I did nothing buy fry french fries for 90-100 hours a week in a little refreshment shack at an amusement park in 100+ degree heat with no a/c. On top of that I had to wear a uniform consisting of long beige pants, a short sleeve polo shirt (that was a really thick material), a full apron on top of that, and thick gloves. I lost 30 pounds that summer (both from sweating it off in the heat and also because the smell of the hot oil make me sick to my stomach and made me not want to eat anything) and I swear that my skin and hair had oil in them for months after the season was over - no matter how much I scrubbed.
I was Christmas seasonal help at Spencer Gifts, that obnoxiously loud store with strobe lights and lots of neon. Because I was only there for the Christmas retail rush, I wasn't trained on anything and simply wore a Santa hat and asked customers if they needed help. Trust me, customers do not want help when they are looking in the kinky sex gag gifts section. My Santa hat had a large red spring on it that got caught in the beaded curtains that hung from the ceiling. It was also the first year the humping dog animated stuffed animals came out, and we sold out everyday. Made me turn into the Grinch!
I was laid off and working for a temp agency. They sent me on a job at a HUGE chemical manufacturer. My job was to sit in the basement office doing data entry on an old grimy pc, tracking chemical testing data on spreadsheets. The basement was filled with giant vats of bubbling chemical carcinogens. All the people who worked down there had deformities and growths and/or hacking coughs. The smell was horrendous. It was the scariest place ever. I lasted for 3 days, then I started to develop a hack myself and said "thats it"! I'd rather be dead broke then ..dead.
During a hot summer, I worked at a conveyor belt factory. I didn't make conveyor belts, but I did ship them out. During the day I could be found rolling long, giant "metal carpets" into big rolls, and building boxes around them. I think I lost all my finger nails during that summer.
The worst job I ever had was unbelievable. I went to work for this start-up, which actually didn’t exist at all. It was a front for a man that was using it to try and kill his ex-wife. He took several of us on a business trip. On that trip he planted several car bombs in an attempt to kill his ex-wife. I was not only “lucky” enough to be present on that trip, I was the one that turned him into the FBI, and had to testify at a Federal Trial. Then to top it off, we find out he had taken million dollar life insurance policies out on his employees and had a plan to kill us off in “accidents”. All of these plans were very nicely documented and confiscated by the FBI. Unemployment never looked so good after this!!
I spent an unfortunate part of my teen years in eastern North Carolina, where the main sources of income come from farming or hog farms. I did both in order to get through community college. As the "assistant", I had a number of duties. Daily I cleaned the inside of hog houses with a high-pressure waterhose and a scraper attached to a broom handle...in 90-degree plus heat. I removed the dead animals from the houses and placed them in the "pit". There were other duties that are too gross to describe here. Suffice to say, I made good grades in community college to get out of this job. To this day, I eat very little pork.
One summer while trying to make money for University I applied to an ad in the newspaper for a job that was listed as "truck driver/setting up and taking down equipment at local events". After transferring buses nearly a dozen times to make it to the outer-most part of the industrial end of the city, I was informed that the job was actually to power-wash used outhouses. After going all the way out there, I decided to try it for the day. Needless to say, it was not the job for me. I told them I wasn't interested at the end of the day and they refused to pay me. After calls, emails, and finally a threat to sue, I got my pay along with a note that read: "Here's your welfare cheque. Don't forget to claim it on your income taxes".
My worst job EVER was working on a campaign in South Texas. The pay was $750 every 2 weeks and we were pushing 70-80 hour work weeks. We weren't taxed as we were contracted out but any expenses I had hadto wait until tax time or they would reimburse me for the next pay period.
Long story short, I gained about 20 pounds. Lost faith in candidatorial politics, was chased by dogs, dealt with very spoiled children (i.e. employees underneath me), had a crap boss that would just disappear.
Eventually I just had to quit because it was thankless and the pay was horrible. It just wasn't worth it for the pay, my health and overall well being. Never again. The candidate eventually won but by very slim margin. His second run he lost by a landslide. I can't say I feel too bad about that either.
