I worked at a convenient store, and my boss barely spoke English. I went to a show last Friday, and he told me it was fine if I had the day off, but when I came to work the next day, I got fired for missing work.
I'll never work for someone who can't fluently speak English!
Pizza. Some fat asshole came in and ordered a taco pizza. So, I put about 150 sliced jalapenos on it and covered them with cheese. He never ordered one again.
I've been lucky; I wish I had a horror story of turning a big heavy crank all summer or cleaning farm animals. Waitressing could suck at times and I spent a mind-numbing week at a fashion PR office before I walked out.
i was a telemarketer once, only for 4 days but that was nothing compared to the summer i had to dress up like a giant porcupine named spike and take pictures with 3-12 year old kids in the hot hot sun. so great..
the first day i moved to new york, i got a job off craigslist working as a server at a fancy little french restaurant that had maybe 6 tables. really small. the boss lady yelled at me and threw hot coffee at me..so as frank sinatra was singing "my way" on the speakers, i took the big vat of french onion soup and dumped it on the floor, grabbed money off a table, ran over to the open kitchen in the middle and grabbed a few pieces of raw filet mignon and put em in a bag, and flipped her off and ran out of the restaurant.
i've had a bunch of shitty jobs, but the worst was when i tried doing telemarketing for a hot minute when i was 19 or 20. i lasted three days, two of which were training and i wasn't even on the phone. i hated calling people, but tried it because the money was decent.
a close second would be when i worked in death claims at metlife. that lasted for 1.5-years. i basically filed claims and sorted death certificates. it was pretty horrible.
There are a few candidates. Probably working the Mcclusky machine at the pear packing plant back in high school over the summer.
The Mcclusky is a device that unfolds cardboard boxes and fills them with pears that come off a conveyor belt. The cardboard would get jammed up in the gears and I'd have to clear it, sometimes the pears would also.
This was also the lowest paying job I've ever held and I think it was no coincidence. Generally the better I've been paid the better I've been treated.
I've had some shitty jobs, but I think the worst was once when I was temping, I got sent to a place where I couldn't actually DO anything. They hired a temp, but just needed someone to fill a seat. I couldn't type, they wouldn't give me any work, but I also couldn't read or anything. I had to just sit there. Literally, just sit there. No thanks. I've had shitty jobs, like McDonalds, when I was younger, but this was really like mental torture.
One summer I took a job for my dad cleaning out an office building that he had just moved out of... because of sewage damage.
I spent a few weeks hauling piss and shit soaked insulation up and down stairways and to the trucks and dumpsters. I am amazed I ever washed the stink off.
I worked at Sylvan Learning Center for about two months. I quit after the owner suggested I clean the bathroom after a child got sick in it (I'm not talking mildly ill, either). I suggested a few things to the owner and got the hell out of there.
Like Phil, I think my worst job ever was at the pear packing plant. 2nd worst would probably be a bottling line at a winery. Incredibly monotonous, draining, boring work.
Hands down worst job: newly hired academic director of corrupt, seatshop style "bicultural center". Formerly run by the U.S. Embassy, the thing was a shadow of its former self and a real shit hole in 2003.
All I did there was sweat, sit in my broken AC closet office, and wipe the dust off me. Managua is a real dusty place.
I lasted a month and then the typhoid fever, that I think I got from the cafeteria there, began to set in. Actually in retrospect I think the illness was better than the job.
I worked at the mall at a kiosk selling manicure sets. I had to chase people down and massage their hands with lotion. I hate touching people!! People have dirty hands, moles, warts...ugh. I lasted a week.
Ryan, does that make me your worst boss ever? I think Phil hated the McCluskey's so much because he cut his head on a bolt that was hanging down in the "cave" that he had to work in to clear damaged boxes. The McCluskey job was shitty but better than many jobs at the pear sheds. My worst job was at the Pear Sheds too, and was my first job. As a pear packer, I had to manually wrap pears in tissue paper and place them in a 4/5s bushel box for 10 hours a day, 6 days/week. We were expected to pack ~100 boxes a day, I could only do about 60. The job sucked, I hated it, but I made ok money for a teenage summer job and it put hair on my chest and taught me all sorts of values and allowed to understand manual labor and the relationship of labor to a company.
