As I mentioned yesterday, Lands End has offered me one of their fantastic backpacks to offer to you, my fantastic readers. Unlike Dora’s backpack, the Lands End backpack is not bilingual, but it is indeed very cool, very useful and could help you find your way to the magic mountain. Or whatever. I am freely admitting here I haven’t been paying that close of attention to Dora and where she goes.
So let’s see, what kind of hoops can I make you jump through to get a backpack? Hmmm…
Okay. Nothing really to do with backpacks, but leave a comment telling me the worst job you ever had and I’ll choose the worst or most amusing or just some random one to win. I’ll go first since it’s my blog:
When I was 17-years-old, I took a job typing for an insurance company. That was back in the days of carbon paper, which came right after the Bronze Age. So my first day there, I was given this legal-size triplicate form to fill out on a manual typewriter and it had to be perfect. No mistakes. Not even one. Every time I made the smallest typo, I would have to start completely over. White Out wasn’t allowed because it hadn’t been invented yet and we weren’t allowed to use those little chalky white pieces of paper either because this was a mean and sadistic company. By the third time I got to the end of the form and typed s instead of w, I dropped my chin to my chest and closed my eyes and calculated how bad it would look if I started banging my head on the typewriter and would that get me out of work.
The one time I did manage to get to the end of the form without a mistake, the boss lady strolled by, took the form, looked down her nose at me over her reading glasses, looked at the form, looked back at me and then ripped it up with a little too much glee for my taste and then tossed the remains on my desk. So when it came time for lunch, I left and didn’t come back. I went home and cried to my mommy instead. The boss lady called my house looking for me and my mom said she didn’t think I would be coming back. I loved the days when my mommy stood between me and meanies.
Now you’re turn. I’ll randomly draw a name Sunday night and announce the winner on Monday and if you have a US mailing address, Lands End will send you backpack! Yay you!
If you don’t win the backpack and just want one anyway, Lands End is also offering free shipping to US residents July 31 through August 6. Simply enter the coupon code BACKTOSCHOOL and the pin 2382 when checking out at Lands End.
Terri says:
Wow! Am I the first to comment?? Well, I’ve only had 2 jobs in my lifetime. I can’t realy say that either of them are/were bad. My first job was my first summer in college. I worked as a nurse’s aid in a nursing home. The bad part of the job was having to clean bedpans and doing a lot of laundry. But, it wasn’t all bad. I loved those old people and enjoyed getting to know some of them. Before I worked there (the summer of ’78), I thought it was terrible to put someone in a nursing home. After working there for 3 months, I realized that it was necessary for the residents to be there. The “wrong” part of it was when no one came to see them while they were there.
My other job is my current occupation. I am an elementary teacher. I teach fifth grade language arts and social studies. In a few weeks, I’ll start my 28th year. I love my job! I think that I have the greatest job in the world! I can’t wait to meet my new class!!!
So, I’d still appreciate the backpack (or as my youngest used to call one…a “packpack”)even though my jobs weren’t (aren’t) bad at all. Thanks for the offer =)
July 31st, 2008 at 12:40 am
Jennifer says:
I think my worst job was as a janitor in college. It was from 3-7 a.m. The worst part was that I worked in the huge arts center and it was so spooky! A couple of times there were paintings in the gallery that terrified me–I could still tell you exactly where they were hanging, and it’s been 20 years!
I love that backpack. I could carry it next time I go to the gallery and maybe I won’t be so scared!
July 31st, 2008 at 12:58 am
Meg says:
This is fun! I think my phone survey job researching drug use was pretty bad. I had to call all the way up to 9pm and I kept waking up sweet little old ladies to ask them how much mary jane they smoked. I had a script that required to me keep asking about various drugs, even though my horrified grandmother-type friends kept insisting that they had never experimented with any of that nasty stuff. Each call was recorded for “quality” purposes and my boss was walking around listening in every so often. The end of the end came when I called a woman who had quite recently been widowed and she sobbed for a long time. I just listened and sympathized and never mentioned a single thing about LSD or even nicotine. I left and never returned, and it was only one of two jobs that I left without notice. The other one was as a cook at Wyatt’s Cafeteria where my manager kept trying to access my thermometer in the breast pocket of my white chef coat. Nuff said. Does that earn me a backpack?
)
July 31st, 2008 at 1:08 am
Jackie @ Our Moments Our Memories says:
I once worked at a hotel restaurant as a hostess/cocktail waitress. One particularly busy Saturday evening, we were told that the owner of the hotel was coming into town and would be there for dinner. He stopped in the lounge for a drink before going into the dining room.
I was carrying a heaping tray of empty wine glasses, and was following behind my boss who had ventured into the lounge for a moment to check on things. We were both headed back toward the kitchen, when suddenly he stopped in his tracks and turned around. I was moving with too much momentum to stop, and plowed into him, sending the wine glasses hurtling to the ground where they shattered right in front of the table of the Head Honcho Owner himself. My boss was mortified. I was mortified. I still cringe a little when I think about that night.
I cannot even imagine how awful your typing job must have been. I don’t know that I would have lasted the entire morning.
July 31st, 2008 at 1:10 am
Megan says:
Nothing brings me out of lurkdom faster than the chance for something free. *wink*
Because, you know, all homeschoolers need a good backpack to schlep their books from their bedroom downstairs to the kitchen table.
July 31st, 2008 at 1:29 am
Keryn says:
My worst job, hands down, was the summer between my freshman and sophomore years at college. I worked at a second-chance financing office, and I was the receptionist/front-line-of-defense. Seriously. I had to deal with soooo many angry, tired, broke, drunk, crazy people (there were good customers, too, but they usually just sent their checks in the mail, and I never dealt with them) that my faith in humanity was seriously wrinkled for a while. Add to that being accused of stealing $55 (turned out to be a data-entry problem from the OTHER RECEPTIONIST)…well, you can see why doing early-morning custodial work my sophomore year was a breeze.
July 31st, 2008 at 1:29 am
Mrs. Bubba says:
I’ve had quite a few jobs, some of them had been bad, some have been outright horrible. One that made me make a complete career change. I was completing my BA in Interior Design and one of the assignments I had with the Jr Designer was to go to someone’s home, get down on the ground with manicure scissors and trim the fibers on their sisal rugs. I decided right then and there, crawling on my belly that I was leaving the field. I completed my degree but never pursued that field after that.
July 31st, 2008 at 1:32 am
Diane J. says:
I hired on to be a live-in babysitter. It turned into live-in babysitter, housekeeper, yard girl, cook, bottle washer, etc. etc. etc. I was 19 and it almost put me off ever getting married and having my own child(ren).
I’d love to win that backpack for my granddaughter! (I guess you might infer that I managed to work past all that angst I mentioned about the live-in babysitter gig.)
July 31st, 2008 at 1:43 am
graceunderautism says:
The worst one I had was actually a volunteer job at a vet clinic. It turned out to be less of a job and more of a “show and tell, this s what to expect if you want to be a vet.”
The first few days they had me observing surgeries. Atleast once a day there was cauterizing to do. The first day they were “burning” callus type growths off of a little dog. The smell was so overwhelmingly disgusting that I thought I would pass out. I got very light headed and nauseous. The proceedure took forever! So gross.
I was much happier in the surgery prep area where we just gave pets shots and shaved areas.
July 31st, 2008 at 1:45 am
Karen {simply a musing blog} says:
Most definitely the worst (but also the most fun) job I had was when I was fresh out of college – I worked for a new, small fish processing company in Homer, Alaska gutting and cleaning fish for 12-14 hours a day.
It was the worst, because I smelled like fish the entire summer. It was fun because it was owned by three very cute boys (one of whom made headlines a couple years ago when Sara Evans divorced him) and my best friend and I were the only two girls who worked for them – we spent every weekend there playing and singing country music with some guys who would later be backup bands for some of the most famous country stars there are.
July 31st, 2008 at 2:11 am
Janera says:
Thinking, thinking, thinking. Because that backpack would save me some back-to-school bucks bigtime. Try as I might, I just can’t come up with a job that was awful, horrible, terrible. There’s something to add to my thankfulness list, huh?
However, I was fired once. At the time, I thought my life would never be the same again, because, well, now I was among those who had been fired, for Pete’s sake!
In my 20′s, right out of college, I worked for a well service company in the oil fields “out here” in Texas. One of my primary duties was to complete a daily form that made not one bit of sense to me but was very important to the boss, for some reason. Some numbers and stuff. Who knows.
I apparently disappointed the boss because I made mistakes on the form. Not just once.
It was a short-lived career opportunity.
July 31st, 2008 at 2:19 am
trish says:
After I graduated high school in California, I moved to Hawaii to live with my mother who had just gone through a second divorce. I used to tell her what clothes to buy, what music to listen to, and how to do her hair. I made her rent us a studio apartment above Eggs N Things in Waikiki so that I could play volleyball on the beach everyday. She would come home from work and find me parked in front of the TV with flies buzzing off me. I felt bad about that and became desperate to find a job. My first interview was with a skinny Asian guy with bloodshot eyes and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. Every cell in my body was telling me to walk out the door, but I made it all the way through the application which was more like a contract showing the phrases in Japanese that I would have to learn in order to serve a set dinner to the tourists during a hula show. I exchanged my complete application for a polyester uniform and was told to go try it on. It had to be the most disgusting thing ever to hang from spaghetti straps. I stood in that tiny, grungy bathroom looking at the aloha attire I was expected to wear and decided that I couldn’t do it. I love my mother, but I just could not do it. I apologized to the man and left. My mother did not even blink an eye when I came back to our apartment still jobless. The next day I found a job as a cocktail waitress in a Steak and Lobster restaurant right across the street from where I played ball. I worked there for a few years very happily. I would run from one end of the beach to the outdoor shower, throw on a much nicer aloha uniform, work the dinner shift, and then walk or ride my bike home. Even now I can still smell the cigarette smoke that threatened to be my first job in Hawaii and I’m happy to have escaped that nightmare.
July 31st, 2008 at 2:24 am
Karla @ Ramblin' Roads says:
I love this backpack! I hope I win one!
The worse job I ever had was one summer during college as a nurse’s aide at a nursing home. I loved working with the elderly people… but I was quickly disillusioned as to how glamourous a career nursing was! See… I had been reading too many Cherry Ames books. I stuck it out for the one summer, but have never had a desire to go in the field of medicine since then. God bless those who do!
July 31st, 2008 at 2:38 am
Lexi says:
Ah, how to decide…
I worked at the BMV. Talk about catching crap all day long.
or…
I worked at an oil-change place for 4 years. In the summer, it was horrible. The cars were hot so I was constantly burning myself. I have scars to this day. In the winter, it was horrible, because snow and salt and yuck would melt and drip down into my face and hair. Combining with the motor oil and other whatever-fluids-were-leaking that were already on my face and in my hair. Oh, and because I was a woman working on cars, I got hit on by weirdos constantly. Because, apparently, being covered in grease and yuck is HAWWT (a la Paris Hilton).
July 31st, 2008 at 2:40 am
Anna says:
My worst job ever was working with a crazy, raving lunatic. My friends warned me but I thought I could get along with anyone. When I went to work at the new salon, I had no idea, the owner would belittle me in front of my clients. I had no idea that she would yell at me for not selling enough hair products. I had no idea she would be upset if I had a client waiting on the couch in the waiting area. I cannot believe I did this, but it got to the point where I actually asked my clients to wait in their cars and I would go out and get them when I was ready because I didn’t want to upset the crazy salon owner. It lasted a month and I moved on. It was the most stressful time in my life. I guess I can’t get along with everyone.
July 31st, 2008 at 2:45 am
Stretch Mark Mama says:
I’ve always been an Office Girl myself. As part of my first job (in high school), I removed staples from papers and erased pencil markings off of blueprints. On the more challenging days, I got to shred papers.
Some days I had so little work to do that I would sit in my corner and do little experiments with Post-it-notes, seeing how many times I could stick them to my desk before they’d lose their “stick.” You’d be surprised. I think I got up to a few hundred. Fffft, fffft, fffft, fffft. There’s a real rhythm to that that not everyone has a gift for.
And! If you pick me (brown nose, brown nose), I’ll give the backpack to a family in my neighborhood who can’t afford back-to-school supplies.
I might even stick in a pad of post-it-notes for the boring lecture days. Snirk, snirk.
July 31st, 2008 at 2:52 am
jennifer says:
I would love a new backpack!
I’ve been lucky with jobs…I’ve never had a really terrible one. Here’s a pretty bad experience, though:
I babysat throughout junior high, high school, and college. I loved most of the families I babysat for, but there was this one family that wasn’t my favorite. Anyway, the little girl, four at the time, decided to run away from home…while I was babysitting! Luckily, I found her and convinced her that now wasn’t the time for her big escape. I still can’t figure out how she got out of the house so quickly! Four year olds can be sneaky!
