Abusive Workplace

Gumball: But he's got a serious job now with a suit, and tie. They even call him Mr. Robinson.

Mr. Robinson: Really? How's he doing?

Gumball: Overworked...underpaid...downtrodden...kinda soulless, actually.

— The Amazing World of Gumball: "The Boss"

Work sucks. In order to survive, you spend much of the day slaving and doing something you may not actually like, working with people you may not get along with, dealing with unpleasant or overbearing customers and taking orders from people who may not actually know what they're doing. Still, many jobs at least try to ensure a conducive working environment so that employees are at least productive.

But some places of work don't bother. Employees are just a cogs in a machine, easily replaceable, and treated as such. Low pay, verbal (or even physical) abuse, dangerous work environments, lack of support or guidance, awful work-life balance, an Abusive Workplace will, simply put, be an awful place to work.

What makes them so abusive isn't just the place of work having No OSHA Compliance, the presence of a Mean Boss or Pointy-Haired Boss, an overabundance of unreasonable or even outright oppressive rules, and awful coworkers who may either be lazy and push their work off on others (especially low-ranked people) or outright be schemers and backstabbers. Rather, it's the presence of all those factors at once. The very culture of the workplace is toxic by nature, with a Social Darwinist outlook where even employees are pitted against each other.

In real life, such places often rely on people who're desperate (e.g. sweatshops often make use of uneducated workers who have no other options for earning income) or naïve (e.g. fresh graduates just finishing up their education and lacking real-world experience, some of whom are Hired on the Spot), then work them to the bone before discarding them. In addition, some workplaces deliberately invoke this towards certain "undesirable" workers in order to force them to quit rather than be fired. In Japan, such places are the origin of the term Black Company ^note  it should be noted that black companies are normally specifically associated with white-collar work . See that article for more details.

Can overlap with Dangerous Workplace, but where a Dangerous Workplace can offer danger to life and limb simply due to the nature of the job (e.g. logging still has the risk of a tree falling in just the wrong way), an Abusive Workplace may be more damaging mentally. Compare Evil, Inc. and Nebulous Evil Organisation, which ironically enough are sometimes aren't actually bad places to work at compared to these. Workplace Horror can be an extreme example of this, especially when the place of work isn't supposed to be particularly scary or threatening. A Crapsack World may have these all over the place. Almost assured to have more than one Bad Boss with a Corrupt Corporate Executive above them. If a character happens to be Boss's Unfavorite Employee, any place of work can feel like one of these, especially if other employees get in on the action. In a worst-case scenario, an abused worker may snap and end up Going Postal.

A typical MegaCorp can turn out to be one of these, especially in a Cyberpunk setting. Can wind up becoming Incompetence, Inc. as employees either spend their time backstabbing each other no matter what kind of damage is done to the organisation as a whole or don't give it their all due to low morale. Can be a Predatory Business, often to contrast with the more "wholesome" image of the mom-and-pop businesses they try to crush. Mindbogglingly, sometimes this abusive atmosphere is done for no apparent logical reason but For the Evulz, especially when not being abusive actually makes the employees more productive (and therefore generate more profit).

To qualify for this trope there ought to be at least two factors from the list below.

1. A difficult-to-deal-with superior (e.g. a Bad Boss, Mean Boss, Pointy-Haired Boss)
2. Awful co-workers (e.g. who will undermine each other to make themselves look good, who will harass and bully those lower down than them, who are slackers)
3. Very low pay (especially so if there is a minimum wage in the setting, or the pay is low in proportion to the employee's skills)
4. Long work hours or extremely poor work-life balance (e.g. if the employee works 9-5, and when has to bring work home after or has to still attend meetings online after work hours)
5. An unreasonably stressful or dangerous work environment (e.g. soldiers being stressed out due to being deployed into battle is reasonable, a bank cashier being stressed out due to a toxic work environment is not)
6. Detrimental effects on employees be it physical or mental (as extreme stress over long durations will have detrimental effects on one's health)

When adding examples, please include mention of at least any two of the above.

Real Life examples should be from at least five years ago.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• By the Grace of the Gods: At the beginning of the story, Ryouma is shown working for an abusive and exploitative Black Company. He's shown living a lonely, unfulfilling life, and the fact he lives alone means that when he accidentally hits his head on the floor there's no one who's able to get him medical attention and so he perishes. The titular gods take pity on him and send him to a different world, encouraging him to enjoy his new life.
• The Dungeon of Black Company:
  • The main character initially runs his adventuring party (the unsubtly named titular Black Company) like one of these before recognising that keeping employees happy is actually much easier and more profitable.
  • The MegaCorp Raiza'ha Mining Corporation is a much straighter example, more than happy to sacrifice workers by the dozen for even a slight profit.
• I Quit Being An Adventurer: The main character Aix has spent five years being exploited by his adventuring guild in slave-like conditions. Among other things, as a mage, Aix ought to be ranked B but the guild master pays him Rank E wages and pockets the change with Aix none the wiser, his justification being that as Aix is only able to use the most basic forms of magic, that's all he's worth. The guild master also encourages other guild members to similarly harass and abuse Aix, with a group known as the Zombies dismissively referring to him as a "Defect Mage". When the guild master fires him for being a few minutes late in an act of petty tyranny, Aix leaps at the chance to get out of there and refuses to return no matter what the guild offers when things start falling apart without him around ^note  As it turns out, the reason Aix could only use basic magic was because he traded the ability to use advanced magic in return for his basic spells lasting abnormally long times, so a basic strength buff by a normal mage only lasts a few minutes while Aix's would last a month.
• I Will Live Freely In Another World With Equipment Manufacturing Cheat: Ignis never forgives her former party for abandoning her to be potentially gang-raped by a legion of orcs (she had been injured and was left behind so they could save themselves). But even before this, she'd already been planning to leave the party due to various factors. Among other things, the team was extremely unbalanced and refused to recruit people to balance it out, the team's lack of balance made them unsuccessful which had the effect of dragging down her own adventurer's ranking, and the leader of the party had no money sense. The final straw was when the leader donated a big chunk of the party's reward to the bakery run by one of the other members and then split the leftovers with the rest of the party... without bothering to see if Ignis agreed with it.
• Many of the "customers" approached by The Laughing Salesman are unhappy at their places at work, sometimes because they're places like these.
  • Downplayed example in the case of two employees: one an older man on the verge of retirement and a younger man who feels he's overworked. The older worker wants to work, but due to his advanced age and upcoming retirement the company just leaves him in an office with nothing to do, boring him to tears. When Moguro lets them switch places, the older man eventually dies due to the stress of the younger man's workload. Unluckily for the younger man, the older man was wearing his face...
  • In New's "Fantasy Company," a young employee quits his job after being bullied by his boss and finds Moguro, who introduces him to the Fantasy Company, where he can experience a positive workplace environment through simulation. However, when he takes the position of boss, he ironically becomes a bully and gets punished by Moguro into becoming part of the Fantasy Company's new addition as the Bad Boss of the black company experience.
• The Perks of Working in the Black Magic Industry: White magic companies are run in an extremely unethical manner, with the management being abusive and corrupt, while workers are forced to work unpaid overtime, disciplined for calling in sick, and even sued if they quit.
• In Power Of Hope Pre Cure Full Bloom, Kurumi works part-time as a secretary in a thankless job that forces her to work overtime with no pay, leading to her having something of a drinking habit. At the end of the series, she finds the strength to finally declare Take This Job and Shove It, deciding to become the Prime Minister of the Palmer Kingdom.
• Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead: The advertising company Akira worked at for three years was so awful that he was suicidal during his last year there and has lingering PTSD. He wasn't even allowed to go home on his first day on the job for two days because of a deadline, he and his coworkers had to constantly work unpaid overtime, at least one female worker was sexually harassed by the C.E.O., taking sick days or vacation days could get you fired, and everybody was repeatedly chewed out for missing deadlines that changed on a whim, for asking the department head for advice, or for making decisions without the department head. It's telling that the first thing Akira does upon the Zombie Apocalypse (once he gets over his initial panic) is cheer when he realizes he’s free from that company.

