CONFESS!!!! What is the WORST job you ever had!!!

[flvegan]

Mine? I temped in college, and one of the assignments was at a medical billing place. I did data entry for these big insurance companies. I can remember this one file that came across my desk. Single mom, sick baby, no insurance. From the looks of the invoices, it was pretty serious. I thought about this young woman, and how she'd never be able to pay this (no insurance). I saw the $940/day room rate for her infant. I saw the recommendation for collection. So, here's this woman, no father on any of the bills, with enough problems. Now, she's looking at never getting out from under this debt.

I threw the file away. I know I didn't solve her problems, but I think I at least bought her some time.

I saw this a number of times. I saw it with veterans, too. I couldn't stomach it. I lasted a month.

What's yours?

[bliss_eternal]

1. I've had so many--

hard to pick out just one.

There was the real estate office that was thrilled 9/11 occured. All they could talk about was how much money they would be making from the repurcussions. :puke: There were other things that made it a rotten place to work, but within weeks of this I quit--didn't even give notice, just left and never went back.

There's the string of corporate restaurants that want the server to behave like little sales robots--begging and harassing the customer for every extra dime of their money.

There's the independently owned restaurant I worked in where one of the owners followed us around during rushes, reminding us of our 'side work' and basically being a royal pain in the ass--who I eventually went off on and told what she could do with her 'bucket water.'

:shrug:

[GoddessOfGuinness]

2. I was a telemarketer

for 3 days. It was awful, annoying people at dinnertime and waking night-shift folks from the only sleep they'd get.

[Dave Reynolds]

3. I worked in a research lab.

I lasted 8 months out of a 12 month contract.

I still have nightmares, and do not go into monkey houses at the zoo.

[flvegan]

5. Though a topic near and dear to me

I won't even ask.

sorry...

[Dave Reynolds]

6. No need to be sorry,

the details are not discussed with even my family.

[flvegan]

7. Probably best that way. n/t

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

4. Several yucky jobs, all many years ago.

Copy reader for a newspaper in its classified ads department -- tedious enough, but also had to work next to a woman who had the most stunning, toxic B.O. Waitress, very briefly, in a place where you had to wear this "sexy" little costume; got enough sexual harassment in a few evenings to last a lifetime. Clerical worker in a big law firm where I had to run personal errands for the partners; eventually had to threaten to sue them to get vacation pay. Aide in a nursing home -- cleaning up poop, looking after poor souls who never got visitors. Horrendously depressing.

[djeseru]

8. Receptionist and/or hostess.

I wasn't polite enough for either one, due to the fact that I didn't want to have these jobs - they held absolutely no interest for me and they were nothing I wanted to excell at. The receptionist lasted all of two weeks and the hostess quickly became cashier. Still, that one lasted only 4 to 6 months.

After the hostess one, I got a record store job that lasted quite a while.

[LeftyMom]

9. Retail sales

One day I looked around the store where I worked and realized there was nothing there people really needed. Sure there were a lot of things that were nice to have but at the end of the day, nobody's life would really be improved because of whatever gadget I sold them. I quit a few weeks later, because after that realization my effort seemed wasted.

The crappy hours, canned Christmas music, the know-it-all customers and the customers who treated me like I was selling more than electronics (IYKWIM) were a pain, but I could have put up with all that if I thought there was any point to the job. When I realized I was contributing the aquisitiveness of American culture, I couldn't do it anymore.

[khashka]

67. When I worked in retail

I worked in book stores. So I felt that what I was selling really was worth having.

But the customers did drive me to the point where I decided shopping should be like driving: you have to have a license. And you have to work six months in retail until you can get that license to shop.


Not to say I didn't have some good customers - some regular customers treated me like a human being and a friend and I would go way out of my way to help them. Others treated me like trash and I would do only the bare minimum my job required.

Khash.

[Dukkha]

10. believe it or not...Victoria's Secret

warehouse distribution.
sucked ass! low pay. so monotonous it made me screw up a lot on orders.
I went there after I lost a cushy high paying web design at home job. A huge fall from my vocational ladder.

[flvegan]

12. I think that I'd like to work for VS as a consultant.

Yes, ma'am, that looks smashing on you.

Oh, wearing that, I'd not be able to keep my hands off of you.

I like see-through.

No, ma'am, that thong could NEVER make your ass look big.

Let's just see how easily it DOES come off.

Unsnap with one hand? Let's try.