July 31st, 2008 at 3:15 am
Photochick says:
I think the worst job I ever had was working at Buffalo Wild Wings… I started there a few months before I turned 21 as a cashier with the promise of a serving position as soon as I did turn 21.
I hated that job… I always ended up smelling like smoke before the night was out, I worked til the wee hours in the morning, and many nights involved cleaning up puke – GROSS! But I stuck it out til my birthday, since I knew I’d end up with a serving position (and would make a killing in tips)
Well, my 21st birthday came & went, and after asking the manager for the millionth time about the serving position I was assured he said: “Look, I never actually promised you’d be a server as soon as you turned 21. Wait a couple of years & if there’s an opening, we’ll see if you’re a good fit.”
I quit on the spot. And come to think of it, I’ve pretty much avoided Buffalo Wild Wings ever since.
~~~~~
AM, your story is MUCH sadder than mine, though! I think I would have needed therapy after a job experience like yours. I mean, the hardest job I had (til I was 20 anyway) was a lifeguard. Yeah, getting paid to get a burn tan. I can’t blame you one little bit for not going back. And the 5-year-old still lurking deep inside of me has something to say to that mean boss-lady… “PPPPPPPHHHHHHHTTTTTTTT!!!!!”
I Love you, AM! And thank you SO very much for another awesome contest (hey, it gave me a chance to vent!) and I obviously appreciate very much the opportunity to participate. Much love to you and yours, take care and God Bless.
xoxo
Amanda ~ Photochick
July 31st, 2008 at 3:45 am
Judith says:
I have been blessed with jobs I have really enjoyed, but from the perspective of an innocent bystander, the worst job I’ve had would be helping with the milking on my dad’s dairy farm, a job which include the clean-up afterward. Let’s just say there were rubber boots, squeegees, and high pressure water hoses involved in getting the milking barn clean again.
And, I would *love* to win a Land’s End backpack. I purchased mine in ’96 and have used it almost daily, stuffing it into bicycle baskets, shipping it as checked luggage and taking it to three continents plus Australia.
July 31st, 2008 at 3:53 am
Tammy Marcelain says:
My least favorite job experience was working as a hostess in an Italian Restaurant. To the average customer the employees were very nice. But behind the scenes they were twisted and angry and took out their twisted anger on the 16 year old hostess, me. I don’t remember what happened exactly, but I do remember one day at work when the bartender, a woman in her late twenties or early thirties became enraged, I must have said something that didn’t make her very happy and she chased me around the bar in circles like a cartoon, I think the manager came out before she caught me, because I escaped unscathed that day. Very strange. There was something strange in the air in that crazy place.
July 31st, 2008 at 6:31 am
Melissa K says:
I’m not sure why I had my worst job because I was 18 and the previous two summers had lifeguarded (the ultimate teenager’s job!). But anyway, for some reason one summer I worked for a factory, but it wasn’t factory work. They were in the process of taking all of their records (like every piece of paper they had) and putting them on microfilm. Remember, this was 20 years ago, so that was considered fairly a fairly-up-to-date method!
Anyway, I spent an entire summer in the basement of the factory because that’s where the records all were. I fed box after box after box into the microfilm machine. I did this eight hours a day, five days a week. And did I mention that there were only two of us doing it? The other lady was a middle aged mother who was a little bit strange, but at least she was nice & friendly. No one else came down to the basement. I think by the end of summer we hadn’t made a dent in the pile of papers that had been there about 50 years!!
July 31st, 2008 at 7:16 am
Jeana says:
My first job was as the Easter Bunny. I didn’t assist the Easter Bunny, I WAS the Easter Bunny. No joke. At the mall, for the pictures, that is. I didn’t actually hop from house to house and fill the baskets. I did manage to flirt with the guy who worked at Chess King with my costume on, which in my opinion ought to be worth an extra entry for the back pack. That was actually promised to me as a benefit, since they didn’t offer medical.
July 31st, 2008 at 7:32 am
Bethany says:
The summer after my freshman year of college I worked at a cafeteria in a city about an hour away. Because I was on the early shift, I had to get up at 1:40 a.m. to pick up my Amish co-workers and be at work by 3:30. It was awful. Because the one Amish woman was the manager and had extra responsibilities, I often did get home until 2:30 p.m. Into bed at 6 p.m., and the cycle started over. After a year of hanging out with friends every day at college, this was a startling change. The main problem was that I would sleep normal hours on the weekends, and then do you think I could go to sleep at 6:00 on Sunday evenings?! Ha. So I’d start the week on 2-3 hrs. of sleep. Oh, it was FUN, I tell you…not. The next summer I worked the afternoon shift, and it was MUCH better.
July 31st, 2008 at 7:45 am
Mom24 says:
My first job was at a store in the mall that sold teenage clothing. I learned basically nothing, except that people love to leave dressings rooms a huge, horrible mess! I was only hired for the 6 week back to school rush.
I would love to win this backpack!
July 31st, 2008 at 7:55 am
Tiffany says:
Worst job Ever? I’ve got one.
Shortly after I graduated college I got divorced. I took the first full time job i could find. I was a manager at a knick-knack chain store. There was no back room to store stock or supplies. The owner needed to have every square inch of retial space he was paying for, go towards displaying the merchandise. All of our extra shwlving, racks, stock, etc was stored up above, on top of the DROP CELING TILES!!
We’d have to shuffle up an 8 foot ladder in our skirt (yeah, we HAD to wear skirts-i wore bikers shorts under mine!) and move one tile out of the way (hoping nothing was on top of it) and try to pull down the shelving, racks, or stock that we needed.
I spent much of my day running up and down ladders, balancing on top, trying to carry huge awkward shelving units up and down.
Horrible!
Quitting wasn’t an option, so I actually stuck it out almost a year and a half.
Terrible!
July 31st, 2008 at 7:55 am
Smockity Frocks says:
Once, I was asked to “dog sit” for a couple who had a much loved toy poodle named Gidget. Apparently, Gidget wasn’t happy that her owners went on vacation without her, because every morning she would poop right outside the door of the bedroom I was staying in, hoping I would step in it as I came out. It worked surprisingly often. One day, she took it into that crazy head of hers to run away. Or so I thought. I drove all around the neighborhood for an hour nervously singing, “Gidget! Here, Gidget!” Turns out she had been hiding under the couch the whole time, the little brat.
I was very glad when the owners came home.
July 31st, 2008 at 8:23 am
Qtpies7 says:
I don’t know that I’ve had a “bad” job, I’ve liked most of my jobs, except maybe not the drive-thru person at Wendy’s. I was 8 months pregnant and guys at the drive-thru would hit on me. Not even kidding. Um, hello, do you SEE this belly? They did. And didn’t mind. How about the fact that this belly comes with a husband and 4 other kids??? Yeah, I thought so.
I also had a great job as an admin assistant but all three owners of the company were nuts. One was bi-polar, and that was a trip. But I did like the job. I quit because as a construction company it was apparently required to “fudge” the books a bit and say that all the $$$$ you spent on the insurance guys house was really done on his clients house that you worked on. Um, NO!
July 31st, 2008 at 8:26 am
Lisa @ The Preacher's Wife says:
My hubby is a pastor and we have four children so I’ve always looked for non-traditional ways to earn extra money, hence, I began a commercial cleaning service.
One night after two ballgames, I arrived at the pediatrician’s office I cleaned already exhausted. It was 10 pm and I would have to be there until at least 1 am to finish.
I walked into one of the bathroooms to find poop literally sprayed across two entire walls and the floor. It looked like the mom picked up her explosive child and aimed for everything in that room BUT the toilet.
I sat down and cried like a baby. A big ‘ole poop-cleaning baby. When I say cried, I don’t mean a few little tears. I mean I SOBBED. After my meltdown, I put on every kind of protective gear I could find and scrubbed that bad boy down til she was good as new.
I didn’t get out of that office until 3 a.m. Unarguably one of the worse nights of my life.
Surely that gets me a back pack?
)
July 31st, 2008 at 8:27 am
BYOC says:
My first job was as a turkey de-beaker. And that is exactly what it was. Cutting part of a turkey’s beak off so they didn’t peck each other to death.
July 31st, 2008 at 8:28 am
Kate says:
This was one of the summers during college, and I took a job at Mailboxes Etc. Working there already was a woman and two more college girls. My first day the woman lit a cigarette which dismayed me greatly as I cannot STAND smoke. This was basically just one room with a partition between the front desk for customers and the back where we packaged stuff. So there was no escaping the smoke. The thing is, SHE DIDN’T SMOKE IT. It simply burned in the ashtray until it was a stub and then she lit another one. I asked one of the other girls about it and she said the woman always did that…lit a cigarette, let it burn, but didn’t smoke it.
I quit at the end of the day and when the woman got all flustered and said I hadn’t even filled out my forms yet to be paid I told her not to pay me I just had to leave. And I did. Seriously, the smoke drove me out.
July 31st, 2008 at 8:28 am
ColleenM says:
In high school I got a great job at a local department store. Being a shoe queen, I thought it was a perfect job for me. Then I realized that I had to measure feet and put the shoes on people. UUuggghhhhh! It is no wonder that I now hate feet! LOL
July 31st, 2008 at 8:29 am
Sarah at themommylogues says:
I don’t know that I’ve ever really had an awful job (which means I’m probably blocking it out), but I’ve had plenty with awful moments. My first job was proofreading legal notices with my mom for the newspaper our family owned. I think I was maybe 11 or 12. The ones that involved land just made your eyes glaze over. “The NW 1/2 of the SE 1/4 of Section 12…” and sometimes it named everyone who had ever owned the land (in case someone from 120 years ago wanted to come back and dispute something). In any case, I would love a backpack that doesn’t have Dora on it, or a my little pony tail coming out of it.
July 31st, 2008 at 8:31 am
feefifoto says:
I worked for a few months at an exclusive ocuntry club operating their antiquated switchboard, the kind with all the wormy cords that had to be plugged in to the right places. I had two trianing sessions and then was left on my own to run the switchboard from 5 to 9 pm; this meant that there was nobody to help me if I had a problem, not that I’d have had the courage to ask for help ever if there had been someone.
I was okay answering one call at a time but there were small idiosyncracies I couldn’t remember at crunch time, so sometimes I’d connect calls to the wrong extensions or even connect two calls to the same line so exclusive-country-club members would be on each others’ calls shouting: “Who are you!? Why are you on my line?!”
I didn’t last long. Not long after I was fired they replaced the worms with something more automatic.
Still having trouble backing up to edit comments. Could it have soething to do with whatever you have set up to disallow copying?
July 31st, 2008 at 8:36 am
Tammy/Photography for Fun says:
I would say my least favorite job was when I was 19 years old and had moved 1400 miles from my hometown in Missouri to go to school in Arizona. I worked at Peter Piper Pizza and ALL I did was pour pitchers of beer. I was the only one on my shift old enough to do so, so that’s all I did. My room mate worked in the same place and all they trained her to do was take orders and fold the pizza boxes. Needless to say neither of us stayed long there.
July 31st, 2008 at 8:36 am
Lisa @ The Preacher's Wife says:
I thought I submitted mine but it disappeared..trying again!
My hubby is a pastor so I’ve always had non-traditional jobs to make extra money. One of those was cleaning a pediatrician’s office.
I went in one night after two kids’ baseball games already exhausted. It was 10 pm and would take until at least 1 am to finish – then an hour drive home.
I walked in to one of the bathrooms and discovered two of the walls and the entire floor covered in poop. It looked like the mom literally picked up her explosive child and aimed for everything in that room except the toilet.
I sat down and sobbed like a baby. Not little tears mind you. I mean a big ole heart-wrenching ugly cry. When I got over my meltdown, I sucked it up, put on every manner of protective gear I could find, and scrubbed that bad boy good as new.
Hands down one of the worst jobs and nights of my life.
p.s. I no longer clean the docs office…:)
July 31st, 2008 at 8:37 am
Yvonne says:
Worst job I ever had was working for a plumbing company owned by 2 brothers. They basically hated each other, and the place was wrought with constant tension. One was pretty mean, and the other was pretty nice – until they got in a room together….I was only 14, very shy and just felt sick everytime I had to go to work – and I had to work on SATURDAYS!!! What a waste of my weekend. My dad got me the job, so no way could I quit until something better came along – and it didn’t for about 3 years….
July 31st, 2008 at 8:41 am
Jenni D. says:
I’ll play!! In high school I worked for a local department store in the gift wrap department. It was fun and the time passed quickly…in December. The rest of the year, not so much. The worst was working on the night of July 4. Not many people need gifts wrapped on that night because they are all out living lives. Oh, also, there was a security guard named (I’m not kidding) Rocko who used to come into the backroom and try to pinch my hiney. I had this job throughout high school, and the benefit is that I can now wrap a mean gift quickly and with no tape or seams showing!
