What's the worst job you've ever had? What made it miserable...the duties? the people? the bad coffee? What could "they" have done to make things better, if anything? Hey -- if you've NEVER had a crappy job, then you'll have to tell us about your *all-time favorite*.

Also, is there a particular type of co-worker you despise/adore? (you know, like the creep who always eyeballs and sniffs your lunch or the sweetie who always says hello to your face and actually remembers your name).

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

Answers

The worst job I ever had was back when I was still in the Air Force. It was one of those jobs that tend to exist in government service, where the line in the job description that says "Other duties as assigned" winds up filling your whole day. The "other duties" were always god-awful annoying and useless sorts of things.

It didn't help that I worked for PsychoMajor. One of his quirks was scheduling mandatory overtime for the whole office one night each week. He would then spend the entire after-normal-hours period yakking about his philosophy so we couldn't get any actual work done. Yeah, boss, I want to spend the hours between 5 and 9 pm listening to you yap about the meaning of life! Needless to say, when another opportunity presented itself, I took it.

My least favorite co-workers? The ones who won't clean up after their damn selves in the kitchen. You use it, you wash it, buddy.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

Working at Blockbuster. We were either so busy, it was insane or during the week days, it was so dead, it felt like years had passed by the time I was off. They made us play those previews on an endless loop. It's wonder I managed to keep a bit of my mind. I hated wearing the stupid blue oxford cloth shirt and khaki pants every day. There was this one really creepy guy who was a chef and he used to come in late at night and stare at me over the rows of videos. It was so bad co-workers noticed it. He always insisted on checking out at my register and everytime he gave me his money, he'd caress my palm. I'm getting ooky just thinking about it. There was nothing redeeming about that job.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

Working at a health food store and being required to listen to old people and hippies describe their health/diet issues in excruciating detail. Yeah dude, I'm all about helping you find the right kind of psyllium, but please spare me the harsh details of your colon trouble. Thanks.

My current job bores me and pays me poorly. It's still a million times better than the health food store.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

Ooh, good topic, Laura.

My absolute worst was the grocery-store deli. The customers were from hell. We always had to walk on grease. I hate the employee who goofs off all day, but then makes a big show of working in front of the boss. And that type always sucks up to the boss hardcore, too. And then there's the type of boss who loves this.

The employees I love are the ones with whom you have in-depth conversations while actually working.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

I was a telemarketer at a sign manufacturer once. The owner was a NUT, sometimes he would sit in his office all day with the lights off and his head on the desk. Other times he would stand behind us listening to us as we worked and smacking the cubicles with a hockey stick. Other times he'd bring in beer, turn the stereo up and we'd all party. He made us put a quarter in a Mickey Mouse bank on his desk if we ever said the words 'pay' or 'bill' to a customer.

I found out later I was the only one he didn't 'take to a sales convention' if you know what I mean. I was also the only one that was married at the time, but hey, he could have asked, right? I quit when my payroll check bounced.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

I worked in an office where the writers of Melrose Place came to get their storylines. The company actually made Nicole shoes. I was hired during the middle of a pissing match between the president's sons (it was a family business) and the man the president hired to actually get the business back in order. Apparently after each son graduated from college, he became a vice president of a section of the company, and from years of not knowing what the fuck they were doing business suffered. Larry was hired because he had 20+ years in the shoe business and knew what he was doing, and the sons knew he would make them look bad. After a year working there, Larry convinced the president he needed an admin assistant and I was hired. The brothers got some of the catty women that worked for them to spy on me and tell them about anything I did that wasn't perfect so they could tell their daddy that Larry's assistant was inept and that he really didn't need help. It got to the point that Larry wouldn't let me leave my office unless I was specifically going to someone else's office for business reasons, because I was being ratted on for going to the freaking bathroom and considered a slacker. And the brothers would cancel orders Larry's salesmen would place (example: Oh, your salesman sold 100,000 pairs of style X? Well, I've discontinued that style) causing the company hundreds of thousands of dollars just to make Larry look bad. And the oldest son had Lou Gehrig's disease so he was slowly dying in front of our eyes and he the worse he got the more hateful he became. Things were better when the he went to Europe for medical procedures that aren't approved in the U.S. in order to slow down his disease, but when he came back he was nastier than ever. The catty women finally got me fired when they got me to start talking about a gay club I had been to to go dancing, not knowing that a customer was sitting down just around the corner from where we were talking. When I went back to my office, the head cat woman - the receptionist, went to the president and told him I was going around talking about gay people and gay clubs in front of customers.

