I have several, from a variety of fields, but lets start chronologically.
The Kid's Play Place
The first example comes from a kid's play place that was 90% 16-year-old girls for employees where I was a manager. Besides being the 'host' of children's parties, all employees were expected to clean the huge place. I don't really think that needs any more to be understood (I really didn't mind doing the bathrooms for the squeamish girls), but here is an example of the kind of randomness I had to deal with: I had one employee 'quit' mid-shift because her mother came in and saw her wiping down tables in the cafe area. The mother started shouting about how 'her daughter doesn't wash tables for a living' and storm out with her. Not the girl's fault, but still ridiculous.
Customer Service
My next job was in customer service at a major discount clothing store. I was constantly partnered with this woman, until the police arrived and asked me to step aside while they arrested her. It turns out she had been doing 'returns' to herself whenever I was away from the counter. Thankfully our store security knew me pretty well and reviewed the camera logs for when the returns occurred, and saw that she was the only one at a register whenever they happened.
Sign Shop #1
The next job was as a graphic designer (my first 'professional' graphic design job at a sign shop). I should have learned my lesson about trusting people from the previous incident, but I didn't. Essentially, I was 'hired' to replace the manager's buddy who was on deployment until she got back, but I wasn't informed of that fact. Her friend came back and she immediately set out trying to fire me by mistakes I'd made with some of the equipment, despite being untrained on the equipment even after I'd asked to be. I was very good at the design work while the manager's friend was a good artist but a very sloppy designer (meaning her stuff looked good but design is as much about technical details as it is about the looks), so the owner of the company kept me on despite this. Mostly I kept my job because the sweet couple that did the carpentry work always stood up for me (and they're the reason I try my best not to judge 'trashy' people).
So instead, the manager decided to create a hostile working environment for me and be 'buddy buddy' with her friend while either ignoring or berating me most of the time (it was just the three of us at desks pushed up next to one another in the office. She would give me tasks she knew I didn't know how to do, tell me to figure it out and go back to a personal phone call, then save any material I wasted to show to the owner. When not trying to get me fired, she spent half her days planning for her breast implants and the other half talking to her boyfriend about when she could leave her husband and kids for him. Her friend, on the other hand, was about as 'mean lesbian' stereotype as you can get, which was a shock for me because I hadn't ever had someone dislike me simply for existing (I'd several lesbian friends in high school, and they were all super sweet, so I admit I was shocked). So, the friend decided that I was a spoiled rich boy since my parents let me live at home while I was commuting to my college, and so would constantly make snide comments about my privilege to anyone who would listen. Thankfully, a new owner came on and the manager was fired (which is when I found out about what the old manager had been doing, up to that point I had no idea what was going on behind my back), only to be replaced by a seemingly cool but ultimately racist (he was extremely focused on fried chicken around black clients) bipolar man. He fired the friend after she refused to wear anything but jeans, a t-shirt and a beanie to work or meetings with clients, despite a company polo being provided for everyone. We then hired a perfectly nice nerdy guy for the position, but who was much slower at the job than I was, but the angry bipolar took that to mean he was lazy and berated him to tears at least once a week for things that he certainly didn't deserve being yelled at for. Thankfully, the company was bought out again by a former police officer and the bipolar was nixed, but not until after I'd left.
Sign Shop #2
I left that job for another sign company in the city. The owner/manager seemed stunned by how many sick days her two employees took (her niece and the current Graphic Designer being the only employees). What I didn't realize upon interviewing is why they took so many sick days, the woman was a tyrant, despite not meaning to be (her niece told me about how much she valued me in private, but all I ever got was grief). First, she would follow me around while I was doing the fabrication side of things and clean up the tools I was using, to the point where I would often have to bring tools back out to keep working. Second, I was a part-timer and the only one doing any physical work (creating the signs from concept to final product), but it was clear her shop was doing as much business as my old job, which needed a full-time designer position and a part-timer, and at least someone on contract to do installs. The former designer had been moved to a small desk in a corner to make cold calls all day long when he wasn't out doing sales, but frequently fabrication would take more than one pair of hands, or we'd have too tight a deadline to get it done myself.
The other two employees would frequently get berated for helping me get the jobs finished instead of 'doing their jobs' (one of which was sitting up front and waiting for the four customers a week who walked in). The owner wouldn't help either, as it was her job to work 'on the business, not in the business', but she didn't seem to realize that running the day to day personally meant she WAS working in the business. There was one day she accepted a rush order of about 50 signs that we had about four hours left to complete and no hope of getting it done myself... the owner decided to go to her nail appointment instead of helping complete the order. Thankfully, after she left her niece was able to come over and give me a second pair of hands. All of these things were annoying, but I could cope. It was only two ridiculous things that broke the camel's back: The day she berated me for not disposing of a dead bird on the sidewalk outside of the office, and the days I had to sit in an alleyway in 90+ degree weather in khakis and a polo dismantling a professionally packaged crate with flat head screwdriver and a hammer. That's right, the things that you see large men crack open with big crowbars and power tools? I had a 6" long flathead screwdriver and a small hammer. I got out of the field entirely when I realized there was zero growth potential and thanked my lucky stars I hadn't been pursuing my degree in it.
