I can't believe it! I actually forgot to write in the blog (on my assigned day I mean). It's not that I was too busy, I mean, I was busy, but if I had actually remembered I would've done it. I guess I was so focused on the play and getting my costume done for next week that it slipped my mind.
Anywho - on to the topic. I think I have a bit of selective memory when it comes to my jobs. During, I'll complain about stuff, but when I look back it never seems as bad as when I was actually working there.
Like my job at Halloween Horror Nights - it was pretty fun, but to go to classes and then pull those late nights was a bit of hell. The actual job was pretty sweet - 45 minutes of work, 45 minute break, and our houses (there were two in the same area) were the best ones in the park. During training, they kept warning us about people lashing out and hitting us, but reassuring us we had an exit right behind where we would stand if such a thing happened - except me. I was in this trippy room with black and white checks, fog and a strobe light, and then I wore a mask and a black and white checked jumpsuit to blend in. The room twisted around, and while my coworker got to be out in the open, I was stuck in this corner around the bend in a little corner - with no exit. So, to give me something to ward off people (and bash around to scare them and make noise) they gave me an aluminum trash can lid (which really hurt my hands when I banged it around - I eventually had to tape up my hands to keep my knuckles from getting torn to shreds).
The way the room twisted, some people thought they had to get past me to get out of the room. Thankfully I only got kicked once by a woman who was totally freaked and trying to get out, but I didn't call her on it (we could get people kicked out of the park for that). Thankfully nothing much else really happened except I got hit on - no, not beaten, I mean the woman was trying to get me to kiss her. She kept coming up asking for "one little kiss", and I kept pushing her away, and after she still wouldn't leave me alone a few minutes later, I ripped off my mask and she said "Oh, you're a girl" and walked away embarrassed.
The other sucky job story was when I worked at a camp in TN. I loved that job too, but the last summer I worked there I was kinda head of one of the missions departments. I helped make staff schedules, match work projects with groups, and was in charge of getting the awards done for the week. Well I had this Friday off, (I think it was a scheduled day off, but lucky for me I was sick too) but I came in for the morning just to do awards and schedules. About 10am this group comes up and asks where their group leader is. I look at the schedule and the person assigned was our problem employee. I had been told by others that he was just dropping groups off at their work sites, and then going home to take a nap or something. He never called when he was going to be late, and apparently didn't call that morning to say he wasn't going to be there. I was the only one still around, so I had to go out with the group (when I was sick - on my day off). The group was really nice, and wouldn't let me do anything to help them out because I was feeling so bad, but when I finally got back to camp there was hell to pay.
Pam and Rachel, the heads of missions, had already decided that he was going to be fired, but because I was livid they let me call him. I called his cell phone (yes, cell phone - so he can't blame an lack of tools to communicate), and he told me his grandfather had to be taken to the hospital last night. I relayed this information, and while I was doing so, he hung up. Oh - he was so dead now. So I called him back, and he didn't answer, so I left the following message. " Hi _____, just calling to let you know you don't have to come in Monday, or for the rest of the summer for that matter. Your behavior has been completely inappropriate and will not be tolerated." I was still shaking afterwards, I was so upset (adrenaline).
The worst job I had was probably working at the T-shirt printing place. My employer was really nice, it was just insanely hot (huge heater to cure the paint, no AC) and I worked with harsh chemicals.
These aren't the most entertaining stories I could post - no, those all come from my current job at the library. However, rather than repost them I'll just give you a link to my other blog, and you can take a search through.
Showing posts with label terrible job stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label terrible job stories. Show all posts
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Pat sucks
Those of you who know me probably had to hear me complain A LOT about my previous job in DC. I won't mention the name here, because I've learned a thing or two about Google Alerts since this whole blogger thingy got going, but I was a peon and, worse than that, I was treated like a stupid peon.
