I was listening to the radio this morning and people were calling in regaling them with stories about the worst job that they ever had.
Since I am not one to look a gift horse in the mouth I figured that I would blog about it. For those of you who don't know, most of my posts are on the fly. I rarely write something prior to the day that I post it. I usually get my inspiration from conversations at work or maybe I read something on someone elses blog that gets my mind working about something in my own life so I blog about that.
Anyway...back to the subject.
When I was 18 and a senior in high school I needed to find a job and I found one in the want ads and went to check it out. It was in a strip of small offices in a slightly seedy part of town.
I walk in the door to apply and am surrounded by a cloud of smoke and hear a hacking cough coming from an office to the right of the lobby.
Calling out a greeting I see this woman come out of the office with blue tinged hair. She could have been anywhere from 50 - 80 years old. She was wrinkled and her face had a gray cast to it. I wouldn't have been surprised if she keeled over dead on the spot.
She told me that I would be working to raise funds for disabled children to be able to go on fun trips. Basically I was a telemarketer.
I have a feeling that this was a scam and I will tell you why.
I never saw one disabled child or a photo of one.
Our leads would come from tearing pages out of the phone booth.
I never saw any kind of license or plaque to show that we were a non-profit agency.
We were not taxed on our income.
I worked there for 3 or 4 months until one day we all arrived and the office was locked up. We waited 20 minutes then wrote a note, stuck it to the door and left. I guess that 10 minutes after that someone showed up to unlock the door.
They called me and told me that I needed to get back there NOW to work or I was fired. This was not the first time that I was threatened with being fired. It was nearly an every day occurence. I was sick of it so I quit on the spot.
When I went to go pick up my last paycheck I was not allowed to walk into the office. She handed me my check and slammed the door in my face.
When you ask about the worst job that people have had, many will tell you about the one that was the most disgusting. This job might not have had me cleaning out grease catchers or sewer pipes, but it made me feel dirty and the humiliation that was piled on us daily was hard to take. And I was ashamed to tell people what I did for a job. Everyone hates a telemarketer almost as much as they hate bill collectors.
What was your worst job ever?
Since I am not one to look a gift horse in the mouth I figured that I would blog about it. For those of you who don't know, most of my posts are on the fly. I rarely write something prior to the day that I post it. I usually get my inspiration from conversations at work or maybe I read something on someone elses blog that gets my mind working about something in my own life so I blog about that.
Anyway...back to the subject.
When I was 18 and a senior in high school I needed to find a job and I found one in the want ads and went to check it out. It was in a strip of small offices in a slightly seedy part of town.
I walk in the door to apply and am surrounded by a cloud of smoke and hear a hacking cough coming from an office to the right of the lobby.
Calling out a greeting I see this woman come out of the office with blue tinged hair. She could have been anywhere from 50 - 80 years old. She was wrinkled and her face had a gray cast to it. I wouldn't have been surprised if she keeled over dead on the spot.
She told me that I would be working to raise funds for disabled children to be able to go on fun trips. Basically I was a telemarketer.
I have a feeling that this was a scam and I will tell you why.
I never saw one disabled child or a photo of one.
Our leads would come from tearing pages out of the phone booth.
I never saw any kind of license or plaque to show that we were a non-profit agency.
We were not taxed on our income.
I worked there for 3 or 4 months until one day we all arrived and the office was locked up. We waited 20 minutes then wrote a note, stuck it to the door and left. I guess that 10 minutes after that someone showed up to unlock the door.
They called me and told me that I needed to get back there NOW to work or I was fired. This was not the first time that I was threatened with being fired. It was nearly an every day occurence. I was sick of it so I quit on the spot.
When I went to go pick up my last paycheck I was not allowed to walk into the office. She handed me my check and slammed the door in my face.
When you ask about the worst job that people have had, many will tell you about the one that was the most disgusting. This job might not have had me cleaning out grease catchers or sewer pipes, but it made me feel dirty and the humiliation that was piled on us daily was hard to take. And I was ashamed to tell people what I did for a job. Everyone hates a telemarketer almost as much as they hate bill collectors.
What was your worst job ever?
20 comments:
Oh good post, good post. One job springs to mind for me, and it wasn't the job where I pulled a swamped beer bottle out of the one and only toilet in the mens' room. I have another in mind. >:)
I can't think of any jobs that were awful like yours. My first job was working at Taco Johns - it was SO gross to feel covered in grease at all times.
Wow! Good idea quitting on that one. Working at a place where you just don't feel "right" is the worst. I never worked anywhere that was that sketchy, but I've worked at one hotel where the GM and the F&B director were stealing money & blaming the bartenders. Luckily, I was "laid off" prior to their demise, so I didn't have to worry about going down in flames with them.
That photo looks like the Flatulent False Teeth Lady from Sizzle's blog!
My worst job: SOMETIMES the one I have now. Otherwise, it was my job as a peon in the meat market of a supermarket. I cleaned saws, washed dishes, mopped floors and cooked broiled chicken for 8 hours a day. I came home at the end of the day smelling like the dirty grease from the chicken cooker.
I had a job in college doing fundraising for non-profit groups. (They were ligit, unlike your deal) However, they were a really crappy employer on sooo many levels.
Great post.. That is toobad that people have to be such ignorant fools.. and they ought to be in a different field..I will blog about my worst job..it's a good one..
