Worst thing that has happened to me this year was probably getting passed up for a raise/promotion that a significantly newer guy got.
A friend and I were doing an IT job, we each got paid $7 an hour. About 9 months after I got hired (for friend it was 8 months) a new guy was hired at $7 an hour. A month later I get a raise to $8, the friend gets a raise to $9, and the new guy gets a raise to at least $11 (so hinted one of our supervisors). And the new guy is given supervisor position over us... despite not knowing as much as we do. 😕 I have nothing against the new guy, he was nice and everything... I blame the boss for making such a fscked up decision
Needless to say, I quit that job at the end of the summer and started the new semester pretty happy despite having no income. I got a new job grading papers and it actually pays $12 an hour for much easier work, so the worst event of the year for me probably turned into the best!
Edit: And thanks to the grading job, I got offered a spot as one of the TAs for an undergraduate lab section. These sections are almost exlusively reserved for grad students, so someone somewhere apparently thinks highly of me!