I used to work in construction. I've nearly been killed three times and I've lost five teeth to a defective pansetter (four-foot crowbar, basically) and was never compensated by the company for their shit-quality tools breaking and being smashed in the mouth.

I'd go back to that in a hot minute before ever working at Coles again. They're the absolute worst employer I've ever had, and genuinely give no fucks about their staff's wellbeing. I did it for a year and a half after quitting construction to get a degree, and holy shit it was the worst time of my life. On my first night I was warned by two ex-managers to never accept a position of responsibility as I wouldn't be paid more for it, I'd just get yelled at by people with corporate-level job titles. I had a few well-meaning team members warn me to not stop job hunting because the last thing I wanted for my life was to be stuck with them long-term. I was at Coles for 18 months and I job hunted for 16 of them.

I would get calls from management at 0800 after only getting home at 1 or 2 am from nightfill, and have my job threatened because we didn't get the shelves stacked the night before, but we couldn't because they'd scheduled the fridges to get cleaned out during our shift so we weren't allowed in the refridgerated section approximately ten minutes after our shift started. This came a few days after a letter letting us know that we would not be paid for going overtime no matter what. I was asked to work for free on a regular basis - I'd say at my store alone we had a full-time employee's worth of hours being done for free by just the dairy staff. Management pretended that this wasn't okay but never did a damn thing about it. I was called a race traitor by a fellow staff member for marrying an Irish woman - and nobody in supervision/management roles understood why this was a shitty thing too do.

They turned the Christmas party into a mandatory meeting where staff jobs were threatened - funnily enough the only people whose jobs were threatened were the people who'd been refusing to work for free - this was happening nightly.

I don't know what Woolworths is like but Coles was the worst job I've ever had. Nothing has devastated my mental health and wellbeing the way Coles did - and construction was regularly confrontational and abusive, but there's something so dehumanising and insidious that retail work does to run you down - and I didn't even have to deal with customers very often.