July 31st, 2008 at 8:45 am
Christine says:
Without a doubt my worst job ever was when I’d first moved to Big City and my first real job didn’t pay crap. So I got a Christmas job at Gigantic Mall. I wanted to kill someone every day. I felt like Phoebe Cates in Fast Times: I looked out over the mall and just hated Christmas. Crowds, screaming kids (and parents), and through it all I wondered how many of them really celebrated Christmas like it should be celebrated. And then I wondered if *I* would be able to get back to the real meaning myself.
So when my Christmas job was over I ran away from that mall and it took me months to ever go back.
(But I did, of course. Let’s not get crazy.)
July 31st, 2008 at 8:47 am
Tara says:
I hope you choose the winner randomly because I’ve not got a horrible job to report to you! No wait, I was blocking. I worked at the movie theater for three days. I was the popcorn maker. I made popcorn for three days straight. While the other employees couldn’t remember that I had a name and called me a bad name I cannot print here because you are a family friendly blog and the name is not. And the other underaged employees also brought in their own “lemonade” despite the fact that the consession stand served perfectly good and LEGAL lemonade. I only felt bad that I didn’t give them a 2 week notice for like a minute and a half!
(Oh, and if I win my oldest son is heading to third grade and we could TOTALLY use a new pack for him!
July 31st, 2008 at 8:50 am
80smoviemama says:
I worked at a video store for one, well 1/2 a day, I didn’t go back after lunch. No one ever called looking for me either. Hmmm. It wasn’t one of those big chains like Blockbuster but a small one that probably had one of “those” back rooms for “special” movies. Manager was very creepy.
July 31st, 2008 at 8:52 am
Sophie says:
I was hired for a job which wasn’t going to exist in a few weeks. On the first day they called me in and said “Shhh! We are going to fire your boss soon and we will give you another, more prestigious job. But don’t tell him!”
It took two months to get rid of the boss and in the meantime I had no work. After the first day when I asked him for something to do and he pointed out *one field on a form* I could go away and fill in, I never asked again.
Believe it or not, having nothing at all to do can be one of the worst occupations ever. I made myself numerous cups of hot tea and then made numerous bathroom trips. I worked exclusively with men, who made constant jokes about my non-stop bathroom trips. Finally I worked out how to hide a magazine from the break room under my blotter pad so that nobody could see it (With hindsight I probably didn’t need to hide it). Then I ran out of magazines.
July 31st, 2008 at 8:53 am
Paulla says:
When I was 15, my parents had a friend who ran the local Hilton Hotel, so she got me a job in the housekeeping department.
I was too young to clean the rooms, so it was my job to go into the rooms and remove all sheets and towels, so the maids could clean. I had to take all sheets and towels to the 100 degree laundry room, and then go back for more.
I got my exercise, but the worst day was after the hotel had rented out several rooms for some special boxing match that was going on. The next morning, the rooms were reeking of beer and vomit, and as fate would have it, I went to work sick that day. I had to spend the day picking up sheets covered in ick and towels used to wipe up more ick. It was a nightmare.
Oh, and the next year I had a job at the very first video store in town. That dates me for sure!
Have a good day.
July 31st, 2008 at 8:53 am
stacy says:
I worked three jobs while in college and one of those was as a weekend caretaker in a group home for mentally retarded adults. I must clarify that I LOVE working with disabled children and adults and that I did end up teaching special education for 8 years…….and it is not my intention in this post to be disrespectful in any way. What was hard about the group home job is that these young adults were bored, not challenged, and somewhat unhappy (some of them). We had one young man in particular who had a “habit” that pretty much consumed his thoughts about every 30 minutes. Thankfully someone had taught him that that was to only be done in the bathroom behind a locked door. Well, we were required on the weekends to practice at least one fire drill, so we would always first double check to make sure that he was sitting in the living room before we lit the match to set off the alarm. However, it NEVER FAILED that as soon as we would set it off he would have somehow managed to have worked his way back into the bathroom. As soon as that alarm would go off he would come running out of the bathroom in all his glory with his pants around hhis ankles and would run right out the front door and to the curb! So what you have to envision is me, a naive 20 year old college student (without brothers and no experience in such things), running behind a 6 ft. tall boy (who is quite excited in more ways than one) trying to pull his pants up for him while he’s headed to the street!
July 31st, 2008 at 8:57 am
Jodie says:
The most interesting job I’ve ever had was undoubtedly my short stint working in a junk mail warehouse. The fun started at 6 am. When it was still dark outside. I am not, nor have I ever been, a morning person, and so I was still mostly asleep at 6 o’clock. My duties were to feed massive amounts of junk mail onto a conveyer belt to be addressed and boxed up to be delivered to your house. The thing about these belts is that they were moving at warp speed which caused some friction, and that friction caused things to warm up a bit. Things got so warm matter of fact, that they actually caught on fire, at which point we had to stop the belt as fast as we could and pull out the strategically placed wool blankets from under the conveyer and throw them on top to smother those hungry flames before they tried to devour one of the employees. Oh, did I mention that I was 19 years old and completely without ambition? Oh. Well I was. Needless to say, they never saw or heard from me again after day two. Why return after all the fun of day 1, I don’t know. Mostly because I was stupid dumb.
I want this backpack really bad. My big boy would lurve it.
Just an aside: I love backpacks. I hate Dora. The end.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:00 am
Kim says:
The worst job I had was working for An On Line conglomerate. Let’s just say ethics weren’t a job requirement. Now that they’re FREE I still wouldn’t use any of their services.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:06 am
Aimee says:
I was 19, working full time hours and going to college full time. I was young and had the energy. My job was a dietary assistant at a retirement home. I helped prepare and serve breakfast, lunch and/or dinner, depending on my shift. It was always a rule that the commercial size mixer was always unplugged and turned off after every use. After dumping in several boxes of muffin mix and eggs and oil and water, I plugged in the mixer. It was NOT turned off, it was in the “high speed” setting. Muffin mix went everywhere, the ceiling, the counters, clean dishes, and all over me. I could have been put in the oven and baked as one big muffin, I was COMPLETELY covered with batter. The other girls were laughing at me, and the head chef stepped back to see what was going on, took one look at me and just lost it. I went down the hall and washed the batter off and changed into a clean uniform and continued on with my day. I was glad nobody was upset, except the residents who had to have jello instead of muffins.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:12 am
Sandra says:
When I was 18 (49 years ago), I got a temporary job in a small JC Penney store. They had come out with their first credit card, and my job was to sit at a card table in the middle of the store and have people fill out applications for a card. I was told emphatically that every blank in the form had to be completed. I was told this emphatically!! The first time a man rebelled from putting in any personal financial information, the manager rushed over, reprimanded ME, attributed everything to my youth, and apologized profusely to the unhappy man for having been asked to answer the questions on the form. I was a very quiet, shy young girl so I was mortified yet knew I had not done anything other than follow the directions I had been given. The Bright Side…I always remember that feeling any time a young clerk or salesperson does something that seems frustrating or unnecessary…I remember that they are probably just doing exactly what they have been told to do, and I give them respect and try to follow their requests or just quietly end the transaction and walk away…no calling the manager to jump on a hard working employee.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:14 am
Jen L. says:
My worst job was as a nanny/dry-cleaner’s assistant one summer. Yes, both were part of my job. I opened and ran one dry-cleaner shop until the 3 kids got off the bus then watched them. After school was over I took care of the kids at the house. When the lady hired me she said I would have light housekeeping duties – mop floor, wash dishes, laundry. My hours were from 8-5 Mon-Fri but not too long into the summer I was asked to stay late so the mother could go on a date (she was divorced). I was told she’d be back by 11 – she returned at 2am. This happened a couple more times so the next time she asked I said I couldn’t. Oh, and 4 weeks into the summer I still hadn’t been paid yet. So my dad called her and said his attorney would be contacting her if she didn’t pay me within 24 hours. One week later she fired me. Why? For folding the towels in 3rds not in half, for mopping the floor not scrubbing it, and not taking the blinds down off the windows to clean them…all of which she’d never told me how to do it. She did pay me an extra week for letting me go early.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:25 am
misslisslee says:
The worst job I ever had was in college. I went to a college where almost all of the students have an on-campus job. First, I was on the paint crew (not bad, but very messy when you’re as klutzy as I am), then I got what I was sure would be a wonderful! easy! job. I started work at the nursery school, which was full of 2-4 year-old kids (note to self: I was CRAZY). And a director who believed that redirection was the only discipline necessary. You can imagine the fun. I was supposed to teach some sort of science-related lesson (only none of the kids were listening, because there was no discipline involved) and then help care for them until the school closed for the day. I was not thrilled about this development, especially when I found out it was part of my job to clean the bathroom area (a raised platform behind a half-height wall with probably 4-6 sinks and 4-6 toilets). Man, kids can make a nasty mess out of a bathroom. And somehow the mess is a lot grosser when it didn’t belong to your kids (noting at the time that I didn’t have kids, and wasn’t sure that I ever wanted any kids, and would silently curse the kids as I cleaned the bathroom once everyone was gone). Wow. I’m thinking being a stay-at-home mom is SO much easier than that!
July 31st, 2008 at 9:31 am
Carrie says:
When I was in college, I worked at a Midwestern restaurant called Culver’s, and you know, it’s pretty much fast food…so it was a hard, stinky job, but the free frozen custard pretty much made up for the hard parts, and the people there were pretty nice… but THEN when I went home for the summer, I transferred to the Culver’s in my hometown, and it was a completely different atmosphere. The one manager who always seemed to be on my shift was this middle-aged lady who was still trying to be a teenager, and so to ensure that the teenage staff liked her, she bought beer for them & had tailgate parties in the parking lot sometimes, and since I went to Bible College, and didn’t want to go out and drink with her, she hated me (and other staffers who didn’t drink). She used to set a timer when it was my turn to clean the bathroom- ten minutes for men’s and women’s bathrooms, and if I didn’t get it done fast enough, she’d come yell at me. Ugh. The summer couldn’t end fast enough!!
July 31st, 2008 at 9:32 am
Cyndi says:
The worst job I ever had was working for the most unethical person on the face of the earth. Liar, cheater, thief, you name it. Found another job REAL quick and got out of there!
July 31st, 2008 at 9:33 am
Julie at Elisharose says:
I was a telephone solicitor for two and a half days. It was awful. I sat in a room full of desks and other half-wits doing the same thing. I would call a list of phone numbers given to me when I walked in. When someone answered I would say, “This is Julie with your Dial-a-Number Program calling from downtown Houston. You have been selected….” Ha, not only was I calling from beautiful Southwest Houston, but the only selecting done was they were next on the list of numbers. It was tragic. I, too, left for lunch on day 3 and never went back.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:39 am
becky jo says:
Sign me up!!!
July 31st, 2008 at 9:49 am
A&EMom says:
The summers in high school I worked at the local water park. While I’m sure lifeguarding has it’s woes, I wasn’t a lifeguard. In the sea of tan hot bodies, I was in consessions, pasty white and smelling like french fries. They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach and I’m here to tell you that smelling like the food won’t get it done.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:50 am
Veronica MItchell says:
AM, I am unable to move my cursor in your comment box, which makes correcting typos impossible. This is very painful to me, so instead of telling a story I will just say: Baskin Robbins was my worst job ever.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:52 am
becky jo says:
Totally hit the wrong button and sent my comment before telling ya that my worst job was as a preschool director in the “black sheep” school of the company. I was director, cook, teacher, van driver, janitor and, on occasion, plumber. I worked around 13 hours a day and on a very small salary. I actually calculated one paycheck to learn that I had earned a whopping … drum roll … $1.96 an hour. Did I mention that I had to come in on Saturday and, often, Sunday to get the Director part of the job done?!?!?!
Yeah, it was not fun!
July 31st, 2008 at 9:54 am
Aunt Murry says:
I worked at Toys R Us during Christmas in 1989. That was the year that the first Batman movie came out. One very long night, December 23rd to be exact, after I had been there too many hours and had too many people berate me for not having this toy or that I came upon too ladies who both had their hands wrapped around the very last Batmobile toy in the state. They looked like they were about to gouge each others eyes out so I took it away from both of them. They in turn tattled to my manager who promptly disaplined me in front of every one. Tey finally let me go home at 5:30 am that morning…I had worked almost 18 hours and they expected me back at 4:00pm on December 24, we were going to stay open until Midnight. I sisn’t even call in. They called me. I was still passed out and I told the lady that called me that I was not coming back…ever. Oh did I mention that I was unemployed at the time? I will never be so desperate again for a job to work at Toys R Us at Christmas. I would rather flip burgers for Ronald.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:56 am
Fraulein says:
Ooh, I’ve got one for you. In the early 90s, my first journalism job when I got out of college was at a tiny and very crappy weekly newspaper in northern New Jersey. My salary was $13,000 a year. I worked about 70 hours a week. My $80,000 private school education (as my dad used to like to point out, shaking his head sadly) and I lived with my parents during this time.
