Can i leave a previous employer off my application?

I was an assistant teacher at a daycare taking care of toddlers ages 18 months to 3 years. My boss was very abusive towards me when I鈥檇 mop the floors at nap she鈥檇 come in and say, 鈥淲hat am I paying you for? You call this mopping? Redo it. God you better watch your back because you鈥檙e so replaceable.鈥?When parents would come in for tours she鈥檇 introduce the lead teacher but not me then when I introduced myself she鈥檇 say, 鈥淥h and yes this is our assistant teacher. She鈥檚 slow at catching on but the kids like her so I guess that鈥檚 all that matters.鈥? I had strep throat once and I knew it was strep because of the symptoms but my doctor is in from 9am until 6pm and I worked 8am until 6pm and my lunch break was only 30 minutes and my boss wouldn鈥檛 give me time off. She said I had to have a doctors note. So finally I called in saying I was going to be late and went to the doctor anyways. Then she said, 鈥淚 sure hope that doesn鈥檛 happen again because I鈥檇 hate to have to pull out some applications from on file.鈥?I told her I had strep and showed her the note but she scoffed at me and threw it away. Then I had food poisoning (from their food probably) and I was throwing up and had horrible diahrea and cramps and was so sick but she wouldn鈥檛 let me go home. So I had to run to the bathroom a lot and she yelled at me saying, 鈥淭his is ridiculous! I can鈥檛 get anyone in here every five minutes so you can go fool around in the bathroom!鈥? Anyways I couldn鈥檛 take it anymore so I quit. She was so pissed that I gave her my two weeks notice so she took me out of my room for my last two weeks and had me doing janitorial work 8 hours a day.

Well I applied to fifteen daycares after that and nothing. I have four years volunteer experience on top of my work there! Nobody will hire me. I even applied at restaurants and stores and nothing. When I called one of the places back they said I had a poor recommendation. So now I鈥檓 wondering can I just leave my previous place of employment off of my apps? If they find out will they disqualify me? It says list all employment but I鈥檓 afraid if I do I鈥檒l never get a job! I know she鈥檚 saying crap about me. Any ideas?

No law prohibits it, but if a new employer finds out that you lied on your application, most will fire you.

Custom make your resume for every job
Leave of any bad jobs, but make sure you fill the time on the resume. Put that you were working in a friends business (put a name/phone)
You won't get a job without a lie of omission, so whats to lose
(You can say you worked for me)

What a horrible person! Why didn't you stand up to her...and it sounds like you could've taken legal action against her. This is the rason I want to be a lawyer. People like this just aggravate me so much and I just want to put them in their most deserving place.

Find out what she's saying, if you can (i.e. probe deeper into what was meant by "poor recommendation"), then talk to a lawyer. Defamation is very frequently actionable, so if she's telling your prospective employers things that she can't back up, you may have an action against her.

As for leaving your last employer off your application...I leave lots of employers off my resume. I put in the ones that I most want the prospective employer to see. Of course, it's common practice to put your most recent ones, and the obvious question that will come up in the mind of the person reading your application is "What has she been up to recently?"