The only thing worse than a toxic workplace is staying in a toxic workplace, but like frogs in boiling water, we often don’t notice the “heat” until someone points it out or, finally, some final incident pushes us over the edge.So one personasked the internetto share the reason they left or were fired from their last job. From idiotic management to unsafe working conditions, netizens responded with a host of stories. We also got in touch with career coachDaphne Gomezto learn more. So get comfortable, pour yourself another cup of coffee, and get scrolling. Be sure to comment your thoughts and upvote your favorites.This post may includeaffiliate links.
The only thing worse than a toxic workplace is staying in a toxic workplace, but like frogs in boiling water, we often don’t notice the “heat” until someone points it out or, finally, some final incident pushes us over the edge.
So one personasked the internetto share the reason they left or were fired from their last job. From idiotic management to unsafe working conditions, netizens responded with a host of stories. We also got in touch with career coachDaphne Gomezto learn more. So get comfortable, pour yourself another cup of coffee, and get scrolling. Be sure to comment your thoughts and upvote your favorites.
This post may includeaffiliate links.
I asked for a raise when I realized my job was about 5 positions in 1. When my boss tried to get my raise approved, she was denied. She told the big bosses that I would walk if this wasn’t approved and they literally said “oh well.“I got my dream job the following week.
The company didn’t offer bereavement days. I called off to go to my fathers funeral and my manager told me it was inconvenient for them to have to cover my shift because they were short staffed and that I needed to come to work. I told them I wasn’t missing my fathers funeral for their measly $11 an hour. They fired me the next day.
HVAC installer here. I quit my last job because our scheduler decided she didn’t like me so when I’d message her to get the address of my next job, she wouldn’t respond. I had to call another office staffer to ask if she was In (she was) and asked to be transferred. She picked up, and hung up immediately. I called staffer again, asked to be transferred, again, she hung up. Again.This was a Friday. I went home, cleaned the work van of my tools, dropped the van off at the office, keys inside, went home and emailed the boss a letter explaining WHY I was quitting, where the van was, and that he could mail me my final cheque.He called me Saturday morning asking what it would take to get me back. I told him he’d have to fire the scheduler. (His wife), he said he could never do that. I told him I already knew that and had a job lined up for Monday morning.In between getting home and returning the work van, I sent my resume out to five different HVAC companies. In the three hours it took to clean out and return the van, I had five offers.
Bored Pandagot in touch withcareer coach Daphne Gomezto learn more about avoiding bad jobs in the future and she was kind enough to lend us some insights. First, we wanted to hear about some red flags to look out for when reading through job postings.“Job postings that pay entry-level but require years of experience, and job postings that don’t have clear descriptions of what your responsibilities will be in the position. This one is very niche, but we’ve also seen a small handful of companies explicitly write in their job posting “We will not hire former teachers for this (L&D) role.” I would personally never want to work at a company that openly discourages an entire applicant pool for an open position, regardless of how many match the qualifications of the job postings.”
Bored Pandagot in touch withcareer coach Daphne Gomezto learn more about avoiding bad jobs in the future and she was kind enough to lend us some insights. First, we wanted to hear about some red flags to look out for when reading through job postings.
“Job postings that pay entry-level but require years of experience, and job postings that don’t have clear descriptions of what your responsibilities will be in the position. This one is very niche, but we’ve also seen a small handful of companies explicitly write in their job posting “We will not hire former teachers for this (L&D) role.” I would personally never want to work at a company that openly discourages an entire applicant pool for an open position, regardless of how many match the qualifications of the job postings.”