Again, worst job was at the pear sheds....it was cannery foreman my last year there...and although it paid alright for the time and i made $$$ in overtime...it was the most stressful, busy, exhausting job i have ever had...i rarely had time for lunch/coffee breaks...The bossman tom always loved to always try and push me to the next level too...also my assistant foreman knew nothing of what true management work is and caused all sorts of problems that way...i am so surprised i did not quit...
ANd i agree with phil, the more money you make, generally the better paid you are...
my first job was a cashier at the Cinnabon at Sun Valley Mall in Concord. that was okay. my boss was a total bitch.
one of the worst jobs was doing phone surveys for the sociology department in college. totally sucked. as jake said, getting told 'no' hundreds of times a day gets old.
I worked for a psychotic, delusional woman with an associates' degree in business who decided it would be fun and lucrative to run her own high school. Over the course of the year, she lied to overseas parents to gouge them for more money, pissed off te russian mob, threw keys at my head, insulted the way my mother raised me, called me a son-of-a-bitch, and paid me 12$ an hour, not including prep time. I made 12000 for an entire year living in LA (where my rent was 800 a month). The school has since been turned in to a Kaballah center.
Ooh! I also worked at a snowball (snowcone for the non-marylanders) stand when I was 13, and gained like 25 pounds. I also ended up with one giant Popeye arm from holding the grinding lever down. Hence my overwhelming popularity freshman year.
construction helper... in terms of heirarchy, you are one step below the construction worker. You're just the guy, who carries the material to wherever they need it... but looking at the the Portugese working next door, who made the foundation for 8 Deutsche Mark/hour made me feel good again... that job REALLY sucks...
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22 comments:
When I was in high school, I did a couple of stints as telemarketer. It's the worst. Getting told "no" hundreds of times a day really wears on you.
I worked at a convenient store, and my boss barely spoke English. I went to a show last Friday, and he told me it was fine if I had the day off, but when I came to work the next day, I got fired for missing work.
I'll never work for someone who can't fluently speak English!
Pizza. Some fat asshole came in and ordered a taco pizza. So, I put about 150 sliced jalapenos on it and covered them with cheese. He never ordered one again.
I've been lucky; I wish I had a horror story of turning a big heavy crank all summer or cleaning farm animals. Waitressing could suck at times and I spent a mind-numbing week at a fashion PR office before I walked out.
i was a telemarketer once, only for 4 days but that was nothing compared to the summer i had to dress up like a giant porcupine named spike and take pictures with 3-12 year old kids in the hot hot sun. so great..
the first day i moved to new york, i got a job off craigslist working as a server at a fancy little french restaurant that had maybe 6 tables. really small. the boss lady yelled at me and threw hot coffee at me..so as frank sinatra was singing "my way" on the speakers, i took the big vat of french onion soup and dumped it on the floor, grabbed money off a table, ran over to the open kitchen in the middle and grabbed a few pieces of raw filet mignon and put em in a bag, and flipped her off and ran out of the restaurant.
i've had a bunch of shitty jobs, but the worst was when i tried doing telemarketing for a hot minute when i was 19 or 20. i lasted three days, two of which were training and i wasn't even on the phone. i hated calling people, but tried it because the money was decent.
a close second would be when i worked in death claims at metlife. that lasted for 1.5-years. i basically filed claims and sorted death certificates. it was pretty horrible.
There are a few candidates. Probably working the Mcclusky machine at the pear packing plant back in high school over the summer.
The Mcclusky is a device that unfolds cardboard boxes and fills them with pears that come off a conveyor belt. The cardboard would get jammed up in the gears and I'd have to clear it, sometimes the pears would also.
This was also the lowest paying job I've ever held and I think it was no coincidence. Generally the better I've been paid the better I've been treated.