Ambulance Company
My next job took me to an inner city private ambulance company that specialized in transporting immobile dialysis patients to their appointments. Lots of sweet older people who simply had diabetes or strokes and could no longer even walk themselves out to a cab. The company was 95% black, with the only white people being myself and a large white woman (and her girlfriend who managed the office). The day they hired a Jewish guy, it apparently got around that I was also Jewish (I'm Italian and have a nose on the large side) and that I had helped this guy get the job. Despite never having met this other guy in my life, this progressed to the point where my coworkers would deliberately drop pennies in front of me to see if I'd pick them up. When I corrected them that I was Italian, I was asked every day whether or not I was bringing is pasta or lasagna for lunch. Honestly? None of this bothered me too much, it was actually kind of funny how bad they were at being racist. What bothered me was that when the manager I liked left (he worked there in his off-hours from the city FD), the large woman was promoted and immediately instituted a harsh croneyism policy. She and her girlfriend would sit around the office all day while her drinking buddies would get all the nearby runs and come back to the office afterwards to hang out for an hour before having to go back out again. Which meant that whichever crew I was on almost always got stuck with every run on the outskirts of the city, making us late to almost all of our calls and meaning we were running ragged with no time to stop for lunch or even stretch our legs through our 10 hour shifts. Even that I could put up with. What I wouldn't do is start falsifying my reports when they lost their ambulance certification and started driving people in personal vehicles. I heard after I left that about six months later they were shut down for medicare fraud.
My current boss is a lovely woman and it's the best position I've ever had, and in comparison to my previous jobs the slightly noisy coworkers who leave their radios up too loud just seem quaint in comparison.
So how about the rest of you? What kinds of awful jobs have you worked?
Is it weird that I am 30 and have only had two jobs? One was college summer work at a grocery store, typical grunt work as a bagger/misc. front end. Eventually stopped coming back because they would never promote me to cashier because even though i worked multiple summers I had to have X months continuous work to be able to be in a different position. Now I am pushing 8 years at the same place and want to leave. It is not that my environment is horrible, the people are pretty nice, we have decent perks and the pay is okay for where I live. It is just after that many years of watching how half ass the company is run most of the time I cannot believe we are still in business and just walking in the door every day gives me a headache.
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“Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.”
― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential
I will always firmly stand by the belief that Magic is a game first and a collectable second.
I was once hired to be a server for a new restaurant. Before it opened, the manager had me make the menus for him. Out of Sharpie and wood planks. When it did open, I was the only server on and the manager left to go to his son's birthday party. I was the server, host, busser, bartender, dishwasher and partial cook because the one cook he had hired was still in culinary school and was so unfamiliar with the menu that I had to cook most of the food myself. After close, I had to clean the whole restaurant floor (meaning the actual floor, the tables, the chairs, the windows, etc) then do all the dishes by hand because all we had were sinks and no dishwashing machine. I quit when the manager came back after 13 hours to ask how we did.
My current job isn't quite that bad, but it's destructive in a lot of the same ways. I'm an assistant outlets manager at a hotel so I run the restaurant, lounge and room service. I work 65+ hours a week that can vary from 5am-7pm to 1pm-3am and anything in between with some shifts back to back only allowing me a brief nap/shower/change of clothes. We're critically shortstaffed, getting no support from leadership, in fact being criticized for not doing more by leaders who have no comprehension as to what our situation entails, it's been this way for 15 months, I have yet to make any sort of life in the city I moved to for this job (I have one friend I haven't seen in almost two months, had several first dates with no second because I can't find the time, etc), I can't afford furniture so my apartment is still unfurnished a year later and my salary barely pays my bills and leaves me with $200 spending/saving money a month. It's been really rough, particularly the last three months, and there's no end in sight. Yet I fear leaving because I'm not sure the grass is really greener elsewhere and though other industries may yield better results, this is all I've ever known so I don't know if making that jump is going to be a good fit for me. But something's gotta give soon.
Worst Job: Day labor - Roof tear down in early spring rains in Oregon. Cold and slippery and no, the tether is not fun to have catch you when you slip off a 3 story roof and weigh over 300lbs.
I'm with pstmdrn, too many jobs to really think about.
