We've all had shit, dead end jobs that you do because its simple and you could have done it forever, but real life creeps in...
Phish Food
Delivering Cars
Its was great fun. I worked for Audi VW, I had just passed my driving test the day before and was driving a Porsche 911. I got to drive lovely cars,like Audi Quattro sports and listen to music really loud.
Downside was, the pay was crap, and I wanted a bit more from life.
posted
i agree with vomitboy. that is not a shit job, unless your only criteria is pay.
my worse job was teh charity fundraising thing. just cuz i dont like making old grannies cry. young pretty women, now that's a different story.
i just quit my current job, about two hours ago. it's only part-time but pays pretty well. i wander round hospitals persuading people to sign up to the foundation trust. royal brompton (specialist heart and lung hospital, very excellent) was lovely to work at, but now i have to do chelsea & westminster (general hospital with flashy building but no soul) and the people there are suck so bye bye stupid job.
what next for me? i relaly don't like this whole work thing. why won't society just give me money?
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posted
Good Fairy is currently trapped in a prison of career mediocrity, flying around the world in a private jet, performing to crowds of adoring fans and receiving fellatio from beautiful young things.
My best shit job was working as a pizza delivery boy. I did it for one night only. I bought an eighth of 'hash' and Kim kept me company during my shift. He sat in my little 1275GT mini, rolling joints, while I collected the pizzas from Perfect Pizza and delivered them to hungry customers. I earned 15 pounds for a night's work. It would have been a fantastic job because 95 percent of it involved sitting in my car smoking dope – which was pretty much all we did anyway. Unfortunately, by the end of night, we'd smoked the entire eighth. I earned 15 pounds for my trouble – precisely what the dope cost me. All I had to show for my efforts was one free pizza – which went down a treat at the end of the night – and a few tips.
I concluded that work was too much like hard work and never went back.
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posted
I had a 'shit job' like that. I worked in the despatch office of an ad agency, CDP. One of my responsibilities was maintaining the cars in the executive car park. You know, petrol, new tyres, MOTs... I was just 18, I regularly drove a Lotus Eclat, an E-type Jaguar, a couple of Bristols (Phwoooar), a bunch of Porsches and BMWs. I also regularly delivered cases of Becks, I'd deliver them from the stroreroom to my flat. I had to work with a right shower of arseholes, though.
quote:Originally posted by Good Fairy: I worked for Audi VW
VAG
quote:Originally posted by Good Fairy: So what was yours?
I worked at Deep Pan Pizza in Newbury. Employees were allowed to make themselves a pizza for their break. I got told off for adding three inches of toppings (worth over £30 according to the boss) to one of mine. It took three passes through the conveyor grill to get hot in the middle, but it tasted fucking excellent.
We used the same knife for meat and vegetarian pizzas, to save washing up. The customer whose Margarita had a silver of pepperoni wedged between the slices got quite vocal about it.
One afternoon we were told that the regional manager would be visiting the following Sunday. He was important and we were asked to be on our best behaviour. I was at a party the night before and totally forgot. I turned up an hour late and still drunk, having watched the sunrise to a soundtrack of Simon and Garfunkel with a lovely, ginger, West country girl called Anna. The regional manager wasn't impressed as I struggled to keep my eyes open during his talk on punctuality. Eventually I fell asleep and was rudely awoken when he smashed two metal pizza dishes together a couple of inches from my ear. I wasn't sacked, but left of my own accord a few weeks later after witnessing one too many Deep Pan Pizza Stag Nights...
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posted
I had a couple of shitty jobs when I was at college. They might have been awful but they kept me in beer money for a little while.
1. I worked the evening shift at a factory that made shower and bath fittings. Some evenings I was assigned the task of packing and boxing sets of showers or taps etc. The different components had to be packed in a particular way, otherwise you couldn't get the fuckers in there. No instructions on the order of packing were given so you pretty much worked it out as you went along. I usually went for the 'cramming it all in until the box is about to burst and taping over the bulges' approach. I got through a lot of sellotape and usually managed to leave flecks of black or purple nail varnish behind. My friend's approach was to simply ermove random components and throw them onto the floor until you got to the point where the box closed nicely. Other evenings, I would be assigned the role of 'tap tester'. Man, that was the worst job. Basically, you had to put on a giant, yellow waterproof that had already been worn throughout the day by an obese middle aged man with horrendoud body odour. Then, you stood in front of a water pipe on the wall, attached a tap to it, turned the stopcock on and waited to see if you got soaked in cold water.
