# Worst job you've ever had?



## omairp (Aug 21, 2006)

Just thought it would be a fun non-controversial thread. 

I was once almost roped into being a door to door salesman for pizza hut coupons (yes this company sold coupons for $20 a pop, its as stupid as it sounds.) The company placed a vague ad in the newspaper for something to do with sales, and I needed a summer job while in University, and the guy who interviewed me was very skilled at dodging the question of what exactly I'd be selling or to whom until the first day of work when I shadowed one of the more experienced salesmen. One guy answered the door in his underwear, and I decided to call it a day and left after that. In retrospect, I should have walked out of the interview when the guy started telling me he was a millionaire with a 9th grade education.


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## Laxplayer (Apr 26, 2006)

corn detasseling
I lasted 3 days.


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## StevenRocks (May 24, 2005)

Dumping out expired soda products at a Pepsi plant when I was 19. I only lasted one day.


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## eagle2250 (Mar 24, 2006)

Laxplayer said:


> corn detasseling


Ditto...though the pay was actually worse than the actual work. While it was many, many years ago, 35 cents per hour still sucks! Although, it did allow me to get the best suntan I've ever had.


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## Howard (Dec 7, 2004)

worst job I've ever had was outside maintainence in 1995.Working outside in very hot temperatures near 100 with showers and thunderstorms.I wound up with bug bites all over my body.I quit 2 weeks later and this was volunteering if you wanted to know.


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## maxnharry (Dec 3, 2004)

Weeder at a tree nursery.


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## mpcsb (Jan 1, 2005)

eagle2250 said:


> Ditto...though the pay was actually worse than the actual work. While it was many, many years ago, 35 cents per hour still sucks! Although, it did allow me to get the best suntan I've ever had.


Bring a city kid, I thought you were making this up. Well, silly me....look what I found on "the Google":


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## Asterix (Jun 7, 2005)

Cleaning tables/emptying the garbage and occasionally making subs at Cousin's subs.


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## agnash (Jul 24, 2006)

*Toss Up*

Working on the loading/unloading docks of a textile factory in Alabama while I was in college. No a/c, no heat, and moving box after box by hand. I would drive home every day in my car, and the sweat would dry out of my shirt leaving white mineral deposits.

or,

Auditing with a Big 4 public accounting firm.


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## 16128 (Feb 8, 2005)

I answered an ad for a telemarketing job when I was 17. It involved sitting in a grungy apartment office with a phone book and randomly choosing people for timeshare sales.

That lasted one day.


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## Frank aka The Minotaur (Nov 12, 2004)

Eight weeks at a brokerage house back office operation, maintaining systems connections between the brokerage house and entites like SIAC, DTC, NASDAQ, etc. Sounds interesting? Yes, could have been, except that my boss and his boss were in a mind-games war with me in between. My boss withheld information from me, which made it impossible to get the jobs done or know what was going on; his boss grilled me on why things weren't done and why I was so clueless. After 8 weeks of this no-win situation I packed up my belongings, left a letter on the desk of a v.p. dropping a dime on the whole affair and walked out.


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## jbmcb (Sep 7, 2005)

Working at my mom's retail store when I was a kid. I didn't mind retail, but she'd give me all the jobs she felt bad giving the other kids, like breaking up the burnt-out 4' long florescent light bulbs to throw away, and cleaning out the roof drains so the ceiling didn't leak. Made my next job at a video store seem cushy in comparison. Working as a student assistant at a computer lab was pretty bad, too. You'd have to teach these psych-101 students who've never touched a computer before the basics of SPSS. Fun!


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## TMMKC (Aug 2, 2007)

A busboy at a restaurant in Des Moines, Iowa. They lied to me and said I'd be a waiter. When I showed up the first night, they said they changed their minds and handed me an apron and rubber gloves. I spent the next eight hours "diving for pearls" in the kitchen sink...quickly scrubbing pans and loading the dishwasher. I quit at exactly 1:30 a.m.


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## Wayfarer (Mar 19, 2006)

Laxplayer said:


> corn detasseling
> I lasted 3 days.


LOL, WUSS! In one summer, I detassled the whole season (you got a bonus for staying), hoe'ed beans, picked tomatos, picked cucumbers (those are mean, pricklies you know), and finished off with loading pumpkins (which was actually fun).

I never really had a "bad" job IMO. They all paid me and when I got tired of them or needed a raise, I just left and got a new one. Using that as a criteria, I guess this job is the worst I have had, as I cannot afford to leave it. The golden handcuffs are on tighter than ever.


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## TMMKC (Aug 2, 2007)

Wayfarer said:


> I detassled the whole season (you got a bonus for staying), hoe'ed beans, picked tomatos, picked cucumbers (those are mean, pricklies you know), and finished off with loading pumpkins (which was actually fun).


Did you do any "Punkin' Chunkin'?":icon_smile_big:


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## Wayfarer (Mar 19, 2006)

TMMKC said:


> Did you do any "Punkin' Chunkin'?":icon_smile_big:


Oh for sure. The rotten ones would get shot-putted and such. Great fun for teenage boys.


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## Laxplayer (Apr 26, 2006)

Wayfarer said:


> LOL, WUSS! In one summer, I detassled the whole season (you got a bonus for staying), hoe'ed beans, picked tomatos, picked cucumbers (those are mean, pricklies you know), and finished off with loading pumpkins (which was actually fun).
> 
> I never really had a "bad" job IMO. They all paid me and when I got tired of them or needed a raise, I just left and got a new one. Using that as a criteria, I guess this job is the worst I have had, as I cannot afford to leave it. The golden handcuffs are on tighter than ever.