[grateful581]

20. Where do I apply !

[seaglass]

11. Comcast call center - lasted 6 weeks in training then 4 weeks

on the floor (including my 2 week notice).

The hours were awful, but the worst was the people - EVERYONE that I met that worked there was miserable and at least 50% of the callers were too. Usually I can make the best of a situation but the misery was overwhelming.

Damn, if I lasted one more month I could have had free cable with all the channels (my son was so mad)!

[sarge43]

13. Megasuck jobs

Telemarketing and cleaning monkey cages - I worked in a pet store.

[Ikonoklast]

14. Skinning beef livers

Beef livers have a very thin, tough membrane on them that needs to be removed before slicing for retail sales. They came in a 300lb. barrel and were just above freezing.

After removing the central veins by knife, you slide your thumb between the mebrane and the liver.


After ten minutes your hands are so cold that you want to cry.

[LeftyMom]

16. Oh yuck

I got some liver under my nails once (it's a long story and makes little sense since it involves student film) and couldn't get the smell off my hands for a week. I can't imagine having to handle it all the time. :puke:

[GOPisEvil]

18. OK, that's just gross.

I just ate. Not liver, thankfully.

[Heidi]

19. Did you work in a packinghouse?

In any event, you have my sympathy. Next to the animals, slaughterhouse employees have the worst jobs imaginable.

[Ikonoklast]

29. I've worked in both retail and wholesale food operations

since the age of fourteen. Started out at the New Central Market in Cleveland (where Jacobs Field now stands) working at a retail meat stand. Worked retail meat, purveyor (wholesale meat to hotels, hospitals, restaurants, etc.) supermarket, smokehouse and packinghouse operations. Beef, veal, pork, lamb and poultry.

You name it, I can do it in packinghouse or meat processing operations. I still make a variety of homemade sausages, can't hardly get anything like that anymore.


Changed directions back in '99, never looked back.

[Wapsie B]

15. I've had several.

Nurse asst. in nursing homes, worked in restaraunts where others got trained to cook and I was told to wash the dishes were part of my work history. But the worst had to be one in healthcare. I was passed up for a promotion. The new supervisor was a person who made it their mission to micromanage me. I finally got it through my head that this was to make me so miserable that I would quit. I'd get to work and see long nasty notes to me, written in bold red ink, picking apart everything I did. I'd get calls at home and while working berating me for various things. But the icing on the cake was after my grandmother had died. I told this person the news and the only words out of their mouth was, "Well how does this affect me?"

[Heidi]

17. Mainstream journalism after it went to the dark side.

I made plenty of money, but lemme tell ya, it wasn't worth the heartache.

[ghostsofgiants]

21. Unpaid computer monkey for friends, family and family friends.

x(

[LeftyMom]

23. Hey, I have a problem with my router

:evilgrin:

[ghostsofgiants]

24. Just let me get my gun and I'll be right over to fix it.

:P

[LeftyMom]

25. While you're at it

LeftyKid's computer's running ME, so bring some explosives. :D

[ghostsofgiants]

27. Just let me consult my Anarchist Cookbook Computer Repair manual

[LeftyMom]

28. .

[ghostsofgiants]

30. Hahaha...

Awesome. :)

[ronnykmarshall]

22. Mc Donald's

Worked there in high school. Hated every minute of it.

[ShadesOfGrey]

35. When I was in HS, my first job was at McD too...

It sucked!

Every night we had to throw away all of the left overs. We couldn't donate it to the hungry. We couldn't take it home. We just had to dump it all. I still can't figure out what that was all about. Lots of food wasted for no good reason. Grrrr...

[ronnykmarshall]

51. and we had to count it!

I hated the Rah! Rah! attitude they tried to drill into our heads. I remember one weekend, it was over 100 degrees outside and my neo-nazi pig boss had be clean the fucking parking lot. He trots his ass out to lecture me that "at some stores, the employees would run to make their store number #1". I just glared at him and said, "If I ran around this parking lot in this heat, in this polyester outfit, I'd drop dead". Needless to say I was never Mc Employee of the month.

Another time this asshole called my house at 8pm and wanted me to come in and close the fucking place. It was a school night. I told him no. He said "did I hear you correct? Are you refusing to come in?". It was at that point my mom got over her little fanstasy world that was I working at "a nice little burger place".

