Teenager working a construction job. They ordered several boxes of the wrong brackets; the holes were too small for the bolts. So the foreman hands a power drill, something like six boxes of hundreds of these brackets and tells me to start drilling. You would think they would have appropriate tools for such an occasion like a drill press, or at least some clamps. But no.

Just for the uneducated, there are a few factors you need to be aware of: first, drilling into metal is not easy. It takes a considerable amount of pressure and moreso depending on the thickness and type of metal.

Second, the amount of friction makes the metal get very hot very fast.

Third, every component in this equation is stronger than your skin, ergo physics demands that if any one point is going to fail it will be your own self.

So I sat there redrilling these stupid brackets with nothing but work gloves to grasp them and a half charged drill. I made a game of it: see how many I can do in an hour, then try to break that record. After awhile, he comes back, looks at the couple boxes I had gone through and remarks "that's it?" At this point, my gloves had long worn through, my palms were bloody hurty things where the skin used to be. I could only drill so many of these before the battery gave out, swapped it for the other half dead battery and repeat. And all through it, knowing just how stupid this was when they should have A) ordered the correct parts or B) sent someone to buy some new ones. Brackets and washers aren't some precision tech that can only be fabricated in Japan.

I was saved by the bell that day and left with the job unfinished. Any other circumstances in any other position, I never would have done that. But in this one unique instance, I simply did not care and that was the last time I reported to work for that business.