When we ran out of toilet paper in the ladies’ room in my office at this place, we had to approach the office facilities manager, a crochety old guy named Tom, and ask him for more. (Which was humiliating enough.)And then he would give us one new roll at a time. Because the owners of the company were afraid we were going to steal the toilet paper.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:57 am
amyB says:
My Worst job: working in an inner city hospital. Here’s what a day-in-the-life looked like: (it’s a long comment, sorry)
http://remembertoplay.blogspot.com/2008/06/memories-from-er_20.html
Scene: 3:30am in a crowded Pediatric ED in the Inner Harbor area of Baltimore]
Brrrriiiiiiinnnnnnnggggg!! Brrrring! Briing briing briiing! [the sound of the triage window bell]
Me: [droopy eyed] Hi, how may I help you?
Unnamed girl about 17 years old [neon green highlights in her hair and gold teeth]: Yeeeeah. I got a probluum. I need a prunguncy test.
Me: Um. This is an emergency department.
Unnamed girl: Yeah, dis is an emergency, lady! I be trippin’ if I gotta babie. Shyyyt.
Me: We don’t just test every girl who comes in here for pregnancy. That’s what CVS is for.
Unnamed girl: Are you sayin’ that you turnin’ me AWAY while I’m in an emer’gncy?
Me: No. You aren’t having an e-mer-gen-cy. You might be pregnant. We can only give you a pregnancy test if there was something wrong with you medically that required us to ensure that you were or weren’t pregnant.
Unnamed girl: Soooooo, what if I said my head hurt?
Me: No.
Unnamed girl: Uh… what if I had said my neck hurt?
Me: NO. I am not playing “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes!” with you. Please. go. to. C.V.S.
Unnamed girl: Do they take my medicaide there?
Me: Probably not for a pregnancy test. But they are only $7.00.
Unnamed girl: Okay, so what if my stumik hurt?
Me: [thinking] {darn it. She went there.} Does your stomach hurt?
Unnamed girl: Uh. Yea. It do!
Me: Well then. If it honestly hurts and you feel it is an emergency then we can see you and evaluate you and this may or may not include a pregnancy test. Okay?
Unnamed girl: Rite. Rite.
Me: Okay, what is your name?
Unnamed girl: Donquita
Me: [writing down her name]
*Donquita: Uh… noo noo. Don Quita. With a captial Q.
Me: [cross out Donquita and write: Don Quita]
Don Quita: Uh no, there is a hicomma
Me: Wha?
Don,Quita: A hicomma. You know it.
Me: Okay. Can you just spell your name??
Who The Heck Knows Her Name: D. O. N. space. Hi Comma. Q. U. I. T. A.
Me: Hi Comma? Oh! HIGH Comma! Wait…what is a high comma?
Who The Heck Knows Her Name: Yea, HIGH COMMA. [looks at me like I'm the moron]
Me: [thinking] {High comma… HIGH comma…high COMMA… what could it–OH MY GOSH.}Do you mean APOSTROPHE???????
Don’Quita: Wuz dat?
Me: Just. Get. In. Here.
[End Scene]
July 31st, 2008 at 10:00 am
fern says:
This may not have been my worst job, but it sure was my strangest.
In high school a friend told me of a great opportunity for a short term, cash job that paid well. I think we made over $5 an hour which was much higher than minimum wage at the time. For 1 or two evenings we went to some plumbing supply warehouse and filled test tubes and other small bottles with some sort of different liquids (I think some sort of chemical). Then we took the tubes and packaged those up into boxes. Then they bought us big macs and paid us in cash. I never found out what was in the containers.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:01 am
Refrigerator Art blogger says:
Between my freshman and sophomore years in college, I was a “turner” in a clothing factory. I had to turn pants right-side out after they were sewn. Basically, you plunged in your arms up to your shoulders, grabbed the pants cuffs, and gave them a snap. This sent thread and fluff flying in every direction, including up my nose. Corduroy pants were the worst. Oh, and it was about 100 degrees with no air circulating.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:03 am
Laura says:
One summer while I was in college I worked in a day care. There were way too many kids and not enough workers. The day care met at a church and all of the rooms had huge windows facing out into a common room. One day the pastor of the church was taking a couple on a little tour showing them the day care. As he passed by the window of the room I was in he knocked on the window and pointed to a little boy. I was so busy I hadn’t noticed that the little boy had stripped his clothes off and was running around the room completely naked! The pastor never did say anything to me but it was pretty embarrassing.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:03 am
Antique Mommy says:
Veronica, I know about that problem about not being able to edit comments. It works the same way for me when I comment. I don’t know how to fix it and can’t find anyone who can fix it. You can use your left arrow to back up to where you want to correct and then backspace to delete and re-type. Sorry.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:04 am
k&c's mom says:
My worst job was during my junior year in college. I got engaged and decided to take a semester off. I took a job packing boxes for Hickory Farms (the mall sausage and cheese people). The place where we were to pack was in a warehouse without heat or air conditioning. You stood on hard concrete floors and packed the boxes on a conveyor belt. You could not stop for breaks of any kind because the belt kept moving. (I’m sure you have all seen the Lucy show with the chocolate: it was like that but it was not funny. At all.) They brought a lady from corporate in to motivate us: she packed the first box with more enthusiasm than most people would have for a cruise. In fact, you would have thought she was christening a cruiseliner with a big ol’ champange bottle she was so giddy about it. We, the workers, did not click with her. I think it was her fur coat and we were all cold. Without heat. Standing on the hard concrete.
I lasted until lunch and did not return. On my lunch break I called the other job I was waiting to hear from: State Farm Insurance. I got the job. There was a God in heaven and the world made perfect sense. Until I started work at State Farm. I was a typist where I typed on a manual typewriter. (We COULD use the little pieces of paper that made corrections, but we only got one piece a day.) I’m pretty sure that when Moses said, “Let my people go,” he was working in one of those positions. Going back to college the next semester was the happiest move I ever made. Great motivation to graduate. And never work at a Hickory Farms or State Farm again.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:04 am
Sherri Edman says:
Well, there was the overnight answering service which had several personal injury attorneys on its client list– I had to field calls from irate people yelling at ME because of the scumball lawyers. Also, the owner actually bounced a couple of my paychecks.
Then there was the temp job I got when I first moved to DC. It was in Alexandria at the office of some non-profit association. They had a big conference coming up and needed to put together packets for the attendees. They had already made copies of all the handouts and everything, they just needed the packets assembled. So, did the woman in charge give me a completed sample packet and say, “They all need to look like this?” Nooo.
First she pointed at a stack of folders, and said, “Please open all the folders.” I was like, “Just…open them?”
“Yes,” she said. So I opened all the folders. Then she pushed one of the handout stacks toward me and said, “Okay, now put one of these in the left hand pocket of every folder.”
You get the idea. I had just completed a Master’s degree in literature, and here I was sitting with a woman who obviously didn’t expect me to have the brains to stuff a folder with more than one piece of paper at a time. I was a little insulted, and a lot bored– that was the assignment that made me understand why the Underground Man was so grumpy.
And I would love to win that backpack, because…I love backpacks. It’s kind of a fetish.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:04 am
gretchen from lifenut says:
Worst job? That’s easy.
Working in the dishwashing room in my college dormitory. Disgusting, humiliating, hot, and exhausting.
It paid for my room and board, though.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:06 am
Kim (aka Doodles) says:
Worst job: my mom was a “refunder” – meaning: you send in labels off of soup cans (or whatever), mail them in and you get money! My mom took me to the DUMP where we took razor blades to zip off LOTS of labels. This was her “at-home business” and her mom job (apparently) was to take me to the dump!
I WAS treated to a burger & fries afterwards which, in those days, was a HUGE TREAT!
July 31st, 2008 at 10:07 am
Angie says:
Just after high school I worked as an assistant in a dentist’s office. The dentist was CUH-RAY-ZEEEE! He even had the bulgy eyes and messed up hair to match. One day he was doing an extraction on a patient who had an infected tooth. What he didn’t know what that the infection had spread up into his sinuses. He laid the guy down, pulled the tooth, and lo and behold! All the blood and infection yuck started pouring (literally!) out. The problem was the guy was lying down, so he started to drown in his own nasty infection. So the dentist sat the guy’s chair up, and the guy spit and then threw up all that stuff ON ME! I was covered with it from head to toe. What added insult to injury was how the dentist didn’t want to take any blame for what had happened, so he yelled at me for not moving fast enough and helping the guy by holding a basin for him to spit in. Yep, yelled at me in front of his patients (happened all the time). I think I lasted one more week dealing with the crazies.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:10 am
Amy says:
During the summer while I was 15, I worked at a little pizza delivery shop within walking distance from my house. I would work in the evenings and would help make pizzas, answer phones, etc. I was paid “under the table” since I was so young. One day, the boss’ wife went into labor and left the shop under the control of the 19 year old delivery boy. Smart idea, right? This 19 year old, sadly, was the only one in the shop who knew how to make everything on the menu. So, he had to delegate his normal duties to the rest of us. Guess what duty I got to take on? Delivery. In his car. I had never driven a car before. So, he’d hand me a stack of pizzas, 3 or 4 addresses, and tell me to collect the money at the door. Needless to say, I had an incredibly stressful evening. I didn’t even know how to turn on the headlights of his beat-up car. He had to come out and show me. It was a nice crash course (no pun) on driving. Nothing terrible happened, except for my increased blood pressure the entire night, but I’ll never forget it!! The boss never found out about that chaotic night. Ha!
July 31st, 2008 at 10:15 am
Brigitte says:
Ech, I had to type forms like that in my early insurance days too – but had no psychotically mean boss to rip them up. My jobs have been soul-sucking, but otherwise not too bad.
The worst was an insurance agency (after being an underwriting assistant at the insurance company). I got paid diddly, had to give quotes to people (many of whom had unintelligible accents & no home phones to call them back on) – which was ILLEGAL without an agent license, but my boss didn’t care, and I had to deal with screaming tantrums and backstabbing from the other (all of 5 or 6) employees.
Then the boss would accuse people of stealing things nobody in their right mind would ever WANT to steal, and he yelled at me because he thought I had been an underwriter before (though I never lied or misrepresented myself in my interview or on my resume).
It was the shortest commute I ever had, but I lasted about two months before I quit.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:24 am
Minnesotamom says:
The worst job I recall having was in-home elderly care. I had one client who was very low-maintenance physically. I would take her to the post office or do her laundry or sweep her kitchen, but I didn’t have to wipe her mouth or anything like that. Then I would drive her to town and drop her off at the nursing home to visit her brother.
However, I had another client who required sponge bathing. This was very hard for me, as I am not even comfortable in my own skin, much less washing someone else’s. I still shudder thinking about it.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:47 am
Colleen Kennedy says:
When I was 14/15 I had a summer job through the city. The job was to help seniors with some light cleaning in their houses. The senior that I was assigned to had me cleaning out closets and scrubbing all day, past the assigned quitting time. After a week of this heavy cleaning, I also went crying to my mommy who in turn got me assigned to another senior.
Love your stories:)
July 31st, 2008 at 11:05 am
Kathy says:
I went back to work after being a stay at home mom for thirteen years. I had been warned my new boss might be a little difficult. Little was the understatement! I couldn’t use a blue pen–it gave him headaches. I could only staple six sheets of paper with a regular staple–then I had to use the heavy duty one. I had to stack papers a certain way so that they were level sitting on my desk. And I got sarcastic comments about my personal conversations on the phone. Many other things but I won’t go on and on. Needless to say I only lasted a week.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:08 am
diane says:
I worked at a box store — before digital camera’s in the electronics department. When things were slow we would open up peoples film and look at their pictures. (I am cringing when I think of this) – one time a fellow worker set up a picture ‘show’ complete with music in a cassette player (yes, I am now feeling really old)of ‘you don’t send me flowers anymore’ and pictures from a funeral. The show was set up all down the sales counter – we found it when we opened the store the next morning. Creepy. I guess (from my experience of film spying) that pictures from funerals is a common practice? Apoligies to the families that sent their pictures to that store. I left shortly after the ‘show’.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:26 am
motomom says:
I had been married about a year when I got a job at a printing compay. Actually, the job was great- I
worked with all men and was completely spoiled.
However, the boss brought in a friend to manage the
bindery department where I worked. Mike had just
gotten out of jail. It did not take long for Mike to
start hitting on me. At one point he hooked up with
the boss’ secretary and told me she could be a
reference for his performance in bed!
Because my husband was working during the day and going to school at night I would occasionally babysit for my boss. One night my boss and Mike had gone out and I was babysitting. When they returned they asked me to stay and play stip poker. There were also some not so subtle hints regarding the potential for a threesome. I not so subtly declined and got out of there.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:46 am
trixiefan says:
I guess my worst job would be the one day I spent as a secretary in a legal office. The office was set up in a neat old house and I thought I would love the atmosphere. I had never been a secretary, but was looking for a way out of a retail job. I was there one day and they wanted to change my name! They alread had a Jamie and I guess having two would be too confusing, so I was to be Jamie Ann. Ann is not even my middle name! Also, one of my duties would be to clean the kitchen and the office. Not exactly what I pictured I would be doing. So after one day, I called and passed on that job.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:52 am
Linda says:
You were helpful with the post about swimsuits at Land’s End, I am going to Fl next week and was able to purchase a nice swimsuit at Land’s End due to your recommendation.