[ShadesOfGrey]

59. Ughhh!!! Yea, we had to count them too!

I remember asking, "Can I take a couple of these apple pies home?" OMG, The dirty look I got! "NO!!! Just count them and put them in the dumpster."

I worked the closing shift and I had to pass through a part of town with many homeless people on my way home from work. It made me sick that so much food was being trashed when there were so many people going hungry.

I can't stand McDonalds! I'm a vegan now so I'm not even tempted to go there. However, if I were a burger-eater I'd STILL be boycotting them!

Oh... another peeve about that place. Even when things were slow, we had to PRETEND like we were always busy. We had to keep cleaning the same "clean" spots over and over just to make it look like we were doing something. That was company policy.

[CanuckAmok]

26. HS summer job: Housekeeping department of a geritric lock-down ward.

These were about a 50/50 mix of chronic Alzheimers patients, and inmates who were too old to remain in the prison system.

Nice old people who, you know, killed and ate their families in the 50s, and stuff like that. Okay, only one of them ate his family.

I won't go into the details, but let's say that when i had to clean the washrooms, part of my kit included a ladder and hipwaders.

[Left_Winger]

31. My very first job

When I was a teen I took this job working on a farm in 1973. The pay was $2 a day plus lunch (which was rather good and filling). I had two principal tasks: pulling weeds in the fields and slopping the hogs. Pulling weeds in the SC sun was not so bad but I was provided a long stick which was to be used in the fields where the crops were too high to see the ground. Why? I was to use this stick to hit the ground in front of me to find out if there were any snakes (especially rattlers) in the furrows. Yikes! Did I ever encounter any? Yes.

However, slopping the hogs was the worst. My task was to take an empty bucket and run across the hog pen and have them chase me while the farmer's son poured the slop into the troughs. Running across a hog pen is neither easy nor pleasant; and those hogs can run like you would not believe! I was told that if I fell to throw the bucket as far away as possible because that was what the hogs wanted. There is a silver lining to every dark cloud: because of this I am very sure-footed and can run like the dickens, those hogs never caught me.

[Burma Jones]

32. Waiting tables at TGI Fridays

Or Houston Cab Driver - take your pick.....

[Mutley]

33. Chili's.

Not only was I the worst server EVAH (!) but the manager hated me. He used to make me wait til last to check my area before I could leave, even if I was the first one there. :cry:

[obxhead]

41. LOL....

I work there now myself. Looking for a new place now in fact.

[Mutley]

42. Oh I'm so sorry!

Hopefully you're at least better at it than I was. Oh man was I bad. :D

[obxhead]

46. Oh, I'm a decent server....

at least most of my customers compliment me on the service I provide.
now it's time to find a higher end restaurant to work in while I work on my degree.

[Mutley]

47. Higher end is better.

Better tips. :D

[obxhead]

48. It's all in the #'s

I usually hit 20% of my sales by the end of the night. Now I just need to find a place with a pricier menu and less children. I'm not against kids, but 2.99 meals don't help drive that check up and parents won't usually pound those margaritas with the kids around. :)

[Mutley]

49. One good thing I was good at when i was a server...

getting people to drink. :D

[obxhead]

50. Me too - My boss just figured that out and now

is putting me in the lounge more often :)

[Mutley]

53. Mine would never put me in the lounge.

x(

But, I'd do best on drink sales fairly often. :D

[Texasgal]

34. Several...

But I will say that my worst was just a few years ago. I worked as a triage nurse at a very busy community hospital.

It was so hard to see people with little or nothing being screwed by the healthcare industry. I treated the poorest of the poor, the sickest of the sickest. It is so true, that with money you can BUY anything, including healthcare. If you didn't have money, you die or suffer.

After 7 years of it, I became very despondent and moved on to private practice.

I still volunteer at triage when needed. When the Katrina victims started rolling in I put in almost 80 hours of volunteer work at a local hospital!

Healthcare in America sucks.

[khashka]

36. Picking up trash and cleaning up chemical spills on the North Slope

It was awful. Mostly because of how were treated.

I asked for time off and got written approval. At the last minute - after I'd bought a plane ticket, paid for a hotel, paid convention fees, etc. - the approval was rescinded. They told me "that's just too bad".

One of the secretaries was not doing her job - instead of filing documents she'd do stuff like shove them behind the filing cabinet or shred them or just wad them in a drawer. They asked me to take over her job. Only it turned out that meant coming back after a twelve hour shift out on the tundra and trying do undo the mess she'd made of the filing system.


