What's the worst job you've ever had?

[Ernest Buckley]

 

Physically I've had some very stressful jobs but I've learned I prefer physical stress over psychological. With that in mind, my present job is the worst I've ever had. The company I work for is a nest of dishonest, amoral snakes and it degrades me every day I continue to work there. Terry D.

 

 

So you`re a real estate agent?

 

Seriously, I agree with you about psychological stress.

[rasputin1963]

As I've shared here on SSS before, the music gigs I've most despised were ones in which I was sought out and hired as a pianist for high society parties.

 

Usually these were merry, convivial affairs and I was greatly appreciated by hosts and guests....

 

But there were some gigs in which I'd start playing the (fully acoustic) grand piano, and the hostess would keep coming by my side to "shush" me.

 

Now, I don't know about you guys who are musicians, but nobody shushes me more than once. If I lower my volume--- by shutting the piano lid and playing pianissimo--- and that's STILL not quiet enough for the hostess? Then I am Audi 5000. I've walked a couple gigs like this, even when I desperately needed the money.

 

As I've shared here before, there have been parties in which the hostess simply wanted a slick guy in a tuxedo behind her piano to "wow" her tony guests.... She didn't want the accompanying music. That kind of superficial philistinism raises my "prima donna" hackles...

[MrKnobs]

I feel strongly that workplaces, if there's no compelling reason not to, should be a good mix of men and women. Too many men, you get the "locker room" style atmosphere, too many women, well, you get my job.

 

The entire second floor administration at my job is women plus a couple of feminized men. These women cannot be bothered to work as they are constantly planning parties. They have birthday parties, team parties, reward ourselves for doing our job parties, or just the routine it's Tuesday at 3PM tea party. IN the time remaining, they gossip, conduct compex intrigues and back stabbings, and just generally talk the day away. I don't mean to characterize ALL women this way, nor to say that there aren't any workplaces with a lot of women who actually work, but this is how MY workplace operates.

 

One of the worst, most bizarre things I saw them do was a handicapped girl in our graphics department got fired, for no other reason than I could tell because she just "didn't fit in the clique;" her work was excellent. At the same time one of our managers (a man!) was being let go.

 

The b*tches downstairs threw a PARTY for the two fired people, people THEY had fired, on premises, during the work day!

 

Who throws a party for fired people? Who COMES to their own firing party? And while the party was going on, they sent someone down to the parking garage to remove the little handicapped girls' name plate.

 

Terry D.

 

P.S. Have to tell just one more. I'm a scientist, I write a buncha crap constantly. I give it to our publication dept. to edit. Hey, who knows, maybe I made a couple of comma splices or something, could happen. Or maybe this week I'm supposed to use Helvetica instead of Times New Roman, it's constantly changing.

 

Except we don't have any editors on our staff, we have facilitators. The facilitators take the reports from the researchers and give it to undergrad students who are maybe freshmen studying English, undergrads, and maybe English is not their first or even second language. They make minimum wage. The facilitators, of course, make big bucks and we have a lot of them. With all their spare time, of course, they have to do something so they plan more parties.

 

Anyway, I'm in a "teamwork" meeting with our head boss lady, who is called our "Head Coach" but in fact is the wife of one of the college deans. I'm bored {censored}less as we've spent two hours trying to "craft" a single sentence, our new "mission statement." Nobody can agree, and it really doesn't matter anyway as the directors of the center will simply make it whatever they like. I'm fuming because I have real work to do.

 

One of the facilitators brings me in the edited copy of my latest report. I'm bored, so I glance through it and it's all F'd up. There are graphics floating all over the pages, somehow come unstuck from the figures and now sitting on top of text. I can't believe what I'm seeing!

 

My eyes widen focus and my ears are online again, I hear the head facilitator (also in this useless meeting) droning on about all the "value added services" her dept. is planning on giving us, and I see red. Let's call her Clair, because that's her real f*cking name.

 

I interrupt her and say, "Clair, maybe it would be a better idea if your dept. asked the researchers what we actually need, rather than sit around thinking up slogans and brochures, or whatever. Like maybe doing a decent job editing our reports, since we're required to let you edit them."

 

And I hand her the mangled report, held open to one of the (many) pages with graphics floaties all over the text.

