What's The Worst Job You Ever Had?

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i learned how to program computers when i was young, and i knew a number of languages and wrote many programs for my entertainment and to satisfy my curiosity about notions that used to crop up in my mind. i never was taught, but i just found my own way.
i did not get any jobs as a programmer for a few years as no one hired anyone without qualifications for a job as a programmer then.
i was unemployed between the ages of 18 and 19 and my mother said i MUST work at what ever i could, then i worked at a few bad jobs after that.

the worst one was when i answered an ad that said i could make $2000 per week if i had initiative.
well i was not lazy because i worked hard on all my useless non money making curiosities, so i applied. i was naive.
i was accepted and then i went to the "inauguration" meeting before my first day of work.
i realized that they wanted me to flog pots and pans!!.

they gave me a number of pots and pans and assigned me to a group, and we all had to go to a shopping mall in the group leaders stinky old car. I HAD TO SIT IN THE BACK!!.
i did not want to sit in the back and i became annoyed with the "team leader" who assigned our seating positions in his old crate.
i had to accept his decision as to where everyone would sit because it was my first day and i did not want to get sacked.
but it was like trying to stop the flow of water through a garden hose with one's thumb pressed hard into the end.
little jets of "squirting" pressure escaped from my mouth that i tried to seal.

as i sat in the back of his clunker i declared in an artificially happy way "well what a fine
introduction to this "team"!
it's a great first impression to be derived from sitting in the back of a stinking mouldy smelly old crate and expecting a coil spring to burst through the decrepit old seat into my arse at any minute!! !!" (i remember that sentence well because i told my friends about the encounter)
he turned and asked me to repeat it and i told him i forgot what i said.
he said something like "mate.....if ya don't wanna...." and i interrupted and said "yes let's get on with it. look at your watch. we have to go"

so we drove to the hornsby plaza which is a 4 storey complex of shops.

when we got there, my task was to go to all the shops and interrupt the people working at the shops to show them a display of pots and pans and ask them to buy them.
needless to say that they were not impressed. neither was i.

my "sales pitch" was "sorry i have to try to sell these pots and pans. are you interested in pots and/or pans?"
they would say "no i'm sorry. i'm rather busy as you can see".

well.....i have ODD and i did not see that they were busy but whatever. i understood that pots and pans are hard to impress people with.

sometime later i was found by the team leader and he asked me with a bare toothed smile "how many units have you sold so far?"

his teeth were as yellow as kraft single's (individually wrapped cheese slices).
i was taken aback by his grin even before i heard his question about how many sets i sold.

i said "none" and his teeth disappeared beneath his lips that returned to a normal position. i thought "thank god there is an upside to not selling any pots and pans"

i started to snicker because i went into an "entertainment cycle" where i imagined seriously unflattering caricatures in my mind pertaining to his head.

he grabbed me by the arm and told ne to get serious, and he looked so angry.

i thought "ha ha ha ha the f*cking pots and pans maybe shoddy and substandard and unsaleable to even idiots, but your head is no match for them. especially when they get swinging so hands off mister!! !"

i did not communicate that thought to him and my thumb pressed more firmly on my "hose" to suppress a scene where i may get into trouble.

so he told me to sharpen my act up and i said "aye aye popeye" as he walked off and i am sure he would have recommended that i was unsuitable for the job.
so i placed my set of pots and pans on the ground next to a shop in the mall and i walked to the train station and went home.
i never heard from them again.

i was totally not designed for that type of work.

In high school I spent 1 week selling newspaper subscriptions door-to-door. Ugh. The only good part was that we had a script to work off of. The worst was that it was pure commission; no salary. I figured with the sales I made versus the hours I put in, I worked for $0.50/hr. That's right...fifty CENTS per hour! Oh, and the other workers kept accusing me of being a narc. WTF?!

I once had a job peeling boiled eggs.

I stood at a metal sink in a cold room, with a dozen other people, wearing a rubber apron, knee high rubber boots, and rubber gloves with an endless supply of boiled eggs wich had to be peeled with both hands for up to 12 hours a day and you were timed on how many you could peel and told off if you didn't make the quota. All for minimum wage.

