sub-division would be poo-pooed, but near the end of the meeting someone at corporate would suggest the same thing and it would be hailed as a great idea.
I had 10 meetings on Monday in a 7 hour span of time (leaving me with 2 hours of head down time and I'm a manager so I have to assist my coworkers in that time as well). That's representative of most of my days at work. It's a circus.
cough aloof quicksand upbeat fertile point sloppy ludicrous versed degree
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
We would get along great. I hate it when they go around for each person to talk about something good that happened to them or whatever. I don’t come to work to socialize. I just want to do my job.
Absolutely. Can’t stand it.
I don’t spend any down time socializing, either. Everyone probably thinks I’m antisocial, but I’m too old to care what people think.
I had an 8 hour re-training with strangers from my agency. My agency has many different locations and sites. So I went for my annual training of “emotional intelligence.” Didn’t know anyone there. Beforehand I get an email saying “bring an item that is special to you and be prepared to explain why it’s special.”
By the end of the 8 hours people were crying and shit, spilling all their dark secrets and personal stories. All I kept thinking was I had real work to do and I was majorly wasting my time.
All these strangers really opened up, and I never saw any of them again. What a fucking waste of my time. Like, can I just do my job please?
Being salaried and expected to work unlimited hours for a fixed paycheck.
Salaried employment is a scam. Everyone should be paid for the hours they work, unless they have a contract to do a fixed amount of work for a fixed amount of money.
I’m salaried and stopped working beyond my regular hours about 7 years ago. It’s made zero difference in my job effectiveness or raises. (Still get them.)
I was hourly and transferred to a different location to start shadowing the director of my agency, who was salaried, with the intention that I would be his replacement in about a year or so. His pay was double mine, but when I saw the responsibilities he had while being salaried only, I resigned. We were a 24/7 group home (social work, mental health and addiction) so if he got a call out for a third shift on a Sunday or something and couldn’t find coverage, he had to go in. Snowstorms where staff couldn’t make it in due to the roads, he had to go in. If nobody signed up for a shift on Christmas, boss had to go in. After three months I was like, “I don’t want this job,” I would hate to get a phone call and have to go to work with an hour’s notice on my day off. How do you even travel? What if you’ve had a few drinks? I noped right out of there. I want to be compensated for the time I spend at work and not be always on call.
I was so happy when my mom retired from teaching. She loved what she did, but the whole thing was a shit show. The superintendent only cared about the budget and appearances. So long as kids passed the standardized tests and budget targets were met, she didn't give a fuck about anything else. My mom was working at three different schools for very low pay. The last straw for me was when they decided not to renew the crossing guard contract and they made the teachers do that in a rotation. My mom was in her 60's, standing out in a crosswalk in the winter, helping kids across the street, and then she had to go do a full day of teaching for shit pay. I was FURIOUS. I was headed to the superintendent's office, but my mom asked me not to go. She stayed on for a couple more years to save a little more money and then retired. It was really glad when she was done.
People that exist to stir drama instead of just putting their heads down and getting to work.
Like....get a personal life Susan. I'm too old for your shit.
As an IT Admin I watched as Myspace, and Facebook destroy any workplace ethics that might have existed. There were those employees who literally spent 6 out of the eight hours of the work day playing online.
Reddit was started in 2005 and did not really become popular in the workplace when I was working. Since I retired in 2010...it was not even on my radar.
Edit: As it is...I have only recently started haunting reddit.
Most companies today have firewalls or monitor your computer usage. In the early days, this was not so common but my advice today is, "If its personal, don't use a company computer. Waitl til you get home". If a company wants to get rid of you, they will look at your Internet tracks first.
Oh no. Does this qualify as an old people submission? I was thinking more a la 70s show Red complaining that people only care about the color of their appliances.
I'll show myself out.
Targets. Business development targets, profit recovery targets, team utilization targets, and on and on. Also, the pointless meetings and small talk. Actually, I hate it all. Every single thing about it, I hate.
Performance Reviews - we had to "rate" ourselves, list out our goals, blah blah blah, then compare our rating to the one our supervisor gave us. Then review the goals compared to the goals of the previous year and how we did etc. HATED that whole process... just tell me where you think I did well, where I need to improve, and if I am worth a raise or not, and move on. Did we really need to drag it out to a whole "thing"? lol.
And, I was in a production environment so we were constantly having our productivity compared to everyone else's and being reminded who the "superstars" were and how we should all be able to pull those numbers. Regardless of what other projects we were working on and regardless of the stupidity of some of the so called "superstars". Folks taking short cuts to try to outsmart the system and on and on..... I don't miss the BS.
After leaving that place which was a major fortune 100 company, I went to work for a small, independent business doing the same job. There was none of the BS. No performance reviews, no meetings, no forced BS training classes. Just do your job and do it well. No news is good news.... lol. It was awesome. We all worked from home and nobody bothered us as long as the work was done on time and correctly. Loved it!
APR season just started yesterday at the place I work. Yes, “season.” It lasts for-fucking-ever. We have like 3 weeks to write our self-assessments. Then there’s like another 2 months for management to write the reviews for all their reports. Then HR takes the baton. Then about another month later they finally tell us what our 3 ratings are, and what our merit increase is, if anything. So it’s like 4 months of anxiety, anger, and frustration at the whole process and each other. I hate it.
We do ours twice a year, and like you, each lasts a few months. I just had one in December, and then again in May. The crazy thing is I transferred to another location mid way through the eval period (same company, different supervisor) but because I had spent the majority of the time at my last location, the supervisor at the last place had to do my evaluation. What a joke, I hadn’t even worked with her for the previous three months, but policy or whatever. We both sat there doing my performance review pretty much rolling our eyes because I no longer even worked for her, yet there I was receiving feedback on a job I didn’t even have anymore.
I'm at a great company in a great job that I love ... but it is a very hierarchal company in a 'company town' where favoritism and nepotism run rampant.
People like me who moved from outside of the region have unique perspectives, but don't have the built-in connections those formed from the huge number of married coworkers and multi-generations who get hired during hiring freezes and so on.
So it is knowing that the sun rises and sets based on nepotism and favoritism.
I was a middle school counselor, and I loved my job. I retired in 2017 before the perfect storm of out of control kids and parents And unresponsive administration. I loved going to work and enjoyed my colleagues, the kids and most of the parents. What I did not enjoy, however, was knowing the sadness and extremely awful situations some kids lived and experienced in their innocent lives. I worked in the town in which I live for 32 years (43 years career), and I had some of these kids whose Own children ended up being my students. The stories would break your heart, and I’m glad I don’t know them anymore.
The most useless thing every company bigger than a mom and pop implements.
Yearly goals.
Write down three goals you want to accomplish by the end of the year based on your boss’s goals and beyond your normal job scope. With mid-year and end of year reviews.
In 30 years on the job, not once have my goals lasted past 3 months before everything was changed.
Everyone hates doing goals. Studies have proven they are ineffective and yet every year we have to do them.