Comic Strips

• Dilbert portrays the unnamed company Dilbert works at as one of these, with Dilbert having to put up with incompetent co-workers and higher-ups with room-temperature IQs who consistently undervalue his accomplishments, some of whom (like Catbert, head of HR) are literally described as evil.
• Zigzagged with Scrooge McDuck. Yes, he's miserly and a penny-pincher, but his employees are generally still fairly paid and he isn't above moments of generosity on special occasions. One strip had Scrooge declare to his employees that they'd done so well, he was allowing them to put another piece of coal in the furnace to keep warm. Huddled in their scarves and jackets, the employees thank him. It also helps that he isn't a hypocrite: he keeps his own office at the same low temperature as everyone else's. He's just so much tougher that he doesn't notice all that much. Played straight with Donald Duck: Scrooge doesn't treat him as well as he does his employees (for example, Donald doesn't get any of the perks or benefits) because Donald isn't an employee.

Films — Live-Action

• Aliens helps secure Weyland-Yutani's reputation as one of these, as the company as a whole encourages all sorts of underhanded and outright lethal courses of action as long as the company benefits. Company representative Burke is very blithe about causing the deaths of over a hundred and fifty colonists, and other material throughout the Aliens franchise drives home just how amoral the company is in pursuit of profit and success... no matter how many bodies it takes.
• The Devil Wears Prada: Runway fashion magazine headquarters deconstructs the trope. The main problem is Miranda Priestly, a controlling and domineering boss who treats the majority of her staff like garbage (although she's capable of genuinely complimenting them when they do good work). Said employees are also remarkably catty and nasty to each other; the majority of the women are constantly dieting to better look like fashion models, which leads to a generally miserable culture since their choices of food and outfits are strictly limited; and the schedule involves long hours and abrupt changes at a moment's notice. However, every employee is fully aware of Runway's awful reputation and still chooses to work there, largely because it's the world's greatest fashion magazine and has hosted some of the best designers of the 20th century in its long run. It's also suggested that Miranda's Control Freak nature is the biggest reason why Runway is so successful, as the nearly-impossible standards she sets are reflected in the magazine's layouts.
• Office Space: Initech is probably not deliberately abusive for the most part, but it is most definitely soul-sucking to the Nth degree and Bill Lumbergh is a passive-aggressive Mean Boss who orders his employees to do overtime on a constant basis and in the case of Milton he goes way out of his way to make his life a living hell.
• Star Wars: While the Original Trilogy would heavily imply it (most famously with Darth Vader's iconic You Have Failed Me moment in Empire and the Implied Death Threat in Return), ancillary material would reveal that the Galactic Empire works as one of these on a galactic scale. Corruption is tolerated so long as it doesn't do too much damage to the Empire itself, several military officials and civil servants try to carve out personal fiefdoms within the Empire, and military doctrine revolves around We Have Reserves (for example, the famous TIE Fighters are extremely cheap to build and field compared to the X-Wing utilised by the Rebel Alliance, lacking equipment like shields and an in-built hyperdrive that could improve pilot survivability). The best one can hope for is to be a Punch-Clock Villain who doesn't go out of the way to Kick the Dog or a Token Good Teammate.
  • Zigzagged in ancillary material in regards to serving under Darth Vader. Despite just how dangerous it is to work for him directly thanks for his well-deserved reputation for being a Bad Boss ^note  he once had his entire starship maintenance department executed because they failed to have his TIE Fighter ready for departure between the time it took him to take the lift from his personal quarters to his personal hangar , there are still a lot of Imperials who're willing to do so. Part of this is the prestige: if Lord Vader can find no fault with you, then you're some of the best of the best. Vader is also not above granting great rewards if he's sufficiently impressed, and it isn't unusual to be promoted multiple ranks under his service. This also means, however, that this means there are bouts of backstabbing as some Imperials try to make themselves look good at the expense of their comrades... though unluckily for them this also happens to be one of Vader's particular BerserkButtons.

