I've heard of (and had) bad jobs before, but some of these stories are just ridiculous!
What’s the Job Title for This?
Shutterstock/Roman Pyshchyk
“I worked on a croissant line. You can bet they never came out of the machine with that nice curved shape. Nope – they are straight, but someone has to bend them into shape, thousands of them every day, on a moving line. This equates to the most depressing job in the world. I bent croissants for a living.”
Dirty Jobs
Shutterstock/WaiveFamisoCZ
“I never really made a concrete plan for after high school, my mother was firm that I would not simply be a layabout around the house (totally fair) so I took the only job I could find in my small town. It was at a salmon hatchery in rural New Brunswick. My job was to breed salmon… for minimum wage.
A typical day went like this;
Get to work at around 6AM…. it is around -10 degrees Celsius, and you work outside.
You get the female fish from the breeding tank and kill them, then suspend and gut said fish to free the eggs that you collect in a bucket.
Next you take the male fish, one person holds it while the other essentially jacks off the fish and you collect the seamen in a bucket.
Then you bash the male fish to death with a steel pole and toss it aside to prepare later.
Lastly, you take your sperm bucket, and pour it in your eggs bucket, and give it a big old mix around with your hand, protected by a flimsy latest glove while simultaneously trying not to vomit or freeze.
Worst. Job. Ever.”
Darker Side of Prank Shows
“I once worked as a production assistant for a prank show, where the ‘star’ of the show would run up to people and just insult them, or say something completely inane while referencing pop culture, or quiz them about fairly common knowledge so they could make fools out of themselves in front of the camera. As a PA, I was the one who had to run up to the victims and get all their information and signatures, including SS#s, photo IDs, addresses, and other info for the release forms. None of these people ever wanted to be on camera in the first place, especially after being insulted or humiliated. I was yelled at, spit on, hated by these poor people who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time; all while a producer screamed into a walkie-talkie hooked to my ear that we NEED this person’s permission, and to make sure they don’t get away.
It was as if my job was to ruin their day. It sucked.”
Scoop of Suckage
“Maybe selling ice cream in Niagara Falls.. sounds fun right? Except when you’re so close to the falls the mist destroys the calculator, people from different places trying to haggle me for Hagan-Das, creepy older men trying to lure me to hotel rooms when I was 15, hardly any bathroom (or any) breaks, oh and my umbrella came loose from the cart and almost impaled someone. Oh, and I got electrocuted once (that was kind of fun). It was even worse than handing out coupons under the table for below minimum wage because at least it was simpler and I could enjoy dancing outside.”
Where Was this Hotel Located?
“I was a hotel housekeeper, and believe me, it cannot get much worse than that. We had high school sports teams with super lenient coaches who thought trashing rooms was some kind of competition, leaving us a week’s worth of crap to clean up. Then the coaches had the audacity to complain. Petty f–king guests who didn’t realize we were people with lives and expected us to be on-hand 24/7 to do their stayovers at their beck and call, despite the huge f–king sign at the front desk saying we did them at eleven. They complained, too, or would literally wait until we clocked out and were almost out the door to tell us we were ~allowed~ to make their bed.
The long-term guests who decided they worked there. The back-alley abortion I had to clean up out of the bathroom. People stealing tips. People overreacting to dumb crap (‘Ma’am, I’m sorry I implied your cat was fat. Sir, that is not a bag of urine you found. That’s boxed wine.’). People destroying stuff out of spite because they broke the rules and got caught. Twenty-something college students informing me that if they didn’t turn their room inside out, I wouldn’t have a job (which is f–king stupid; I’d not only still have a f–king job, I’d also not be getting chewed out over the overtime I can’t avoid spending three hours cleaning up after your dumb a–).
Add to that a creeper manager who tried to get in the pants of every female who worked for him, the drama surrounding the workforce, the meth-addict whine machine I was forced to work with, the backstabbing and rumor mill, and just the fact that I have medical issues that made keeping up with the time limits difficult, and it was the most miserable f–king job. Especially when the squeaky little I-wish-I-was-management girl kept barking at me to move faster, do better, when I still don’t know what the f–k she did aside from brag about her social life and show us videos of dumb country stuff on her shiny new iPhone that she could somehow afford on her superior wages.”
