The Worst Job Ever discussion thread

[Shatmandu]

I delivered furniture one summer, working with two old absolute hillbilly moron asswipes.

The one guy, named Restus, talked constantly about hitting his wife, how she liked and deserved it.

The other, Ray, whenever any female entered his line of sight, he would say, "Would you jam her, Joe? Would ya?" and expected an answer every time.

They had a joke they would make over and over, every time they saw each other after being separated for a few moments:

Ray: "Restus, what do you like best-us?"
Restus: "I like ass-bestus."

Fifty times a day.

One day toward the end of summer, Ray stole a metal bed frame from the store and blamed me. I got fired, and drove away laughing and clapping.

That was about 20 years ago, and I hope they are both dead.

Joe, liver

 

[TheBrew]

I canvassed door to door raising money and organizing for an environmental group for 2 years full time, on turf from 4:00 til 9:00 every night, rain, shine, snow, sleet, 115 degrees in the shade or -25 windchill. There was a 6-foot blizzard and we got one night off. I had dogs sicced on me. People got shot at. For $15,000/year, pre-tax. I win.

I almost did the exact same job, but I didn't last as long. Sucked major donkey balls. My last day was sidewalk canvassing while it was literally just flooding.

 

[Yoda]

Cell phone game test monkey. This was in 2005/2006... since I was new I got to test the 'old' handsets. The games were terrible, the boss was terrible, the company was terrible. I got canned for 'not showing enough initiative'... took a job testing Playstation 2 games for less than 2/3 what I was making at the cell phone job, but it was still a million times better (yet horrible in its own way)... quit that job to take a job testing printers for over double the PS2 gig. That was nice. Click print 100 copies of something... dick around on the internet while occasionally changing ink and paper, and flipping through the output to grade it... eventually got downsized out of that job and after nearly a year finally got a job writing computer code from home, which is what I wanted in the damned first place!

 

[Ruaidhri]

Spent three years as a gypsy cab driver in Niagara Falls. At the time I was not permitted to work in Canada, but my ex wouldn't agree to me moving home to get a legitimate job to save money for the immigration process. Paid cash, used my own car, wasn't legal.

Passengers included many criminals, drug addicts, prostitutes and strippers.

Left that "job" to deliver pizza from 4pm to 4am. The restaurant's owner had an affiliation with the Hells Angels and was acting as a drug dealer. I can only guess how much narcotics I delivered. It was astonishing how often people ordered the 2 assorted subs special at 3 in the morning.

The years I lived in Niagara Falls were the worst of my life...so glad I got past it.

 

[Lookingglassman]

I got another one to add: The US Post Office!

I got paid mad money, but it was like being a freaking slave.

I got hired through veteran's preference and quit my old job. Once I signed on with them they tell us about their "caste system". Basically you start off as a "PTF - part-time flexible" meaning you work the crappiest shifts, Can be forced to work overtime and only get one day off a week and have to work every weekend and holidays. After decades you get made a "regular" employee where you work five days a week, get two days off and all national holidays and dont have to work overtime if you dont want to. Like I said it takes decades to be made a regular (I know one guy who was just made regular after being a PTF for 17 years.

Well anyway, I wasnt working in yout friendly neighborhood post office, I was working in the big processing plant where millions of letters and packages are processed 7 days a week 24 hours a day. My boss was a jerk and didnt care about us. As long as we kept the machines processing the mail he left us alone pretty much, but when we needed something from him he could never help us out.

I had to work the 1030pm to 630am shift and the post office week runs from Thursday night to the following Thursday. They went off a two week cycle for payment. If you made the boss mad he would schedule you off that Thursday night of the first week and your next night off would be the last thursday of the second week so you are working 13 days in a row before you got another night off.

Everyday the mail had to be processed and ready to ship by 6am and we only got a 30 minute lunch break where all we did was sleep. They would tell us we had overtime right before we thought we were going home so we had to stay an extra 2 hours.

From Dec 1 - Jan 30 the post office still made us do overtime, but the double time went away so we only got paid time and a half no matter how long we worked. On Dec 31, 2002 I worked from 1030pm to 1100AM Jan 1, 2003. That was the final straw. I quit because I was sick of always being sleepy, run down and worked like a dog. I was getting paid great money, I averaged $3200 a month after taxes, but I never could spend any of it because if I wasnt at work I was asleep.

The US Post office is just paid slavery.

 

[FPAlpha]

Worst job was delivering medicine and related products to drug stores and apothecaries.

The work itself wasn't that bad.. nice colleagues, after a few works you got the system of sorting the various boxes for the various stores and had memorized the driving routes but it was hell for me waking up at 4am once a week and work till at least 7pm.

The absolute worst however was the weather.. delivery no matter. Pouring rain, snow/blizzard, searing heat.. people still need their medicine and someone had to deliver (i especially hated one drug store that had a very tiny storage room with narrow steps and many times ordered really heavy canisters which i had to carry in there).

All considered i didn't really have any shitty jobs on general.. some aspects at some jobs were not that easy but overal it was well.

 

[Hoser]

I worked in telemarketing, for all of 2 weeks...

I made it 3 days. Of course, 2 of those I spent chatting up or apologizing to people I called.....
My boss there was nice, though. I'm just not a good interruptor. Most of my calls were 'Hello, my name is Hoser, I'm selling you something, this is where you hang up'.
I suck at sales.

That wasn't my worst job, though.

 

[MeanJoePhaser]

Working for family, not getting paid (except room and meals) and getting bitched at a lot.

Don't work for family.

