The Worst Job Ever discussion thread

[Amasov]

So out of all the jobs we've all had in our lifetimes, let's vent those frustrations in regard to how bad some of them have been. I've had my fair share!

For me, the worst job I ever had was working for a screen printing company about a year ago. Throughout most of 2008, I had been in and out of work. I couldn't hold down a job at all. In fact, it was getting so bad I thought there was something wrong with me that my employers just couldn't stand.

So last summer, I secured a job through a hiring agency -- which I will never do again, by the way. The job paid $12 an hour for 40 hours a week. I figured at the time, it didn't look like I was going to get hired anyplace else and even though the money wasn't a whole lot, it was still money, right? I was still able to pay rent, buy food, I just couldn't spend it on a lot of other stuff. So while the job wasn't exciting, it was better to make money than to not make it at all.

I took the job and started in mid-July of 2008 as a screen printer. I was doing it on ceramic boards, so the job was EXTREMELY tedious. The first few weeks, it went alright. I got to know the people in the print room I worked in - one of them was even a huge fan of LOST, so we conversed about it almost everyday and all day.

My supervisor, however, was a whole other story. When I first came in to tour the place and see what I would be doing, she was so nice and even assured me that while the job I would be doing would be very tedious, she told me not to worry. I would be trained over the course of the next few months and she said she didn't expect anything out of me for at least four to five months. She basically was saying that screwing up would be okay. They all did it when they first started out.

Even the plant manager himself gave me the same attitude and expressed his concern over my focus being in the design field. He wasn't sure if I would stay on board because this company did not do anything that I was particularly interested in. All he asked for was a one year commitment from me and I said I would be happy to do that. I even came clean and said, "Look, eventually, I'm going to get a job in my field. I don't know when, but I will, but the only way for me to get there is to get any experience that I can whether it is related or not. I would be happy to do one year here."

We shook hands and I reported for work Monday morning of the next week.

Again, like I said, it started off okay, but as days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months, it rapidly went downhill. My so-called supervisor never trained me anything. She would be pulling other workers of their jobs to set up my machine for printing or she would tell ME to tell THEM to help me, so there was that overwhelming feeling of guilt. I made mistakes on my jobs and she would never let me forget it. She would give me an attitude every single day - which would result in the two of us fighting constantly. She NEVER stopped monitoring me and would come look over my work all the time. This woman was the very definition of a micro-manager. On top of that, she would bring her home problems into work and take it out on everyone she would come into contact with.

So, as the end of October approached, work for me slowed down. There wasn't a whole lot for me to do. She would struggle to find work for me and just assign me pointless things that no one would ever be doing on a regular basis. So it became increasingly clear to me what was eventually coming.

My speculation came to an end on the 31st of October, 2008. Around 10AM that morning, I got through doing pointless thing for her. She says to me, "I'm going to have you go see Michael in his office." Michael was the plant manager I mentioned earlier. My immediate response to that was, "Well, it was... sort of nice working for you." and she grinned. She must have thought I was moron. It wasn't hard to figure out what was going to happen when I walked into that office.

So I go in, he has me sit down and says, "We are going to be ending our contract with you," I motioned in agreement with my hand just to illustrate that I knew he was going to say something along those lines. He told me that he would pay me for the rest of the day and that if the work picks up they would call me. I told him not to bother as I knew that was a complete lie, but even if it was the truth, I was not at all interested in returning.

Even though losing a job is not a fun experience, the moment I was told that I was let go, this enormous sense of relief came over me. The most stressful three months I ever had to endure finally came to an end. I walked out into that parking lot and seriously pulled a Mary Tyler Moore. As I got to my car, I spun around and tossed my hat in the air with joy.

The next three and a half months of unemployment were not fun, but I secured a job in early February of 2009 and I'm still here. In fact, I just got back with my team from an awesome San Diego trip to meet the rest of our company.

Things are going wonderfully for me at this place. I'm so happy with my work and co-workers, it's not even funny.

In a way, I guess I have my older jobs to thank, because if those didn't turn out that way, who knows where I would be right now?

 

[RoJoHen]

Eh, my "worst" job wasn't bad. It was just kinda boring. 3rd shift at the desk of a gym. Fact: a total of 4 people go to the gym between midnight and 4am. After that, you get maybe 1 really old person an hour.

I can't complain too much because I used the time to watch Babylon 5 on my laptop.

 

[tharpdevenport]

I shoveled pigeon shit in 100 degree weather at one job -- for a tad over minimum wage at the time, so you had it pretty good, Amasov.