I've had some shitty jobs, but I think the worst was once when I was temping, I got sent to a place where I couldn't actually DO anything. They hired a temp, but just needed someone to fill a seat. I couldn't type, they wouldn't give me any work, but I also couldn't read or anything. I had to just sit there. Literally, just sit there. No thanks. I've had shitty jobs, like McDonalds, when I was younger, but this was really like mental torture.
One summer I took a job for my dad cleaning out an office building that he had just moved out of... because of sewage damage.
I spent a few weeks hauling piss and shit soaked insulation up and down stairways and to the trucks and dumpsters. I am amazed I ever washed the stink off.
I worked at Sylvan Learning Center for about two months. I quit after the owner suggested I clean the bathroom after a child got sick in it (I'm not talking mildly ill, either). I suggested a few things to the owner and got the hell out of there.
Like Phil, I think my worst job ever was at the pear packing plant. 2nd worst would probably be a bottling line at a winery. Incredibly monotonous, draining, boring work.
Hands down worst job: newly hired academic director of corrupt, seatshop style "bicultural center". Formerly run by the U.S. Embassy, the thing was a shadow of its former self and a real shit hole in 2003.
All I did there was sweat, sit in my broken AC closet office, and wipe the dust off me. Managua is a real dusty place.
I lasted a month and then the typhoid fever, that I think I got from the cafeteria there, began to set in. Actually in retrospect I think the illness was better than the job.
I worked at the mall at a kiosk selling manicure sets. I had to chase people down and massage their hands with lotion. I hate touching people!! People have dirty hands, moles, warts...ugh. I lasted a week.
Ryan, does that make me your worst boss ever? I think Phil hated the McCluskey's so much because he cut his head on a bolt that was hanging down in the "cave" that he had to work in to clear damaged boxes. The McCluskey job was shitty but better than many jobs at the pear sheds. My worst job was at the Pear Sheds too, and was my first job. As a pear packer, I had to manually wrap pears in tissue paper and place them in a 4/5s bushel box for 10 hours a day, 6 days/week. We were expected to pack ~100 boxes a day, I could only do about 60. The job sucked, I hated it, but I made ok money for a teenage summer job and it put hair on my chest and taught me all sorts of values and allowed to understand manual labor and the relationship of labor to a company.
Again, worst job was at the pear sheds....it was cannery foreman my last year there...and although it paid alright for the time and i made $$$ in overtime...it was the most stressful, busy, exhausting job i have ever had...i rarely had time for lunch/coffee breaks...The bossman tom always loved to always try and push me to the next level too...also my assistant foreman knew nothing of what true management work is and caused all sorts of problems that way...i am so surprised i did not quit...
ANd i agree with phil, the more money you make, generally the better paid you are...
my first job was a cashier at the Cinnabon at Sun Valley Mall in Concord. that was okay. my boss was a total bitch.
one of the worst jobs was doing phone surveys for the sociology department in college. totally sucked. as jake said, getting told 'no' hundreds of times a day gets old.
I worked for a psychotic, delusional woman with an associates' degree in business who decided it would be fun and lucrative to run her own high school. Over the course of the year, she lied to overseas parents to gouge them for more money, pissed off te russian mob, threw keys at my head, insulted the way my mother raised me, called me a son-of-a-bitch, and paid me 12$ an hour, not including prep time. I made 12000 for an entire year living in LA (where my rent was 800 a month).
The school has since been turned in to a Kaballah center.
Ooh! I also worked at a snowball (snowcone for the non-marylanders) stand when I was 13, and gained like 25 pounds. I also ended up with one giant Popeye arm from holding the grinding lever down. Hence my overwhelming popularity freshman year.
pretty much anything minimum wage. those jobs just waste your time. i was a hostess one time. i do not have the personality for that position.
construction helper... in terms of heirarchy, you are one step below the construction worker. You're just the guy, who carries the material to wherever they need it... but looking at the the Portugese working next door, who made the foundation for 8 Deutsche Mark/hour made me feel good again... that job REALLY sucks...
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