However, that was not my worst job. While I have never collected rodents from barns (although I handled them a lot when I worked in that Tallahassee pet store, which, in retrospect, was a really fun job), or let my soul escape through a headset in a massive call center, or pulled jaw bones out of deer (wha??), I did spend a month one summer working in a Florida department store that I later quit for a lower-paying job with the county school board.
I'm not sure this particular type of department store exists in places that have a lower percentage of retirees than Florida. The store is basically crammed full of white and pastel colored shorts; t-shirts with rope, mirrors, and anchors sewed onto them; one-piece bathing suits that begin with size 12; and acres of "gifts" that include lighthouse lamps, seagull lamps, dolphin garden sculptures, magnetic pelican mailbox covers, and, to reach out to the Father's Day crowd, a handful of tiny and useless 'kits' that included everything from roadside emergency kits to manicure kits to tie organizing kits. I applied for this job right before the end of my junior (I think) year of high school, thinking I should at least find out what working retail is like. Although I expected a sales position on the floor, they put me in the service office, which included the gift wrapping station, postal service center, phones, and the admin offices. By my second week there, they had asked me, this 16-year-old kid making $6 an hour, to take over the entire financial recording and accounting for the store. I did it for about a week, then told them I wouldn't do it anymore. If I screwed up, which was highly probable since I had no experience with accounting, the store got called out by "corporate" and I knew very well I would be the one tossed onto the pyre.
The postal stuff wasn't so bad-- mostly old ladies needing to buy stamps and occasionally sending a package. Gift wrapping was probably the best part because I got to play with the ribbons and things, although if the old people weren't satisfied with my gift wrapping abilities, they let me know it. They also got mad that I wasn't allowed to give more than one bow per package, no matter how big. One time, around Mother's Day (I'm certain the busiest time of year for this place) someone gave me a buck or two as a 'tip' for wrapping her gift. I, being young and naive and in awe of authority figures, was worried that I might not be allowed to take money from customers (remember, I grew up in Lakeland, the home of Publix, the home of strict rules against tipping your bag boys [Glenn]), so I asked one of my managers what I should do with it. She took the bills from me as if they were infected or dripping with some unknown substance and said, 'I guess we'll just put it in petty cash.'
This particular boss, Pat, was atrocious. For starters, she reeked of rotten tuna ALL THE TIME. I understand that some middle-aged women have smell issues every once in a while (I mostly only know this from TV commercials), but this woman smelled bad all the time, and I used to step back from her when she was talking to me. We had a dress code that women had to wear pantyhose everyday. This is during a Florida summer, remember, and I stood in a tiny office all day, peeking into the rest of the store via a small cut-out in the wall for the customer service desk. So one day I came to work wearing an ankle-length skirt and dressy sandals with straps that went between my toes. Therefore, no pantyhose. But Pat called me on it. "In this store, we wear pantyhose everyday. I suppose I'll let you go this time, but don't try this again." Seriously? I can count the number of times I've worn pantyhose since then on one hand.
We also had a rule about never, EVER, even for a second, even when no customers were within miles, ever leaving the service desk unattended. So one particularly boring day (keep in mind that the highlight of most days was catching the muzak version of 'Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme'), I had to pee. I paged a manager on the intercom, but none came. I paged a few minutes later, and none came. A few minutes later I thought I would wet my pants, so I paged again and then darted the 6 feet across the hall to the ladies room. When I returned to the office, there was Pat, clipboard in hand, wiggly smell lines radiating from her body, looking pissed. "Where were you?!" Prostrating myself, I wept "I'm sorry, I paged a manager several times, but no one came and I had to go to the restroom!" Pat raised her chin(s) and said "Next time, then, either hurry up or sign out before you do that." Yes, she told me to clock out before I went to the bathroom so they wouldn't have to pay me for all that valuable time I spent peeing.
There were many, many little degradations besides these, but even as a high schooler I knew no one should have to put up with that kind of crap and have to act grateful for the opportunity to do so. There are other minimum wage jobs out there. So I got one with the school board for the rest of the summer where I got paid less and had to drive about four times as far, but I sat in an air conditioned office and my boss told me on the first day, "You should probably bring a book. Things sometimes get pretty slow here." It was awesome, and I also learned a lot about that 'good ol' boy' culture first hand. Actually, it probably helped a lot in my Washington adjustment. Except for the having to do work part.