My current job isn't quite that bad, but it's destructive in a lot of the same ways. I'm an assistant outlets manager at a hotel so I run the restaurant, lounge and room service. I work 65+ hours a week that can vary from 5am-7pm to 1pm-3am and anything in between with some shifts back to back only allowing me a brief nap/shower/change of clothes. We're critically shortstaffed, getting no support from leadership, in fact being criticized for not doing more by leaders who have no comprehension as to what our situation entails, it's been this way for 15 months, I have yet to make any sort of life in the city I moved to for this job (I have one friend I haven't seen in almost two months, had several first dates with no second because I can't find the time, etc), I can't afford furniture so my apartment is still unfurnished a year later and my salary barely pays my bills and leaves me with $200 spending/saving money a month. It's been really rough, particularly the last three months, and there's no end in sight. Yet I fear leaving because I'm not sure the grass is really greener elsewhere and though other industries may yield better results, this is all I've ever known so I don't know if making that jump is going to be a good fit for me. But something's gotta give soon.
This sounds like my buddy's former situation at the YMCA. Essentially:
-They don't have proper budgeting procedures so he couldn't budget for what things actually cost because someone did it wrong the year before and they went over budget
- They won't budget for replacing equipment nor increase the maintenance budget for equipment that needed to be replaced several years prior
- They wouldn't let him fire an employee who both illegally personal trained a minor without parental consent AND pocketed the money
- They wouldn't let him fire employees that consistently didn't show up for their shifts, requiring him to work 65+ hours a 6-7 days a week, frequently having to go in on zero notice because someone failed to show up and being held accountable for it despite having no power to discipline or fire employees
- They asked him how he was feeling about the position in private (he told them he felt like he was being set up to fail) and then threw it in his face every meeting since that one
- They held 'performance improvement plan' meetings when the 'improvement plan' was 'Jay13x's friend needs to want to be here'
He should have seen this coming though, because:
- They've been firing some of the highest paid hardest working managers in the system
- They've been buying up properties on the cheap with the intention to make money off of them when the economy comes back, but have been bleeding money in the mean time
- The executives get bonuses every year while losing money
- They promoted an embezzler who returned the equipment he 'accidentaly' had shipped to his house instead of the gym
I've had a different job almost every year since I've turned 18. The only exception, was of course the worst job I had, Walmart. I held various positions in my three year tenure at Walmart(during college). Forever I will support a higher wage for Walmart employees, the customers are awful, the management is awful, and the bonus system is even worse. For awhile, I subscribed to the theory of the "You only remember the bad ones" as far as "the customers are awful" go. Then I started to count, I carried around a little flip notebook. I marked down whether each customer interaction was "positive" "neutral" or "negative." The results were pretty shocking even to me. Nearly 3 times as many negative as positive, and 2x as many neutral as positive. For reference I considered anytime that the customer showed any semblance of gratitude towards help as a "positive" experience, this ranged from the male "head nod"(guys know what I mean) to a verbal "Thank You" for whatever service I provided. "Neutral" encompassed "the norm" the people who just walk away with no acknowledgement of any sort be it positive and/or negative. The "negative" pretty much explained itself, the people who would complain, no matter what, the scoffed when you asked if they needed any assistance, etc.
As a guy who studied statistics in college, I actually wrote a report based on the average customer experience, vs the average employee experience. The result was that the relationship is pretty contentious. Most customers feel like they're getting terrible service at Walmart, and most employees feel like they're getting terrible customers.
/end diatribe about Walmart.
Aside from that, I worked at a hobby shop, the work was continuous and tedious, but the job was fun, worked at a couple gas stations, and as a kid i worked at a mom and pop grocery store. All of which were pretty average experiences. Now I work as statistical analyst for the Denver Nuggets, and it's pretty much the best job I've ever had.
It's common. When I worked at a Big and Tall Men's Store, one employee was hospitalized and one was fired. The owner's main store is 3 hrs away. I managed two stores, one each an hour away from each other. One month I WORKED 31 EIGHT HOURS DAYS IN A ROW FOR REGULAR PAY!
Definitely Wal-Mart. I would get in trouble for helping out other departments when I caught up my department. I quit the day they gave me employee of the month and asked me if I'd like to become a department manager.
My first adult job was at a hospital in the admissions department. We mainly filled out insurance information and passed out those legally mandated forms that everyone throws away instead of reading.
The problem with the department was the implementation of discipline. Basically, everyone broke rules all the time and only sometimes did you get punished for it, because many of the rules were arbitrary and nonsensical The best example I could think of was that in the state I worked in, Medicaid required every visit to be verified. We had an online verification system that we used to do this, and the first year I worked there, I was completely unaware it existed, or that this procedure was commonplace. I may have been singly responsible for helping with many, many cases of Medicaid fraud, and I wouldn't know it.
Did I get in trouble for that? Nope. During my first performance review (after 12 months working there), I asked in passing if I was supposed to be doing this. One of my two bosses, who was in charge of getting people logins for this system, was surprised that I'd never done this, but neither of them was the least bit concerned what it could lead to. They assured me that it was fine, and that I should just do it from then on. I was relieved.
A year or so later, I was pulled in for a laundry list of complaints against me and written up. One such complaint was from a co-worker, I never found out whom, but I worked exclusively with women aged 30-60, one of whom complained to management when I accidentally dropped a pen under her chair and asked if she could grab it for me. This was on an official disciplinary report, while something that could potentially cost the hospital thousands of dollars was brushed aside with a "don't worry about it."