LOL That Ending
“It was the worst and also the shortest job of my life. It was on a line at a scalloping factory. I was sixteen.
To get this fantastic position, I stood outside the scalloping factory at 6 am. The Man came around at 6:30ish for a 7 am start and pointed to about 10 of us. We all marched inside, then we were lined up along a conveyor belt and told to pick off the Bad Scallops as they went past us.
I had never actually seen a scallop before, so I really wasn’t sure what the difference between a Bad Scallop and a Good Scallop was and so, I asked. The Man told me to ask the woman next to me. I did. Unfortunately, the woman next to me didn’t speak English. I turned to the woman on the other side of me. She didn’t speak English either.
A disgusting looking belt began its 10 hour long journey, round and round, carrying scallops through the production line before plopping them into cans at the end.
Did I mention that I hate seafood? Did I mention that the smell was utterly rank?
There were four of us in the Picking Off The Bad Scallops section and I observed what the others were doing in order to better understand what a Bad Scallop might look like. Please, don’t ask me because I don’t remember – I’ve blotted the details out of my mind.
The sound tore at my ear drums, the scallops shells cut through my rubber gloves, the smell kept my tummy in a state of constant alert, as if it were saying, ‘Now? Did you want me to hurl now?’ But well, I’m smart. After a short while, I figured it all out and I was picking those Bad Scallops off that belt like I was born to it.
Also, I am a compulsive singer- can’t help myself. I sang really really loud, because I couldn’t hear myself over the machinery. I don’t remember what I was singing but it was very probably _I Wanna Rock and Roll All Night (and party every day) by Kiss.
Nobody seemed to care, they were all off in whatever place it was that allowed them to endure the scallop line. So, I really got into it. It helped a lot to be able to sing really loud knowing nobody could hear me. It made it almost bearable. Until the machinery stopped and everyone stared at me like I was a total nut. I froze like a sea-wombat caught in the navigation lights of a scalloping boat.
I thought I knew what humiliation tasted like. I thought being the new kid at half a dozen separate schools had shown me the sharp edge of social disapproval. That was child’s play. Those scalloping women were not amused, not even slightly, by my anti-social facsimile of joy.
I looked around at those bleak angry faces and was overwhelmed by a visceral experience that can best be expressed by these words: GET ME OUT OF HERE NOW OR I WILL DIE.
I made my way to the toilet and sat down on the closed lid. What was I going to do? I couldn’t stay there the rest of the day. I just couldn’t. I couldn’t tell the boss that I couldn’t stay there for the rest of the day because I was about a month out of school and I thought the rules were the same. That is, that if I went to him and said, ‘Hey, I’ve changed my mind about this job and I’m going home,’ he would behave like a teacher and say, ‘Oh, no, you’re not. You will finish this day and then when it’s done, you’ll go to the office and write fifty times I must not sing on the production line’.
Anyhow, my traumatically embarrassed sixteen year old brain came up with the only sensible solution – I stood on the cistern and pushed open the high toilet window. Being young and agile, I slithered out like a snake and ran across the back yard of the factory and out the back gate. This took me into a strange, urban no-man’s-land of warehouses and 6 foot wire fences.
I kept running. I don’t know why. I guess I thought they could do something to make me go back. Maybe they would send the dogs after me. Maybe The Boss would call up The Boys in their mirrored aviator sunnies and they would give chase Mad max-style, in ancient Landrovers with roof mounted hunting rifles.
Yeah. I was a weird kid. Some would say that the only thing that’s changed is that if it happened today, I wouldn’t have a hope of getting out that window”
This Job Made Him Want to Shoot People
“The worst job I ever had was working for a convenience store chain in the San Jose area while in college. The chain was called ‘Stop ‘n’ Go,’ and it’s now out of business.
The store was open from 7:00 AM to 2:00 AM, and there were only three staff members, so the shifts were very long and there was little relief if someone needed time off. Clerks always worked alone, and were expected to do all the side work, such as mopping floors and stocking shelves as well as work the cash register.