Started a job as security for a gate at a nuclear power plant, enjoyed it, was working 40 hours a week. Showed up every day, didn’t complain. Then they fire 3 people for no reason and make me start working 80 hours a week mandatory. I was making tons of money but was struggling to find time to buy groceries since I worked until late at night.Boss starts micromanaging every little thing while I’m working 16 hr days. Then they wanted me to start training people, said I’d get a 2 dollar an hour raise for doing it, that never happened. Then I had some car issues and I couldn’t come in one day. I had to go to Autozone and buy a replacement part. I got the problem solved and was good to go the next day. I never missed a day in six months. My boss called every car shop in town (allegedly), and said that I was lying. I bring the part that I replaced in to show her. She says that’s not enough proof and that no one in town said they sold me that part. She wrote me up and then said I might be fired or I might not, and I’ll know at the end of the week. I said okay and she asked me if I was coming in tomorrow morning and I said sure.Next day I slept in and never showed up, apparently there were trucks backed all the way up the road for 4 hours since I didn’t show up to open the gate. Boss texts me saying I’ll be criminally charged for not showing, I just ignored it so she called me everyday for about a week. I never answered. Found out later that she went on a power trip and fired the people I trained because I “taught them wrong” then replaced them with her relatives. This is the person guarding your energy infrastructure America!
I took early retirement to get away from the micromanagement/ bullying that was endemic throughout the company from the top down.I now work part-time for a lot less money, but somewhere where I’m appreciated and looked after.My mental and physical health has improved beyond measure.
Of course, “skilled” toxic workplaces will find a myriad of ways to hide their problems from new applicants, as otherwise they risk never being able to find new employees when the old ones inevitably leave, so we wanted to know what are some good questions an applicant might ask when interviewing? What qualities or accomplishments have made past employees successful in this role? What does collaboration look like in this role? How does your company encourage work-life balance?” Daphne suggested.
My father was hired in the same company.When on working sites he talked to me like his ‘‘kid’’ and spoke to other people about me like i was still a child…It ruined every single relationship i had with other workers, i was looked on as a child when i was 20 years old, all respect from the boss was down the drain and i just had no voice anymore…I had to go..Father of the year
Given her experience, we were curious to hear what horror stories she had encountered from friends or family when it comes to deeply toxic workplaces. “A friend of mine quit a role after a few weeks in a new position, she was hired for a remote company and during onboarding was shown her “virtual office.” All employees were required to have cameras on at all times and off mute so that everyone could listen in to all phone calls, making an extremely noisy and distracting environment.”
Use to never understand people when they said “new manager so I left”. Use to think they were overreacting.Last job I quit because new management. Now I understand what they were saying.
I was teaching high school social studies. Had a difficult heart episode (had previous heart attack) and my friends at school who visited every day in the ICU, convinced me it was time to retire. That was 4 years ago. They were right. I love being retired.
F**k them kids. Teaching has turned into behavior management day care. It sucks the joy out of you all day and then the parents are calling to suck out some more joy. A select handful of kids are incredible and fantastic. So many kids won’t turn anything in as in earning a literal 0 for the semester.While all of this is going on you’ll have admin and the network telling you the kids are failing because you didn’t set them up for success, you didn’t invent a new wheel, you didn’t take enough data, you didn’t love them into behaving better.
“There were chats of people who were being scolded for turning their cameras off to use the restroom without asking permission first, etc. The friend ended up quitting within a month,” she shared with Bored Panda. If you want to learn more about finding a job that works for you and actually getting it, you can find more resources atteachercareercoach.com.
I was a teacher. My vice principal yelled in my face in front of a student. A combination of other factors had built up over time and made me hate teaching, but that was the straw that broke my back at that place. After that, I walked down to the principal’s office and told him I intended to resign.Right now, I’m in the process of changing careers, but I’m far happier than I was as a teacher. I’m glad I left when I did.
My last employer, of 32 years, had shrunk from 3,000 employees to ~200. I’d earned above average reviews for many years, then my boss gave me a below average one. That was the writing on the wall for me. Things were getting worse and worse, s****y attitudes all around. I just got fed up, gave my two weeks notice. I’d told them for years that they’d miss me when I was gone. Well, I left, they started calling, asking me to come back. Sorry! I’m retired.
Boss reduced employee salaries 30%, all but his wife and kid, who also worked for the company. That was after taking his extended family on a 12 day vacation.
In general, many of the stories here showcase just how much poor management decisions can and will affect a workplace. This is why it’s not necessarily enough to research just the company itself, it’s best to understand who you will be working under. Sites like Glassdoor.com can help here, where employees can anonymously vent about working conditions, pay, and other aspects of a job.