Literature

• A Christmas Carol: Downplayed example. As trope namer for The Scrooge, Scrooge is a miser who even refuses to fully heat his rooms in the dead of winter in order to save money and loudly complains about having to give his employees time off for Christmas. Downplayed in that while he complains, he does at least give Christmas Day off and keeps his word, rather than having a last-minute change of mind.
• In the Michael Shea short story "The Pool" (set in the Cthulhu Mythos), the protagonist is a construction worker whose boss is an abusive taskmaster who saddles them with building the titular pool in an absurdly short amount of time and covers it up when one of his employees is mysteriously injured. It's implied he's actually a cultist, seeing as how the "pool" is actually a disguise for a shogmoth looking to feed on the boss's wealthy clients.
• In Company Max Barry, Zephyr Holdings Incorporated continually passes new and unpopular rule changes, shuffles its employees between departments on a whim, and relentlessly pursues cost reductions despite little evidence that the measures actually improve the company's efficiency or bottom line. Eventually, protagonist Stephen Jones manages to penetrate the executive suite and discovers the truth: The company doesn't actually do anything, it's all a lab for testing new management ideas for the authors of a series of corporate self-help books.
• A Series of Unfortunate Events: Lucky Smells Lumbermill in the fourth book, "The Miserable Mill", pays its workers in coupons, feeds them chewing gum for lunch, and are willing to employ actual children.

Live-Action TV

• A series of advertisements for a job searching site portrayed various organisations from Kamen Rider as these, showing the various mooks being abused by their superiors or getting hurt in the line of duty. The punchline was usually text showing the mook's inner thoughts (normally complaints or cursing), followed by the tagline "There's another way". Averted in the actual series, where most mooks are either Brainwashed and Crazy or cultishly loyal.
• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit provides us with one in the episode "Bully", when the detectives investigate the death of Ellen Sazelin, an employee of Luscious Grape. On the outside Luscious Grape looks like a welcoming space where everyone loves each other; underneath, the boss, Annette Cole, physically and verbally abuses all of her employees including the victim, Ellen, and her coworkers are indifferent to her and their own suffering. The abuse is so horrific that Ellen went back to drinking after being clean for a year, due to Annette's abuse and one of her coworkers visits a therapist just to discuss how awful Annette is. Ellen was going to reveal to the public how toxic the work environment was by recording Annette's outbursts and leaking them to the media. In the end it's revealed that one of Ellen's coworkers accidentally killed her, with some of them trying to cover up her death and Annette's abuse so that they could earn millions from a company merger.
• Leverage: Quite a few of the clients the Leverage Team takes on are attempting to expose corruption or abuse within the company they work for. For instance:
  • The client in "The Top Hat Job" is an attempted whistleblower on a frozen dinner company who is attempting to cover up salmonella contamination in their products; they're forcibly ejected from the building and have their home broken into.
  • " The Carnival Job"'s client has a Data Drive Macguffin stolen from him by the episode's mark and is subsequently fired in an attempt to cover this up.
• Leverage: Redemption continues this trend from the original series:
  • "The Golf Job" portrays a nail spa that employs illegal Vietnamese migrants as being operated like this; on top of being a front for a human trafficking operation, the mark of the episode is holding the child of one of them hostage in an attempt to win a golf bet.
  • "The Big Rig Job" shows a company that has turned into one of these; Good Stewart Trucking's original owner was a genuinely good person, but his children have turned it into a front for their mob-connected business endeavors, on top of sticking the drivers with expensive bills for their own rigs and not giving them any breaks or time off.
  • "The Pyramid Job", as the name suggests, focuses on a Multi-Level Marketing Company (i.e. a pyramid scheme). Magiq Baby ensures that everyone downstream of the CEO cannot make a single red cent off of their sales, and has a practice called "Rebirth", where its employees are sent back down to the lowest possible tier, regardless of where they are in the rankings, and have to start all over again, deep in debt.
• The Pretender: The only reason why Broots still works for the Centre is that his family has been threatened. Sidney was separated from his twin brother because the Centre wanted him to invest in itself, and children are kidnapped and subjected to experimentation. The Centre also has Internal Death Squads and Kangaroo Courts, with workers (or their relations, such as Miss Parker's fiancé) being threatened with death or outright killed if they leave.
• Roseanne: In the first season, Roseanne is employed at Wellman Plastics, a manufacturing plant, and while she occasionally has to handle overtime shifts and gets stressed, it's generally a good place to work, especially since her sister Jackie and other friends are employees alongside her and they have fun on the floor. Then the episode "Let's Call It Quits" sees a new boss named Mr. Faber arrive, and he quickly starts overworking the women on the staff while being sexist and cruel to them. Roseanne tries to stand up for everyone, but Faber says he'll only ease off if she treats him with (utterly undeserved) respect. She reluctantly agrees, only for Faber to go back on his word and even brag about it, saying that "breaking" Roseanne means that he can control everyone on the staff. Roseanne promptly quits...and in a show of solidarity, all of the women follow suit.
  • The Conners, the sequel series to Roseanne, reveals that Wellman Plastics has maintained this reputation over the decades. It turns out that they've been knowingly polluting the groundwater of Lanford for years, and attempt to use newly-hired employee Darlene as a patsy by having her make a statement denying the blatant crime. Like her mother before her, Darlene ultimately quits rather than betray her principles—and in a further show of just how bad Wellman is, the owner deliberately keeps her from getting a job at another company by sending a terrible and entirely false review of her work.
• Seconds from Disaster: A number of cases involve these.
  • "Texas Oil Explosion": The Texas oil refinery had several issues with safety prior to the explosion that's the centerpiece of the episode, with the British Petroleum executives blithely ignoring safety concerns by doing convoluted "calculations" that convinced them that any serious risks were low.
  • "Bophal Nightmare": Like the above, the chemical plant featured in the episode had multiple issues including cost-cutting in terms of safety.
  • "Amagasaki Derailment": JR West is revealed to be the cause of the disaster, as the driver of the featured train had already gone through their idea of "retraining" ^note  among other things he had to write a letter detailing his own failures, had to sit through "sessions" that were essentially made up of people screaming at him, and had to do pointless bodywork like weeding and became so panicked at the thought of going through it again he pushed the train too hard in an attempt to make up lost time.
• Taxi Driver (2021): Maria is beaten by her boss for questioning why she has to do physical work at a fish factory (when she was told she would be doing computer work) and then forced to sit in an oil barrel for hours. On top of that, she is sexually abused by the company owner who takes advantage of her disability. Maria is Driven to Suicide, but at the last minute she sees an advertisement for the Rainbow Taxi company, and decides to get revenge. They completely demolish the company.
• The Umbrella Academy (2019): When The Handler takes over the Commission in Season 2, she apparently has a habit of "vanishing" anyone who disappoints her; plus, after finding out about Harlan's new powers, she murders the switchboard operator who told her about it. She seizes control of the entire Commission in Season 2, making the group even harsher and more ruthless than ever before; new Putting on the Reich uniforms are instituted, Canned Orders over Loudspeaker becomes common across headquarters, and employees who don't make the cut "vanish." A resistance movement is created to oppose her.

