mirror ball 46: my worst job

my worst job:

Valerie:

Worst Job.
 

Wow. I was going to tell this long, detailed story - about the dry cleaner job, when the owner raised all the prices on my first day of work, the day a new coupon came out, so that the coupon made it so people paid exactly the same. I’d never seen that side of business cheating and I was so appalled, at the naive, idealistic age of 20. I lasted three days. I can’t even tell all that made it the worst. There was a lot, including my astonishment at how much more women’s clothes cost to dry clean than men’s, but I think what was very worst was that I lost my innocent belief in the essential well-meaning of all. I mean, I had seen bad things by that time in my life, sure. I just hadn’t seen anyone pretend good while being bad. I can’t make myself go back there. It was so purposeless. I’m lucky I got to quit and find something better for myself, though since I had gotten the job through an employment agency (another blow to my idealism), I owed them a lot of money...

Steve:

I think the worst “job” might have been the series of positions I got through a sad temp agency in Chicago. The staff of the agency was pretty clearly a dissatisfied group of people who would like to have been doing something else. I know I did. One day I stuffed envelopes for hours in the company of a sullen, homophobic girl. For another few days I was sent to a law office that seemed to specialize in clients with traffic violations; one of the lawyers made snide and bitter comments about my cheap, colorful tie. One day I called the temp agency for my assignment and was dismayed to find myself in a conversation with my job-assigner: she told me I needed to apologize to the administrative assistant at the temp agency. I asked why and she replied “Oh I think you know very well why.” I didn’t. “Oh I think you do,” she said. I really didn’t. “Oh you know why,” she said. I was dismayed, resentful, felt superior to her and yet powerless because I really needed the temp work. I hated it. 

Dave D: 

Chris and I spent most of the 70s traveling, so many of our unusual stories date back to then. We were bumming around Greece with (as usual) no money whatsoever, and took up the offer of a couple of days work with a farmer. We had dreams of drifting through a couple of balmy days in a shady orchard reaching out every 20 minutes or so to pluck a couple of oranges from the trees that our hammocks were slung between, breaking up the tedium with the odd glass of chilled retsina.

The reality? Two twelve hour days up to our knees in pig shit shoveling the stuff into the back of a pick-up! At the end of those two days, I helped tug Chris out of the smelly bog to find she had lost her shoes which were worth more than our pay!

Having said all this, such horrible jobs seemed tolerable in your early twenties and in a place as beautiful as Crete.

Lori F:

My worst job lasted one day.

It was Christmas break and I was home from college. All I wanted to do was relax, take a load off and concentrate on important things like eating my mom's beef stroganoff and sleeping until 1:00 in the afternoon. My parents weren't too keen on this idea and decided that I would get a job for the few weeks I was home to keep me occupied and help earn my keep.

I applied for and got a job at a department store, Meier and Frank, floating around and filling in whe needed. On my one day of work I wore a giant cowl neck sweater, tights, a mini skirt and high heels. I was excited because I started my day in the fragrance department. They gave me a bottle of Calvin Klien Eternity and sent me off into the wild to spray perfume on people. It ws the holiday rush, people were rude and pushy, the store was packed and nobody wanted any of my scent on them. After five hours my tootsies were beginning to swell in my pointy heels. I had a break and then was sent to the home/kitchen department. My parents came in with my brother to see how my new career was going. My mom bought one of those creamers shaped like a cow where the cream pours out of its mouth, I was ringing her up when I started to sweat inside my giant scratchy sweater. The cow was supposed to be $10.99 but I rang her up at $19.99 and couldn't figure out ow to back out of it. My mom told me to call a manager but I refused. Being 18 and frustrated I got all emotional and told her, "just give me twenty dollars, I'll pay you back later, God!" she reluctantly paid double for the cow creamer and said she'd see me at home.

When I got home I peeled the shoes off my bloody feet and hobbled upstairs, shedding my sticky sweater as I made my way. "I'm not going back there tomorrow" I hollered at Mom as I collapsed on my bed.

I don't recall calling in the next day or giving any sort of notice, I just never went back.

My mom gave that cow creamer to my dad that year for Christmas. I think it was the best twenty bucks she ever spent, he absolutely loved it. 

John:

I had to think about this one for a while. I've had menial jobs (mopping floors and scrubbing toilets), jobs that left me greasy and reeking of garlic (busboy at The Old Spaghetti Factory), and jobs that left me feeling disrespected and demoralized (company shall remain nameless). But the most depressing and cringe-inducing work memory is from the time when I was a member of an improvisational comedy group and worked some stints as "the entertainment" at various functions.

