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“I Don’t Get Paid Enough”: 43 Infuriating Moments That People Experienced While Working
Interview
It’s safe to assume that everyone is hoping for a raise at any given moment. According to a 2022 survey, less than one third of workers actually believe that they’re being paid fairly. And low pay is cited as one of the most common reasons for employees to leave their jobs. While most of us are willing to put up with minor frustrations during the workday, we all have our breaking points, especially when we’re suffering for a small paycheck.
Redditors have recently been sharing stories of the moments when they realized they definitely weren’t getting paid enough to put up with their current work arrangements. From being yelled at by their manager to being expected to fix sewage problems, these situations immediately sent workers over the edge. We hope that these stories won’t be relatable to you, pandas. But if they are, it might be time to say sayonara to your current employer!
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Boss said lesbians are a waste of a life because they're not doing their duty to men in bearing children. I'm not even gay but it was more than enough to get me to leave.
RELATED:
#2
I got red in the face yelled at for chatting with my coworker, WHILE we were both fully working and the two of us were among the best performers on the site. Two weeks notice got put in within the week.
#3
I worked at a preschool where my supervisor, who happened to be a good friend of two of the aides, had them spy on me. I decided to turn in my resignation. Before I did, she called me into a meeting with the HR director. While I held the letter behind my back, they said I was being laid off. After the meeting, I ran the letter through the paper shredder, and I was able to collect unemployment insurance! I felt I had gotten even! I did go back to teaching, but I found a job that I loved in a public school. I went from the worst job I ever had to my favorite!
To find out how this conversation started in the first place, we got in touch with the Reddit user who invited others to share their work horror stories, MidnightPandaX.
"I'd say the reason I made this story was mostly out of curiousity, rather than anything specific," the author shared. "Ask Reddit hasn't had a good question in a good while, so I thought I might ask something that people would genuinely enjoy."
#4
Passed over for promotion then tasked with training up the external hire who got the job, as I was one of the most competent people on the team. Notice was handed in and I walked less than 2 months later.
Zig Zag Wanderer 44 minutes ago
Once, I lost a contract, and I was tasked with showing the new team (of indian workers brought in to do the work) how to maintain the system. My mate made a bet with me that I couldn't work this period and leave them with less knowledge than they started with. I pretty much won the bet. They were clueless when they started, and absolutely clueless after listening to me for 4 weeks 😎
#5
I was a young professional at the time and one of the older partners had me drive his wife to her hair dresser and wait for her to be done, i then had to take her grocery shopping, carry the groceries in and put them away for her and when she told me to vacuum her carpet before i left, i said no. By the time i got back to the office my partner was red in the face and said that if his wife tells me to do something, it is like he was telling me to do something. I told him to write me up, which he did and had HR present it to me that i was insubordinate for not vacuuming his wifes carpet.
I ended up leaving a few weeks later after a lateral move to a more progressive firm. I have that write up framed in my office as it is so ridiculous.
#6
That I’ve never received a review or raise in the 5+ years I’ve been at my current job. When brought up I received blank stares and they questioned my loyalty?
We also asked MidnightPandaX if they had any similar stories of their own to share. "I think the only scenario that made me quit like that was when I was taken off the schedule in retaliation for calling in sick at Dominos," they told Bored Panda. "I had to threaten to get the state involved before they gave me my job back, and by that time, I already had a job lined up for me."
#7
Witnessing my boss having an affair *in the office* with someone. He's married with kids, and the woman is like. Sort of the worst person you can imagine in a workplace (unreliable, irresponsible, unorganized, immature, unprofessional, unkind, the whole shebang). The woman came up to me afterwards and begged me to keep their secret, and my boss couldn't look me in the eye for WEEKS but never brought it up and never apologized to me. Afterwards, the woman tried to get me fired.
#8
Working in a library, having to deal with parents not understanding that the library is NOT a daycare. Do not leave your kids behind...
Emilu 1 hour ago
I think this is a problem for a decent amount of retailers, as well. When I worked in a technology/electronics store, the amount of people that would attempt to leave kids with us watching the TVs whilst they shopped was insane. Fortunately back then it was as simple as saying "we don't babysit; if your kid runs off we're not responsible" to get most people in line. I doubt it'd be the same now. And we're only talking a decade. It's not like I'm 102. (I think?)
#9
A wiring closet was built on the 1st floor where a bathroom used to be. Guess what was on the 2nd floor above it?
There was a sewage leak from the 2nd floor.