It was torture, coming in every day and not knowing if I could count on anyone to not go to management for crap like that. I can't believe I worked there for over 4 years.
My 1st job, which was at the local library, was the worst. It wasn't hard and the people were pretty nice. I just have a terrible addiction to reading and it was sort of like inviting a pill addict to work at a pharmacy. Nearly every corrective action was for reading on the job! I told my mother it wouldn't work out but she was insistent that I work there.
What. Is this...typical of American workers? Are these just a few unfortunately bad stories that are not representative or would you hear of the same terrible management, ridiculous conditions and exploitative hours from most working people?
It really depends. I wouldn't say it's always true, but there are a few reasons why American stories seem bad (although if you want bad, talk to Italians).
1) Some people just can't be fired because HR is afraid of lawsuits. This sometimes means that people get promoted away from where they can do any harm. Sometimes it means terrible people are left in relatively unimportant positions forever.
2) The political and legal climate is such that many businesses know that legal recourse is too expensive to reasonably pursue. Making people work hours off the clock is a very common practice, especially for retail or mid-level management in order to keep payroll on budget.
3) Some people feel incredibly entitled and overreact to the normal bull**** of having to deal with other people or feel like they're better than the position they're in.
This being said, there are FANTASTIC small business owners and there terrible small business owners who know they can find other low-paid workers to take a job.
Customer Service sucks, no one appreciates you for what you do except for people who have also worked customer service.
I started at Subway for minimum wage, and was so berated by customers, poor unpredictable hours, a revolving door of co-workers, and a crappy manager that after being yelled at by a customer for being too slow I nearly broken down and cried. I went to the grocery store on the other side of the plaza and got hired there earning $2 more an hour, with a stable amount of hours p/ week. Still there, in a different position.
Now my gripe is mostly the sheer hatred of the word "full time" and being forced to work it with no vacation, or sick days. Coupled with school I generally push 70 hours a week with no days off. The customers are slightly better as I don't have to deal with all of them, and most ignore me anyway.
All I got to say to people who haven't worked in customer service, if you're getting angry at someone, you're only 1 problem for that person in that day, and a lot of their problems isn't the job, or you, it's crappy management and working for a company that doesn't care for them. Take it easy the next time someone is working a little slower than you want because they need to get an incompetent manager to help them.
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"I've always been a fan of reality by popular vote" - Stephen Colbert (in response to Don McLeroy)
I had a job at a video store and one of the assistant managers seemed to be intimidated by the fact that I went to college and didn't pop out three kids by 18, or been to jail. She made it a point to belittle my work and she wrote me up for doing exactly what she told me to do (washing the windows), and not following an alleged shoplifter out the store, which would have been against store policy.
I quit shortly after that.
I never had a problem with the customers, because I'm generally extremely polite to the point of where enraged people begrudgingly respect me. I was at a hearing with a government official that was just absolutely rude to me and others, but I stayed extremely polite to him (yessir, no sir, please, thank you). The time the second hearing rolled around he was actually somewhat polite and made jokes to me.
A positive attitude and politeness will get you very far in the South.
Being a waiter. After two weeks my lips where starting to quiver every time I had to do with jerks and I was beginning to have homicidal fantasies. I luckily left before anything bad happened but it did give me an eternal respect for people who do that job.
One incident I remember well is there was two sisters who worked at the restaurant who where gorgeous. One day some guy comes in and asks to see one of them. I tell him as politely as I can that she is not at the shop today because you know she is not.
Long story he complains I realise the owner will take costumers sides no matter how unreasonable they are and I quit the next day.
To this day you will see me go beserk if I see people being jerks to waiters. I always tip generously as well. It is amazing how a few bucks extra can make them happy.
To this day you will see me go beserk if I see people being jerks to waiters. I always tip generously as well. It is amazing how a few bucks extra can make them happy.
My boyfriend was a waiter, so I have more sympathy towards waitstaff. But if a waiter refuses to write down my order and messes it up, or is hungover (because I KNOW how much waitstaff loves to party after work), etc; I won't tip well. But I have on several occasions tipped for more than twice what the bill is. I'm a person of simple tastes, rice and a coke will do it for me. But rice and a coke is a real waste of waitstaff's time, makes me feel bad.
Number of bad jobs, but there's worse ones too and I am sure there will be more in the future. What a happy thought.
Being without anything to do is no good, but having too much to do and too little time or energy for living is also no good (for instance, the 80-/126-hour work week).
You think being a waiter is bad? Try doing deliveries. One of my buddies worked for Domino's for years, and they get less respect (and less tip) than the most mistreated waitstaff. The whole '30 minutes or less' thing disappeared in the 90s, but people still give the wrong address and then try to claim they get their pizza for free.
You think being a waiter is bad? Try doing deliveries.
Bad, but differently bad.
