'Horrible Bosses 2' stars reveal worst jobs

Think you've had it bad at work? The stars of Horrible Bosses 2 would like a word with you. USA TODAY's Andrea Mandell checks in with the comedy crew about their checkered employment history, ahead of their slick sequel, opening Wednesday.

Charlie Day (who plays Dale Arbus)

Like many actors, Day is no stranger to the restaurant life, having worked at spots such as the Cornelia Street Café in New York City. Plus, "I was a cater waiter in New York, serving up lukewarm chicken pilaf," he says, admitting to being "an awful employee. If I was waiting on you in a restaurant, I was going to get your order wrong, I was going to be slow to get the order in and slow to get it to your table. I might drop your water glass. I was clumsy. I had plenty of bosses who were angry with me, but I deserved it every step of the way … I didn't really start to get it together until I got into a career where I was excited to be going to work."

Jason Sudeikis (Kurt Buckman)

The new dad to a 7-month-old with fiancée Olivia Wilde says baby Otis isn't the boss of the house — yet. "He stays put. He's not even crawling yet. If we put him on a spot of the couch or the carpet, he'll roll a few times, but we're still running the show."

The Saturday Night Live alum had a string of "normal" jobs before making it big, including working at Banana Republic and Kids Foot Locker, but was "let go from the best temp job I had.'' It was a semi-permanent job earned through a temp agency in his Second City days in Chicago. "I even had a business card! What was I, affiliate team manager? Something like that. But I stupidly took advantage of their timecard situation and overbilled them a couple weeks in a row for about 20 more hours than I had worked." Oops. Long story short, they sent the future star packing. "It was rough, because they had been so great and patient in regard to my schedule (at Second City). It was embarrassing. I felt ashamed.''

Jason Bateman (Nick Hendricks)

Who's the boss now? Last year, Bateman directed his first comedy, Bad Words, and quickly sold the film at the Toronto International Film Festival. This summer, he went behind the camera again for TheFamily Fangwith Nicole Kidman and Christopher Walken.

But at home? "The 2-year-old is (boss) because she screams louder than any of us and you can't really negotiate with her," he says of Maple, his youngest with wife Amanda Anka.

The biggest lesson he's learned in the director's chair is that "if you don't really have a good plan, people can smell that. It's tough to be an efficient leader if you're not well organized." And if you've got a rowdy cast, "You just say, OK, rolling! And actors just start to go to their marks. Because as soon as the camera is on, they're then exposed. And so they wouldn't want to be doing anything other than exactly what they should be doing and they don't want to look foolish.''

Christoph Waltz (Bert Hanson)

Want to collect a war chest of bad boss stories? Work in theater for 40 years, says the Oscar winner.

"I had many, many horrible bosses though, especially in theater, where a lot of the horribleness has free rein. When I started in Austria and Germany, even some of the old pre-war masters were still working. But the next generation was probably worse, because they were using more or less the same (awful) method to subdue and oppress," from verbal abuse to throwing chairs.

These days, Waltz has a new strategy on set: "If someone starts yelling, I turn around and leave. I don't yell back, I don't engage."