 

[Gryffindorian]

Picture this: McDonald's, summer of 1990. A young teenaged boy decides to find his first part-time job so he'll have some pocket money while his two older sisters work full-time to pay the bills and his parents are abroad. One of the supervisors is an asshole named Maurice (God, I'll never forget that name) who throws tantrums and is constantly criticizing and yelling at his employees, especially at the young man, who's very honest, easy-going and hardworking. After hours upon hours of flipping burgers and doing housekeeping duties for minimum wage (and having been sick with the chicken pox), the boy finally quits and returns to school in the fall at the beginning of the school year.

Years later, the young man now has a full-time job that doesn't entail slave labor and pay nickels and dimes. He goes back to the old restaurant on Central Avenue for an afternoon snack and sees his former supervisor, taking orders from hungry customers. The boy says to the man, "You're Maurice, aren't you? I used to work here years ago. You know, I remember how you treated your employees like crap. Now I make more money in a day than you do in a whole week. You're a fucking loser. Now I'd like to order #6 with a medium soda before I spit on your face!"

That young man was me. And the supervisor Maurice? I heard he later got run over by a car. Freak accident. Or so they say.

 

[JonathonWally]

Eh, my "worst" job wasn't bad. It was just kinda boring. 3rd shift at the desk of a gym. Fact: a total of 4 people go to the gym between midnight and 4am. After that, you get maybe 1 really old person an hour.

I can't complain too much because I used the time to watch Babylon 5 on my laptop.

I wish my gym was open all night long, I'd go in at 2am. But the only 24 gym around is too far away. But I have gone the distance if I had way too much energy or needed to work out some frustration.

 

[Tiberius Jim]

My first and worst job was straight out of high school. I was 18 and had no job experience and the only place that would take me was an oil change shop. It was one of those where the customer stays in their car the entire time while we serviced their car. I thought this was cool (at first) because I love cars, so working on them every day would be fun...right?

Well, it was...at first. I started off with greeting customers, checking tire pressure, cleaning windshields...basically the "bitch work". I gradually trained to do the real stuff like working under the hood, actually changing oil, filters, fluids, etc.

All went well until there was a change in management. The old guy was pretty lax on things like dress code (which was incredibly ridiculous for a place like an oil shop) but he was tough when he needed to be. Not tough enough for corporate, apparently because they canned him and the manager of a nearby store took over ours as well, and well...he was a major dick. We would always have to be in perfect dress code, although it was mid-January at one point and they didn't provide us with jackets so I wore my own a lot) The biggest problem was that if we got busy, the manager would tell us all we'd have to skip our lunch breaks...and would offer to get a pizza delivered. I was the only one who realized this was illegal, and started letting the other guys know; they were oblivious that their labor rights were being violated.

Well, Mr. Manager didn't like me blowing the whistle too much, so I got bumped back down to the "bitch work" in retaliation. They even wanted me to pick up the cigarette butts from the outside landscaping (everyone there smoked by myself and one other guy). I knew what was going on but didn't know what I could do about it.

One day the district manager (a major prick and the son of the franchise owner) came in, and I was called into the office. I got chewed out for wearing my own jacket instead of company issue, to which I argued that I never got one. This went back and forth for a bit, until the guy said "You just don't seem to have a passion for working here" as if anyone has a friggin passion for changing car oil. I agreed that I did not in fact have such a passion. They gave me the option to finish out the day or leave right then and there...lets just say I wasted no time leaving a nice fat burnout on the driveway as I left.

 

[Miss Chicken]

The worst job I have wasn't that bad just boring. It was as a library technician in a law court library. Mainly I just updated the looseleaf files. When I did this I had pages that said 'remove pages 11-14 (from the file), replace with pages 11-12 (from the new packet), remove pages 375 to 456 and replace then with pages 375 to 501 .....etc etc etc.

Besides doing the looseleaf filing I had to do all the photocopying. This wasn't too bad most of the time except when the full bench was sitting. As the library only had two copies of the neccessary law books, and as the full bench was 3 judges it meant I had to copy all the neccessary paperwork twice, once for the third judge and once for the ligitant. I only worked four hours a morning and sometimes I spent three hours of that photicopy.

However my boss was a very nice woman.

 

[jamestyler]

Mall cop. When my daughter was born I was looking for full time work as freelancing was too insecure for my liking (now I was supporting a family and Mrs T wasn't thrilled with me working from home. I applied to everything possible and the first job I was got in retail security for a mall in a rough area.

The job was simple and dull. 12 hour shifts patrol the mall and dealing with any customers to be ejected, liaising with the shops, hourly patrols of the perimeter, car park and attached office blocks. I took on fire safety checks on Tuesdays and checking the vacant offices on Sundays to give me something a bit more 'exciting' to do.

During the few months there I was threatened verbally and physically, something I don't really mind that much - I've received years of abuse wrestling as the bad guy - but when they refused to fix my wages (I was getting significantly less than I was supposed to) and I was working almost minimum wage to fight off violent drunks and addicts, regularly having knives pulled on me, I got a little bit annoyed.

