In 2024, most adults in the United States will have held a variety of jobs. It's very rare today for a person to get a first job straight out of high school and stay with that company until they retire.
Jobs that were like that were usually in mills or factories—jobs that were shipped outside of the United States.
Of those multiple jobs—or even multiple careers—there may bd jobs or workplaces that people enjoy. And ones that they despise.
A Redditor asked:
"What job will you never do again?"
Retail
"Anything in retail."
~ Proof_Baker_8292
"Minus making life long friends, working retail ruined the holidays."
~ Strange_Pasta
"I worked in retail for a few years during college and I met my now wife there. Still good friends with 3 guys I met there as well. So that part was positive. I haven’t worked retail in about 13 years now."
"Not to make light of the term, but I sometimes wonder if trauma bonding has something to do with people being closer with their coworkers in fast food/retail type jobs."
"My current job is much easier mentally/physically, even though it requires higher job skills, and I like my coworkers, but it just isn’t the same level of connection."
~ TSchab20
"Retail ruined my outlook on life and also showed me how cruel the majority of people are when they think they’re better than you."
"There were so many days I’d sit in my car having to psyche myself up to go in just to work. Then sitting in the car for 5-10 minutes trying not to cry after my shift was over."
~ Spartan2842
Mover
"Being a mover. Sweating your a** off and lugging sectionals up flights of stairs sucked. The winters were brutal and the summers were hot and humid."
"We’d basically force ourselves to drink water to keep our fluids up. The only plus side was getting tips from generous customers."
~ HippoProject
"I was a mover for a university. It was hit or miss on how good or bad it was. Some days we worked our a**ess off and some days we hardly did anything."
"There was one day the only work order we completed was moving a filing cabinet a few inches to the right to uncover the outlet behind it."
~ Saphurial
Call Center
"Call center. Chained to a phone the second you start in the morning to the end of your day."
"Having to talk to people all day, a lot who aren’t happy, is mentally draining. I would have to be one step from homelessness before I even consider going back to that job."
~ Foreign-Cellist895
"It’s awful, you don’t even get a second to breathe between calls."
"Productivity is important, but call centers expect you to be on it every second of the day for 10-12 hours straight."
~ thegingerofficial
"Same. I worked in an insurance call center and no one called who was having a good day."
"Silver lining, I figured out that my productivity numbers were based on number of calls I took and talk time. Approving a claim took a hell of a lot less time than denying someone."
"I got really good at finding minutia to justify a reversal (aka an approval) on the claim and I could live with myself at the end of the day."
"I would literally shovel sh*t for a living before doing call center work again."
~ Prestigious_Door_690
"I worked at a banking call center for three years. I hated every minute of it. I would actually fantasize about getting sideswiped on my drive into work. I would've preferred a trip to the hospital."
It was nothing but a call-after-call-after-call for 8 hours. All day, every day."
"Then we would have meetings where we would get berated for not taking enough calls. Sometimes, I would pretend to go to the bathroom just cause I needed a mental break."
"Once, I got reamed for spending 9 WHOLE minutes in the bathroom. Yes, someone actually counted. Looking back, I'm surprised I didn't have a nervous breakdown."
~ casino_night
Customer Service
"I won't do anything with customer service ever again. I got tired of returning home crying after getting yelled at by customers."
~ Morrigan405
"It's not just the customers. Oftentimes, it's the management. You can have a rabid customer screaming in your face so close that you're getting spit on because they're stupid."
"You handle it the best you can and then management swoops in and undercuts the store policy that you've had drilled in your head. Or they ask you why you just didn't do it."
~ GaryBuseyWithRabies
"Worst part about a customer service call center is that the pipeline doesn’t stop. No breather to collect yourself after an intense call. Nope. It’s all about handling the volume."
"I had a call with a woman who was returning sports bras because she was having a double mastectomy due to cancer, and she broke down on the phone. That’s a heavy phone call to take, and she was appreciative of me just listening to her."
"But then I’m expected to turn around and be Mr happy customer service immediately after. That. That is what made the job so emotionally draining. This was also during COVID, so I can’t go anywhere to process it. I now realize why I went through 8 bottles of bitters during the pandemic."
"Long story longer, I not only accepted her late return, I also sent her a $50 store credit because she’d need a new sports bra. F*ck policies. She deserved it."
~ pug_fugly_moe
CNA
"CNA. It wasn't even the constant lifting of 200-pound people, wiping of privates, watching people take their last breaths, hearing elderly people cry and moan and complain and whimper and ache and grumble and groan and all that, running back and forth, taking short breaks, having to change clothes as soon as I walk through my doors."
"It was the fact that I was one person taking care of 13 people every hour. I had to handle them all on my own because no one would help. If you were lucky enough to have a friend on your shift, you could buddy up, team lift, shower in pairs, get your people done so fast."
"But if you have no friend on the floor, you are stuck. Your coworkers are not your friends. Management is not your ally. Residents are just income to anyone not wearing scrubs."
"The nurses are mentally exhausted because they hear complaints and are constantly being asked for drugs all day as if they're doctors, but the doctors only come by once a week at best, and only the good nurses help you do physical labor. Otherwise they just sit at the nurse station and watch us try to care for 13 people in a single hour."
"If you have even 2 total care people who mess themselves while you're trying to hand out lunch trays, management will throw an absolute fit if you don't handle them. They will also throw a fit because you've handed out lunch trays so late that they've become cold."
"They stand in the halls and watch as you try to keep up and shout that you shouldn't have the linen cart in the hall at the same time as the lunch cart because it's unsanitary, but yet you can't leave that person to sit in their filth either."