Beer, wine, and cigarettes, all of which were restricted for sale to minors), were the most popular theft items. In the poorer areas, people would just come in, take what they wanted, and run. The rich kids would come in and announce, ‘I’m stealing this beer! Gonna stop me, motherf–ker?’
A few would try to buy the forbidden items, and would have ‘forgotten’ their identification, or would hand over a badly altered driver’s license (one just had the year of birth scratched out with an earlier year written alongside). If I refused to sell them the beer, they would say something like, ‘I’m just going to stand here until you sell it to me.’ If I took the package and put it behind the counter, they would go and get another out of the cooler. One pulled the bottles of beer out of the carton and threw them at me, one by one, the bottles breaking against the wall or on the floor.
Younger customers, middle school and younger high schoolers, would cause as much damage as possible. One pair of 12-13 year-old girls would pick up every ice cream novelty (Popsicles, ice cream sandwiches, ice cream bars, etc.) and throw them back down into the freezer violently, trying to break them and render them unsellable.
Calling the police wasn’t much of an option unless there was a flat-out emergency. The only phone one could place calls from was a pay phone located in the back of the store. Management thoughtfully taped a dime under the counter so we would be able to make a call if we were robbed and all the cash and coins were taken.
I got shot at twice while working in these stores. One was a robber who put one round into the back wall as he was leaving to discourage me from chasing him (it worked quite well). The other was a nut case who had come in drunk to ask for directions to some place I had never heard of. When I told him I didn’t know where the place was, he said, ‘I got a gun in my car for you.’
This experience was part of my motivation to be a cop. As a cop, at least I could shoot back.
I don’t think I have ever worked anywhere where I felt less valued as an employee. “
I’m Glad He Got Out!
“Telemarketer- I got laid off like a lot of people in late 2008, it was the only job I could get was selling magazine subscriptions. I was awful. I hated calling and bothering people. Some were very nice and would say no thank you, and some would go out of their way to make you feel like garbage. Not only are you yelled at by people you are forced to call, but also by your angry room supervisor.
There are 100 of you forced into a small room with a tiny desks, one guy yelling behind you to make sales goals and you get a maybe 20 minute break on an 8 hour shift. If you didn’t make your goal, you would get a ‘meeting’ and basically told to do whatever you can to get people to sign up and beat down verbally until you want to cry. I lasted maybe 2 weeks, enough to get a small paycheck so I could keep bills paid for a month and get some groceries. The day I quit I had one fellow tell me on the phone, ‘You’re probably in the same situation I am, I’m sorry. We will both find better jobs one day.’ And a week later, I was able to get a decent job at a clothing store.”
She Got Them Both Fired!
“My worst job ever was a job I got to pay bills for the summer in between my unpaid internship and my first year teaching. It was a three month gap and I really just needed a pay check and a non mentally draining job. What I got was f–king insanity.
It was a phone-a-thon place that advertised 10 bucks an hour (a decent amount for unskilled labor in my area) on craigslist and was 2 miles from my house. We called local businesses to sell ads. I honestly think it was a scam, in retrospect.
When I showed up for my interview, there was only one girl Cayla (yes spelled with a ‘c’) working there and she was slightly off and seemed terrified. The boss never showed up. So eventually (half an hour post interview) I got the girl to call him. He said she could interview me. She had worked there two weeks and revealed she was the only employee because everyone else (including the manager who lived with the boss, but had no clear relationship and said he was ‘from the streets’– I know this because he would randomly come hang out there for NO REASON) got fired for smoking pot at work.
I had a random block phone, a desk with a sign that said ‘B—h Please’ left by some occupant, and a script to just randomly recite down the phone book. It was miserable. Every once in a while the boss would call in and pretend to be someone I had already talked to prior. Like Undercover Boss but without the heartwarming ending. He would accuse me of being off script and rant. To be fair, I had spilled a Mountain Dew on the script at some point and we had no printers or computers so he wasn’t entirely wrong.