If we acted in any way violently to anyone, we'd be at risk of losing our job and license. Site management insisted that we be aggressive regarless which only caused arguments in the office.

In the time I was there I was given hell for not cutting my hair to the style preferred by the site manager. It wasn't long or untidy, just not to her liking. I eventally got it cut short and gained myself a verbal warning. I recieved aformal warning when I was unable to come into work after being hospitalised. She then refused to offer me a transfer and tried to block me training for and working on th CCTV systems, despite there being a lack of staff.

I'd work in the office on her days off, though it wouldn't be logged despite me handling stuations there better than her chosen staff - which isn't a dig at them, one of them was open about not being able to handle the job and eventually quit over it - I was told it was all down to me 'liking the wrong music'. Yet she blocked my transfer to another site and I ended up recieving several apologies from my area manager about her behaviour.

I finally left after my holiday (booked for months) were cancelled with a days notice and I recieved a second final warning for grounding a guy who pulled a knife on me outside the coffee shop.

The security company I worked for was great. The site manager not so much. Since I left she's lost all her staff and no one works there longer than a month at a time all citing her as the reason for leaving. Yet she still has her job.

 

[ITL]

1991, egg factory.

My job was to stack up the huge trays of hard-boiled eggs that came whizzing down a conveyor belt fresh from being boiled. Keeping up with the supply was one thing, but the sheer monotony was awful. Everyone who worked there was a soulless robot, locked into their mind-numbing routine.

And the smell....OMG, the all-pervading eggy stench that stayed with you no matter how much you scrubbed...

I lasted three days. That was enough. Kudos to anyone who has stuck out a crap job for any length of time. You're made of sterner stuff than I.

 

[SeerSGB]

It's a tie:

-- I was working a a Panera's as a pre-opening/to mid morning prep cooking. Get there a 5:30 in the morning and starting cutting down meat and vegs for the sandwich line, get the soups running, baking, etc. I was the only one and I was expected to do all the prep work, plus morning inventories, etc, etc.

Well I was having fun till assistant-manager from hell came back from vacation. She takes an immediate dislike to me cause I'm "to strict" about the health dept. guidelines for food handling, I don't kiss her ass (she was constantly cursing for compliments from men), and I (to the surprise of the GM that didn't know what was going on) stopped a weekly shortage in the meat and condiment inventory by not allowing people to take freebies home off the truck and out of the cooler.

Carry on for about a 2 months like this, when I get a call before my shift and she said that Scott (the GM) has changed the schedules and he needed me to take that day off plus the next, and pull a double on Thursday and Friday. No biggie. Will I go in to work on Thursday and I'm called back into the office and there's the AM (with a big grin) and the GM (looking like someone kicked his dog). Well apparently, I called the AM at home cussed her out, insulted her body and her looks and told her to go fuck herself that I would come to work when I wanted to come to work. Naturally that hadn't happen, and I tell the GM that. I tell him how the AM called me and said he [the GM] changed the schedule. He says he couldn't have changed the schedule cause he was at a district meeting that day and that it was my word against the AM's. So she is just sugar and pie when she says "Well, I think I can overlook his rudeness and the hurt feelings if he'll publicly apology and just modify his attitude with me". I, again, say I didn't do it. She says "Scott just told you, it's your word against mine, and I'm your supervisor". I say, "Not anymore, you both can just go fuck yourself." Walk out the door, flip open my phone call the DM and tell him EVERYTHING that happened and what is and was going on in that location. 2 weeks later, I get a phone call from him apologizing for what happened and "Oh yeah, they fired the GM and AM, and he appreciated me bringing their management issues to light". The only thing I said was "Lose my phone number, I don't care."

Blockbuster -- Took that job as a "see us through the summer" gig after Panera's. God that place sucked. From the AM's boyfriend that would come in drunk and piss and shit in a corner or the store, to the AM and the boyfriend getting it on the bathroom, to the cashier that was selling bootlegs inside the store, to the batshit district manager, that was just a hellhole to work in. I lasted there 6 weeks before I walked out in the middle of a shift, with a packed store, leaving the AM to deal with it all.

 

[Kirby]

I've never had a really bad job but the one that comes closest was the summer before my senior year in high school when I worked as a dishwasher at Red Robin. My second day there we were told that the health department was coming in for an inspection the next day, so they stripped the kitchen after closing and we had to clean everything. There were 5 of us there until about 4am.

Later in the summer I was doing some prep work while a new guy was washing dishes. He took his 30 minute lunch break and never came back. By the time we discovered that he was gone, the whole dish area was packed with dirty dishes and I had to clean them all.

For the most part my co-workers were really cool, and I finally quit when the kitchen manager (one of the few jerks that worked there) gave me a a great performance review, then offered me a 5 cent per hour raise and promised that I would get trained as a busboy 'someday'.