Toys

• G.I. Joe: Surprisingly, in the original toyline and associated media COBRA was not depicted as one of these, generally offering good pay and benefits, along with plenty of opportunity for career advancement ^note  a humble COBRA trooper or Viper could work their way up the ranks to become an elite Strato-Viper or Snow Serpent or Range Viper, and at least one comic depicted a COBRA trooper who was a multi-millionaire due to his successes in recruiting new COBRA operatives from inside prison . Played straight with the Toxo-Vipers, nicknamed "the Leaky Suit Brigade". These unlucky sorts are given mostly airtight and solvent-resistant uniforms, and armed with chemical weaponry meant to make the surrounding environment hostile enough to enemy forces that COBRA has the advantage. Their uniforms offer very little protection to enemy weapons, and the nature of their weaponry means that the slightest tear can have horrific consequences. Justified in that being appointed to the Toxo-Vipers is a punishment, and so COBRA is perfectly fine cheapening out on their equipment.
• Transformers:
  • Unsurprisingly implied in many of the Decepticon bios from the original toyline (which were expanded in the Transformers Universe books). Some are obvious, like Megatron being a Bad Boss or Soundwave happily using his mind-reading abilities to blackmail other Decepticons. Others are more mundane, with Direct-Hit being a victim of The Peter Principle (he was a competent warrior but promoted to team leader... a role he's completely unsuited for) or Sparkstalker, a brilliant cryptologist best suited for a role in Decepticon military intelligence, who has somehow been assigned as a Firecon and spends most of his time having to physically grab his comrades' heads to at least point them in the direction of the enemy. Blot of the Terrorcons is outright being bullied much of the time due to his condition that causes him to emit foul-smelling oils from his joints, and some mid-ranked officers like Motormaster and Roadblock are described as being both physically and vocally abusive.
  • Surprisingly implied with some Autobot bios as well: there are several characters that would be described as "toxic co-workers" by today's standards. Slag of the Dinobots is belligerent and picks fights with just about anyone to the point other Autobots would have no problem just abandoning him to die, Repugnus is described as so personally unpleasant (for example, he thinks that describing how he beats Decepticons to death while drenched in their internal fluids is water-cooler conversation) that he's actually been kicked out of the Autobots a few times only to be let back in due to his extreme competence in his job, and the Throttlebot Freeway is known to make hurtful "jokes" that is essentially mocking abuse... but either can't take it himself or is very, very careful not to try that kind of thing with the Autobots who would be willing to beat him half to (or completely to) death for it (like the aforementioned Slag and Repugnus). In addition, the Micromaster Air Patrol is one of the Autobots' best aerial units, but they have awful interpersonal issues ^note  Tread Bolt makes himself unpopular by praciticing his stealth skills by sneaking into the private quarters of other Autobots, Blaze Master is a borderline Sociopathic Soldier who enjoys watching his enemies scream as they melt due to his napalm-like corrosive spray and clashes with The Pollyanna Sky High, while team leader Eagle Eye just ignores all these issues that Autobot High Command has never seen fit to correct as they still manage to get the job done. ^note  In the Japanese continuity, Eagle Eye's incompetence is eventually found out and he defects to the Decepticons out of spite.
  • Implied in the toy bio for the Vehicons from Transformers: Prime. Said bio states that not only do they have to worry about being blasted by the Autobots, they might find themselves being scrapped by a superior officer looking for spare parts. Their greatest desire is to one day earn themselves a name.

