Castiel233 Posted December 31, 2014 Share Posted December 31, 2014 Worked at a dreadful warehouse, low pay, heavy lifting and sub-human grunting co-workers. Unbearable place. You felt you might get a punch in the face purely for turning up. The company is constantly advertising for people. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator TrueFreedom Posted December 31, 2014 Moderator Share Posted December 31, 2014 I enjoyed working in a warehouse, though it had its hazards. The worst had to be roofing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Furball Posted December 31, 2014 Share Posted December 31, 2014 I have had several, but the worst was being a janitor at a local auto place that fixed cars. This one giant monster of a man used to go in there first thing in the morning, every morning and take this giant massive smelly dump. Part of that job entailed me cleaning that toilet first thing in the morning, right after that guy dropped his load. pee-yew Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SilentLoner Posted December 31, 2014 Share Posted December 31, 2014 Children's clothing store. Mind numbingly boring, but fortunately it was a short stint. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GoldenWolf Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 Did child care for work experience at school, one of the ladies working there did not like me at all. The kids would also fight over who got to sit on my lap, it was cute at first, but I did not enjoy my legs going numb and my shins bruising from kids sitting on them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thurisaz Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 IT Helpdesk, Volkswagen Bank. At first it was stressful but also fun. The users would actually try to figure out things on their own quite often and only call us in times of real need. Then... something changed. Almost from one day to another, everyone became arrogant dumbfucks. Blatantly lying arrogant dumbfucks. Of course in such a job not everyone's telling the truth all the time but the lies became so painfully obvious it still blows my mind remembering it. And we had to smile audibly via the phone and assure the caller that of course she's right, naturally we're all assholes who just twiddle our thumbs and drink coffee all day and should be tortured to death, blah yadda... you get the idea. Also, whenever someone wanted something that wasn't allowed, or was technically impossible, at the slightest hint that it won't work that way everyone was "What's the name of your superior?" (imagine that in a properly evil hissing tone). Fucking everyone. Oh, and nearly everyone started their calls to our number not with "my name is..." or "I'm having the following issue", but with "But it's URGENT!". I kid you not. And the day that happened, the workload exploded too. Which, in compliance with manager S. O. P., the Bank folks chose to resolve by simply ignoring it. Our team head compiled the literally same statistics at least 15 times, and every time they got rejected by the bank because they proved that some bank manager had fucked up with his decision. Support is never a heavenly task, but in the more than eleven years I've been working for VW companies in that field, this shit still takes the cake (and pisses on it). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
older Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 As a temp one Christmas season for the post office, sorting parcels and loading trucks, long before any automation. Seven tons of mail bags per man per shift carried into semi truck trailers. Pick up bag, carry to front of trailer, repeat, for 10 - 12 hours. Motivated me to go back to finish college. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mwc Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 General labor at a xian high school. Most of the odd jobs weren't too bad but they decided to not use chemicals in their lake so this seaweed like algae grew everywhere and they decided it was my job to put on waders, grab a rake, and pull it out. So all day, every day, I went round and round this stupid lake raking this stuff out all the while hoping I didn't fall in since I can't swim and I was all alone. It grew so fast I could never hope to catch-up with it but they had me doing this nearly non-stop for I don't remember how long. mwc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DataLady Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 When I was a student, I once had a summer job working at a nursing home for old people. It was a pretty gloomy and dreary place. A lot of the time I had to take people to the toilet and change incontinence pads. I also had to make tea and sandwiches and clean the kitchen, although I didn't mind that part so much, it was the incontinence pads that I hated the most. I admire nurses and anyone else who had to do that sort of thing, it's just not for me. The best job I ever had is the one I have now, database developer for a charity - great colleagues, interesting work and the feeling I am doing something useful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DataLady Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 I meant: I admire nurses and anyone else who *has* to do that sort of thing, it's just not for me. how many times do I have to post before I can edit? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mwc Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 how many times do I have to post before I can edit? Unless they changed it you used to be able to edit with 25 posts. mwc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DataLady Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 Aha, actually I have just realised I can edit, it just looks as though the edit button is greyed out! Doh! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 Printing place for flyers like Walmart or such that they put in the Sunday newspaper. 