However, that was not my worst job. While I have never collected rodents from barns (although I handled them a lot when I worked in that Tallahassee pet store, which, in retrospect, was a really fun job), or let my soul escape through a headset in a massive call center, or pulled jaw bones out of deer (wha??), I did spend a month one summer working in a Florida department store that I later quit for a lower-paying job with the county school board.
I'm not sure this particular type of department store exists in places that have a lower percentage of retirees than Florida. The store is basically crammed full of white and pastel colored shorts; t-shirts with rope, mirrors, and anchors sewed onto them; one-piece bathing suits that begin with size 12; and acres of "gifts" that include lighthouse lamps, seagull lamps, dolphin garden sculptures, magnetic pelican mailbox covers, and, to reach out to the Father's Day crowd, a handful of tiny and useless 'kits' that included everything from roadside emergency kits to manicure kits to tie organizing kits. I applied for this job right before the end of my junior (I think) year of high school, thinking I should at least find out what working retail is like. Although I expected a sales position on the floor, they put me in the service office, which included the gift wrapping station, postal service center, phones, and the admin offices. By my second week there, they had asked me, this 16-year-old kid making $6 an hour, to take over the entire financial recording and accounting for the store. I did it for about a week, then told them I wouldn't do it anymore. If I screwed up, which was highly probable since I had no experience with accounting, the store got called out by "corporate" and I knew very well I would be the one tossed onto the pyre.
The postal stuff wasn't so bad-- mostly old ladies needing to buy stamps and occasionally sending a package. Gift wrapping was probably the best part because I got to play with the ribbons and things, although if the old people weren't satisfied with my gift wrapping abilities, they let me know it. They also got mad that I wasn't allowed to give more than one bow per package, no matter how big. One time, around Mother's Day (I'm certain the busiest time of year for this place) someone gave me a buck or two as a 'tip' for wrapping her gift. I, being young and naive and in awe of authority figures, was worried that I might not be allowed to take money from customers (remember, I grew up in Lakeland, the home of Publix, the home of strict rules against tipping your bag boys [Glenn]), so I asked one of my managers what I should do with it. She took the bills from me as if they were infected or dripping with some unknown substance and said, 'I guess we'll just put it in petty cash.'
This particular boss, Pat, was atrocious. For starters, she reeked of rotten tuna ALL THE TIME. I understand that some middle-aged women have smell issues every once in a while (I mostly only know this from TV commercials), but this woman smelled bad all the time, and I used to step back from her when she was talking to me. We had a dress code that women had to wear pantyhose everyday. This is during a Florida summer, remember, and I stood in a tiny office all day, peeking into the rest of the store via a small cut-out in the wall for the customer service desk. So one day I came to work wearing an ankle-length skirt and dressy sandals with straps that went between my toes. Therefore, no pantyhose. But Pat called me on it. "In this store, we wear pantyhose everyday. I suppose I'll let you go this time, but don't try this again." Seriously? I can count the number of times I've worn pantyhose since then on one hand.
We also had a rule about never, EVER, even for a second, even when no customers were within miles, ever leaving the service desk unattended. So one particularly boring day (keep in mind that the highlight of most days was catching the muzak version of 'Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme'), I had to pee. I paged a manager on the intercom, but none came. I paged a few minutes later, and none came. A few minutes later I thought I would wet my pants, so I paged again and then darted the 6 feet across the hall to the ladies room. When I returned to the office, there was Pat, clipboard in hand, wiggly smell lines radiating from her body, looking pissed. "Where were you?!" Prostrating myself, I wept "I'm sorry, I paged a manager several times, but no one came and I had to go to the restroom!" Pat raised her chin(s) and said "Next time, then, either hurry up or sign out before you do that." Yes, she told me to clock out before I went to the bathroom so they wouldn't have to pay me for all that valuable time I spent peeing.