2. I also had a casual job in Burtons. I didn't fit in very well with the other staff as I was a goth at the time. Lol, a goth working in Burtons - imagine that! I still don't know how I got that job. I had to stand around all day, making sure that my section was stocked up with suits that looked as though they had been made out of cheap, nylon carpet tiles. Every now and then, one of my goth mates would turn up and stand about 6 feet away from, shouting things like "Madam! I demand that you take my inside leg measurement and allure me with an array of your finest carpet suits! I expect to be enchanted!" After a couple of weeks, they let me go with the excuse that the regional manager was due to visit the store and I just "couldn't be seen."
3. I had a cold calling job for about two days. I was given a section of the phone book and told to ring everyone in it. If anyone answered, I had to ask them if they lived in a council house and if so, did they know that they had a right to buy and would they like one of our advisors to pop round to advise them on mortgages? blah blah blah. One elderly, upper class woman got the right hump when I asked her if she lived in a council house - that was the only highlight of my two days.
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H1ppychick
We all prisoners, chickee-baby. We all locked in.
posted
i love you sindy. my stomach hurts.
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posted
How about the most shittest job you ever had? Period? Sorry I need to vent and apart from writing a very damaging email which will lose me my job, TMO is my only outlet - please allow me this courtesy for some therapy, and I apologise for wasting any bandwidth or your time but I need this.
Have you ever worked for a company you were actually embarrased to admit you worked for? I do. I gave up admitting to people some months ago who I work for as their customer service and general hatred towards them has forums of people berating and complaining against them. No I don't work for a company involved in animal testing or anything like that, I work simply for an internet provider and cable television company.
They are the biggest cable operator in Europe, but rather than pride themselves on providing a level of service, their drive seems to be about monopolisation, and once they have all the subscribers, they could not give a flying fuck about the customer - as long as the money keeps rolling in that's all that matters. Hell even Kiki rang up one time about a problem with the TV and the CS rep pretended to be an answerphone - now that's service!
Now me, I like to take a pride in what I do - I might only be a little cog in a very big machine but I care about it when what is for most people their prime source of home entertainment is provided by the company I work for. Yet here I sit at 1.53am, roped into doing some sort of healthcheck and half the systems are down. But the great thing is no one has told me how to fix them. The other great thing is I have received no training in the systems, I was told to write the documents myself about how to do them, and yet I am here, pulling my hair out because nothing works and I have no idea what I am supposed to do about it - let me explain....
My daily role consists of if you like, putting tape over the cracks in the software - I am given the tape, I am told where to stick it and that's all I do - stick the tapes over the cracks. If we use the anallogy of a cracked building say, of course they could make the building from a good enough material not to crack, or perhaps ensure that when it was built it would not crack, but hey that would take aforethought! But now I am suddenly instructed to check the foundation of the building with the cracks, ignore them but make sure the elevators work, the stairs are clean and the entrance door is operational. But I am not told where the door is, or given the tools to check the lifts - hell if they are malfunctioning I am not even told how to work them as a user, let alone be the prime mechanic.I have no instruction manual, no keys - no nothing, just as long as the tenants pay the rent and the landlords have their wallets full, that is all that matters, and if the lifts don't work in the morning, I'm the expendable one. Its not through want of trying, but everything is done as an afterthought - the first time they put my team on call, they put me on for the morning healthchecks to check systems for several countries without any instruction whatsoever - I had to go ask around, with no base knowledge whatsoever and make it up as I went along. After a few months they pulled me off on call as I was not up to speed - not my fault I may add as I still had no grade one base knowledge of what I was working with, and now they ask me to do it again, and when it all goes tits up who do I have to call at 2am? No one....
I work for a company that has no documentation yet swears to adhere to Sarbonnes Oxley accountability (look it up), and the great thing is when I try and write some, I pass it around for review and no one reads it. At all. It just seems to be a policy of "winging it all the way" - fuck it as long as the cash comes in that is all that matters. And it will therefore be no surprise that the company who are in bed with the bosses and supplying all the software are the same company that brought down Enron, just rebranded and with a smiling Tiger Woods taking x million dollars a year for wearing a hat with their name on.
Those that know me on here no I am not thick - in fact when it comes to what I do for a living I can call on some pretty high-brow ex-employers - ABN AMRO bank, Cornhill Insurance, Nike, Coca Cola, The European Space Agency, Nat West Bank and many more - yet my employers, a company I joined to join to learn some new technology and gain some new knowledge, but how can you do that at a company that does not send you on adequate training courses (though it promises to) and has zero reference point apart from expecting you to go around asking everybody (who couldn't care less anyway) and then making documentation that is discarded for the corporate way - "just suck it and see!" - fantastic.