I didn't quit after 3 days, I was let go for not working fast enough. 
I also moved furniture for a couple of summers. The job wasn't so bad, although it was hard work, but some of the people we moved lived in absolute filth. If roaches or fleas were present (and they often were), the company refused to move the furniture, so they wouldn't contaminate the moving trucks. The roaches were pretty disgusting. I remember lifting a bed and seeing what seemed like hundreds of them scatter across the floor. Cartons of fast food and old pizza boxes were all over the place. As disgusting as the roaches were though, fleas were worse.


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## Wayfarer (Mar 19, 2006)

Yuck. Okay, I withdraw the "wuss" allegation.


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## Acct2000 (Sep 24, 2005)

I can't think of anything truly awful right now.

I quit a job after about a month of doing janitorial work in my dormitory in college because I did not like getting up early.


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## jackmccullough (May 10, 2006)

I agree. No really awful jobs. I caddied one summer (maybe that fostered my lifelong disdain for golf) and the worst thing about it was the hours sitting around waiting, and the unpaid time on days when I never got out. I also did some phone surveying and it was pretty similar. I only got paid for completed surveys, and I had to do a lot of unpaid calls to get paid for the surveys I completed.


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## Andy (Aug 25, 2002)

Selling Yellow Pages advertisments! Did, however afford me the time and location (being outside) to visit men's clothing stores.

Actually none of my jobs (and I've had many careers!) were much fun except for this one (this website) and my part-time stint in the Polo store!

I tried working once and didn't much care for it! :icon_smile_big:


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## Mark from Plano (Jan 29, 2007)

Three come to mind:
1. Working for my father's construction company at age 14. He was building a house with a full basement and my job was to coat the outside of the basement wall with a black, tar-like waterproofing compound. I would climb down into the excavated red Oklahoma dirt trench with a large bucket of compound and a trawl and spend hours in the summer heat applying this stuff to the outside of the cinderblock walls. After a few hours of sweat, tar and red dirt I looked, smelled and felt awful.

2. Two summers during college I and several of my friends got jobs working for a moving company. The full timers relished giving the worst jobs to us "college boys". It was hard, but frankly not THAT bad. I definitely got some great stories from that job. One example was the old guy that carried a coffee thermos every day which he, and only he, drank out of constantly. Oddly, the "coffee" carried the aroma of burnt barley and the man would often disappear for a couple of hours late in the afternoon.

3. Also during college I got a job as a night desk clerk (10pm to 6am) at a flea-bitten motel on the north side of OKC. The Korean owner decided that collecting past due rent from the pimp who had taken up residence there was something I was particularly fit to do (since of course he didn't want to do it). Between (a) the hours, (b) the nightly confrontations with undesirables over money, and (c) general fear for my safety given the seediness of the neighborhood, I lasted all of about 2 weeks before I quit.

I am thankful though for each of these jobs as they helped motivate me to finish college.


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## Laxplayer (Apr 26, 2006)

Wayfarer said:


> Yuck. Okay, I withdraw the "wuss" allegation.


lol, no problem on the wuss thing. 
I had never detasseled corn before (we didn't live in the country). My dad knew a guy that knew a guy who was a farmer, and he got me the job. All the country boys showed up with long sleeves, jeans and bandanas to work, and here was my brother, cousin and I wearing shorts and t-shirts. It was cold in the mornings and hot in the afternoon. We had so many cuts from the corn leaves that first day! We were itchy and hot and didn't pull the tassels very fast. The farmer told us on the third day that he didn't think we were cut out for farm work.

Another time when we were moving furniture, we suddenly heard the blast of a shotgun...the owner of the house had shot his old dog because "we couldn't take her with us." We ran outside to see the quivering body of the now dead dog, chained to a stick in the yard. Needless to say, we moved rather quickly after that, and took great care not to scratch or drop anything. That house was way out in the middle of nowhere...directions to the place start off "turn off the paved road..." With all the animal urine/feces, roaches, fleas and just plain filth we saw...we could have been on that show Dirty Jobs. Not all of these places were in bad neighborhoods either. One of the worst ones was a $400k house.

As nasty as that job was, I couldn't list it as my worst job because the upside was that we were paid $10/hr cash daily, and $15/hr by some of the out of town OTR drivers that didn't know any better. My buddy (his dad owned the place) decided we should tell the drivers $15/hr just to see if they would give it to us. Quite a few of them did.


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## Acct2000 (Sep 24, 2005)

You did the corn a service by working slowly. How would you like your genitals ripped from you in the prime of life?


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## Laxplayer (Apr 26, 2006)

forsbergacct2000 said:


> You did the corn a service by working slowly. How would you like your genitals ripped from you in the prime of life?


lol, good one.


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## eagle2250 (Mar 24, 2006)

forsbergacct2000 said:


> You did the corn a service by working slowly. How would you like your genitals ripped from you in the prime of life?


Yuck!!! Having detasseled corn over a period of several summers, I feel like such an agricultural "pervert!" Thanks for a good chuckle!


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## BertieW (Jan 17, 2006)

Six months at a fast-food chain, my first "real" job at age 15 (worker's permit). That felt like prison. My advice? Steer clear of anyplace that has "grease gutters," and certainly be wary if you're called upon to clean them. 

Probably why I'm a vegetarian today. 

Other than that, most of the gigs have been fine.