It’s a long story, but I’ll try to keep it short. I had been having a long, hard struggle with endometriosis for a while, and it came to a point where either I get a hysterectomy or get another repeat procedure in hopes of controlling the endometriosis again. After much hesitation, I made the fearful decision to get a hysterectomy. I knew kids were not in my future. And everybody had been saying, “If you aren’t actively trying to have children, what are you waiting for?” The doctor gets in there and sees just how out of control the endometriosis had gotten again. And had to do extra procedures to remove the scar tissue. As such, it caused me to have a hyperinflammatory response to the point where it not only shut down my bladder, but my colon too. I had no choice but to pursue a temporary disability.My boss didn’t believe me that it was that severe. Before they could contact the doctor’s office to investigate my need for the disability, they fired me. I was able to push back, and they reinstated a temporary position for me and allowed me to get the disability as an apology. I took it, knowing at this point I wanted nothing more to do with them. Everyone there was encouraging me to get the procedure done, but when things went south on me for recovery, nobody even bothered to ask how I was doing. I was expected to be able to pick myself up and move on like nothing had happened. Now, I’m stuck fighting constant infections and have no hope for my health.
Had a Zoom meeting in which I was told that my department’s work was eventually going to be outsourced to India. They said “it could be six months from now, it could be a year, it could be two years,” and offered me a buy-out if I didn’t want to wait, so I jumped.
They sell snake oil to little old ladies and I couldn’t do it any more. I thought about all those grandmothers being taken advantage of and I felt so dirty. I up and left in the middle of a shift.
Really toxic workplace, but the last straw was when I had to miss a day and work over the weekend/night because my dad was having surgery… and my manager accused me of lying. He pulled in HR as a power play as well. He was absolutely delusional because he was new to the position and things were already a s**tshow. I ended up having an anxiety attack because I just couldn’t believe what was happening, on top of my parents’ health issues, so I got short term disability pay for a few months and then quit after lol
The site supervisor asked me to fraudulently sign training documents for an upcoming audit from corporate because nobody knew how to do their job.
I got seriously ill from surgical complications and 2 months into my medical leave, when I was still in the middle of very involved and costly treatment, the company yanked my health insurance out from under me. I had to quit so I could qualify for Medicaid because I HAVE to have health insurance.I am very sad about it because I loved the job and fought to keep it but yeah…they didn’t give a single f**k.
I was burning myself out and losing my mind when they brought in a new system and what would have taken me 5mins to do on the old system now took me an hour. Department was understaffed and when I asked to get more help they refused. Needless to say, I left and they hired seven people to replace me.
Worked the same position for 10 years to much growth and success. I was the “go to” person in my department and made many allies on other teams as well. My boss (who had occupied the position for 22 years) was retiring and I was a natural fit to be promoted into this very niche higher level position, which I very much wanted. instead, department head downgraded the position so it would have been a lateral move.When this was happening, I was headhunted at another org. I was offered almost the same position as my old boss, almost doubled my salary, and it took my old company 9 months to fill the position (and had to hire more than one person). And as much as I’m happy and growing at my new role, I’m still sad about how it all went down at my old company, because it was an organization I loved.
Was being scheduled literally 13 hours a week. Most days I’d come in at 930 and leave at 11. Brought up to my service manager multiple times “ hey you only gave me one shift this week. Can’t afford daycare with only one shift” he’d say he forgot and sometimes give me a pity shift. Went to the GM she did nothing. I was tired of doing them the favor of coming in to open (cause they didn’t want to) and then not being given any serving shifts in return
I was there for just over a year…still waiting to be trained. I sat in a room for 48 hours a week unable to work because “nobody wanted to train “.
I worked in an special ed preschool. We were short staffed and any time we mentioned the dangers we were facing, the principal dismissed it. She even had the nerve to tell us that “everyone’s suffering.” We had 24 children, 16 of them had special needs, and many of them were not potty trained yet, but we only had two adults. I was not being paid enough to deal with that so I left for a better paying job.