 

[Major Chord]

Well, I've never had a full time (or really even part time, as I'm still in highschool, and have decided to devote my time to my studies) job, but I do work as a medical practice dummy at the ATLS/ACLS courses my dad teaches at the University of Buffalo. The work isn't that bad, in fact, getting paid to lay on a table in makeup is pretty sweet...but I'm not a fan of people touching me...which is what this normally involves. Considering some of the demos require me to be without a shirt, and I'm very self conscious, it's not always the most pleasant experience.

Like some of the others, don't hate it, just some aspects of it.

 

[AstroSmurf]

Working for family, not getting paid (except room and meals) and getting bitched at a lot.

Don't work for family.

I could not agree more. Actually I still do it from time to time because I do not have the ability to say "no".

But my worst job was probably being the night manager at an upscale golf resort. Between running myself ragged keeping the housekeeping staff from sleeping or chasing down naked drunk people or finding cab drivers shot dead in the flower bed or escorting the drugged up hookers out of the building, I never had a moments peace. And the crazy hours and stress blew my health all to hell. The only good thing to come of that job was more than a few hilarious stories to tell at parties.

I also learned that the more money a person has the less common sense they possess. Oh and that most professional athletes have the morals of an ally cat in heat. (And if you don't believe me, I could always tell you the story about the NFL football player who rented the tranny hooker, got hopped up on crack and beat the crap out of him/her with a lamp. And yes he knew she was really a he.)

 

[Gryffindorian]

I got another one to add: The US Post Office!

Ah, the good old Postal Service, my first full-time (though not permanent) job. Were you a supervisor?

In the late 1990s, I was hired as one of those holiday workers who sorted the mail at the distribution plant. Boooooring! And I met some pretty stupid, weird, and just plain rude co-workers and supervisors. For a little while, I got a job as a temp receptionist in the personnel department. I worked for one of the Postmasters who directed the Associate Supervisor Program in the Oakland/East Bay District. He was all right, although he got on my nerves from time to time, typical office boss I suppose.

After my eight months were up, I became a data conversion operator for one of the Remote Encoding Centers (REC site), doing 100% data entry, entering ZIP and alphanumeric codes for automation so that regular mail could be processed with barcodes. There were only two shifts: swing (Tour 3) and graveyard (Tour 1), and I was on Tour 1. There were no benefits, it wasn't a permanent position, and I was only a Transitional employee (TE) who was allowed to work up to 360 days in the year with breaks in service and a chance to renew every year. Talk about boring and repetitive; I would sit in front of a monitor for up to seven hours (longer during the holidays) with 5-minute breaks in between. In retrospect, it wasn't so bad since I actually enjoyed working with people who were mostly my age at the time. That was my last job before my "real" full-time permanent job.

 

[CaptainStoner]

Two Words: Day Labor.

You have not been to the bottom of the employment barrels, my friends, IMO, until you have say in the Day Labor office at 5:30 AM in some large city, smelled the smell of 10+ long unbathed homeless laborers crowded into the room, and waited, sometimes for hours, until, if you were lucky, you got sent on some godforsaken job in the hopes of making $40 for the day.

Occasionally, the work was fun, but more often it involved a lot of exposure to chemicals, and truly shitty cleaning jobs, a lot of post-construction cleanup. One of the worst was cleaning the grout in hotel bathroom floors, room by room, for days. Your body hurt from being crouched down so much, and the chemical exposure was not cool.

 

[Sephiroth]

I got hired into an "up and coming" enginering firm in Rio Rancho, who got a contract to do some work for the natn'l labs, I was the only male employee, also the only straight employee (out of 12), I was treated like the only thing I had on my mind was rape, I had touched on this in other threads, but I held alot back, I said that I started carrying a gun openly, it was because I was pepper-sprayed and had my face scratched in the parking lot for having the misfortune of being born with a penis and coming within 5 feet of one of my fellow employees

 

[Hoser]

Two Words: Day Labor.

I did that too. That I actually enjoyed....a big job that year was cleaning out a Canadian Tire that was being demolished.
It paid pretty well at the time, I was pulling in 100 in cash. One guy got more, but he was selling 'homemade herbal cigarettes' to the others when they got paid.

But then those jobs dried up, and I joined a temp agency...that sucked.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

At least you weren't the poor soul who had to deal with...wait for it...

VINEGAR BOY!

 

[SeerSGB]

At least you weren't the poor soul who had to deal with...wait for it...

VINEGAR BOY!

Meh, I've read that a couple of times and still doesn't compare to the stupidity I, and others, have dealt with.

"I'm sorry miss, but hamburger will not stay fresh for 4 days in the truck of your car...yes, I think the fact that we had a heat wave, and yes the fact that you don't have a trunk air conditioner could have contributed to it spoiling..."

 

[NCC1701]

Worst job I've ever had would be working in the kayak factory from October to December of 2006. The first two weeks weren't bad, working from 6.30am til 4.30pm from Monday to Thursday in the shipping department. But after those two weeks, we had a shakeup and different days off, mine was Tuesday, and I got made to work in the parts department. The guy who ran it was a dickless no-hope tantrum-throwing meth addict, and the rest of the staff were either losers or psychopaths. After preparing the same shitty handles to fix to the kayaks for over two weeks straight I got depressed, and almost started driving to work crying because the work was so shit.

Needless to say, I didn't last much longer there, I quit a week before Christmas. I started my Gasfitting apprenticeship in February 2007, and haven't looked back since. If any of you work in manufacturing, I have one piece of advice: get the fuck out if you can, and get a job in a place that doesnt treat you like a piece of shit.

 

[McCoy]

I've had a boss with PPD (Paranoid Personality Disorder). Now that was tough.