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## red96 (Jun 26, 2007)

Do volunteer assignments count? If so, I've definitely got a horror story.

I arranged a group volunteer day for a bunch of employees from my company. We went to this inner city food service outfit that operated both as a food pantry and a provider of resources to other agencies. I can't remember why we were asked to do this, but basically a group of us were shown to a dumpster full of garbage and asked to spend the day sorting it based on whether its contents were edible or inedible for pigs. :icon_pale: They were going to provide the picked over garbage to a pig farm somewhere and use the proceeds to fund some project at their facility.

Needless to say, I am ever thankful this was only a 1 day job!


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## TMMKC (Aug 2, 2007)

Though I did not hold this job, an old friend of mine worked in a pickle factory one summer during college. Not only did it cure him from ever eating pickles again, he said it was akin to sausage making. Literally, the "rejects" that fell through the grates later became relish. I understand the smell was horrible.

He did say the days the rabbis came by to bless the kosher pickles always offered some humor...if only because they drove around from warehouse to warehouse doing their blessing...WHILE IN TRANSIT!


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## eg1 (Jan 17, 2007)

I worked in a meat-packing plant for 3 summers. The jobs varied, but the worst were among the worst imaginable: the kill-floor; rendering; and the bacon press.

Shipping was pretty good.

Best job was in the "blast-freezer".


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## Beresford (Mar 30, 2006)

Roofer, as a summer job while in college one year.

Incredibly hot, dirty and dangerous work. When you pulled up the old roof you found all sorts of wonderful things like hornets' nests, scorpions, and centipedes. The tar smelled to high heaven, and you always worried about losing your balance and falling.

Convinced me I wanted to spend my life sitting at a desk in a nice air-conditioned office.


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## globetrotter (Dec 30, 2004)

strangly enough, the worst jobs I've had have been pretty good jobs with bad bosses - once I had a boss who told me to come back from a vacation or he would fire me: he called me on a monday morning to ask me where I was and I said "frankfort airport, flying on my way to my vacation" he had forgotten that I had asked for and applied for vacation that week (the first in 3 years) and he told me that if I dind't get back on a plane and return he would fire me, even though there was nothing special going on. he didn't fire me, but I quit as soon as I could.

my next boss was jsut as bad - we had a huge disconnect as to what he expected from me and what I expected from the job, and it was a nightmare. I was hugely relieved to get out of there.


on top of that I worked as a fry cook in a fast food resteraunt for 3or 4 years in high school, I washed dishes for a while, I sliced and packed bread in a bakery, I collected chickens from henhouses for slaughter, I worked construction, I dug a ditch by hand, and I cleaned out low income apartments when the tenants skipped rent to prepare the apartments for new tenants - all that before I was 19. none of those were that bad.


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## PennGlock (Mar 14, 2006)

Investment banker


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## VC2000 (Feb 10, 2006)

Anybody “walk” soybeans? I hated that job more than detassling. I corn detasseled for several summers. It was awful but at least you only had to work for a block of time rather than everyday. I figured out that if I ran my own crew I made more money. Wonderful education to learn as a teen that you could make more money employing others rather than your own sweat.

I worked in Ottumwa at the Hormel plant - a couple of you would know what that means. (TMMKC?) (Pork packing plant) I was drawn in by a friend who got a bonus if he recruited someone. It was horrible - you had to wear a pair of boots because of the swill on the floor. Some of the workers would wear diapers because you couldn't take a bathroom break as the production line couldn't be stopped. 

The worst job was "making" Iowa oysters. I worked for my Grandfather who had a large hog farm. This wasn't an eight hour job - Grandpa's farm was exempt from labor laws and employment was by default by birth. For about 12 hours you castrated pigs for several days. I passed out the first time I did it. Later I just vomited. That was a bad job. It is a two person operation – one person takes the pig flips it upside down (they dislike this so they fight and squeal) tuck its head/snout under your armpit; grab a leg with your free hands spreading the back legs open. The second person takes a razor - makes a cut and squeezes the "oyster" out then makes another cut freeing the testicle and tosses it in a bucket then repeat on the other side. Early on the pig decides it doesn’t like the process and squeals rather loudly and squirms. This upsets the other pigs making them harder to catch – the greased pig contest is for a reason they are hard to catch. We probably did about 30 hogs an hour I'd guess...with about 1000 pigs to “treat” a month.

Yeah if that offends the PETA types trust me I was far more offended doing it. 

The upside was that I figured out very early I wanted off the farm! Algebra and chemistry were a treat compared to those jobs which made me a good student and got me out of there. I was in school during the farm crisis so the situation seemed even more dismal. In college forgoing partying to study was easy when I thought about the job awaiting me if I failed.


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## vwguy (Jul 23, 2004)

My first job out of college after not being able to find something in my field was selling cars (VWs actually) and I hated it. The hours were terrible, I hated the managers &I felt dirty every night when I left. That lasted about 3 weeks and w/ the money I made I drank the rest of my Summer away 

Brian


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## crazyquik (Jun 8, 2005)

Wayfarer said:


> I never really had a "bad" job IMO. They all paid me and when I got tired of them or needed a raise, I just left and got a new one.


Couldn't have said it better.


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## omairp (Aug 21, 2006)

red96 said:


> I arranged a group volunteer day for a bunch of employees from my company. We went to this inner city food service outfit that operated both as a food pantry and a provider of resources to other agencies. I can't remember why we were asked to do this, but basically a group of us were shown to a dumpster full of garbage and asked to spend the day sorting it based on whether its contents were edible or inedible for pigs. :icon_pale: They were going to provide the picked over garbage to a pig farm somewhere and use the proceeds to fund some project at their facility.


