Bull$h!t jobs... gotta love 'em!

Off-topic
1

Being that not all of us are born natural geniuses like Gerble, nor do most of us inherit large sums of money for no good reason, sooner than later we find ourselves rolling up our sleeves and doing some dirty work. What’s your experience been?

I’ve been lucky enough not to have had to work in the food service industry; I’ve heard some horror stories from friends who had to cook fries & flip burgers… no thanks!

My “entry level” job experience took place in an electronics factory, doing test and assembly. Bonehead work. A typical work sequence involves placing a part in a test jig, pressing the big green button, and throwing the part away if a red light comes on. Otherwise the part goes back on the tray. Repeat. Fifteen hundred times a day. Whee.

My favorite highlight is the time I was falling asleep while working (easy to do in a comfy chair) to be shocked awake 'cause I pressed the green button while my hands were still touching the test jig. The shock was strong enough to put me on the floor, about four feet back from my desk. No flesh was burnt, but I smelled something funny for the rest of the day.

I think I fried my brains. People who’ve met me would probably agree. Ouch.

Another job that was particular entertaining was selling lift tickets at the local ski resort. Driving to work at 3 in the morning over icy roads did not allow for sleepy drivers. I woke up in a snow bank a couple times, thank goodness I had a really big, really old car. Donuts in the empty, iced-over parking lot were fun, though.

Working with the public makes one realize how little evolution has occurred between humans and their animal predecessors.

People would have to stand in line for well over 10 minutes sometimes, which would entitle them to work up a frothing rage if their purchase total exceeded the estimate they spent the last 15 minutes cooking up in their pointy little heads (even if there was only $1 difference). Good thing there was a window between me and them… it allowed me to blow off steam by leaning back (so they couldn’t hear me so well) and throwing passive-aggressive obscenities into my dialog: “f*ck you very much for visiting our mountain today, sir!”

But, hey, I got more free time on the mountain than most of the season pass holders :slight_smile:

So what’re your stories? I know you got 'em! Fess up!

2

My first job in college was as a dishwasher at the campus pancake house. It was hot and nasty. College students are famous for stuffing whatever is left on their plates into their glasses and mugs and I got to get it out. The waitresses, similarly on work study, were unhappy to be there and took it out on me. I lasted 3 weeks. I spent the rest of my work study working in the library and am a librarian today.

My summer job between freshman and sophomore years was as a janitor in a ritzy building on Madison Ave and 68th street in Manhattan. Sweeping, mopping and buffing the floors. Taking out the garbage takes on a new meaning when it’s 200 other peoples’ garbage. I worked many night shifts polishing the brass fixtures and sleeping. The manager of the building was an Irishman who was mostly one drink away from beating the shit out of me and his assistant was a homunculous Puerto Rican guy who actually had his car horn set up to play La Cucaracha. And speaking of which, the waterbugs in the basement were enormous.

My last crappy job was right out of college as the assistant buyer for the hardware department for a discount chain called S.E. Nichols. This place made the Family Dollar Store look upscale. In this place every man in my position was called “Assistant Buyer” and every woman in my position called “Secretary”. Same responsibilities, different pay. My responsibilities pretty much amounted to placing orders with the vendors and making sure the stores didn’t forget run out of the sales items which consisted of hammers most quality nails would shatter. My boss was the unhappiest man I have ever known. He was unhappily married, unhappy in his job, disappointed with his kids and ultimately got fired. To his credit he took me to lunch to let me know that he’d been fired and expressed sincere concern in me and hoped that his leaving would not adversely affect my career.

3

I have had the pleasure to experiece the following jobs:
dishwasher at Howard Johnson’s
drive-thru cashier at Wendys
Ice-Cream Man
Hot dog vendor
Asst. Manager at a crappy health food store
Forman at an auto-parts distribution center

4

Go to college then … you will certainly get a better job.
I had those type of jobs while in High school.

My worst/hardest work …?

try detasseling corn.
in 100 degree heat
in the middle of cornfields
just off the Illinois river (humidity and bugs)

I thought I was going to passout, falloff the tractor platform and get runover by a ‘hick’ farmer
(die… in other words)
I would get home sit down and fall alseep everyday
(my mom freaked out when I wouldnt wake sometimes)

But I had a friend take my prize…

in the same conditions …
he cleaned the riverboat barges…

he said the rats were huge

the only funny thing that ever happened during that job was accidentalty pissing on an electric fence :slight_smile:

5

Re: Bull$h!t jobs… gotta love 'em!

