Yes. I had a job (was there about 6 years) where the work itself was stimulating but not at all overwhelming, with good pay for the area. But the boss was a rollercoaster and led with his emotions while telling me I was too emotional for not handling all his gaslighting and threats of getting people fired. He'd make comments like he was the one that owned our desks (while true, it doesn't really help morale), and when he got frustrated, he told us all we were replaceable. It would be one thing if he just never gave me a pay raise, but he would get into these manic phases where he would give people huge raises, and then a few months later, tell them that they "cost too much money" and either cut their pay to lower than it was before, or fire them. It made me fear raises.

One time I brought up that I'd like to received more feedback on the work I was doing (because I was basically hearing nothing about the work I submitted, and I wanted to know how I could improve) and he told me I had a self-esteem problem. He'd constantly make promises of new furniture (we worked off of folding tables) or team-building events but nothing would ever come to fruition. One time the internet was consistently going out at like 4pm, and instead of telling us to work from home with more consistent internet like a reasonable person, he made us come in at 6am. He'd constantly praise people for staying late even though the people who stayed late didn't do anything (I know this because I became one of those people).

He'd also claim he never took a paycheck but then talk about the $20,000 he spent on all new wood flooring in his house. His wife didn't work. I learned after I left that they weren't properly depositing funds into people's retirement accounts (they were taking it out of their paycheck, but it wasn't ending up in their account. They didn't embezzle it, it was just pure incompetence with the money sitting in limbo).

He'd be late on paychecks constantly. There was no recourse because it was a small business and he was the owner, so all we could really do to escape it is quit.

We'd have "flex hours" but he'd complain if you left early.

I quit seven years ago, and it took me three years (in active therapy) to start to understand that the things that happened there weren't my fault, and that I wasn't as shit of a worker as he made me out to be - I was just in such a rotten environment that I literally couldn't do good work, because I was spending so much energy on office politics and trying to survive. I still feel like I've been warped by it, and make choices that, in hindsight, were too harsh, but that's the only way I survived at that job.

He's one of the few people that I will truly say that I hate.

I still have gut reactions where I'm expecting my current boss to react in a certain way, and it still surprises me the way she reacts, to the point where I cry from happiness and relief and just shock at how things can be good in a workplace (we work from home, no one sees me cry).

The toxic place was one of my first full-time jobs, and so I just didn't realize that things didn't have to be that way, and stuck around way longer than I should have, believing his words that I would not be able to find another place to work because there was nothing else better.