My worst job was working at Woolworth (do you remember that 5 and dime?). I had to work in the plant dept. Please note that I do not have a green thumb. At night (because I worked there after school), I had to water all of the hanging plants. What fun. What a mess. And after all of my hard work, the woman during the day always complained that I did not water the plants enough or that I watered “her” plants too much. Finally I grew tired and moved on to working at a bank.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:55 am
Stephanie says:
My first job out of college was working for an insurance company. The majority of my work involved processing cancer policy claims. I would pour through medical records and endless piles of information that I would request from the insureds in order to process their claims. Most of these people had been paying on their cancer policies for years hoping never to have to use them. It would absolutely break my heart to have to speak to them after denying one of their claims because the treatment they received did not “directly” pertain to their cancer, although it was a result of their cancer. Most of the insureds I assisted depended heavily on this small policy because their treatments had taken a toll on them financially. It was definitely a depressing job but I am thankful for the experience and knowledge I gained from it!
July 31st, 2008 at 11:56 am
Pat says:
I was working at a paper mill and filled in for a vacationing office worker who was adept and educated and could chart paper contents or sales or whatever they charted on graphs. I had no clue what I was doing and so faked my way through the graphs for a week. There is no telling what their paper product (huge rolls) contained that week, or if they could tell anything about their sales.
Or hoeing cotton one summer.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:56 am
zoom says:
In college I got a job working for a Marketing Research company. My job entailed going door to door to solicit information from folks. One of my territories involved going into a less than desirable neighborhood.
Do you remember the scene in “What’s Up Doc” where Eunice/ Madeline Kahn is in a wearhouse district and ascends scary, dark steps in an effort to find Howard/ Ryan Oneal?? She has that quiver in her voice, ” H..ell..ooo.. is a…n..y one he–re??” that was so me. ” Hum excuse me ( large , scary person) we are conducting a survey..” I sweated a lot and developed a high shaky voice during that time. Not one to quit… I think I lasted 6 months.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:58 am
Marianne says:
Hoeing sugar beets, and picking strawberries. Also, one summer working at Dairy Queen. All in all, not too bad!
July 31st, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Robbin says:
My worst job was as an assistant manager of a boutique store that sold trapunto wall hangings. I didn’t mind the work but I was hired over a clerk that was clearly resentful that she was not promoted. I was poorly paid, selling a product whose time had clearly passed (did I mention that half my salary was commission based?), and had to deal with a surly subordinate who undermined everything I did, and actually made up transgressions to write me up to the store manager. Every day was a constant battle of wills. I made it two weeks. Seriously. I caught bronchitis so bad I was coughing blood and called my subordinate and told her she was going to have to open the store without me that morning. She went off on a, no kidding, ten minute harangue about how they didn’t really need me anyway and how horrible I was, and how I had taken HER job. So I waited through it and said “Fine, I quit. You can tell the store manager why. The keys are in the mail.”
But the hardest job? Tasting coffee for Folger’s Coffee Company on shift work. Try working 7pm to 7am, tasting over 120 cups of coffee and then going home and trying to sleep. I think I got eight hours of slumber. A week.
July 31st, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Antique Mommy says:
IMO, so far turkey de-beaking is the worst job. Maybe because the thought of touching a bird, dead or alive, is my worst nightmare.
July 31st, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Sarah S. says:
Okay, Lisa with the poop-sprayed potty totally wins in my book. My most consistently awful job was the summer I babysat a set of twins spawns of Satan and one older brother who couldn’t be bothered by listening to me. But one recent stinky job was working for a non-profit that expected/ required me to go camping with about 40 kids 10-18 years old. One trip I helped treat one lice-infested baby. Next trip, I became the lice-infested baby, and spent hundreds of dollars and 4 weeks getting rid of them in my uber-thick tresses.
July 31st, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Quirky says:
During one summer between semesters of college, I was the office manager to a dentist who really had no business being a dentist. He was a nice guy, but had lost some of his marbles along the way and really should have retired long ago. It was almost like I spent my day babysitting him. I had to hide the cash from whenever anyone would pay because he would raid the cash drawer to buy candy (did I mention he was also diabetic, and not allowed to eat sweets?). He also sold Amway on the side, and wanted me to go through the phone book to identify “foreign-sounding” names because “they usually buy a lot of Amway”.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was when I heard a patient calling out “hey-woo!” from the back room. The dentist had numbed this guy’s mouth and stepped out for a minute…to go fishing! Dr.*** had snuck out the back door and headed over to his favorite fishing hole while the guy was still in the chair! Try explaining that to a guy who has been drooling on himself for the past hour!
I left when school started back up, and never went back. I also transferred my dental records. Be careful who you let work on your teeth!
July 31st, 2008 at 12:23 pm
GeeGee says:
I have had a few cruddy jobs but the creepiest one was working as a secretary at a military school that was almost defunct. They still used a mimeograph machine that was up in the unused attic spaces covered in cobwebs and spiders and whatever else lived up there. I used to have to spend hours making copies and listening to the thunkna thunka of the machine, getting ink stained hands clearing out jams and then hiking down floor flights of stairs to clean them in the ancient bathrooms. Very creepy….
July 31st, 2008 at 1:23 pm
kids n chaos says:
I worked for a guy in high school at a local feed store. I loved the customers because they were all country folks and I got along with them so well. The owner though decided that I could do anything for him since he was signing my checks and I spent a lot of time running his personal errands and such. Now that I am an adult and have had other dealings with him I realize what a dishonest snake he really is and was….
Hindsights 20/20
July 31st, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Cheryl says:
My worst job ever was substitute teaching. First, I had to wake up at 5:30AM (egads!) for the phone call to receive my daily assignment. Then, if my assignment was a middle school or high school class I had to deal with the anxiety of facing a group of difficult “out to get the substitute” kiddos. My salvation was the maternity leave of kindergarten teachers which would land me in a room full of young ones for several weeks at a time.
(It’s been awhile since I’ve commented but I’m a faithful reader and still enjoy your writings!)
July 31st, 2008 at 1:28 pm
Lila says:
My absolute worst job was in the shoe department at Kmart. It was my first job too. So not a good start. I had to do hourly blue light specials on Saturdays(remember those).Go to the register and make price tags for people who got a pair without one(the days before bar code scanners). Keep all the shoes straight. Replace any purchased shoes with new stock. It was horrible. I am very careful to replace shoes now when I shop. So I guess I did learn something. But boy was I glad to leave that place.
July 31st, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Doris at threads of conversation says:
After getting out of grad school, I searched a few months for my first professional job in my field. I finally found one, found a fabulous apartment with a fabulous landlord (who lived next door) and signed a one-year lease. Then I returned home, packed up and moved across THREE STATES to take my first “career-based” job. I knew on the first day I had made a terrible mistake. I went to work every day for a week, it was miserable, the other staff (only 3-5 people) were not welcoming, no one showed me what to do, I was lost…I did not go back the following Monday. Instead, I told my landlady I would not be staying after the first month, got in my car and drove across another SIX STATES to a job interview for a place I had originally declined an interview with because I had alreadt accepted position #1. Got offered Position #2 on the spot, called my Dad up and asked him to come help me move my stuff (AGAIN) to State #2, which meant a drive across NINE STATES for him (and a drive back across them all to go home). I assumed he would want to kill me. He told me he was proud of me and glad I stood up for myself and made the huge life-changing decision for myself. I loved position #2, never regretted the scariest decision in my life or leaving that horrible job behind me.
July 31st, 2008 at 1:42 pm
rrmama says:
My worst job ever was at a local department store When I was 16. I had to stand at the front of the store and offer people a credit card application as they came in. There I would stand in my dress and heals for 8 hours on Saturday. Casual clothes were not allowed. I actually had one lady yell at me. She told me that if wanted a credit card she would apply for one. So glad that I didn’t make that job a goal in my life.
July 31st, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Muddy says:
Great Giveaway-thanks!
My most interesting job held was during my second year of college. There were some psychology graduate students studing intinct vs learned behaviors. They were doing these studies on baby ducks to see if they would follow an artificial duck naturally on their own around a track. Well, in order to do the study properly-they needed to know the exact age that the baby duck was born. In order to know the exact age the duck was born, they had to “induce labor” on said baby duck.
My job was to induce labor on the baby duck and report when said ducks actually hatched.
I lasted a month. LOL
July 31st, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Julie says:
My worst job honestly was just recently when I watched a friend’s daughter part time. It sounds so easy, but it just wasn’t something I can do very well. I know that now. I’m not a good daycare person. But anyway, another nasty job I had was in high school. The job itself was very easy, but there was another worker there who constantly said the f word. Yikes. I didn’t appreciate that.
Thanks for the giveaway!
Julie
July 31st, 2008 at 1:55 pm
bonniebeth says:
I am in the worst job I ever had…it is like being stuck in a nightmare…and when you wake up , it is still there.
My job is being mother to my two grandchildren while their parents are serving a long prison term in another state. The boys are 6 and 7 now – they were 8 months and exactly 2 years old when we drove across four states to get them. They had not been up to date on their shots, they had been emotionally traumatized and had been sleeping in the car as their parents carried on their crime spree after dark.
I mother these children and can’t grandmother them
But at the same time I encourage and accomodate visits, letters, phone calls to keep them in touch with their parents who are so very far away. We do prison visitations twice a year which are emotionally and physically exhausing for all of us. I accept collect phone calls twice a month – times 2- so the boys can speak with their parents. I am totally honest about their parents’ mistakes, but don’t try to prejudice them against their parents in any way. I want the boys to come out of this experience with the least emotional scars possible. My goal is to enable them to be healthy, happy and well adjusted but with the knowledge that their mother (my daughter-in-law) could possibly get them back three years from now and their father(my son) won’t be out of prison for 10 more years.
So I am a soccer mom, a school homeroom mother, an emotional security blanket, a play-date arranger, a nurse, a mediator, a cook while still trying to parent my 18 year old son at home and be a wife to my husband who has a very hard job as well.
I send letters and pictures to my daughter-in-law’s mother in Georgia who has never written or phoned the children in the almost 6 years that I have had them. I send letters and pictures to their half-sister in South Carolina whose father has only this year given her permission to reply and send pictures to her brothers…while I have buried my father, watched my mother enter a nursing home in another state, moved yet again to a different state and become menopausal.
Don’t misunderstand me, I do it gladly and do it with much love – but it is the worst job I have ever had to do.
July 31st, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Samantha says:
I know it’s not very interesting or exciting, but the worst job I ever had was waiting tables. I did this throughout college and I was really bad at it. I mixed up orders, I forgot to put orders into the kitchen, and I dropped things. No matter what happens in my life, i will never, ever wait tables again. And for the rest of my life I will always overtip a waitress. I know how badly they need those tips!
July 31st, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Sue says:
Wow! After reading some of these, I know I haven’t had a bad job. I do say the most challenging one I’ve had was working with children with special needs. I had patience to help ones who need extra help and time to learn and loved doing that, but I was not good at dealing with ones with behavior problems. If no one else had been able to figure out how to make them behave (evidenced by 3-page behavior plans that didn’t work,) I wasn’t the one who could do it either. I do admire teachers who have that ability. I would be giving the backpack away. Thanks for the chance. I hope it goes to the right person.
July 31st, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Mary B says:
I haven’t had any horrible job but have a good story. When I was in college I worked some temporary agencies in factories because it paid well. This one I was at was at did powder coating for bases of office chairs. Most of the people drove rusted out cars and were lucky if they had all their teeth (I am just trying to set up the environment). Well a few days into the job we were packing the bases and one of the workers was looking at them and asked “what color is this?”. In which I replied, “I think its taupe”. Everyone just looked at me and then said “your dad must drive a volvo”. Apparently you had to have much culture to know what taupe was in the early 90′s!
July 31st, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Carrie says:
My most yucky job was at a fast food resturant! The scheduled me at nights, instead of the days they said I could work and then the grease, yuck! It was not the place for me. I quit after two weeks. Thanks for offering! We could use a new on around here!
July 31st, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Jeanne A says:
I have a tie. Between the one day that the temp agency sent me to a pretzel factory. And the day I spent at sorting tomatoes as they came off the truck.
Guess i wasn’t cut out for factory type work!
July 31st, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Stephanie says:
My worst job was as a temp in college. A retirement community hired me to hand address envelopes telling seniors about their community – the theory being that seniors were more likely to open letters with handwritten addresses. After 3 hours, my hand hurt so so bad I could hardly open and close it. I lasted out the day, but did not go back the next day. They couldn’t pay me enough LOL The backpack would go to one of my children who all need new backpacks for the fall =)
July 31st, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Kelly @ Love Well says:
I worked for 6 months as a “data processor” at a HMO-type company. My job was to enter in information we would get from doctors/medical groups/hospitals so they could be accepted into our network.
