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QOTD - July 2nd, 2013

Greetings, superfriends.

Quite a few questions in the que, but today I wanted to go with one I've been wanting to ask since the beginning. A pretty basic one, but there's always some great stories that go along with it.

Worse job you've ever had, and the worst moment.

For your scribe, it was when I was 17. My friend use to be a dishwasher at this hole-in-the-wall Chinese resturant, and he was quitting. Well, he offered me up the gig and I said sure, as a favor to him. It was a favor because he couldn't quit and start this job he really wanted until they found a replacement.

I was hesitant because I'm a bit of a germaphobe. I like things clean. I especially have a problem with food related illness, like e-coli, or salmonella. So, imagine my joy when the first thing they have me do is scrape frozen blood, mold, and discarded meat off the freezer floor. Or be told to just rinse out this tub that had been holding uncooked meat for hours with only water. Which would then hold rice. Anyway, the worst moment came when one particular, after helping to kill a GIANT sized rat in the kitchen, one of the cooks decides he wants to play a CD, of some absolutely God-awful Chinese pop-music. And there's only one song he likes, and he plays it over and over and over, literally for hours. I was covered in blood, and all sorts of fantastic things, in this God-forsaken place that was 95-100 degrees inside, listening to this atrocious music. Later, everyone was on an hour break, and I asked if I could listen to some of my music, well that was instantly vetoed. Thankfully, my request reminded him that he hadn't listened to his song in a while.

Also, while working 10-12 hour days isn't bad, I wasn't eating. I didn't feel clean, or safe to eat anything until I could get home and take a shower. Needless to say I quit that job after 4 days. Funny thing was, when I told them I quit, they said "We thought you already quit? Got your friend to take over?". They thought I was my friend, who'd been working there for 2 years. We didn't look a like at all.

How say you?

Comments

  1. I remember my worst job experience:

    Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, Chief. We was
    comin' back from the island of Tinian to Leyte... just delivered the
    bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel
    went down in 12 minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half an
    hour. Tiger. 13-footer. You know how you know that when you're in the
    water, Chief? You tell by looking from the dorsal to the tail fin. What
    we didn't know, was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress
    signal had been sent. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very
    first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin', so we formed ourselves into
    tight groups. You know, it was kinda like old squares in the battle like
    you see in the calendar named "The Battle of Waterloo" and the idea
    was: shark comes to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin' and
    hollerin' and screamin' and sometimes the shark will go away... but
    sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark he looks right into
    ya. Right into your eyes. And, you know, the thing about a shark... he's
    got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya,
    doesn't seem to be living... until he bites ya, and those black eyes
    roll over white and then... ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched
    screamin'. The ocean turns red, and despite all the poundin' and the
    hollerin', they all come in and they... rip you to pieces. You know by
    the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don't know how many
    sharks, maybe a thousand. I know how many men, they averaged six an
    hour. On Thursday morning, Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie
    Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boatswain's mate. I thought
    he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. He bobbed up, down in the
    water just like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he'd been bitten in half
    below the waist. Noon, the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw
    us. He swung in low and he saw us... he was a young pilot, a lot
    younger than Mr. Hooper. Anyway, he saw us and he come in low and three
    hours later a big fat PBY comes down and starts to pick us up. You know
    that was the time I was most frightened... waitin' for my turn. I'll
    never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went in the
    water; 316 men come out and the sharks took the rest, June the 29th,
    1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.

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  2. I once got a really bad papercut. Like 3 or 4 cm. 1.0 Muta, easy.

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  3. I used to work for Chris Kanyon. Food hasn't tasted the same since.

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  4. WHO'S A BETTER EMPLOYER THAN KANYON??

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  5. Eh, that's bad, but I had to listen to annoying Chinese pop-music.

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  6. When I was 19, I worked as a waiter at an IHOP in New Jersey. Long story short; I caught a bus boy stealing my tip off a table and the manager told me he couldn't fire the bus boy because they had a shortage. I said either he goes or I go, and my manager said "waiters are easily replaceable, bus boys aren't."

