worst job ever?

Worst job I ever had was working for a Internet provider comapany and having to answer their phones, so many angry or upset customers and I was basically told by my boss to fob them off with excuses or say it will be fixed, but the company clearly didn’t care. I was only there 2 months before I decided to quit. Now I am working for a Double glazing company and it’s far much better.

While I spent three years on the radio...six days a week...I enjoyed that...sort of. It was a small station rather like WKRP from Cincinatti. Just as soon as I got there, the jock before me split, and I had the station to myself. My friends would visit...we'd drink beer and get high...it was a playroom. I could use the audience to experiment on with comedy routines, and I played whatever the hell music I felt like playing. It was great...I totally got away with it. All money work has been this way for me. No, my worst job came from a chick named Carmen from Spain. You'd think a chick named Carmen from Spain would know how to...oh well Catholic upbringing...I'll get over it.

my two are less about the job and more about the dynamics of the work.

1. I was an out of state summer camp counselor. I was almost banned from leaving the premises (in new york) on the weekend to go to new jersey to get checked out by a doctor and get antibiotics for a chest illness. That was the first year the camp was ever run, and there was so much illegal stuff going on. We were paid far far far less than minimum wage, and sort of signed the contract before we knew that our travel there (very expensive, some people came from out of the country) was not covered or reimbursed and came out of our wages. I ended up making $300 (out of the $750 I thought I would get) for three weeks of awful full time work. Thankfully my friend worked at a doctor's office that summer and could get me my antibiotics for free.

2. I was a TA for a professor without tenure (had been teaching about 3 years) that had a tendency to insult the students (like for their weight) and put them down and had horrible teaching methods (always played loud music while she read them grad seminars she had supposedly converted for an undergraduate freshmen audience but not really-- and refused to repeat anything or spell anything out). When I sympathized with the kids a bit she immediately took it that i was undermining her authority and i was hereby a target of her malice. Also when i turned in a time sheet she harassed me for turning it in even though it was normal to do so... for what logical reason i do not know. She was very very inexperienced.

So yeah, i guess the worst work situations I have ever had involved really inexperienced people who had way too much authority (but were way to insecure) and took every simple comment or request as a personal attack. It was like, grow up!

Definitely the bank job where I sat at a desk and moved money from on place to another all day--on little pink pieces of paper. It was all electronic and my fun was getting up from my desk to cut the checks for the loan officers to pay off what I then thought was massive consumer credit debt but would now be a drop in the bucket of the average consumer's debt. I learned a lot but I used to have to find things to do at the end of the day once I got all my work done. This girl does not like to sit at a desk when all her work is done. I solved that problem by creating elaborate fantasy football charts! (We didn't have computers with internet access.) If you could pick on job where you felt your life draining away in every moment, that was the one for me!

But that's the kind of thing that inspires me to go for it with what I love. Creativity is so enlivening. The only way to live is to go for it!

Thanks to all for sharing.

Best,
Melanie

I believe in creativity in service to others. You can hear more at...www.publicradioquest.com/node/1855. Thanks for listening!

It's a tough choice...
there's
*the job I took (once) getting a mobile home that had sunk past the axles in the mud raised enough to be hauled away... by myself as a 16 year-old kid, with only an automobile bumper-jack (3rd runner-up)
.
* the time I took on cleaning out a cattle-hauling trailer for a semi driver... with just a water hose and a shovel - also when a teenager (2nd runner-up)
.
* telephone-soliciting to raise funds from alumni of Cal Tech (1st runner up)
.
* working on a bridge repair crew for the Texas Highway Department (as it was named then), to correct problems caused by substandard concrete UNDER the bridge: using a jackhammer, pushing it ABOVE my head (only the "little" 57 pound kind) to remove the concrete beneath the bridge... in West Texas summer heat... all day for several weeks
(it did help with building up forearms and triceps & such, but was not worth the resulting pain & soreness). Ow. (1st place?)
oh, yes... plese check my entry @
http://www.publicradioquest.com/audio/user/7099

One summer in high school I worked at the zoo at a concessions stand.
Working at the zoo... cool, right? WRONG. Hot. Sticky. SMELLY. Crabby parents indulging whiney kids.

People would as me what types of soda we served (even though the fountain was LITERALLY between us at eye level).

