I’ve had many stressful adult jobs. Stressful as I would be responsible for pricing securities and if I did the calculation wrong it could mean couple of million loss for the firm. I always took it in stride and didn’t make any errors.
My worst job (this was an adult job, not a college part time job) was working for a major consulting firm. I was hired as a subject matter expert in my field. My first week there I was asked to do an RFP (request for proposal) for a client. I have never done it before and was only given a junior person to help out. I actually got it done, but with a lot of tears and screaming by myself. The RFP was 100+ pages and was selected by the client. It became their template for future responses on that topic. I was traumatized by the experience.
They also expected to pull PPT deck together in days by myself. I have never done a PPT by myself before because I always had my staff do it .
I quit after 3 months because I was stressed all the time. I hated traveling every week, living in a hotel, and be on call 24/7.
I was lucky to be able to find something quickly. I now live 20 min from work. I am no longer in the front line and have a team to do the presentations for me.
The senior partner at the consulting firm who hired me was shocked at the reason I resigned. He said he wished had known because I wasn’t hired to do those things.
Sounds like an “Emily in Paris “ office situation!
Got my dream job straight out of grad school. Think Devil Wears Prada but in the art world. Dream job became the nightmare due to devil boss, who makes the Meryl Streep character look like a fuzzy wuzzy grandma. My boss was known as the Prince of Darkness at the time. Harry Potter wasn’t a thing back then but if it was then he certainly would’ve been known as Voldemort.
“Highlights” of the indignities included being told to procure class A drugs for a world famous artist within 2 hrs (I was a 23 yr old woman in a foreign country at the time of the request, I failed at this task) and being sent on transatlantic “business” trips with only hours’ notice to hand-carry black market stone lingams (look it up) which my boss collected.
The whole job was an exercise in humiliation and disillusionment and ultimately made me lose all respect for the contemporary art world. I quit after two years and went into nonprofit arts administration.
On the plus side, I got Bryan Ferry and Mick Jagger to both attend a party I planned for a new artist, and Jagger ended up taking a large group of us to a pub afterwards where he treated the whole place to a round of drinks. Nicest guy. Met Jerry Hall too in the midst of their divorce, she had commissioned a portrait of herself but it turned out looking very mean and angry and she was displeased and wanted him to paint her a new one. That was an awkward conversation. 
Another fun one from back in the day:
One summer, I worked at the local country club, about a mile from our house in the woods of northern Wisc. I was not driving yet, so I rode my bike daily. I think I was about 14-15. We were members at that time, so I figured I’d try my hand at working there. (More like, Mom made me get a job and strongly suggested it, as she would not have to drive me to and from work…)
This country club was a couple hundred feet from a lake, and operated some rental cabins there. The soil was mostly sandy, and the grass was sparsely spread.
I was on the resort crew, so mainly we cleaned the cabins and did laundry. But about weekly, we mowed the “grassy” areas surrounding those cabins.
Well, I had managed to avoid this for most of the summer until one day, when I was handed a weedwhacker and told to get to work.
Try to imagine mowing an acre of sand/grass mix with a trimmer. lol. When I was done, I was covered head-to-toe in dirt and sweat – so, basically mud. I had also managed to whack my ankles a few times, and those welts felt awesome covered in dirt and sweat!
I was nearly done for the summer, so – while we weren’t supposed to jump into the lake while on duty, I thought, “screw it” – and I tossed off my sandals and shirt, and jumped right in. It was awesome. And the manager must have been busy, because I never was reprimanded.
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