Your Worst Job.

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Somebody's been talking bout dream jobs, but since we won't always get our dream job, I think we should attempt to avoid nightmares. Tell me a nightmare job you had, you have, or you Never want to have. You may say some.

For me, nightmare jobs would be working in fast food or doing somebody else's laundry. I hate the later so much I'd just stuff everybody's clothes in their doors and not fold or iron them. The former I did for 4 months and found it boring and stressful to the point I quit.

I once did telemarketing for two weeks. That was several lifetimes ago.

The fast food job where my manager verbally threatened me... I am really sensitive to stuff like that.

I have a few:

Being shot at in a building as an unarmed security guard.

Working for UPS at one of their "hubs" where we would load semi trailers with boxes/parcels of varying size and weight from light to heavy. UPS told us in training that UPS did not make money "shipping air" so the boxes needed to be packed front to back as perfectly as possible like a real life 3D Tetris game. We were responsible for up to 3 semi trailers at once with the boxes coming down to the trailers on conveyor belts. You couldn't see how many boxes would be stacking up at the other trailers when you were deep inside the one you were working in so a manager on a catwalk would yell/scream at you like a drill sergeant to get to another trailer. Management was not allowed to help in any way and was only there to observe and yell. I did this in the middle of winter where the inside of the trailers were frozen and all the rivets had frost covering them. Even so, within fifteen minutes of the whistle blowing, my sweat would drip from my forehead onto the boxes. You were not allowed to wear gloves because then they apparently couldn't "dust for fingerprints" if someone tried to steal packages. That meant your hands would often get gashed by large copper staples. The shift started at 10pm and would go until 2am. At midnight the whistle blew for a fifteen minute break. No one talked to each other and would instead stare blankly while replacing their lost fluids with liquids. It was like an intense non-stop nearly four hour workout five days per week. My brain could not think fast enough as far as the best way to position each box so I was yelled at often by the manager on the catwalk. I lasted a few months at the most before I quit.

Service Clerk out of high school which more or less is a clean up and front end duties job at Supermarkets. Cleaning the redemption center not only was completely disgusting but dealing with the homeless and drug addicts who hung out there all day was unpleasant to say the least. Worst part is I did that job way longer than I should have but dealing with the recession during that time didn't help matters. At least now I am doing significantly better.

I've never had a job that was a complete nightmare, but my least favorite was a grocery store bagger. Which you'd think would be a simple job. The main problem was that this particular store prides themselves in that they offer "premiere customer service" and are pretty much the only grocery store chain anymore that still has their baggers actually go outside with customers and help load their groceries in their cars. They had all these little rules for baggers, and basically wanted us to be really pushy with customers and try to go outside with as many of them as possible. The thing is, most people in this day and age don't want that service, unless they're elderly, handicapped, or maybe if they have multiple small children to corral and don't want to have to worry about putting their groceries in the car too. When I was starting the job, I just assumed and we were to offer the carryout service to every customer, but if they declined, oh well. But no....we had to do what was called "2 and 2"...make sure we had 2 hands on the cart and offered to go out with them 2 times. If we offered and they said no, we were NOT supposed to just say ok and let them go. Even just saying, "oh are you sure, I don't mind?" wasn't considered the best thing to do. What they REALLY preferred was that we just kept walking towards the door with the cart and said, "I've got it." It really was insane. And this clearly annoyed a lot of customers and made them uncomfortable. They also told us that we needed to make sure to take the cart from the customer in the very beginning and pull it all the way around to where we were while we bagged. I guess that was to make sure that we could get our hands on it before the customer when it came time to go outside. But I was never comfortable just snatching the cart from them when they had their purse or their child in the cart. And sometimes, I'd ask them to let me pull the cart around, and they'd say no, most likely because they knew I was going to harass them later about going outside with them, so they didn't even want to give it to me in the first place. What was I supposed to do in situations like that? Wrestle the cart away from them? I guess so, because I got counseled, and later got written up for not doing "2 and 2" correctly. I definitely always offered carryout service twice, at least verbally. But sometimes it just wasn't possible to physically have my hands on their cart. And I just couldn't be pushy and forceful with the customers. If I were the customer in the situation and a bagger was being that way with me, I definitely would have been uncomfortable and would have just wanted to get the heck out of there. And being written up was the last straw...my manager even said what a good job I did otherwise, and how I was one of the only baggers they could rely on to have everything clean and done at night when I closed. But I was literally written up because I had hopped on a register where there hadn't previously been a bagger, and the lady's groceries had piled up. I was still trying to finish bagging the last few things when she finished paying, and she just walked over to where I had the cart and got her hands on it before I could.

The other negative to the job was of course having to go out constantly in extreme temperatures. I'm especially sensitive to overly hot and cold weather, and having to go out in the summer when it was in the 90s with horrible humidity was the worst. The job was certainly stressful when I had to worry about getting written up for something so stupid, but even when it wasn't stressful (when the customer service manager wasn't there to watch us, or creepily sit in her office and watch camera footage of us to see if we were doing 2 and 2 properly), it was pretty boring and tedious. I can't multitask very well and I definitely can't do too much at once, so I do feel like a need a job that doesn't require TOO much of that, but bagging was just on the other end of the extreme. All I did all day was bag groceries and occasionally go out to help customers or retrieve carts. And I did get bored doing nothing but that for several hours straight.