The part about being fired that pissed me off the most was that the president told Larry to get rid of me Thursday afternoon, but he didn't tell me until Friday at 4:30, AFTER I finished a load of reports that he needed for a meeting Monday morning. Sheep fucker.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

selling cars, at a high pressure dealership.

We used to have to go out there and pounce on anyone who set foot on the lot. I did learn a lot of tricks on how to take advantage of people, but it was WAY stressful. I'll take working in a deli or some slacker job anytime...

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

Working in a dining room of a certain Legislative Assembly and "serving" politicians home-made ice-cream and other food-stuff. That and the fact that I was 40 years younger than everyone and had big hair - it was the 80's what can I say?

-- Anonymous, June 16, 2000

It's a tie:

At seventeen, I worked at a sno-cone cart in front of Wal-Mart. Not an air-conditioned little sno-cone hut, but an open-to-the-elements cart placed on asphalt in the midst of raging Oklahoma summer heat. We were not allowed to call our products sno-cones, because the owner wanted them to be called "Sno Biz Shave Ice Products" (as in, "Hello Sir, would you like a Sno Biz Shave Ice?"). I contend that it should at the very least be *Shaved* Ice, but the owner was adamant. Anyway, it was hot. The pay was crap. People were never happy with the placement or amount (too little, too much) of syrupy flavor. The sno-cones were free to workers, our one perk, but after the third day, you never wanted to have one again. You just wanted the syrup out of your hair.

During winter break of this last year, I worked at Lame Giant (TM Gwen) for extra money. Because the vacuum cleaner was so old that its cord had exposed electrical wires and its insides were tired, we were made to crawl on the floor picking up any piece of paper larger than 1/4 an inch in order to keep the vacuum from jamming. After doing this the first day, I hoped to actually be shocked to unconsciousness when touching the wires rather than continue working at the store. Eventually I made the job work by refusing to harass the customers ("May I help you? What about now? What about now? What about now?) and simply folded sweaters from shift beginning to shift close, unless a customer actually seemed to require assistance. My manager hated this, but the customers actually seemed happier.

-- Anonymous, June 17, 2000

I forgot to mention that at the sno-cone job, we had to wear shirts that said: "Sno Biz Shave Ice" and underneath, in big cursive script, "DO ME A FLAVOR."

Many male Wal-Mart shoppers found this hilariously funny, or worse, irresistably inviting.

-- Anonymous, June 17, 2000

My first job was working the counter at a Baskin Robbins ice creamery. It was next door to an infested hotel that housed ex-mental patients after the Reagan-cutbacks. Other than mopping-up urine, I was constantly harrassed by a severly burned man who liked to touch me with his 2 remaining fingers and stick his tongue out through the small slit that was once his mouth. He lost his nose, ears, and was understandably bitter. The $3.25 an hour I made didn't quite cover the cost of therapy I had to go through afterwards. My brothers still tell me that "Burnie Fryer" called. The bubble-gum ice cream was good

-- Anonymous, June 17, 2000

I worked at a cheap Canadian department store called Zeller's (it's like K-Mart) when I was in high school. It was a very small town in Nova Scotia, and this was the only big store for many miles around. When I was hired at 15, they put me on the jewellery counter, which was a big square in the middle of the store, and people would come up from all sides demanding service. I had no training whatsoever, and I found out right away that I was expected to change watch batteries (what!!??) and repair, like, gold chains with links missing...it was a nightmare. I'm such a control freak and I was stuck in a box with people on all sides wanting a piece of me, and I had no damn idea what I was doing.