Video Games

• Bendy and the Ink Machine: Joey Drew Studios was not a good workshop to work at even before the supernatural occurrences. The workers are harassed, underpaid, and forced into overtime, on top of the entire place having hazardous lack of maintenance. Some workers got into high positions based on the boss's preference, which also created an internal rivalry.
• Bioshock 2: Alexander the Great mercilessly torture the splicers his Fontaine Futuristics "employs."
• Bioshock Infinite: In Finktown, employees work 14 hours a day, jobs are auctioned to the lowest paid worker and Fink uses the truck system.
• Dishonored: The first level of The Knife of Dunwall DLC portrays Daud infiltrating a slaughterhouse for whales where several striking workers, who simply want better pay and safer conditions, are being held prisoner by the City Watch behind arc pylons and walls of light. One of the possible avenues into the slaughterhouse itself involves freeing the workers from their imprisonment.
• Evil Genius: The player can turn their Supervillain Lair into one of these, with death traps that trigger even when employees walk by, not providing adequate areas for rest, food, and relaxation, and the occasional bout of You Have Failed Me. Because recruiting and training new personnel is a constant drain on resources, it's not the most efficient way to run an evil organisation. Even if you have money to burn, losing the highly-trained higher-ranked mooks can dramatically affect the organisation's operations.
• Final Fantasy XIV:
  • Downplayed with Rowena's House of Splendors. Rowena is The Scrooge and pays her employees a pittance in her company's scrips, leaving most of them dressed in skimpy outfits while sending them off to far-off places to drum up business. Many of her employees complain about the amount of work placed on them and dream of acquiring enough wealth to not need to work for Rowena. On the other hand, many of Rowena's employees are women she plucked out of much worse conditions. She gives them room and board and protects their identities with pseudonyms to keep away Loan Sharks and other unsavory individuals. At least one employee, Regana, became an employee because she admired Rowena's business acumen and wished to emulate her.
  • The bonded citizens of Eulmore live in constant fear of failing to appease their free citizen employers. Successful bonded citizens get to enjoy the safety and luxuries of Eulmore, but those saddled with a Mean Boss may be thrown off the roof for not living up to expectations. One quest in the main story involves a singer who hides in Eulmore's jail after losing her singing voice out of fear of what her employer could do to her if he finds out. She's surprised when he isn't mad at her and offers to take her to Vauthry to undergo ascension for her service. Only this is even worse, as "ascension" is a euphemism for being turned into a sin eater via being infected by primordial light, and sin eaters are ground up and made into meol (a bread-shaped food) to be fed to the populace.
• Hardspace: Shipbreaker: LYNX Corporation is a spaceship disassembly company who have the cloning technology, meaning the Cutters are not only forced to work to death, they literally can't die until they pay the debt, which keeps increasing any time someone is close to completing it. The middle manager Hal Rhodes consistently disrespects Cutters as slow despite not working himself and pushes them to improper disassembly procedures, and gets just one step away from getting one of the Cutters Killed Off for Real out of spite.
• Have a Nice Death: The game attempts to capture some of the stresses of working in a real-life abusive workplace, complete with a warning at the beginning of the game that it may make some players uncomfortable. Not only is Death himself not always the nicest boss to work for, but the Sorrows (essentially the department heads) are even worse than him and tend to pile work on the lower rungs while trying to play favorites with their thanagers. Death Inc. is not a happy workplace.
• Hi-Fi RUSH: Most employees at Vandelay are robots, and as such, this has permitted the company to take insane measures to increase productivity, such as adding an eighth day to the week and permitting only a single lunch break in that week. A late-game memo you can find indicates that they're intending to distribute T-shirts celebrating the company surviving Chai and the group's rampage through Vandelay's campus, rather than any sort of compensation.
• Lethal Company: The titular company sends crews out to salvage materials on hostile alien worlds with savage and terrifying monsters completely unarmed, and furthermore with each successful salvage mission increases the required quota until reaching unachievable levels. When that inevitably happens, the crew is Thrown Out the Airlock for failing the company.
• Master Detective Archives: Rain Code: The Amaterasu Corporation has a petty rival for power between its two leaders, specifically Makoto Kagutuschi and Yomi Hellsmile as the CEO and the Peacekeepers director, and the company's head researcher is a Mad Scientist willing to sacrifice other people for his experiments, including his own workers; even one of the head researcher's subordinates can attest to being constantly insulted by him.
• Night in the Woods: Played for Drama, and a rare variation where the manager is the victim of the abuse. A hangout with Bea implies that she was sexually assaulted by a repairman who works at the Ol' Pickaxe, the only extant hardware store in Possum Springs. Despite the fact that Bea is essentially single-handedly running the shop, she can't fire him, in part because he's too good at his job, but mostly because the hardware store is technically owned and operated by her father, who has been in the midst of a mental breakdown for years.
• Persona 5: The Phantom Thieves are requested to investigate Kunikazu Okumura, the CEO of Okumura Foods, for the rumors of abusing his employees. Inside his Palace, it turns out he does see all of his workers as mindless robots, who in his view are willing to sacrifice themselves on command, and those who underperform as metaphorically "disposed of".
• Portal 2: By the logs of Cave Johnson and some posters, Aperture Science not only follows No OSHA Compliance, anyone who tries to correct the boss's scientific vision gets constantly insulted, while low-ranking employees and the homeless for hire are subjects to experiments that, despite not intended to be "human experiments", have a high lethality rate.
• Resident Evil: Umbrella Corporation is an example of Evil, Inc. and Predatory Big Pharma that sells itself as a Peace & Love Incorporated, with Racoon City proudly proclaiming itself "home of the Umbrella Corporation". Internally, it's an awful place to work, with employees generally being viewed as expendable, most of the higher ranking researchers and the like are mad scientists with a For Science! approach to developing all sorts of horrific bio-weapons (including seeing the occasional outbreak as an excellent opportunity to gather data), and nearly every major facility has a self-destruct function for those situations when things get out of hand. While they do have Consummate Professional-types among their ranks (for example, the operative only known as HUNK), at best they're professionals doing their job and engaging in Pragmatic Villainy.
• Super Robot Wars T: Deliberately averted by the VTX Union, the MegaCorp that employs the main characters. VTX offers generous hazard, overtime and night pay along with performance bonuses (all of which appeal to the money-minded Sakurai), while also offering flexible work hours and opportunities to expand one's skillset (which appeals to Consummate Professional Tokito). Lower-ranked employees are also encouraged to speak out if they see issues. This instills in most employees a strong sense of loyalty, with bad apples kicked out. Played straight with the UND (i.e. The Company), an intergalactic army organised like a corporation. While it does offer similar perks to VTX (e.g. performance bonuses, job opportunities), it also operates under a We Have Reserves mentality, individual higher ups can be Bad Boss-types who do not believe in second chances, and employees will have their pay docked for damage to company-owned assets like warships and mechs. It also doesn't discriminate when it comes to potential employees, being more than willing to recruit the occasional Tyke Bomb or Sociopathic Soldier even if they result in a hostile work environment.
• Yuppie Psycho: The setting operates on hierarchical system where everyone belongs to a certain Social Rank. The SintraCorp reflects it with how "more important" employees work on higher floors, while "Class R" don't even have the privilege of having names. Even disregarding the entire company being turned into a Haunted House, unless you've climbed your way to a high position, the basic respect or guarantee of safety are not common.