Can you imagine your first day as a trainee airline pilot, and instead of the introductions and induction courses prior to flight training be told "Oh Fred's off sick - can you take this 737 to Copenhagen - I'm sure you can figure it out as you go along" - that is exactly how I feel about where I work - chancers, the lot of them. A joke, literally a fucking joke.
So now I am waiting for a mate to try and help me - poor sod, he has to be up at 6.15 to check the same things again - not like anyone between 1 and 6 is on the systems, or anything happens, but because some VP (IE Shareholder) a year ago moaned about a process being down at some stupid hour, I have to check them at this time, as does my colleague in a couple of hours. I guarantee no one gives a flying fuck about these machines at this time of the morning as they are all safely tucked up in bed dreaming of their incoming dollars and their homesteads in Utah, and all the time laughing at us mortals who make it for them, and the poor souls who subscribe to the piss poor services they provide, paying their hard earned euros for shit.
Is it any wonder, that last month in IT alone, which employs maybe 150 people that 13 resigned last month, 2 of them being senior management and both of those being the only skilled managers in the company that I respected? One for another job, another simply out of protest - turning away an 80,000 euro a year job, being stuck unemployed in a foreign country rather than turn up for work? Got to say a lot doesn't it?
I'm still hoping and praying that this job in France comes off - I know I can do it, but I know more than anything I cannot continue doing what I am doing.
Could this be classed at TMO's first online resignation?
And finally, the one thing that saddens me most of all was I tried to sell the company to one of my best mates - I even got him an interview, and in their true style promised him a call-back for a second, yet never to call again. For that Darryn, I am really sorry mate - best to learn like this that get you in and find out like I did.
Sorry for the rant, but at this time of night only TMO was there - what would we do without it?
posted
That would be the helpdesk job I endured when I first become a contractor...
Although it was the best paid job I have ever had, I wouldn't go back there if they paid me double - and I am currently out of work.
I used to wake up with toothache by grinding my teeth all night. I used to watch at least one of my colleagues be walked off site on an almost weekly basis, largely for things they hadn't done. We called it the walk of shame.
They tried to get us to sign a contract promising that we'd never use the internet or phone for non work usage. We all refused, even on pain of termination.
The Support manager was boss by virtue by the fact that she'd been there the longest. She had no technical knowledge whatsoever and would berate the technical staff for making excuses when they had to explain that what she promised users wasn't feasible. She would stand over staff and tell them that any non-work conversation was `not appropriate'. She was known as `The Wicked Witch of the West Wing Annexe' by all and sundry and the only time you'd see her manager was when you were going to get a bollocking.
Staff would be told that procedure would be followed to the letter no matter what, without exception - and then bollock said staff when a user complained as a result of the procedure she had been put in place. And then command the staff to phone the user, apologise and get on with it.
You were supposed to ask permission to use the toilet.
I used to go into work with an overwhelming feeling that no matter what I did or said all day, I would get a bollocking for something.
I used to think I was paranoid about the place. Then, one day I got a call from an agency asking if I wanted to go back there as a contractor (I'd left because they'd laid all contractors off in a bid to recruit permanent staff).
When I refused point-blank and said it would be the last thing I ever did, she asked me what was so bad about the place - as she had just phoned one of my colleagues who was on the dole but preferred to stay there than work for that fecking place again.
On the positive side, the adversity of the place made me a few good friends and a feeling that no matter where I have worked since, things ain't that bad.
posted
I once, very briefly, had a job in the Amsterdam Arena, the Ajax football stadium. During the day it would mean cleaning the skyboxes and the stands. In the evening, if there was a match or a concert on, we'd just have to walk around and pick up rubbish. On my third day I was asked to work in the VIP area as a toilet cleaner. Nohting else, just clean the toilets all night long. Great. There were 6 of us and there were 10 toilets. So we mostly hid in the supply room and smoked. There was some sort of concert on that night with many different performers, all Dutch. Apparently one of them, some singer who was popular in the 70s or 80s, had a few too many that night, got into his car and crashed it in the parking garage, killing a parking attendant. The next day I go back there and, of course, lots of people who work there full time and knew this woman are understandably upset. Then some knobhead manager walks in and tells everyone in a very pissed off voice that we are not allowed to talk to anyone, not even each other, as there are reporters from various tabloids walking around. Then he leaves, without so much as a word of comfort or anything to these people who just lost a colleague. The next day I went to the temp agency and toldf them I didn't want to work at that place anymore.