    At this point I channeled Ric Flair and proceeded to rip my name tag, shirt and tie off in front the entire restaurant and ranted about how they reward thieves and punish hard workers. I really wish there was YouTube back then because it would have made an awesome video.

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  7. You poor, poor man.

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  8. YankeesHoganTripleHFanJuly 2, 2013 at 9:40 AM

    Oh this isn't about my worst job, but rather my first job interview after I graduated college. It was for a place called Peak Promotions. I go on the first interview and am told that the job consists of spending your day outside a supermarket, selling toys and books to raise money for child abduction awareness. The hours were M-F 8-6. A bit long of a day but whatever. So the first interview goes fine and then they invite me to come back two days later for a "day in the field" Interview. I go to the second interview and when I get there everyone in the company is in a closed door meeting and I hear something like war chants. Yeah...war chants...who does that at a place of employment.
    Anyway I go out on the field with two other employees. One was a total idiot, he would say something like "hey would you like to see some of the toys and books we have for sale?" If they would say no he would say something like "well that's even better." Umm no it's not moron. To top it off there was an old lady selling flowers for wounded veterans that kept getting mad at us for taking potential customers, (I can't really say that I blamed her.) Around 6:30 we packed up and headed to the office getting back, along with the rest of the employees, around 7:30, (remember what I said about being told the hours were 8-6?) Here is where it got creepy. Every employee that introduced themselves to me said the EXACT same thing. "What's your name? Where are you from" Over and over and over and over and over and over and over, like they had been brainwashed. When an employee would leave they would announce that they were going home, bang a pot and everyone would cheer for some reason. Again who does this at a place of employment. Well I finally meet with the boss am offered the job, (newsflash, everyone is offered the job.) I accept am told to be there at 7:30 AM that next day and leave in a daze. I get home tell my parents about my day, (living at home post college) and they burst out laughing partly out sympathy, partly because they knew EXACTLY how my day was going to go but I had to learn for myself. Needless to say I did not show up the next morning.

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  9. YankeesHoganTripleHFanJuly 2, 2013 at 9:45 AM

    Caliber I now have the image of you covered in rat guts listening to Chinese pop. Made me laugh. So...thanks.

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  10. YankeesHoganTripleHFanJuly 2, 2013 at 9:54 AM

    Did you elbow drop your uniform? Please tell me you did?

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  11. I'll never take advice on MAN'S MAN MOVIES MAN from a germophobe. NEVER.

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  12. Pool construction grunt in South Florida during the summer. I can't think of many worse things than hauling 50-70 pound pool coping in 95-100 degree weather with top notch humidity and no breeze. Did that the summer between junior and senior year of high school. Let me tell you, I knew I wanted to be a "white collar" professional the rest of my life.

    Also, have to agree with Caliber, working as a dishwasher bites. It's one of the hardest, worst jobs on the planet. Did it for a diner for about 3 weeks before I bailed.

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  13. I did construction labor in Florida for a while, it was brutal.

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  14. My cousin is currently roofing houses in Mississippi. Just saw him the other day and he looks terrible. Working outside in the South between May and September is something I wouldn't wish on my 2nd-worst enemy.

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  15. Really, I should have said former. I did research in my early 20's and realized how pointless it was to be bugged out about it. You can still trust my reckos. If I were any manlier I'd have to shave my eyeballs.

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  16. No kidding. My buddy runs a home maintenance company and once a year, they pressure wash all of the roofs for these rich peoples houses. I decided to help him out for some reason over the weekend, I certainly didn't need the money. Guess I thought it'd be fun to hang out with him and do some work. Well, make sure you always wear gloves and a long sleeve turtle neck. Holy shit, my hands got so burned, they swelled up to the size of baseball mitts at night. It was frightening. Roofing is even worse.

    There are so many hard jobs out there. I always admire anyone who can do that line of work for 25-30 years, 5-6 days a week.