There were many, many little degradations besides these, but even as a high schooler I knew no one should have to put up with that kind of crap and have to act grateful for the opportunity to do so. There are other minimum wage jobs out there. So I got one with the school board for the rest of the summer where I got paid less and had to drive about four times as far, but I sat in an air conditioned office and my boss told me on the first day, "You should probably bring a book. Things sometimes get pretty slow here." It was awesome, and I also learned a lot about that 'good ol' boy' culture first hand. Actually, it probably helped a lot in my Washington adjustment. Except for the having to do work part.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Terrible jobs and shameless self-promotion
A year at Burger King my senior year of high school taught me that humanity is vile. A summer waitressing the graveyard shift at Steak-n-Shake left me totally exhausted. A month waitressing at a Chinese restaurant in my hometown brought me to the realization that I was neither blonde enough nor personable enough to bring in the big tips. Six weeks at a Dell computers call center has caused me to boycott anything and everything Dell. Five months ripping jawbones out of dead deer was actually kind of fun – but try explaining the presence of that on your resume! A little over two years as a Fed left me astounded by the fact that the entire infrastructure of the United States hasn’t simply collapsed. But by far, the worst job experience that I ever had was a five month stretch in 2001.
My friend Melissa and I were nearing college graduation, although we had yet to either line up jobs or decide on career tracks for ourselves. Neither of us felt ready to resign ourselves to a world of cubicles. When we both landed reasonably high paying jobs at the same company in a foreign country, we were ecstatic. Unfortunately, the experience didn’t turn out to be anything like what we expected.
When I returned home from that misadventure, I sat down in the armchair in my bedroom and pulled out my laptop. I sat for days, typing. Roughly seventy pages later, I achieved a well needed catharsis. Now, obviously seventy pages are a few too many to post on a blog… but you want to read about it, you know you do. Luckily for you, I published it. Just click on the image below to purchase it!
My friend Melissa and I were nearing college graduation, although we had yet to either line up jobs or decide on career tracks for ourselves. Neither of us felt ready to resign ourselves to a world of cubicles. When we both landed reasonably high paying jobs at the same company in a foreign country, we were ecstatic. Unfortunately, the experience didn’t turn out to be anything like what we expected.
When I returned home from that misadventure, I sat down in the armchair in my bedroom and pulled out my laptop. I sat for days, typing. Roughly seventy pages later, I achieved a well needed catharsis. Now, obviously seventy pages are a few too many to post on a blog… but you want to read about it, you know you do. Luckily for you, I published it. Just click on the image below to purchase it!
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Terrible Job Stories
Last week I finished the temp job I had working with our school's literary journal (Gulf Coast - check it out, everybody! The latest issue has a great selection of new poetry and prose [shameless plug]). I have some money in the bank, but if my calculations are correct (and since my calculations are addition and subtraction, they probably are [probably, anyway {I really like the brackets within parentheses thing}]), then I need to make five hundred additional dollars to get through the summer. That means job time!
So I've been scouring Craig's List, which I guess is 99.9999% scams, and reminiscing about terrible jobs I've had. Well, maybe the jobs weren't terrible, but they had terrible moments. No, on second thought, the jobs were terrible.
My first job I ever had was working on the farm behind my house when I was ten. My brother, some friends, and I went over, and these twenty something year olds said they'd pay us $2 an hour to help them with field work. To me as a kid, $2 an hour is like a million dollars an hour. I was just as good as math then as I am now. But to be fair, if I worked for ten hours, that was twenty comics, because back then comics were a buck. So we laid out hay on the strawberry field for 6 or 7 hours. Then I wanted to die I was so tired. But they said come back and help them at the farm house and they would pay us more. So the next day we went to the farmhouse, and they paid us to chase and kill rats. It was pretty traumatic because 1) I thought rats were small, 2) I didn't realize rats lived in our food before it was shipped out, and 3) I didn't like killing animals. Anyway, that was terrible. The next day it was more field work. By that time, they owed each of us like $40, for twenty hours work. But then they said they would only give us $10, total, and we had to split it between the four of us. That was total bullshit. My father went over and talked to them, probably to let them know they were breaking a billion or so child labor laws, but he didn't get any more money from them. My parents felt bad for us and gave me and my brother $5 additional dollars, which bought one issue of Darkhawk and like maybe two X-Men comics. I don't really remember what I was reading back then. It wasn't DC.