Wow. That has got to be the worst one so far. Although collecting rent from a pimp comes pretty close. I'm guessing your company didn't volunteer at their facilities again the following year, did they? You volunteer to get that warm and fuzzy feeling, and they send you dumpster diving for pig slop. A


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## BertieW (Jan 17, 2006)

That's some fucked-up repugnant ****, to quote Jules from Pulp Fiction.

Guess my grease gutters were nothing to get worked up about.



VC2000 said:


> Anybody "walk" soybeans? I hated that job more than detassling. I corn detasseled for several summers. It was awful but at least you only had to work for a block of time rather than everyday. I figured out that if I ran my own crew I made more money. Wonderful education to learn as a teen that you could make more money employing others rather than your own sweat.
> 
> I worked in Ottumwa at the Hormel plant - a couple of you would know what that means. (TMMKC?) (Pork packing plant) I was drawn in by a friend who got a bonus if he recruited someone. It was horrible - you had to wear a pair of boots because of the swill on the floor. Some of the workers would wear diapers because you couldn't take a bathroom break as the production line couldn't be stopped.
> 
> ...


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## The Gabba Goul (Feb 11, 2005)

My wordst job was working as a bagger in a grocery store...the job its self was not so bad, but I had this one manager who was studying to be a cop, so he was always walking around the store like Mike Hammer PI or somehting, just trying to irk employees so that he could "bust" them when they stepped out of line...I remember the day I quit, he asked me to show him something that I had in my pocket (I guess that he thought I was stealing or somehting...you know us Hispanics are all no good theifs)...any way...I reached into my pocket, produced my middle finger told him I quit and walked off the job...probably wasnt the best way to let an employer know that I was leaving, but when you're a 16 year old kid, you don't really worry about being rude...


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## stuman (Oct 6, 2005)

New York City Taxi driver. Lasted three months. Got into an accident, got robbed. Dangerous job, you never know who or what is going to get into your cab. I was young, adventurous and stupid.


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## AddisonBelmont (Feb 2, 2006)

*My Meteoric Career at World Drug Store*

I had just totaled a borrowed new car that didn't belong to me--an uninsured car, I found out after the fact--and my pal & I had sat down and worked it out like grown-ups, even though we were still just out of college. I blamed him for not having told me there was no insurance, since if I had known that I would never have got behind the wheel in the first place, and he blamed me for wrecking the car, so we split the cost 50/50.

Except that since I had just graduated from college, I had no money at all. Obviously, my high-paying career in Liberal Arts--and what was that, exactly?--would have to wait, because I needed money, lots of it, and I needed it fast, so I made an appointment for an interview at the first job in the first paper I saw on Monday morning: stock boy at World Drug Store. "Apply in person." I went right down to the store.

The "boy" part in stock boy worked out fine, because although my pals were all long-haired hippies, I had gone to see a revival of _No, No Nanette_ with my Grandmother not long before, and although I didn't care much for the show, I had fallen hard for the clean cut Joe College look, with tight argyle sweaters & big tweed pants, and so that became (courtesy of Goodwill, where you could still find such stuff any day of the week back in the 1970s) my new look. That and a pair of horn rim glasses. Round ones.

Anyway, so I go down for the interview and before I had even sat down, the old guy behind the desk took one look at me in my Buster Keaton getup, picked up his phone--why am I remembering this as a candlestick phone? This was 1977.) and said to somebody "I want you to hire this boy." It was swell!

The first day, a sullen-looking guy showed me how to face the shelves, and he took me upstairs to a vast, dark, mostly vacant floor, and he showed me where the paper goods were stored, where the canned goods were, where the candy & housewares & first aid supplies were kept. Everything that was on the shelves downstairs had its counterpart upstairs, except that upstairs, you could hardly see for the gloom, there were no signs telling you what was in any of the darkened aisles, nothing was in the same location as the store below and, worst of all, every single category in the upstairs warehouse was larded with other stuff: smack dab in the middle of the bagged candy was the laundry detergent, and light bulbs were stacked in the middle of boxes of ladies' cosmetics. Canned goods & Kleenex sat right nest to each other. There was no logic to any of it, and I didn't know how I could keep it all straight. So that was half my day, roaming around the underlit warehouse hunting for stuff.

The other half of my day was spent in the brightly-lit downstairs, watching how fast things moved off the shelves. If I came in and saw a crowd of seniors clustered around a big hole where the Milk of Magnesia should have been, I panicked. How could I keep shelves faced if they were going to put a 10-cents-off coupon in the paper without telling me? Or ordereing enough backstock? The other employees--high-school dropouts for sure, all of them--didn't say much to me but they watched me like amused vultures, waiting for me to screw up, and when I dropped a jar of pickles while they were all standing around waiting to punch out, they all busted out laughing. It was the triumph of the school of hard knocks over fancy-schmancy book learnin', and they enjoyed the sight of me in my college-boy duds down on my hands & knees cleaning up broken glass & feeling around for pickles that had rolled uder the bottom shelf. I wanted to kill them.