I was the IT guy. They thought it was my problem to clean it up.
Finally, we asked the author what they thought of the replies to their post. "I think my favorite story from the thread is the servers which were drowned in sewage," they shared. "I work in IT now, and luckily, I haven't had a scenario like that (and never wish to), but I can just imagine the damage and smell from something like that. Ugh."
#10
I worked for a video distance learning program in the 80s-90s. I had a cool job doing some computer graphics and video production, but I also had to recycle hundreds (thousands?) of VHS tapes that had to be de-labeled, and the stickers did NOT come off easily. One day in frustration I just blurted out "can't we hire somebody to do this?!" My boss smiled at me and said "we did.".
#11
There was a piece of equipment in a crawlspace that needed replaced. I opened the door to the crawlspace and saw the device about 50 feet away, through a forest of spider webs.
That piece of equipment is still there, still broken, and won't be replaced.
#12
Cleaning bodily fluids for $7.25 an hour.
#13
There was a girl who I had the biggest crush on ever since we met in kindergarten. She moved away for college, and we got to talking, and I found out she had a crush on me, too. She came back home for a spring break from college and we hung out the entire time. I was scheduled to work (as a cashier at Meijer, for like $7.25/hr) on her last day home. I called and quit so I could spend one more day with her. Worth it.
#14
I had a job that didn’t pay us during the holidays. Working a full time job that claimed they “didn’t have the money right now to pay all of their employees”. It was a small “mom and pop” type employer so I get that times were hard but d**n that sucked. We went 3 weeks without a pay check. Caused me to fall behind on rent, car payment and paying back my student loans. I left that place as quick as I could land something else.
#15
My coworker asked why her emails weren’t being sent and others weren’t receiving them. She was writing them in Microsoft word.
#16
Retail jobs, multiple of them. One that really put me over the edge. Guy paid for something on layaway. Once you pay it off you get the item but it's not on site and is shipped in. Out of my control as an associate, out of store managers control too. We did not have the item yet, impossible to get it that minute he wanted it. This guy berated me for 30+ minutes like it was my fault. Store manager was almost zero help. He just let me get yelled at me over and over. I finally got the situation sorted and the dude left without his item. Afterwards I nearly cried in the parking lot sitting in my full motorcycle gear beside my bike. A friend I hadnt seen in years happened to see me and say Hi. Normally I would have talked to him forever. But I was absolutely destroyed by that customer, I basically just said "hey" and that was pretty much the extent of it. That was basically the moment I decided to go back to school, got an internship and worked myself into technology. Retail is FINE 95% of the time but it's the 5% that eats your soul alive. I hope that guy chokes on a rock. .
Emilu 1 hour ago
Retail can be soul-crushing. I saw someone that I thought was a friend in my store and said "Hi! I haven't seen you in ages! How are you?" and she literally turned around and ignored me, then quickly left. I also had a woman tell me "I hope you can't have children" because I wouldn't accept her return. The main reason I lasted in retail for... about fifteen years, IIRC, is because of the people with whom I worked. I'm still friends with several now, but it's certainly not easy-street. It is, however, a good way to make other options seem viable/plausible/worthy of aiming towards.
#17
About 26 years ago I was working at a video store and a customer threw change at my head when I had to validate her birthday. My boss had to stop me from punching her in the face.
My appendix blew up two days later and I lost the job anyway. Boss didn’t care that I was having a medical emergency so I walked through the door via an ER. About a year later, his store was taken over by Blockbuster. Karma.
#18
When I was in college I worked a retail job, I always got stuck on the closing shift. The store had a policy that you needed 2 departments worth of people there with the manager when they locked up the store. My department had the most individual items (lots of small components) so repriced and restocks always took forever, so we were basically always stuck there until the very end (generally about 3 hours after our scheduled clock off because there's always 1 other department that for one reason or another had a very long closing each day).
One day we decided we would work our asses off getting everything ready so we can leave on time for once, we get to 15 minutes before the normal clock out time and our supervisor goes and gets the manager to do a walk through and ok us to leave. He says there's something wrong, when we ask him what it is he refuses to tell us. We proceed to spend the next hour trying to find anything out of place, and find nothing. Finally once we are the last department not finished he tells us, turns out literally 1 item on one of the end caps wasn't straight (it was slightly crocked). I literally screamed in his face chucked my badge at him and walked out the emergency exit.
Peeka_Mimi 1 hour ago
When I worked at Ross Dress for Less I had a manager like that. She was German and we all called her a Notsee. She made that job miserable.