It was the only place in town that was always hiring when other places were laying off workers. You didn't need a CV. You didn't need to fill in an application. They just observed that you were breathing, reasonably coherent, possibly sober but it wasn't a requisite, and able to stand upright unaided... and then asked if you could start immediately... they even had a box of fresh rubber gloves on the desk to kit you out.

The place was disgusting in every way possible. Especially in the summer when the flies got in and did what flies naturally do. And no matter how many times you showered there was always the lingering smell of rotten eggs on your person.

I still can't eat a boiled egg unless I boil it myself... because I know where those eggs of unkonwn origin may have been before they got to the salad bar or into the egg and mayo sandwich.

Gavia, I'm getting sick just reading what you wrote about your job. The smell of boiled eggs makes me physically ill.

My worst job? Working as a cashier in a grocery store. Dealing with way too many customers. Luckily that was only for 3 months

boiled or scrambled or poached or fried,
they're the same when they drop from your backside.

With all due respect -- I prefer my eggs boiled, or scrambled, or poached, or fried, without any extra wriggling protein, thank you.

My first, current and only job is definetly a contendor for the worst job I'll probably ever have.

I work at McDonald's.

I'm in the kitchen all the time, so at least I don't have customers shouting at me. It's litte compensation, since I'm expected to 'socialise' non-stop with the other kitchen staff all day. Most of them are 20-something year old college dropouts who mostly joke about sex and stuff like that. And how drunk they're planning on getting that night. They're more than aware that I don't talk to them, and are always pushing me to get things out of me. Like a 'conversation' that went on for literally weeks about 'Let's find out what Chaz likes to do at home'. More than anything, I hate talking about myself because I know people see me as weird. I don't like that. In fact, it's almost a fear to be seen as abnormal. So I'd just shrug my shoulders nervously and they'd continue to pester me. Over an eight-hour shift. Every Saturday. For weeks.

The manager's really scary. He shouts at me and calls me stupid if I forget something or make something wrong. When I don't respond, he shouts more, and more than once, I've heard him suggest that I'm deaf when he thought I wasn't listening.

That's enough about the people - what about the actual job? Aside from the small problem of me being vegan and McDonald's being a burger place, the whole environment is disgusting. When I'm there, I feel the need to compulsively wash my hands, which is frustrating, and I come home stinking of burger. It's really stressful and you have to rush everything, which doesn't help. And every time someone places an order, if flashes on a screen above you with a horrible beeping noise. And everything beeps. It's so noisy. When stuff is done frying, it beeps. When we run out of stock, it beeps. Over lunchtime especially, it gives you the worst headache imaginable.

And as if it's not obvious, the wages are rubbish.

I'm seriously considering quitting. I can almost gurantee it will have driven me insane by Christmas. I don't know how those people do it. Some of the older ones there have worked there for 10-15 years. It drove me insane and I've been there 4 months.

Apology accepted and no offence taken.

My worst job was actually in government, when I worked on a department's intranet and also did some internet design. It was really hard to stay motivated when no-one knew what my job was really supposed to be, and trying to enact some changes to a really archaic system was like constantly bashing my head against a wall.

It was a very frustrating job and I walked after three months because I couldn't see the purpose of me sitting in an office for eight hours, spending most of my time surfing facebook.

The worst job was when I was in college, as a telemarketer for the Annual Fund and having to call alumni to get them to donate. It was so bad that I quit after a week.

Quizno's. There were times I was given 15 minutes notice to be in on what I thought was my day off or I would be threatened with a write up. My last day on the job, I got one for being late on my day off, so I ripped it up, took my hat and shirt laid it on the table and walked out

Subway. I think fast food in general is just the worst, judging by some of the other responses here. I remember one really awful day in particular that just did it for me: I was the opener, and the closer from the previous nite hadn't done even half of what they were supposed to do, so I had to play catch-up. Plus one co-worker came in late, another was a no-show, and we got slammed early and without let-up. We actually ran out of bread and I got screamed at by the manager when he came in, but hey I only have two hands! Can't be baking bread while trying to wait on everyone and answer the phone and take in deliveries at the same time when we're short a person and the prep work wasn't done the nite before like it should have been. Also, some of out customers would get psycho when you didn't put things on their sandwich in the order that they wanted it. What difference does it make? When you take a bite it all gets mixed up in your mouth anyways. Plus stupid things like the toilet backing up and not having time to get to it because of the line going out the door.

The one I got now, a damn cashier.