Worst job: working for a company that didn't pay me for four months straight. I went from October to February with no paychecks. In San Diego. I had to call my dad and beg for money to pay my rent.
Alternately, working at IHOP as a hostess when I was 16. 7:30 AM to 2:30 PM, on your feet with no breaks, and if you were hungry at the end of your shift, you had to pay for your own food. One morning the cash register broke at 10:30 AM - which was right when the after-church crowd decided to come on over for some pancakes.
I did learn how to carry six water glasses at once and how to count out money so it snaps, though.
This job totally left me feeling awful about myself. All I did was fold clothes and ask people if they needed help. I also had four different bitchy supervisors. I've worked in many different places since turning 14 (now I'm 31) and this was totally the worst.
My worst job pales in comparison to everyone else's stories. I was a cashier for Kmart during high school and on summer break for my first couple years of college.
Standing on one's feet for 8 hours drains the life out of you, and when customers blame you for things ringing up wrong, it's even worse!
I interviewed for my dream job, or so I thought. The interview was excellent and the managers I met with were very supportive of the new role that they were creating for me. The division VP was even supportive and the work environment couldn't be better.
When I started a few weeks later, I noticed that one of the managers who had interviewed me was gone. Upon inquiry, I discovered she had quit in the intervening weeks. Within a month, it became apparent that the job as described to me was not what they were expecting of me. Many managers I had interviewed with were hostile to the job I was hired to do. When I asked my hiring manager why this wasn't told to me in the interview, he said (and this is a direct quote), "If I had told you the truth, you wouldn't have taken the job." He left two months later, leaving me in the lurch.
His replacement, my new boss, had yet another view of my responsibilities which he didn't deign to share with me. I would get called into his cubicle and berated for not doing X when X was nowhere near my purview. When I asked for a new job description so I could better understand my duties I was told that he didn't have time and that I should know my duties and what is expected of me. The project I had spent the previous few months on was looked at and scrapped by both my new boss and the others who were supposedly supportive of it.
The kicker came when it was time for annual reviews. I gave my self-evaluation, as was required. When I had my face to face review, my manager accepted all of my statements as true. Then he added new job responsibilities on the spot and based my evaluation on not meeting these new goals. When I discussed this with HR, they told me that the division VP was rogue and they couldn't help me. They then told me that he was suspected of giving lower-than-normal reviews (we averaged low for the company) in order to save on merit raises to meet his budgetary objectives. During my year there, the attrition rate for my division was 70% (against 30% company wide).
A year later, when I called to see how things were since I had left the previous year, I discovered that the VP and many managers had been fired and they were rehiring staff who had quit or had been laid off unjustly. By then I was completely soured on the place and had no intentions of going back.
I got a job during the summer between high school and college with a marketing company. Not until I was seated in room with 20 others during orientation were we told that we would actually be selling knives door to door. I could not believe that I had been duped into attending such a ridiculous scheme that I giggled out load. They immediately told me in front of the 19 other people that they didn't think I could take the job seriously, and I was asked to leave and not come back.
two tips that work for me to reduce the energy needed for cooking (and help us get by with very little AC use in the house):
cook in a crockpot or toaster oven (works great for a small pan of meatballs or chicken), and place the toaster oven in a porch, unused room, or outside
bake a batch of granola in your car- spread the mixture out on a pan and place on the dashboard or in the back window (whichever is on the sunnier side) for 3-4 hrs.
my 2nd worst job occurred as a new hire for a major poultry company (yes, the guys that make all your tasty chicken nuggets) in western North Carolina. my boss (the head geneticist for the company) was getting close to retirement and had 2 heart attacks -- so the company forced him to hire a person who was, effectively, their life insurance policy in case he shuffled off his mortal coil....
needless to say, he didn't want to hire anyone and certainly didn't want me around.
at one of our larger breeder farms, their was a stand-alone incinerator for the disposal of dead birds. apparently, the gas burner (which was the business end of the incinerator and located on the bottom of a very large steel bin) broke -- BUT, the farmhands never told anyone and continued to pile around 24 cubic feet of dead birds over the coming week. of course, this occurred in in the heat and humidity of august in north carolina.