#19
My boss wouldn’t let us leave to eat lunch. Instead he would bring bologna and bread and have us eat that. I got tired of it and bounced.
#20
I took a job as a receptionist. Pay wasn't great and there were no benefits, but the interviewer stressed work-life balance as they have three receptionists, so it should be ok for one to leave early as needed. Well it turned out that by "leave early," she meant "leave right at 5:00 rather than waiting for any stragglers to leave." I missed many of my daughter's cross country meets, but was determined to make it to her league championship meet. We came back from lunch at 2:00, so I asked if I could just be off the rest of the day instead, to have time to change and travel to where the meet was. The office manager made me pull up Google maps and calculate to the minute what time I'd need to leave the office to go directly to the meet, and made me work up to that minute. So much for work-life balance.
They also demanded a hell of a lot of work considering the pay. I thought I'd just be answering phones and scheduling appointments, but any time there was a lull we were supposed to be running reports, poring over records for mistakes, etc. And there were rarely lulls-- usually the phone was ringing, I was trying to reach another staff who wasn't answering her phone, and I had two people in front of me with questions-- so when things actually got quiet for a sec I wanted to actually catch my breath. Nope, gotta go through these 400 postcards and make sure they're correct before we mail them! It was way too much for the pay, but the Google maps incident was my breaking point. .
#21
After being denied a raise after being told I was one of the best employees they had I was asked to help load the owners 17 year old daughters car that he was borrowing because his was in the shop. That car was a brand new Porsche Cayenne.
#22
I was a QA tester for a video game.
I submitted a critical bug for a piece of content made by a designer for an expansion to our MMO. That designer came over from across the building to yell at me, saying my bug was invalid. I didn't argue. I didn't do anything when they closed the bug as invalid. I didn't complain to my boss. Some co-workers came to see if I was ok.
A few weeks later they were having a public reveal on a test server where people could try out the content for free for like 3 days. This designer's content was the first level of the expansion content and because it was broken, players couldn't access anything.
I swung by her desk and saw her with her head in her hands as the lead producer and senior producer were standing over her.
About 2 months later she was laid off.
Our team had this weird tradition where if someone was fired or laid off people who didn't like them would collect their name tags. It was sort of a trophy to say "I outlasted this person." Some people would also grab the name tags to "protect them" from someone else keeping it as a trophy. It started with our boss at his previous game studio, and he brought it to our company. It was a very weird and macabre tradition that largely existed because layoffs were frequent. I tried to avoid it as much as I could because I felt it was a little infantile.
But I made sure that I collected her name tag when she was laid off.
#23
Highly unprofessional co-worker had the balls to complain to me because I'd been at home recovering from a life-threatening crash, which apparently was inconvenient for him. Management did nothing about it.
I don't work there any more. I did not in fact get paid enough, as my next job included a significant raise. I made it clear why I was leaving when I did.
#24
There were multiple moments that made me realize I definitely wasn’t getting paid enough getting yelled at, insulted, and even reprimanded for asking why I had to make up hours as an exempt employee just because I went to a medical appointment.
But the breaking point was when my boss, who was also an attorney, advised a client to hide money from the local tax department to avoid a lien. That’s the kind of thing that can get us disbarred, and yet it was treated like nothing.
The next day, I left a three-page resignation letter on his desk and my coworkers’ desks and walked out before he even got to the office. By the end of the summer, the rest of my coworkers followed and left the firm too.
#25
Listening to my maga boss rant about politics while we have 3 undocumented employees that he RELIES on to run his business.
#26
Got a new sales and engineering manager that had been with the company for decades that did not understand when a customer buys a larger amount of a product, the unit price goes down.
#27
I worked for a construction company where they paid me every week. Then switched to every other week. Then the pay checks started bouncing. I started cashing my pay checks immediately after I received them. One day the owner called me in and questioned why I was cashing my paychecks and questioned me if I this was just a job or a career blah blah blah. I told him what I do with my paycheck is none of his business. Two days later I was laid off. Kept me from having to quit and I got unemployment.
#28
Getting yelled at by my boss for telling him not to use a tool (that didn't belong to him) in a way that would break it. I walked away after that.
#29
When I was told I had to go to an employers house on weekends and do personal pc work...that wasnt in my job description as an IT person. I worked at a law firm in IT department.
I got sick of the one on one hand holding.
#30
I was told the oily stains on my work shirt were highly toxic dioxins.