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1 Working in a drugs factory. Sadly Tagamet, and the like, rather than cocaine or anything else more bracing. Task highlights included spending a week inspecting the printing on tablets; squirting three giant boxes-worth of acne cream from its tubes into a bucket; stuffing cotton wool into the tops of pill bottles as they went along the conveyor belt...
2 Selling encyclopaedias door to door, and living five to a three-berth caravan in the winter
3 Picking melons in the Northern Territories in Australia. It was 40 degrees, my arms blistered, my fingers got full of spines and I was sacked for being a girl.
4 Cooking for builders. I set the kitchen on fire, and got asked every night by the foreman if I wanted to go upstairs with him for a bit of extra money.
oh, I forgot...
5 Working in a bar so rough that the ashtrays were chained to the tables, which were bolted to the floor. People used to drink until they were sick at the bar. One woman would come in in her nightie and wee on the stool.
posted
best shit job was in a clothes shop, I was too miserable for the shop floor, and hated all that fiddling with clothes and asking people if they needed any help shit, so they put me in the stock room. I used to take orders for clothes from friends, and then put them on under my actual clothes.
Oh, and working in the Pie N Mash shop in tooting when I was about 11 was great, they paid £25 for one evening and a full day's work, cash in hand, and gave you as much pie n mash as you could eat. And when I was 11, i could eat a lot.
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H1ppychick
We all prisoners, chickee-baby. We all locked in.
posted
gosh herbs, you're completely rock hard, you are. I'm slightly scared of you now.
my best shit job was probably temping in the post room at BT when I was 17, my first university summer job. I got to sort mail into the appropriate departmental pigeonhole so the postboy could take it around on his cart, plus I got to whizz letters through the franking machine very very fast. I also got to rob stationery from the cupboard and chinwag with some very decent people all day, who clubbed together at the end of my temping stint to buy me a parker pen, because that's what you buy students, isn't it (the next summer job was on the checkouts at Asda wearing a nasty blue nylon button-front dress and they bought me exactly the same present when I left)
Also! doubleplusgood! I got to borrow my brother's car for the daily commute, even after having taken him for a test drive in my mum's car as a result of which he wrote extremely disparaging things about my driving ability in his diary (which i sneakily read) - but since he got to borrow my mum's (better) car he didn't really have much option. heh.
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posted
Much as I'm enjoying my new-found status as 'cool bitch', in the interests of truth I feel I should point out all those shit jobs were when I was a student, or travelling around Australia. All jobs since have been a good deal tamer, and I haven't set fire to any more workplaces.
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posted
my last shit job was a couple of years back, doing something 'transcoding', which was basically just using postcodes and fragmented addresses to find points on a map. I did so much mouse clicking that I got some minor RSI and a carpal tunnel type thing that still kicks in to this day. My colleagues in this kind of sweatshop room were semi-retarded teenagers, and the whole outfit was known as 'the oompa loompas' by head office in glamourous Hyde Park. Dark days.
But, like herbs, the really shite ones like fruit picking and call centre work only happened when I was at university, and of course there was the supermarket that I went to everyday between 16 and 18 years old. They didn't even have barcode scanners. But they did keep me in free cigarettes. Before then I was a paperboy, getting up at like five in the morning or something. Nearly got run over doing that because the sunday supplements were so heavy that they caused me to lose my balance on my bike, and then they pinned me to the middle of the road. A van driver nearly did the world a favour that morning.
[ 25.05.2006, 09:23: Message edited by: Dr. Benway ]
posted
One of the grimmest jobs I had, every holiday from the age of about 12 til 18, involved archiving for a law firm. They had this disgusting archive with no windows underneath a night club where the toilets leaked, the walls were crumbling, the air was full of dust and the stench of rotted paper and heavy with fungus. Because it was too appallng for any full time official employee to go down there and archive/ retrieve stuff, files built up for months at a time: basically until my holidays arrived and I had to spend days at a stretch in this pit, filing stuff away and digging out needed files. After 8 hours down there, my clothes and hair would reek, my lungs would ache an I would feel sick to my stomach from all the mould, shit, and rotting paper. Cuz, it was my dad's firm and they couldn't employ just like some regular kid to do the job for them because the conditions were kind of illegal. So I'd have to do it based on the assumption that I probably wouldn't sue my own father.
So you know. That was a fun way to spend six years. I did get quite protective of the place, and I became the only person who understood really how the weird system worked, the most obvious places to look for mis-filed files and stuff. Became almost proud of the place in the end, like some strange little dungeon creature.
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