several neighbors reported the smell. the gas company came out and refused to fix the burner until the unit was cleaned.
guess who got the job??
right, my boss said -- clean it out. i suggested that the farmhands were at fault and they should clean up their own mess. my boss said, and i quote, "never ask anyone to do something that you won't do yourself. get to work."
the company didn't blink when i complained.
now... i had a wife, 6 month old baby and HUGE student loans at the time. i cleaned it out. my wife had to literally hose me off for an hour in the back yard before i was allowed to come in and take a shower. i think the grass is still dead there.
the good news is that 3 months later i got a GREAT job and left scenic north carolina. 1 month after that, the s.o.b. had another heart attack. 6 months after that the company was bought out and no longer exists.
my WORST job ever also paid the best of any job i ever had. i lasted 3 days on the job (which was 2 and a half days longer than anyone else) and paid for a full semester of college (back in 1972). that one is worth WAY more than a $10 prize.
My first real job was for a trust company. Mind you I was not the most efficient person at 22 but I was working 12 hours a day, plus Saturdays, Sundays and holidays and was still falling behind. I was put on probation, on the way towards being fired. They moved me to a new position and proceeded to have three other people try and catch up where I was falling behind. Amazingly, they were falling behind as well, with 3 times the people. One of the transfers I had been working on didn't get completed till 2 years after I left the company, yest somehow I was the screw up.
The position they moved me to, one woman broke her back so I had to pick up her slack, then another person quit, and they couldn't find anyone to replace them right away, so was back to three person job again. Of course I fell behind.
Luckily after 10 months of this, I moved on and was at my next company for almost 5 years. Even though I was a snotty 22 year old I did have ideas to streamline things that they always poo poo'ed. about 10 of those things got implimented after I left.
When I was 16 I spent a summer working for the local dry cleaning shop. It was not only miserably hot (well over the legal temperature limit, but the owner kept a broken thermometer to thwart any attempts on the part of the staff to be released early on sweltering days), but extremely poorly ventilated. Dry cleaning is dusty and I often came home blowing black snot out of my nose. We weren't allowed to take breaks (bathroom breaks allowed but definitely not encouraged), and I distinctly remember my boss clipping his nails near my work station one day. ugh.
I also encountered my fair share of screaming and irate customers, as well as many pairs of dirty underpants left in the garments I had to sort for cleaning. Not joking. It was a pretty bad experience!
Out of desperation one summer while staying with friends of friends, I got duped into a pyramid scheme selling discounted ticket books door-to-door. At first it was okay because they send the new people to the rich neighborhoods where people shell out the money. As soon as you seem convinced, they send you off to the "hard sells". This job was pure commission and didn't cover gas or tolls - often sending us from Long Island through Manhattan into Jersey to peddle our wares.
A few miserable weeks in, I discovered that one of the ticket books I had been selling was false advertising and the cruise ship displayed on the front cover didn't exist. When I brought this to everyone's attention, I was reprimanded for making a fuss and assigned a different coupon book. I don't think anyone was surprised when I quit shortly thereafter.
Beware business students! This is what happens if you slack off in even the easiest classes and fail to get an internship to bolster your resume. I was thankfully still in school at the time and therefore in a position to feel very, very bad about everyone who was living their *real lives* at this labor camp.
My worst job ever was walking soybean fields pulling the weeds. The fields were 80+ acres and we were walking them in the lovely South Dakota July heat and humidity.
My worst job ever was parking cars for a posh condo in Buckhead in Atlanta, GA. The residents were the most arrogant, pretentious pricks in all the world.
My best job ever was chauffeuring old ladies and men around from a retirement home in Atlanta. It was a joy to be able to talk to these people. They were so friendly and just loved having someone to talk to.