The only upside was my coworker who similarly hated the job and was always scheming to get us (yes, both of us) new jobs. I tried to help her with her resume but after she revealed she was the mastermind of an armed robbery so could only work craigslist jobs, it became an uphill battle. Three weeks into the job she got us both fired for complaining our paychecks were 2 dollars short and asking hard questions like, ‘How come you never got our social security numbers? Why do we have 6 different company names? Where is my two dollars?’ When Cayla got off the phone she was bawling and saying, ‘I got you fired! We’re both unemployed!’
And that was the end of that job.”
What’s the Job?
“Let me preface this with a warning: If you ever see an advertisement for ‘no experience necessary’ work that lists a pay rate without any details regarding the job, that means that the job is so bad that nobody would apply for it if they knew what it was. They also know that the kind of person who is responding to an ad with no idea what the job is will probably be pretty desperate.
Which is precisely where I was about 13 or 14 years ago. I’d lost my job for being an incompetent and immature 20-year-old idiot, and was facing the prospect of an eviction. So, when I saw a job that promised ‘400 dollars a week! Guaranteed!’, requiring no experience, I jumped on board as fast as I could.
I called the number and they immediately, before having any information other than my name, said they wanted to schedule an interview. They asked if I could be out the next evening, and I said ‘Sure!’
If the ad itself was Clue #1 that I should have ran away screaming, the ‘Come right in now!’ without any kind of screening should have been #2.
Either way, I bought it and went. The next evening, I put on my shirt and tie and went to the location. An attractive-but-still-trashy receptionist greeted me and took me back to the room in which the interview would take place. There were about 20 other people in there, also there for an interview.
Well, at this point I should have gotten out my crayon and little green notebook because I was staring at another clue. Sh-t, there may as well have been a big blue pawprint on the door to the conference room.
Interview begins as a guy who embodies the word ‘Shady’ comes in and introduces himself as Chad. I can’t make this sh-t up. Chad is wearing an ill-fitting suit and a gaudy ring on his pinky finger. He takes a moment to show off his diamond-encrusted little-flashy and tells us that we’re the smartest people in the world for showing up there that night, because in a few short weeks we can all be wearing ‘nice’ suits and horribly ugly jewelry. Well, he didn’t describe it as ‘ugly’.
He starts talking about making money. Says that he, too, was desperate one day when he came in and was in our shoes. Now, he’s the co-manager of this branch and is making money hand-over-fist. He talks about how nice it is to be independently wealthy. But there’s something wrong here…everything he is saying? He sounds like he is trying to convince himself that it’s all true. In retrospect, it’s another clue! By now I should be ready to sit right down in my thinking chair and think. Think. THINK.
But, I’m an idiot. So I listen and start feeling like I may have made…not a bad decision…no, the BEST DECISION EVER.
I’m going to be a go-zillionaire b—hes!
All I have to do is…wait….what the hell is the job? Why hasn’t this dude mentioned it yet? Seems like an important detail…
Funny thing though…by the end of the ‘interview’ (in which I answered precisely zero questions), I still had no idea wtf was going on. But Chachi pulls me aside as everyone is leaving and thanks me for dressing up. I was dressed for an interview…most everyone else was dressed for a ride on the subway. I asked the King Doorknob what the job actually was, and he said, ‘Don’t worry about that…the work doesn’t matter, what matters is that you’ll finally be able to make money on your terms!’
Well, see, at that age I was dumber than a box of frogs. So I left rather excited, hoping I’d get called in for a personal interview.
I did get a call back, not for the interview though. No, that call was a f–king job offer! Oh hell yes! No more financial woes! Imma be rich!
I show up the following Monday for day one…still not sure what I’d actually be doing. First impressions, though? Well, my first thoughts were that this was not a typical job. Everyone was having fun, there was loud music blaring and cheering and energy and beach balls and more cheering and more loud music and people acting like madmen…it was wild. In retrospect, it was a cult.
It would take me another hour until I figured out the true nature of the cult I’d joined.
See, I was at that moment…a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman.
Not just any vacuum, though. No, I was to sell Kirby vacuums. These are vacuums that have the same price-point as a used car. They are obnoxiously expensive, such that my commission on a single vacuum would be more than I would ever actually spend on a vacuum.