Tara ~ That sounds like lots of fun. Bottles and toilets don't mix well.
Reformat ~ Mmmmm mexican food.
arm ~ I used to work at another place where a shift manager embezzeled funds. I knew about it and after I quit working there I called the manager and tipped them off. Don't know what ever came of it.
lefty ~ Do you hate the smell of chicken now?
MiniJonB ~ How were the crappy?
Babybull40 ~ I will make sure to check it out!
That place sounds awful! It must have been a relief to quit it. I have been pretty lucky with jobs and haven't had to work at something too sketchy or with a horrible boss.
This job of yours sounds dreadful. I like quitting on the spot like that. Sure does stick it to the man.
I've had way too many bad jobs to mention just one. I think one guy was in the Witness Relocation Program. He owned a deli and hated making eye contact with customers.
Good post, I hated a job I once had because one of the middle managers was a control freak. She gave the best jobs to her "favorites" and reduced some staff to tears. She hawled me into her office once and accused me of undermining her authority. All I did was get myself and a colleague to go on a training day. She didn't like me much, so whatever I did was wrong.
oh my god that sounds horrible!
I haven't actually had very many jobs. I've worked long term at all my jobs. But probably the waitressing job where I was sexually harassed on a weekly basis would be up there! WOO, being the only girl in a male work place = no.
l.b. ~ You are definitely lucky if you haven't had a bad job or a bad boss.
Egan ~ It was dreadful. We were all stuck in a 15x15 room with tables and phones and it would get SO loud in there. The lady was a hoverer as well. She would walk around and check to see how much money you had collected and then if you didn't make much it was a threat every day.
Furtive ~ I was a favorite once. I don't know why. I didn't want to be. She was a horrible boss. She sounds a lot like the one that you had.
M ~ I was a server a few times. That is a pretty thankless job. The conversations that would occur in the back area were really, really bad. And this was a high end steak house.
i've always wanted to say "i quit!" and storm off. it's the drama queen in me.
i haven't ever really had an awful job- very boring ones, yes. i guess i am lucky that way.
I love how they kept threatening you with being fired, when that should have been your reward.
As may be obvious by my blog, I grew up in many different countries. Most of them non-English speaking and in Latin America. My worst job was in one of them South American countries, in a toy store where I sold Barbies. I had no problem with that. What I had a problem with was the condescending and arrogant ways of the owners and the security guy. Most of the girls in the store came from low-level income families, and were trying to make a buck to help their families. Most, if none of them, spoke no English and had to be explained everything about the toys we sold. I was there because my family, though of middle class and private school style, was not ritzy and I needed a job to buy my own shit (I'm not saying this to be mean or classisist, is to explain what comes next).
I hated the job. I hated the hours, the way the security guy acted like he was our pimp, the fact that there was ONE stool for 4 girs and almost no breaks in 12 hour shifts. I hated that they kept us there on Christmas night almost up to midnight, doing "inventory".
What I hated the most was the day we were gathered for a meeting with the higher management people (i.e. the owner's son). We got some speech about Christmas sales. Then on the way out, I heard the man who had given us the speech and who turned out to be the owner's son and who was as Southamerican as they come- talk in English to his dyed blonde girlfriend about us "sales girls". HE was so demeaning towards us, so rude, so high up in his horse and unconscious that it was US who were making the money for him, who were breaking our backs while he sunbathed at the beach. He didn't think any of his employees knew any English. He was wrong. And I can't say that I didn't feel sadness the day I learned that the f'n store had burned up in flames and the business was gone.
As usual, I think faster than I type. I meant to say I DIDN'T feel any sadness when I heard the store burned down.
Hehe
That sounds like a nightmare of a job, good you had quit as soon as you could.
I have had my share of horrible jobs.
I have been a waitress in a place that I hated so much. The boss was a cruel person that only wanted to humiliate us girls, we had to clean on our knees every tile on the floor every day. I lasted a week.
I have been a chambermaid in a seaside hotel for the summer months in 96 and worked from 6am til 10pm with only 2 hours break and not ONE single day off until the 2,5 months were finished.
But what I really really hated was my very first job, in an estate agency in Rome. Every agent would be given an area of 6-7 blocks and we had to go into every single building and knock on every single door to find out whether anybody was trying to sell or rent! I had to do it even on a Saturday morning. The pay was ridicolous and the last week on the job I was so fed up I brought a book and read it on a bench all day. Then I finally quit!
Rachel, that does sound like a nightmare job! Worst job that comes to mind for me was working on the checkout in a supermarket part-time when I was at Uni. The job itself wasn't so bad, but I've never had so many people be rude to me, or had to bite my tongue so much and so often.
Well, finding out what my worst job to date has been would just take too long, and I should not take up so much space on someone else's blog.
But there was an incident at a wildlife park. One day I was left at a certain place, from about 9am to 4pm, without a break, and without a bathroom. At some point, when something like that happens, you just have to worry more about your health than your job and just walk away. But I couldn't walk away in the middle of the shift at a wildlife park. Someone could have gotten lost or hurt, or an animal could have gotten loose or something like that. So, I stayed.
Other people at the park could not believe what happened. But the people responsible and the people in charge did not so much as come and apologize for what happened.
One where the 70 year old boss used to grope the young receptionist in full view of everyone (she let him) and he used to leave the bathroom door open when he peed so we could hear him. I told him not to lay a finger on me and left within 6 months.
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