Buckle in, folks! This gets a bit personal, but I hope anyone in the situation that I was in can learn something from it.
For a long time, I thought nothing could top my 4+ years slinging auto parts at Autozone part time while attending a local college. Working there showed me the worst in humanity. I saw selfishness, desperation, and flat-out violence from both customers and co-workers on a near-daily basis. Their corporate culture drove me to write an Anthropology paper that, after I submitted it, was asked by my professor to switch my major due to the unique insight I provided in how that company operated on a whole. My time there darkened my soul and filled me with disdain for my fellow man. Retail, as they say, is hell.
But that wasn't the worst. Not by a longshot.
After slinging auto parts for those 4+ years, I graduated college and got a "real job" working an entry level position for a giant in the Finance industry. Promises of climbing the corporate ladder in the hopes of making decent money were laid at my feet by people I knew that worked in the field, and that things would be "easy".
LIES.
After busting my rear for a year, I was in line for a promotion. I did everything by the book and did it well. When it came time to move up, the job was given to someone off the street with absolutely no experience who knew the hiring manager, and I was shipped off to another team to start the process again. A year later, I got that promotion, and a year after that, I got demoted. The person they had hired to replace my entry level position got jailed in another state, and I had to cover for him for close to A YEAR while company policy didn't allow for his firing and replacement. When he finally came back, they just kept me in that role and moved him to another, while all my peers moved up. I wasn't happy.
I frantically looked for a new position, and found one inside the company at another location, a lateral move. I interviewed and got the position, but it was a huge change and I stuck out like a sore thumb on the new team. At that point, I needed the stability of a steady (albeit low paying) job, so I just ate my crap sandwich and slogged on for another 4 years. Then, somehow, that situation got even worse.
I worked on a team of about 8 people performing a crucial, specialized function. It was me, two other guys, and the rest were middle aged women. My boss was tough, but she liked me and the other guys. The middle-aged clique liked to gossip, and they also liked to act like they were in high school. They began data mining me through social media accounts and getting into very personal things to the point where I had to block them all and ask friends to do the same. They even went as far as asking other employees (one of which was a VP that happens to be my wife's uncle) about personal things having to do with my marriage. Another coworker was going through a divorce, and they were all over him as well. They even started going after my boss, who was having some serious health issues at the time. It became an extremely hostile work environment very quickly, and our HR department wouldn't do anything to help me or the other guy. In fact, WE got in trouble somehow; they decided to write us up due to a "zero tolerance" policy, and we were the victims. They wouldn't let anyone transfer out either, as we were the only 8 employees in a company of 30k+ that could perform our function. My boss ended up quitting, going to work in Retail Hell over dealing with that mess.
Also, along the way, a new CEO replaced the one who was actually good to the employees. He cut all funding for holiday celebrations, cut entire business units off like dead branches on a rotting tree, held back raises and bonuses for years on end, and lined the pockets of the board of directors in the process. For over a year straight, every last Wednesday of the month, jobs would get cut. No one knew which jobs would be on the chopping block, so you would sit there at your desk and wait for security to make their rounds and grab people to remove from the building. We saw people that worked right next to us getting carted off, and you could feel the fear in the pit of your stomach as they roved the aisles of the floor looking for careers to kill. They were unceremoniously kicked out like common criminals, sometimes without being able to gather their belongings (they would ship them to you in a box if you were lucky). And when the holidays approached, the cuts would get more widespread. The day before Thanksgiving would usually have the biggest layoff numbers of the year. Cold and heartless.
Because of all this, my stress level was through the roof, and the place drove me into the darkest places one could imagine. My mental state was unfathomable, and severe depression began to take hold. I ambled along like a dead husk of my former self. My motivation and will to live was crushed by corporate indifference. I felt like I had a gun to my head, and I wanted them to pull the trigger to end it. It was that bad.
After hitting rock bottom and remaining in that pit for so long, I finally made the decision to get out, and it was the best thing I ever did with my career. I hit the jackpot with my current role. I got lucky and knew the right people, and got a good job that's closer to home that's rewarding and more suited to my skill set.
Also, with the stress level down, I found more time (and mental capacity!) to be able to write about cool cars. 