Web Animation

• AoHaru Manga Library: Keiichi may start his story working in such a place (the company name and the colleague names may vary in each chapter). Between having a Bad Boss who disrespects him or a colleague who tries to steal his credits or a female co-worker turning out to be a Gold Digger to other co-workers who are too dependent on him doing most of the jobs (and sometimes don't lift a finger when Keiichi is in a pinch) or extremely tight and stressful work hours to the point Keiichi may fall sick or be undernourished, or perhaps all of them at once, it usually shows just how bad the workplace is. Thankfully, Keiichi will eventually decide to just call it quits and move on to a much better workplace, while said abusive workplace falls apart because Keiichi turns out to be the sole reason they're still standing, and they have just driven him off.
• hololive: Sometimes played with by talents (especially for Comedic Sociopathy or Black Comedy).
  • Takanashi Kiara has her KFP franchise, where her viewers are referred to as her employees. One of her opening sequences for her streams depicts the hapless KFP members on an assembly line being tormented by assorted items, and there are constant joking references to "the usual room" where those who disappoint her are sent.
  • While playing the fourth Pikmin game, Ninomae Ina’nis was sent an akasupa (i.e. red superchat) claiming to be a representative of her Takodachi's WAH (Workers Association of Happy Takomin), wanting to renegotiate their working conditions for either a hard hat or an extra cookie per day. Ina's response is to tell them to meet the Negotiation Department, because she's just the boss, not in charge of employee conditions. When the official Hololive English channel posted an animation of this interaction, the description cheekily describes OSHA as meaning "Only Some Hardhats Allowed".
  • Ouro Kronii invokes this in her playthrough of Frostpunk, where her main priority is to keep the city functional and worker comfort is a distant second.
  • When playing Lethal Company, several members demonstrate a willingness to slay their own comrades for the sake of achieving the required quota. A typical example is when Koseki Bijou noticed that the team is short by one dollar, and after remembering that the corpse of a fellow employee brings in at least that much arms herself with a shovel to chase the others down. She claims to the others that I Did What I Had to Do.
• Helluva Boss: Blitzo frequently berates Moxxie at the I.M.P. office. In the episode "Seeing Stars", Blitzo's adopted hellhound daughter Loona physically attacks him after Blitzo confronts her about her poor attitude toward I.M.P.'s potential clients.

Web Original

• Extra Credits: Discussed extensively in the Extra History episode on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, where 146 people perished due to unsafe conditions in the factory, the most prominent of which was a door that was their only means of exit being locked to prevent workers from leaving early. The video also discusses how the lobbying efforts of Frances Perkins, a witness to the fire, helped kickstart work reforms in New York State, and nationwide, in the USA.
• SCP Foundation has something called the "Fire Suppression Department", which essentially prevents critical employees from quitting the Foundation; those that do manage to quit have their circumstances manipulated by the FSD so that they can't get a job anywhere else, go broke, have their identity stolen, and get gaslit so badly that they're eventually driven back to the Foundation.

Web Videos

• Multiverse Tales: DinoCross Park, an Extinct Animal Park where Dr. Champagne McGreggor used to work as their top dinosaur-creating geneticist, was a highly-dangerous workplace. The security was abysmal, dinosaurs kept breaking out on a daily basis, and the pay was so poor, Champagne resorted to breaking into the enclosure of the Duckasaurus Rex (a T-Rex version of Scrooge McDuck) just to steal four gold coins from its nest (for all the good that did him). Additionally, the higher-ups at the park were a mixture of Pointy-Haired Boss and Bad Boss, constantly asking Champagne to give his creations abilities that were both biologically impossible and dangerous, and not showing any concern over park employees getting injured or killed (case in point, when the Duckasaurus ate Champagne's arm, they only spent a week building a mechanical prosthetic for him, and kept it hushed-up for as long as possible). And that's not even getting started on the fact that park owner Dr. Eunice Versaille (aka, Dr. Universe) is a Corrupt Corporate Executive who kidnaps animals from other dimensions and literally employs two supervillains to do her dirty work. Naturally, such a toxic environment made Champagne so bitter, pessimistic, and cynical that he actually developed suicidal thoughts, which he only got over after A) being rescued from working at the park by local superhero team the Sci-Five, and B) meeting his eventual boyfriend Benny Sharp.

Western Animation

• The Amazing World of Gumball: In "The Boss", Rocky the janitor gets a job at Chanax, Inc. after his father is hospitalised. It is later revealed that the corporation literally steals people's souls.
• In Archer, ISIS is a spy agency run by Malory Archer, a past-her-prime Cold Warrior who regularly abuses her own employees and allows her incompetent and self-absorbed son Sterling to run field operations despite his leadership often resulting in catastrophic failures and injuries. Worse, the company actually has an HR department, but its director Pam is a Depraved Bisexual who constantly abuses her position to hit on co-workers, and the few complaints that she actually bothers to address usually involve Sterling, and thus she's not actually allowed to do anything about them.
• Big City Greens: In “Night Bill”, Bill begins moonlighting at a telemarketing firm to earn extra money. The boss, Jyle, is verbally abusive to his employees and makes them sign exploitative, long-term contracts, and encourages them to compete against each other, and all the other employees seen are tired and miserable. When Bill tries to quit after Cricket and Tilly convince him to come home, Jyle refuses to let him, and the kids can only get Bill out of his contract by taking advantage of Jyle’s competitive nature and beating him in a race.
• G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero: Zigzagged. COBRA is shown to maintain several resort bases throughout the world for rest and relaxations for its members, and in one instance the Joes discover they even have an internal organisational magazine where COBRA operatives can learn about job openings and opportunities (with Shipwreck even remarking "Hey, they have dental!") On the other hand, several episodes also depict COBRA forces being stationed in unpleasant or dangerous locales such as swamps or frozen tundras, and COBRA Commander is occasionally shown to cheap out on materials wherever he can to keep costs down (in one episode, for example, the arms-dealer Destro is offended when he notices the shoddy workmanship and substandard materials used in a submarine he'd boarded).
• Hazbin Hotel: The porn studio is owned by Valentino, who frequently physically abuses Angel Dust. Also, Vox allows Valentino to shoot their employees who aren't productive enough.
• Spongebob Squarepants: The number of times Eugene Krabs has been shown to be underpaying his employees at the Krusty Krab, if he's paying them at all, is too numerous to list, on top of firing and re-hiring them on the whims of his pocketbook. While it's all Played for Laughs, it's little wonder that Squidward hates his job.

