Back Server at a dinner theater. See, the front server would act as a typical waitress/waiter and take orders and punch them into the computer, and get drinks for the guests. Back server had the ☺☺☺☺ job of hauling all the crap from the kitchen downstairs up to where the people were. Because it was a dinner theater, it meant that everyone arrived at almost the same time before the show and you were carrying trays with up to 18 salads at once or 12 dinners. And all the other back servers were doing the same thing and you'd eventually run into someone and spill ☺☺☺☺. It was horrible.
The worst part was that you got paid the below-normal-minimum-wage rate of a tipped employee, but didn't get any tips directly! The front server collected the tips and then tipped their back server what they felt was appropriate. And they always put the new back servers with the fronts that gave ☺☺☺☺ty tips.
Even worse, they intentionally over-scheduled for servers so that if/when someone called off they would still have enough people. You wouldn't even know until you got in whether or not you'd actually be working that night. About 40% of the time as a back server I'd get dressed for work, drive in, only to look at the schedule and see I wasn't working that night. But they'd let me set up silverware on the tables in a section for someone who wasn't in yet! How nice of them! I mean, I hated being there, but I still needed money from working. Easiest quit ever.
tl;dr strenuous work, getting tipped by other employees, and regularly driving into work to find out I don't work = fail
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"For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love." --Carl Sagan
I babysat for some neighbor kids who behaved abominably toward me. I'd usually be watching them while their mom was working in room in the house, so if I'd say no to something, they'd go pound on the door and whine to her. Then she'd look at me like it was my fault. The girl would pull my hair, and the boy would never just go to bed when told to. Most of the time I had to carry him upstairs kicking and fussing. I started to get busy when they'd call to ask if I could babysit.
Cashier at Target. 8 hours. On my feet. Doing the same thing over and over again with the general public. The worst days were when I was on the express checkout lanes. Seriously. 10 items means 10 items. Not 9 items and 109310 little tea light candle things that are all priced individually but are the same thing.
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I liek Phelddagrifs.
Official Knitter of the Crafters.
Currently knitting: It's a surprise!
I work as a Teacher. Bad students sometimes ruin my day.
Your students might not appreciate you and the parents of your students might not either. But I am sure there are millions of Americans that realize you have the most important job in this country even though you make peanuts.
vligerdragon I babysat for some neighbor kids who behaved abominably toward me. I'd usually be watching them while their mom was working in room in the house, so if I'd say no to something, they'd go pound on the door and whine to her. Then she'd look at me like it was my fault. The girl would pull my hair, and the boy would never just go to bed when told to. Most of the time I had to carry him upstairs kicking and fussing. I started to get busy when they'd call to ask if I could babysit.
Cashier at Target. 8 hours. On my feet. Doing the same thing over and over again with the general public. The worst days were when I was on the express checkout lanes. Seriously. 10 items means 10 items. Not 9 items and 109310 little tea light candle things that are all priced individually but are the same thing.
I'm not sure if laws about this vary from state to state, but in my state there is no law against going through the express lane with a cart full of stuff. We are allowed to ask the customer if he/she realizes that they are in the express lane but we are not allowed to remove them. When one or more customers gets angry about a customer with a large order in the express lane, I explain to them that we are not allowed to remove them but they are welcome to try to persuade this customer to move to another lane. But I do empathize :).
I'm not sure if laws about this vary from state to state, but in my state there is no law against going through the express lane with a cart full of stuff. We are allowed to ask the customer if he/she realizes that they are in the express lane but we are not allowed to remove them. When one or more customers gets angry about a customer with a large order in the express lane, I explain to them that we are not allowed to remove them but they are welcome to try to persuade this customer to move to another lane. But I do empathize :).
I would imagine that no state would have such a law since that is purely a service offered by the stores at their own discretion.
What you probably meant was that no company you know of has a policy of removing the customer since they do not want to lose the business of even the obnoxious people.
I'm not sure if laws about this vary from state to state, but in my state there is no law against going through the express lane with a cart full of stuff. We are allowed to ask the customer if he/she realizes that they are in the express lane but we are not allowed to remove them. When one or more customers gets angry about a customer with a large order in the express lane, I explain to them that we are not allowed to remove them but they are welcome to try to persuade this customer to move to another lane. But I do empathize :).
I would find it hillarious if the customer started throwing crap out of the lane. "10 means 10 you (insert epithet of your choice)" lol. Usually those people let me go ahead of them. I got in the line the other night with some lady who had 18 boxes of tea.
I asked if it was on sale. She said no. I asked if there were a lot of people in her house. She said just her. I asked her if she lived far away, she said no around the corner.
Maybe she was one of those crazy coupon people who trys to get stuff for free with thier coupons. I never figured out why she was buying 18 boxes of tea at regular price.