I did nothing buy fry french fries for 90-100 hours a week in a little refreshment shack at an amusement park in 100+ degree heat with no a/c. On top of that I had to wear a uniform consisting of long beige pants, a short sleeve polo shirt (that was a really thick material), a full apron on top of that, and thick gloves. I lost 30 pounds that summer (both from sweating it off in the heat and also because the smell of the hot oil make me sick to my stomach and made me not want to eat anything) and I swear that my skin and hair had oil in them for months after the season was over - no matter how much I scrubbed.
I was Christmas seasonal help at Spencer Gifts, that obnoxiously loud store with strobe lights and lots of neon. Because I was only there for the Christmas retail rush, I wasn't trained on anything and simply wore a Santa hat and asked customers if they needed help. Trust me, customers do not want help when they are looking in the kinky sex gag gifts section. My Santa hat had a large red spring on it that got caught in the beaded curtains that hung from the ceiling. It was also the first year the humping dog animated stuffed animals came out, and we sold out everyday. Made me turn into the Grinch!
I was laid off and working for a temp agency. They sent me on a job at a HUGE chemical manufacturer. My job was to sit in the basement office doing data entry on an old grimy pc, tracking chemical testing data on spreadsheets. The basement was filled with giant vats of bubbling chemical carcinogens. All the people who worked down there had deformities and growths and/or hacking coughs. The smell was horrendous. It was the scariest place ever. I lasted for 3 days, then I started to develop a hack myself and said "thats it"! I'd rather be dead broke then ..dead.
During a hot summer, I worked at a conveyor belt factory. I didn't make conveyor belts, but I did ship them out. During the day I could be found rolling long, giant "metal carpets" into big rolls, and building boxes around them. I think I lost all my finger nails during that summer.
The worst job I ever had was unbelievable. I went to work for this start-up, which actually didn’t exist at all. It was a front for a man that was using it to try and kill his ex-wife. He took several of us on a business trip. On that trip he planted several car bombs in an attempt to kill his ex-wife. I was not only “lucky” enough to be present on that trip, I was the one that turned him into the FBI, and had to testify at a Federal Trial. Then to top it off, we find out he had taken million dollar life insurance policies out on his employees and had a plan to kill us off in “accidents”. All of these plans were very nicely documented and confiscated by the FBI. Unemployment never looked so good after this!!
I spent an unfortunate part of my teen years in eastern North Carolina, where the main sources of income come from farming or hog farms. I did both in order to get through community college. As the "assistant", I had a number of duties. Daily I cleaned the inside of hog houses with a high-pressure waterhose and a scraper attached to a broom handle...in 90-degree plus heat. I removed the dead animals from the houses and placed them in the "pit". There were other duties that are too gross to describe here. Suffice to say, I made good grades in community college to get out of this job. To this day, I eat very little pork.
One summer while trying to make money for University I applied to an ad in the newspaper for a job that was listed as "truck driver/setting up and taking down equipment at local events". After transferring buses nearly a dozen times to make it to the outer-most part of the industrial end of the city, I was informed that the job was actually to power-wash used outhouses. After going all the way out there, I decided to try it for the day. Needless to say, it was not the job for me. I told them I wasn't interested at the end of the day and they refused to pay me. After calls, emails, and finally a threat to sue, I got my pay along with a note that read: "Here's your welfare cheque. Don't forget to claim it on your income taxes".
My worst job EVER was working on a campaign in South Texas. The pay was $750 every 2 weeks and we were pushing 70-80 hour work weeks. We weren't taxed as we were contracted out but any expenses I had hadto wait until tax time or they would reimburse me for the next pay period.
Long story short, I gained about 20 pounds. Lost faith in candidatorial politics, was chased by dogs, dealt with very spoiled children (i.e. employees underneath me), had a crap boss that would just disappear.
Eventually I just had to quit because it was thankless and the pay was horrible. It just wasn't worth it for the pay, my health and overall well being. Never again. The candidate eventually won but by very slim margin. His second run he lost by a landslide. I can't say I feel too bad about that either.
Worst job: working for a company that didn't pay me for four months straight. I went from October to February with no paychecks. In San Diego. I had to call my dad and beg for money to pay my rent.