I got into the habit of responding, "Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, Human Blood, Pink Lemonade, and Root Beer."
They would do a double take and say, "Um, what?"
With a very innocent smile I would say, "Coke Diet Coke, Sprite, Pink Lemonade and Root Beer."

...

Eventually my boss told me to knock it off.

*sigh*

They're no fun.

............................
I'm a Punk Knitter!
http://www.publicradioquest.com/node/1320

Waiting to interview potential research subjects while in a university hospital ER waiting room from 7 to 11:30pm, 6 nights a week. The subjects had to "appear" to be elderly. Only had one potential subject in 2 months of work. Couldn't read a book or interact with hospital staff. Only watch TV. BOOORRRING. I did, however, get to watch every pitch of the 1988 World Series, so it wasn't all bad, just boring.

Speechguy

I can't believe I've entered!
Speechguy says, "Please listen, vote and comment. Thanks."

http://www.publicradioquest.com/node/840

This topic is uncannily related to my entry, which is a mini-essay about jobs that writers worked before they became famous as writers.

http://www.publicradioquest.com/node/1381

To answer the question, though, the worst job I ever worked was standing in the parking lot of a casino, waving an orange flag to try to persuade cars to park in our parking lot. This was in Colorado, during the summer, and there usually wasn't a cloud in the sky. I spent most of the day standing in a shadow of a telephone pole to keep from bursting into flames.

I took a job as a water blaster one summer. Basicly this job requires you to dress in a rain suit and crawl into a sewer and use a high pressure hose to "clean" the tanks and walls of the sewer. Let me tell you it is a job that you learn real quick how to keep your mouth shut incase something off the wall blowsback at you.

Click this link for free Beer and Wine!!!! http://www.publicradioquest.com/audio/user/8769

The best and the worst jobs I ever had were both for the U.S. Postal Service. First, I got a temp appointment doing Special Delivery (forerunner of today's Express Mail). I only had mail people actually wanted to get- like the Ponderosa Steakhouse payroll, airline tickets, letters from long-lost loved ones, etc. I'd cruise through the suburban speed traps because they couldn't interfere with the delivery of the mail. Everyone was hahppy to see me. What a great job! My next temp appointment was the night sort. Midnights, putting trays of mail piece by piece into little slots. To the union, the temps were scabs and management preyed on that attitude. One night, when it was ten below, I got sent outside to work the dock. Unload a semi full of National Geographic. Work I actually didn't mind. When I came back inside after completing my task, I passed by the bosses, who were gathered together for a yukfest. "Hey, Barfuss!" called my supervisor. "Where ya been?" Har, har, hars all around. Then the head guy on the shift added, "Yeah!. While you were out there we didn't have anybody to mop the floors." Har, har, har. I returned to my letter tray feeling very dispirited at receiving such a reward for my cheerfull willingness to help out. "Geez. What was that for?" I remember thinking how glad I was to be a temp, because if I needed that job for a career, over 20 or 30 years that sort of thing would eat at me and one day would be the last time and I'd end up shooting one of those m%#@*f%^@#s. And that's NOT a common thought that runs through my head. Ten years later, when people started what is now called "going postal" everyone was mystified why that could happen. I wasn't. I knew exactly why. And I was glad I wasn't there.
Jim Barfuss
http://www.publicradioquest.com/user/2824

“It is not success to succeed at being something you are not.”

Ugh hands down McDonald's. Not only was the pay the worst I'd ever had it just sucked all around. I worked the counter and took people's money and made french fries to keep them fresh. It was a second job for me and it didn't last very long LOL!! Only good thing I learned?? To ask for new french fries when I go there. I can spot old ones from way across the counter. Sad sad thing that is.....

More about me ... http://www.myspace.com/violet_rose07

"Then say you'll share with me one love, one lifetime; let me lead you from your solitude. Say you need me with you, here beside you, anywhere you go, let me go too, that's all I ask of you."

This whole thread could be turned into a reality TV show. Like America's Most Wanted, only with reenactments of peoples' worst jobs ever... LOL!!

America's Worst Jobs

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Please listen, then vote and comment if you are willing, to my 2 minutes of funk (sans funk)
http://www.publicradioquest.com/node/805

Worst job in itself: working at McDonald's after high school graduation. First job I ever got. I'm just not cut out for manual labor. Not that I'm too good for it, but because I'm not good enough for it. I don't wanna work that hard. I couldn't even make fries correctly. It was awful. HATED IT! Only thing I ever did right was make drinks and salads. I lasted 3 weeks.