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  17. Man, that story is exactly how most places are run, too. By brainless morons who'd sell every shred of dignity and integrity that they could.

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  18. The job I hated the most was working the register at Home Depot, but that was just one long 2 year blur of suck. But the actual worst was working at a small theme park called Old Town in Kissimmee, FL. I had some good times there but the hours were brutal. We would only be scheduled from whatever time til "close", which meant whenever the ticket sales slowed down. It could be as early as eleven but more often than not it was 2 or 3 in the morning. After a whole day on your feet, in the Florida sun, with only an hour lunch out of as much as 15 hours, hearing some drunk asshole yell at you because his bratty kid isn't tall enough to ride the goddamn roller coaster is fucking grounds for justifiable homicide.

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  19. I was really hoping he'd start shouting "FIRE ME! I'M ALREADY FIRED!"

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  20. It really is pointless. I completely understand where people get the fear from. A few years ago I was completely paranoid about this stuff, making sure to disinfect anything and everything. I'd still get sick every three months like clockwork. So I stopped and ever since then, I've been illness free, which has now lasted about a year and a half.

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  21. Woooo!!! You should've Flair flopped.

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  22. What a weird, weird job. I've never heard of anything like that. How on Earth did this require a college education? Or was it just a place setting until you got the job you really wanted?

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  23. "It was a favor because he couldn't quit and start this job he really wanted until they found a replacement."

    That doesn't make any sense.

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  24. Anyone who does roofing for a living is a bonafide bad-ass. It's extremely dangerous, and they're constantly brutalized by weather, and can run into everything you can imagine, including groups of bats that live under shingles and what have you.

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  25. If only I knew how to take a bump I gladly would've been dropping elbows all over my uniform.

    Instead I was just yelling "this is ridiculous! You don't treat employees this way! See this IHOP name tag? I don't want it? IHOP tie and apron? Means nothing! You oughtta be ashamed of yourselves." Then I strutted out and drove home to be greeted by my mother who asked why I was only wearing an undershirt.

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  26. I'd say my actual worst working experience was when I use to do landscaping/construction jobs with my dad. He started a company that did this sort of thing in his early 20's, but in his late 20's he got on at Boeing, and only did gigs like this part-time.

    So, there's this massive duplex that needs to be painted one summer. I live in Washington, and as you probably know, we're use to 50-60 degree weather days. So, this was during a heat-wave, and every day was about 105 degrees. To a person from Washington, it's fucking DEATH. Now, this house is a dark blue, and they want it white. So what's that mean? Fucking primer! Ugh. It's so obnoxious, because you paint the house, and then you gotta paint the goddamn house AGAIN. Painting with primer first is such a defeating, pointless exercise.

    Anyway, on the hottest day of the year I was painting the broad side of the house, which once 10am rolled around, was bathed in sun until the end of the day. So, I'm painting the wall fucking white, and the sun is not only cooking me, but it's bouncing off the wall and hitting me in the face. I started to hallucinate. I had a 24pack of water, and I'm not kidding when I say over the course of 12 hours I drank the entire thing, and only pissed once. That's how hard I was sweating.

    So much props to blue-collar guys. It's a fucking shame they don't get their due.

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  27. He had a job lined up that was ready for him, but he couldn't do it until he stopped working at this restaurant. Now of course, they can't control him, but he was a super-stand up guy. They gave him a job at 15 when he really needed it, and no one else would hire him. So, he felt that he owed it to them to stick around until he found someone.

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  28. Easy. I worked as an accountant for a construction management firm. I know, that doesnt sound so bad..and honestly, the job itself was interesting and challenging. However, unbeknowst to me when I was hired, I was being brought on to replace a woman who held the same title. It was supposed to be a secret: she would train me, thinking that they were expanding their workforce, then eventually, they would let her go on the grounds that she was a first class bitch to everyone from interns to her clients. Well, someone (I'm gonna guess by the partner that was plugging her) told her about said plan, but nobody told ME. So while training me, she gives me false info, then points out that she didn't tell me to do it that way in meetings, making me look completely incompetant. The whole time, I'm going INSANE because I couldn't figure out why this cooze was fucking me over. Only job I've ever quit for reasons other than schooling. The CFO must have had an inkling, because dude gave me a month's severence after I had been there for a total of 9 months.