It was mindless, boring and law-paying. Oh! And did I mention it was Phoenix during the hottest summer on record, and I had to back oven mitts everyday so I could drive my car home?
Near the end of my stint there, I asked for a week off so I could chaperon the youth group at our church on a trip. My request was denied — which was stunning to me — so I quit. Immediately. My boss was equally stunned. “So … you’re just LEAVING?”
Ummm. Yeah. I can make $7.50 an hour at about 100 other jobs when I get back.
July 31st, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Michelle- This One's for the Girls says:
During the spring of 1991, my new husband was working on his masters and got laid off from his job. So… instead of enrolling for my senior year in college, I applied for the position of janitor at the girl’s dormitory. It was humbling. But it was good for me. I was ever so thankful when my husband graduated and got a real job.
I never finished college by the way… I got pregnant that year and never went back to stay home with baby. My job as a stay at home mom shares a lot of the chores that I did as a girl’s dorm janitor. But the payback is a million times greater.
July 31st, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Jenny says:
The summer after my junior year in college I worked in a diaper factory. I had applied earlier in the summer but didn’t get the job until a month before I had to return to school. They let me know on very short notice that I was to report to work that night…6 hours from when I got the call. The money was great so I didn’t hesitate to accept.
My first night on the job I had to wear my dad’s old steel toe shoes, they were 2 sizes too big. As a college laborer I had to report to my supervisor for the shift assignment. The first night I stood on a platform and pushed trash into a compactor with a long metal pole. I guess they decided I was capable of moving around the plant so the next night I walked around and around throwing a green cat litter material on the floor to catch the diaper dust; then I would sweep it into a giant dust pan.
Another assignment was quality control. I had to go through bins of perfectly good boxes of diapers and slice them open with a knife. I never did figure out what we were looking for, the diapers looked fine to me. I sure could use some of those diapers now for my 6 month old.
My worst moment at work was when the supervisor decided to humiliate me and put me on the diaper assembly line. Picture Lucy and Ethel at the candy factort. I had to open a plastic bag and place it over a metal box the size of a diaper. Another flexible metal rod would push a stack of diapers into the bag, then I would pick up another bag to catch the next batch. It looked easy enough, until I tried. Putting the bag over the metal box was tricky and the machine didn’t wait for me to get the hang of it. Gradually the diapers piled up to my knees as the machine continued to spit them out at me. The regular employees gathered around for the show and had a good laugh.
I was glad when school started and I could continue my education to become a dental hygenist…all so I could quit work to stay home and clean my own kids teeth on a daily basis…at least I know how diapers are made!
July 31st, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Vicki says:
When I was eighteen I worked at this horrible little diner. It was the nastiest place on Earth. We had these one piece, zip up the back, green and white striped uniform dresses. The clientele the place attracted were mean and grumpy and often left little or no tip after treating me like dirt. All this would have been totally bearable, it being my first waitressing job I had no experience with anything better. However, the absolute worst part about it was the way my middle aged boss flirted inappropriately with me nonstop. Actually, flirting is a gross understatement. If I knew then what I know now, I would at the very least quit immediately, and probably should have turned him in for sexual harassment. He tried to kiss me more than once, and even went to so far as to once tell me he thought of me while having sex with his girlfriend. To this day it makes all the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. At the time I was way to young and naive. I could kick my eighteen year old butt for putting up with that for a whole summer.
July 31st, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Janis says:
My worst job ever was when my husband and I had our own catering truck. There was nothing gourmet about it. I made meatloaf sandwiches, coney dogs, potato salad, and brownies. Our clients were construction guys building new houses out in the farmlands that became the suburbs. Every morning my husband fought with the generator while I stocked up on diced onion and filled the crockpots. We worked all day long and then we came home and I cooked all night long. I hated it. On rainy days I pulled the blankets over my head and thanked the heavens above that constuction guys didn’t work on those days. Sometimes I even hated my husband, because of how hard I had to work for his dream. One very difficult morning as we bumped along a long twisty road on the way to a construction site, a large jar of pickle relish flew off the counter, and covered me head to toe with sweet green goo. My husband didn’t say a word and neither did I. Those were stressful days.
Years later we just laughed about the experience. Our marriage and sanity survived. But, whenever he got that gleam in his eye and had the desire to start a new mobile food type business, I nixed it. We worked long hard hours for so little compensation.
July 31st, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Kim Hacking says:
I am very fortunate to say that I have loved every single paid job I have ever had. I’m also fortunate to say that I have always been able to hand pick my jobs. It amazes me every time I think about it.
So, if I were to pick my worse non-paying job, it would be pulling weeds for my mom when I was 10 years old. I still hate that job!!!
July 31st, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Patty says:
I got my first job after college right after we moved to Los Angeles from Kansas. I was working for a temp agency and they sent me on a two week assignment at an insurance agency working in the file area.
The office was on two floors of the building and our job as file clerks was to pull files requested by the insurancy people, take a cart and visit all the insurancy peoples desks and pick up files they were done with, and finally, file all the files back where they belonged. We did this four times a day. There were approximately five to seven temps to do this (the company must have had a bunch of extra money to throw away). We had quite a bit of down time, at least I did, maybe the job was really taxing for the rest.
The worst part of the job was at 10:00 a.m., a bell would ring and the whole office would go on break. We had to be back in our spots before the break-over bell rang at 10:15. Then the bell rang at noon, time for lunch! But wait, not for you temps, you had to wait until 12:30. We all again had to be back at 1:00 when the lunch over bell rang again. Then again at 3:00, the bell thing all over again. And again to signal the end of the day. I felt like a lab rat in an experimental maze waiting for bells to ring and doors to open revealing treats.
Unfortunately, no treats existed in this office. By the end of day one of my two week assignment I was so bored, I was pulling staples out of the file place holders just to make them neater. I could not wait for my two weeks to be up.
The final Friday of the assignment I happily checked the job completed box on my time card and took it to my supervisor to have it signed. She looked at it, then looked at me with shock. “This job isn’t completed! It goes on as long as we need you!” she said. “Sorry” I lied. “I have another assignment.” I didn’t but I would rather sit at home unemployed before spending any more mind-numbing hours waiting for the bell to ring.
July 31st, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Joan Gambill says:
Well if Stacy doesn’t win, or the one that cleaned up poop in a pediatrician’s office at 10 at night, You are not thinking clearly!!!!!!! And I haven’t even finished reading all the entries so there may be more IF’S.
July 31st, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Elizabeth says:
I guess the worse job I ever had was babysitting for an adorable little boy who lived in a FILTY house. You would literally stick to the kitchen floor. It is too disgusting to even describe. I only charged a dollar an hour and my $5 checks for payment would bounce!
July 31st, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Mariah says:
I’m not sure it was my worst job, but it was my first one and the conditions were less than ideal. Even I recognized that at the time. I was 16. I was a fry cook. I worked for an alcoholic who was always drunk and who, conveniently, owned the bar where I worked. I made sandwiches and snacks for the customers, some more drunk than other, most of them men who were looking for a little more than a sandwich on some occasions, if you get my drift. I was pretty naive and didn’t quite “get” that part of it, but it was not the best atmosphere for a young innocent 16 year old girl. At Christmas one of the bartenders gave all the other employees a bunch of those mini bottles of booze…you know…the tiny ones with just a few ounces in each like they give you on the plane. My parents were aghast. My dad called the bar owner who happened to be a friend of his and complained. I didn’t work there much longer, and I don’t remember that his friendship with the guy lasted much longer either. I did learn how to make a seriously good grilled ham and cheese with tomato sandwich, though!
July 31st, 2008 at 6:12 pm
Joan Gambill says:
OK, Bonnie Beth wins!!! No yuck, no nasty talk, just having to cope and love and pray the kids will come out as well as possible. God bless her.
July 31st, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Libby says:
The summer I was 14,(FOURTEEN!) my mother made me get a job at a sandwich shop (!) in our small town. According to her, I was somewhat of a surly teen, so she wanted me out of the house so badly that she was willing to drive me to & from work, since I obviously had no way to get there myself. Not only did NONE of my friends work, but the humiliation of slopping sandwiches as a freshman was practically unbearable. I honestly don’t recall many details of the job itself, but I just remember the pain of that adolescent experience, which now makes me laugh. The best part is that my mother claims that she has NO MEMORY of this AT ALL.
July 31st, 2008 at 6:54 pm
jolyn says:
Ok, after reading Bonnie Beth’s if anyone deserves to win a little prize it’s her. (Oh, and the innter-city hospital one made me laugh.)
I have a whole slew of jobs I’ve hated, but no poignant or particularly hilarious stories. I suppose working in the call center of a bank, figuratively tied to answering phones, was the most miserable for me as I needed it to pay the bills with a little one at a babysitter, and it was the first time I came to feel real disgust toward people who would call in with entitled tones wondering why the bank didn’t notify them their account didn’t have enough money in it to pay the check that bounced.
(Btw, I’ve got my eye on a real-cute backpack for my daughter who will be starting kindergarten in a couple of weeks.)(Just saying.)
July 31st, 2008 at 7:46 pm
geri says:
hmmm the worst job I ever had…I’ve had a few. The worst one tho was as a shampoo girl in a beauty shop! EWW!My first day there i had to wash a mans hair who had dreads. Now I was 16 and never even shampooed anyone elses head ,much less 7 years of dreads!!! I lay him back in the chair,moderate my temp and start wetting his head! And the…bugs started running everywhere! I swear, it’s true! I walked out and quit!WORST job ever!
July 31st, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Brighton says:
WOrst job ever: I was an aerobics instructor in college and a garbage company, yes a garbage company- hired me to “stretch out” their garbage collectors in the mornings before their rounds. So I would show up at the crack of insanity and spend a half an hour showing them stretches and going through them. Needless to say, they were more interested in the T & A and not so much in the stretching. Worst. Job. Ever.
July 31st, 2008 at 8:32 pm
jennP says:
oh my! i was thinking i didnt have any bad ones but then it dawned on me that the one i hated most was when i had to take a temp job after moving to a new city. I had to call different garages and do a survey about pneumatic mufflers. i had NO idea what i was talking about and to this day i don’t ! hahahahah
July 31st, 2008 at 8:32 pm
ellen says:
hotel housekeeping in a super 8. so bad in so many ways…
July 31st, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Jeanne A says:
IT’s a toss up between the day I spent working at a pretzel factor or the assembly line at a tomato “whatever.” The tomatoes came in from the fields and we had to pick out the bad ones. No one even told me what to look for so I just grabbed.
Guess I’m not one for assembly lines.
Now the best job I ever had—taking care of my kids—doesn’t pay in money but it has other rewards.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Meg says:
I am going to have to vote for the poor Preacher Wife who had to clean up poop in the dr. office until 3am…after a good cry. Of course, my vote doesn’t count, but I feel for her!
)
July 31st, 2008 at 10:07 pm
france59 says:
The worst job I ever had…well, that’s a tough choice! It is a tie between two! One of the worst has to be working at A&W as a carhop (yes, I’m that old…I was an A&W carhop). I had kids spit root beer at me when their parents weren’t paying attention, I had people tip the tray off their car window into me as I’m delivering and they are “trying to help” me put it on the window of the car door. I’d have been fine if they would have left me alone. Instead, I ended up wearing their dinner! Oh, but the worst was closing time. I always got stuck having to clean the restrooms! It wouldn’t have been so bad, but I was 16 and had my own bathroom at home, so I never had to clean up after guys. THAT IS DISGUSTING! Well, anyway, at 16 it’s really horrible!
Or maybe it was babysitting at the age of 12 – the night a little girl decided the ketchup-coated hot dog chunks weren’t quite as good as she thought and they ended up coming up from her tiny belly and spraying all over her bed, her white-blonde hair and her pj’s. My mother came over to help – she held the little girl and calmed her down after I had cleaned her up, while I cleaned up her bed. I think that was the night I decided I wasn’t meant to have children!
July 31st, 2008 at 10:09 pm
lynn says:
Easy – summer job at McDonalds. I came home smelling like grease – my clothes, my hear my skin… YUCK.
It took me a while before I could eat there.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Lesley says:
Carrying people’s groceries out of the supermarket in 100 degree weather. I didn’t last very long.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Heather says:
ooh. This is an easy one. The summer after my junior year of college I didn’t have enough money to return senior year, so I worked, and worked, and worked. From 6 a.m. to noon I poured coffee at a Dunkin Donuts and then I went and worked at a factory from 2:30 to 10:30. At the end of these days I smelled like coffee and printer’s ink, having dealt with every flirting truck driver on the face of the earth AND a guy named something Mastrodonato who’s father had been self-employed and who was killed because of ‘business’ – HELLO mob boss :~) I had a 30 minute communte to and from, so I averaged 5 hours of sleep.
