What was the worst job you've ever had?

It was as an assistant hotel manager. The general manager micromanaged, attempted to pull the wool over the eyes of the owners, and was sleeping with a co-worker. Fortunately, I got out and went to work at another one of the chain’s hotels before the GM was fired.

Later, a wise person shared that employees often quit their boss before they quit their job. How true in this case.

pizza delivery. I lasted one night. The pay was horrible, I had to use my own car, I was threatened with violence, and I nobody tipped. Shit, people. Tip your delivery people.

Applebee’s.

Working 2 days for a tiny ad agency whose owner, a newborn Christian, announced to me at lunch on my first day that I was fated to go to hell unless I converted from Judiasm.

Medical biller. I got to be the face of your insurance company when it rejects your coverage for treatment. It’s like a special hell for people who dislike confrontation.

The one I have right now

I had a ‘professional’ job for which I put in about 2000 hours of overtime (grueling, middle of the night support calls) over the span of about two years, which was never even acknowledged by management and certainly not at all compensated.
After I got my next job, it took about a year for me to stop gritting my teeth when the phone rang.

I have been so fortunate. I’ve enjoyed every job I’ve had.
If I had to pick the worst I’d say working at a Chicken Delight while in high school. Every day my clothes and body were permeated with fryer grease. I shared a bedroom with my brother and he used to complain about the stench. I still had fun at the place. Good memories.

“Don’t Cook Tonight! Call Chicken Delight!”

I lasted five months as a secretary/amanuensis for a women who ran her own PR firm, out of her bedroom. I had a tiny desk with a manual typewriter and a phone, crammed between her bed and clothes closet.

My typing skills were none-too-good and when she hovered, I made lots of typos. Then I discovered she was having an affair with the husband of an acquaintance of mine. So that was that.

There were a lot of them; I worked in the crematorium at a huge pet cemetary, I was a gorilla in a carnival gorilla show, but the one that comes to mind is one of the first when I was hired as an Arthur Murray dance instructor. I was underage, just 17. The only dancing I’d ever done in my life up until then was an Irish Sword Dance for school under the micromanagement of proud Irish nuns. My lack of experience didn’t seem to bother Ms. M., the lady who ran the studio. She taught me everything I needed to know within a couple of days. It was the best paying summer job I ever had in my life and I really needed the money for college, but I hated it. My dance partners were lonely, middle-aged women and I was paid in tips that amounted to about twice as much as the meager salary.

The worst was a stint as a tele-marketer. Oh, hail no. I walked out after a couple of hours.

Walking around and sticking advertisment flyers into mail boxes.
@Dutchess_III
Yeah, knowingly trying to con people into buying junk they neither need nor want is something I would only do if I was rejected for porn.

I went from one job to another, and the boss was nicknamed shakey by one of my coworkers. This boss was the biggest dick I ever worked for. Anything good happened he took credit for, anything bad he dumped the blame on us. I had a loan the loan review guy rated satisfactory, he was sucking up to the boss and reviewing loans, he rated it unsatisfactory so he could promote his system. He was the biggest brown noser ever. I didn’t stay there for long. It wasn’t worth it.

Factory work, I lasted about a week. It was the same thing over and over. This machine that measured the amount of pressure their containers could take. UG

The few days I worked in a rendering plant. Thank god it was the dead of winter.

I answered a random ad on Craigslist to proofread people’s manuscripts. Barely made it through my first assignment. A western set on a tropical island and written in first person. I wanted to gouge my eyes out with my pencil.

The 12 years I worked in a rendering plant, horrible working conditions safety sucked, and management should have been lined up against a wall and just plain shot.

I have been fortunate.

The worst job I had was the night shift at a KFC.

It was not air conditioned in the back cooking area and we had about eight big pots of oil going at any one time to fry the food so the heat and sweat were unbearable at times and since we always had the back door open with just a screen door, sometimes the flies would be a real irritant. We used to knock them into the batter then throw their butts into the fryers (never eat the loose crispy bits).