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  29. Oh man, I did something like that too when I lived in ATL. So you know how when you go to doctor's offices and other office buildings and see innocuous paintings? This place sold those paintings to office buildings. You basically had to go door to door to a bunch of different buildings hoping they first wouldn't yell at you for ignoring the No Soliciting sign that most all of them have and then trying to sell them a shitty painting you could buy at WalMart for like $20. And they did the exact same thing with chanting and shit in the morning and taking me on a "field interview". And the people who worked there all seemed to be fairly poor and the chick they assigned to take me on my field interview didn't have a car so I basically had to drive around all day listening to her tell me how great this job was even though she didn't look like she had a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out and didn't have a car to get around in (and no, she was not attractive so there wasn't even the possibility of a lunch break bang). Like you, I lasted one day and didn't bother showing up or returning their phone calls.

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  30. Amsterdam_Adam_CurryJuly 2, 2013 at 12:04 PM

    "waiters are easily replaceable, bus boys aren't."



    Since when? Also, you have more self control then I do, I would have kicked the shit out of that guy. Stealing is one thing I won't tolerate from anyone.

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  31. Used to work at a sawmill. They hired a retarded guy named Greg to help sweep up. Every night at work Greg would hide and masturbate. And he wasn't god at hiding.

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  32. I had a similar experience on a job interview shortly after I upped and moved to Chicago for the hell of it. It was with a marketing company, pushing new phone service to businesses.
    I went out in the field with a guy who thought he was the most clever guy in the world calling himself Maverick and me Iceman to the potential customers. They told me I did well and should come back the next morning. Needing a job, I did. Then, I got pulled in to the power circle, where they were doing war chants. I walked. I couldn't handle it.

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  33. One summer during college, I ended up working in the rotisserie chicken department of a Price Chopper supermarket. Two of my other friends ended up working there, too, one with me and the other making bagels.


    The entire chicken dept. was hot, and I had to wear an apron over a smock over a white button down shirt, so not only did I come home every night smelling like chicken, but I did so sweating like a frigging pig. Somehow, no matter what shift I was on, I was the one who had to wipe down the rotisserie ovens from the grease and lemon-zest seasoning that somehow managed to get splattered all over the windows. I never got to prep the chickens, or sell the chickens. No, I had to clean the windows and mop the floors.


    I finally quit when my boss called me in to work on a day that I had requested off - my college girlfriend was coming to visit, I hadn't gotten laid for about 5 weeks and I was very much looking forward to it - and said he needed me to work. If I didn't I was fired. I told him to stick it.


    Thankfully, one of my other friends worked as a park ranger at a nearby state park and they needed someone to work the ticket booth. Despite the stupid customers and some mosquitoes, that was a MUCH better place to spend the summer.

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  34. AverageJoeEverymanJuly 2, 2013 at 1:49 PM

    Been to Old Town many times, nice place. Would hate to have to work there though.

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  35. Dude, the rat was HUGE. If I didn't know any better, I would have thought it to be a mountain lion in a rat costume. We had it caught behind a giant table, I had a broom, he had a house. Eventually he drew it out, and since I'm an animal lover I couldn't watch whatever it was he ended up doing. God, that was the absolute worst.

    Then you'd get dishes come back that have peoples old soggy, gross, snotted up napkins on it. Ugh. I'm losing my mind just thinking about how fucking gross it is.

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  36. Haha, holy shit. Man, Maverick & Iceman are the names that "clever" people use when they want to be cool. These are the guys who laugh at their own jokes, and say "I'm Rick James, bitch!"

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  37. You know where that rat ended up...Peking Duck anyone?