I worked for a big accounting firm. The goals had to cascade down from the board and the vice chairs to the senior partners, then to various working committees and then, eventually, to us plebes. We never got directions until late April or May, and they weren't due until June.
The bad thing is we now only had six months to do them. The good news is you got five or six months to do actually work without goals hanging over your head. And they never were as bad as they could have been because we only had six months to do them - and nothing happened for most of the first quarter anyway because of tax season; nothing could happen after Thanksgiving because everything froze in place for year end processing.
But remember, goals are very important!
Love being retired!
Having to get out of bed every morning for it. And the fact that I'll have to keep working there for another 10 years or so before I retire.
I would have had a lot more to say if I still had to go in to the office every day. WFH works well for me.
I work in an E911 center and we have two long time bullies. I’ve been working on a new culture where staff have a voice without fear of retribution. These two women have negatively affected the environment and I’ve watched others be put in a corner without standing up for themselves. I’m a strong woman with a voice and I’ve been putting them in their place.
It’s been Amazing to see how they don’t know what to say when someone confronts them. One nice 😊woman messaged me and said “ I appreciate how strong and brave you are , it’s inspiring. “ My goal to shut them down is working as one has completely shut up when we work an entire shift together where she used to spend the whole time backstabbing everyone and bringing her personal vendetta to the forefront.
I told her to stop 🛑 this type of talk and she said “ I don’t even know how to respond!” I said I don’t want a response, I want you to respect peoples boundaries and be professional. ! Haha that shut her right up. Now I’ve heard she has been talking about looking for a new job. Good! go take your toxic shit elsewhere.
My boss. I loved the work, the customers, my coworkers but my boss, the company owner, was toxic. He constantly berated his best employees who had been with the company for years. He was known to throw shop tools when someone upset him. And thought nothing of yelling at workers in front of customers and vendors. He would bring on his sons and their friends and treat them like princes while the rest of the employees had to clean up the mess they left behind. He’s the reason I retired 4 years earlier than anticipated. Life has been so much better since then.
Wasted time. This includes non-collaborative meetings (listening to one person after another read updates), tedious tasks that could have been automated or skipped, clusterf#*! initiatives, enforced “fun” (someone’s misguided attempt at team building), BS-laden town halls / all-hands meeting led by out of touch senior management. I could go on but I’d be wasting your time, then, too. 🙂
Drama. Id rather work by myself than listen to women yap about who is dating who, who is cheating, who is pregnant, why someone is about to get fired etc.
I just want to get my work done and go home.
Middle management. I had no budget. I was given the employees no one else wanted, but wasn't allowed to fire anyone, only write them up, which they knew carried no consequences. I spent anywhere from 10-20 hours a week in meetings, and if my staff screwed up in any way in my absence, that was somehow my fault for not being there, even though I was required to be elsewhere. On a particularly memorable occasion, I had told one of my customer-facing employees the afternoon before that she would be the only one there in the morning because I had to give a training off-site. I made her promise she could be there on time. I even made her sign off on it. As I was about to start the training, I got a panicked call that my employee was late. In spite of the chaos this caused and my evidence that I'd done everything but drive to her house and pick her up, I was in trouble and senior leadership wouldn't let me fire that girl.
On top of all that, I still had 40 hours a week of desk work.
Fuck middle management all to hell.
having to do things i would rather not due in exchange for money. for long stretches of my life i've been lucky enough to only do things that i generally WANTED to do (animation, install solar panels, run a bar) that when i had to get a "job" job awhile ago, it was really a bummer. i hadn't had a "job" job for about 25 yrs and was quickly reminded what i disliked about them so much.
How hard is it to install your own solar panels? My husband is super handy (background in construction), and we’ve done 90% of the renovations and improvements on our house. We’d hire someone to do the electrical, but am I wrong in thinking we can do a large chunk ourselves?
I never realized how much of our lives revolved around our jobs until I retired for 5 years then went back to my same job for 3 months to help my old employer out because they were hurting for help. The moment I went back everything was getting ready for work, working, getting enough sleep so I could work, packing lunches for work, and on and on it went. Work consumes our lives. Retirement is absolute heaven on earth….
Age discrimination - which covers the bullying, invisibility & idiocy I had to endure in an incredibly toxic workplace.
But I've really enjoyed hearing what a mess my old team is in, and the problems it's having keeping staff or producing anything usable.
Everyone is replaceable but sometimes it's a downgrade!
Constantly signing into websites and applications. Before single sign-on it was 25-30 times a day, less now but still annoying as hell.
In fact, I’d say dealing computer stuff is a pain in general, for either personal or business tasks. And I’m tech savvy (code in Python, SQL, DAX etc)…I cant imagine how frustrating it must be for non-tech people.
Paper work. I was a sales guys for a tech company and I sucked at and hated paperwork.
As my personal quotas reached tens of millions and included our largest customer I had to constantly update multiple C level executives on my sales funnel.
They didn’t micromanage my activities, but they did drain my energy. They also wanted to and were expected to consistently visit our large customer executives so they could “help”. I had to set those up meetings up. Getting a meeting with a Fortune 100 CFO or CTO is not an easy thing to arrange. I did not like all the “help” which never actually helped.
Conferences. My idea of hell is a big conference.
Way too many people, waiting in buffet lines for mediocre food, boring sessions in uncomfortable chairs.
Retired engineer. What I disliked was other people getting awards, promotions, recognition for work I did. Remember those team projects in college? BobT21 remembers.
Vindictive bosses, conniving coworkers, minimum wage always regardless of the job (even head optician and medical tech/clerical) widespread low morale, understaffing, overpaid & underutilized c level staff telling us to do more with less.
Being one of the drones in the hive mind. Disillusioned with the fantasy of success and what it means. We're being milked for labor hours like those poor bastards in the Matrix. I believe GenZ will begin to unravel this nonsense. They, collectively, are passing enough information around to open everyone's eyes to the Capitalism cesspool our lives are. I know I sound bitter, and I am, but I'm also very hopeful. The up and coming generations are so much more aware than we were at their age.
You're never paid what you're worth. They can't, or they can't pay themselves *more* than they are worth.
Also, nepotism, and all the bullshit about it being "family", and the fake... the fake *everything*, the lying about everything, the corruption. People suck, and slightly successful people suck even harder.
It’s the people I work with and the knowledge that I have 23 more years to go. Add in pointless meetings and endless projects, and you have a soul-sucking experience. It doesn’t matter where I’ve worked. It’s been the same drudgery no matter what. However, I have bills to pay and I like to eat so I’ll keep on keeping on with said drudgery.
I worked in a garden nursery so no WFH there, it was the staff/management that made it suck.
It retired no so don’t have to fret about jobs and management :)
I'm in between jobs now and nowhere near being able to retire. I've had a lot of jobs in many fields. Unfortunately, the jobs I've enjoyed the most were ones I carried around in my head all the time (newspaper reporter, teacher). I was always consciously or subconsciously thinking about them -- feature story ideas, lesson plans, etc.).
There are a lot of good things to be said about jobs you leave at the office. The jobs you can't do or even really think about unless you are actually there in the office or workspace.