One of my buddies worked for Domino's for years, and they get less respect (and less tip) than the most mistreated waitstaff. The whole '30 minutes or less' thing disappeared in the 90s, but people still give the wrong address and then try to claim they get their pizza for free.
How do you get a free pizza if it does not even arrive at your place?
You know what's bad? Going to school and then, after finishing much schooling and training, being under pressure at all times and having to constantly put up with crap or risk getting physically abused or even murdered by malcontent people or family members. Besides the aforementioned delivery, I don't think any other jobs also expose you to such high stakes.
In order of appearance:
Packing orders in a plant distribution center. It was quite a nice job with nice people, but I was let go after two months because "they hadn't the time to actually teach me stuff". Except there was nothing to teach. Given a few more weeks I would've known the layout of where everything was stored.
Blueberry picking. Horrible. It was 30+ degrees celcius, my knees and back constantly hurt because the plants were quite low, the boss was driving around in a golf car constantly and being an annoying ass, you were payed jack **** and you had to get up at 5:30. Best thing was that you were payed by the kilo, and they had the guts to dock your payment when a few (slightly) under-ripe berries were in the batch.
Super market. I was part of the vegetables/dairy department. You were required to wear a ridiculous outfit (apron + hat in a really silly tartan, clip-on ties, black shoes and trousers). My direct supervisor was an blockheaded mongoloid ******* who had the courage to constantly was being verbally abusive to his underlings and management did nothing about this. Nice anecdotes include me being called too slow because I had a cart of eggs of which one in three was broken, requiring major cleanup, bosses being mad because I did not wear a body warmer in the dairy fridge and me being called lazy because I accidentally locked myself in one of the large walk-in freezers.
Supermarket 2 was quite good. Really peaceful job, except that my boss was certifiably insane. He looked like a goblin, had a habit of whistling out of tune and constantly countermanding his own orders in which order certain jobs should be done.
Patisserie: co-workers were a bunch of racists *******s, but nice enough if you avoided those subjects. Hours were really bad though: on week days we'd work from seven pm until about three, four in the morning, and in the weekends we'd start at one am and work until around eight in the morning. Having a decent sleeping schedule was impossible. I still blame that job for me increasing my smoking from at most one a day to about half a pack each day. I stopped when I started hallucinating due to a lack of sleep.
Shell: I did this for a few weeks after quitting my job at the patisserie. Was pretty okay, but they had some strange ideas about how many things a person can do at once. If I'm constantly helping costumers, you shouldn't be surprised if I cannot find time to clean the toilets, which are around the back and therefore require a few minutes of respite, since you cannot see what happens inside from there. Highlights include me having to wait 1.5 hours outside with one of the security guys because I didn't have the right key to close the building.
Tutoring: both the best and the worst job. If the student was committed to it, it's the best thing ever. However, if the student didn't want to be there, it was horrible. At least with all of the above I could just zone out and do the jobs on auto-pilot. However, when trying to convey information, you have to pay attention, so I was awfully aware of each single minute spent trying to teach someone who wasn't listening.
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We have laboured long to build a heaven, only to find it populated with horrors.
I was good at it, but I hated it. Show steer hair trimmer. I had trim every hair on their body to a buzz cut basically. They kicked a lot. It was for 4-h and FFA show animals. The electric trimmers weighed 15 pounds to. Not fun.
How do you get a free pizza if it does not even arrive at your place?
Back in the 80's and early 90's a lot of places had pizza guarantees within 30 minutes or less or it's free to generate business (watch the first Ninja Turtles movies, Mikey stiffs the delivery guy on the tip for this reason).
It ended due to rampant abuse, but people still try to claim that they should get their pizza free. What they do is call and given an incorrect address nearby, then call back after the 30 minutes is up and start demanding the pizza for free and giving the correct address, and claiming they had given the correct address in the first place.
There are actually a lot of delivery ordering scams out there.
The Kid's Play Place
Customer Service
Sign Shop #1
So instead, the manager decided to create a hostile working environment for me and be 'buddy buddy' with her friend while either ignoring or berating me most of the time (it was just the three of us at desks pushed up next to one another in the office. She would give me tasks she knew I didn't know how to do, tell me to figure it out and go back to a personal phone call, then save any material I wasted to show to the owner. When not trying to get me fired, she spent half her days planning for her breast implants and the other half talking to her boyfriend about when she could leave her husband and kids for him. Her friend, on the other hand, was about as 'mean lesbian' stereotype as you can get, which was a shock for me because I hadn't ever had someone dislike me simply for existing (I'd several lesbian friends in high school, and they were all super sweet, so I admit I was shocked). So, the friend decided that I was a spoiled rich boy since my parents let me live at home while I was commuting to my college, and so would constantly make snide comments about my privilege to anyone who would listen. Thankfully, a new owner came on and the manager was fired (which is when I found out about what the old manager had been doing, up to that point I had no idea what was going on behind my back), only to be replaced by a seemingly cool but ultimately racist (he was extremely focused on fried chicken around black clients) bipolar man. He fired the friend after she refused to wear anything but jeans, a t-shirt and a beanie to work or meetings with clients, despite a company polo being provided for everyone. We then hired a perfectly nice nerdy guy for the position, but who was much slower at the job than I was, but the angry bipolar took that to mean he was lazy and berated him to tears at least once a week for things that he certainly didn't deserve being yelled at for. Thankfully, the company was bought out again by a former police officer and the bipolar was nixed, but not until after I'd left.