On Tuesday, I stopped trying to make any sense of where stuff was kept & just concentrated on keeping the downstairs shelves full. I also learned to grab a few extras of whatever popular fast-moving items I had to go get--Band-Aids, Ivory Soap, Vienna Sausages, Ho-Hos--and to keep them all in a separate shopping cart in an out-of-the-way area of the back room, so I wouldn't have to make so many restocking trips up & down in the filthy open-cage elevator. By the end of the day, I was starting to get the hang of it & the shelves didn't look half bad. It was boring work, but at least I felt a sense of accomplishment seeing the smooth, unbroken ranks of creamed corn or Vitalis. As I was leaving, Helen, an older woman who presided over the perfume counter by the door, whispered to me said "Mr. B really likes the way you work." This was hardly the job of my dreams, but at least there was one nice person, and when I went home that night I didn't smell of pickle juice.

Wednesday was a breeze. By then, I knew where everything was, and I could guess without even looking which brands of denture adhesive I needed to grab extras of when I went upstairs & which ones hadn't moved since Monday. The others were starting to sneer at me instead of laugh. When they'd see me coming with my cart loaded with replacement products, they'd holler out "Look out, Dwayne! Here comes Mr. Efficiency!" After lunch, Helen smiled at me & told me that Mr. B wanted to see me in his office. I figured I was in trouble. He must have heard about the pickles. Well, he had, he said, because he had been watching me for two days--his office on the second floor had a window that overlooked the store--and he wanted to offer me the position of Assitant Manager.

Great. There was no way in the world I wanted to manage a run-down drug store in the bad end of downtown, and I only took this job so I could pay for my pal's car, but I could hardly say it like that, so instead, I smiled & said I'd like to think about it & that I'd give him my answer in the morning. He gave me the kindly expression that, if he'd been a priest, would have accompanied "Bless you, my child." Then I went back to work, but more with a sense of oppression a& dread than of elation. I just wanted to do my job & make some money to pay for the stupid car. This wasn't going to be a career, for pete's sake. I didn''t need any additional pressure. On my way out the door, Helen said. "I hear things are looking up!" I gave her a big smile but it was all fake. This wasn't the plan. Not at all. I felt trapped.

Thursday morning, I faced my shelves, filled a cart from inventory & left it in the back room, then took adeep breath & went to see Mr B. in his office. I thanked him for his generous offer, but I told him I didn't yet feel ready for the kind of responsibility he was offering me. He didn't seem to like that answer, so I added "There's just so much more I need to to learn in a place like this, and I want to feel more comfortable about my own work before I take on the job of helping manage a whole store." That sounded good, and it was not untrue. OK, mostly it was untrue. True, I didn't really know what I was doing yet, but the store seemed to be on autopilot, anyway, so I had no doubt I could do it if I wanted to. But that was just it: I didn't want to. I already hated the job. There was absoulutely nothing to it. Besides, I could just imagine having to deal with the other empolyees--the _lifers_, I was beginning to think of them--all of whom except Helen, seemed to hate me already. And for what? Had Mr. B told them his plans for me? Were they envious? If so, of what? A job I wouldn't have touched with a stick if I hadn't been forced to do it? At any rate, after I gave my tactful, carefully worded explanation, Mr. B just said " I see" then turned around in his chair.

Was he just thinking of what he wanted to say to me? To say he understood my lack of confidence, since I was still so new? To ask me to take my time & reconsider? Or was the interview over? I couldn't tell, so I just sat there, waiting for some signal one way or the other. Finally, he called over his shoulder in a tight-lipped voice "Don't you have somthing to do?" I got up, more than a little flustered, and went out to the outer office. It was payday, so there was a line of lifers standing at the accountant's window waiting for their paychecks. When they saw me open the door, they all stood up straight & saluted, then they started laughing & punching each other in the ribs, and for a moment--just a moment-- I wished I had said I'd accept the stupid job, just so I could fire the whole bunch of them. Then I'd quit! But it was too late for that: I'd thrown away my chance at ruining their lives.

The rest of the day seemed like an eternity, and while I faced my shelves--I could feel Mr. B scowling at me from his window up above--I decided that I'd finish the week, and give my two weeks' notice on Friday afternoon. That, at least, gave me some relief. No--oh, _hell_, no--I wouldn't stay, but I'd take my leave the right way & give proper notice. None of that walking-off-the-job take-this-job-&-shove-it nonsense. That was the way the lifers would do it.

On the way out the door, Helen stopped me with a concerned look on her face. "Did you forget to fill out a Loss Form for a jar of pickles the other day?" I sensed her disappointment--Mr B. had obviously told her about my negative answer to his offer--but I acted as though nothing had changed, and said "Oh, no, I didn't _forget_, I didn't even know there was such a thing. Nobody ever said anything about that. But thanks for letting me know. I'll take care of it tomorrow." She just raised her eyebrows mournfully, as though she had told me hundreds of times before about Loss Forms, and knew that I was a hopeless cause.

Friday was better than Thursday because I had done already done the hard part--declined the Assistant Manager job--and because I had already made up my mind to leave. I had only to get through the day without giving away my plan, and then after that, the next two weeks would be easy. By staying and playing the part of a stock boy, I would be doing _them_ a favor, not the other way around. I walked in the door feeling like a free man.

Helen--the only friendly face I ever saw there, even if she had been sad the night before--wasn't at her station: she was Jewish, so she had the day off. Instead, Bertha--Big Bertha the lifers called her, Big Bertha with her upper arms like smoked hams--Bertha from from the liquor department was behind the perfume counter. "Good morning!" I called as I walked past. She didn't answer. I walked upstairs, and was on my way to punch my time card when the accountant stuck her head out her window. "Mr. B wants to see you."