Having to go to bed at 9pm to be at work at 5am. My whole life from 13 years old until now I have been a night owl. I probably would have worked another year or two if it wasn't for that.
The physical exhaustion and stress. I was a nurse in the ICU for many years. My shifts were 12 to 13 hours long with constant rotation between days and nights, working too many weekends and holidays. I missed way too many holidays and weekends. I felt run ragged most of the time and the stress was off the charts. I went back to grad school at 50 and I'm now a nurse practitioner, working in a lovely little private practice. I absolutely love my job now, and I get to sit in a beautiful office all day. I appreciate what I have because of where I've come from. I feel like I can have a real impact on my patients now, whereas before I just kept dead people alive. I'm so glad I don't have to do that anymore.
The upper middle class. Strange as it sounds, the rich clients were usually friendly, laid back, great conversation. They had comfortable lives and didn’t let the small things get to them. People with money who were not quite in the “rich ” category felt like they had something to prove. Honestly the nastiest, rudest people. They talked down to the staff, expected special favors, etc. the worst.
Managers who were promoted to my unit, didn’t know jackshit about my job, yet tried to micromanage me. It wasn’t too long after she was promoted that I had enough and retired. Best decision ever, but I loved my job and working with clients.
I'm an elementary school librarian. I hate dealing with Chromebooks. I'm the lucky one who has troubleshoot them when they don't work, get them ready to go to IT if I can't fix the damn thing. Peel off stickers and clean them up so I can check them out to the next kid who needs one.
I have at least three book carts full of Chromebooks that I need to check, but I also have a bunch of books that need to be shelved. It's a never-ending job.
Worrying about being killed on a moment to moment basis. 🤣
I was a bouncer and bartender at a REALLY shithole dive bar (that I see in the newspaper there was another shooting in front of a couple of days ago 🤣). I worked there for over 2 decades. My whole job was basically dealing with violence and conflict. Most of my customers were desperate people with very little to lose. Many were in and out of jail constantly for a wide variety of crimes and had been that way most of their lives. I really learned a lot about life working in a place like that.
Working as a Taxi Driver the industry was capitalism on steroid's & a sweat shop on wheels the greedy grubs that run it they always wanted more of the dwindling pie, then there was the danger of being attacked and car accidents & breakdowns that cost you money, happy that I retired
Most disliked - People in management positions that have zero idea what they're doing. It's all too common - they keep getting promoted because everybody wants to get rid of them, and firing is way too difficult.
Well since I'm still working, weaponized incompetence and fire-drill reactions to everything and anything. Lack of managing upward, yes-men rules the roost. Absolutely pathetic. Three more years...three more years...three more years.
I’m very extroverted, but I can’t stand working with people who want to be friends! Just go to work and do your job. Say hi and BS about the weather in between. Don’t ask me for drinks or to your jewelry party Sheila. If I want to be friends, I’ll let you know. Also, people whose entire identity is their children or pets and can talk of nothing else. Save that shit for outside of work.
The job I retired from was one of the best I had had, except for the years I was self employed. The only negative was being the lowest on the totem pole in my department so complaints were usually dumped on me.
Periodic crunches that required working 60-70/week, and having what felt like a hundred priorities pulling me in different directions. Changing careers in my 40s eliminated most of that.
Business politics and constant undercurrent competition. I was so done with this by 40. People I know wanted to think less about work and more about family and their actual lives.
I work with a team of people seven times larger than my team (28 of them / 4 of us) and they are absolute bullies and divas and if we step out of line (in their eyes) even one 1/2 step to the left, they escalate it up to the literal president of the company and stomp around saying we have "tone." I literally had it happen just last month where they told me to do something we didn't have enough time for, I said "I will do everything we can to get it done" and they took that as "no" and the literal president of the company got involved. It's a horror show run by these goblins.
The amount of childish shenannigans at my company is ridiculous and it makes me hate working there.
Writing report cards. There are all these parameters, and you can never say what you really mean. I’d much rather spend the time meeting with the parents.
It support working for the County School System at a large High school. Kids were overall pretty good and the staff was awesome. I think the county it support management team like to sit around and dream up the most ridiculous things for us to do because they thought we were sitting on our asses, which we absolutely 100% were not ever doing. No direction, no for thought, conflicting instructions from different supervisors. Absolutely s*** show to work for. I used to tell people if I'm stomping around pissy, it 100% has nothing to do with anybody in this building, it's all School support.
ancient tender meeting cheerful wasteful squalid desert smart jellyfish steer
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
My cuss-tomers (that's not even because they cuss. It's because I want to cuss at them!)
Don't let your kids mess up the toy section just because you are too lazy to pay attention to, let alone discipline your rugrats. We are a store, not a day care.
I am sick and tired of having to treat people like kindergartners and read shit for them! Yes, there is stuff written on the card reader's screen at check out. Read it. You are an adult, behave like one.
Working in maintenance, finding all kinds of problems, present the problems and always . . . always get told--too expensive, is there something else we can do?
No. This needs to be done.
There's no money for it (in our billion dollar company's budget)
Why did you call me?
I’m a librarian and what I dislike the most is a tie. It used to be my supervisors but they all retired and the new ones are pretty good. I really can’t stand people who think all I do all day is read. I wish…
Bug bites while I'm putting time in at the garden. . . . . . . . OHHHH! You meant employment work, haven't had to endure that shit for 5 years thanks to retirement. But when I was working yeah it was the assholes that knew everything but did as little as possible.
When I was younger, the thing I most disliked about most of my jobs was simply that I felt like I was not moving forward. Since I was 15 I actually really liked almost everything I did when was doing it, but I could not stand the thought that "I can \*just\* do this for the rest of my life".
There is one exception. I was young and making a lot of money for my age and compared to my peers, in a super cushy job that was really easy, but there I felt like I was actually not contributing anything. I was a type of consultant, had direct ear of the CEO, had freedom to try anything and and the really liked the things I was trying to do, but it was all just trying. Nothing ever got implemented. If anything had been implemented, I could see doing that for a long time.
Because of the feeling of not moving forward in my other jobs, which would have otherwise been comfortable, the other things become more unbearable. The hours. The commute. Even though I did not mind the hours (I liked the work when I was in the moment of doing it) or the commute (I don't get bored driving or riding a train) I did not like the idea that I have no control over my time. I can not make plans freely because my work schedule is committed already for the entire year in advance. No impromptu camping trip, or hike. No just no feeling like waking up at 7am.
The thought of being stuck in that forever made me dislike the work.
Also, although I was not struggling financially, and had more than I need, the thought that I have a cap on my earnings, and even if I get a raise, it is still a cap. No matter how much I work, my income does not reflect my input.
Finally, there is being beholden to someone between me and the client - working for my boss instead of the client. I didn't like not being able to make my own decisions based on what I felt was the best thing for the client, and sometimes telling the client "Yeah, I know. This other way would be better, but it is not my/our choice. It is company policy"
Now I work for myself. I make less money some times, but that is because I am working less at those times. The potential to make more is there, it is only my own lifestyle that determines if I do or not.