Sign Shop #2
The other two employees would frequently get berated for helping me get the jobs finished instead of 'doing their jobs' (one of which was sitting up front and waiting for the four customers a week who walked in). The owner wouldn't help either, as it was her job to work 'on the business, not in the business', but she didn't seem to realize that running the day to day personally meant she WAS working in the business. There was one day she accepted a rush order of about 50 signs that we had about four hours left to complete and no hope of getting it done myself... the owner decided to go to her nail appointment instead of helping complete the order. Thankfully, after she left her niece was able to come over and give me a second pair of hands. All of these things were annoying, but I could cope. It was only two ridiculous things that broke the camel's back: The day she berated me for not disposing of a dead bird on the sidewalk outside of the office, and the days I had to sit in an alleyway in 90+ degree weather in khakis and a polo dismantling a professionally packaged crate with flat head screwdriver and a hammer. That's right, the things that you see large men crack open with big crowbars and power tools? I had a 6" long flathead screwdriver and a small hammer. I got out of the field entirely when I realized there was zero growth potential and thanked my lucky stars I hadn't been pursuing my degree in it.
Ambulance Company
My current boss is a lovely woman and it's the best position I've ever had, and in comparison to my previous jobs the slightly noisy coworkers who leave their radios up too loud just seem quaint in comparison.
So how about the rest of you? What kinds of awful jobs have you worked?
TerribleBad at Magic since 1998.A Vorthos Guide to Magic Story | Twitter | Tumblr
[Primer] Krenko | Azor | Kess | Zacama | Kumena | Sram | The Ur-Dragon | Edgar Markov | Daretti | Marath
Runner up - car wash in the winter.
― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential
I will always firmly stand by the belief that Magic is a game first and a collectable second.
Wow! I am 36 and have had over regular 10 jobs not counting day labor stints!
[Clan Flamingo]
My current job isn't quite that bad, but it's destructive in a lot of the same ways. I'm an assistant outlets manager at a hotel so I run the restaurant, lounge and room service. I work 65+ hours a week that can vary from 5am-7pm to 1pm-3am and anything in between with some shifts back to back only allowing me a brief nap/shower/change of clothes. We're critically shortstaffed, getting no support from leadership, in fact being criticized for not doing more by leaders who have no comprehension as to what our situation entails, it's been this way for 15 months, I have yet to make any sort of life in the city I moved to for this job (I have one friend I haven't seen in almost two months, had several first dates with no second because I can't find the time, etc), I can't afford furniture so my apartment is still unfurnished a year later and my salary barely pays my bills and leaves me with $200 spending/saving money a month. It's been really rough, particularly the last three months, and there's no end in sight. Yet I fear leaving because I'm not sure the grass is really greener elsewhere and though other industries may yield better results, this is all I've ever known so I don't know if making that jump is going to be a good fit for me. But something's gotta give soon.
Archatmos
Excellion
Fracture: Israfiel (WBR), Wujal (URG), Valedon (GUB), Amduat (BGW), Paladris (RWU)
Collision (Set Two of the Fracture Block)
Quest for the Forsaken (Set Two of the Excellion Block)
Katingal: Plane of Chains
I'm with pstmdrn, too many jobs to really think about.
This sounds like my buddy's former situation at the YMCA. Essentially:
-They don't have proper budgeting procedures so he couldn't budget for what things actually cost because someone did it wrong the year before and they went over budget
- They won't budget for replacing equipment nor increase the maintenance budget for equipment that needed to be replaced several years prior
- They wouldn't let him fire an employee who both illegally personal trained a minor without parental consent AND pocketed the money
- They wouldn't let him fire employees that consistently didn't show up for their shifts, requiring him to work 65+ hours a 6-7 days a week, frequently having to go in on zero notice because someone failed to show up and being held accountable for it despite having no power to discipline or fire employees
- They asked him how he was feeling about the position in private (he told them he felt like he was being set up to fail) and then threw it in his face every meeting since that one
- They held 'performance improvement plan' meetings when the 'improvement plan' was 'Jay13x's friend needs to want to be here'
He should have seen this coming though, because:
- They've been firing some of the highest paid hardest working managers in the system
- They've been buying up properties on the cheap with the intention to make money off of them when the economy comes back, but have been bleeding money in the mean time
- The executives get bonuses every year while losing money
- They promoted an embezzler who returned the equipment he 'accidentaly' had shipped to his house instead of the gym
TerribleBad at Magic since 1998.A Vorthos Guide to Magic Story | Twitter | Tumblr
[Primer] Krenko | Azor | Kess | Zacama | Kumena | Sram | The Ur-Dragon | Edgar Markov | Daretti | Marath
As a guy who studied statistics in college, I actually wrote a report based on the average customer experience, vs the average employee experience. The result was that the relationship is pretty contentious. Most customers feel like they're getting terrible service at Walmart, and most employees feel like they're getting terrible customers.