I walked into his office. He was writing something and said "I'll be with you in a moment." without looking up. After thirty seconds or so, he raised his eyes--just his eyes--and said "Did you take care of that Loss Form?" I explained what I had explained to Helen, that I hadn't known there was such a thing, but that I would do it. He just nodded. "You also failed to punch in or out for lunch the other day. We can't have that." I explained that I hadn't punched in or out because I hadn't taken a lunch that day. I had been trying to finish up something, so I didn't eat but worked straight through.

Mr B. dropped the paper he had been writing on & his pen on his desk. "What is this? So we're making up our own rules now? I'm sorry, but that's not how we work around here, doing things when we feel like it, not doing things if we don't feel like it. Perhaps you aren't aware that it is illegal in this state to work without a meal break? There are fines for things like that. And I'm very sorry to say, but this is not the first complaint I've received about your work habits or your general lack of the friendly attitude that this store is famous for. Also, perhaps your failure to take a scheduled lunch break is understandable, since I understand you've been _secreting_ & consuming food in the back room without paying for it." He leaned back in hs chair & made a tent with his fingers.

What in the world was he talking about? I stood there with my mouth open, waving my hands. This was all so stupid that I couldn't say anything. "Please! Don't bother!" he said. "Thievery will not be tolerated here. Food must either be in the warehouse or it's on the shelves, not hidden away in secret corners so you can snack in private!"

I tried to explain that the stuff in my cart--the HoHos & the Vienna Sausages--were not hidden so I could eat it but to save me a trip upstairs. Did he suspect me of eating the Band-Aids too? This was so ridiculous. But I didn't get a chance to say anything because as soon as I opened my mouth, he said just waved his hand & said "No, no, no, Please! Don't say anything. I wish it were different, but your flagrant disregard of our policies and your deceit & dishonesty & your lack of co-operation with your co-workers leaves me little choice, and I must regretfully terminate your employment with us. This is most upsetting to me. You may pick up your paycheck fron the paymaster." Then he turned around in his chair. And this time, I _knew_ I was dismissed.
Addison Belmont.


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## vwguy (Jul 23, 2004)

The Gabba Goul said:


> My wordst job was working as a bagger in a grocery store...the job its self was not so bad, but I had this one manager who was studying to be a cop, so he was always walking around the store like Mike Hammer PI or somehting, just trying to irk employees so that he could "bust" them when they stepped out of line...I remember the day I quit, he asked me to show him something that I had in my pocket (I guess that he thought I was stealing or somehting...you know us Hispanics are all no good theifs)...any way...I reached into my pocket, produced my middle finger told him I quit and walked off the job...probably wasnt the best way to let an employer know that I was leaving, but when you're a 16 year old kid, you don't really worry about being rude...


Ha, ha, now that was funny! I bagged groceries (and pushed carts) to pay my way thru college & we had a manager who was pissed off at life and would try to bust people screwing off as well. One cold snowy day we were warming up inside & listening to the Packer game on someone's radio, said manager comes in, breaks off the antenna, then yells at us to get back to work. Yeah, this guy also got married on his lunch hour one week day, a real prize.

Brian


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## The Gabba Goul (Feb 11, 2005)

vwguy said:


> Ha, ha, now that was funny! I bagged groceries (and pushed carts) to pay my way thru college & we had a manager who was pissed off at life and would try to bust people screwing off as well. One cold snowy day we were warming up inside & listening to the Packer game on someone's radio, said manager comes in, breaks off the antenna, then yells at us to get back to work. Yeah, this guy also got married on his lunch hour one week day, a real prize.
> 
> Brian


LMAO...his lunch hour??? What a tool...

hopefully he paid for the radio that he wrecked...some people just can't handle authority very well...I've known more than a few jagoff managers/supervisors...aaah well...at least it makes for funny stories...on my current job, I hang out with a manager from another department every now and again...whenever we go to lunch or somehting she refuses to leave her lab coat behind in her office (like almost everybody else does),I know it's because it says "manager" on the little name tag thing...she has often bragged about that, I'm sure she wants people in public to know aswell... she wont admit it, but I just laugh...


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## TheSaint (Jun 28, 2005)

Summer Temp job when I was 18. Stuffing Chlorine Tablets the size of hockey pucks in a plastic bag on a conveyor belt. Pure torture. Lasted one day.

Best Job: Working as a dishwasher (promoted to Pantry later) in a restaurant when I was in High School. Oh the fun I used to have with waitresses in the kitchen.

Cheers


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## Kav (Jun 19, 2005)