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  38. Honest to God, it wouldn't surprise me if they'd put rat in the food of customers they didn't like. One time a guy cut his finger while dicing up pork, and I'm not even joking when I say he let it bleed on the meat for a minute, then said it was no problem because they cook it.

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  39. Wow, my worst job interview is much more minor- I spent like a fucking WEEK going to "Manpower" in Edmonton (a place that trains people and hires them out to phone call centres and junk), doing interviews with 2 separate people, and doing a computer math test and one on a Spreadsheet or something. Then when I'm finally done and waiting for a call, it never comes- even to tell me if I got a job or not. They even specified ahead of time that I'd get a call even if I didn't get hired- I was never informed. Sure the main person in charge of interviewing me had quit and been replaced, but seriously- that was bone-headed and frankly just cruel to someone looking for work.

    Saying "fuck it", I had another job lined up anyways that I would have quit for the Manpower thing. TWO YEARS LATER I got a phone message from Manpower asking me my availability. I never bothered calling back.

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  40. Price Chopper? Who on Earth comes up with these names?

    Isn't that one of the worst aspects of working with hot food? The smell gets into your pores after a while.

    Being a park ranger would be pretty cool. How many Yogi Bear jokes did you have to hear?

    I worked security at Target and was forced to ride a Segway when I "surveillanced" the parking lot. Oh, and when was this you ask? It was smack dab in the middle of Paul Blart's run in theaters. Mo.Ther.Fuck.Ers. I mean, my fucking badge had a Target symbol on it!

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  41. The worst part was, after the first time he used it, we walked out of the office and he started to explain it to me, like I didn't already get it. Fucking tool.

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  42. Haha. Be thankful you didn't have to do the high-five and "need for speed" line.

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  43. Manpower? Who in their right mind, besides me, would call a company that?

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  44. I wasn't actually a ranger, I just sat in the booth and sold admission to the park. I was the only guy working the ticket booth with three or four girls. Not at all a bad deal.

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  45. Oddly, it was staffed almost entirely by women.

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  46. If there's one thing I've learned, never, EVER work for a place that's mostly women. Especially older women. They're mean, often bordering on cruel, insane, emotional, and quick to over-react.

    I've found the best boss is a Gay man. They're fun, and really nice.

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  47. lol! You need to send Gordon Ramsay to this joint.

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  48. You can tlel you're not a northeasterner, not knowin about P Chops.

    And I'm all but positive I've had chicken from the Price Chopper in question.

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  49. I used to run the Rave movie theater in the University City section of West Philadelphia. I got promoted to manager really quickly when Rave bought the theater when it was still called the Bridge, and in less than six months, went from the lowest level manager to running the damn place (only answering to the General Manager when he bothered to show up) because every manager above me either quit or was fired for some stupid reason.

    Suffice to say, it was an easy job. I had great employees, the pay decent to substitute the shitty hours I worked.

    The problem that made it a terrible job?

    The incredibly southern and racist district manager, who claimed that a majority of my employees weren't "right people". What that meant I have no idea, all I know is that he fired some of my best employees without giving a reason and forced me to hire some of the worst employees I ever had to deal with (those best employees were black and the worst I hired were over entitled white kids from UPenn). So I got bored and started doing everything in my power to get fired.

    I showed up to work drunk multiple times, I would leave the theater during operations for about an hour and stop at a bar or restaurant. I would bring women back there after hours and have sex with them. I would openly contradict my boss in front of the employees. I would give away tickets because I really didn't care anymore.

    And no one in power noticed, until I made a slight inventory error. Then they flipped shit and my district manager forced the GM to fire me on the spot, never mind the fact that I fixed said error (and multiple employees made this error without any repercussions). They fired me, I signed the termination papers with "Wakka Wakka", went to a bar, got incredibly shit faced, and walked back into the theater, sat down to watch a movie, for free.



    I still go there to this day and get free movies from the managers that I trained.

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  50. I worked in the Records Dept. at police headquarters and I was the only guy. They all loved me. Never had a single problem.