I was in a three foot crawl space - and I was sitting, scooting along on my butt, since that left my hands free to do my job. The foreman yelled at me to stand up. I'm six foot tall, I can't stand up in a three foot crawlspace. "Sitting down leads to lieing down and that leads to sleeping on the job!"

What finally made me quit was a girl I had made friends with blew her nose. That same foreman screamed at her to quit wasting time and get back to work. I looked at her boyfriend, he looked at me, we both looked at her.... and in unison we said "We quit". The foreman said "You can't quit!" I said "But we just did."

Gods, I hated that job!

Khash.

[Maine-ah]

37. I worked at wal mart for 5 years.

[Dr Batsen D Belfry]

38. My current one

I thought my second full time job was corporate Satan, but this one takes the cake. My current Bushbot employer has put me back 6 years in earning potential by not paying me what he owes me. As a result, I am giving him my resignation on Tuesday and am offering him the option of turning over his customers to me in exchange for no litigation. If he wants to avoid jail time, he will sign on the line.

DBDB

[Kali]

39. Waitress at this chipper, happy, Stepford sort of yuppie Mexican

Restaurant where everybody got off work and then socialized together - gag. I got fired because I "didn't quite fit with the Cisco's culture" hahahahhahahahahaha the one thing I agreed with!

Bunch of well dressed confomist zonbies. :scared: :puke:

[ronnykmarshall]

52. I used to hang out w/ my co-workers at Marie Calander's.

I didn't know I was a "confomist zonbie".

[Kali]

65. I doubt if you are/were

These guys all were, same jobs, same drinks, same cars, same majors...it was creepy, trust me - and I didn't fit in because I was dating a non-employee and had ....a life....

[ronnykmarshall]

72. You can't stop Stepford!!

[misanthrope]

60. Seems to me...

...that every restaurant in which I worked, the employees always went out drinking together after work each night. Why does that strike you as odd?

[Kali]

66. Not talking about "hey ya wanna go get a drink?"

I mean like organized activities - every night - by management....

[Giant Robot]

40. I was a store manager for Blockbuster

I was *ahem* between jobs at the time and needed work and this came my way. Oh god it was hell. That place literally had the power to steal my soul. I was never happy the 4 months I was there. I hated the customers and how they were indignant when we were out of whatever was the hottest title for the week; or how they would argue over a $3 late fee when there were at one point at least 6 places they could see when to return the movie. I hated the pay that was actually less than McDonald's. And I hated how, no matter what, the higher ups automatically decided it was my fault. I was done after I was yelled at because I was working a shift with one of my assistant managers rather than a regular employee, because the AM was paid more. Oh, but at that point my store staff was only 2 AMs and 1 employee, and they were not looking to get me any help yet since it was a smaller store, so I'm not sure how I was supposed to make my employee work 6-7 days a week. Yes yes I do hate that place.

[terrya]

43. Selling law books for a telemarketing company

I took it as a second job when my financial situation was really bad. It involved calling law firms accoss the country to try to sell them law books. It was a room full of people using "leads" selling books to essentially the same pool of law firms. There were some understandably pissed people at these firms getting calls from the same people every day. I was not very good at it, to put it mildly. I fucking hated it. One day I went on my break and just didn't come back.

[Orsino]

44. Shoveling out sewage pits.

In waders, thank god. But the smell hung with me for days.

[Rob H.]

45. Advertising department of a daily newspaper

Not only was it the worst job I've ever had, my first supervisor there was the worst, most incompetent supervisor I've ever had, too. I'm not normally a violent person, but there were a couple of occasions when it took all the restraint I could muster to stop myself from beating him into unconsciousness with my bare hands. Glad I'm not there anymore--and I vowed in the wake of that experience to never work for another newspaper again!

[ronnykmarshall]

54. Towel boy at a gay bath house ....

oh wait you didn't you say "job that you bent over backwards for"?

[Mr. McD]

55. Shoveling chicken shit at an egg ranch

I was 16. I didn't last long.:puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke:

[misanthrope]

61. Did the chickens have large talons?**nm

*

[wickerwoman]

64. I'll see your chicken shit,

and raise you pig shit.

Pigs are absolutely the filthiest, meanest, smelliest, nastiest animals on the planet. And to shovel the shit you have to get into the pens with them. And while you're shoveling their shit they bite your legs and slobber all over you.