/end diatribe about Walmart.
Aside from that, I worked at a hobby shop, the work was continuous and tedious, but the job was fun, worked at a couple gas stations, and as a kid i worked at a mom and pop grocery store. All of which were pretty average experiences. Now I work as statistical analyst for the Denver Nuggets, and it's pretty much the best job I've ever had.
[Clan Flamingo]
The problem with the department was the implementation of discipline. Basically, everyone broke rules all the time and only sometimes did you get punished for it, because many of the rules were arbitrary and nonsensical The best example I could think of was that in the state I worked in, Medicaid required every visit to be verified. We had an online verification system that we used to do this, and the first year I worked there, I was completely unaware it existed, or that this procedure was commonplace. I may have been singly responsible for helping with many, many cases of Medicaid fraud, and I wouldn't know it.
Did I get in trouble for that? Nope. During my first performance review (after 12 months working there), I asked in passing if I was supposed to be doing this. One of my two bosses, who was in charge of getting people logins for this system, was surprised that I'd never done this, but neither of them was the least bit concerned what it could lead to. They assured me that it was fine, and that I should just do it from then on. I was relieved.
A year or so later, I was pulled in for a laundry list of complaints against me and written up. One such complaint was from a co-worker, I never found out whom, but I worked exclusively with women aged 30-60, one of whom complained to management when I accidentally dropped a pen under her chair and asked if she could grab it for me. This was on an official disciplinary report, while something that could potentially cost the hospital thousands of dollars was brushed aside with a "don't worry about it."
It was torture, coming in every day and not knowing if I could count on anyone to not go to management for crap like that. I can't believe I worked there for over 4 years.
When in doubt, call a judge.
Objectivist here. Hit me up to talk philosophy.
It really depends. I wouldn't say it's always true, but there are a few reasons why American stories seem bad (although if you want bad, talk to Italians).
1) Some people just can't be fired because HR is afraid of lawsuits. This sometimes means that people get promoted away from where they can do any harm. Sometimes it means terrible people are left in relatively unimportant positions forever.
2) The political and legal climate is such that many businesses know that legal recourse is too expensive to reasonably pursue. Making people work hours off the clock is a very common practice, especially for retail or mid-level management in order to keep payroll on budget.
3) Some people feel incredibly entitled and overreact to the normal bull**** of having to deal with other people or feel like they're better than the position they're in.
This being said, there are FANTASTIC small business owners and there terrible small business owners who know they can find other low-paid workers to take a job.
TerribleBad at Magic since 1998.A Vorthos Guide to Magic Story | Twitter | Tumblr
[Primer] Krenko | Azor | Kess | Zacama | Kumena | Sram | The Ur-Dragon | Edgar Markov | Daretti | Marath
I started at Subway for minimum wage, and was so berated by customers, poor unpredictable hours, a revolving door of co-workers, and a crappy manager that after being yelled at by a customer for being too slow I nearly broken down and cried. I went to the grocery store on the other side of the plaza and got hired there earning $2 more an hour, with a stable amount of hours p/ week. Still there, in a different position.
Now my gripe is mostly the sheer hatred of the word "full time" and being forced to work it with no vacation, or sick days. Coupled with school I generally push 70 hours a week with no days off. The customers are slightly better as I don't have to deal with all of them, and most ignore me anyway.
All I got to say to people who haven't worked in customer service, if you're getting angry at someone, you're only 1 problem for that person in that day, and a lot of their problems isn't the job, or you, it's crappy management and working for a company that doesn't care for them. Take it easy the next time someone is working a little slower than you want because they need to get an incompetent manager to help them.
"I've always been a fan of reality by popular vote" - Stephen Colbert (in response to Don McLeroy)
GPolukranos, Kill ALL the Things!G
I quit shortly after that.
I never had a problem with the customers, because I'm generally extremely polite to the point of where enraged people begrudgingly respect me. I was at a hearing with a government official that was just absolutely rude to me and others, but I stayed extremely polite to him (yessir, no sir, please, thank you). The time the second hearing rolled around he was actually somewhat polite and made jokes to me.
A positive attitude and politeness will get you very far in the South.
this
i went 6 months without a job,that's worst when you wake up you dont have anything to do just eat,sleep,bid on ebay play hoops
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One incident I remember well is there was two sisters who worked at the restaurant who where gorgeous. One day some guy comes in and asks to see one of them. I tell him as politely as I can that she is not at the shop today because you know she is not.