Then I begged to be made a regular cashier, and they said yes, and I was happy as a clam. Ah, the happiness of an orderly line-up.

-- Anonymous, June 17, 2000

My worst job was in high school, making a few extra bucks as a telemarketer. I felt terrible trying to sell these people "information packets." The people I worked with were all a bit trashy too. One big white girl who thought she was some kinda bad-ass chicana always scared me. Turned out she liked me a fair bit and invited me to her second single mother babyshower. The assistant manager liked me too, and she turned out to be a lesbian. The manager thought he was a bad ass and walked around the workplace wearing a weight-lifter's belt. One day I got called into the manager's office for a "talk." I was scared out of my mind and thought they'd caught me telling the phone customers that the information packets really didn't let them "buy homes for a dollar!" so easily. Turned out that the guy working in the cubicle next to me had been waving his willy around at female co-workers and I was rumored to have been one of the unfortunate victims of his visual assault. I wasn't, but the guy was still fired based on other women's reports. I quit the place soon after. The last time I drove by the office, the windows were all boarded up.

-- Anonymous, June 18, 2000

I think Rebecca wins. I was a cashier at KMart for a year during college. People were so rude and they treated me like I had zero brains. One women turned her head and dropped her change into my hand so she wouldn't have to touch it. Another time, someone switched prices and I caught it. I wasn't rude at all. I just told them I had to get a price check. They became livid. 45 minutes later someone came though my line and said that person must be really pissed at you. I turned around and they were staring at me though the window. The manager told me I should of been nicer. I quit two weeks later. I worked at Pizza Inn one summer. We joked about making pizzas out of the flattened road-kill in the parking lot (we never did though-really!!) It was back around 1979 and there is some song that was played on the juke-box so much I have a visceral response when I hear it-something about "take a chance on me..." Anyway, the managers there aspired to higher Pizza Inn levels for careers and one night this idiot was trying to work fast to impress someone and he impressed the oven door on my arm, duh. Now that I have a real job, my education continues in different ways.

-- Anonymous, June 20, 2000

One summer during college I worked at the Local Huge Expensive Amusement Park. Instead of running a ride or picking up trash or something normal like that, I wore a 20-pound bear suit for the children's area of the park. The job itself wasn't so bad-but we were having a record heat wave that summer. I would go outside for 10 minutes of each hour and watch sweat drip liberally off the tip of my nose in the bear head. Oh, and I lost count of how many boys/grown men would punch me in the back of the head. sigh...

-- Anonymous, June 27, 2000

One summer I was hired to be a typesetter for a company that printed up a banking directory. Yup, every bank in the world was listed in those expensive little books. I was hired by the department head's boss while the department head was on vacation. When she came back from vacation the trouble began. She hated me, I guess because I looked blank and went outside for a cigarette when she asked me which Bible Study class I was in. So I was swiftly transferred to the bindery.

I cut and glued address changes for three months in a little room all by myself. I was so bored I thought I'd go insane, and it didn't help that the bitch spread the word that I was Spawn of Satan and no one would talk to me on breaks or at lunch lest I corrupt their Heaven-bound tiny brains. It was like infiltrating a cult, but with lower pay. Oh, well, at least my biggest aspiration wasn't to use my experience to work for the Yellow Pages.

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

I was Wendy (as in Wendy's Hamburgers) several times during a very hot summer. The dress didn't fit. The wig was red yarn. I felt stupid and couldn't bend over to bus tables (yes, children, back in the day, Wendy's host[esse]s would clean your tables for you and there was no super salad bar).