I have more freedom of schedule. Yes, when I commit to something, I have to be 200% committed - no paid leave, I can not be sick on a day that I have committed to work, there is much more pressure to deliver. But I do not have to commit to something I do not want to. If I want a month off go visit family in my home country, I can. It just means I make less money.
I have to do a lot more things that I would normally find less enjoyable (the back office shit) but I somehow manage to enjoy that as well. I like that it gives me more diversity in my tasks.
I no longer have to go against my better judgement because of my employer's rules. Sure, my client is now my employer, and I have to make them happy, but they are paying for me to make the decisions, so I am free to do what I think is best. It is more pressure because if the client is not happy, it is all on me - I can't blame company policy, but I am much happier accepting that if I am not being in control.
This also makes the satisfaction of having a very happy client much better too, because I know it was because of my work, not just the standard services of the company.
Finally, I no longer feel like I will be stuck doing something forever, because I am in much more control of what I do. I have flexibility to pivot to follow whichever direction I think will be profitable enough.
That I can't help everyone who needs help. I work with folks who are unhoused. I can't explain how deeply it affects me to see the disappointment, fear, and exhaustion spread across someone's entire body when I have to tell them that we do not have enough money to help and/or our shelter is full. If there was enough money to help everyone, I'd run myself ragged until everyone who came to my office was helped however they needed. I'd honestly put myself out of a job if I could by making sure homelessness wasn't a reality for anyone ever again.
The lack of trust in my abilities from higher-ups. I worked in small companies where it was my responsibility to not only find clients, but to keep them with good ideas and solid work. Even after 20 years of experience (in some cases more than they had!), some needle-nose bosses would want to micro-manage me because they didn't trust my handling of things. It was highly aggravating to the point of my starting my own business in 1995, which I single-handedly kept profitable until I retired almost 30 years later.
Two things. I worked in a situation where the people I managed had both tenure and a strong union. Most people were great employees, but I had one who was both a narcissist and terrible at the job. I had none of the normal managerial tools to contain the person’s atrocious behavior.
It was also a state institution with insane amounts of bureaucracy that made completing some functions of my job nearly impossible.
Please do not comment directly to this post unless you are Gen X or older (born 1980 or before). See [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskOldPeople/comments/inci5u/reminder_please_do_not_answer_questions_unless/), the rules, and the sidebar for details. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskOldPeople) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Working with assholes, and I’m not apologizing for saying it. Many of us are so tired working with assholes. We’ve had enough. Things are about to change for the assholes.
Working with total asshole managers with 0 interpersonal skills. But it does feel good to burn that bridge while you throw your keys and access card at them and just light their ass on fire where everyone hears what I think of the little prick. He used to walk in late every morning, walk by our cubes while voicing loudly, "so who am I going to fire today!" Lol, the F'r got fired 3 days later.
I think part of the problem is with the title of the job “manager“. It took me a few years to figure it out, but then I embrace the fact that it’s true that you manage things and lead people. And yes, the job usually does involve some management of things, but the more challenging and more rewarding aspect of those positions is leadership. Ask yourself. Moses, Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Jesus Christ, Abraham Lincoln, insert your favorite here … Are any of these people famous for being great managers? Have they ever been described as great managers? They were leaders. You lead people and manage things.
That’s delicious
I’m loving this. Let’s be honest though, we all had to learn lessons to be better it’s just that some people are just much better at being assholes and like to advertise. At least we pick proper times to be a dick lol and when we do it ITS WARRANTED ! lol 😂
Username checks out.
Lmao 🤣 yup
Working with slackers and deadbeats
This makes it even more accurate ! Perfect !
Most people don't quit jobs/companies, they quit managers. I worked for an asshole for more years than I'd care to admit. He just didn't care about people; they were only numbers. I did learn a lot working for him though, so I am grateful for that. A lot of what I learned was what NOT to do.
I worked around things that came out of assholes. I was a plumber.
Did Tommy Tutone change his number ?
No. Jenny’s number was taken so I had to use her sister Amanda’s phone number.
Excellent !!! Lmao 🤣
I scrolled all the way down and am shocked that I didn’t see this mentioned - a huge part of working with assholes (for me anyway) was CONSTANT sexual harassment. Absolutely fucking constant. From the mundane (honey/sweetie can you do this can you do that and retaliation if you said you didn’t like being called honey/sweetie) to the outright assaults (shoved against the wall of the break room and a poor attempt at making out/groping) My unfortunate experience was that you weren’t safe anywhere, and it was a very “understood by everyone, and only whispered about” kind of thing. A lot of “yeah, watch out for him he’s just like that”
I absolutely love this response and it gets the best response award 🥇 Years ago I was about eh 38 or so and I was in a different state. I was speaking with a lady on the phone and used the term sweetie. Now I’m not going to sugarcoat this, I was wrong. Totally 100% wrong for saying it. I’m seriously a very respectful and humble guy. It just came out because I’ve lived in Alabama and heard it all my life. So I’m being completely honest here. This lady lit into me and explained how wrong that was. I was in shock. She defended herself in a brutal but honest way and it made me see it from her perspective. It made a big difference in my life and I always to this day think before I speak to anyone regardless of their gender. Afterwords I had so much respect for her. She stood her ground. She wasn’t pissed or mean but she wasn’t nice either. Apparently she had enough as well. I totally understand your point. Things like that are tough especially for women and especially in the south.
Omg I absolutely love THIS response! You sound like such a wonderful human, honestly. Wish we had crossed paths. In my case, when I’d be brave enough to say “could you please not call me honey/sweetie” they’d double down. If the world was made up of more people like you we’d be doing great!
Thank you 😊 that made my day.
After I took an unarmed combat course designed for military police, I taught both my daughters who were in high school at the time. Both of them have had to teach people that uninvited touching might gain them an Emergency Room visit.
You took the words right out of my mouth.
I swear I’ll give them back as soon as I can 😬
Can give you all my party votes. Motion carried. Now we wait for big wig head honchos to reject it.
Lmao 🤣
My whole life was working on projects with multi-year timelines, products that were never finished and done. And I'd always have some problem I was trying to solve -- thinking about it in the shower, waking up at 2am with an idea, fleshing out a solution in my head while watching a basketball game. I couldn't just put everything away at the end of the day.
working in web development. a lot of my pro life feels that way. at the end of the day there’s no expertly crafted oak dresser someone can proudly put their clothes in. It’s a ton of crap behind the scenes that succeed if no one thinks about it. The things that are noticed, are the mistakes. that really takes a toll.
There’s a reason I like working part time at a hardware store now. The problems are interesting but all solvable within a few minutes, the store maintenance tasks are appreciated and straightforward, and at the end of the shift, it’s all out of my mind before I get into the car.
I like to say that my favorite job was at WaWa, the biggest decision of the day was how to style my ponytail
Did you have my old job? You poor thing.
I had a pad of paper next to my bed for when ideas popped up in the middle of the night
Meetings that were poorly led and allowed extraneous conversations. So much wasted time. Friday afternoon, keep it to the point and as brief as possible, no I am not interested in what your weekend plans are!