Real Life

• Sweatshops are infamous for being these, normally being set up in places with extremely weak labor laws or enforcement like Bangladesh or parts of China where there isn't much work and so desperate people are willing to endure harsh conditions. Such conditions include extremely low pay, horrifically long hours (16-hour workdays are not unheard of), unsafe and/or unsanitary conditions, and various forms of abuse (e.g. verbal abuse, physical abuse, sexual harassment). Horrible disasters are not unheard of like the 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza in Dhaka, Bangladesh (death toll 1134) or 2005's Spectrum garment factory collapse (death toll 78).
• In the entertainment industry, the term "crunch" originally referred to compulsory uncompensated overtime needed to ensure a video game was ready to launch on schedule. This could lead to work weeks of 65–80 hours for extended periods of time, with developers even going so far as to sleep in the office or continue working at home. In 2004 and 2010, the significant others of employees at EA and Rockstar games drew attention to the deteriorating work conditions of their loved ones which resulted in negative health issues, and many studios became infamous for their reliance on extended periods of crunch ^note  The idea of a development team having to scramble to solve an issue before a game's launch in of itself isn't necessarily bad as unexpected problems can crop up at the last minute, but the issue is that some studios developed a "crunch culture" that relied on crunch to meet their deadlines, showing a failure to properly plan or manage assets. The term has also since extended to other industries like animation and visual effects.
• The term "Black Company" is a specifically Japanese term that describes a variant of one of these, but is normally associated with white collar (i.e. office) work rather than labor like sweatshops above. They're still extremely abusive, with people often being Driven to Suicide by just how toxic they are. Unfortunately, many Japanese workplaces have traces of black company methodology in them, which is part of the reason so many young people become disenchanted with working. As an example, the power structure between senpai and kouhai is often considered sacrosanct, and so it isn't unusual for a senpai (i.e. employee who has been around longer) to mistreat a kouhai especially if the kouhai manages to outshine them. ^note  For example, the case of the VTuber Yamiyono Moruru of Nijisanji, where some people suspected the reason she was treated as a pariah by other livers was the impression her channel's growth was outstripping that of her senpais, leading to some of them wanting to put her "in her place".
• Worker unions were created by people who realised that without representation, companies would have no issues creating such workplaces and squeezing employees for everything they have before discarding them. As an example, in the voice acting field, Peter Cullen and Frank Welker heavily lobbied for the formation of a voice acting union as during their most active era it wasn't unusual for a voice actor to have to use their voice so much they began coughing up blood. In this interview, Cullen casually refers to such things as "blood throats". Even then, however, there were loopholes that could be abused: as a voice director, Wally Burr (who worked on shows like G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero and The Transformers) was respected as a consummate professional but was also known to have voice actors keep working until the very limit of the union-designated work hours, whether it was actually necessary or not.
• Unsurprisingly, many government jobs under Nazi Germany were less than pleasant workplaces. Among other issues, simply trying to do your job was undercut by ambitious superiors hoping to get on the Führer's good graces. If a sufficiently powerful patron couldn't be convinced of the value of a good idea then such ideas died on the vine, like what happened when pre-war it was concluded that an extremely long-range bomber (nicknamed "the Ural Bomber") would be needed in case of a prolonged war, but when the only high-ranking official who believed in the idea died in an accident the entire project was shelved. Struggles between high officials severely hampered people simply trying to do their jobs, as what happened when the Kriegsmarine attempted to create a small air arm in order to improve reconnaissance capabilities, but the jealous leader of the Luftwaffe managed to shut it down. Worse of all, of course, was Hitler's mercurial personality, which could and would change the direction of the government almost at a whim.
  • Joachim von Ribbentrop was made ambassador to the US, and so feared losing Hitler's ear that he spent as much time as he could out of the US. This made the day-to-day running of the embassy extremely difficult. Upon his return to Germany, he effectively set up his own Foreign Ministry directly opposite the actual Ministry, and once appointed the actual Minister of Foreign Affairs absorbed it. Ministry employees weren't just encouraged to report each other for lacking sufficient "loyalty", they were also blamed and harassed whenever they brought reports that von Ribbentrop knew Hitler wouldn't want to hear.
  • Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering was Hitler's old friend and recognised that his power and influence were directly proportional to the effectiveness of "his" air power. As a result, he often over-promised success while not recognising (or refusing to recognise) that blunders made by him and other officers within the organisation gave the Luftwaffe an expiration date. Among other things, due to the belief that a war would be short and sharp few resources were allocated to developing suitable long-range transport, reconnaissance, and bomber aircraft. As a result, Luftwaffe personnel not only had to deal with increasingly obsolete aircraft, changing objectives, and unrealistic goals, but Goering's reaction to inevitable failures was to harangue his subordinates for not living up to his expectations.
• The Imperial Food Products chicken processing plant in Hamlet, North Carolina had never had a safety inspection in its 11 years of operation, despite three previous fires. In addition to not having a fire alarm or a functioning sprinkler system, workers were not properly trained or briefed in regard to fire safety. In addition, fire exits were locked up on the orders of the company's owner, ostensibly to prevent workers from stealing chicken. As a result, when fire broke out on September 3rd, 1991, 25 people were killed. On the same day as the fire and after the news had been broadcast, OSHA received an anonymous complaint about safety at Imperial's Georgia plant. OSHA took the unusual step of inspecting that plant the same day and found the same issues as in the North Carolina plant. The company owner tried to claim that he hadn't done anything that hadn't been approved by the fire department, but the state hit the company with a record-breaking fine that caused the company to declare bankruptcy.
• Nintendo is an example of a workplace being abusive to a particular employee, in this case Gunpei Yokoi. Among other things, he invented the D-pad that all gaming controllers use to this day, created the Game Boy and as a producer oversaw the creation of games such as Metroid, Kid Icarus, Dr. Mario and Fire Emblem. However, after the high-profile disaster that was 1995's Virtual Boy, Nintendo did things like make him man the booth at a trade show, something considered entry-level work in Japanese corporate culture and thus a massive insult to someone of his stature. He eventually resigned and began development on the WonderSwan, a Japan-only handheld system that actually challenged the Game Boy's domination in Japan... but he was unfortunately killed in a traffic accident in 1997. Following his death Nintendo pays tribute to him and recognises him as an important figure in the company's history, and even attributes the failure of the Virtual Boy to the company as a whole rather than singling him out.