That hurt! No not you me! I had hernia surgery yesterday, and when I read that I thought I would split my gut open.

6

Right now I work 3 jobs.
I do maintenance work at a Tree Farm. I also drive tractor, skid steer, etc. Weld, drill, cut, etc. etc.
I pump gas at a gas station.
And I work at a sawmill on the cleanup crew and I also drive fork lift.

Before these jobs I worked at the beach renting out boats, canoes, kayaks, pedallos etc. to tourists and spent alot of time just sitting and talking to girls.

Although the beach job was sweet, the pay sucked… it was on comission. The Tree farm job is the hardest and I make 8.55 CND an hour. At the gas station I make 8 bucks and it’s just boring. At the mill I make 24 or 26 dollars an hour (not quite sure, and it changes if I work a graveyard shift.) and I like it the best.

After school’s through I hope to get into adventure tourism.
But whatever you do, dont get a job at a gas station.

-Dylan

7

i used to work food service for the dorms at college. Now i assistant manage a movie theatre. that sucks too. not horrible but i have dumbasses working under me who spend 10 mnutes explaining to me how they were about to work really hard, and do exactly what i just told them to do, rather than do it. also when working in box office people ask the worst questions ever.

“you guys don’t have X movie any more?”
“no sir. that left 3 weeks ago. sorry.”
“bullshit, i read it in the paper today!”
“well sir, that must not have been today’s paper, i swear we don’t have that movie”

ugh. oh well, i’m interviewing for a job at a ski resort in utah, maybe something will come of that.

8

Re: Re: Bull$h!t jobs… gotta love 'em!

i feel your
pain :frowning:

9

I will feel your pain… on February 24th.

10

I used to collect test-data to verify mathematical models for a company that did traffic planning.

It sounds better than it really was. You stand beside the road and try to estimate how many cars and how many people go by.
The best day was when the watch broke. Trying to tell time from the bus-schedule and a makeshift sundial was fun (but not very acurate :frowning: ), but mostly it was just cold and boring.

The worst was testing the automatic traffic controll system. Some cars had a little gray box somewhere in the windshield. The job was to stand on a bridge across a highway and write it down whenever you saw one of those little gray boxes. Ideally data from the sensors on the bridge would be the same as mine.
At the end of the day I was so used to looking at cars comming toward me that, when I looked away from the cars, everything seemed to move away from me. The effect went away after a few minutes, but it felt wierd while it lasted.

11

I once had a job in a Medical Vitrification facility. We operated a Plasma Enhanced Melter. You have to love a job where the first thing your boss tells you is:
There are four things that will kill you here.
1 the heat
2 the voltage
3 the biomedical waste
4 the costic fluids

Now that was a fun job :roll_eyes: xc

12

My first job was working at a Dairy Queen. The job itself sucked cause I was usually in charge of cleaning the grill and dishwashing. The water was super hot and it hurt alot. But I really liked serving customers, people buying ice cream are usually pretty happy.

But I’m now pretty selective about the stuff I eat there. Cause I know there’s a good chance that some of the candies fell on the floor and just got swept up back into the bin. Dirty floors = Dirty candy.

Now I work Sunoco. So far it’s alright, I have chair and I take money from people. And when people try to steal gas from me, I have to chase after them, that’s always fun. Sunoco’s awesome.

13

my first job was labeling evidence two summers ago… i was 14

basically here’s the rundown. you have about 30,000 pages to label, and about 300 pages of stickers to do it with, each with about 100 stickers. AND they gotta go in order, the stickers starting at 1 and going to 30,000. Pluck one off, put it on page 1, pluck off sticker #2, put it on page 2, etc. I guess you could say i’m somewhat of an expert at peeling sticker’s off of pages and putting them on other pieces of paper. by the end of about 20,000, you can do almost about a page every 1.5 seconds. i think once i was done (it took me 2 or 3 weeks), i had a few stacks of labelled papers that each went about 5 feet high. i dare you to find a more repetitive job than that :slight_smile:

-grant

14

:slight_smile:
what a wonderfull thought

15

One of my many jobs was working in a Law Firm traveling the country numbering documents and making copies of those documents for large lawsuites. We used a hand stamping machine to number the pages then make copies. Sometimes numbering in the millions. I would have a staff of 3-4 people with me with 4 copiers working 12 hour days for weeks on some jobs. As boring as it sounds, I actually enjoyed those trips. Always new challanges.

This is the machine we used to stamp…

I did this back in the days I thought I was going to be a lawyer.