But, I survived and got back to school – still in love with coffee, but not donuts or guys named Mastrodonato :~)
July 31st, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Allison says:
My worst (or hardest) job was when I was 19 and worked at a day care. I don’t want to scare anyone, but I had NO training and yet I was trusted to pick up (in the school van) a large number of after schoolers and then cared for them until their parents picked them up that evening.
As a 44 year old mother of two young girls I can honestly say that I whould have been horrified for the likes of me at 19 to drive and care for young children!
July 31st, 2008 at 10:46 pm
deb meyers says:
newlywed, moved to NYC. First job was substitute teaching inner city junior high special ed kids. City gave per diem work to anyone breathing with a college degree. I am NOT a teacher but needed work quick. I spent my lunch break crying in the janitor’s slop sink closet (which is where they told me to hang my coat) and it is the only job I ever ran away from and never went back to.
I was AFRAID for my life in that classroom.
deb meyers
July 31st, 2008 at 10:54 pm
Rhonda says:
My worst job I ever worked was also sometimes my best job I ever had. I was the assistant activities director at a nursing home the summer before my freshman year of college. I got to talk and interact with many wonderful elderly people(I have a special place in my heart for the elderly) but also had to deal with the not so pleasant side of the elderly. One of my favorite memories is having to turn off the tv in the activity room to start a game of bingo and almost being assaulted by a man who did not want the tv turned off. Good thing I could run faster than he could roll in his wheelchair!
July 31st, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Heather says:
This is too fun! I’ve been blessed to have very fun jobs = except for the time I was hired as assitant manager for a big city fabric store. We had many customers from other countries and some of the women wanted to barter. It was my job to explain again that the prices were marked and set by the company and I could not barter. One lady got so angry with me she beat me with a bolt of denim and caused bruises! Another lady came in in a loose sari and as she was leaving I noticed it was no longer loose – she looked like she was ready to give birth to twins. When I confronted her, she started talking with her hands and out fell a bolt of pure silk that was worth over $800 – I had to call the police. They also had to be called every night in the winter to evict a ‘vanilla drunk’ from our front window where he would hide under the fabric display that cascaded from the ceiling. He would be very quite – except he snored when he fell asleep in the warmth and he really needed and bath and we could smell the cheap vanilla he was drunk on. We felt very sorry for him and often brought food for him and let him stay until closing. Not very terrible, I know but every night was something new to deal with – I was so glad when they hired a real manager and I went back to just sales!
Oh – I just remembered – I also worked a $65 per plate baron of beef buffet and signed my name to a contrat where by I agreed to pay for any dished I broke – Noritake china to be exact! On my second day I was carrying a big tray of plates out to the dining room when someone came in the out swinging door – crash – smash – not one plate survived! I worked for free to pay for over a month and quite the minute the last cent was paid in full – I didn’t think it was quite square since I was exiting correctly, but they fell from my hands, so I had to pay. That was pretty bad – I think I had all but blocked that out…. does this mean I have to go back to therepy? All for a chance to win a backpack for my darling boy … we mum’s will do just about anything for our kidlets!
July 31st, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Emily says:
Worst job ever… I babysat for two children from h*** once. I was hired to babysit for them upstairs while their parents had a big holiday party downstairs. Thankfully, the party was loud enough that no one downstairs noticed when the children essentially locked me up in a big box. That’s right. Stupid me. I didn’t anticipate that two little children who allegedly wanted to play house in the enormous box upstairs would lure me in and then both run out at a predetermined signal so that they could push the box up, trapping me inside. Then, to complicate matters, they ran around the perimeter of the box, making it impossible for me to push the box back over without pushing it onto one of them. To add insult to injury, the parent who was driving me back to my house afterwards actually OFFERED ME A MARGARITA. When I declinded politely, the parent insisted–”not even just a little bit?” Folks I was 14 or 15. CREEPY. Thankfully, I got home just fine, and let’s just say I was MUCH more careful about how I got my babysitting recommendations after that experience!
July 31st, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Jennifer says:
Ok, when I was in Jr. High I volunteered to give pizza samples at our local grocery store. Mind you our home town had a population of about 700. I don’t ever recall having samples ever before at our store. My brother worked there as a grocery bagger, stocker, etc. and he got me this ‘job’. I was excited to be able to make some money of my own…besides babysitting. Any hoo, I baked the pizza’s & cut up little pieces for people to taste for about 4 hours or so. AFter I got home that evening I was never so sick of smelling pizza in my entire life! I had vowed never to eat the stuff again! I was to babysit a little girl that night as well, but I ended up getting sick-too much pizza got to me- and my mom had to watch the little girl. Needless to say I have never been a sample girl since and it took me awhile to want pizza again……
July 31st, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Christy says:
McDonalds… Nuff said.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:43 pm
Jean@workingmomma247 says:
The worst job I ever had was as a “telecommunications” person in other words a telemarketer. I did surveys on vacuums enticing a poor soul to have someone come out and clean their carpets with the fantastic Rainbow. I was 17 and the turnover rate was horrible. We didn’t have headsets or computers. You just picked up the phone and dialed from a list of random sequence numbers from a sheet of paper.
My boss wore pointy toed cowboy boots and some kind of jumpsuit from the 1970s, I’m sure there was come gold chainage going too (this was ’96). Every day he would come into our tiny room while we were making calls and he would say, “How’s everyones day?” and we were required to say “SUPER FANTASTIC!”
I lasted 4 months which was probably the longest tenure of any telecommunicator to this day..at least for that company.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:53 pm
Sarah says:
The worst job I ever had, was working at Hot dog on a stick! It was horriable! A friend and I ended up working there togehter! I still have nightmare of those hats and uniforms!! eeek!
August 1st, 2008 at 2:18 am
Whitney says:
When I was 19 I worked at Sears Portrait Studio. It was horrible. Parents wanted smiling, adorable photos of their tots no matter what! It made no difference if the kid hadn’t had a nap or any food that day. They wanted a beautiful portrait or else. It stressed me out bigtime! They taught us to get the kids to say silly things to make them smile. I once offended a middle eastern family by telling their toddler to say:
“Daddy wears pantyhose!” I quit the next day!
August 1st, 2008 at 8:53 am
Nikki says:
Love that backpack – my daughter already has a LE backpack, but I’d love to win this one for my son.
I am one of the lucky ones who hasn’t had too many bad jobs. The worst job experience I ever had, though, was one night babysitting in the 9th grade. I locked myself out of the house after the kids were in bed b/c I was tryng to catch a moth for my biology class bug collection. Thankfully, the oldest son (out of 3 children) was still awake and heard me calling him. Also, the parents were great about it. They totally understood, and told me where the hide-a-key was just in case I ever needed it again.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:07 am
Sandy says:
The worst job I’ve ever had… well, maybe the grossest was the first summer after my husband and I were married and I had a nanny job for these two little twin boys. I was pregnant and didn’t know it yet, and they had this huge German Shepherd who kept barfing (yes, barfing, not barking) all over the place and guess who had to clean up all his mess? Louisiana heat, dog vomit and the 1992 Summer Olympics… ahhh, the memories!
August 1st, 2008 at 9:14 am
Deanna says:
My worst job was back in the early ’90′s as a collector. I was one of those people calling to collect unpaid debts. I hated the ambulance bills the most. The info would come up and I would always know it was going to be a bad call. You have to ask for the person on the account. After checking the date of birth I knew it would be bad. ’99, ’01, ’02, none of those years had happened yet, as in 1999, or 2001; it was 1899,1901, etc. The person was always deceased and I had to talk to the poor widow or widower. It was heartbreaking. I’d tell them to put the bill at the bottom of the pile and I’d send their account off into ‘the loop’, never to be seen again. I only stayed a month. The manager tried to get me to stay, said I was doing a good job, but I just couldn’t.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:32 am
Shalee says:
My worse job? Does wiping poop off a wall or cleaning up vomit count? Because all my other jobs were walks in the park compared to the “clean up on aisle 9″ jobs that come with motherhood.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:32 am
Dana says:
Hi. My name is Dana. I was a…hang on…I can do this…
I was a
telemarketer.
Every evening, I would go into a storefront in a run-down strip mall. There was butcher paper on all the doors and windows. I would sit down in a beat-up red vinyl diner chair and scoot up to a piece of plywood supported by two saw horses and wait for my neighbor to pass me the Oklahoma City phone book. I’d open it to the residential pages and carefully extract a page. Usually from the V’s. I liked the V’s. I’d pass the phone book to my left and align the desk-top, rotary-dial phone with my page, position my ruler, poise my pencil and begin to dial.
“Good evening! Am I speaking with Mr./Mrs. Vardoulankis? This is Anastasia, and I’m calling with an exclusive offer of Olan Mills portraiture…hello?….” ::move ruler, dial again::
Oh, yes. We gave fake names and used words like “portraiture”. Did I mention this was Oklahoma?
When, by some fluke of having finally dialed the number of some poor sap who was already knackered at 6pm, the “exclusive offer” was accepted and a sale was made, one of us would literally get in the car, drive to the sucker’s -er- slasher’s -uhm- CUSTOMER’S home to deliver the certificates and collect the money. You read that right. A 16-year-old girl would strike out just after dark to hunt down a double-wide trailer 8 miles south of County Road 8, burning their own 59¢/gallon gas in their über-reliable Pintos.
To my everlasting shame, I actually worked there for most of my sophomore year. It ended when I was fired for taking too long on a delivery. It wasn’t my fault, really. I had been sent about 40 miles away to an area of the Oklahoma City metro that I’d never even heard of to find the dirt road that turned off the gravel road that was 6.3 miles past the end of the blacktop, but if I passed the 3-legged dog, I’d know I’d gone too far…
I never did find the house. I tried to find my way home from what I’ve come to believe is Oklahoma’s Area 51: no street signs, no lights, and not even the sun to tell me which way was which. Cell phone? What’s that? It was the early ’80′s and all I had was Blondie admonishing me from crackling speakers to “get in your car and you drive real far and you drive all night until you see a light and it comes right down and it lands on the ground and out comes the man from Mars and you try to run but he’s got a gun and he shoots you dead and then he eats your head…”
Should I just pull into the next driveway and ask Freddie or Jason or Chuckie if I could use the phone? Would driving slower make my 1/10 of a tank of gas last long enough to get me back to civilization? Could my body be identified by its Mall Bang Sculpture and multiple earrings?
Proof that God watches over fools and children: in the distance, I spotted a beacon of light illuminating a 20-foot green dinosaur. Then and there, I decided to name my first child Sinclair. Mercifully, there was a sheriff filling up his car. As soon as I drove under the fluorescent lights, I began to bawl and slobber and run snot and Maybelline Great Lash. He astutely guessed that I was in need of assistance, somehow made out that I was lost and discerned that my pinto was heaving on fumes. He gassed me up and let me follow him to the main road. He gave me his card and asked me to call the dispatcher when I got home to let them know I’d made it.
The next day, after school, I went back to the run-down strip mall to find someone else occupying my vinyl chair. I apologized, thanked them for the opportunity (!) and headed home.
“Well now you see what you wanna be, just have your party on TV…”
August 1st, 2008 at 10:40 am
Courtney says:
the summer after i graduated high school, i worked at a one-week temp job that ended up being a summer job. everyday i sat in front of a computer screen looking for errors in medical records that had been scanned into the computer. if there was an error, i had to find the box and the file and re-scan the entire thing. and i was the youngest person there by about 30 years. It was bad. we sat in a narrow room and got two breaks. most of the employees smoked so it smelled horrible. that experience only made me want to leave for college sooner
August 1st, 2008 at 10:51 am
Debbie says:
I haven’t had an really awful jobs, but the worst of them was my stint as a cafeteria worker in my college dorm. Yes, I got to wear the maroon t-shirt, but the fun didn’t stop there. I had to wear a hairnet. That was not a way to look cute and try to snag cute guys my freshman year! I left smelling like, what else…cafeteria food, and most of the ladies who worked there weren’t very happy to be there. Nor were the college workers. Or the diners, quite frankly.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Monique Reed says:
Worst. job. ever.: weeding half an acre of daylilies where Canada geese have been feeding and…pooping…copiously. Goose poop is like nothing I can think of.
This was part of my summer internship at a botanical garden. The interns kept a list of “S__t Jobs” The goose poop was at the top of the list, but someone else had to scrub the algae off a big fountain with a toothbrush.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Shelley says:
My worst job was working as a “bus boy” cleaning up tables at a local restaraunt. I always came home smelling like fish.
August 1st, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Crystalyn says:
I was 18, a few weeks out of high school, and got a job working as a “clerk” for a bankruptcy trustee. He interviewed me in the court house and everything seemed great until I went to work at his “office” It was this little run down house on the outskirts of town. One phone line (that ran both internet and the actual phones) and no signage or markers of any kind indicating this was an office of any sort. He was apparently the, uh, paranoid sort and didn’t want ANYONE knowing where his office was (an understandable situation given the “trustees” nature of business, but still… he took it to the extremes)
I was fired on my third day there because I used my cell phone on my lunch break outside. He freaked out because someone might be able to “trace” my location.