For the next two weeks, I hopped into a beat-up van early in the morning and drove to low-income neighborhoods to effect high-pressure sales techniques upon a population of people who had the least amount of usage for two-thousand-dollar rug sweeper.
Why low income, you ask?
Oh, that’s easy. Kirby finances their vacuums. Not only that, they know that the kind of person who would buy one without financing it is also the kind of person who would never buy a thing off of a door-to-door salesman hitting them with some of the most obnoxious sales techniques imaginable.
My job was pretty simple: Go in, show them how the machine works by using a special attachment that would take dirt from the floor and put it on a white paper disc. Keep filling discs up with dirt until they barf or sign on the dotted line.
If I don’t get a sale, my ‘manager’ comes by an hour after I’ve started annoying the person and he turns up the heat all the way to 11, refusing to take ‘no’ for an answer. This is usually where the person either signs, or Jazzy Jeff’s our butts right out the front door.
If they sign, yay! Commission! In two weeks, though, I managed to get precisely zero signatures.
At least I made 800 dollars, right?
Not so fast! See, when I agreed to this job, I agreed that my 400 was for 4 complete ‘shows’ a day, five days a week. What’s a complete show? I never found out. What I did find out is that the criteria is set up such that it’s pretty easy to say ‘Nah, you failed to complete the show’. If they kick you out? Fail. Don’t let you shampoo the carpet? Fail. You didn’t get enough dirt-discs? Fail.
And who grades you? The ‘manager’, whose commission is dependent upon yours. Not only does he make money when you do…he loses money if you complete a show but fail to close. So he has a very strong financial incentive to make sure that you never complete a single show.
So I made not a single dollar.
Moral of the story? Don’t take a f–king job if you don’t know what the f–k it is. And if you find out it’s selling vacuum cleaners…run like hell.”
Wonder How Many Glue Sticks He Used?
Shutterstock/SpeedKingz
“I worked for a major Cola ‘superpower’ of the world (not Coca-cola) as a machine operator. Now in my job description I was told that I would learn how to operate all these cool machines, and I thought to myself, hell this is going to be a really simple mindbogglingly tedious job where I get to play with giant machines. Awesome, I love learning how things work, and I was actually pretty excited that I was getting this position.
No, I never once was trained how to use any of these machines, they apparently wanted another janitor to help sweep during the nights, but janitors were on a higher pay scale than machine operators, but hell, I was so desperate to work I would of done just about anything for a paycheck. So I swept in a factory for close to 12 hours every day, here’s the great part though, this is one of the factories that makes the soda bottles, and they move the bottles with small conveyor belts and wind….. lots of wind… It takes a good 2-3 hours to sweep a good majority of the factory, and by the time you get back to the start, there is more dirt there than what you just swept up. This led up to my supervisor yelling at me almost constantly, which I really didn’t mind, but you can only take so much abuse for a close to minimum wage job.
The last day I worked there was much different than all the other days I worked. The labeling machine was on the fritz, and didn’t apply any glue on the labels for the 2 liter soda bottles, so my supervisor comes up to me and tells me she has a new job for me, my face lights up with joy, I was so pumped to not sweep for 12 hours, she brings me over to where all the pallets were. There before me was 20 full pallets of the already filled soda bottles, and she hands me a 24 pack of glue sticks. So I would pick up a crate, peel off the label which was just barley on there and glue it back on.
I forget how many bottles there were exactly but it felt like a never ending amount, so I had to start lifting these 25 lbs crates of 2 soda to relabel them, I’ve never felt so ridiculous in my entire life, I ended up doing this for 12 hours straight, there was no clock so I had no idea when to take my lunch break, and no one ever checked on me. (The next shift actually came by and told me that my shift was over.) That day I had to of relabeled what felt like 4,000 soda bottles.
I drove home that night and I decided I wasn’t going to do this s–t anymore. My back ended up getting really f–ked up from lifting boxes all day with no brace (I thought I was just really sore, but it ended up not going away without medical treatment) I called work and told them wasn’t going to be working with them anymore. I never received my final two paychecks.
Now I work at a maximum security prison. I’m much happier.”