• Despite the theme parks being called "The Happiest Place on Earth", the Walt Disney Corporation has been plagued with accusations of being less so behind the curtain. This article includes a number of mentions, the earliest of which was a 1996 report by the National Labor Committee (NLC) that revealed some Disney products were produced in a factory in Haiti that paid its workers 12 cents an hour, significantly below the legal minimum wage of about 28 cents an hour (and a follow up revealed that while the factory raised the pay to that minimum limit, it often short-changed the workers). Other investigations in 2002, 2007, 2012, and 2018 would highlight how workers often suffered unpaid overtime, unsafe conditions, verbal and physical abuse, as well as "destitution-level wages". The theme parks aren't much better, with a 2018 survey noting that Disneyland employees were paid so little that 11 percent reported being homeless at some point during the preceding two years (with fifty-six percent worried about being evicted) and two-thirds of them being "food insecure" (i.e. lacking sufficient access to safe and nutritious food).
• In 2015, Konami was hit by a series of PR incidents that painted the company in a bad light. An unflattering interview revealed that Konami had been making its video game division's life a living hell, with the employees likening it to being sent to prison (among other things, they were subjected to huge amounts of pointless oversight, and employees punished by having to do janitorial work for other divisions). It was strongly suspected this was done in order to make the gaming division's employees quit so as to save the company money from firing them, as the CEO of the time intended to take Konami away from producing AAA video games and instead focus on mobile game titles and pachinko machines. While such tactics aren't considered particularly eyebrow-raising in Japan, when the news spread beyond the nation, overseas video game fans were livid (the interview being revealed right after their infamous feud with Hideo Kojima also added fuel to the fire) and Konami has suffered from a reputation as a Black Company ever since. Their treatment of the video game division also came back to bite them during the COVID-19 pandemic, as profits from the astoundingly lucrative pachinko slot market dried up dramatically (and new rules being put into place by the Japanese government would've eaten into said profits anyway). With the video game division gutted, Konami had to rely on external studios to develop games while they tried to rebuild.
• The Japanese VTuber agency Nijisanji has faced accusations of being this in the past, culminating in the formation of the "Nijisanji Resistance" on 15th November 2018. Made up of some of their biggest "livers" ^note  The Insistent Terminology Nijisanji uses for their talents to differentiate them from rival companies, a portmanteau of "live" "streamer" (ライバー in Japanese), despite the name the resistance was more of a union with the goal of gathering complaints from members and improving company activities. The catalyst for the resistance being formed was the realisation that Nijisanji's insistence on groups keeping separate (e.g. SEEDS and Gamers) was leading to them actively competing with each other to the point that the work atmosphere was becoming outright hostile, and the lack of sufficient managerial staff meant the livers weren't getting much behind-the-scenes support causing low morale. In addition, the toilet paper provided by the company was of very poor quality. The resistance eventually wound down when, as founding member Shiina put it, the company improved enough they no longer had much to complain about (especially the toilet paper).
  • Unfortunately, despite the above Nijisanji has never quite shaken those accusations (with some people going so far as to call it a Black Company). Part of the reason for this is because compared to other VTuber agencies, Nijisanji has had a higher proportion of graduations. This can be chalked up to the sheer number of livers (as of March 2024, the company had 177 livers total) and so there would naturally be a higher chance of people leaving compared to smaller agencies ^note  for example, close rival hololive has 86 active members while Canda-based agency Phase Connect has 27 during the same period. The other reason that Nijisanji has such a reputation is because of its tendency to Unperson departed talents, a step most other agencies normally take should a talent be terminated/ fired rather than graduate. This means that it's almost impossible for people to find these departed talents barring collab streams, highlights or fan-made clips. Examples of this happening include Suzuhara Lulu, whose channel only has her graduation stream up left, or Otogibara Era, whose Youtube channel no longer exists. This is despite the fact those two talents supposedly left the agency on good terms, thus making people suspicious about just how "good" those terms actually were. ^note  In the case of Lulu, she was known to be The Determinator and had multiple archived streams which reached nearly 12 hours, all of which were privated and made inaccessible after her departure.
  • When Nijisanji GAMER member Yamiyono Moruru left the company in June 2019, she had a graduation stream. During such streams, it's normal for a VTuber's friends, acquaintances and genmates to call in or send messages wishing them well. In Moruru's case, no one (not even from the agency, including her own genmates) showed up and so what ought to have been a send-off had her quietly eating a meal accompanied by her viewers in chat. She would mention on a PL ^note  A fandom term referring to "Past Life" i.e. the identity someone has/had before becoming a particular VTuber that part of the reason she left the company was a feeling that she wasn't getting any support from management and was being treated as a pariah by other livers. As an example of the former, she had some skill with the Electone, a fairly unique skill among Nijisanji's livers, but that skill went completely underutilised throughout her time with the agency ^note  As for why this was a waste, when she later joined a different VTuber agency she further developed her skill to the point that Yamaha, the company behind the Electone, took notice and even featured her on the official website twice.
• In 2019, several employee reviews at the website Glassdoors drew attention to awful work conditions at Rooster Teeth including long hours, unpaid overtime, and extremely stressful work environments. The company's defenders tried to play down these negative reviews as being the work of disgruntled ex-employees and pointed to a high rate of employee retention (a high employee turnover is generally a sign that a company is bad to work at), until former high-ranking Rooster Teeth employees like directors or showrunners came forward to confirm the reviews were in fact true. Furthermore, while employees had a high retention rate, Rooster Teeth was revealed to make heavy use of unpaid interns who were under the impression that their work would lead to a proper job offer, only to be let go once projects were completed or they were so worn out they could no longer continue working. Those unpaid interns didn't count as "employees" and so were not included under employee turnover. More details can be read here.

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