Bad job? Not really. Bad boss? WORST EVER!
August 1st, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Roxanne says:
The worst job I’ve ever had is also the best job I’ve ever had depending on what day of the week it is. It is also my current job and my profession. It is teaching middle school. ‘Nuff said.
August 1st, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Teri says:
My worse job was working as a tray aide in a nursing home. The food was horrible, the place smelled like urine & death. I quit to babysit my sister’s daughters, the oldest one I was sure was pure evil. She tortured every sitter. But she was still better than that nursing home!
August 1st, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Shannon says:
One summer, when I was home from college, my mom got me a job with a friend of ours who owned a travel agency. I was told I would be answering phones and delivering things around the office, when in reality I was given keys to a Geo Metro and told to deliver airline tickets to customers ALL OVER THE DFW AREA
August 1st, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Lynn says:
When I left to go to college, my parents thought it would be very responsible for me to have some sort of job for “pocket change” you know. Daddy didn’t want a job that would interfere with my studies because he could tell that all the boys on campus would do a good enough job with that. As well as having a sweetie I was leaving behind to mourn! So, I took a job selling AVON. Yes, you heard it here. My mother was my best customer. It worked out very well for my pocket.
August 1st, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Lynn says:
Oh, I am ashamed. I didn’t realize it was “worst job” scenario. So, just scratch mine! I have nothing to top some of those!
August 1st, 2008 at 6:14 pm
Gina says:
I’m just like someone a few posts ahead of me. I taught 8th grade science. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…but the worst was when a student sprayed cleaner into my coffee cup when I wasn’t looking, because he thought he was being funny. Ended up talking to the police.
August 1st, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Pork with Bones says:
The veterinary clinic I worked at after college had two doctors. One was very nice: a genuine human being who cared about our patients, their owners, and those of us who worked there. The other vet owned the place.
Once upon a time, we assistants had more than the usual number of dogs to walk at closing time. We also needed to clean the place up from top to bottom, close out the paperwork, etc. Nice Doctor decided to pitch in, and was in the back walking a dog when Clinic Owner drove up.
“What are you doing, Doctor? That’s not your job. We have People for that.”
Yes, he actually did say that. “We have People for that.” Where “People” = “Second-class Citizens.” And where the whole statement = “That’s beneath your dignity. You’re demeaning yourself.”
It’s not as if he was respectful of those of us who did the jobs he found distasteful, obviously!
August 1st, 2008 at 7:24 pm
jenne says:
I think Walmart…It took me years to be able to even consider shopping there. Man…bad bosses, bad work, baaaad customers.
August 1st, 2008 at 7:42 pm
Gini says:
My worst job was picking potatoes. We had to wear a belt around our waist that had a large hook on it. You hooked a burlap bag on the hook, straddled the row of unearthed potatoes, bent over, picking up potatoes and throwing them into the bag. You dragged the bag along until it was half full – fifty pounds. We threw a piece of paper into the bag with our ID number on it. We got 50 cents for every 50 pounds of potatoes we picked. I lasted 2 days.
I,too, am a pastor’s wife and am always looking for creative ways to work and stretch the budget. I am currently working in a leather store where we have to greet every customer that comes in the door with the following greeting “Hi folks. Everything in the store is under $30.00″ I don’t mind saying it, except when the customers give me a hard time. Like saying, “Oh, can I buy the cash register for $30.00? We sell a lot of purses and backpacks (not as cool as your give away) in our store. Can you tell me why women have to unzip every zipper in the store and leave them unzipped?
August 1st, 2008 at 8:02 pm
Debbie says:
The job itself wasn’t so bad; it was the new person in charge who told deliberate lies about my husband (who also worked there) and me, got us fired and later said he hadn’t done anything wrong and that we should leave town. Our home town, by the way, where we’d lived our entire lives with the exception of a few years in a couple of other cities. (We didn’t!)
August 1st, 2008 at 11:39 pm
elismsue says:
Backpacks! As a special education teacher, backpacks to use for organization, is a muist. if I win, I will give it to one of my needy students!
Sue
August 2nd, 2008 at 10:53 am
Grace says:
My worst job was in college. I worked as a file clerk for an insurance company that underwrote bailbond offices. I was in a huge windowless room pulling and returning bonds in numeric order. What was the worst was that I worked with a smelly guy who used to lick his finger as he would flip through the copies of the bailbond forms. [shuddering]In the end, I quit. But I found out months later that this guy LOST it one day. He got ticked and yelled at the whole office and threatened to come back with a gun. Thank goodness I was gone before he went critical.
August 2nd, 2008 at 1:44 pm
D says:
hmmmmm, so many to choose from.
I worked for an insurance co. They didn’t really have a job description or a job really, for me to do. So after a month they called me in and said they didn’t need me anymore. When I asked why, he said, when I came in to fill out an application they weren’t really hiring for anything, but decided to hire me just in case anyone needed help. Turned out, nobody needed help! Whaaatt? So that wasn’t so good.
Also, as a waitress outside a Marine base that opened at 9:00PM until 6:00 AM,(that should tell you what kind of restaurant it was) Lots and lots of drunk Marines, not good either. I like Marines, just not drunk ones.
August 2nd, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Tracy says:
My worst job was working as a “bagger” for Kroger. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, being a bagger also entailed coming in at 4:00 am to run the waxer on the floors, cleaning the DISGUSTING bathrooms, being at the ready when you heard “cleanup on aisle 10″ (where you would inevitably encounter something nasty like a broken jar of pickled pigs feet), and gathering carts in 100 degree heat! Oh, it was fun stuff! = )
August 2nd, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Lisa says:
The worst job I ever had was at a meat packing plant. I got to pick the fat up off the floor and do the dishes. By dishes I mean huge vats and a power hose. I also got to dress very lovely in rubber boots (way to big for me) and a beautiful hair net. My husband (was boyfriend at the time) worked there with me. Even in that atire he still thought I was cute:) Love is blind.
August 2nd, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Marilyn says:
My worst job was working in the corn freezing room at a Green Giant factory in August. We had to take corn off a conveyer belt going from left to right, and put them on a smaller conveyer belt going from right to left. We stood on a wet concrete floor for 12-hour shifts 6 or 7 days a week.
August 2nd, 2008 at 8:28 pm
chaotic joy says:
When I was just out of highschool I worked for a temporary agency and they sent me different places to fill in as a receptionist. For a week or even sometimes for a month or two. One long term assignment I had was to answer the switch board for a Sanitation company. I answered about 1200 calls a day and most of the people were irate. It turns out the company was failing, and subsequently failing to pick up people’s trash. I would get cursed at and yelled at all day long because I would put people in a queue where they would be on hold for an hour. So they would hang up and call and curse and yell at me some more.
I had no backbone at that time so I stuck it out for about 6 weeks waiting for them to find someone permanent which of course they never did because it was THE. WORST. JOB. ON. THE. PLANET. Everytime I tried to train someone they would last one or two days and refuse to come back. I finally called the temp agency crying and they moved me somewhere else.
August 3rd, 2008 at 12:12 am
Lindsey says:
My worst job was definitely managing an apartment complex. 2 buildings, 48 units. Mostly retired people whoe had nothing better to do than complain about the garbage in the laundry room “overflowing” when it was less than half full. Now I love seniors, I know that we should honor them, but this was horrible. I even had one lady spank my bottom and say ” You’re built!” Awkward… I ended up getting pregnant and having horrible morning sickness so my husband and I moved out. I tell anyone I meet who is interested in managing apartments to run away as fast as they can!
August 3rd, 2008 at 12:49 am
Cynthia says:
My worst job – waitressing as a teenager at a busy metropolitan water-front Italian restaurant; equation goes something like this: greedy little old restaurant owner + small kitchen + too many tables + not enough silverware for customers + 40 minute wait for appetizers + my people-pleasing nature = much fingernail biting and many tears of stress. But at least some good education in what not to choose as a career. And a few good embarrassing moments, like being asked for a pen and pulling a Tampax out of my pocket instead.
August 3rd, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Nicole says:
My worst job – I didn’t even have to think about it!! The summer before my senior year in H.S. I needed a job in the worst way, you know, for all that senior stuff that we think that we must have and will never live without, not sure where some of that stuff ended up at! I lived in a small tourist town near a river that is used for floating and boating! That means many motel rooms that needed to be cleaned!! I applied and accepted a job cleaning rooms! I thought that it couldn’t be too bad, I had to clean at home, how hard could this be. Well, I quickly figured out that most people that visited here were not families with good etiquette, but college students that would have a little too much too drink and I will let your imagination do the rest for what I had to clean in those rooms. It was the longest summer of my life!! I worked as long as I could and quit the day before my birthday and 2 weeks before school started! I have to say, that when I frequent a hotel/motel now, I clean up my room before I leave! I just can’t help it!
August 3rd, 2008 at 12:50 pm
france59 says:
How could I have forgotten?? I just had my memory nudged…another horrible job! I worked at a graveyard shift waitress at Country Kitchen in a college town/railroad town/meat-packing plant town. Yep, all of those lovely customers from the college, the railway and the meatpacking plant who came in late at night to eat. Most had been out for a few drinks before stopping by for their sobering-up meal. The college students thought it was funny to place the few measley coins for a tip under an overturned glass of water, so you had the joy of drenching yourself and the table (more to clean up) when you retrieved them or they would roll up a dollar bill and stick it in the neck of the ketchup bottle. Who doesn’t love a ketchupy dollar bill? Such a tasty snack! The railway guy I remember was the one my friend and I were both waiting on (we had to double team him, since he was so obnoxious and demanding) who chose to expose himself to us just as she was pouring his coffee. He almost had 3rd-degree burns on a sensitive area. And there were the meat-packing plant guys who came in smelly, smelly, smelly. That is not a good smell–dried blood, etc. So, I blocked it out of my mind…that summer of a mean, lazy manager who felt that his office was his personal restaurant where we were to wait on him while also trying to deal with the crowd of drunks and the time in my life when I realized just how valuable my degree was going to be. It would almost ensure that I would never have to do that job again!
August 3rd, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Jeni says:
This is pretty graphic.
Before I became a SAHM I was a veterinarian. I loved most of the work, but one afternoon in general sticks out in my mind. I was the newest doctor in a 3-doctor practice, so I got all the patients no one wanted. Enter Roscoe, an old, obese Bassett Hound with all of his credentials, smelling SO strongly of dog and urine and poop that it was hard just to be around him. Roscoe’s owner had lovingly fed Roscoe a “big ole ham bone” a few days before, and Roscoe was “all stopped up.” An x-ray showed that big chunks of ham bone were all stuck & congregating all in his rectum.
My job? Sedate Roscoe. Glove up. Manipulate & retrieve said bone chunks from rectum using LONG hemostats.
It took 2 hours.
Enough said.
August 3rd, 2008 at 5:35 pm
imagine1community says:
My worst job was probably the one typing addresses of telephone poles for Bell of Pennsylvania. The job was tedious enough, entering the details into a database. But what sticks with me is the boss man who, in the days before Anita Hill, liked to come up behind me and grab my butt.
I was going into my sophomore year in college. I was living away from home, paying my own rent and expenses in an off-campus apartment, and I couldn’t quit because I needed the money.
August 3rd, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Jess says:
The worst job I had was a data entry position at a Sanitary District Plant. Men with big jars of very smelly stuff would come in all the time. YUCK. This was also a data entry job when computer screens were black with blinking green cursors.
August 3rd, 2008 at 10:02 pm
Irish Mom says:
Ok, my worst job was at the Taste of Chicago about 15 years ago. It lasted about 10 days (seemed like 100) and had to be at least 200 degrees. I worked fora pizza restaurant serving slices. Each “restaurant” was in a 10×10 tent and all the food was cooked in the tent. This means there were rows and rows of ovens and grills, this turned a 200 degree day into a 450 degree inferno. Not to mention the humidity. I think I sweated out 20 pounds a day, and I still to this day don’t like pizza.
I remember customers not liking the particular piece they were being served or taking 2 bites and wanting a refund. People would wait an hour for a slice then it was finally their turn and they’d stand there and stare at the menu (of 5 different types of slices) and take forever to decide what they wanted. I swore I wanted to smack some folks up side the head with a slice of pepperoni!!
August 3rd, 2008 at 11:11 pm
edj says:
Am I too late? Dang it, I’m moving, and Ilsa needs a new backpack. I’m going to try anyway.
Ok, my worse job. No it wasn’t thesis students in Mauritania, where I had to correct sentences like “The American revolution had done the born of the wrong hop that after the suppression of the treat, the slavery passed away by itself, for the sources of the traffic one time cut, the institution was intended to disappear naturally.” Nor was it the 2 days I lasted at Pizza Hut, in my fetching tan polyester trousers. No, it was probably a house-cleaning job I had in college, where the woman follwed me around in case I stole something, and when she overpaid me and I pointed it out to her, said, “I would have noticed anyway.”
August 4th, 2008 at 1:04 am