Hannahjrob:

One of my first jobs was a grocery bagger. I think it was 1987 and I can identify with much of what you're saying. Not the 2 and 2 part, but everything else. Every other type of worker there was union labor except for baggers. We were peons and many of the cashiers let us know it. That was also the very first year grocery stores in our area started to offer plastic bags. One day there were these weird metal contraptions with with no warning. They held the bundles of plastic bags. We'd never seen anything like them.

"What are these?"
"They're plastic bags. From now on, you're to ask each and every customer if they want paper or plastic."

Loathsome things, those plastic bags. I HATED them. What was wrong with paper bags? I HATED having to ask everyone and to have to wait for their response with a smile on my face.

Funny how things come full circle. Now those stupid plastic bags are being banned in many places.

Bill. Collections.

One of the worst jobs I had was working nightshift and caring for an extremely medically fragile child on a ventilator (I'm a nurse). I have no idea how I was able to do that for over a year, as the anxiety I felt was horrendous. I eventually had a mental breakdown, and had to leave the case. I will never work nights again or with children on ventilators. The responsibility is HUGE and anything that can go wrong usually does. To top it off you're alone all night because the family is sleeping. I found out that after one of my shifts had needed and I'd gone home for the day, not 30 minutes after I left he went into full cardiac arrest and his mom was the only person at home with him. He had to be air lifted to a hospital.

With my record of getting jobs being approximately 1 job-25 rejections, I can't describe my 'worst job.' But here's the jobs that I would NOT want to do under any circumstances...

- Fast food. Absolutely not. They are stressful, hot environments, with angry managers who don't want to be there, rude customers, you name it. Most fast food places do NOT have you just work as a cashier...you are expected to do everything as a crew member. The stress combined with noises and rude people would make me quit (or get fired) in 2 weeks or less.
- Special education/1-on-1 jobs. Keep in mind, I'm on the site because I have HFA. As a substitute parapro I keep seeing the same 1-on-1 special ed positions show up at a couple of schools, and I don't take them. 1-on-1 students are usually non-verbal, and/or experience violent outbursts or tantrums. I would be lost on what to do. I had no experience in the self-contained classroom as a kid. Now general para subbing...I LOVE doing that! And it's sadly my only job experience. Small group reading, helping in the classroom, recess duty, every day is different. Maybe I should widen my horizons and try the 1-on-1 once...if I can't take it, don't take it again.
- Working in the fields. I wouldn't fit in because I'm not Hispanic and do not speak Spanish. Here in Yakima, half of the county consists of fruit/vegetable fields, mainly apples. Actually, most warehouse jobs are like that here as well.
- Late night shifts at convenience stores or hotels. Crime rate is high here and robberies are common. No thanks...I do NOT want a gun pointed at my head at 3:30AM.

The jobs I've been rejected from, were jobs that I could handle doing. Receptionist/cleaning gym equipment at a local fitness club; several paraeducator positions; front desk at a hotel (with a little training I'd do great); cashier at a local grocery store; general team members at the local kids arcade; general team member at a bowling alley; donation attendant at Goodwill; a couple of stocking jobs; seasonal driver's assistant at UPS. All rejected me, only a handful ever did interviews (and I did quite well with them nevertheless).

I was 18, needed a summer job between schools and this factory was about 15 minutes walk from my house. I only knew they worked with meat stuff.
Hmm well when I was called in to a trial day I realised what they were really doing.
Washing pork guts inside and outside for sausages. You can't image how disgusting it was, I waa near to be sick into the massive container.
I said I would go to the toilet but basically I ran for my life.
And the cherry on the top, there were two angry dogs in the yard guarding the factory and they didn't like that a stranger was there,but luckily I managed to get out without being mauled too.

And fast food industry is HELL too!

Any job that has an abnormally high amount of stress ( soldier, doctor, police officer, firefighter, 911 operator), except in video games. If I can't rid the real world of suffering and injustice I might as well do it virtually. Although I don't usually play games where the protagonist is a soldier.

And then there's working as a cashier at a store even at a restaurant. I lose focus all to easily when I have to do repetitive, mundane, boring tasks and I start daydreaming. That was bad enough when I was in school. I feel bad for the cashiers, sometimes. I know they get some really nasty customers who make me look emotionally stable.

A janitor. Although I wouldn't have to interact with other people much, having to clean up other people's filth when I have a hard enough time cleaning my own apartment would be beyond disgusting.

I enjoyed working at a special needs summer camp, but the managers ran it really poorly, over worked us, and made a lot of questionable decisions... which made it far worse. Ive talked to people who worked at similar camps... nowhere near as much work

the cheesefactory (packaging),
every time i worked (and not the bf) i got a heroin- consumption going, instead of any other consumer-desire,
thus further on, decided on the "stay at home mom and the working husband" model

maybe at home too, I (&sibs) had to help/work a lot, but it ended more often with father's meltdowns (thus it ended feeling failured by uncontrollable causes)

Fast food that's for damn sure, I did all the cleaning and the manager was a nightmare

Fast food, my coworkers use to mock me for being so quiet and they made fun of the way I walked and talked. And laughed when I made mistakes.