After that I did some babysitting for my parents in exchange for the opportunity to rent one PG-13 movies. I saw a lot of awful movies. Like The Rocketeer, and Death Becomes Her. Also, I dog sat my friend's horrible german shepherd that tried to maul me on multiple occasions, fostering my current fear of large dogs. But when you're a kid, you like money. In high school I was not allowed to work during the school year for some reason, which sucked, because that meant I never had money. But in the summer time I worked at my dad's office doing odd jobs. I guess that wasn't really a terrible job, apart from roaches in the records building. But I already told that story on this blog once before. Long story short, I don't like roaches, they like me, my cat Xerxes likes them for dinner.
Teaching 7th grade sucked, but everybody knows those stories. Working for three days at Service Zone (a Dell service center in Lake City) also sucked, because they lied about how much they were going to pay me. Also, it sort of felt like the place people went when they failed at everything else in life. I don't know if I can explain that to anybody who isn't from Lake City. In the few days I worked there I ran into a lot of people from high school I barely knew, but they were all super excited to see me. Most of these people flunked out of community college, or never really saw any point to get any learning past high school. Maybe I'm a total asshole for saying all this, but I felt like at any second the dinner scene from "Freaks" was going to break out once they saw me, a college grad (well, in creative writing, anyway), in their training class, like it justified all of their opinions of the world outside Lake City, that it was unimportant and overrated. It is after all, the town that will survive the end of the world.
Anyway, my last story involves working at Publix. Lots of terrible stories surround that place, like whenever I tried to quit and the manager teared up and guilted me into staying. Or the fact that I was two years out of college and a bagger at Publix working for $7 an hour. But I'll tell the story of the time I was working one fateful Sunday morning. I was a bagger at the time (which meant that customers would talk about me like I was stupid and deaf to the cashiers, but rarely acknowledge my presence unless it was to tell me not to put their bread on the bottom of the bag, as if I was from some alternate dimension in which bread could not be crushed by six cans and would be astonished that they would not want their bread on the bottom of the bag, but it also meant I had the lowest amount of responsibility, which was cool), and I was called over to the office counter. They told me the men's bathroom needed to be cleaned (another duty of baggers for some reason), which wasn't a good sign, since it was Sunday morning. That probably meant something was up. And indeed, something was up. Piles of shit all over the bathroom floor, and shitty footprints leading out of the store. I walked back over to the counter and asked what would happen if I didn't clean it up. The supervisor said I'd be fired. So I just sat there for a minute, and the supervisor repeated that I'd be fired. I said I know, I'm just thinking. Well, I guess this story would be cooler if I quit right then, but instead I cleaned up the mess by dumped a gallon each of the strongest cleaners we had on the bathroom floor and mopping up the mess. Well, that sucked. And then I worked there for 8 more months.
Then I worked at a T-Shirt factory, which was a pretty good job, and now I teach college, which is also a pretty good job. Except I need a summer job that preferably does not involve human feces in any shape or form.
So share your terrible job stories! Sorry this post is a million words long or so.
So I've been scouring Craig's List, which I guess is 99.9999% scams, and reminiscing about terrible jobs I've had. Well, maybe the jobs weren't terrible, but they had terrible moments. No, on second thought, the jobs were terrible.
