What's the worst job you've ever had?

[Nya Halcyon]

Simple question :p Whatever the reason might have been - bad pay, bad conditions, horrible colleagues, etc

[Sanis Prent]

I was a ball shagger at a driving range back in 1996. It was a shitty summer job, all under the table. No taxes but also no bennies. We began work each summer day at around 6 AM. Now if y'all don't know about the deep south, it's still hot around that time of the morning, and it's pretty much a sauna. Also there are mosquitos the size of cats.

We weren't trained to use the automated shagging cart. No, we did it all manually. We had these little collector hoppers we could tote around and stab at golf balls, that would feed up into a bag that we could dump into a waiting golf cart. It was tedious and back-breaking work.

To top it off, assholes who got to the driving range early in the morning would aim at us as we were finishing our morning rounds.

I stayed there a week. Fuck that job.

[Yog]

Telemarketing. Absolutely could not stand it. The salary was entirely based on sales numbers too (which was awful on my part), so I gave up after a few days. I swore to myself never ever try that field again. Telemarketing is a useless parasite on society, and the only thing worse than being pestered by those, is being one yourself.

[Loklorien s'Ilancy]

My worst one was that stupid 'marketing' pyramid scheme I got caught up in about seven years back. Not much more beyond that needs to be said, other than it was soul-crushing. Working on straight commission certainly didn't help either.

[Captain Untouchable]

A step worse than telemarketing would be fundraising via telephone on behalf of charities. All the stigma and loathing directed towards you as if you were a telemarketing person... except you're trying to do it for charity. If you're lucky enough to find someone who doesn't verbally assault you as if you're the spawn of some sordid union between Satan and Hitler, odds are you'll be talking to someone with a truely heart-wrenching personal experience, especially if you're working with a medical charity. Working eight hours straight with only a half-hour for lunch and two fifteen minute breaks, listening to people breaking down as they tell you about the loved ones they've lost - or worse, the loved ones who are living with the kind of conditions you're raising money to help - and then hearing how they're desperate to support the charity but can't spare a single penny... it's emotionally draining, and can get really tough at times, especially when you have to pick yourself up and move on to the next call each time.

Don't get me wrong; I find charity calls as annoying as the rest of you do... but having been on the other end of it: you really don't know what these guys have to go through sometimes. And believe me, they already hate themselves for having to call you, so you don't need to try and give them extra reasons to. ;)

[Yog]

If you're lucky enough to find someone who doesn't verbally assault you as if you're the spawn of some sordid union between Satan and Hitler..
That happened to me pretty much all the time. :p

The few times I was lucky enough to not get yelled at, it usually ended in some kind of circlejerk where I fax the company pricing information about ad-space in some yellow page phone index no one on this planet had ever heard about, and naturally no one has any interest in paying for worthless ad-space. Then predictably, nothing is heard from them again, so the standard company procedure was to nag them with more phone calls and faxes to nag them about signing the pricing offer, and convince them that they had agreed to something they had not..

The most efficient telemarketers in our team were literally psychopaths. They would find some weakminded individual and break him/her down with a commanding voice and various hypnotic techniques to get them to buy a product they really really did not want. Some of the tricks employed were borderline fraudulent. That's why people of that honored profession were popularly referred as "catalogue sharks".

At the end of that experience, I had to wonder what on earth was I thinking going for that "job". :lol

[Captain Untouchable]

Yeah... that's why people in my profession hate telemarketers. Everyone who uses telephones as a medium is painted with the same stigma; whereas we're specifically trained not to use those sorts of tactics. First and foremost, we're meant to be "ambassadors" for the charity, so such techniques would likely get us fired, successful or not.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Worst job I ever had was working for Blockbuster. Horrible hours, and upper management treated our managers like crap. Plus trying to collect late fees was always a nightmare because no one deserved them, of course.