Complete Silence and a #2 Pencil
“I graded standardized test for Pearsons (John Oliver recently discussed them). We worked in an old Hobby Lobby, it was just rows and rows of tables with cheap laptops.
They expected complete silence all day, no talking to the person next to you, no headphones, nothing. You had to ask to use the restroom.
Luckily I only worked there for about 3 weeks before finding another job. I spent the last two hours of my last day giving every kid a perfect score on their essays.
ALSO – the essay that year was on the importance of sleep. Reading terrible 8th grade essays about sleep in the most boring environment ever really makes you tired. “
Bad Burger- Home of the Worst Job Ever
“I worked in a burger restaurant in a small amusement park. I was one of only three decent employees, and without me they would’ve had some troubles. So when I almost quit, they gave me a small raise and promoted me to management. Sounds good, right? No. It was awful. Largely because management in the park was just horrendous.
No managers wanted to open and none of them wanted to close. So I often got split shifts so I could open and close. The amusement park was in the middle of nowhere, and I had no car. So I was stuck there between my shifts, often spending 16 hours at the park for 8 hours of pay.
Employee morale was awful. One reason: many of the managers would spend 80% of their day doing absolutely nothing in the employee rest area. An employee would go on their break, see their managers there relaxing, go back to work while their managers were still hanging out, and come back for the next break 3 hours later and still see the managers doing nothing. Meanwhile, employees were reprimanded if they were one minute late getting back from break (despite the fact that, while doing their 5 minute walk back to work, they were expected to help any guests who might need help even though their walk back was considered part of their break). For the brief time managers did ‘work; everyday, they would come around and yell at any employee who wasn’t working with great energy/efficiency and would continuously repeat, ‘If there is time to lean, there is time to clean’ even on the slowest days when the place was spick and span.
I didn’t just get chewed out by managers and employees. One of the main roles of management was to interact with guests. When a guest was happy, the senior managers were all about talking to them and accepting the compliments. When they could tell a guest was looking for a manager because the guest was upset, I got sent out.
I was also expected to chew out people, not just get chewed out. The senior managers absolutely loved having the nice conversations with employees. If an employee got a bonus, award, raise, or anything good they were all over talking to the employee. But if an employee had to be reprimanded or fired, that was my job. This sucked because many of these people were friends getting reprimanded for stupid things (like being one minute late for their shift because they went out of their way to help a guest on their walk to work).
They had this awesome idea that managers shouldn’t ask employees to do anything managers weren’t willing to do, so managers should do the worst jobs in the park. This is probably a good idea in theory. In practice, it meant that I, as the lowest manager, got all the worst jobs in the park. Someone pukes anywhere in the park? I get radioed. If lady drops her keys in the disgusting trout pond and someone needs to get in and find them? I get radioed. Someone needs to wear the hot mascot costume in the parking lot (ie: surrounded by steel and concrete) on the hottest day of the year? I get scheduled.
After two months of being a manager, I finally got fired because meat was improperly stored in the fridge- a box of meat was above a box of vegetables This is bad, because meat juice might leak onto the veggies which are served raw. A food inspector found this on a random inspection. However, this inspection happened on a Tuesday about 5 minutes into my shift. I hadn’t worked Monday.”
Guilt
“I once worked as a door to door vacuum salesman. We’d get in the door with a promise of a reward, similar to how those time share deals work. Anyway, I went through the two week training, did a couple of ride-alongs with established sales guys and was then cut loose with a handful of appointments. Most people just eyerolled along with the stupid sales pitch, collected their voucher and sent me on my way. That’d be fine by me, except we were paid completely on commission. No sales, no paycheck. So about a week in, I’m getting desperate. I need a sale. So I get a call to this Hispanic family. As I’m going through the pitch, the grandma brings their teenage daughter home with her baby. I realize that there are four generations of people living in this little two bedroom house.
Anyway, I go through the whole hour long spiel, get to the bit where you suck the dead skin out of the mattress onto a black filter and explain to them what bed-bugs are and eat, the whole deal. One look at Mom’s eyes and I know I’ve got ’em.
So I hand the deal over to the ‘closer’ on the phone. Twenty minutes later I have a signed purchase contract and had cut the plug off their perfectly working Hoover.