My janitorial job was easy enough before and even going into the pandemic, but once they had to fire another dude for refusing to get vaccinated, they gave me a good portion of his job on top of what I already was doing, and didn’t seem to feel like replacing him. I was struggling to keep up.On top of this, I requested off to visit friends for Christmas and they waited until the last minute to give me a yes or no, making my plane ticket cost a lot more than it needed to. That was kind of my last straw among a bunch of other things.I should add that I had to fight for the right to quarantine during the time when we didn’t have a vaccination ready, and people in close contact with covid positive people like myself were being given an automatic recommendation to take a week or so of (I forget the exact number). Their stance was if I’m not personally testing positive, I would be fired for not showing up. no exceptions. I was just trying to be safe, for myself and others.I had to get the state involved to even get them to allow it.In addition to that, my boss had a history of lying, framing people to make them look like they were doing worse than they were, I could name a bunch of others that quit for the same reason. I didn’t want to quit, parts of my job was almost too easy, but she crossed the line a few too many times with me to stay.
I told a regular customer who always acts like an idiot exactly what I thought of him. Unfortunately it turns out he is an investor in that business. I was sick of that job anyway. Just got a higher paid one closer to my house. I actually saw him today. As soon as he saw me he scuttled off to drink somewhere else.
They wanted me to send all my private information through Gmail. Just in a regular email. No security measures, no contract for pay, nothing. So I started doubting if they were real. Go out to the place where they were located. Owner yells at me and starts cussing me out. I said f**k this and walked out. They were super shocked.
Complete chaos in the IT department.The company had a super tight budget and everyone from bottom to top was stressed out because not enough personnel was hired to meet the goals of the C-Suite. Basically you get paid below market to do the work of 4 employees. And this wasn’t a startup, it was a company that has been in business for decades.Ended up finding a role that paid double for less work. Bottom line: if you are overworked and underpaid, look for a new job asap. It can potentially take a long time but it’s always worth it.
I was unappreciated. My boss would only seem to critique us. Never any appreciation. He’d leave for a weekend vacation and come back complaining about something we didn’t do. While we were spending the entire weekend doing something he asked to make sure was done, and still helped customers, and one of the days was on the higher end for sales. I also worked there for three years and never got a raise. He also asked me to take on more responsibility, but never told me specifically how to do that.
Toxic leader in a peer department. Used extortion, fear, and blackmail regularly. His team couldn’t hold talent longer than a few months due to him. Leadership refused to address the issue, rumors that he had dirt on the company so he effectively got everything he wanted when it counted.I left when he went after my team and leadership allowed him to. Turns out it was the best decision of my professional life because at the same time this was happening I was offered my dream job making more money, working fewer hours, and over a year in I can report no workplace drama here!
Manager had a grudge against me, because she knew my family member prior to me getting the job, and didn’t reveal that information to me until after I signed on.Spent 3 months making my life a daily hell as a way to get back at that person through me. So I walked in and quit.
Got hired on,“oh yea we’ll let you implement a bunch of changes to make the system more stable and work on the DBA side of things”.In actuality; “please make these reports for a washed up programmer we unwisely made into a VP. They’ll give you ‘pseudo code’ that doesn’t resolve to any data on our system, obey any form of logic and they’ll hire friends from church to be business analysts to muck up specs for major projects that literally do not make any sense.”
While on maternity leave the cost of living went up so much that returning to work would lose us money. So basically forced to quit and be a stay at home mom. Not that i had a choice but im happy
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Had to quit to take care of an aging parent with dementia
I worked at walmart….do i need to say more?
There is no set schedule. Every week, the schedule would change at least 3 times. And you HAD to work the newest schedule. I had hours from 7 to 13 hours. Turn over shifts, no breaks (legal in that field), no benefits at all. I could work mornings, afternoons, or nights.I couldn’t have a life, and I was burnt out.