 

She takes one look at it, and, I swear to God, she says, "I'm short staffed, my staff doesn't have TIME to look at every page we edit."

 

I lost it, I seriously lost it.

 

I said, "Well, CLAIR, I had TIME to write every F*CKING page in that report! I think that probably takes a LITTLE more TIME than it does to EDIT a report!"

 

Our "Head Coach" shushed me with a hand in front of my face and said very sweetly in a little girl voice, "I know that you two are personal friends and have the highest regard for each other, and I welcome this sort of spirited discussion on quality improvement, but right now we have a mission statement to craft...."

 

 

I said, "Ma'am, I may not be the best person to represent our dept. in this series of meetings, I will probably delegate an assistant to attend the next one."

 

And that's what I did.

[UstadKhanAli]

I'm really disliking my current job right now, but I'm not being whipped or whatever, and the money's okay, so I'll continue.

[Ernest Buckley]

Gee whiz Terry, sounds like you replaced me on an old job I once had.

 

We had many meetings, 95% of them had nothing to do with me. Endless paper work... Used to "love" getting the notes from our meetings. Yeah, I really needed to be reminded of the meeting that wasted 2 hours of my life. Not only did they want me to attend the meeting, but now I had to read the notes and make sure they were correct?

 

It came time for me to take notes... I turned in a one pager... the boss calls me...

 

Boss: "Are they pages missing in your report?"

 

Me: "Nope, its all on one page."

 

Boss: "How can this be? We had a 2 hour meeting?"

 

Me: "Hmm, I don`t know, thats all I heard."

 

Click.

[MrKnobs]

I'm really disliking my current job right now, but I'm not being whipped or whatever, and the money's okay, so I'll continue.

 

This is the majority opinion.

 

Or as Jack Black said, "Hate your job? Wanna quit? Well, there's a support group for that now. It's called 'All of us' and it meets at the bar every night after work."

 

Terry D.

[UstadKhanAli]

This is the majority opinion. Or as Jack Black said, "Hate your job? Wanna quit? Well, there's a support group for that now. It's called 'All of us' and it meets at the bar every night after work." Terry D.

 

 

Yeah, that's about it. I'm gonna ride it out, and then consider a transfer elsewhere within the district (I'm a teacher) or, when the economy and the other districts get economically stronger, whenever that is, look for jobs there. In the mean time, I need to get far better at the Fine Art of Not Giving A Sh*t. Unfortunately, I typically fail miserably at that, as I'm hardly what you would call unflappable at work.

[Cry Logic]

Man I've done so many low level jobs over the years it's hard

pick the worst one but I reckon I'll give that prize to the dairy

factory I worked in in for 3 weeks in my early 20's.

 

A twisting, winding production line, consisting of metal rollers,

that transported what seemed like 100 zillion glass milk bottles

around, over, under, up, down, through, and across the factory

floor ... the sound of glass and metal crashing against each other

at mind numbing level ... all this in a concrete and metal environment,

in which, if everything was turned off and you clapped your hands,

the echo/reverb would go on for about 20 seconds!

 

When I 1st complained about the noise they shifted me onto the yogurt

table, at the end of the yogurt production line, where my job, along with

1/2 a dozen other workers was to put the lids on the yogurt containers

after they'd been filled by the gun worker who held a long tube that the

yogurt spewed from at a very fast rate.

 

This was still in the same huge room as the milk bottle production line,

but over the other side ..... still unbearably noisy!

 

After almost 3 weeks my boss, who knew I hated the noise gave me the

job of going out to the storeroom, which was out the back of the factory

in another room , which was mercifully quiet because it was full of

cardboard and paper packaging.

 

But the new job was stamping yogurt container lids with the date..

 

I would get a box of lids, open it up ... inside were something like 500

lids, in stacks, each lid firmly pressed into the one under it so maybe

50 in a stack?