There was the dying mall that hired our crew to engage shoppers in fun and games. The problem: no shoppers. Heck, half the retail spaces were empty. We tossed balloons back and forth for what seemed like hours, trying to look cheerful and inviting. No soap. We started a game with one seriously dour little boy who, when we asked him "What kind of animals should we be???" replied in a monotone, "I don't really care what kind of animals you are."

Then there was the Christmas party for the lawn care company. What didn't occur to us was that, because winter had arrived, three fourths of the attendees were on the brink of being laid off. The mood was not light, and when my partner Cindy and I shouted to the crowd, "Give us a topic!", someone instantly shouted back, "Unemployment!" I think they really would rather have had a hypnotist.

In fact, take my advice: If you organize events for your company, always go with the hypnotist.

Tanya:

I moved to Los Angeles in 1990 ready to reinvent my twenty-something artist self as a muralist/decorative painter/interior designer.  As the months passed and my savings dwindled I sadly realized the need for a "survival job".  Damn!!  I needed something flexible so that I had time to pursue my art, so I took a job as an early morning telemarketer for Helsinki Hair Products.  It was my job to telephone random balding men on east coast time and convince them to trustingly hand over their credit card number to me so I could in turn provide them with another hefty package of the snake oil they had purchased on late night TV that they were now skeptical about.  It was my job to suavely convince them that although they did not see nary a sprout, they surely needed to give it another full round of treatment; "I understand you still have a goodly supply sir, however my extensive professional experience tells me that most men like yourself do not begin to notice results until the second or third month".  Often I went so far as to coach them on the spiritual art of meditation, working the angle that  "often times men do not see results as quickly because their stress levels are much too high...you must be overworked poor dear!  Let me give you some advice on how to relax and unwind..." (okay so I veered from the script and although it was a bit unorthodox it couldn't hurt!).  As I spun the tale for each prematurely aging male, I imagined they must be picturing me in a crispy white lab coat surrounded by books and doctors, with a wealth of hard earned knowledge and years of extensive follicle research under my belt.  Really, I worked every weekday morning in a small boiler room situation with a motley collection of about six other out of work wanna be's in Hollywood, most with a questionable degree of education and some with interesting grooming techniques, until the day I finally landed my first real design job and high-tailed it out of there!!  As a perk, I still own one of the "highly effective" rubber scalp massagers which continues to work wonders on scrubbing my dog (it must be good stuff because he hasn't gone bald yet!!).  

anonymous:

I can honestly and gratefully say that almost all of my jobs have been pretty good! Even at times when jobs have been unpleasant, or forced me to collaborate with people who had difficult personalities, I've tried to see it as an opportunity to use the skills that I learned in meditation. Those negative experiences often ended up giving me a great gift in the long run.

When I was an undergrad in college, I was a bit more starry-eyed and naive than I am today. I was recruited, with promises of making $10,000 in three months, for a summer position selling study guides door-to-door. This company whisked us off to "sales school" in Nashville, where we learned all kinds of techniques and memorized our sales pitches. It felt a bit like a cult and from time to time they would directly bring religion into it in a very manipulative way. At one point during "sales school" one of the speakers told us that this company has very good lawyers, and that if any of us ever tried to sue them, we would lose. Don't ask me why I decided to continue with this "job" after hearing that.

We headed to the west coast, to our book selling headquarters for that next three months. We had to go door-to-door asking people if we could live with them for the summer. We all found places to stay that were reasonably affordable, but no background checks were done on the people with which we stayed. One group stayed in a crack den and felt very unsafe. We were also encouraged to go door to door asking families for food, and to "collect" (steal) No Soliciting signs from private properties as a joke. We worked 85 hours per week and were not allowed to sleep a full 8 hours each night. This was legal because we had signed on as independent contractors. If someone was ill, they had to work anyway. You would get dropped off outside alone by your sales area and you were stuck there until you got picked up at night. In many sales areas, soliciting was technically illegal. Friends of mine went to jail or had to pay off police officers.

They were clearly taking advantage of broke, desperate, naive college students. Nobody made $10,000. My roommate was the top seller in the California sales group that summer, taking home around $1,200. We had to spend most of our earnings on lodging, food, travel, to buy the items we were selling, a hospital bill in my case, and other expenses. For all the work we did, if we had a day of not selling anything, we would get a phone call with verbal abuse from our supervisors. Such comments as "your zero days are a reflection on your life," et cetera. They told us that we'd better not tell our parents how hard things were on the sales field, it would just make them worry. How selfish of us to tell our parents that we were being exploited!