Alternately, working at IHOP as a hostess when I was 16. 7:30 AM to 2:30 PM, on your feet with no breaks, and if you were hungry at the end of your shift, you had to pay for your own food. One morning the cash register broke at 10:30 AM - which was right when the after-church crowd decided to come on over for some pancakes.
I did learn how to carry six water glasses at once and how to count out money so it snaps, though.
This job totally left me feeling awful about myself. All I did was fold clothes and ask people if they needed help. I also had four different bitchy supervisors. I've worked in many different places since turning 14 (now I'm 31) and this was totally the worst.
In college I worked at a biological station, and as part of my lab work I had to wash dirt. This is not a joke.
My worst job pales in comparison to everyone else's stories. I was a cashier for Kmart during high school and on summer break for my first couple years of college.
Standing on one's feet for 8 hours drains the life out of you, and when customers blame you for things ringing up wrong, it's even worse!
I would love to read this book. It will be interesting to see if Google can sustain its dominance.
I interviewed for my dream job, or so I thought. The interview was excellent and the managers I met with were very supportive of the new role that they were creating for me. The division VP was even supportive and the work environment couldn't be better.
When I started a few weeks later, I noticed that one of the managers who had interviewed me was gone. Upon inquiry, I discovered she had quit in the intervening weeks. Within a month, it became apparent that the job as described to me was not what they were expecting of me. Many managers I had interviewed with were hostile to the job I was hired to do. When I asked my hiring manager why this wasn't told to me in the interview, he said (and this is a direct quote), "If I had told you the truth, you wouldn't have taken the job." He left two months later, leaving me in the lurch.
His replacement, my new boss, had yet another view of my responsibilities which he didn't deign to share with me. I would get called into his cubicle and berated for not doing X when X was nowhere near my purview. When I asked for a new job description so I could better understand my duties I was told that he didn't have time and that I should know my duties and what is expected of me. The project I had spent the previous few months on was looked at and scrapped by both my new boss and the others who were supposedly supportive of it.
The kicker came when it was time for annual reviews. I gave my self-evaluation, as was required. When I had my face to face review, my manager accepted all of my statements as true. Then he added new job responsibilities on the spot and based my evaluation on not meeting these new goals. When I discussed this with HR, they told me that the division VP was rogue and they couldn't help me. They then told me that he was suspected of giving lower-than-normal reviews (we averaged low for the company) in order to save on merit raises to meet his budgetary objectives. During my year there, the attrition rate for my division was 70% (against 30% company wide).
A year later, when I called to see how things were since I had left the previous year, I discovered that the VP and many managers had been fired and they were rehiring staff who had quit or had been laid off unjustly. By then I was completely soured on the place and had no intentions of going back.
There's a penny auction watchdog site & forum where you can discuss your experiences and learn more about penny auctions www.pennyauctionwatch.com
What's the deal there? You're a service provider, yet you still have to pay?
I'll stick with advertising elsewhere, tyvm...
I got a job during the summer between high school and college with a marketing company. Not until I was seated in room with 20 others during orientation were we told that we would actually be selling knives door to door. I could not believe that I had been duped into attending such a ridiculous scheme that I giggled out load. They immediately told me in front of the 19 other people that they didn't think I could take the job seriously, and I was asked to leave and not come back.
two tips that work for me to reduce the energy needed for cooking (and help us get by with very little AC use in the house):
cook in a crockpot or toaster oven (works great for a small pan of meatballs or chicken), and place the toaster oven in a porch, unused room, or outside
bake a batch of granola in your car- spread the mixture out on a pan and place on the dashboard or in the back window (whichever is on the sunnier side) for 3-4 hrs.
my 2nd worst job occurred as a new hire for a major poultry company (yes, the guys that make all your tasty chicken nuggets) in western North Carolina. my boss (the head geneticist for the company) was getting close to retirement and had 2 heart attacks -- so the company forced him to hire a person who was, effectively, their life insurance policy in case he shuffled off his mortal coil....
needless to say, he didn't want to hire anyone and certainly didn't want me around.
