Worst job you ever had!

[ArcsVibe]

We had a thread like this in one of my local car forums and the response was crazy! So tell me dear Genvibers what is the worse job you've ever had?

[Ocean14]

I worked at a BBQ Rib restaurant for 2 days. I was 16 and started on a Friday night. I began working in the dishroom where I was the youngest by 20+ years and the only one that spoke English. In fact, the only person that spoke "some" English kept telling me about his kidney stones and how I should drink Cranberry juice...this went on all night. Near the end of my shift, I was promoted to expediter/prep in the kitchen and had the pleasure of dealing with a surely cook lol. Shortly after that weekend, I received a co-op position at a local hospital and have remained in health care ever since (still in school).

[joatmon]

I've had a variety of jobs, and none of them have been all that bad. Each had something good and something bad. The pay of the current job is nice, but there's never any real sense of completing anything, stuff just continues, evolves, but is never finished. With laptops, internet, cell and smart phones, etc, the job refuses to be left at the office, it's always there, no matter where or when. Also, this "modern" age of technology is training me to have attention deficit disorder. I'd write more but have to check email, respond to a few IMs, oh look a bird!

[Persephone]

I worked at an amazing local book store. My boss was nice but the store was horrendously disorganized. It was superhard receiving orders every day because the majority of special orders for people was hinged upon her memory. . . which isn't a very good one and she's not the only one working there!!One day this lady came in to pick up a special order. I rang her up, and told her the total, and she said, "Oh. I think someone else already paid for it. >.>" And so I say to Morgan (the other girl who worked there), "Hey Morgan, how do I confirm someone has already paid for a special order and how do I confirm that they received it?" And she looked at me like I was a total moron, "Just give them the book? We don't do those things." So I did. . . but. . . Shouldn't there be something on the special order thing that says that it was already paid for?!?! >_So pre-paid stuff was hinged on her memory, too. . . And the shelf with special orders was a disorganized mess. I tried to sort alphabetically by the names of the people so we wouldn't waste their time when they came to pick up their books, but the boss wouldn't stick to it.And then later on, she found out I ran a maid business and decided to take advantage of my skills. She had me busting my @$$ cleaning the whole store on minimum wage (half of what I charge my clients), whereas her other employees sat in a chair and watched football on the huge plasma screen all day. I got sick of it and quit.

[KNINE]

Window washer. I'm afraid of heights. It lasted one day. I didn't even go back to collect my pay.

[KITT222]

I've only ever had two (three, if you count mowing the lawn) but working Park Services at Valleyfair was pretty terrible, and not just because it's worse than my Heavenly 9-month-out-of-the-year job at School Space Media. Basically, I'm a janitor at an amusement park. I either sweep, collect garbage, or clean bathrooms. Really not bad work. Nice, humbling, a good bonus if you fulfill your contract, you get a nice tan (I'm Mexican, so I don't burn, I tan), some people are nice, and $7.75/hr. But the fellow employees and higher ups were a pain. At break some spoiled-rich girl (Shakopee is a richer city in the area, and VFair is in Shakopee) was sitting nearby, and I said I was looking at a new computer, and I gave my price range. She said she hasn't had any that were under $2000. Baffled by this, I just told her I didn't want a computer worth more than 20% the value of my car. She remarked that it must be a really crappy car. Later that week, her car broke down and she was late. While walking away I made the remark that it must have been a pretty crappy car. Ah, poetic justice. I never saw her again. But that was just one of many people which made me not enjoy being there. I didn't make friends until August, too. And "The Suits" (AKA the executives) treated you as scum. It's great work, and the people won't be a problem if you're not socially challenged. But that's behind me now, and it looks GREAT on a job application.

[star_deceiver]

Bad job.... Hmmmm...Nothing too horrible... But I can remember working 4 jobs, 1 day a week at each of them...

[BurnOnyx08]

I started out packing groceries at a locally owned grocery store, worked hard for minimum wage ($6.15/hr) but the employer was so good to work for.I dug ditches 65hrs/week. Solid honest work and I was paid fairly. Got into the best shape of my life but burned right out from long hard labour.Worked in a warehouse for the city and then later did records management for the same city. Decent jobs.Did night crew at a different grocery store for $8 an hour and was never given more than 24hrs/week. Worked for a guy who was 5 years younger than me and hired 8 days earlier for the same job. He smoked weed in the basement while I busted my a$$. Quit that job after 2 months.Now have the best job I could ever ask for, police officer in one of the best cities in Canada. Awesome salary and benefits for the first time ever, job security, have fun all shift and get to stand on the cool side of the barricades. Also see some of the worst things you can see, rob people of their freedom, get crapped on by the public because THEY broke a traffic law and I have been punched, spit on and threatened and am expected to consider it a hazard of the job.But it's still the greatest job out there.