I got bitten by a sociopathic little brat while teaching Sunday School. His mother worked with me and passively pleaded with him to let go until I threatened to dip him head first in a sink full of water until he let go. Making mattters more complicated, I was an agnostic at the time (leaning towards Taoism but not fully informed enough to make the decision 'final') so I had to be extra careful not to inflict my religious views on the children to the point where their parents would burn me at the stake. The job paid $10 an hour, though.

Worked in a casino in Las Vegas while the union was threatening to strike. I don't gamble and I didn't drink or have any interest in being picked up by tourists, so I was a social leper among my colleagues who were all about boozin', whorin', gamblin' and the like. Learned basic words (and rude words) in Spanish out of self- defense. Forgot most promptly, alas, due to lack of practice.

See "hellish bosses" and "most gross/disgusting thing ever" threads for others...i.e., the guy who timed my bathroom breaks worked at the medical center where I was the librarian.

-- Anonymous, July 10, 2000

The place I'm at now. It's a county paratransit service and the Board of Supervisors hired a job-hopping Super Bitch as our new director two years ago. When she's not off at conferences or just away from the office through her creative interpretation of flex time, she's fucking with long term office and operational policies. She communicates to us in memos, several a day, some written to clarify earlier memos. She's taken sane, logical practices and applied her Rube Goldberg logic to create hideous policies, two of which actually got the disabled community up in arms. When she's not busy coming up with time consuming, union-grievance-generating, policies, she's going after employees who opposed her by making their working conditions so unpleasant they quit. This way the county doesn't have to pay unemployment. In the past year she's driven out the secretary, the assistant director, two long term full-timers, five part-timers and a number of casual drivers. Five more full- timers are looking for other work. There has been a almost a constant round of hiring to replace new workers who have quit out of frustration. She's currently targeting a full-timer who's been here for 19 years and has had to take off a lot of time lately due to sickness and she's beginning to harass another long term full-timer, as well. Her latest change in office policy is to take away our half hour lunch breaks, something we have always had. She's got the tacit approval of the Board so complaints are worthless. She was in Air Force Intelligence for years and sums up a person's value to her by their status in relation to hers. She drips Southern charm to her bosses and they are completely fooled by her and think we are being unfair to her. Between the constant stress of all the bullshit she generates and the continual problems dealing with and training new employees all the time, dealing with stressed out office workers, stressed out drivers, vans that are breaking down all the time because the director ignores maintenance until we almost don't have enough vehicles to cover the rides we're supposed to do, and increasingly demanding and upset riders and agencies all I want to do is find a basketweaving job somewhere, far away from people and corporate office bitches who run out older employees to save money, and give them little cudos to add to their resumes.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2000

I've cooked in kitchens where I had lemon fights with Haitian boys because they couldn't handle a woman telling them what to do. I worked in a screen door factory (that was nice) where you got a $.10 raise per hour for every saw you could use. I ran a Taco Bell in Cleveland, but quit when I found out one of the employees I had hired was a serial rapist (didn't get me thankfully). The cops said "didn't you notice those marks on his neck? That's where someone shot him. You should be more careful who you hire." Duh! Of course, jobs in college can really suck. I must have those blocked from my memory.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2000

I was a stripper for like a week. I was'nt very goodd at it cuz i kept tripping on stage from the hi heels i wore. 1 time a guy threw a lime at me! Can you believe it?? I'm probabley the only striper who ever got fired. I'm not very smart.

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2000

Floosie, you shouldn't be so hard on yourself. In some cultures, citrus-fruit throwing is considered a compliment.

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2000

Really Gwen. Myabe it was considred a tip in his culture?

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2000

Floosie, are you sure the guy didn't want you to put the lime somewhere into your wonderfulness, and then squeeze the juice into his drink?

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2000

My wonderfluness? is that what i think it is? Skuki, yur baaaad!