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  51. I think the Northwest's version of Price Chopper is Fred Meyer.

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  52. Karma really is hilarious sometimes, isn't it?

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  53. Really? You're a lucky duck. My statement may sound sexist, but every person I know has horror stories about working in female dominated workplaces. Hell, the only female boss I ever had made my life a living hell, as I later found out she was a complete sexist and hated men. Turns out I was the first one she'd hired in YEARS, and was forced to because I was the best candidate. I ended up quitting 3 months into it because I absolutely could not stand her. It was also one of those maddening situations where EVERYBODY knows what's going on, and no one likes her, yet because of this litigious-society the only way someone can be fired is if they murder some one. A lot.

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  54. I'll attest to this. The worst boss I ever had was a overly-stressed 40-something restaurant manager, and I was one of the hosts. So guess who got the brunt of Every. Single. Mistake.

    *shudders* That bitch was nuts.

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  55. Yeah, especially when it came to filing for unemployment, my boss showed up almost a half hour late for the hearing when Rave challenged it. Turns out he intentionally showed up late, because he hated the idea of firing me considering I was the one person who knew hands down what he was doing in practically every aspect of running the place.


    The best part of the hearing was me and the ref shooting the shit for that half hour, and then the moment my boss showed up, he turned into a stone cold killer whenever he addressed him. Turns out I helped this guy out earlier in the year when he came to the theater, after my boss was kind of a dick to him.

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  56. I'm the only guy in my department right now. Basically, my boss is one of the most hilariously vulgar women I've worked with.


    We bonded over the horror stories from our previous jobs. She even jokes when I come on in Saturday mornings, threatening to give me a breathalyzer. Or she asks which employees I'm sleeping with.

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  57. Oh man, AND he had to sleep in the bed he made? Dude, that kind of experience deserves a memoir.

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  58. Ohhh man. Last summer I worked with a painting company. They made us wear company uniforms when we painted. They were all black. Even black hats they made us wear. I live in Michigan, and I don't know what the rest of the world thinks, but Michigan has the most god damned bi polar weather ever. It was around 70-75 the first day, and sure the heat sucked but I mean, it was manageable.

    Then the next day came along, and it's fucking 105 out, and I'm in a black uniform with my one co worker, attracting the heat and it's already 105+. We were also painting the house white, and we had to do the primer then the actual paint. Good god it was hell. I didn't go 12 hours and hallucinate like you, I just walked out on the job, I couldn't take it. Props to you for even being able to handle that shit for 12 hours.

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  59. richard householderJuly 2, 2013 at 6:08 PM

    A. Top notch humidity cracks me up. B. Dishwashing sucks and blows. My worst experience was when all the bosses were gone and there was no one left to tell me how to break down the dishwashing machine when food crumbs clogged the bottom water drain. That left me to try scraping at the drain holding a butterknife by my finger tips to avoid the scalding hot water.

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  60. I'm slowly writing one now interestingly enough. I started it during my last months there, basically ranting about my life and my job at that point. My friend happened to read it and thought it was hilarious, so I started keeping at it, basically incorporating stories from my life throughout it and trying to combine it into one concise story.

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  61. My ex got me my wedding ring from Fred Meyer Jewelers. We went to a wedding in Northwest Washington a few months later and saw a Fred Meyer grocery store. We both were in complete shock because we thought "why would you expand a jewlery store into a grocery store or vice versa?"

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  62. I worked in restaurants for 10 years. Every single day is a nightmare if you're anything less than management. Bugs, rodents, mould, blood, yup. To say nothing of having to count your hours because the owner WILL try and rip you off. Or having money witheld just because, or having your hours cut to zilch just because a waitress flirts with you more than with the manager who likes her.
    Damn good parties though. Restuarant people know how to party.
    The worst though was painting dumpsters in blistering summer heat in a shadeless lot, where they also dumped raw sewage from septic tanks.
    That place smelled worse than anything else that I have ever experienced in my life.
    I worked at a Chinese owned banquet hall with gang connections too, and that was a bit scary for 17 year old Mister_E_Mahn. They had an extremely illegal gambling operation in a building on the site with huge numbers of people with insane amounts of cash and weapons and all of that good stuff coming and going every day. No drugs that I ever saw there, in fact they were pretty clear that they weren't involved in drugs when I asked around about buying some weed, but every other kind of dirty shit you can imagine. Teenage girls, most of them fresh off the boat from Wherever, Asia, obviously being trafficked as prostitutes. How it never got busted I will never know, especially with the practice of hiring random 17 year old kids and letting them see it all on like day 3.

