The only thing worse than working at a crummy job is when someone doesn't get any acknowledgment for the good work they're doing. However, sometimes it goes beyond a lack of gratitude and it is flat out disrespectful. Whether it's from a boss, a coworker, or a customer, the last thing you want is to deal with their comments and degrading gifts.
We looked throughout Reddit to find the most disrespectful 'thanks' out there, and we can say that these hard workers have dealt with some of the worst people in the business. This content was edited for clarity.
He Was The Whole Team
“I was working really hard on a wildly successful and difficult project that was my idea, doing 99% of the work, only to have the boss say in the big meeting say, ‘Thanks to Cheryl and her team for the amazing success with the Northern City Reclamation Project!’ I’m ‘the team’ and Cheryl didn’t do anything other than sign off on things because I wasn’t allowed to.
Happens all the time.”
It Was The Babysitting Job That Never Ended
“I was paid $20 once for watching three of the literal WORST human children I’ve ever encountered. The person who hired me was a family friend and the price wasn’t necessarily mentioned / I didn’t expect much pay but as a CPR, first aid certified high schooler with five years of experience my going rate was $5-$8 per child.
I was assuming I’d get $50 for an 8-hour session with three hyperactive, loud, disobedient children in my own home. Nope, she picked me up and we went to their house. I had to cook dinner, bathe two of the three, and put them in bed where they all cried for an hour. She then didn’t drop me off around midnight when she was supposed to come home but instead popped in for 15 minutes to tell me she was going to be working another shift and I’d have to stay another 8 hours. She came back the next morning and asked if I could stay a ‘few’ more hours so she could run errands. She didn’t come back until the next morning at 7 am. She tried to guilt me into following them to church and watching the demons a little longer. I said no and I’d walk home because the ride was part of the deal, I guess. She handed me a crumpled up clump of money on my way out and it was $20. For three days of labor. That was like five years ago and she still calls/messages me asking if I’m available. I’ve been ignoring her calls since.
I was 17 at the time and didn’t really know what to do, I didn’t know how to respond to very obvious manipulation. She made it seem like she couldn’t do anything to change the schedule but I’m 99% she knew about the shift already or asked for it. Plus, she was being really nice and acted like she was in a jam.
And the kids were the absolute worst. The littlest (about 3 years old) asked if she could do my nails.I said she could paint but not cut because I didn’t want her playing with clippers. I went to sleep for a second while they watched tv, woke up with my finger on fire. She’d cut about half a centimeter into the nail bed and my finger was bleeding an insane amount. I wasn’t mad at her but it just added to the annoyance. You could tell they were decent kids, just had literally no attention or supervision.
Other things that occurred during my time there were that I got kicked in the head by eldest, had my DVDs broken, had a poop diaper placed in my bag poop side down, I had to break up several fights, had to bake shortbread in time for a party, and I had to sleep on weird lumpy couch because the guest room was off limits.
I slept throughout the night but would get woken up randomly because they needed a chaperone to the bathroom, didn’t feel like sleeping, and just generally woken up early. The latest they woke up out of the three days was 6:30 am. Bedtime was at 8 pm but no one actually went to sleep until 11 pm and when their mom came home they all woke up so technically 1 am on that night. Also, the lumpy couch and no change of clothes kept me awake.
I wouldn’t have mind $20 for the first 8-hour shift, it’s a family friend, so no biggie. I also wouldn’t have cared if she had called a few hours later and asked me to drop by again. You can’t just decide you don’t want someone to leave, force them into working, and keep guilting/manipulating them into staying. Also, the errands she needed to run was for a party which my mother told me about when I finally came home, they were dancing there together.
Abusing your resources is literally the worst thing you can do if you’re in a financial need like I assume she was.”
That’s Not A Bonus, That’s Barely A Treat!
“I was offered a warm eclair instead of an end of year bonus after a great year for the company. I declined.
The CEO brought the cakes round our department on the morning she’d taken delivery of her new Jaguar company car.
That was the beginning of the end for me there.
I left after watching them force out my fantastic department manager through devious means while she was struggling with cancer.
Now I’m with a great small company who express gratitude in words, actions, actual money, and don’t do office politics. I work to live, all the way.”
He Doesn’t Want To Seem Ungrateful, But…
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“I won my company’s Halloween Door Decorating contest and got a gift card for $3.29 for Starbucks. Yes, someone took a 10 dollar gift card, bought themselves a drink, then gave it out as a prize.
I love HR.”
Small Business With Small Reward
“I was a pet sitter when I was younger, about 14 at this time. Everyone in the neighborhood knew of my business and I made a lot of money. I kept it all within my neighborhood and would go over multiple times a day when watching someone’s pet (cat or dog). I’m talking at least 5-6 times, and I spent quality time with the animal. I charged $10 a day for dog sitting and $5 a day for cat sitting with an additional $2 fee for any additional animals.