I worked for the infamous Jose Menendez on the graveyard shift for 3 years. First was the guantlet of insecure security guards with Soldier of Fortune and Kung Fu magazines at the entryway.They never grasped the concept employees usually steal when going OUT.Then it was a freezing clean room with high speed video duplication and shell loading equipment. About half of my 6 person crew would vanish periodicaly and wander back half stoned. The israeli in charge of maintaining the machines refused to fix the ones run by my two pakistani workers and would likewise vanish. Meanwhile I'm staring without seeing at 100s of monitors with everything from gay porn to Gumby cartoons or calling the company production supervisor at his home to call the israeli at his second job assembling some electronic sub units to come fix the machines. Security guards would walk in trying to bust somebody and compromise the clean room integrity or else fall fast asleep. I field stripped the one's spanish Star sitting on the counter, round chambered, safety off and threw away the firing pin spring. In the morning Menendez would scream at me for failing to crank out 10,000 tapes even though the machines if running perfectly could only do a maximum of 8,000 while his very butch lesbian yes man dayshift supervisor promised 10,000- by switching production paperwork from the night before until I walked past the security guards fighting each other with numchucks and salted her VW fastback with a case of gay porn and told the now bleeding guards to take a look. Trying to sleep in a darkened room I'd get phone calls from college friends " Chris, I have to do a paper comparing W.B. Yeats pre and post revolution poetry" until I disconnected the phone. Menendez finally demoted me and put this angry woman in charge at $5 more with no experience who hated all men except for Pope John Paul. She would stand there with a very pronounced case of 'parting wind' screaming at me to do all the programming they forgot to teach her. I did, except for 3 weeks 7,00 vhs tapes went out daily misloaded. We got word Menendez was selling out the production end to RANK films. I reprogrammed a run of Handgun Control INC tapes to actually load Col Jeff Cooper on Handguns before taking out 3 of the 10 $10,000 recording heads with a nail and was let go on December 24. I told Jose what I thought of him and that someday somebody would probably take a 12 guage to his arrogant, cuban mouth. Bad choice of words and I was later interviewed when his two spoiled boys offed him. Luckily, I was with a punker, born again christian girl named Mary Katherine ( good irish stock) I had worked with at the video company and a computer security program company before that who vouched for me.She said we were living together, but for 6 months my bio rythems were so messed up I wan't sure. I will never work graveyard again.


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## omairp (Aug 21, 2006)

VC2000 said:


> Some of the workers would wear diapers because you couldn't take a bathroom break as the production line couldn't be stopped.
> 
> For about 12 hours you castrated pigs for several days. I passed out the first time I did it. Later I just vomited. That was a bad job. It is a two person operation - one person takes the pig flips it upside down (they dislike this so they fight and squeal) tuck its head/snout under your armpit; grab a leg with your free hands spreading the back legs open. The second person takes a razor - makes a cut and squeezes the "oyster" out then makes another cut freeing the testicle and tosses it in a bucket then repeat on the other side.


Correction. THIS is the worst one so far! Ughhh... makes my stomach churn just reading it. :icon_pale:
Besides, what kind of ghoul actually pays to eat pigs ball's???


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## tntele (Apr 12, 2007)

The worst job I've ever had is my current job, being a homebuilder. You are leveraged to high heaven, the current real estate market sucks, and it costs you an arm and a leg each month in interest. Being self-employed sucks! I still question why I'm not a lifeguard on some beach.


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## omairp (Aug 21, 2006)

PennGlock said:


> Investment banker





tntele said:


> being a homebuilder.


If you guys count these as the worst jobs you've ever had, you should count yourselves as some luck mo-fo's.


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## Count Bassie (Oct 2, 2007)

Forest fire fighter. Dangerous, dangerous work. I think I inhaled the equivalent of a million packs of cigarettes in one summer while working 23 hour shifts trying to keep slash burns from jumping the lines or toting water pumps to hell and back. And for some g--damned reason, there would be these fire bug/gnats that would fly around my face. i was always thirsty, but you never dared drink from any stream running through a burned area for fear of catching giardia (oh what fun that is). I remember being so tired one night that just fell asleep on the ground with fire burning ten yards away.


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## Laxplayer (Apr 26, 2006)

Count Bassie said:


> Forest fire fighter. Dangerous, dangerous work. I think I inhaled the equivalent of a million packs of cigarettes in one summer while working 23 hour shifts trying to keep slash burns from jumping the lines or toting water pumps to hell and back. And for some g--damned reason, there would be these fire bug/gnats that would fly around my face. i was always thirsty, but you never dared drink from any stream running through a burned area for fear of catching giardia (oh what fun that is). I remember being so tired one night that just fell asleep on the ground with fire burning ten yards away.


Much respect to you for being brave enough to do that type of work. I used to be a volunteer firefighter, and it was sometimes dangerous, but that doesn't even compare to fighting forest fires.


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## JRR (Feb 11, 2006)

globetrotter said:


> strangly enough, the worst jobs I've had have been pretty good jobs with bad bosses - once I had a boss who told me to come back from a vacation or he would fire me: he called me on a monday morning to ask me where I was and I said "frankfort airport, flying on my way to my vacation" he had forgotten that I had asked for and applied for vacation that week (the first in 3 years) and he told me that if I dind't get back on a plane and return he would fire me, even though there was nothing special going on. he didn't fire me, but I quit as soon as I could.
> 
> my next boss was jsut as bad - we had a huge disconnect as to what he expected from me and what I expected from the job, and it was a nightmare. I was hugely relieved to get out of there.
> 
> on top of that I worked as a fry cook in a fast food resteraunt for 3or 4 years in high school, I washed dishes for a while, I sliced and packed bread in a bakery, I collected chickens from henhouses for slaughter, I worked construction, I dug a ditch by hand, and I cleaned out low income apartments when the tenants skipped rent to prepare the apartments for new tenants - all that before I was 19. none of those were that bad.


+1

The bad boss thing is critical.

The worst job I've had is Tax Collection Defense legal work for tax deadbeats. People don't listen to you, don't pay you, and my boss was a complete a-hole.

I worked at a Burger King in high school and worked as Garbage man during my college summers. Those were fine compared to the Tax Collection defense bs.


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## a4audi08 (Apr 27, 2007)

Fed Ex. Imagine a metal box, 53 feet long, baking in the sun, and having to unload literally thousands of boxes some weighing up to 80 pounds for 5-9 hours a day. Everyday a couple of the workers would pass out from heat exhaustion. It was only a summer job although I heard it was just as bad during winter.


