We asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us their worst horror stories from their first job ever. Here are some of the grossest, weirdest, and most cringeworthy results!
1. Clean up on aisle NOPE:
"When I was 19, I worked in a grocery store. This toddler kept pulling at her mom's sleeves and whining that she needed to use the bathroom. But the inattentive mom ignored her toddler and kept scanning her groceries while looking at her phone. Finally, the toddler had enough and peed right on the floor. The mom didn't even notice until she finally got off her damn phone and told her kid, 'Well, you should have told me you had to go potty!' So guess who got to clean up toddler pee that night."
2. Cold chicken tenders are a crime:
"I was an hourly manager at a restaurant chain. A woman told me she was going to call the police because her chicken tenders were cold, and sure enough, she did."
3. Intense moaning = uh-oh:
"When I was 15, I was working at a restaurant in the customer service booth. The booth was right near the public bathrooms. I had noticed some intense moaning from the men’s room. Before I knew it, I was on the phone with the police explaining the moaning. They came to get a guy who was masturbating in the men’s bathroom. I will never forget it."
4. Throwing plates:
"I was 16 and worked in a small café in my hometown. One night was way busier than normal. I was the only one there besides the owners, and I was stressed to the max. I was carrying a stack of dishes and put them in the sink in a hurry. The owner's husband — who had just smoked weed in the back bathroom and was high — freaked out, grabbed some plates, and followed me out to where a bunch of guests were eating. He screamed at me about how I’m going to break plates by not being careful, then proceeded to throw a dish at me, where it shattered at my feet. That was one of the only times I’ve ever gone home and cried about a job."
5. Be wary of chocolate fountains:
"I once worked as a waitress at a banquet hall where we had a chocolate fountain machine. During one of our events, an older woman looked at me and asked if she could stick her finger in it. I told her no. She looked me right in the eyes and proceeded to stick her entire hand in it. I never eat anything from chocolate fountains anymore."
6. Fitting rooms are not bathrooms, people:
"I worked at a retail store throughout high school. One night, I was going to the fitting room to grab the clothes for women, and this lady walked out with clothes dripping wet. She complained that someone must’ve peed on the floor in the fitting room and that her clothes fell into it. I called my manager over, and when we went into the changing stall, there was pee everywhere. The woman still bought all of the clothes she tried on, and we saw trickles of pee running down her legs as she left the store in a hurry. Guess who had to mop up her pee."
7. The dangers of garden work:
"I worked in the fresh-flowers department of a garden center, and I got foot-and-mouth disease from dirty water in the buckets of flowers. I ended up with blisters all over my tongue and mouth, and my hands and feet peeled for months. Twenty years later and my hands and feet still peel in the summer. So gross!"
8. Maybe stay behind a desk:
"I had worked at my first job in high school for almost a year. My boss finally trusted me to take her personal vehicle to run an errand. While I was driving up this steep curve, I hit a bird with the passenger-side mirror. I hit the bird so hard, it made a loud bang and scared me so badly that I screamed. I looked across the seat to see the damage, and the bird had hit the mirror so hard that it was turned in. I saw my own reflection and it scared me AGAIN, which made me scream and swerve. Needless to say, I didn’t drive again for a while after that."
9. Little girl, big puke:
"I used to be a hostess at Applebee’s when I was 16. As soon as this family walked in through the door, the little girl vomited all over the carpet. I’ve never seen so much puke come out of a little person. The mother put her hands out to catch it — so she had handfuls of puke, and there was so much more on the floor. After I collected my thoughts and my jaw from the floor, I handed the lady the garbage can and showed her to the bathroom. When they left, I had to get on my hands and knees and scrub puke out of the carpet, and people kept stepping in and over it. Not fun."
10. Stay away from the salsa:
"My first job was as a dishwasher for a Mexican restaurant at 15. I had to scrape plates and wash the dishes by hand. A few weeks into the job, while I was cleaning out a salsa bowl, my boss ripped me for throwing out the salsa that customers had used. I found out that they saved all the salsa and reheated it the next day for smothering on other foods! I told everyone not to eat the salsa and found a new job."
11. So many gross things to clean:
"When I was 16, on my first day at Panera, my trainer took off for a few hours. I had a kid throw a bowl of soup at me, and someone threw up in the men’s bathroom all over the walls, floors, and ceiling and clogged the toilet, which I had to clean! On my second day, someone pooped and smeared it all over the stalls. I worked there for two years."