I cat sat for this women for two weeks. She was a friend of my mom’s (as pretty much everyone was in this small neighborhood). She had four cats, but they honestly weren’t the problem. She had a huge yard full of plants that needed watering 2X a day with this hand pump. It took about an hour each day, plus I would stay to play with the cats and such. I should have been getting $11 a day. She left an envelope on my doorstep when she got back with $20 in it and a card that just said thanks. I never worked for her again.
I asked my mom if she had told her my prices and all that and she said she did. It was such a cop out how the lady left the envelop while no one was home. It was a well-known fact in the neighborhood that I did this as a business.
Luckily, this was the only time. Everyone else paid me my listed prices. That lady was a bit looney. She went on to get three chihuahuas, one Australian Shepard, and three sugar gliders, on top of the four cats. She also had three kids.”
Who Takes Advantage Of A Six-Year-Old?
“It was 1975 and I was 6. My dad just died and we were broke so I was about that hustle. My neighbor owned several acres and greenhouses as an orchid grower in a residential neighborhood. He had been there forever at that point and he was like a century old. So I boldly knocked on his door and asked for work. He looked my little girl ginger self up and down and laid this guilt-trip on me about his dead wife’s rose trellises.
I spent a few hours in the blazing Florida sun clearing out old rose vines covered in thorns with my bare hands, thinking there’s gonna be folding money to buy records.
When he decided I’d done enough, he handed me some loose pocket change and told me I’m a hard worker and he was willing to have me come back.
Yeah, no thank you. I may have been six but I’d rather be broke than be duped.
Believe it or not, that was the first time I’d been duped and it stuck with me. I just knew he was well off, I worked really hard, and it wasn’t fair.
However, it was not the last time I let myself get shorted on faith. I’m doomed to undervalue myself, it seems.”
Once They Got A Look At Him, They Changed The Tip
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“I used to deliver pizzas. On Halloween, I had to deliver to a house that was going to throw a huge party, so they ordered like 20 pies. I had probably four of those oven bags full of extra large pizzas and they weighed a quite a bit. These people lived on a hill and the only place I could park was at the bottom of the hill. I am a hefty man and I was carrying two bags up this mountain dropping them off and then running back down to get the other two and then trekking back up the mountain again, I was tired and sweaty and breathing heavy by the end of it.
The people I was delivering to paid me and added a tip but then saw me, a large out of shape man, sweating and breathing heavily. I was embarrassingly bad at trying to hide just how out of shape I was. So they crossed out the tip and changed the total and grabbed a Hershey’s bar and gave that to me as their tip. IT WASN’T EVEN FULL-SIZED! A fun-sized Hershey bar!”
A Disaster Of A Dad
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“My older brother was working at an Outback Steakhouse in college when this guy came in with his son. The kid wanted a grilled cheese, the dad said no, and that he had to get mac n cheese.
My brother brought out the mac n cheese. He returned like ten minutes later. The dish was half eaten. The dad started screaming at my brother that his son wanted grilled cheese and how was my brother so incompetent.
On the bill in the tip section, the dad wrote, ‘The tip can be that awful mac and cheese you served my son.'”
She Usually Didn’t Give Folks Like That The Time Of Day
“I used to work registration in an ER. One day the boss called me away from my other work to deal with some people who weren’t patients. They started off angrily demanding I give them their daughter’s driver’s license. Of course, I had no idea who these people are or why I would have their daughter’s driver’s license.
I gradually figured out that the daughter had a final exam for something in a couple of days and needs her license but lost it while visiting the hospital a few days ago. Usually, I’d spend five minutes searching my office before telling these people to get lost, but that seemed like a legitimate problem for their daughter. So, instead, I spent the next few minutes looking her up in the system; she came in by ambulance. I saw we never made a copy of her cards. I spent ten minutes asking around the ER to see if anyone has her driver’s license sitting on their desk or in a drawer for some reason. I then spent the next twenty minutes on the phone with fire department dispatcher trying to figure what ambulance the daughter rode in on. This is an urban area, mind you, so there are a lot of different departments with their own fleets of ambulances. I didn’t have a lot of hope of finding this girl’s card, but stranger things have happened there.
I found out which fire department carried this girl and even what ambulance she was in. I called the fire department, that exact ambulance she rode in just happens to be in their garage bay. Someone just happened to be available to go check and the driver’s license just happened to be sitting out where the guy saw it. The angry parents have no idea how lucky they are.
I happily walked back to them and let them know a firehouse about four blocks up the street actually has the girl’s card and they can go get it there with no more fuss. I expected the parents to be relieved that someone actually found what they needed. The parents’ only response was angrily demanding to know why the fire department can’t bring the card here to them before they stormed off.”
She Justified Underpaying For A Bizarre Reason
“I was babysitting three kids for this family that lived down the street. It was a 10-year-old boy, an 8-year-old boy, and a 5-year-old girl. These children were demonic. The mom told me that she would also like me to clean up the house while she was gone which I usually did anyway. She also told me that she promised her kids she would get them ice cream that day, so she asked that I drive them to Baskin Robins instead, which I did.