 

Pull off a lid, jab the date stamp onto the inkpad, stamp the lid, throw it into another box,

pull off a lid, jab the date stamp onto the inkpad, stamp the lid, throw it into another box,

pull off a lid, jab the date stamp onto the inkpad, stamp the lid, throw it into another box,

pull off a lid, jab the date stamp onto the inkpad, stamp the lid, throw it into another box,

pull off a lid, jab the date stamp onto the inkpad, stamp the lid, throw it into another box,

pull off a lid, jab the date stamp onto the inkpad, stamp the lid, throw it into another box,

pull off a lid, jab the date stamp onto the inkpad, stamp the lid, throw it into another box,

pull off a lid, jab the date stamp onto the inkpad, stamp the lid, throw it into another box,

pull off a lid, jab the date stamp onto the inkpad, stamp the lid, throw it into another box,

pull off a lid, jab the date stamp onto the inkpad, stamp the lid, throw it into another box,

pull off a lid, jab the date stamp onto the inkpad, stamp the lid, throw it into another box,

pull off a lid, jab the date stamp onto the inkpad, stamp the lid, throw it into another box,

pull off a lid, jab the date stamp onto the inkpad, stamp the lid, throw it into another box,

pull off a lid, jab the date stamp onto the inkpad, stamp the lid, throw it into another box,

pull off a lid, jab the date stamp onto the inkpad, stamp the lid, throw it into another box,

pull off a lid, jab the date stamp onto the inkpad, stamp the lid, throw it into another box,

pull off a lid, jab the date stamp onto the inkpad, stamp the lid, throw it into another box,

pull off a lid, jab the date stamp onto the inkpad, stamp the lid, throw it into another box,

pull off a lid, jab the date stamp onto the inkpad, stamp the lid, throw it into another box,

pull off a lid, jab the date stamp onto the inkpad, stamp the lid, throw it into another box,

pull off a lid, jab the date stamp onto the inkpad, stamp the lid, throw it into another box,

pull off a lid, jab the date stamp onto the inkpad, stamp the lid, throw it into another box,

pull off a lid, jab the date stamp onto the inkpad, stamp the lid, throw it into another box,

pull off a lid, jab the date stamp onto the inkpad, stamp the lid, throw it into another box,

pull off a lid, jab the date stamp onto the inkpad, stamp the lid, throw it into another box,

pull off a lid, jab the date stamp onto the inkpad, stamp the lid, throw it into another box,

pull off a lid, jab the date stamp onto the inkpad, stamp the lid, throw it into another box,

pull off a lid, jab the date stamp onto the inkpad, stamp the lid, throw it into another box,

pull off a lid, jab the date stamp onto the inkpad, stamp the lid, throw it into another box.....

 

Aaaaaaaaaagh!

 

I lasted 1/2 a day ... then I cracked, went out to the time clock,

clocked off and went home ....never went back.

 

I have forgotten more jobs like that than I can remember.

 

All kinds of low level, minimum wage horror.

 

But that one still stands out as probably the worst.

[John Sayers]

I was the one feeding the dirty bottles into the milk bottle cleaning machine

[Magpel]

Hey, who knows, maybe I made a couple of comma splices or something, could happen.

 

In fact, it happened twice in this very sentence! (I understand that forum posts are not buttoned-down writing. I am so sloppy in my forum posts, I sometimes wonder if people even believe me when I say I write/edit for a living.)

[Lukenskywalker]

 

God Rasputin, I really admire your restraint...

You shoudn't have held back...you should have expressed how you REALLY felt about her.

[Synonym Music]

God Rasputin, I really admire your restraint... You shoudn't have held back...you should have expressed how you REALLY felt about her.

Bitch burned her own bridge.

 

Rarely is it the people that I dislike at bad jobs. Maybe I've been lucky? Who knows. It's oftentimes the working conditions. I don't mind the workload, I don't mind the pay - it's that they don't want you to do any of it in a reasonable time frame.

 

Need a break? Too bad.

 

Need food? Too bad.

 

Getting tennis elbow from slinging all those cans of beer? Too bad.

 

Mold in the fridge? Too bad.

 

People are criticizing your work even though they didn't do the job? Too bad.

 

Customer knocked over two bottles of wine? Too bad.

 

Somebody knocked over malt liquor in the fridge? Too bad.

 

Gathering overstock takes more than two minutes? Too bad.

 

 

 

Most employers bring it on themselves, sorry to say.

[cx04332]

Picking shade tobacco in Ct in the dead of summer. 30 miles from home; if you quit, you walk home. Shade tobacco is grown under a flimsy tent. Sit on your ass in the dirt, between the rows of tobacco plants. Pick a couple leaves off the plant, lay them across your lap. Scoot on your butt to the next plant and repeat. When you get ten or so leaves on your lap, you put the pad in between the plants for someone to collect. Two 10 minute breaks and 30 minutes for lunch. Straw bosses randomly roaming through the fields. I lasted about 3 weeks. It was the only job available to 14 year olds. I lasted 3 weeks and was smart enough to quit at home.