Worst job I did in a job: furniture sales. Thankfully, it was not a commission-based position. I'm not pushy, persuasive or slick enough to be effective in sales. My boss said I was too nice. I don't think that's a bad thing. ;)

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Please listen, then vote and comment if you are willing, to my 2 minutes of funk (sans funk)
http://www.publicradioquest.com/node/805

I got to see how snobby people can get. That job was bogus, I got another job and just stopped going to that one. The servers there were pretty awesome though. Couldn't live off of that pay though, and I wasn't about to put up with that kind of stress every day to barely make by. I wound up working construction. This was around the time I started to get in to Radio as well. It was more of a hobby at first. Now I'm trying to make it my career.

When I first got my start in college radio, I was told that if I stuck around over the summer, they'd put me onto overnights (2-6am) and I'd quickly get enough hours and on-air experience to move up to late nights (10pm-2am) in the fall. Considering that on-air jocks only got one shift a week during the academic year and I'd be on EVERY night in July and August, I grabbed the chance.

But even a cheap summer sublet in a college town is expensive when you've got no income - overnight jocks didn't get paid. So I took a job as a campus custodian (working 7am to 4pm), cleaning out dorm rooms at the end of the semester, and making beds/cleaning toilets when the college turned the dorm into housing for summer conferences.

It's amazing how much loose change college students leave behind. On good days I pocketed as much as $20 in dimes, nickels, quarters, and of course pennies. And amazing how many people know the toothpaste trick for plugging up nail holes in walls. But when you wash the walls - voila! a minty fresh smell and nail holes appear.

It was the summer from hell. I'd go into the station at midnight to shadow the late night jock, pull all my albums and cuts prior to my show, then cue up the stuff on turntables (yeah, this was the early 80s) and replace the albums back in the huge music library as I played them. With all the paperwork and other stuff, I didn't make it out of the station until 6:30am, then I grabbed a morning cup of coffee and a bagel with cream cheese before starting my janitorial job at 7am. I went home at 4pm, ate an early dinner, tried to sleep from 5-10pm (the noisiest part of the day) with no air conditioning in a tiny sublet room, then got up and headed into the station at midnight.

I guess everybody who works in radio has to have that one summer from hell, but I don't know how I did it. I was constantly tired, I had very little money for food and no social life. But it did the trick. Later that school year, I was paid as full-time jock on the air over winter and spring breaks - doing morning drive, no less.

-- Linda

Visit me in my House by the Sea:
http://www.publicradioquest.com/audio/user/1432
http://blog.syracuse.com/communitycritics/linda_lowen/

You will simply have to trust by the detail in this story that what I say is true. Even calling these scenes back from the depths of my memory for the purpose of setting finger to keyboard makes me tremble in fright. When I was 18, I worked for this company called Centrobe (which is a James Bond villian's shadow corporation name if ever I've read one) and they handled issues with magazine subscriptions. Like, if you subscribe to Rolling Stone (which I don't, as a rule) and you don't get the issue that month, you call a number inside the magazine or on your subscription card, and it dials through to Centrobe. The company had two different locations in Colorado, where I grew up, and one in Florida, and at my location there were four huge football-field sized buildings that were connected as one building by a sort of Red Cross Logo-shaped connective hallway. Now, in the center of these four buildings, the center of the Red Cross Logo, there was a huge amount of space. If you rode the bus, like I did, you had to walk through the connective hallways to get to the back building (Building 3, I think) whre I worked. So everyday, I walk past the center of the building, where they have these enormous pallets of subscription cards all shrinkwrapped and stacked on top of one another, creating a kind of square building within the building. Now this building had hallways set in it so that the forklifts could drive new pallets of shrinkwrapped subscription cards into this building of pallets. But, see, the space was so big in there...it was very very strange. You couldn't see into it, it was dark in there, but it was SO MUCH SPACE! My joke at the time to my mom was that they must be operating on aliens in there.
So, a few months after I quit (or was fired, but I mean, what, are we splitting hairs here? I was a temp! That's what the word means, tem-PO-rary) I was deep in a late-night place with some of my friends and some extremely weird chemicals, and one of us suggested calling 666-6666, which we thought was hysterical. I thought it was too. Until it dialed through - "You have reached the offices of Centrobe Industries. We are closed for the evening..."
I leave the dots for you to connect.