About a week later, when I asked why my commission was taking so long to process, they informed me that this family had been rejected by five different credit companies before they found a willing lender. I’d have felt less guilt if I’d just nicked $250 from their dresser and bolted. I quit the next day.”
This Makes My Inner Child Hurt
“I would say working seasonal at Toys R Us. I thought it would be a chill kind sort of cool job working in a toy store. I was so wrong.
The managers treated us all like s–t. They knew that none of us were gonna be kept so they worked us to the bone and didn’t even remember our names. Basically had to do hours of either monotonously ‘cleaning’ the aisles only to have idiot customers f–k up all your hard work. Then you’d be yelled at by the bosses for not keeping your area clean. They’d make you restock even though you didn’t know where anything was and would be struggling to find where to put it. Then they’d be angry you were going slow.
Then came the customers, they would either expect you to know everything about every toy and where everything is. And if you didn’t know since we weren’t even trained we were just thrown into it, they’d be pissed and treat us like garbage. You’d have to take s–t from them with a smile on your face. Then imagine all this times 10 on Black Friday. You weren’t allowed to talk to any coworkers even though there wasn’t anything else to do at times or else you’d get yelled at. So basically you’d have to find something to pretend to do at all times.
My last straw in all this was that they scheduled me from 7:30 pm to 2:00 am on Christmas Eve to Christmas. After the way they treated us all and didn’t even know our names. I said f–k it and no called no showed. Best decision I ever made. I don’t know why I didn’t quit earlier even though I knew I’d be fired.. one of the dumbest choices I ever made not to just leave and look for something else.”
Push or Pull
“Working for a polling firm was my worst job. It was mostly political polls, and though there were signs up that said ‘WE DON’T DO PUSH POLLS’ pretty much all we did was push polls.
Most of our clientele were the GOP, and as such we had to say very untrue and very negative things about their opponents, and very untrue and very positive things about them. I’m fairly sure that our office single handedly convinced half of the east coast that unions are evil and killing america.
Beyond the horrible (and poorly written) surveys, there were the quotas. It was set up so that if we stayed above x# of surveys completed per hour, we would get paid over minimum wage. The more people we got responses from, the more we’d get – but the supervisors knew better than to let that happen. If you had a really high rate going for that pay period, invariably on the last day of the pay period, a supervisor would walk over to you and tell you that you were being put on a ‘special project’ – which meant they were moving you to a survey that is doing so poorly it will put your rate into the negative zone so they don’t have to pay you anything over minimum wage.
Above and beyond the type of work we were doing – was the office. It was a SLUM. The roof leaked, the walls were molding, there were mice and rats that lived in the cubicle walls. The computers were so old that they literally ran on MSDOS – all of our surveys ran on a text-based application. The keyboards were dirty and sticky and most of the office was usually ill. I’d been electrocuted a couple times from plugging a monitor back in when it would fall out of the crappy outlets.
And don’t get me started on the employees – supervisors and their favorite employees would do drug deals on the office floor. People would get to work as a couple and give each other hand jobs at their desks. Crazy old people selling magic miracle water would harass female employees, and someone took a s–t in the break room on the floor.
The only good thing about it was that the work day didn’t start until 2pm, and every now and then the whole office would get free pizza.”
Inside that Mask, Know He’s Frowning
“I worked at the worst place on Earth. I was 14 about to turn 15. A hurricane had hit and my friend and I had decided to go exploring the aftermath, we were trying to go see a movie and ended up walking into this new location that was just opened. We joked about getting applications and we ended up leaving with 2 part time jobs. They were desperate.
We emailed in our ‘resumes’ (because we were 14 and didn’t have anything we put down all of our school achievements and I put down my certifications etc). We both started working but quickly realized what a mistake it was- horrible company, crappy pay and boss. The place was dirty, the food was horrible. The rat costume was old and breaking (yes we both had to be chuck e). We decided to stick it out and save the money we made. I quickly quit once I had saved up enough for a car and found a better part time for being in high school. I don’t recommend any one go there they literally mess with the food, the tunnels are dirty and rarely cleaned. Worst job ever!”