My first job I ever had was working on the farm behind my house when I was ten. My brother, some friends, and I went over, and these twenty something year olds said they'd pay us $2 an hour to help them with field work. To me as a kid, $2 an hour is like a million dollars an hour. I was just as good as math then as I am now. But to be fair, if I worked for ten hours, that was twenty comics, because back then comics were a buck. So we laid out hay on the strawberry field for 6 or 7 hours. Then I wanted to die I was so tired. But they said come back and help them at the farm house and they would pay us more. So the next day we went to the farmhouse, and they paid us to chase and kill rats. It was pretty traumatic because 1) I thought rats were small, 2) I didn't realize rats lived in our food before it was shipped out, and 3) I didn't like killing animals. Anyway, that was terrible. The next day it was more field work. By that time, they owed each of us like $40, for twenty hours work. But then they said they would only give us $10, total, and we had to split it between the four of us. That was total bullshit. My father went over and talked to them, probably to let them know they were breaking a billion or so child labor laws, but he didn't get any more money from them. My parents felt bad for us and gave me and my brother $5 additional dollars, which bought one issue of Darkhawk and like maybe two X-Men comics. I don't really remember what I was reading back then. It wasn't DC.
After that I did some babysitting for my parents in exchange for the opportunity to rent one PG-13 movies. I saw a lot of awful movies. Like The Rocketeer, and Death Becomes Her. Also, I dog sat my friend's horrible german shepherd that tried to maul me on multiple occasions, fostering my current fear of large dogs. But when you're a kid, you like money. In high school I was not allowed to work during the school year for some reason, which sucked, because that meant I never had money. But in the summer time I worked at my dad's office doing odd jobs. I guess that wasn't really a terrible job, apart from roaches in the records building. But I already told that story on this blog once before. Long story short, I don't like roaches, they like me, my cat Xerxes likes them for dinner.
Teaching 7th grade sucked, but everybody knows those stories. Working for three days at Service Zone (a Dell service center in Lake City) also sucked, because they lied about how much they were going to pay me. Also, it sort of felt like the place people went when they failed at everything else in life. I don't know if I can explain that to anybody who isn't from Lake City. In the few days I worked there I ran into a lot of people from high school I barely knew, but they were all super excited to see me. Most of these people flunked out of community college, or never really saw any point to get any learning past high school. Maybe I'm a total asshole for saying all this, but I felt like at any second the dinner scene from "Freaks" was going to break out once they saw me, a college grad (well, in creative writing, anyway), in their training class, like it justified all of their opinions of the world outside Lake City, that it was unimportant and overrated. It is after all, the town that will survive the end of the world.
Anyway, my last story involves working at Publix. Lots of terrible stories surround that place, like whenever I tried to quit and the manager teared up and guilted me into staying. Or the fact that I was two years out of college and a bagger at Publix working for $7 an hour. But I'll tell the story of the time I was working one fateful Sunday morning. I was a bagger at the time (which meant that customers would talk about me like I was stupid and deaf to the cashiers, but rarely acknowledge my presence unless it was to tell me not to put their bread on the bottom of the bag, as if I was from some alternate dimension in which bread could not be crushed by six cans and would be astonished that they would not want their bread on the bottom of the bag, but it also meant I had the lowest amount of responsibility, which was cool), and I was called over to the office counter. They told me the men's bathroom needed to be cleaned (another duty of baggers for some reason), which wasn't a good sign, since it was Sunday morning. That probably meant something was up. And indeed, something was up. Piles of shit all over the bathroom floor, and shitty footprints leading out of the store. I walked back over to the counter and asked what would happen if I didn't clean it up. The supervisor said I'd be fired. So I just sat there for a minute, and the supervisor repeated that I'd be fired. I said I know, I'm just thinking. Well, I guess this story would be cooler if I quit right then, but instead I cleaned up the mess by dumped a gallon each of the strongest cleaners we had on the bathroom floor and mopping up the mess. Well, that sucked. And then I worked there for 8 more months.
Then I worked at a T-Shirt factory, which was a pretty good job, and now I teach college, which is also a pretty good job. Except I need a summer job that preferably does not involve human feces in any shape or form.
So share your terrible job stories! Sorry this post is a million words long or so.
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