[ArcsVibe]

Thanks everyone! Keep them coming!!

[IMakeVibes]

Never had a really bad job, just various ones. I started bagging groceries in high school, never thought I'd be in the grocery business for 10 years after that.Then I thought I wanted to do something in the music industry and worked for a few radio stations in the San Francisco area doing various things both on and off air. This was when radio was still fun before the huge companies like Clear Channel came through and took over radio.I then found the best job yet, working at NUMMI where all your pretty Vibes were born. Back then, we were still making Geo Prizms along side the Corollas and Tacomas. I haven't worked since the plant shut down. I've got to come up with something soon as I'm almost done with school. Hopefully it will be the next "best job yet".

[Houston]

My worst job was shortly after hiring into Buick back in '63. Tires were already mounted and the new Buicks, sitting on a moving conveyer belt, were moving along at the rate of about 70 cars per hour. My job was to install gas-pedals and then smooth out the carpet on the driver's side floor. Crunching down and doing that about every 52 seconds for a whole day is a killer and I'm sure glad it lasted for only that one day.There were many worse jobs, though, and I thank God I never had any of them. I remember this old man who had the job of spraying a tar-like substance on the underside of hoods (before they were installed on the car) as an adhesive to hold the fiberglass insullation he then pushed into it. He was isolated, because nobody wanted particles of that goo that splattered everywhere getting all over them the way it did on him. I felt so sorry for him having to do that all day, everyday, with absolutely nobody nearby to talk to. He had that job for years, too, and then I never saw him again. My guess is that junk getting into his lungs killed him. I don't agree with all these new government regulations, but thanks to all this environmental stuff, this sort of thing supposedly no longer occurs.

[jkm311]

I was hired at a home improvement store at the age of 18 to work in the dept they called "Millwork." Yeah, the only part of the job that remotely had anything to do with millwork was custom cutting lengths of molding for customers. And that was with a dull saw and a mitre box. No table saw in sight. Talk about measuring twice.The rest of my job? Being suspended 30 feet in the air and lifting (read: shoving) 200-400 lb. custom ordered sliding glass doors, bay windows, etc. worth more than my life on to a stock picker. Alone, and above customers walking under me. I have no idea why this was the practice. They also wanted me to learn this awful CAD-based software program that designed people's kitchens for them, and I refused. It was so clunky, the computers crashed, and people were dropping tens of thousands in up-front deposits. No way should I have been trusted to do that. I knew better.The break area (lunch could not be longer than 20 minutes) was in an open area on the sales floor, with only a 2 1/2 ft wall where customers could just walk up, lean over you and ask where rebar and bags of concrete were located. And boy did they ever do that.I also unloaded the trucks when they came in. This was a monotonous, menial task, but it was my favorite because it kept me busy and not answering customers' questions, for which I did not have any answers (zero training from day 1). Also, I was the youngest worker by a minimum of 10 years. And every man I worked with could not have been more down on their luck in their personal lives if they tried. It's all they talked about, and being 18, I had almost zero to contribute to the conversation.The weekend pay rate was the only thing keeping me there. I wasn't shoveling coal, but I hated every day of the summer of 1998.

[CAMOGIRL]

TWO:Waitressed at a dive in college for two days, not a single customer the whole time!Worked in a cabinet shop between Jr/Sr year of high school. I loved the assembly line, and this is where I learned to paint, I could work the whole line myself from stain to seal to clear coat if I had to... but I started on the sanding table. 12 hour days standing at a vacuum table using an orbital sander. UGH!!

[csxt8058]

I stocked/rotated product in the freezers at our local Sam's Club...that lasted about two weeks. Temps average from 3 above zero to 4 below. I'm used to the cold living up here in the northern woods all my life, but that was tough for 8 hours. I had my fur mad bomber hat and my leather gloves to protect my extremities, nothing else out of the ordinary. Worse part was kneeling down to work the bottom shelves, my knees would begin to hurt from the cold. Only other thing was this strange rushing I would hear in my ears for several hours after getting home...not sure if it was from the intense cold or the constant hum/whoosh of the freezer units, but at least it was temporary. JR