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2000

I actually made it pretty far in life before taking a shit job, but I'm so glad I did have one for the experience value. Granted, I've had some pretty low paying jobs, but they were cool in other ways. The last semester of medical school I was pretty broke and had a lot of free time, so I took a job a friend passed along working in the evenings as the receptionist at a tanning salon. I just sat at a desk and read a book, answered the occasional phone call. It was great though, being talked down to by wrinkled Dallas matrons maintaining their tacky orange UVA-induced tans. Heh. One moron got bad at me because I wouldn't let her 12 year old daughter get in a tanning booth. "It's not dangerous, is it?" she asked. What a dipshit. I only lasted about 2 months there; it was just too painful. And I was afraid of being seen there by someone who knew me.

-- Anonymous, October 24, 2000

This may sound backward but the job most think would be cool wasn't and the job most think the worst is actually the best job I've ever had. In high school I had a job as a, ah, well hung hunk o burnin love to a rather nice looking middle age mob wife. No kidding. I ran the riding string at a fancy resort in SoCal and after work I was an, ah, escort. We used to go for long rides out where the back nine is now and, ah, enjoy life. I was always scared shitless that her bodyguard would catch us. He couldn't ride a horse so he would stay at the paddock and polish the Lincoln. The job I have now is the best job I've ever had. I've had jobs that paid much more money and jobs where I was much more important, but this is the best job I've ever had. I am a supervisor at a shit processing plant. No shit. The wastewater processing facility for the 5th largest city in the US. I make lots and lots of money, I love to be up to my neck in trouble and figure out how to keep from drowning and I love the people that work for me. I have awesome hours and super benefits. And I can look out my office window, like right now, and see what the surf is like. It's raining right now but the waves are going to be good tomorrow and the sunset will be awesome tonight. Thankyou Lord. I am truly blessed and don't know why. I also worked at a fast food fish and chips shop and a plastics fabrication factory. I worked for the government twice. The first time really sucked the big one and the second sucked too. I was a building contractor and hated dealing with clients and I was a consruction superintendant. I liked that alot. I worked in a gas station and a couple of surf shops. For a long time I worked at being stupid but that's another thread. James

-- Anonymous, October 27, 2000

James, one thing scares me about your post. You work at a huge wastewater treatment plant and can see the ocean from your office window? No one's swimming in the overflow, are they? I guess if you're running things, it's probably OK. Hey, do you know anything about aquaculture wastewater treatment? or is it hydroponic?

-- Anonymous, October 30, 2000

I worked hydroculture or aquaculture for the first ten years in the field. It is ok for very small applications but the enourmous amount of biomass created makes it unattractive for large applications. And it is very land intensive. And in cold climates it only works in the summer and fall. Oh, and I surf about a mile down from my plant at a place called dolphin tanks. James

-- Anonymous, October 31, 2000

Oh, and I sat through the orientation to be a U.S. Census taker but quit after it was over. That was truly horrible. I sat in the back of the room with this cool old lady who used to be a pilot who agreed that this was the suckiest thing we'd ever gotten ourselves into. She brought me sandwiches every day and then just took out her hearing aids and I did her tests for her.

-- Anonymous, November 01, 2000

I can't say *the* worst job, because ANY and EVERY temp job I've ever had blows platypus nads to the nth degree. I am a graphic artist and actress and having to work these souless Ninth Circle of Hell temp jobs was one of the worst experiences I've ever had. ONE of the worst, therefore, was at this finance company where every woman was a catty, ignoring, evil BITCH who gave dirty looks and/or ignored me. I got paid $9/hour and had to get on my hands and knees to file in these sicko cabinets that had folders jammed in and the drawers really low. you could NOT file. It was next to impossible. I got little cuts on my fingers and I should have sued their asses. Imagine a hot artistic chick in a dry, gray building full of finance bitches. I was thrown to the lions! I quit that hellhole the minute I got a real gig. YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!

-- Anonymous, January 16, 2001