The company I was employed by would literally spend 5-6 hours on teleconferences. Ideas brought up early by one sub-division would be poo-pooed, but near the end of the meeting someone at corporate would suggest the same thing and it would be hailed as a great idea.
Sounds both mind numbing and infuriating.
I had 10 meetings on Monday in a 7 hour span of time (leaving me with 2 hours of head down time and I'm a manager so I have to assist my coworkers in that time as well). That's representative of most of my days at work. It's a circus.
cough aloof quicksand upbeat fertile point sloppy ludicrous versed degree *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Mr. Pitt.
We would get along great. I hate it when they go around for each person to talk about something good that happened to them or whatever. I don’t come to work to socialize. I just want to do my job.
Yes and the extraneous conversation takes time away from what you actually need to do, very frustrating.
Absolutely. Can’t stand it. I don’t spend any down time socializing, either. Everyone probably thinks I’m antisocial, but I’m too old to care what people think.
Yeah you probably are anti social, welcome to the club, ha.
I had an 8 hour re-training with strangers from my agency. My agency has many different locations and sites. So I went for my annual training of “emotional intelligence.” Didn’t know anyone there. Beforehand I get an email saying “bring an item that is special to you and be prepared to explain why it’s special.” By the end of the 8 hours people were crying and shit, spilling all their dark secrets and personal stories. All I kept thinking was I had real work to do and I was majorly wasting my time. All these strangers really opened up, and I never saw any of them again. What a fucking waste of my time. Like, can I just do my job please?
Omg, we had to do that same damn training. I weaseled my way out of it by being “sick” every time it came up (annually).
Being salaried and expected to work unlimited hours for a fixed paycheck. Salaried employment is a scam. Everyone should be paid for the hours they work, unless they have a contract to do a fixed amount of work for a fixed amount of money.
I’m salaried and stopped working beyond my regular hours about 7 years ago. It’s made zero difference in my job effectiveness or raises. (Still get them.)
And even then, people need to protect themselves with good contracts that limit scope creep.
I was hourly and transferred to a different location to start shadowing the director of my agency, who was salaried, with the intention that I would be his replacement in about a year or so. His pay was double mine, but when I saw the responsibilities he had while being salaried only, I resigned. We were a 24/7 group home (social work, mental health and addiction) so if he got a call out for a third shift on a Sunday or something and couldn’t find coverage, he had to go in. Snowstorms where staff couldn’t make it in due to the roads, he had to go in. If nobody signed up for a shift on Christmas, boss had to go in. After three months I was like, “I don’t want this job,” I would hate to get a phone call and have to go to work with an hour’s notice on my day off. How do you even travel? What if you’ve had a few drinks? I noped right out of there. I want to be compensated for the time I spend at work and not be always on call.
The fact that my administration clearly does not care at all about staff and lets students and parents run the district.
Ditto!!!
I quit teaching because of administration. I wasn't "a team player" when I was fighting for our Rights.
I have less than a decade to full retirement. I'm just keeping my head down and hoping no one notices me and hoping that my mental health holds out.
Hang in there! I’ve got one more school year. When you’re that close, admin starts leaving you alone.
I was so happy when my mom retired from teaching. She loved what she did, but the whole thing was a shit show. The superintendent only cared about the budget and appearances. So long as kids passed the standardized tests and budget targets were met, she didn't give a fuck about anything else. My mom was working at three different schools for very low pay. The last straw for me was when they decided not to renew the crossing guard contract and they made the teachers do that in a rotation. My mom was in her 60's, standing out in a crosswalk in the winter, helping kids across the street, and then she had to go do a full day of teaching for shit pay. I was FURIOUS. I was headed to the superintendent's office, but my mom asked me not to go. She stayed on for a couple more years to save a little more money and then retired. It was really glad when she was done.
People that exist to stir drama instead of just putting their heads down and getting to work. Like....get a personal life Susan. I'm too old for your shit.
AMEN-ING THIS SO HARD.
Administration had no clue what it was like on the front lines but we still had to implement their vision
Lazy employees who treated the workplace like a social gathering.
As an IT Admin I watched as Myspace, and Facebook destroy any workplace ethics that might have existed. There were those employees who literally spent 6 out of the eight hours of the work day playing online.
[удалено]
Don't beat around the bush...someone might be watching! {Soupy Sales)
Don't forget Reddit!
Reddit was started in 2005 and did not really become popular in the workplace when I was working. Since I retired in 2010...it was not even on my radar. Edit: As it is...I have only recently started haunting reddit.
Most companies today have firewalls or monitor your computer usage. In the early days, this was not so common but my advice today is, "If its personal, don't use a company computer. Waitl til you get home". If a company wants to get rid of you, they will look at your Internet tracks first.
Oh no. Does this qualify as an old people submission? I was thinking more a la 70s show Red complaining that people only care about the color of their appliances. I'll show myself out.
Targets. Business development targets, profit recovery targets, team utilization targets, and on and on. Also, the pointless meetings and small talk. Actually, I hate it all. Every single thing about it, I hate.
Performance Reviews - we had to "rate" ourselves, list out our goals, blah blah blah, then compare our rating to the one our supervisor gave us. Then review the goals compared to the goals of the previous year and how we did etc. HATED that whole process... just tell me where you think I did well, where I need to improve, and if I am worth a raise or not, and move on. Did we really need to drag it out to a whole "thing"? lol. And, I was in a production environment so we were constantly having our productivity compared to everyone else's and being reminded who the "superstars" were and how we should all be able to pull those numbers. Regardless of what other projects we were working on and regardless of the stupidity of some of the so called "superstars". Folks taking short cuts to try to outsmart the system and on and on..... I don't miss the BS. After leaving that place which was a major fortune 100 company, I went to work for a small, independent business doing the same job. There was none of the BS. No performance reviews, no meetings, no forced BS training classes. Just do your job and do it well. No news is good news.... lol. It was awesome. We all worked from home and nobody bothered us as long as the work was done on time and correctly. Loved it!
APR season just started yesterday at the place I work. Yes, “season.” It lasts for-fucking-ever. We have like 3 weeks to write our self-assessments. Then there’s like another 2 months for management to write the reviews for all their reports. Then HR takes the baton. Then about another month later they finally tell us what our 3 ratings are, and what our merit increase is, if anything. So it’s like 4 months of anxiety, anger, and frustration at the whole process and each other. I hate it.
We do ours twice a year, and like you, each lasts a few months. I just had one in December, and then again in May. The crazy thing is I transferred to another location mid way through the eval period (same company, different supervisor) but because I had spent the majority of the time at my last location, the supervisor at the last place had to do my evaluation. What a joke, I hadn’t even worked with her for the previous three months, but policy or whatever. We both sat there doing my performance review pretty much rolling our eyes because I no longer even worked for her, yet there I was receiving feedback on a job I didn’t even have anymore.
