This led to people sharing examples of toxic, problematic, and downright NOT OK situations that they had to deal with at their work. Here's what people said:
1. "When I was giving birth, I got a call from my boss asking if I was gonna have my report turned in and if I was coming back the following day."
2. "I went to go tell my boss and said that I had finally planned my wedding and my honeymoon. She told me, 'No, that's not gonna work for us' because it's on a certain date that our magazine gets published — even though I had told her more than six months in advance. I was a salesperson, so my job was done by the time the magazine gets published."
3. "I went to leave on time, and I was asked if I was working a half day. My manager's argument was that if I could leave on time, I clearly didn't have enough work, and I should be working late every single night."
4. "When I asked my senior to come eat lunch, he said he can't because he didn't want people to see him taking a lunch break."
5. "When I was trying on a menstrual cup for the first time, and I bled through my pants. I was two hours away from home, so no one could bring me pants. I wasn't allowed to leave, so I had to work a 12-hour shift in bloody pants. It was disgusting."
6. "My boss thought it was a 'joke' to call me by my birth name every single day, rather than my chosen name."
7. "I was pregnant and working at Subway and my coworker had a heat stroke because they wouldn't fix the air conditioning. I had to work around him passed out on the floor with EMTs trying to wake him up because the owner wouldn't close the store. Instead of fixing the air for me to be safe with my unborn child, all the owner did was say, 'Hey, good job getting through that.'"
8. "When only the females were allowed to be cashiers, and the males were only allowed to bag and push carts."
9. "We were at a company festival, and my then-boss had taken a bunch of drugs the night before, so I think he was still high the next morning. We were all chilling by the pool, and he shared with me that he was dying of cancer. I had a sister who had passed two years earlier, so being the sympathetic person I am, I started to give him advice. He then turned around and said, 'I'm just fucking with you.' I quit a month later."
10. "I worked for a health care provider. While sitting in the ER with two toddlers with croup and a husband with a 107-degree fever from the flu, I called out. My job said I should 'do what I thought I needed to' for my family, and they would 'do what they needed to' in regards to continuing to employ me."
11. "The GM at my old job pressured me to take a management job. I ended up getting so much better than him that he would continuously stalk me on the cameras and once he got the opportunity, fired me during COVID."
12. "When I called to inform my boss that I was unable to come in due to my 4-month-old daughter being kidnapped, they threatened to fire me because it 'sounded dramatic.'"
WOW. Have you ever worked somewhere super-problematic, like these people have? Let me know about it in the comments below!
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.