Once the brainwashing wore off and I realized that I could not ethically make money for this company anymore, I stopped selling. I befriended a man in my sales area who had just lost his mother. I met a 100 year old woman who was still gardening, chopping wood, and had more energy than I do. I befriended families and gave some free tutoring to children. I helped busy moms (many of whom were stay-at-home moms who were dying to have an adult to talk to) who needed it, I walked people's dogs, I got invited to family dinners. I meditated in parks in the California sunshine. I made next to nothing financially, but I learned a lot from the experience and from the people I met.

When the summer was over and we went back to Nashville, my group had a near fatal car accident on the way because we were pressured to drive all day and all night, sleeping in the car in shifts, until we got there. We arrived in Nashville (via greyhound, that seller had to leave her almost-totalled car behind) exhausted, frazzled, defeated from our summer adventures. My supervisor brought me into his office and yelled at me until I cried. I have never had another sales job since then and I never will again. I am thankful for the people I met and the lessons I learned.

Carolina:

Hello again mirror ball! I could not resist the theme of the worst job prompt so, I thought through my various over-worked under paid moments in time. The job that take the worst job fetid prize is ...my job job as a 1. barista/ 2. waitress/ 3. crêpe maker/ 4.cashier/ 5. dish washer/ 6. logo-designer/7. gallery coordinator, at seemly classy upscale Victorian house on trendy-third ave. (job titles for this ONE job are listed in order of frequency of which i preformed the tasks-- although technically I was hired only for coffee slushing and cashiering).

As soon as I attained the position the establishment changed its name from something cool to something yuppie, letting go the bohemian vibe of poetry reading and classical string instrument musician that had made it a go-to place, red flag #1. Like most jobs I’ve encountered once they realize you have two brain cells to rub together the responsibilities were piled on, red flag #2. The owner asked me to make a design for the storefront “something catchy like the starshmucks” Which I did only to have him and his wife alter it slightly and then not pay me saying it was now their own. This was red flag #3, it was an added insult because I was being worked to the bone all hours while in art school.

What broke this Ameri-can’t-do-this anymore, was when a lazy bitch that I was working with decided to tell me I was washing dishes TOO slow. Something snapped in me and I literally broke a dish on that girl's face. The dish cracked in half. I don’t know who was more shocked, she, or I.  I ran upstairs and cried in the wash room until I regained composure. I finished my shift and I never went back.

Richard:

I have led a wonderful life filled with much joy and adventure.

But unfortunately, I would have to say that my current work situation is by far the low point of my work history.

Alas.

I am an event manager/cater waiter.

It is seasonal, freelance work with very little heart and no real purpose.

And it offers no future.

You often serve people who are less than gracious.

You find yourself changing into your uniform in public restrooms.

You push your way through an overcrowded room with a tray of shrimp as countless hands reach out in all directions to scoop up the goods.

You see people eat in the most horrific way.

You watch as the rich flaunt their wealth.

You hold your breathe hoping that enough work will come to fill out the week.

You begin to fade away as one party blends into another party.

I know this will not be forever.

I am working hard to re-direct my life and a change will happen.

But at the moment, and since you asked, this is what it is.

Wishing all a vast open bright and brilliant new year.

Tom:

A number of years ago, I lived on Guam (a whole ‘nother story) and cleaned/moved outhouses on the island.  I drove a truck with two huge tanks. One was filled with water and one was where the outhouse contents would go. In order to get the contents from the outhouse to the tank, there was a hose, very similar to a large vacuum hose that sucked the contents from the outhouse and dumped it in the tank. I would lower the hose into the toilet and begin the sucking process.


But, very often, there was more than just human waste in those toilets. People would throw pop bottles, clothes, hats and various other things into those toilets. Unfortunately, the hose was not strong enough to suck that kind of thing all the way to the tank, so those things would get stuck in the hose and clog the hose. To unclog it I had to get a stick, turn off the hose vacuum and start poking around. But, I had to be careful because there would be human waste behind whatever was stuck and that human waste would come back down the hose once I was able to remove whatever was stuck. A few times, when I was a bit slow, that human waste would wind up all over me, including on my head and face. Usually, I would just get the hose from the water tank and clean myself off, but a couple of times, when it was close, I just ran into the ocean to clean myself off. 


For me, that has to have been one of my worst jobs.