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## EAP (Jan 19, 2007)

Driving out to ground zero's at the Nevada Test Site to retrieve data after underground nuclear detonations. Interestingly, they always left the portable toilets set up in the recording trailer area. Amazing what a nuke can do to a row of Portapotty's, somewhat analogous to tornadoes leaving bathtubs in trees.


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## NewYorkBuck (May 6, 2004)

Cashier in supermarket chain.


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## omairp (Aug 21, 2006)

JRR said:


> The worst job I've had is Tax Collection Defense legal work for tax deadbeats. People... don't pay you.


Shouldn't you ask for cash up front for those services? :icon_smile_big:


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## Murrah (Mar 28, 2005)

Hearse driver.


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## Wayfarer (Mar 19, 2006)

Murrah said:


> Hearse driver.


Ever get stiffed?


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## David V (Sep 19, 2005)

I worked in a muffler factory for 2 weeks. I put the bolts and clamps in a plastic bag and dropped them in the box. Now I know why you sometimes find extra parts in that bag. When in doubt, toss it in.


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## globetrotter (Dec 30, 2004)

Laxplayer said:


> Much respect to you for being brave enough to do that type of work. I used to be a volunteer firefighter, and it was sometimes dangerous, but that doesn't even compare to fighting forest fires.


+ 1 - foreest firefighter strikes me as a job for guys with seriiously big ones.


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## Acct2000 (Sep 24, 2005)

An official AAAC snare drum rimshot for Wayfarer!!!


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## Count Bassie (Oct 2, 2007)

globetrotter said:


> + 1 - foreest firefighter strikes me as a job for guys with seriiously big ones.


It was a summer college job for me and I vowed never to do it again. I was particularly worried about previously applied herbicides (2-4-5T comes to mind) that would have been incinerated and inhaled. But you know, the guys (and girls) who really risked it were the smokejumpers.


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## jkreusc (Aug 14, 2006)

My worst job experiences were always ones where:

1. The nature of the job did not permit me to use my brain.
2. The job did not allow for interaction with other people.

Jobs that met one of the two criteria, but not both were bad, but not awful. Here's some of the highlights from worst to bad:

1. Staple remover (points 1 and 2): I worked for a microfilm/batch scanning company. I was given several boxes of files each night and was to remove all of the staples from them so they could be fed into the auto-feeder. I did this for one month. To pass the time, I collected, rather than disposed of, the staples. I filled 3 one quart Ball jars in the 1 month I worked there.

2. Medical file clerk (points 1 and 2): This was my 40 hour day job while I was pulling staples for 20 hours per week. The thing that made this one better was that the hospital was a geriatric facility as well as an alcohol/drug rehab. Reading the doctor's notes in the back of the stacks was often times pretty freaking funny.

3. Dunkin Donuts cashier (point 1): Actually, not a bad job. Great customers that I got to know. Fast paced and the time flew by. Unfortunately, I had to quit when I caught the manager pouring bleach and ammonia down a drain to try and unclog it. I told him he was a "F**ng idiot" and walked out the door, past the customers, and told them what he was doing. They followed.

4. Summer temp for the school department grounds crew (Point 1): Not a bad job as I got some sun and didn't have to work hard. The only time it was bad was when they left me alone at a school to paint all of the curbs safety yellow. Mundane work with nobody around.


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## cgc (Jan 27, 2007)

My experiences are not nearly as bad as some of the ones already posted, but I have two:

1) Fireworks stand. Two of my friends signed up to man a fireworks stand for two weeks preceding the Fourth. After signing the forms and then seeing the stand one of the two split leaving the other one in a bad spot. I get the call to fill in on no notice, and, taking pity, agree to do the work. Not only is the stand not air conditioned in the Texas heat, but one of us has to stay with the stand at all times. Yes, this means we took turns sleeping in the damned thing. The hours were effectively 8am to midnight every day. It was quite a day waking up on the floor of a shack filled full of gunpowder and then putting in a double shift in near 100 degree heat only to have to sleep on the floor again after it was over. The real kicker was the owner of the stand was a total cheat who lied about the inventory and then took the 'missing' stock out of the final paycheck. I think I ended up being paid about 25 cents an hour for that job. 

2) Auto auction. This was also a summer job in Houston where I spent all day outside getting fried by the sun. I walked the acres of blacktop finding cars which had been sitting in the sun for days or weeks building up intense heat inside. There is no feeling like entering a 120 degree car driving it for two minutes then stepping out into 98 degree heat and finding that a relief! That got repeated about a hundred times a day.


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## Acct2000 (Sep 24, 2005)

I would have been tempted to toss a lit cigaret into the middle of Fireworks guy's remaining inventory.


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## globetrotter (Dec 30, 2004)

Count Bassie said:


> It was a summer college job for me and I vowed never to do it again. I was particularly worried about previously applied herbicides (2-4-5T comes to mind) that would have been incinerated and inhaled. But you know, the guys (and girls) who really risked it were the smokejumpers.


when I was younger i used to want to be a smokejumper - I had the wings, but didn't have the background in firefighting, and they wanted 3 plus years in firefighting to apply, if I remmeber correctly. but I have huge respect for anybody willing to do that.


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## Howard (Dec 7, 2004)

Volunteering for a hospital doing food service for patients.Putting all the condiments for the elderly people.It just wasn't for me.


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