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Out of the blackness and stench of the engulfing swamp emerged a shimmering figure. Only the splattered armor and ichor-stained sword hinted at the unfathomable evil the knight had just laid waste.
I'm not sure if laws about this vary from state to state, but in my state there is no law against going through the express lane with a cart full of stuff. We are allowed to ask the customer if he/she realizes that they are in the express lane but we are not allowed to remove them. When one or more customers gets angry about a customer with a large order in the express lane, I explain to them that we are not allowed to remove them but they are welcome to try to persuade this customer to move to another lane. But I do empathize :).
I'm pretty sure there are no laws, and we'd let people with more items through if it wasn't busy, but if it was, you just politely mentioned to them that this was the express lane. Most people were like "doh!" and switched lanes. Though I did have someone report me to the manager for asking them to choose another lane, and the manager was like "that's what she's been trained to do" and backed me up.
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I liek Phelddagrifs.
Official Knitter of the Crafters.
Currently knitting: It's a surprise!
Worst job I ever had was crop-picking. And picking zucchinis of all things, man they taste bad.
Start at 6am and keep going till about 5pm. Outside in the middle of a field with no shade during the middle of summer with 30 degree heat(celsius).
A huge tractor moves slowly along the rows with long conveyor belts sticking out each side. You had to walk behind the tractor cutting the zucchinis off the plants with a small knife and then dump them on the conveyor belt. If you weren't fast enough to keep up the you would end up running to catch up to the tractor with a bunch of zucchinis bundled in your shirt while the boss yells at you to stop slacking and pick up the pace.
The conveyor belts had little sensors on them that counted each zucchini that went past and you got paid based on how many you harvested, it was only 20 cents for each zucchini so even if you managed to amass hundreds of the damn things your pay was still pretty low.
Also the fact that I had to drive out about 40 kms every day just to get there, and then ANOTHER 40km to get back home meant that I used a large portion of my pay just paying for fuel.
To put into perspective how much that job sucked, I now work at a fish farm where my primary duty is to jump into large pools ankle deep in liquid fish excrement and clean them out ready for more fish to be put in. And I still prefer this job to the crop-picking.
Seriously I think I've been traumatised, every time I see a zucchini I have flashbacks and start sweating.
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Why waste time thinking when you can spend it smashing.
Adding fire automatically makes everything awesome.
Cleaning windows at Subway. It was great at first, only took 30-50 minutes and was an easy 20$ every week. Then they got a new manager who would call me every day after I washed them and say I did a poor job and needed to redo them. Never had a problem before then.
Every job I've had has sucked in some way. I just abhore the concept of working for someone else.
Hallelujah.
Not everybody has a unique marketable talent, skill, or idea that they can go solo with. But if you do, mise well because hell is other people. My worst job was one of my best paying, but the management style was insufferable, even traumatic.
BTW vacin, the 'special needs' folks in line at the store who want things boxed up just so, are on food stamps because they have crippling OCD or autistic spectrum disorders, not because they are spoiled brats and just want to make your minimumwage life hard.
They can't work because they can't deal with even the small level of ambiguity that comes from someone else bagging their groceries.
Yeah, it does make your life harder. But you are lucky and they are not. You can walk into any shop and have a satisfactory interaction with just about any clerk. They bring their own difficulties wherever they go, everyone they interact with is a threat.
So be nice, take their money, and keep being nice to them and taking their money. Their life is ☺☺☺☺ and they know it. Your being nice makes their life a little less ☺☺☺☺ and that's Doing the Right Thing.
Oh and raise your hand if you've worked a minimum-wage range crappy customer service job where your performance of a wide variety of tasks was timed and monitored to the second. You get let go if your transactions per minute drops below like the 90th percentile for efficiency. I hear negative consequences and rigid, heavily regimented work environments are great management techniques. [/sarcasm]
Not everybody has a unique marketable talent, skill, or idea that they can go solo with. But if you do, mise well because hell is other people. My worst job was one of my best paying, but the management style was insufferable, even traumatic.
BTW vacin, the 'special needs' folks in line at the store who want things boxed up just so, are on food stamps because they have crippling OCD or autistic spectrum disorders, not because they are spoiled brats and just want to make your minimumwage life hard.
They can't work because they can't deal with even the small level of ambiguity that comes from someone else bagging their groceries.
Yeah, it does make your life harder. But you are lucky and they are not. You can walk into any shop and have a satisfactory interaction with just about any clerk. They bring their own difficulties wherever they go, everyone they interact with is a threat.
So be nice, take their money, and keep being nice to them and taking their money. Their life is ☺☺☺☺ and they know it. Your being nice makes their life a little less ☺☺☺☺ and that's Doing the Right Thing.