 

[Doggeh]

I've been working one job for the past 2 years, its not bad and its the only job I've ever had. I work at a local movie theater. The hours aren't bad and I've got some of the best coworkers.

Its the never ending battle between management and corporate that sucks. We're a 30-plex so we've got 3 different concession stands available to us. We keep our main one open at all times and its usually all we need. Despite this corporate expects us to have the two side stands open every weekend. Our managers disagree. Wouldn't be a problem if things actually worked. Last time I worked one every other guest came back wanting a new drink cause our soda towers are busted despite efforts to fix them.

Then theres the guests. One guy got angry at my friend the other day cause he ordered his tickets online yet he forgot his credit card at home so he couldn't pick them up at the theater. It was suddenly our fault that we couldn't pull his tickets out of thin air using only his confirmation number. And the bunches of teenagers who get mad because we wont let them into Final Destination without a valid ID.

I've also basically been screwed out of a raise for the past 2 years cause minimum wage goes up shortly after I get my yearly raise. That raise doesn't go up with minimum wage increases. So I'm making the same as people who have been working there for a week.

Honestly if it werent for my coworkers (or the free movies) I wouldn't be there anymore.

 

[SPOCKED]

Used to pump septic tanks and outhouses.

Thread closed... I win

 

[nevermore]

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.

 

[Timby]

I worked at Sears Portrait Studio, as a photographer and salesman, for about six months. Part of that included being the studio's Santa Claus for sittings during the holiday season, as I was the only male who worked in the store.

That fucking sucked.

 

[Mallory]

It's kind of a toss-up for me. I worked for a Republican phone bank making cold calls right after Nixon resigned over Watergate back in 1974. That pretty much sucked, but hey, at the time it was a job.

The other job was one I worked at for less than a year in the 1980s. I'm a software engineer. After I started working there I found out that the owner was slapping new cases on used hardware and selling it as new. Then I found out the salespeople were wandering the country with fucking WordPerfect screen mock-ups selling vaporware with a 90 day installation guarantee, and expected the programmers to produce the software in that amount of time. When they sold a million dollars worth of vaporware to the state of California, I decided to stop even trying to fight the good fight any more and quit. And did I mention that payroll checks bounced on a regular basis? It was always fun explaining to the bank why our mortgage check bounced as a result. Sheesh.

 

[The Grim Ghost]

I can't name just one.

Working at a cigarette processing plant, putting individual packs into cartons. Standing there for 7 and a half hours a day, only one half hour break. Mind numbing to the extreme.

Working at a pet shop chain inside of a mall. Over the couple of weeks I was there it slowly became obvious how horribly these animals were being treated. We had a parrot with a life threatening disease, and our manager told us getting it help would be too expensive, so we should try and sell it to somebody before it died. I walked out and reported them to the SPCA. The place was closed down within the month.

Working at a Burger King for just 2 hours. My 1st day was on an extremely busy shift, and I basically just stood there waiting for someone to explain what I was supposed to do. Was I supposed to be a cashier? A cook? Something else? Nobody I asked knew, not even the person that hired me?!
So I walked into the bathroom, threw my BK hat and shirt into the toilet and walked out. Never regretted it.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

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

 

[Lookingglassman]

It is a toss up between welfare worker and a supervisor at a troubled boys home:

1. Welfare worker - worked it for 2 years and it was hell on Earth. When I started that job I felt sorry for the poor, after two years, I couldnt stand them. I never speak ill of rich people because at least they got off their butts and EARNED their money. The shrews on my caseload were nasty, hateful, lazy and talked to me like I was a piece of crap. I was the only guy in the office, the rest of the people were all female and we had two gay guys that worked there. I would always get in trouble for being too brash and not sensitive enough, yet you had to be tough to deal with those welfare losers.

My numbers showed being tough was working. At the end of the month we had to do a govt report showing how many welfare losers were doing something to better themselves. My numbers were always 40-45% of my caseload, whereas workers who were there 15-20 years averaged 20-25% of their caseload. I didnt play with them. I was quick to cut off their welfare check and food stamps if they didnt comply.

2. After I quit the welfare job I worked as a supervisor at a troubled boys home. Most of those brats just needed a good spanking, but since their insurance was paying they were forced to submit to treatment. My superivisor was a 100% witch. When the money was running out on one boy (he was left in a cage as a baby and fed throught the bars) she told me to do whatever I could to get him riled up so she could find an excuse to dump him because she had a boy with insurance all lined up.

Well I aint going to abuse no kid who was raised in a cage just so this heifer can get more money so I refused. She sent my immediate supervisor down and he stirred the boy up and the lady got rid of him and brought the other kid in. I quit and never looked back.

 

[tharpdevenport]

Does TrekBBS MOD count? At least, I would think some MODs would say that.