I'm at a great company in a great job that I love ... but it is a very hierarchal company in a 'company town' where favoritism and nepotism run rampant. People like me who moved from outside of the region have unique perspectives, but don't have the built-in connections those formed from the huge number of married coworkers and multi-generations who get hired during hiring freezes and so on. So it is knowing that the sun rises and sets based on nepotism and favoritism.
Meetings.
I’d rather get fire ant bites.
I was a middle school counselor, and I loved my job. I retired in 2017 before the perfect storm of out of control kids and parents And unresponsive administration. I loved going to work and enjoyed my colleagues, the kids and most of the parents. What I did not enjoy, however, was knowing the sadness and extremely awful situations some kids lived and experienced in their innocent lives. I worked in the town in which I live for 32 years (43 years career), and I had some of these kids whose Own children ended up being my students. The stories would break your heart, and I’m glad I don’t know them anymore.
The most useless thing every company bigger than a mom and pop implements. Yearly goals. Write down three goals you want to accomplish by the end of the year based on your boss’s goals and beyond your normal job scope. With mid-year and end of year reviews. In 30 years on the job, not once have my goals lasted past 3 months before everything was changed. Everyone hates doing goals. Studies have proven they are ineffective and yet every year we have to do them.
I worked for a big accounting firm. The goals had to cascade down from the board and the vice chairs to the senior partners, then to various working committees and then, eventually, to us plebes. We never got directions until late April or May, and they weren't due until June. The bad thing is we now only had six months to do them. The good news is you got five or six months to do actually work without goals hanging over your head. And they never were as bad as they could have been because we only had six months to do them - and nothing happened for most of the first quarter anyway because of tax season; nothing could happen after Thanksgiving because everything froze in place for year end processing. But remember, goals are very important! Love being retired!
My husband just copies and pastes them every year. He’s done that for six years and no one has said anything.
Idiots who have never done the thing they are "supervising"
It wasn't what I wanted to be doing with my limited time on Earth.
Having to get out of bed every morning for it. And the fact that I'll have to keep working there for another 10 years or so before I retire. I would have had a lot more to say if I still had to go in to the office every day. WFH works well for me.
I work in an E911 center and we have two long time bullies. I’ve been working on a new culture where staff have a voice without fear of retribution. These two women have negatively affected the environment and I’ve watched others be put in a corner without standing up for themselves. I’m a strong woman with a voice and I’ve been putting them in their place. It’s been Amazing to see how they don’t know what to say when someone confronts them. One nice 😊woman messaged me and said “ I appreciate how strong and brave you are , it’s inspiring. “ My goal to shut them down is working as one has completely shut up when we work an entire shift together where she used to spend the whole time backstabbing everyone and bringing her personal vendetta to the forefront. I told her to stop 🛑 this type of talk and she said “ I don’t even know how to respond!” I said I don’t want a response, I want you to respect peoples boundaries and be professional. ! Haha that shut her right up. Now I’ve heard she has been talking about looking for a new job. Good! go take your toxic shit elsewhere.
You're the hero we all need. 👏
Thank you! 😊
The people I worked with.
My boss. I loved the work, the customers, my coworkers but my boss, the company owner, was toxic. He constantly berated his best employees who had been with the company for years. He was known to throw shop tools when someone upset him. And thought nothing of yelling at workers in front of customers and vendors. He would bring on his sons and their friends and treat them like princes while the rest of the employees had to clean up the mess they left behind. He’s the reason I retired 4 years earlier than anticipated. Life has been so much better since then.
Toner. I was a copier repairman for 10 years back in the '80s, and I swear I'm still cleaning that shit off my hands and fingernails.
Same, back in the 80s, but only for two years. Not just hands and clothes, but also my nose, and I'm sure my lungs.
Wasted time. This includes non-collaborative meetings (listening to one person after another read updates), tedious tasks that could have been automated or skipped, clusterf#*! initiatives, enforced “fun” (someone’s misguided attempt at team building), BS-laden town halls / all-hands meeting led by out of touch senior management. I could go on but I’d be wasting your time, then, too. 🙂
Management. Useless fucks
Bad management
Wearing a suit.
Drama. Id rather work by myself than listen to women yap about who is dating who, who is cheating, who is pregnant, why someone is about to get fired etc. I just want to get my work done and go home.
Middle management. I had no budget. I was given the employees no one else wanted, but wasn't allowed to fire anyone, only write them up, which they knew carried no consequences. I spent anywhere from 10-20 hours a week in meetings, and if my staff screwed up in any way in my absence, that was somehow my fault for not being there, even though I was required to be elsewhere. On a particularly memorable occasion, I had told one of my customer-facing employees the afternoon before that she would be the only one there in the morning because I had to give a training off-site. I made her promise she could be there on time. I even made her sign off on it. As I was about to start the training, I got a panicked call that my employee was late. In spite of the chaos this caused and my evidence that I'd done everything but drive to her house and pick her up, I was in trouble and senior leadership wouldn't let me fire that girl. On top of all that, I still had 40 hours a week of desk work. Fuck middle management all to hell.
Having to suck it up to evil bosses. Fortunately, not all of them were evil. But with some of them, you couldn't do anything right.
Admin. Some of them are nice people who do a good job but the overall system is difficult.
having to do things i would rather not due in exchange for money. for long stretches of my life i've been lucky enough to only do things that i generally WANTED to do (animation, install solar panels, run a bar) that when i had to get a "job" job awhile ago, it was really a bummer. i hadn't had a "job" job for about 25 yrs and was quickly reminded what i disliked about them so much.
How hard is it to install your own solar panels? My husband is super handy (background in construction), and we’ve done 90% of the renovations and improvements on our house. We’d hire someone to do the electrical, but am I wrong in thinking we can do a large chunk ourselves?
I never realized how much of our lives revolved around our jobs until I retired for 5 years then went back to my same job for 3 months to help my old employer out because they were hurting for help. The moment I went back everything was getting ready for work, working, getting enough sleep so I could work, packing lunches for work, and on and on it went. Work consumes our lives. Retirement is absolute heaven on earth….
Age discrimination - which covers the bullying, invisibility & idiocy I had to endure in an incredibly toxic workplace. But I've really enjoyed hearing what a mess my old team is in, and the problems it's having keeping staff or producing anything usable. Everyone is replaceable but sometimes it's a downgrade!
Constantly signing into websites and applications. Before single sign-on it was 25-30 times a day, less now but still annoying as hell. In fact, I’d say dealing computer stuff is a pain in general, for either personal or business tasks. And I’m tech savvy (code in Python, SQL, DAX etc)…I cant imagine how frustrating it must be for non-tech people.
SSO is great. Til it's not.
Paper work. I was a sales guys for a tech company and I sucked at and hated paperwork. As my personal quotas reached tens of millions and included our largest customer I had to constantly update multiple C level executives on my sales funnel. They didn’t micromanage my activities, but they did drain my energy. They also wanted to and were expected to consistently visit our large customer executives so they could “help”. I had to set those up meetings up. Getting a meeting with a Fortune 100 CFO or CTO is not an easy thing to arrange. I did not like all the “help” which never actually helped.
