I don't think JIRA is fully capable of being truly awful without people adding most of the awfulness to it. A awfulness-vessel rather than awfully-complete, but it is certainly part of the torment nexus humanity is building for ourselves.
I like to think of it as a Torment Nexus SDK. Start with a punishing UI (the web UI work and become unresponsive frequently, always wait at least 1.5 s before responding to interactions, etc.), add infinitely customizable bureucratic rules on top, and then make people's jobs dependent on making the numbers go up in the correct manner.