jtr1962
Flashaholic
Have you ever had a job you really hated? The kind where you screamed at your alarm clock in the morning and dreaded going out the door? And hated everyone you worked with? Well, then share your experiences in this thread!
I'll relate my own personal worst job experience. I took a job taking inventory at stores in late 1987 after looking unsuccessfully for work for two years after college. Fact is my student loan was in default and I needed money no matter how I earned it. I looked through the classifieds and in the end this was the only job which would hire someone with basically no work experience. I only wish I knew what I was getting into....
The job involved traveling to various stores and counting their merchandise. The hours were terrible. I was never an early riser yet we usually had to be at the main office by 6AM. Since the buses didn't run regularly at that time (and I couldn't afford bus fare on what I was getting paid) this meant a three mile walk to work. After that you waited at the main office until they left for a job site. You didn't get paid until you actually arrived on site. You only got paid for your travel time to the site if it was over an hour, and then only at minimum wage. The regular hourly rate to start wasn't much better than minimum anyway ($5/hour if I recall). You got no overtime (they obviously cooked their books somehow). You usually worked seven days a week. During January, which was the peak season for inventory, you might put in 100 hour weeks with no days off.
The conditions at most of the stores were horrible. The shelves and stockrooms were filthy. The bathrooms were filthy. You often had to climb in precarious positions to count. Your hands were moving constantly punching numbers into the inventory computer. Since I was an accurate counter I got stuck doing the more expensive frozen foods in grocery stores. This meant frostbite in addition to sore fingers from punching in the data. After a few months of this I was well on my way to developing carpal tunnel syndrome.
It gets worse. If you drove the vans to the job sites you got paid extra for driving. You also got paid for mileage if you had a car and used it to travel to the sites. Since many of the employees didn't have driver's licenses this meant they really couldn't be choosy about who drove for them. In the end they were using many unlicensed drivers. I was asked to drive a few times even though I didn't have a license. I refused and was almost fired. As a result, most of the drivers were incompetent. I was involved in two accidents. In the first one the driver slid off an icy road and almost went off an embankment. One girl broke her leg. I was OK. In the second accident I was in a friend's car when we were rear-ended. My head hit the hydraulic rear hatch closer. I needed a couple of stiches and was out of work for a week. A lawsuit went nowhere because it didn't look good that I returned to work quickly but I needed the money.
Don't even get me started on the caliber of some of the employees. To show how desperate they were for drivers (and employees) the operator of the van was a recent parolee from a federal penitentiary. And I strongly suspect at least one of the other employees had actually killed someone in his spare time. To be sure, there were a lot of down on their luck people like me there who just needed the money, but also a fair mix of hoodlums, for lack of a better word, thrown in. I remember one guy who was particularly adept at intimidating coworkers. He of course got on my case. I got him off my case very quickly. In fact, he stopped bothering everyone after that. A couple of fellow employees asked me things like "What did you do, threaten his family or something?" Well, without getting specific on exactly what I did let's just say that having an Italian surname and knowing a couple of relatives on my mom's side "in the business" helped. :laughing:
After a year of this I finally found a much better job repairing taximeters. The inventory place offered me $6/hour if I stayed but I told them forget it. I did work there for evenings and weekends for the next month to make some extra money but by then I was starting to get burned out so I quit entirely. The taximeter repair job offered $7/hour to start, OT after 44 hours, ten paid holidays, and Sundays off. It seemed like paradise after the other job. It took me nearly two years before I finally got fed up with this job as well, but at least I was out of the inventory place.
I pity anyone who is stuck in a job like that. :mecry:
I'll relate my own personal worst job experience. I took a job taking inventory at stores in late 1987 after looking unsuccessfully for work for two years after college. Fact is my student loan was in default and I needed money no matter how I earned it. I looked through the classifieds and in the end this was the only job which would hire someone with basically no work experience. I only wish I knew what I was getting into....
The job involved traveling to various stores and counting their merchandise. The hours were terrible. I was never an early riser yet we usually had to be at the main office by 6AM. Since the buses didn't run regularly at that time (and I couldn't afford bus fare on what I was getting paid) this meant a three mile walk to work. After that you waited at the main office until they left for a job site. You didn't get paid until you actually arrived on site. You only got paid for your travel time to the site if it was over an hour, and then only at minimum wage. The regular hourly rate to start wasn't much better than minimum anyway ($5/hour if I recall). You got no overtime (they obviously cooked their books somehow). You usually worked seven days a week. During January, which was the peak season for inventory, you might put in 100 hour weeks with no days off.
The conditions at most of the stores were horrible. The shelves and stockrooms were filthy. The bathrooms were filthy. You often had to climb in precarious positions to count. Your hands were moving constantly punching numbers into the inventory computer. Since I was an accurate counter I got stuck doing the more expensive frozen foods in grocery stores. This meant frostbite in addition to sore fingers from punching in the data. After a few months of this I was well on my way to developing carpal tunnel syndrome.
It gets worse. If you drove the vans to the job sites you got paid extra for driving. You also got paid for mileage if you had a car and used it to travel to the sites. Since many of the employees didn't have driver's licenses this meant they really couldn't be choosy about who drove for them. In the end they were using many unlicensed drivers. I was asked to drive a few times even though I didn't have a license. I refused and was almost fired. As a result, most of the drivers were incompetent. I was involved in two accidents. In the first one the driver slid off an icy road and almost went off an embankment. One girl broke her leg. I was OK. In the second accident I was in a friend's car when we were rear-ended. My head hit the hydraulic rear hatch closer. I needed a couple of stiches and was out of work for a week. A lawsuit went nowhere because it didn't look good that I returned to work quickly but I needed the money.
Don't even get me started on the caliber of some of the employees. To show how desperate they were for drivers (and employees) the operator of the van was a recent parolee from a federal penitentiary. And I strongly suspect at least one of the other employees had actually killed someone in his spare time. To be sure, there were a lot of down on their luck people like me there who just needed the money, but also a fair mix of hoodlums, for lack of a better word, thrown in. I remember one guy who was particularly adept at intimidating coworkers. He of course got on my case. I got him off my case very quickly. In fact, he stopped bothering everyone after that. A couple of fellow employees asked me things like "What did you do, threaten his family or something?" Well, without getting specific on exactly what I did let's just say that having an Italian surname and knowing a couple of relatives on my mom's side "in the business" helped. :laughing:
After a year of this I finally found a much better job repairing taximeters. The inventory place offered me $6/hour if I stayed but I told them forget it. I did work there for evenings and weekends for the next month to make some extra money but by then I was starting to get burned out so I quit entirely. The taximeter repair job offered $7/hour to start, OT after 44 hours, ten paid holidays, and Sundays off. It seemed like paradise after the other job. It took me nearly two years before I finally got fed up with this job as well, but at least I was out of the inventory place.
I pity anyone who is stuck in a job like that. :mecry:
However, when I reported for work it became obvious that the reason they wanted someone with unix experience is that they were planning to move their stuff from perl and php to active server pages on windows.
oh well
)