We had to empty and scrub the deep fryers and grills by hand at the end of the shift and then render the chickens with a band saw for the next day. Nobody ever lost a finger that I knew of but blood was shed. And them chicken bones could cause a nasty infection if you did not take care of any punctures immediately. Them thin rubber gloves did nothing to protect your hands.

The ONLY good thing about it was that we made deals with other fast food companies to trade buckets of chicken for their food. So one night we would have whataburgers, then pizza, then tacos, then different burgers, then subways, then BBQ, then chinese food then we would start all over again. No matter where you work, you get tired of your own cooking real fast so it helped break the monotony for all of us and everyone was very willing to trade. Don’t know what the bosses thought of it, if they ever found out but since we were allowed to eat all we wanted, I always figured that they were breaking even if we traded it for something different.

@rojo Wow! KFC! The big time!
We (Chicken Delight) did not have a night shift. We came in early and prepared the chicken. They came to us pre-cut so we had to batter and stack them in ½ chicken piles; wing on the bottom, then leg, thigh, and breast on top. We sold ½ chicken dinners. Also 8 piece (1 chicken) box and 24 piece (3 chicken) buckets.
Occasionally we’d get an irate, idiot customer complaining: “My bucket came with all wings. I want another one.” Impossible! Crooks! My boss did not tolerate that all. “Three chickens have 6 wings and that is what you got. You also got 6 breasts, 6 thighs, and 6 legs. The only way that bucket had all wings is if you or your kids already ate everything else.” And he’d bang the phone down.

Wow! KFC! The big time!
Haha…you’re cute

@SQUEEKY2 You know Squeek we talked about this before, but it fascinates me that you were able to work at that place for 12 years. I wasn’t at that job long enough to appreciate or even realize deficiencies in management or safety. The overwhelming shock at the horrors of the place superseded all other considerations. Within an hour of my arrival at the place, there was one thing of which I was rock hard certain, and that was that I would not be there to experience the “wonders” accompanying the Spring thaw.

Luckily, I have not had any jobs that most people would consider awful. My first job was at a local 5 &10 (in other words, for those who don’t know what that is, it’s a discount store like a smaller Walmart). It only paid $3.50 per hour, which was a few cents more than minimum wage at the time (I was 16) and so I would work all day for take home of $18. It was boring but it was not awful, for the most part.

When I was in college, I worked part time for an attorney. He specialized in elder law and SEC types of things. He was very smart and I learned a lot from him. I was his typist and I was the only person he had working for him at the time. I wanted a job that was about 20 hours a week but he really needed more like full time or almost full time. On some occasions, I couldn’t leave until something was finished (lots of revisions as he would re-think and revise often) and on nights when I had a test or paper due the next day, there would sometimes be an argument.

Both of those jobs were not awful but in my scheme of things, they were tough. I guess as far as tough goes, the hardest was CPS worker. Details are too mundane unless someone really wants to know, then I’ll tell you, but it was tough. It paid well, though so that is a mitigating factor.

I pick a different job every time I answer a question like this, depending on my mood. I’ve had jobs that were mixed good and bad and could be the best and the worst at the same time.

Today, I’ll pick my old Pizza Hut job as the worst. The job itself wasn’t bad, but the neighborhood was terrible. I took orders over the phone and after they gave me their address, I’d have a 50/50 chance that I’d have to reject the order because it was a “bad address” because the delivery guy was robbed the last time he went to that address. Once a guy came in and ordered a pizza for carryout. he was covered in blood and had an open wound on his forehead. It looked like he got bashed in the head with something. Before he could finish his order, he passed out on the floor and we had to call the cops. Thank god we were never robbed while I was working there, but I had to call the police several times because I witnessed muggings on a regular basis. I have no idea how I escaped my own mugging.

Our store was mostly dead except for the 15th and the last day of the month, when the welfare checks were issued. People were rude and nasty over the phone—mostly because we told them we couldn’t deliver pizza to them because they robbed the pizza guy last time he came to their place.

It was wild, but it was my first job in San Francisco and it paid the bills. It was really freaking scary though.

@keobooks Sounds like an absolute nightmare.