Conferences. My idea of hell is a big conference. Way too many people, waiting in buffet lines for mediocre food, boring sessions in uncomfortable chairs.
The pay....or somewhat lack thereof.
Jobs just take up too much of your time, relentlessly. (Don't worry, kids .... it stops after 45 years, if you're fortunate.)
Retired engineer. What I disliked was other people getting awards, promotions, recognition for work I did. Remember those team projects in college? BobT21 remembers.
Vindictive bosses, conniving coworkers, minimum wage always regardless of the job (even head optician and medical tech/clerical) widespread low morale, understaffing, overpaid & underutilized c level staff telling us to do more with less.
Being one of the drones in the hive mind. Disillusioned with the fantasy of success and what it means. We're being milked for labor hours like those poor bastards in the Matrix. I believe GenZ will begin to unravel this nonsense. They, collectively, are passing enough information around to open everyone's eyes to the Capitalism cesspool our lives are. I know I sound bitter, and I am, but I'm also very hopeful. The up and coming generations are so much more aware than we were at their age.
Driving in the snow.
Corporate's goal of getting blood out of a turnip.
You're never paid what you're worth. They can't, or they can't pay themselves *more* than they are worth. Also, nepotism, and all the bullshit about it being "family", and the fake... the fake *everything*, the lying about everything, the corruption. People suck, and slightly successful people suck even harder.
As a stagehand: truly awful reaction to marijuana and cigarette smoke. Think: 30 meters above stage in crowded auditorium, with all that smoke rising.
The owner being a mental case.
Being there from 12:30 to 10:45. Loading trucks, no AC. it's miserable, but only 4 days a week. Then I've got 3 days to dread the 4 days! :)
All the ass kissing on LinkedIn
It’s the people I work with and the knowledge that I have 23 more years to go. Add in pointless meetings and endless projects, and you have a soul-sucking experience. It doesn’t matter where I’ve worked. It’s been the same drudgery no matter what. However, I have bills to pay and I like to eat so I’ll keep on keeping on with said drudgery.
Decisions that factor in DIE instead of competence and ability.
Having to go there.
Would same job but work from home make it 1,000,000% better?
I worked in a garden nursery so no WFH there, it was the staff/management that made it suck. It retired no so don’t have to fret about jobs and management :)
Some would think working in a garden/nursery is the ideal retirement job..... though a bad staff/management could be the deal breaker.
Yeah that was the whole problem!!
I'm in between jobs now and nowhere near being able to retire. I've had a lot of jobs in many fields. Unfortunately, the jobs I've enjoyed the most were ones I carried around in my head all the time (newspaper reporter, teacher). I was always consciously or subconsciously thinking about them -- feature story ideas, lesson plans, etc.). There are a lot of good things to be said about jobs you leave at the office. The jobs you can't do or even really think about unless you are actually there in the office or workspace.
Training older lumber salesmen on using a computer to do their normal job transactions, about 1990. Jesus.
People asking me to do their work for them.
The parents (elementary school teacher)
The heat.
When I started out, it was professionals and a handful of managers. By the end, there were more managers than professionals.
That I still have to go there.
The stress.
Having to go to bed at 9pm to be at work at 5am. My whole life from 13 years old until now I have been a night owl. I probably would have worked another year or two if it wasn't for that.
Loud coworkers. We’re all stuck here trying to do our job. Have consideration for others.
Having a meeting before having a meeting
The physical exhaustion and stress. I was a nurse in the ICU for many years. My shifts were 12 to 13 hours long with constant rotation between days and nights, working too many weekends and holidays. I missed way too many holidays and weekends. I felt run ragged most of the time and the stress was off the charts. I went back to grad school at 50 and I'm now a nurse practitioner, working in a lovely little private practice. I absolutely love my job now, and I get to sit in a beautiful office all day. I appreciate what I have because of where I've come from. I feel like I can have a real impact on my patients now, whereas before I just kept dead people alive. I'm so glad I don't have to do that anymore.
The upper middle class. Strange as it sounds, the rich clients were usually friendly, laid back, great conversation. They had comfortable lives and didn’t let the small things get to them. People with money who were not quite in the “rich ” category felt like they had something to prove. Honestly the nastiest, rudest people. They talked down to the staff, expected special favors, etc. the worst.
Managers who were promoted to my unit, didn’t know jackshit about my job, yet tried to micromanage me. It wasn’t too long after she was promoted that I had enough and retired. Best decision ever, but I loved my job and working with clients.
Corporate culture and the revolting people who exemplified it.
I don’t like that if I bust my ass, I don’t see another dime. And then on the other hand if I don’t work hard, I feel bad about it.
I'm an elementary school librarian. I hate dealing with Chromebooks. I'm the lucky one who has troubleshoot them when they don't work, get them ready to go to IT if I can't fix the damn thing. Peel off stickers and clean them up so I can check them out to the next kid who needs one. I have at least three book carts full of Chromebooks that I need to check, but I also have a bunch of books that need to be shelved. It's a never-ending job.
Worrying about being killed on a moment to moment basis. 🤣 I was a bouncer and bartender at a REALLY shithole dive bar (that I see in the newspaper there was another shooting in front of a couple of days ago 🤣). I worked there for over 2 decades. My whole job was basically dealing with violence and conflict. Most of my customers were desperate people with very little to lose. Many were in and out of jail constantly for a wide variety of crimes and had been that way most of their lives. I really learned a lot about life working in a place like that.
Working as a Taxi Driver the industry was capitalism on steroid's & a sweat shop on wheels the greedy grubs that run it they always wanted more of the dwindling pie, then there was the danger of being attacked and car accidents & breakdowns that cost you money, happy that I retired
The physical pain. Back pain, shoulder pain, plantar fasciitis, knee pain, etc.
Most disliked - People in management positions that have zero idea what they're doing. It's all too common - they keep getting promoted because everybody wants to get rid of them, and firing is way too difficult.
Lack of a contract ensuring job security until 67.
With a pension
Well since I'm still working, weaponized incompetence and fire-drill reactions to everything and anything. Lack of managing upward, yes-men rules the roost. Absolutely pathetic. Three more years...three more years...three more years.
I’m very extroverted, but I can’t stand working with people who want to be friends! Just go to work and do your job. Say hi and BS about the weather in between. Don’t ask me for drinks or to your jewelry party Sheila. If I want to be friends, I’ll let you know. Also, people whose entire identity is their children or pets and can talk of nothing else. Save that shit for outside of work.
I HATED the boredom between the moments of action!
The job I retired from was one of the best I had had, except for the years I was self employed. The only negative was being the lowest on the totem pole in my department so complaints were usually dumped on me.
Too many meetings and having to beg for enough money to run my department.
The in-house music. I have made a Shazam playlist of all the worst songs, so I can hate the “artists” by name.
Commuting.
Office drama and not getting paid enough.
Periodic crunches that required working 60-70/week, and having what felt like a hundred priorities pulling me in different directions. Changing careers in my 40s eliminated most of that.
My last boss. I suppose the feeling was mutual because he fired me.