3 on, 3 off, 12 hr shifts. Earplugs the whole time so constant yelling. Constant danger of losing a body part... Miserable Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vigile Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 'Throwing freight' for a grocery store. We were always short-staffed and overworked. I used to work so hard that at the end of the day my hands were bloody and I had white lines of dried sweat down the sides of my face and down my chest. One night I injured my head and had to be taken to emergency for stitches. I had blood all over my face and down the front of my shirt. The admitting nurse seemed unconcerned over that, but nearly broke into tears at the sight of my hands, which were bloody from handling too many boxes. For me, my hands were normal. I just wanted her to fix my head. We used to make new guys quit right and left because they couldn't keep up. It was better to just weed them out by riding them than having them drag us down if they couldn't handle the speed and hard work it required to get the job done. Not proud of it, but I probably personally made more than 25 people quit. We did have a couple of girls working the job over the years; both of whom more than held their own and didn't get ridden by us as we respected them. That job absolutely motivated me to go to college and work hard there. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Castiel233 Posted January 1, 2015 Author Share Posted January 1, 2015 To add, I also worked in a factory standing in one spot at a high speed conveyer belt. The noise was inescapable, the pay awful as well. I lasted less then a week. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SnarkyAntiTheist Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 I worked in a factory putting wooden pool decks together when I was about 17. The work wasn't bad, it was the idiots who ran the place and worked there that made it unbearable. I'm all for smoking some good green, but not on the job. These assholes would all take "smoke breaks" about every hour and a half and get high behind the building. Then they'd come in and do totally stupid shit. We used pneumatic nail and staple guns, and they would jam something into the safety interlock and use them to spray the building with flying metal. You'd hear someone yell "heads up!" and you knew you better freaking hide behind something. The machines we used had two sides to them, and they used compressed air to clamp all the boards in place tight once you placed the various pieces in it. A lever on each side controlled the clamp pressure. They thought it was funny to come up to your machine while you were working and pull the lever down to scare you. I got the fuck out of there after a week of that BS. I can't believe I got out with both eyes and all my fingers intact. The place went out of business within a year after I left, thankfully. Obviously very poorly managed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Castiel233 Posted January 1, 2015 Author Share Posted January 1, 2015 I have had maybe 50 different jobs, so I average about 6 months in each, most of those jobs have been poor to average. Only a couple were outstanding places to work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheerbliss Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 I was an Air Force photographer. I spent 90% of my time in a darkroom developing photos of grip-and-grins (people getting promotions or awards) and happy snaps (people at cocktail parties), mostly. Once a month or so, I spent a week on call and got all the night jobs. The manager was a micromanaging asshole; my supervisor was a micromanaging flake who went AWOL and was discharged for mental health problems. It didn't motivate me to go to college; it motivated me to be frugal so I'd never, ever be stuck at another job. And it made me realize that military experience in terms of character building and such is wildly overrated. People stole stuff left and right in the dorm, sucked up to get ahead, and people were promoted simply for being alive. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SnarkyAntiTheist Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 I was an Air Force photographer. I spent 90% of my time in a darkroom developing photos of grip-and-grins (people getting promotions or awards) and happy snaps (people at cocktail parties), mostly. Once a month or so, I spent a week on call and got all the night jobs. The manager was a micromanaging asshole; my supervisor was a micromanaging flake who went AWOL and was discharged for mental health problems. It didn't motivate me to go to college; it motivated me to be frugal so I'd never, ever be stuck at another job. And it made me realize that military experience in terms of character building and such is wildly overrated. People stole stuff left and right in the dorm, sucked up to get ahead, and people were promoted simply for being alive. Interesting. My son is in the AF. He's a loadmaster, just joined last year. I wonder what his experience will ultimately be. And yeah, I can see why that job would be annoying. We are seriously considering moving out of this giant Victorian and downsizing into a tiny house or even a sailboat for a while after my youngest is out of high school in a few years. I want to be responsible for fewer things and lower our expenses to as little as possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Castiel233 Posted January 1, 2015 Author Share Posted January 1, 2015 I was an Air Force photographer. I spent 90% of my time in a darkroom developing photos of grip-and-grins I love that phrase, never heard it before, I am totally using it when having my picture taken during a handshake Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheerbliss Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 I was an Air Force photographer. I spent 90% of my time in a darkroom developing photos of grip-and-grins (people getting promotions or awards) and happy snaps (people at cocktail parties), mostly. Once a month or so, I spent a week on call and got all the night jobs. The manager was a micromanaging asshole; my supervisor was a micromanaging flake who went AWOL and was discharged for mental health problems. It didn't motivate me to go to college; it motivated me to be frugal so I'd never, ever be stuck at another job. And it made me realize that military experience in terms of character building and such is wildly overrated. People stole stuff left and right in the dorm, sucked up to get ahead, and people were promoted simply for being alive. Interesting. My son is in the AF. He's a loadmaster, just joined last year. I wonder what his experience will ultimately be. And yeah, I can see why that job would be annoying. We are seriously considering moving out of this giant Victorian and downsizing into a tiny house or even a sailboat for a while after my youngest is out of high school in a few years. I want to be responsible for fewer things and lower our expenses to as little as possible. Downsizing is a great idea. It'll make for less work and less expense for you. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RankStranger Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 In my previous career as a heavy equipment mechanic, I've had several jobs that required some really shitty tasks. Some were worse than others- but really this kind of thing has been true of ALL of them except the one union job I had for a few years. I've had to work on machinery when the snow is flying, it's WELL below 0 degrees F with a 30mph wind. So goddamn cold that the diesel fuel would turn to jelly. Or when it's 110+ degrees out with no shade for MILES around... and a 30mph wind kicking up dust. I've had to crawl down into the guts of combines with a blowtorch in one hand and a water bottle in the other- cutting out steel parts WHILE putting out the fire... 'cause those things WILL catch on fire and that's a $250,000+ dollar machine. I've worked on garbage trucks dripping puddles of fetid liquid- where maggots would just magically appear. I've driven trucks up to 18 feet wide and 120,000 pounds when legally under those conditions I was limited to 12 feet wide and 80,000 pounds. In a beat-down old semi with just over half the brakes even working, pulling a trailer with a MASSIVELY cracked and cobbled-up frame. I've had to illegally handle and dispose of all manner of chemicals, drive and operate equipment that I wasn't licensed for, violate every OSHA rule in the book, work on jobs where I KNEW the customer was being defrauded. Matter of fact at the previous place I worked, there's one particular guy they keep around specifically because he's so good at brazenly lying to customers and getting them to pay up- it's the ONLY thing he's good at... but he does have that talent, and it makes them a lot of money. On various jobs, I've passed out from heat exhaustion, broke a bone, had to have stitches, was cut with a 22,500psi water jet, lost several fingernails (they grow back but not necessarily correctly), got a head injury when I fell off an oil rig, got a nasty rash from some unknown chemical residue on an agricultural sprayer, literally got in a fight with a mountain of a co-worker and pinned him up against the wall with my ratchet handle stuck in his adam's apple, got my foot run over by a backhoe, had a lead-acid battery explode in face. I've worked at places who would always send the known drug addicts to do the more dangerous jobs- because they knew they wouldn't have to pay worker's comp if the guy got hurt (you don't have to pay here in the Land of the Free if the guy fails a drug test- some employers actually PREFER drug addicts for this reason). I've seen people fired BECAUSE they were injured on the job via substandard equipment and/or shitty working conditions. And this is just run-of-the-mill stuff that happens every single day all over the country. If you want a job as a mechanic, you'll go along with it. If you won't go along with it, you won't have a job. Period.So this is what motivated me to finally finish college. And lemme tell you- a professional environment is a completely different world. No comparison whatsoever. It's funny to me when I hear my co-workers bitching about this or that- they have NO IDEA what's out there. They practically work in disneyland by my standards, and will bitch about things like the a/c not working well enough, or some company policy about keeping their desk clean. They don't know what work IS. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Castiel233 Posted January 1, 2015 Author Share Posted January 1, 2015 While I think of it, I had a job at a recycling centre, where 99 percent of the time I was on a FLT plough, pushing the rubbish onto a belt....all fine and a good job....however one day I was taken off and put on the manual line, basically sorting rubbish by hand.......along the line came "human waste"...... Ewww Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheerbliss Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 @Rick Stranger, I've never had a job that bad, but people in professional environments complaining makes me scratch my head too, sometimes. A coworker went crying to our supervisor because I asked her why she wanted me to do something. I've heard people complain that they have to drive through traffic to get to work. A friend of mine quit her job because she was tired of answering the phone (she admits now that she made a mistake by leaving). A lot of people say they just can't do the nine to five thing. I work in a CPA office where I proofread reports, do word processing and quality control. It's not exciting, but it's a steady job with decent pay and benefits. And yet it's really hard to find good admin help. People want cool jobs. They try to get jobs they have no qualifications for. They get huffy at the idea of secretarial work, as if there were something awful and degrading about helping people with their paperwork. They want to wear jeans to work every day in a professional downtown office, even though it's just as easy to put on slacks in the morning--and slacks are cheaper and more durable. They whine if the break room is out of free chips. Yeah, I don't think any of these people have ever worked in an non-professional environment. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deva Posted January 1, 2015 Share Posted January 1, 2015 There can be some difficult issues in a professional office if you just can't get along with the co-workers and even worse with the boss. There are different personality types I know I can't work with. I learned a lot the last four years or so how different these office environments can be. But generally except for some pressure with deadlines, paperwork is just fine compared with some of the other types of jobs out there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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