In my 20s, went to work replacing the "mung" lines of a plastics plant. We were given yellow rain suits, rubber boots, and face shields and told to power wash the 3 ft diameter pipes, taking the tar-like substances and putting them in special metal barrels for disposal.
When we need to get a new barrel, I had to go to the safety office to sign it out. The dude there freaked out when he saw the tiny black specs on my shirt.
Needless to say, after his explanation of how very very bad this was, I took the barrel over to my supervisor, took off my shirt and put it in the barrel, AS PER SAFETY GUY INSTRUCTIONS. Walked over to my car. Kicked off my boots and jeans and drove away in my underwear.
That was how I quit.
#31
District manager visited the Blockbuster I worked at and asked us how many super expensive 20 dollar a month rent unlimited video games subscriptions we'd sold. I was happy to ring people up and give them feedback and advice on movies to watch, but I'm not conning them into a bad deal. He breathed down my neck and basically was forcing me to ask every customer if they wanted to be on it, so I just quit then and there. This same guy also took all our clocks off the wall when he arrived so they wouldn't "distract" us. No way I'm gonna sit there and take that kind of condescension.
This is an old story from the 2000s of course, when I was young.
#32
When a girl pissed herself while in an interview with me, soaking her chair, the floor and there was so much that we could see her path when she left.
Turns out she had also pissed on all our waiting room couches.
I was told that because I was health & safety rep, I had to clean it up. As H&S rep I had the place closed to be decontaminated. Honestly, eff them.
#33
I'm a very small and short female and my boss asked me to move about 1000 pounds of candles by myself. I ended up collapsing on the ground because of how much pain I was in after trying to move the candles.
#34
Mechanical engineer. Global company:
I had to digitally sign a document one day.
It took 6 software programs and 1.5 hours to digitally sign, print, email.
I left that day. Never went back. Never looked back. Ghosted them. Started my own business. Best decision of my life.
#35
20 years old, needed money so bit the bullet and became a custodian to more than double my pay and have health insurance, vacation and sick time. Even with all the junk I had to deal with as a custodian it was worth it than working minimum in retail. The part that made me quit was dealing with the bitter old lead who wanted nothing more that to be miserable and make others miserable.
#36
Private school... They let another teacher steal my professional learning materials and pass them off to the staff as his own... When I called admin on the issue, they were silent...
I wrote a 20+ page policy document for admin on how we could transition the staff to online teaching at the beginning of COVID (timelines, resources, training needed, rationale for everything)... They ignored my email, said nothing to me, but two weeks later started (poorly) putting my plans into play...
When I raised concerns about how they were handling staff mental health supports and student success during COVID, they threatened to fire me three times in two weeks...
I started looking for a job immediately, and got out about a year later. Post-COVID the school is on the verge of financial collapse because they've prioritized profits over education and the quality of the people they're hiring AND the student's they've accepted has slipped year over year. I'm making 50% more working in the public system.
#37
My company is no longer giving raises to employees who make more than a certain amount above the base pay, but don't worry, they appreciate our experience and expertise. Additionally, 6 people left and they didn't hire a single person to replace them🙄.
#38
It’s not an insane story but I applied for an estate agent job with the company purple bricks (who at the time went into liquidation but were bought by another company for £1 to clear debts and stay afloat). I had a total of 3 days training, roughly 4 hours a day for the first two days and then 30 minutes on the third. Purely PowerPoint presentations.
The day after this the guy (my boss) pretty much said okay good luck! Handed me about 100 property keys and gave me a phone, to which my first responsibility was to apologise to all their clients for being kept in the dark due to high staff turnover.
Needless to say I told my boss I wasn’t prepared enough for what I threw myself into and quit the next day.
#39
Was working maintenance at a hotel once upon a time. Had to pull out a steam cleaner to remove poop smears from a mattress. Did I do it? Yes, because no one else would. Did I clock out, go home and shower, and never come back? Also yes.
#40
Worked at a fast casual restaurant as the kitchen manager. Open-line restaurant, and during busy times I would jump on the line with my staff to push food and service.
Company was trying to squeeze profits and the GM started cutting my prep cook staff early, leaving me with more work (I was salaried). Was happening every day for months. Longer hours, no extra pay.
One day I’m on the line during a rush helping push service. Owner of company is sitting with his son in a table right in front of. Son is 18, just graduated high school. The owner handed his son the keys to a Jimmy John’s franchise as a graduation gift. Kid had never worked a day in his life.