Long story he complains I realise the owner will take costumers sides no matter how unreasonable they are and I quit the next day.
To this day you will see me go beserk if I see people being jerks to waiters. I always tip generously as well. It is amazing how a few bucks extra can make them happy.
My boyfriend was a waiter, so I have more sympathy towards waitstaff. But if a waiter refuses to write down my order and messes it up, or is hungover (because I KNOW how much waitstaff loves to party after work), etc; I won't tip well. But I have on several occasions tipped for more than twice what the bill is. I'm a person of simple tastes, rice and a coke will do it for me. But rice and a coke is a real waste of waitstaff's time, makes me feel bad.
Being without anything to do is no good, but having too much to do and too little time or energy for living is also no good (for instance, the 80-/126-hour work week).
TerribleBad at Magic since 1998.A Vorthos Guide to Magic Story | Twitter | Tumblr
[Primer] Krenko | Azor | Kess | Zacama | Kumena | Sram | The Ur-Dragon | Edgar Markov | Daretti | Marath
How do you get a free pizza if it does not even arrive at your place?
You know what's bad? Going to school and then, after finishing much schooling and training, being under pressure at all times and having to constantly put up with crap or risk getting physically abused or even murdered by malcontent people or family members. Besides the aforementioned delivery, I don't think any other jobs also expose you to such high stakes.
Packing orders in a plant distribution center. It was quite a nice job with nice people, but I was let go after two months because "they hadn't the time to actually teach me stuff". Except there was nothing to teach. Given a few more weeks I would've known the layout of where everything was stored.
Blueberry picking. Horrible. It was 30+ degrees celcius, my knees and back constantly hurt because the plants were quite low, the boss was driving around in a golf car constantly and being an annoying ass, you were payed jack **** and you had to get up at 5:30. Best thing was that you were payed by the kilo, and they had the guts to dock your payment when a few (slightly) under-ripe berries were in the batch.
Super market. I was part of the vegetables/dairy department. You were required to wear a ridiculous outfit (apron + hat in a really silly tartan, clip-on ties, black shoes and trousers). My direct supervisor was an blockheaded mongoloid ******* who had the courage to constantly was being verbally abusive to his underlings and management did nothing about this. Nice anecdotes include me being called too slow because I had a cart of eggs of which one in three was broken, requiring major cleanup, bosses being mad because I did not wear a body warmer in the dairy fridge and me being called lazy because I accidentally locked myself in one of the large walk-in freezers.
Supermarket 2 was quite good. Really peaceful job, except that my boss was certifiably insane. He looked like a goblin, had a habit of whistling out of tune and constantly countermanding his own orders in which order certain jobs should be done.
Patisserie: co-workers were a bunch of racists *******s, but nice enough if you avoided those subjects. Hours were really bad though: on week days we'd work from seven pm until about three, four in the morning, and in the weekends we'd start at one am and work until around eight in the morning. Having a decent sleeping schedule was impossible. I still blame that job for me increasing my smoking from at most one a day to about half a pack each day. I stopped when I started hallucinating due to a lack of sleep.
Shell: I did this for a few weeks after quitting my job at the patisserie. Was pretty okay, but they had some strange ideas about how many things a person can do at once. If I'm constantly helping costumers, you shouldn't be surprised if I cannot find time to clean the toilets, which are around the back and therefore require a few minutes of respite, since you cannot see what happens inside from there. Highlights include me having to wait 1.5 hours outside with one of the security guys because I didn't have the right key to close the building.
Tutoring: both the best and the worst job. If the student was committed to it, it's the best thing ever. However, if the student didn't want to be there, it was horrible. At least with all of the above I could just zone out and do the jobs on auto-pilot. However, when trying to convey information, you have to pay attention, so I was awfully aware of each single minute spent trying to teach someone who wasn't listening.
Multiplayer Decks- Memnarch - Animar, Soul of Elements - Zur, the Enchanter - Atraxa, Praetors' Voice - Food Chain Tazri - Teysa Karlov
Modern BUMill and Bant Spirits.
Thank you Xenphire for the signature!
I agree, it's a different kind of bad. Did not mean to imply worse.
Back in the 80's and early 90's a lot of places had pizza guarantees within 30 minutes or less or it's free to generate business (watch the first Ninja Turtles movies, Mikey stiffs the delivery guy on the tip for this reason).
It ended due to rampant abuse, but people still try to claim that they should get their pizza free. What they do is call and given an incorrect address nearby, then call back after the 30 minutes is up and start demanding the pizza for free and giving the correct address, and claiming they had given the correct address in the first place.
There are actually a lot of delivery ordering scams out there.
TerribleBad at Magic since 1998.A Vorthos Guide to Magic Story | Twitter | Tumblr
[Primer] Krenko | Azor | Kess | Zacama | Kumena | Sram | The Ur-Dragon | Edgar Markov | Daretti | Marath