Also it created and nurtured OCD in me to where I couldn't go into a video rental store for years without straightening the merchandise. This was also the case in clothing stores for ever - putting things back on hangers and straightening racks. I've mostly recovered, but I can't go into messy places like Ross without getting the shakes.*





*not really

[Dasquian Belargic]

During the last general election, I did cold calling on behalf of the political party that was currently in power, to ask members of the public who they were going to vote for. I'm sure you can imagine how offended some people get, to be called up in their home by a stranger somewhere else in the country, and be asked: Who are you voting far? And why aren't you voting for us?

In terms of the job that made me feel least like a human being, probably shovelling popcorn and nachos at the local arena. It was the first actual job I ever had, and the stafff there were a bunch of arseholes. I had never worked on a bar before, so they just threw me on the pumps during a capacity Alice Cooper concert, with basically no training in how to operate anything. The most disgusting part of the job was a toss up between either having to scrape the hot dogs out of their buns and wrap em in clingfilm so they could be used again the next night, or putting the same tub of nacho cheese out night after night.

I work for the government department that dishes out state benefits (primarily unemployment benefits) right now and that has its terrible moments... though at least I am seperated from the furiously indignant "I've worked every day in my life, paid my taxes and now you bastards want me to live on HOW MUCH?!" penniless public by a phone.

[Nya Halcyon]

When I lived in Ireland I had all kinds of odd jobs in the beginning, from working in a fish'n'chips shop, a book store, a nursing home, several bars, a youth hostel to working on a farm helping with the sheep-shearing (my job was making the tea for the shearers :p ). They were all ridiculously underpaid - minimum wage back then was 1.25 Irish Pounds (that would have been $2.50) but usually came with added benefits of a bed to sleep in and nice co-workers/bosses and a whole rake of interesting new experiences. Unfortunately they were all fairly shortlived cos they were just seasonal or otherwise temporary (there's only so much wool on a sheep, after all).

The only one that seriously failed to fall into that category was my second job: working as a chamber maid at Ashford Castle Hotel, THE poshest place of all - a fake medieval castle once owned by the Guinness family, and the place where all the presidents would stay at when they'd visit Ireland. It was only a stone's throw from the youth hostel I worked in first, and I was really thrilled to get into that place since I figured it would look really cool on my Resume.

Working there turned out to be a trip into the 19th century: ridiculous old-fashioned super-starched uniforms, not being allowed to speak and look at a guest but always walking around looking "demure", being treated like a third class human by the "higher" staff.... It was the only place they ever actually asked me whether I was protestant or catholic, come to think of it. Anyway, I stuck it out for 6 days or so, and then my rebellious self got the better of me and I dared not change an unused pillow sheet in an unused room... so they sacked me.

I've had my share of bad jobs since, but nothing ever came close to that one.

[Sudoku]

I would have to say my job right now. Actually, all my jobs have been shit, but this is the only job where I've made the mistake of being friends with people there outside of work.

Oh, and the being "punished" by having a week off work. The constant "I'm your friend" bullshit from my boss who only likes you if she can use you, the co-workers who are morons, our head office that is full of morons who have no idea how to run a company...

:x

[Firenne Khapst]

Oh, and the being "punished" by having a week off work. The constant "I'm your friend" bullshit from my boss who only likes you if she can use you, the co-workers who are morons, our head office that is full of morons who have no idea how to run a company...

:xI think we work for the same company :ohno

My worst job has to have been the temporary one I had to take when I left college in 1999. I worked as seasonal office help, answering the phone and making appointments for our drivers to pick up our customers' fur garments for cold storage for the summer.

Yes, I said fur. It was god awful. Though, it wasn't entirely atrocious just working in the office where I didn't have to deal with any of the fur in the showroom. But they also created custom pieces by request for our customers...one day I opened a UPS box at my boss' request and took out the mink pelts inside...not only did that alone make me physically ill, but they'd removed the pelt so completely the whiskers were still attached.

I quit on the spot.

And though I didn't realize it at the time, it was the same company that Charles Stuart (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Stuart_(murderer)) had worked for 10 years prior.

[Crusader]

I counted socket outlets in a factory for a whole day...