Was head chef at a busy pub / music venue. Had been there 3 years, the previous year of which was under a new owner. It was her first time owning a business and she was eager but not quite cut out for it. She and I were good friends so it was a happy job even if I was having to pick up the pieces for her a lot.She decided to sell the place but hadn’t found buyers yet. But once she made the decision she went wild trying to cut costs everywhere to get out with as much money as she could have. So she slashed my menu to pieces. All the work I’d put in creating unique dishes that people loved was gone in a day, replaced with the most basic pub fare. I thought she’d totally lost the plot and resigned when she told me she was certain about the changes.She sold the place a month later and when I got that news it suddenly made sense. It was still a d**k move but at least it had a flavor of logic to it and wasn’t just complete disrespect for me with no rationale.She and I have talked and hung out since then so we’re back to being friends. And ultimately leaving that job made me realize just how much stress I was under there. I took a nice easy job where I don’t have to manage anything and I’m way happier for it.
I quit for several reasons: micromanaging and condescending supervisor, the workload was too much with unrealistic deadlines and so much brain fatigue and stress trying to multi task and work fast, low pay for the type of job it was and the expensive city I live in, increasing work load with no additional pay, catty colleagues.
Nearly lost my nose to frostbite after working in -80°C (with windchill). When the day was done I got to go back to camp. They refused to evacuate the work camp in -60°C cold snap when we lost power and with it heat. We had to sleep in -30°C with a thin blanket and whatever clothes we had in the closet. I fell asleep prior to the power outage so I never had the opportunity to put on anything I was fecked. It was -63°C outside the camp the warmest it got was -49°C. No lights, nothing just cold and darkness looked like something out of the Walking Dead. Told the camp manager if it ever happened again I was going to take apart furniture and burn it for warmth
My idiotic manically depressed self decided to quit during an episode
Hostile work environment
I had a mental breakdown. Drank a fifth of vodka. Almost killed myself. Just never went back to work after that.
Absolute disrespect, and a much better paying job
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I worked a second job as a dishwasher for a mom and pop shop. Unfortunately, business became slow during the fall and early winter. The week before the holiday, the owner emailed us saying that the business would close down at the end of January 2023. They weren’t make enough money that’s why we closed down. I was pretty sad because I gotten along with everyone including the owner and his wife. Everyone was very friendly. The owners would always tell me how much they appreciate and how much I’m a hard worker. I would get tips as well. Unlike my full time job where the chef nitpicks me over the smallest s**t and gives everyone a slap on the wrist for calling out or showing up late.
I had a full mental breakdown before walking through the doors….I worked at Amazon
My assistant manager stopped talking to me for 2 months.There was a whole host of things wrong but that was the last straw.
No work life balance. Compulsory overtime, s**t boss.
Dying industry, and I couldn’t handle the low pay and constant stress of rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship. Within a year, my position was ultimately eliminated.
Chronic illness gave me no choice. I had become unable to do the detail work needed with any kind of reliable pace. I loved the job, I just couldn’t do it fast enough anymore to be of any use.
One of my “superiors” was bullying me and she had been promoted to an even higher position so I left.
The Chinese government decided they no longer wanted Americans (or any foreigners) teaching their kids English.
Failed to pay me for a month and a half.
Work environment was nasty and mostly unkept. Could almost skate on the floor with all the oil…EVERYWHERE!!!
A micromanaging boss who always had to be right.
40 hour job turned into a mandatory OT 60 hours. Also, every other department got Veterans day off and paid for except for the one f***g veteran in the company. Just a st company on so many levels.Though we had a Dept. head it seemed he wasn’t really in charge. Random family members of the owner would come a give conflicting directions and priorities and would cause massive amounts of problems. Just simply a poor run company.
Toxic environment, overworked, underpaid, poor management and useless HR.
Felt there was too much I was accountable for that I had no control over…decided to give early retirement a test drive at the end of last year.
FTC rule changes collapsed revenue. 3 monthly meetings where finance presented 30% decline. My coworker, now wife, and I were the first ones to jump ship. The company shuttered 6 months later.
I’m worth more than what they would pay. Shrug.
Place shut down. Pretty good severance pay though
Drama. Loved that job too.But in the end. I was no longer welcomed in the friend group because a woman destroyed my reputation, butting into a situation that was none of her business.I wish I did things differently. But in the end, I learned a lot from that situation.
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Gabija Saveiskyte
Indrė Lukošiūtė
Aivaras Kaziukonis
Work & Money