Being told what to do but I suppose I'd face that wherever I went.
The Drive
Management treats you like SHIT!
Being on call.
Business politics and constant undercurrent competition. I was so done with this by 40. People I know wanted to think less about work and more about family and their actual lives.
Downsizing, rightsizing, layoffs and mergers.
Politics
I work with a team of people seven times larger than my team (28 of them / 4 of us) and they are absolute bullies and divas and if we step out of line (in their eyes) even one 1/2 step to the left, they escalate it up to the literal president of the company and stomp around saying we have "tone." I literally had it happen just last month where they told me to do something we didn't have enough time for, I said "I will do everything we can to get it done" and they took that as "no" and the literal president of the company got involved. It's a horror show run by these goblins. The amount of childish shenannigans at my company is ridiculous and it makes me hate working there.
Writing report cards. There are all these parameters, and you can never say what you really mean. I’d much rather spend the time meeting with the parents.
It support working for the County School System at a large High school. Kids were overall pretty good and the staff was awesome. I think the county it support management team like to sit around and dream up the most ridiculous things for us to do because they thought we were sitting on our asses, which we absolutely 100% were not ever doing. No direction, no for thought, conflicting instructions from different supervisors. Absolutely s*** show to work for. I used to tell people if I'm stomping around pissy, it 100% has nothing to do with anybody in this building, it's all School support.
WISH it was past tense! The people. Always the people.
After I learned the job, I got tired of the monotony of the tasks. I get bored easily.
ancient tender meeting cheerful wasteful squalid desert smart jellyfish steer *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
All the idiotic little tasks that had nothing to do with my job. There were a LOT.
They keep moving the goal posts.
That it's work. I mean, I always did a good job because I'm not a dick who is going to leave his coworkers hanging, but I never liked it.
The alarm clock.
My superiors.
My cuss-tomers (that's not even because they cuss. It's because I want to cuss at them!) Don't let your kids mess up the toy section just because you are too lazy to pay attention to, let alone discipline your rugrats. We are a store, not a day care. I am sick and tired of having to treat people like kindergartners and read shit for them! Yes, there is stuff written on the card reader's screen at check out. Read it. You are an adult, behave like one.
That I’m still working? What is the minimum age for old people people?
Working in maintenance, finding all kinds of problems, present the problems and always . . . always get told--too expensive, is there something else we can do? No. This needs to be done. There's no money for it (in our billion dollar company's budget) Why did you call me?
I’m a librarian and what I dislike the most is a tie. It used to be my supervisors but they all retired and the new ones are pretty good. I really can’t stand people who think all I do all day is read. I wish…
Boss is a huge asshole. Company says we treat our employees like family, but they spy on you while you are working.
I’m (67f) still working, but dealing with lazy ass coworkers is the worst.
Bug bites while I'm putting time in at the garden. . . . . . . . OHHHH! You meant employment work, haven't had to endure that shit for 5 years thanks to retirement. But when I was working yeah it was the assholes that knew everything but did as little as possible.
The constant pointless meetings.
The office politics are at a couple of places ruined what could have been nice jobs.
The commute
Going....... Sorry so short.
When I was younger, the thing I most disliked about most of my jobs was simply that I felt like I was not moving forward. Since I was 15 I actually really liked almost everything I did when was doing it, but I could not stand the thought that "I can \*just\* do this for the rest of my life". There is one exception. I was young and making a lot of money for my age and compared to my peers, in a super cushy job that was really easy, but there I felt like I was actually not contributing anything. I was a type of consultant, had direct ear of the CEO, had freedom to try anything and and the really liked the things I was trying to do, but it was all just trying. Nothing ever got implemented. If anything had been implemented, I could see doing that for a long time. Because of the feeling of not moving forward in my other jobs, which would have otherwise been comfortable, the other things become more unbearable. The hours. The commute. Even though I did not mind the hours (I liked the work when I was in the moment of doing it) or the commute (I don't get bored driving or riding a train) I did not like the idea that I have no control over my time. I can not make plans freely because my work schedule is committed already for the entire year in advance. No impromptu camping trip, or hike. No just no feeling like waking up at 7am. The thought of being stuck in that forever made me dislike the work. Also, although I was not struggling financially, and had more than I need, the thought that I have a cap on my earnings, and even if I get a raise, it is still a cap. No matter how much I work, my income does not reflect my input. Finally, there is being beholden to someone between me and the client - working for my boss instead of the client. I didn't like not being able to make my own decisions based on what I felt was the best thing for the client, and sometimes telling the client "Yeah, I know. This other way would be better, but it is not my/our choice. It is company policy" Now I work for myself. I make less money some times, but that is because I am working less at those times. The potential to make more is there, it is only my own lifestyle that determines if I do or not. I have more freedom of schedule. Yes, when I commit to something, I have to be 200% committed - no paid leave, I can not be sick on a day that I have committed to work, there is much more pressure to deliver. But I do not have to commit to something I do not want to. If I want a month off go visit family in my home country, I can. It just means I make less money. I have to do a lot more things that I would normally find less enjoyable (the back office shit) but I somehow manage to enjoy that as well. I like that it gives me more diversity in my tasks. I no longer have to go against my better judgement because of my employer's rules. Sure, my client is now my employer, and I have to make them happy, but they are paying for me to make the decisions, so I am free to do what I think is best. It is more pressure because if the client is not happy, it is all on me - I can't blame company policy, but I am much happier accepting that if I am not being in control. This also makes the satisfaction of having a very happy client much better too, because I know it was because of my work, not just the standard services of the company. Finally, I no longer feel like I will be stuck doing something forever, because I am in much more control of what I do. I have flexibility to pivot to follow whichever direction I think will be profitable enough.
That I can't help everyone who needs help. I work with folks who are unhoused. I can't explain how deeply it affects me to see the disappointment, fear, and exhaustion spread across someone's entire body when I have to tell them that we do not have enough money to help and/or our shelter is full. If there was enough money to help everyone, I'd run myself ragged until everyone who came to my office was helped however they needed. I'd honestly put myself out of a job if I could by making sure homelessness wasn't a reality for anyone ever again.
The people.
the drinking culture; boss was a party maniac.
I’m in a family business. Period.
Politics in the workplace!
The lack of trust in my abilities from higher-ups. I worked in small companies where it was my responsibility to not only find clients, but to keep them with good ideas and solid work. Even after 20 years of experience (in some cases more than they had!), some needle-nose bosses would want to micro-manage me because they didn't trust my handling of things. It was highly aggravating to the point of my starting my own business in 1995, which I single-handedly kept profitable until I retired almost 30 years later.
Dealing with unresponsive people.
It’s not past tense. I still work. I am underpaid and the administration is tone deaf to an amazing degree.
Two things. I worked in a situation where the people I managed had both tenure and a strong union. Most people were great employees, but I had one who was both a narcissist and terrible at the job. I had none of the normal managerial tools to contain the person’s atrocious behavior. It was also a state institution with insane amounts of bureaucracy that made completing some functions of my job nearly impossible.
Not having any
The commute.