Oh and raise your hand if you've worked a minimum-wage range crappy customer service job where your performance of a wide variety of tasks was timed and monitored to the second. You get let go if your transactions per minute drops below like the 90th percentile for efficiency. I hear negative consequences and rigid, heavily regimented work environments are great management techniques. [/sarcasm]
Ok maybe I was a little harsh in the way that I portrayed the special needs customers. But I can tell you that after countless hours of cashiering that a good portion of those customers are abusing the privelege of getting foodstamps and are taking advantage of the fact that I will do whatever they tell me to do (within reason).
You are right. I should be nice to all of the customers. After all, there is no way that I can tell whether each one with special needs truly has special needs or whether they are abusing the system. But it is very tough to keep from becoming a cynic when you have been working such a low-paying, stressful, and thankless job for years.
Oh and raise your hand if you've worked a minimum-wage range crappy customer service job where your performance of a wide variety of tasks was timed and monitored to the second. You get let go if your transactions per minute drops below like the 90th percentile for efficiency. I hear negative consequences and rigid, heavily regimented work environments are great management techniques. [/sarcasm]
* Sepiriel raises hand
Call center agent in a third world country, was told to "Shut the ☺☺☺☺ up, learn to speak ☺☺☺☺ing English and stop taking jobs from real Americans!"
On the upside i also got to talk to some of the nicest people, Southern Hospitality really made stressful nights (Over here shifts where 9pm - 5am) less horrible.
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Quote from »
Call me old fashioned, but an evil ascension to power just isn't the same without someone chanting faux Latin in the background.
Oreo, Glazing people better than Dunkin' Donuts since 2009
That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange eons even death may die.
I could easily say my current job is probably the worst considering management is so screwed up. I work for a small Postal Outlet, and I get called in almost every day because my manager is "sick". Besides that though, the job is really easy.
My worst job was Tim Hortons about six years ago. They expected a 15 year old to work overnight shifts? Give me a break.
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Commander:
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Talrand, the Sky Summoner
Multi
Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
Reading opinions, drafting, working and properly handling papers and documents, researching, synthesising, summarising, writing briefs and memoranda, investigating, etc.; if anyone without first-hand knowledge of the industry in real life asks (I don't know if, while they were growing up and perhaps now, their parents were people in the industry or they're knowledgeable; so, I assume that few knows the "hardships" that I know), I just answer "getting coffee" or clerical stuff. I like to undersell it because for more than few it's a reality, or it's more realistic than the oversold big-wig corporate whatsits cliché. :/
Of course, because I was an employee, not an employer, and rather green to the industry, I should rightly deal with it and learn the ropes till I become a partner.
I can be thankful that I didn't do all that much clerical work in the worst job ever; but, I have done clerical work in my secondary schooling years, and it's not all that bad in comparison. ([Of] 'course, pays shouldn't be compared considering it wasn't part of the asked-of criteria, I believe.)
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special thanks to sentimentgx4 for the sig
Pourquoi?
The worst part was that you got paid the below-normal-minimum-wage rate of a tipped employee, but didn't get any tips directly! The front server collected the tips and then tipped their back server what they felt was appropriate. And they always put the new back servers with the fronts that gave ☺☺☺☺ty tips.
Even worse, they intentionally over-scheduled for servers so that if/when someone called off they would still have enough people. You wouldn't even know until you got in whether or not you'd actually be working that night. About 40% of the time as a back server I'd get dressed for work, drive in, only to look at the schedule and see I wasn't working that night. But they'd let me set up silverware on the tables in a section for someone who wasn't in yet! How nice of them! I mean, I hated being there, but I still needed money from working. Easiest quit ever.
tl;dr strenuous work, getting tipped by other employees, and regularly driving into work to find out I don't work = fail
Cashier at Target. 8 hours. On my feet. Doing the same thing over and over again with the general public. The worst days were when I was on the express checkout lanes. Seriously. 10 items means 10 items. Not 9 items and 109310 little tea light candle things that are all priced individually but are the same thing.
Official Knitter of the Crafters.
Currently knitting: It's a surprise!
Your students might not appreciate you and the parents of your students might not either. But I am sure there are millions of Americans that realize you have the most important job in this country even though you make peanuts.
I'm not sure if laws about this vary from state to state, but in my state there is no law against going through the express lane with a cart full of stuff. We are allowed to ask the customer if he/she realizes that they are in the express lane but we are not allowed to remove them. When one or more customers gets angry about a customer with a large order in the express lane, I explain to them that we are not allowed to remove them but they are welcome to try to persuade this customer to move to another lane. But I do empathize :).
I would imagine that no state would have such a law since that is purely a service offered by the stores at their own discretion.