I was working on a college farm at the time and they were running an experiment feeding the pigs scraps from the dining halls. Their diet was something like 30% napkin, 10% hotdog, and 60% rotting vegetables. From my end anyway, the experiment was a disaster. And that wasn't even the worst job I ever had.

By far the worst was youth soccer referee. I was only 15 at the time and painfully awkward and shy. I didn't mind the first grade girls, but the third+ grade boys were hell on earth. I had an eight year old screaming at my that I was a bitch and his mother came streaming out on the field shouting "Don't you dare call her a bitch to her face!" There's nothing like having forty or fifty grownups screaming at you and getting in your face when you're 15. The frickin' pigs had better self-control than most parents at a youth sports event.

[aQuArius]

56. Working in a freeper-owned CPA firm

not terrible, but bad enough to make one's stomach turn.

[Scout1071]

57. Maid at Bally's Casino in Reno. Lasted 3 hours. I quit at lunch.

I would have left sooner, but they had us on lock down. Scary place to work!

I was 19, going on 20, with no money. What are you gonna do?

[Systematic Chaos]

58. Tough choice so I'll give two

First one was when I worked in the Student Union dining commons at UNLV. It was run by Marriott back then (1988) and they paid a whopping $3.12 an hour. I was put on the serving line first and deemed to be too slow, so then they stuck me in the dish washing room. The job itself was bad enough, with students flinging trays at you rather than just placing them gently in the slot. What made it worse was the guy I had to work with. He was part of some "hire the handicapped and get a huge tax break" program, and that in and of itself was an okay thing. However, this dude was so totally fucking mental that on many occasions I was honestly afraid to be back there with him. He would start doing some little dance, while singing songs about the blood of Christ and dead children (no, I'm not making this up, I swear I'm not). After each mealtime was over, the workers could eat whatever they wanted from the leftovers. We would all sit in a section of the cafeteria, and this guy would sit by one of the female employees and say the SICKEST stuff. I quit after only a few weeks, and the final straw was when I was too sick to go to class for three days and I called in hours before the start of my shift each time. I was totally uninsured, yet the student manager on duty demanded that I bring a doctor's note. To a job that made me all of $70 a week. After that I quit calling in AND showing up.

The other shit job was working for a Chevron station in North Las Vegas, which has been closed and torn down for a number of years. My good friend's uncle owned it, but he was a cheapskate and a drug addict. I got fired when the owner somehow decided that I was planning to blow up his gas station. He had one of the other employees call me to tell me about it, and when I came in for my last check he went on for about 5 minutes about signed affadavits, yet he was unable to produce any paperwork when I asked. I was on good conversational terms with one of the mechanics, and on my way out I stopped to chat with him because he was on the side of the building taking a break. The owner saw me and threatened me with physical harm if I didn't get off the property.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

62. Counterman in a Bowling Alley...

The smoke! The stale beer! The obnoxious guys named "Lou" who lived only for their season average!

[struggle4progress]

63. Gluing reflective buttons onto the center of the road -- protected ..

.. by a few orange plastic cones, head down at bumper level, while cars sped past ignoring the "Slow: Work Zone" signs ...

[MrScorpio]

68. Caddy at the Grossy Pointee Country Club

Fuck that shit.

[doc03]

69. Coke plant door cleaner.

[Porcupine]

70. Cubicle Rat at a bank headquarters, worse than sliming fish even

Once a month the bank would deliver unto me a four foot high stack of paper that was printed out from it's mainframe. Each paper in that stack was a unique report in 8 point type. My job was to pull reports, copy some once, some twice, some three times, and some four and mail them to the various branch offices. I was paid $11.00 an hour in 1988. It wasn't enough.

This job was so boring and so isolating that nothing could make it worthwhile. It even ranks worse in my pantheon of crappy jobs than sliming fish in a Petersburg Alaska salmon cannery. The cannery actually treated us really well and my fellow workers were intesting and entertaining.

[Montauk6]

71. The three days of trying to sell fake perfume

I felt humiliated because a) I haven't a "sales" bone in my body and b) I actually bought into the logic that these knock-offs would sell like hotcakes. I would learn later that I had simply been hooked into the seedy world of MLM and that the testimonials of many would fit my experiences to a tee.

[WeRQ4U]

73. I delivered tacos in high school.

Nothing heartbreaking to report, just a bad smell that permeated my car and numerous speeding tickets.