And it hit me, that all these extra hours, and penny pinching, and labor cost for the last year, just went into the hands of this pimple faced dude who has probably never bagged his own lunch. This was 5 years ago.
I quit the next day. Told myself I would never work a job where my wage was not directly tied to my effort and performance. Got into sales.
Made $150k last year in a LCOL area. Coming up on 1 year in the house I bought with my fiance. Getting married in June.
#41
Worked as a contractor for the federal government issuing COVID-19 payments, pandemic isolation, helping on myGov, Centrelink, Medicare payments during lockdown (also getting vax stats on the QR code app).
A guy asked for help with updating QR code to reflect vax status. I clearly explained what to click on the different pages. He asks if I can just do it for him, if he gives me his username and password. I explain no because it has 2 factor authentication and I wouldn’t receive the number. He says “well I’ll just read it to you over the phone”. I say “no, if I were to log into your account as you, it would be considered identity theft, the federal tech people in Canberra would recognise my IP logging into a myGov account, not mine and my manager would be notified. I’d lose my job in approximately 20 minutes after doing what you wanted.” He replies “So.. Can’t you just help me?”.
#42
I kept getting tasked with that’s that are soooo not my job and I made less money than a new hire even though I’ve been there for 10 years. Some examples being I am a trainer, can do every job there, handle scheduling and payroll, can drive CDL and do yard jockey and route driving etc but I was by far the lowest paid person there. Like the new hire who only does one thing in the warehouse made $5 more per hour. I’d also be the person who would get sent to other plants to help fix their problems or introduce and teach the new systems.
#43
I was working at Target at guest service, I had been at Target for almost 5 years and was about done with that job anyway. This was back when pre-paid phones were popular. Girl who looked barely old enough to drive brings an ATT phone and prepaid card to guest service to buy. We sold both cards to load minutes on cell phones and we also sold cards for pay phones. Once they were activated they couldnt be returned and they were not interchangeable. I used to work electronics and knew this. I called back to electronics to verify if she had the right card and he said yes so I sold her the phone and the card.
I opened the next morning and around 10 or so I took my break. I come back to the girl pointing at me screaming "thats him! thats the guy!" Im looking around like w*f is going on?! Apparently she did buy the wrong card and when she came to return it and they told her she couldnt she got her parents. Her dad was completely hammered at 10:30 in the morning and acting like a belligerent. He starts telling me that I stole $50 dollars from his daughter and I was paying her back. As if I somehow was doing this for kicks just to mess with her or making money off of a scam. The mother accused me of being a pothead. Now if they would have been nice about the whole thing the store manage would have ate the $50 and gave them a store credit to buy the right card but since they were acting like the way they were he had security escort them out.
I was not about to get yelled over a $50 phone card and had my fill of dealing with the public and put my notice in the next day. I think I worked 2 more days and never went back. I still have nightmares when I walk in that place hearing walkie talkies and calling for backup to the registers.
What do you think ?
Emilu 1 hour ago (edited)
My best few are from working in retail. Naturally. #1: A manager wanted me to join him and his wife in a threesome. The manager was later 'asked' to resign because he was essentially stealing. He'd have been fired otherwise. He got off easy. #2: In continuation to my comment above, I had a woman tell me that she "hope(d) I couldn't have children" because I wouldn't accept her return. I went out to the back room to cry; I was a teenager and not used to dealing with shit like that. My then-acting manager then proceeded to come back from somewhere, apologise to the woman for me being rude and process her return. #3: Also happened when I was a teen; I had a wanker come in and steal something. I tackled him to the ground but he eventually got away, even though he was flashing his manties as a result (heh). Again, I was a loser and started crying. There was an old couple in the store at the time and they asked me if he was my BF. I just said no and asked them to leave.
Emilu 1 hour ago (edited)
My best few are from working in retail. Naturally. #1: A manager wanted me to join him and his wife in a threesome. The manager was later 'asked' to resign because he was essentially stealing. He'd have been fired otherwise. He got off easy. #2: In continuation to my comment above, I had a woman tell me that she "hope(d) I couldn't have children" because I wouldn't accept her return. I went out to the back room to cry; I was a teenager and not used to dealing with shit like that. My then-acting manager then proceeded to come back from somewhere, apologise to the woman for me being rude and process her return. #3: Also happened when I was a teen; I had a wanker come in and steal something. I tackled him to the ground but he eventually got away, even though he was flashing his manties as a result (heh). Again, I was a loser and started crying. There was an old couple in the store at the time and they asked me if he was my BF. I just said no and asked them to leave.
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