What you probably meant was that no company you know of has a policy of removing the customer since they do not want to lose the business of even the obnoxious people.
I would find it hillarious if the customer started throwing crap out of the lane. "10 means 10 you (insert epithet of your choice)" lol. Usually those people let me go ahead of them. I got in the line the other night with some lady who had 18 boxes of tea.
I asked if it was on sale. She said no. I asked if there were a lot of people in her house. She said just her. I asked her if she lived far away, she said no around the corner.
Maybe she was one of those crazy coupon people who trys to get stuff for free with thier coupons. I never figured out why she was buying 18 boxes of tea at regular price.
I'm pretty sure there are no laws, and we'd let people with more items through if it wasn't busy, but if it was, you just politely mentioned to them that this was the express lane. Most people were like "doh!" and switched lanes. Though I did have someone report me to the manager for asking them to choose another lane, and the manager was like "that's what she's been trained to do" and backed me up.
Official Knitter of the Crafters.
Currently knitting: It's a surprise!
Start at 6am and keep going till about 5pm. Outside in the middle of a field with no shade during the middle of summer with 30 degree heat(celsius).
A huge tractor moves slowly along the rows with long conveyor belts sticking out each side. You had to walk behind the tractor cutting the zucchinis off the plants with a small knife and then dump them on the conveyor belt. If you weren't fast enough to keep up the you would end up running to catch up to the tractor with a bunch of zucchinis bundled in your shirt while the boss yells at you to stop slacking and pick up the pace.
The conveyor belts had little sensors on them that counted each zucchini that went past and you got paid based on how many you harvested, it was only 20 cents for each zucchini so even if you managed to amass hundreds of the damn things your pay was still pretty low.
Also the fact that I had to drive out about 40 kms every day just to get there, and then ANOTHER 40km to get back home meant that I used a large portion of my pay just paying for fuel.
To put into perspective how much that job sucked, I now work at a fish farm where my primary duty is to jump into large pools ankle deep in liquid fish excrement and clean them out ready for more fish to be put in. And I still prefer this job to the crop-picking.
Seriously I think I've been traumatised, every time I see a zucchini I have flashbacks and start sweating.
Adding fire automatically makes everything awesome.
Hallelujah.
Not everybody has a unique marketable talent, skill, or idea that they can go solo with. But if you do, mise well because hell is other people. My worst job was one of my best paying, but the management style was insufferable, even traumatic.
BTW vacin, the 'special needs' folks in line at the store who want things boxed up just so, are on food stamps because they have crippling OCD or autistic spectrum disorders, not because they are spoiled brats and just want to make your minimumwage life hard.
They can't work because they can't deal with even the small level of ambiguity that comes from someone else bagging their groceries.
Yeah, it does make your life harder. But you are lucky and they are not. You can walk into any shop and have a satisfactory interaction with just about any clerk. They bring their own difficulties wherever they go, everyone they interact with is a threat.
So be nice, take their money, and keep being nice to them and taking their money. Their life is ☺☺☺☺ and they know it. Your being nice makes their life a little less ☺☺☺☺ and that's Doing the Right Thing.
Oh and raise your hand if you've worked a minimum-wage range crappy customer service job where your performance of a wide variety of tasks was timed and monitored to the second. You get let go if your transactions per minute drops below like the 90th percentile for efficiency. I hear negative consequences and rigid, heavily regimented work environments are great management techniques. [/sarcasm]
Ok maybe I was a little harsh in the way that I portrayed the special needs customers. But I can tell you that after countless hours of cashiering that a good portion of those customers are abusing the privelege of getting foodstamps and are taking advantage of the fact that I will do whatever they tell me to do (within reason).
You are right. I should be nice to all of the customers. After all, there is no way that I can tell whether each one with special needs truly has special needs or whether they are abusing the system. But it is very tough to keep from becoming a cynic when you have been working such a low-paying, stressful, and thankless job for years.
* Sepiriel raises hand
Call center agent in a third world country, was told to "Shut the ☺☺☺☺ up, learn to speak ☺☺☺☺ing English and stop taking jobs from real Americans!"
On the upside i also got to talk to some of the nicest people, Southern Hospitality really made stressful nights (Over here shifts where 9pm - 5am) less horrible.
My worst job was Tim Hortons about six years ago. They expected a 15 year old to work overnight shifts? Give me a break.
1v1
Talrand, the Sky Summoner
Multi
Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
Of course, because I was an employee, not an employer, and rather green to the industry, I should rightly deal with it and learn the ropes till I become a partner.
I can be thankful that I didn't do all that much clerical work in the worst job ever; but, I have done clerical work in my secondary schooling years, and it's not all that bad in comparison. ([Of] 'course, pays shouldn't be compared considering it wasn't part of the asked-of criteria, I believe.)