at one of our larger breeder farms, their was a stand-alone incinerator for the disposal of dead birds. apparently, the gas burner (which was the business end of the incinerator and located on the bottom of a very large steel bin) broke -- BUT, the farmhands never told anyone and continued to pile around 24 cubic feet of dead birds over the coming week. of course, this occurred in in the heat and humidity of august in north carolina.
several neighbors reported the smell. the gas company came out and refused to fix the burner until the unit was cleaned.
guess who got the job??
right, my boss said -- clean it out. i suggested that the farmhands were at fault and they should clean up their own mess. my boss said, and i quote, "never ask anyone to do something that you won't do yourself. get to work."
the company didn't blink when i complained.
now... i had a wife, 6 month old baby and HUGE student loans at the time. i cleaned it out. my wife had to literally hose me off for an hour in the back yard before i was allowed to come in and take a shower. i think the grass is still dead there.
the good news is that 3 months later i got a GREAT job and left scenic north carolina. 1 month after that, the s.o.b. had another heart attack. 6 months after that the company was bought out and no longer exists.
my WORST job ever also paid the best of any job i ever had. i lasted 3 days on the job (which was 2 and a half days longer than anyone else) and paid for a full semester of college (back in 1972). that one is worth WAY more than a $10 prize.
My first real job was for a trust company. Mind you I was not the most efficient person at 22 but I was working 12 hours a day, plus Saturdays, Sundays and holidays and was still falling behind. I was put on probation, on the way towards being fired. They moved me to a new position and proceeded to have three other people try and catch up where I was falling behind. Amazingly, they were falling behind as well, with 3 times the people. One of the transfers I had been working on didn't get completed till 2 years after I left the company, yest somehow I was the screw up.
The position they moved me to, one woman broke her back so I had to pick up her slack, then another person quit, and they couldn't find anyone to replace them right away, so was back to three person job again. Of course I fell behind.
Luckily after 10 months of this, I moved on and was at my next company for almost 5 years. Even though I was a snotty 22 year old I did have ideas to streamline things that they always poo poo'ed. about 10 of those things got implimented after I left.
When I was 16 I spent a summer working for the local dry cleaning shop. It was not only miserably hot (well over the legal temperature limit, but the owner kept a broken thermometer to thwart any attempts on the part of the staff to be released early on sweltering days), but extremely poorly ventilated. Dry cleaning is dusty and I often came home blowing black snot out of my nose. We weren't allowed to take breaks (bathroom breaks allowed but definitely not encouraged), and I distinctly remember my boss clipping his nails near my work station one day. ugh.
I also encountered my fair share of screaming and irate customers, as well as many pairs of dirty underpants left in the garments I had to sort for cleaning. Not joking. It was a pretty bad experience!
Out of desperation one summer while staying with friends of friends, I got duped into a pyramid scheme selling discounted ticket books door-to-door. At first it was okay because they send the new people to the rich neighborhoods where people shell out the money. As soon as you seem convinced, they send you off to the "hard sells". This job was pure commission and didn't cover gas or tolls - often sending us from Long Island through Manhattan into Jersey to peddle our wares.
A few miserable weeks in, I discovered that one of the ticket books I had been selling was false advertising and the cruise ship displayed on the front cover didn't exist. When I brought this to everyone's attention, I was reprimanded for making a fuss and assigned a different coupon book. I don't think anyone was surprised when I quit shortly thereafter.
Beware business students! This is what happens if you slack off in even the easiest classes and fail to get an internship to bolster your resume. I was thankfully still in school at the time and therefore in a position to feel very, very bad about everyone who was living their *real lives* at this labor camp.
I was a telemarker for a summer. There's nothing like being hung up on hundreds of times per day to boost your self esteem.
My worst job ever was walking soybean fields pulling the weeds. The fields were 80+ acres and we were walking them in the lovely South Dakota July heat and humidity.
My worst job ever was parking cars for a posh condo in Buckhead in Atlanta, GA. The residents were the most arrogant, pretentious pricks in all the world.
My best job ever was chauffeuring old ladies and men around from a retirement home in Atlanta. It was a joy to be able to talk to these people. They were so friendly and just loved having someone to talk to.