Be Baffled By Bafflegab!
http://www.publicradioquest.com/node/1319

"All I ask is the chance to prove that money can't make me happy" - Spike Milligan

Well, I'll admit that the poison job was so bad I walked off at lunch the first day and should have left sooner! My position invloved pressing the spray buttons down onto aerosol cans of bug spray as they rolled off an assembly line. The small warehouse was packed with illegal and other aliens and me. Least so I surmised as I gazed through the blue haze. The floor was covered with iridescent pools of who knows what! We broke for lunch and I broke for the parking lot!
The heat job was the summer of 1980 here in North Texas. If you were here you'd remember it as the hottest summer ever. Nearly everyday that summer was over 100 degrees and the hottest day was 118 degrees. Smart me I got a job on the third shift. You'd think the night was the coolest time of the day...wrong, the heat built all day and only dissipated around the time we got off shift. My job? I pounded elbow tubes into air-conditioning coils between two welders next to a brazing furnace in an un-airconditioned building. I sweated out so much salt that my dark t-shirts were practically white. I had a full body heat rash. When I was laid off I was ecstatic! They promised the third shift would start up soon and I could get my job back. LOL I never checked back.
See what a Masters degree in Fine Arts will get you? Nothing really compares to those, though numerous companies tried. I now teach 8th grade art in public schools. Some people think it must be awful. Well, I'm here to tell you that the past 16 years have been a joy!...by comparison.
Ken Raney

I searched for a job, any job and I found one working at Buffalo Exchange, a chain store that buys and sells hipster clothing-- puffy vests, trucker hats, corduroy pants, old lady chic sweaters, and all manner of pretentious accessories. I did not buy or sell clothing. I was the office "assistant" (read: office bitch). It was my job to police the employees over whom I had exactly no authority. I was to keep track of their lateness, grade the quizzes they were given on the latest trends, and dole out marks to each of them based on their performance selling and buying the hippest clothes they could find. One of my prime regrets in life is that I did not tell my boss in my exit interview that it was the most annoying job I ever had.
--
Julie
DIY Nation

So I'm in a major state of broke and a friend give my name to a private investigator looking for an African-American Male to do some undercover work. Sounds exciting right? The job pays well, and the company is trying to catch a man who is sexually harassing the young men that work for him. So all I have to do is go to work at this factory, and just be me, and hope he'll come on to me, so we can bust the bad guy. Sounds easy right?
The job was working at a bread plant. More specifically, I was on the cleaning crew that worked 12 hour days 6 days a week, back breaking meticulous labor. After working there for three weeks I realized that the private detective had no idea what he was doing, and the company was really trying to set the supervisor up because they did not like him.
There have been a few times in my life when I've worked harder, but not many. The work was incredibly hard, and the supervisor had no desire to hit on me at all. I actually only saw him once every two weeks. And when I did see him, he was a nice man, who was only trying to take care of his crew.
One day I over heard management talking about the supervisor (even management didn't know I was undercover) and it was clear to me, that the whole case was fueled by Homophobia. The job was helping me pay off some outstanding debt, and I really wanted to stay just a few more weeks, but in principal, I couldn't do it. The next day without saying goodbye, I took my hardhat walk out of the door, and never looked back.

I worked as a temp for the Red Cross. I thought I'd be doing something I'd feel good about. Helping people, you know? Instead, I walked into a call center where I was given 12 hour shifts to call random people to ask them to donate blood. There were quotas. We had morning morale meetings. There were contests to see who could schedule the most appointments. It was greuling and mind-numbing work. We were encouraged to exaggerate, like there was a shortage of your blood type and someone might die if you don't come in. We would sell them on the free krispy creme donughts. I once got a guy mad after trying this tactic, in desperation. Turns out he was a cop. When people would say they'd passed out the last time they gave blood, we'd talk them into eating a big hamburger or a turkey sandwich before coming in. It sometimes worked, it often didn't. To work in a call center you've got to have a thick skin -- you face rejection almost every minute of the workday. I have so much sympathy for people who work in call centers, they are white-collar sweatshops.

Some of the funnies stories I've got have come from another great/awful job: substitute teaching. Some days it's amazing and makes me want to quit telling stories and get a teaching certificate. Other days, I wonder why we even try to educate our youth when many of them so obviously don't want to be there. Be nice to teachers, it's a rough, though rewarding, job.

elizabeth
news director
morning host/producer
kisu 91.1 fm pocatello, idaho