[Ani]

The entire second floor administration at my job is women plus a couple of feminized men. These women cannot be bothered to work as they are constantly planning parties. They have birthday parties, team parties, reward ourselves for doing our job parties, or just the routine it's Tuesday at 3PM tea party. IN the time remaining, they gossip, conduct compex intrigues and back stabbings, and just generally talk the day away. I don't mean to characterize ALL women this way, nor to say that there aren't any workplaces with a lot of women who actually work, but this is how MY workplace operates.

 

 

You are far much nicer when you talk about women in your office than I am when I refer to women of that type in my workplace. Sounds like you work in a federal agency with a multi-tiered management structure. We have an entire department that is much like you describe; it's called In-Plant Support.

 

At one time our In-Plant Support department was packed lock-stock-and-barrel with highly professional and educated men with very few women in the department outside of SEXitaries and Ad(women)istrative ASSistants. As time passed and stronger laws were inacted regarding women's rights; the barriers began to break down.

 

Men in higher level positions, many who were married, found a way to "take care" of their mistresses at the expense of the company. They would create (unnecessary) management jobs and place their women into them. After a while, once sexual harassment laws started hammering down with "love gone bad" or "favor for favor's" grew out of control; Labor found a way to shut the women up by promoting them. It's really, REALLY sad that any company should have to suffer such dead weight.

 

BITCHES is a very complimenting word compared to the definition I would hang on women who steal a company blind by whoring their way to the top.

 

I can't say this is the case at your job, but I know that the women in our In-Plant Support department do not have a CLUE about how mail flow works or anything that needs to be in place to support operations in a major mail processing facility. There are a few men in the department, one who is the manager that likes lots of women, but out of an entire department of about 25 people; there are only THREE that have a clue as to what's going on. The rest of them pull reports; something that any office assistant could do. Sad part is, most of them are making close to 6 digit figures; probably ALL of them are if you count their benefits.

 

There have been countless times where major changes have, or are supposed to be, taking place whenever someone in In-Plant failed to consult with operations and the entire plan collapses and forces operations to exhaust MAJOR manhours to clean up messes that could have been avoided. It's infuriating to me that I am doing the work of 2+ people, due to cutbacks and such, and I still have people seeking me out to find answers rather than contacting our In-Plant Support department who should KNOW the answers. Some of our In-Plant people come to me :mad: to me to show them what they need to do.

 

Not too long ago, my manager called me into his office to meet with two Postal Inspectors who were seeking information as to tracking a mailer who felt their mails were being tampered with. It took me about five minutes to hear what the inspectors were seeking and review the reports they had to offer, and about another fifteen minutes to return all the information they had requested. They were floored with the expeditious handling of their request and they told my manager that they had spent two full days with our In-Plant Support dept just trying to find a place to start and they had not accomplished anything. Of course, they ask me if I minded if they requested my assistance the next time the needed research. Without delay, I said, not at all; I'd be happy to help out.

 

It just really gets my goat that the people in In-Plant Support start out as level 18's and go all the way up to 25's and 26's. I'm a level 14. This kind of stuff happens all the time and often time, I'm asked to help assist someone from the outside by my operations managers while In-Plant Support women are busy planning dinners, gossiping, or working for the good of the MALE service. My job is stressful enough without the extra added burdens of doing someone else's job while they are busy DOING someone.

 

They are highly paid hookers, or glorified sexitaries, but they certainly have no place in management.

[deanmass]

I gotta say reading these, I am an AWESOME boss:)

 

I have a staff of two. They are supposed to to work 8-4:30, but I let them work 6-2:30, or any increment in between. All I care about is that we have coverage, and the jobs get done. I tend to be in about 8:30 more towards 5, so in the end, we get more coverage, every one is happy re: schedules and the people actually get more support (we are IT support for 5 buildings/500 ish staff).

 

In some of these case, I know it does not apply, but, if you have accountable people, pay them for x numbers of hours to do x number of work, how they accomplish that work in general does not matter, nor does the 'when' as long as the customer is satisfied with the outcome.