12. The supermarket troll:
"My first job was at a grocery store, and one customer would come in almost every other day and pick new employees to harass and yell at. The day after I started, he asked for a very specific brand of orange juice and asked for it in a gallon. I looked for it and couldn’t find it, and he flipped his lid and started calling me all kinds of names and would try to hold back laughter. I don’t know why he wasn’t banned from the store, but he was AWFUL! Every single employee dealt with him, and we even gave him the oh-so-creative nickname 'the Fucking Asshole.'"
13. Don't blame the babysitter:
"I worked as a babysitter in high school. There was a 5-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl. On a Friday night, the kids were playing upstairs while I was finishing research for a paper. The parents arrived at the same time the kids came down the stairs, holding their mother's dildos that they'd found. 'We’re playing ice cream shop!' they said while both parents ran to snatch them out of their hands. I expected to be fired, only for their mother to tell me, 'Yeah, they found my special chest last week.' She paid me a BIG tip to keep my mouth shut about this."
14. Retirement sounds like a good idea:
"My first job was at a Dairy Queen run by two elderly people. One of the owners, Tom, who was like 80 and super skinny, was doing inventory in the freezer. I walked in to grab something, and there was Tom, doing inventory — with his pants around his ankles. I had to scream his name like twice before he even realized I was in there, and then said, looking away, 'Tom, your pants are down.' He said, 'Whoopsies! Sorry, dear!' and just scurried out of the freezer. He was so embarrassed, he stayed in his office for the rest of the day. I was never able to look him in the eyes after that."
15. That Christmas-family-photo rage:
"I was working at a photography studio around Christmas, and we were regularly booked solid. One busy Saturday, we were running behind, and a woman came up to the desk to ask me how much longer. I told her about 15 minutes, and she had already been waiting a while, but I couldn’t do anything about it. She scooped up her kids and stormed out the front door, and as she was leaving, she took a perfume bottle and threw it at our front windows. The whole wall shattered; there was glass everywhere. We had to cancel all the appointments for the rest of that day and the next day. Nobody was hurt, but it was awful."
16. BEES!
"My first job was as a day camp counselor. One kid noticed a bee hive and decided to see what would happen if her destroyed it. He threw a ball, exploded the hive, and pissed off what seemed like thousands of bees. Several campers were deathly allergic to bees, and all were terrified of them. Luckily, no one was hurt. I did get screamed at and reported to my manager by the grandparent of the kid who destroyed the hive. He was mad that I put his grandson in time-out for nearly injuring around 75 children."
17. Who knew golf could be so dangerous?
"I parked golf carts as my first real job. About a month into it, I missed the break before going in reverse, and I drove right through the garage door. I ran up to the clubhouse to tell them what happened. The pro touched the damaged door, and a high-tension spring shot out. He held his hands to his forehead and crouched down immediately. I saw the blood start to stream through his fingers. I ran and grabbed a handful of paper towels; he reached up and, unable to see, grabbed my elbow and slicked his hand down my arm to the towels. My arm was now COVERED in his blood. The ambulance came and stitched him up in the parking lot. Amazingly, I wasn’t fired, but I looked at that scar for the next four years, which was a perpetual guilt trip."
18. WTF is wrong with people?
"I worked in a movie store for five years. The very worst experience while I was there was when a coworker and I had to kick a guy out for jerking off to the porn covers. The porn was on the sales floor, not sectioned off."
19. Food fight:
"I was fired from my first job at Burger King when I was 16. I had just sold about 15 Whoppers to a customer, who gleefully took them and left the building. About five minutes later he returned, yelling about how the burgers 'didn’t look anything like the photos on the board.' I tried to calmly explain to him that the photos were staged. I hadn't even finished the word 'staged' before I was hit in the chest with a burger. He had unwrapped another handful of burgers and was chucking them at the kitchen staff. I, furiously covered in lettuce bits with ketchup running down my neck, grabbed a Whopper and flung it at him as hard as I could. My boss arrived just in time to witness a perfectly wrapped burger sail through the air and hit the belligerent customer square in the face. The explosion of lettuce, cusswords, and my boss screaming, 'YOU’RE FIRED!' over the chaos inside the entire building is something I still treasure to this day!"
—Amanda Bogus, Facebook