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  63. Michael StreeflandJuly 2, 2013 at 6:48 PM

    I can't decide between my worst two. The first was a summer job while in college in a grocery warehouse. Dodged rats and bats all summer for about $6 an hour. We actually had a pool for the guy who could run over the most rats with his pallet jack every day. The pet food aisle was the worst. Word of advice: never buy a bag of dry food that has a hole or a patch. And hard work was punished due to the crooked union and the fact that management was scared of them. Got screamed at for an entire break one time because I was ONE minute late to break. Somehow I made it through the summer. Then, to top it off, the union put the kibosh on the bonus the summer help was promised if we met our quotas. The bonus was actually listed as part of the compensation when I was hired; they screwed me out of $3/hour for all the hours I worked that summer.

    The other bad one was at K-mart. I was the assistant load manager. This meant I was responsible to make sure all the shelf-stockers did their jobs, but I had absolutely no authority to make them do so. All I could do was report to my boss who had no interest in doing anything about it. Only lasted a week on that one. I never realized there could be such a thing as a high-stress job in K-mart before that.

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  64. Never really had a terrible job but I did have one awful manager when I worked at the Deli of a Roche Bros. Supermarket. I was 20 and going to school full-time and got the job when the place opened up for a part-time position.. I asked this chain-smoking prick if I could have just one evening off during the weekends, so I could have some semblance of a social life. Well, this guy proceeded to put me on every single Friday and Saturday night, as well as opening at 6am on Sundays. He also declined my vacation requests and told me he did not believe me when I had to take the day off to go to my grandmother's funeral. When school break ended and classes were to start back up, I told him that I was going back to school and couldnt work 40 hours a week all the time so the next day, he walks over to me halfway through my shift and told me I wasn't "cut out for the deli" and fired me, two seconds after he walked out of the store to go home. So yeah, he was a prick. Flash forward to last month, which was eleven years later, I was at the deli counter at the Supermarket near my new apartment and saw that same prick behind the deli. He looks up at me, then walks away to the back and tells someone else to assist me. That is the kind of guy he was.

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  65. Michael StreeflandJuly 2, 2013 at 6:58 PM

    I used to do that shit with my dad and uncle. It was just something they did on the side, fortunately for them. Roofs with cedar shakes were the worst. You were never more than a step away from a potential fall from the roof with those things. You step on one that gives and your sphincter tightens up quick.

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  66. If you've ever been to the Price Chopper in Plattsburgh, you have!

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  67. You had a dishwasher? lol, lucky you!!

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  68. Hey, all that sawdust on the floor ought to be good for something, right?

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  69. God, I used to go to art college, and all the people in one class were older women. Fucking INSANE to be in that group. They were full of politics, insanity and whining behind people's backs, and they liked to band together to hate on everyone else.

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  70. Honestly, man, if I had a choice I would have. It was weird, because I hit a certain point and I was in the zone. Like I was on auto-pilot, and my brain had checked out. I just kept rolling, and rolling, and sweating, and rolling. Easily the worst experience of my life.

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  71. Yeah, but did you ever grab Naomi Watts' tit?

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  72. Maybe not, but I've been through there. I always get Ground Round when I'm up that way.

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  73. "You're a liar! You're a cheat! You're a scam! You are a no-good son of a bitch!"

    Greatest Flair rant ever; also, had it been a few years later, you could've had a pipe bomb moment.

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