"You can't win."
"And they don't help."
"And when you threaten to quit or you snap and need to cry alone in the break room or you go off on one of them or you shout back at the one resident who demands a third sponge bath despite being fully capable of standing and bathing herself but she just doesn't want to because she pays to be there and therefore we're her slaves... then we get a pizza party."
"I'll specify by saying that I was in a nursing home and not a hospital or other facility. It was a health and rehabilitation place where people came to either get better and go home or live out their remaining days."
~ Tiny-Possible8815
Fast Foodservice
" Fast food. Nothing compares to getting yelled at for prices, recipes, or other things that aren't your fault while making minimum wage and working 12+ hour shifts."
~ axela086
"A lady screamed at me for not having 'fresh' coffee in the McDonald's drive-thru because she saw the pot was half empty, so clearly it had just been SITTING THERE. It was the middle of the breakfast rush."
"The pot was half empty because everyone was ordering coffee. The pot wasn't more than 10 minutes old."
"I started crying, and when the next car came to the window, they said, 'Don't worry, I won't scream at you like she did'."
~ Ethel_Marie
Home Healthcare
"Bedside nursing. My physical and mental health have suffered so much."
"Yesterday was officially my last day. "
~ ThriftingCat1
"I rage quit after 24 years because I was having PTSD from a patient's state, and they were going to assign him to me again."
"And, yes, I asked for an exemption and they said no because 'if they gave it to me they’d have to give everyone one'."
~ OrdinaryNo3622
Corporate Office Worker
"Corporate office work."
"Pushing meaningless papers and pretending like the fate of the entire world depends on whatever nonsense is being discussed in the weekly meetings."
"Just shoot me."
~ MfromtheWood807
"I dreamed of an office job until I got one."
"Unless you're a programmer, I'm guessing 99% of office jobs take about 2 hours of actual work, and the rest is just looking busy and checking work notifications."
"It's so mind-numbingly boring."
~ MfromtheWood807
Teaching
"Teaching. It destroyed me physically, mentally, emotionally, and I spent way too much money on my classroom getting things my students needed that the district wouldn't purchase."
"I will say this. I LOVED the act of teaching and my students. I taught special education."
"I had a lack of support from admin, and I had some really horrible admin that tried to put their responsibilities on me and also blame me for things they DIDN'T do that were clearly their responsibility."
"I had some great parents and truly awful parents. Because I taught special ed, I worked with paras [teacher aides]. Some were great, but many not only had no training, but had never even been around kids, let alone kids with severe disabilities, refused to follow IEPs, left kids with seizure disorders completely alone in rooms, and even lost students in the school building."
"The admin did nothing. I left."
~ Labradawgz90
"This is literally me right now! Ten years in the game with a newborn baby. After my three months of maternity leave ended, I resigned."
"I knew going back to work would break me."
"Financially I am screwed atm, mentally and physically I am free. I am so much happier already."
~ Legal_Potato8958
United States Postal Worker
"USPS employee. People have no idea how awful working in the USPS is, especially for new recruits."
"6 days a week mandated work they tell you where you need to be to sort and deliver mail in unfamiliar areas with unfamiliar processes."
"The work is just awful."
"Awful!"
~ QueenieAndRover
Assembly Line
"Factory, doing the same movements/action all day long for 40 hours a week made my brain rot."
"It was only a summer job, thank God."
"Never felt more motivated to go to university."
~ Victoria_ki639
Wait Staff
"Waiter—nothing says 'fun' like carrying 30 drinks and trying not to trip."
~ Foxy9Pearl
"Standing on your feet all day and working with customers is a job for young people."
~ my-otter-accout
"Standing on your feet all day while working with customers is a job for black belts. Be doing some serious sh*t slapping."
~ OldSunDog1
"Pretty sure that's a Waffle House application field—'what level of martial arts belt do you have?'."
~ MohawMais
"Or being yelled at for food not coming out fast enough."
"After providing the order to the kitchen, the waitstaff has nothing to do with food prep. I don't know why people think they have some weird power over the kitchen."
~ IAmBabs
Fiberglass Manufacturing
"I had a summer job working in a factory making fiberglass insulation. We had to wear long sleeves and pants to keep the fiberglass off our skin, but it got on us, anyway."
"A giant metal warehouse full of insulation in the humid Virginia summer while itching like crazy was the worst working experience of my life."
~ philosofik
Farm Worker
"Detassling sweet corn... f*cking hell. Anyone doing manual field work deserves all the money and air conditioned trailers."
"Those who pick our produce deserve so much more than what they get."
~ First_manatee_614
"Yeah. Get on a bus at 4:00 a.m. Wet/cold/muddy starting at 5:00 a.m.
"Then super hot and humid by the afternoon (by the way, Iowa is 4th most humid of the contiguous 48 States)."
"In the meantime, having leaves (edges are sharp) occasionally cutting your arms and exposed flesh."
"The $4.00 per hour in the mid-80s was probably not that great, either. But it did make subsequent jobs seem a little easier."
~ Schrodingers_goat
"Migrant farm workers deserve all the praise. I lasted ONE DAY!"
~ Business_Loquat5658
Poultry Processing
"When I was just out of high school I worked in a huge plant that slaughtered and prepared chickens for retail sales."
"My job was to clean up all the blood and guts all over the place from the processing."
"Never want to do that again."
~ Additional-Lychee-90
Is there a job you never want to do ever again?
@realDonaldTrump/Truth Social