 

Of course, at any time, someone above could come rattle this, but, that would really be stupid, since we do alot with a little now. I am generally big on forward thinking in business, and like many of the ideas I see on ted.com. This one speaks to what I am talking about here.

[nerol1st]

K-Mart when their stocks went down back in 2002. I swore I would never work retail again.

 

As far as worst physical job goes (cause k-mart isn't that bad as far as the labor goes):

 

56 hours (6 days) a week in a warehouse gathering orders while the cunts in upper management figured out why their automated system failed (I only had a high school ed. at the time and I could have told you why ).

 

We counted how many miles we walked a day using one of those step thingys, we sub tracked 2 miles for error on the unit and still came up with a figure of over 25 miles a day.

 

What made that job worse was it was a non for profit Christian organization. I don't have any beef with religion, but mixing it with work is just about the worse nightmares ever.

[rasputin1963]

God Rasputin, I really admire your restraint... You shoudn't have held back...you should have expressed how you REALLY felt about her.

 

Pretty much covers it, don't it?

[Godsky]

Doorman and cleaner and a bar that was on the verge of being condemmed.

lasted about 6 months as it was during college days, and got to see some good bands and one gig myself.

Other working in a factory/warehouse which was always hot as hell regardless and the smell of that glue used for pvc pipes was verging on sickening....

[ggm1960]

For a short while in the early 80s I worked in a foundry shoveling black sand up onto a conveyor belt in a small room under the foundry floor.

[rasputin1963]

Once I was playing a grand piano in the dark, wainscoted lobby of the venerable old Gunter Hotel in San Antonio.

 

The piano they had me playing was an ancient Chickering full concert grand... made of blond wood, with old-fashioned gilded engraving and whatnot on it. Maybe made in the 1930's or so.

 

It was a very decrepit old thing, and one day-- true as God--- the legs just broke and the piano collapsed to the floor, in a puff of ancient dust. I ended up with the keyboard propped up on my lap, while the strings and sounding board of the piano were at ground level.

 

I should've been angry, but I found it kinda funny, really. Like something out of Laurel & Hardy or the Marx Brothers. So, just to create a hilarious scene, I did not bat an eyelash--- and continued to play the piano exactly as it lay.

[Cry Logic]

I was the one feeding the dirty bottles into the milk bottle cleaning machine

 

 

LOL!

[Phait]

This made me laugh! Thanks

 

Once I was playing a grand piano in the dark, wainscoted lobby of the venerable old Gunter Hotel in San Antonio. The piano they had me playing was an ancient Chickering full concert grand... made of blond wood, with old-fashioned gilded engraving and whatnot on it. Maybe made in the 1930's or so. It was a very decrepit old thing, and one day-- true as God--- the legs just broke and the piano collapsed to the floor, in a puff of ancient dust. I ended up with the keyboard propped up on my lap, while the strings and sounding board of the piano were at ground level. I should've been angry, but I found it kinda funny, really. Like something out of Laurel & Hardy or the Marx Brothers. So, just to create a hilarious scene, I did not bat an eyelash--- and continued to play the piano exactly as it lay.

[Rabid]

Easy answer. ... But the absolute WORST job was for a few months in 1991 or so, when I did cold-call telemarketing for a construction company. Yep... I sat there all day with a list of numbers, calling people who absolutely did NOT want to hear from some jerk trying to set up appointments for texture-coating their houses. Not only did I hate every moment of it, but the office was dingy and gross, the people I worked with were even dingier and grosser, and ever since then, I've been a lot sympathetic toward telemarketers who get through to my own home. It was terrible. It ills me just to think about it. Gah!

 

And yet, it somehow steered you down the career path to marketing weasel!

 

 

[Oosell]

I had agig between gigs where I was labouring for a builder.

One job was digging up sewer pipes that were blocked and turds and paper kept appearing.

 

Just the ting before lunch.....to put you off

[Rabid]

My first good paying job was flunky at a coal washer plant. I did everything from shovel coal that had spilled off of beltlines to operating the main control panel for the plant. The worst part was cleaning the bathrooms. Miners would come there to use the bathroom and clog up the toilets. Some of them did not understand the concept of flushing. I worked there for 5 years, took my retirement, bought a professional quality keyboard rig, and quit to become a full time musician.