The two boys were trying to speak to ghosts and scaring their little sister. They told her she needed to be sacrificed or something. They demanded that I make them food and snacks every 20 minutes. While I was in the bathroom, I heard the little girl crying so I ran out in time to see her brothers body slam her onto the hardwood floors. I yelled at them and told them to go to their room and they straight up said, ‘You’re not the boss of me, my mom said I don’t have to listen to you.’
The mom came home that night and she handed me a couple of 5 dollar bills and said: ‘I only needed you to watch the little girl, my boys could handle themselves.’
So I only got paid for one kid because the other two were old enough to watch themselves.”
It Was The Best, But Still Not Good Enough
“I’m a massage therapist and a good one, by the way.
The last spa I worked at was in this upper-middle-class neighborhood, so my tips were pretty good.
A few months back, I got this wealthy businessman from NYC. He showed up looking for a last minute appointment. He’s not being rude about it, but he weirdly assumed he could find a place to schedule a two-hour massage on a Saturday.
Lucky for him, I had a cancelation. This meant cutting my lunch break short but I agreed to take him because businessmen usually tip pretty well. Plus, he casually mentioned that he’s very discerning about the quality of the massages he had received and wanted the best therapist available, so I couldn’t let that challenge to my skill/ego go unanswered.
Two hours later, he walked out of the room and told me that was the best massage he’d ever received.
He then handed me $3.
For reference, the average tip for a Massage Therapist in my area is $10-$15 for an hour. Plenty of my two-hour clients typically tip $40 or more.
And this guy just handed me three raggedy dollars that clearly came from the bottom of a gym bag.
Never made that mistake again.”
There’s No Way To Fix Stupid!
“In college, I worked in the computer lab and this guy asked me about helping out with something he had on his home computer. I didn’t have anything better to do so I went and spent three hours on it. I set up some software for him after doing some other maintenance that was long overdue.
He offered me a Bud Lite.
Two weeks later, he asked me over again. I saw that he disabled the software and turned off all the automatic scanning I had installed because it made his computer too slow. I spent an hour re-enabling the settings and took off. He didn’t offer even a Bud Lite.
A week later, he came and asked and I very abruptly said, ‘How about a twenty dollar bill to get me to come when you don’t even listen to my advice?’ He never bothered me again.
He was why I never let people know I know about computers because they can and will expect free tech support. Forget that!
When I got mad and mentioned twenty bucks, it was funny how he ghosted me and never talked to me again.
If he had offered a six-pack or something maybe, or if he asked what my favorite drink was and gave me some, that’d be different. Even if he was a buddy that I owe a favor to, then sure, but I spent three hours cleaning up his stuff because he thought if he clicked a banner ad with punch the monkey, he’d win a free PS2 or whatever it was.”
There’s A Reason For The Age Limit
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“When I was 14, my mom decided I needed a job. In my country, you need to be 16 to have an official student job, but my mom’s co-worker saw an advertisement in a local paper for some light landscaping job in the next village so she called them and next Wednesday she dropped me off at some huge house to ‘try out.’ I rang the bell and turned out I need to be in the barn instead of the house. I headed over and there was already some other kid on his first day. Some old dude walked over with his cane and started barking orders at us, he wanted us clearing a stretch of grass but had us do it on our knees with a small garden tool. He then sat on a bench, watching us, telling us about how he used to own these stores and everyone working there was terrified of him and how he loved it and used to drive from store to store to check on them, how he rented out the house and lived on the first floor of the barn to make extra money.
After two hours he ordered the other kid to get a pencil from his wife in the barn. The kid walked over, knocked the door which was standing open, took off his shoes and walked one meter in the barn to look around the corner inside. His wife lost her mind. She stormed out yelling, ‘HE WAS IN THE HOUSE!!’ Old fart lost his mind too, this is clearly unacceptable. The kid said you told me to get a pencil and since you live in a barn, it has no doorbell. The kid was fired on the spot and sent home. I continued on the lawn while the old guy told me to make sure to tell my dad that he fired the other kid. He then asked what job my dad does. I told him my dad was a tax inspector since he was a tax inspector. He turned white and told me the job is done for the day and to call my mom to pick me up. At this point, I’ve been cutting out grass with an undersized tool on my knees for four hours. He then told me to wait on the street and hands me a whopping 10 euro. Wow. Did I mention his ad said ‘no monetary worries!’?
My mom told her co-worker the next day who laughed and said, ‘So that’s probably why the ad is in there every week!’
He was at least 80, and his wife was maybe 50. I remembered they picked up their phone with ‘The Honey House’ instead of their name. I saw nothing honey or bee related there but that’s fine, I just found it weird and like they wanted to sound fancy while living in a barn.
The actual house was huge and well maintained but looked horribly outdated, they clearly didn’t want to invest in it to keep its value. In hindsight, I should have seen the terrible pay for my child labor coming but I was too young to realize.”