Worst job you ever had

[OzFox]

Worst job I almost had...

 

Saw an ad in the Evening Standard for a "laboratory assistant" at a medical college in Barbican. Went along for the interview, and it turned out the job was basically to look after the corpses that the trainee surgeons were working on and put all the bits back in the right place at the end of the day.

 

The 'interview' included a tour of the morgue, the operating theatres and the museum where they put anything interesting...medical oddities like siamese twins, double spines, deformities etc. I remember seeing a row of pickled heads sitting on a shelf (mostly black men for some reason)

 

Managed to hold it together, then sighed with relief when they gave the job to somebody else

 

Interestingly, the bloke said they couldn't put too many details in the job ad because "it attracts all sorts of weirdos"

[Rincewind]

The company wasn't Burke and Hare  was it?

[OzFox]

Don't think they had any need for body snatchers...they had plenty of 'volunteers'

 

After seeing what they do, it's made me think twice about leaving my bits and pieces to medical science

[DB11]

I worked in an office job last summer for five months, but it felt more like five years! It was a 40 mile each way commute and over an hour travelling each way, I don't think I'd want to work sat down in an office again! The travelling was worse than the job itself though, and I liked my colleagues.

 

Was still better than working in the Co-op though - retail is awful

[lavrentis]

[brookfox]

Easy one. Years ago I used to clean the bookies in Stocking Farm. Had to go in at the end of the day to find the floor covered in screwed up betting slips and fag ash. Tidy it completely, wipe the skids off the toilet, get back to the car safely then return the next day to the same scene.

Happy times!

[Nod.E]

I've had all sorts of jobs I've dreaded turning up to ever since I was old enough to work. I don't think I've met anyone else at 23 who has had more jobs!

14-16: Paper rounds. Lots of them. At one point I had a morning round Mon-Sat, free papers Tue-Thu (with all the leafleting too), and a Sunday round. 

16-17: McDonald's. Wasn't too bad in the most part but being bossed around by managers thicker than two short planks on power trips wasn't enjoyable. The cleaning was the worst part. Being on 'dive' at the end of shift was grim and having to empty the oil vats from the side of the grills was rank. Got a few burns as well that I am still scarred from. Then I went on Customer Service and had to deal with Shelthorpe's finest clientèle. Was not 100% successful in terms of biting my tongue.

17-18: Café - Waitor - One of the worst managers I've ever had. The woman was some sort of maniac. Plus I finished McDonald's for there on the provision that I would have decent hours. Ended up getting one 6 hour shift per week. The customers were mostly stuck up, too. I ended up just not turning up to a shift and didn't go back again. Couldn't afford to run my car and my girlfriend at the time lived in Newcastle so that wasn't a good mix.

18: Golf Club - Started working on the bar at a golf club. Best job I've had I think. Just had a laugh and served pints. Really laid back culture.

 

*WENT TO UNI*
 

19: Door-to-Door Sales. After my first year at university I decided it would be a good idea to get some 'marketing' experience. That's where my worst job came from. The job ad was very vague and didn't give much indication as to what I'd be doing. Turned out to be door-to-door sales. Had to get people signed up to giving money to a charity. I would leave my house at 8AM to get the train in to Leicester, before having training and then entering the field in Nottingham at about 1PM. Wouldn't get home til 10PM and all of it was unpaid. You would only get paid commission on sales made. On the first day I didn't manage a sale. Second day I got 2. Third day 1. I had to pay all my travel expenses so by the time I got paid I probably made £30 over 3 days. When I rang the manager to say I wasn't getting paid he said I wasn't getting paid. I argued for a bit before he ended up threatening me that he would find me and 'gouge my eyes out'. I lied and said I had the phone call recorded, and he soon paid up. Still, it remains comfortably my worst ever job.

19-20: Petrol Station - Just turned up each Sunday and took payments for petrol and snacks. It was the only day off for the owners so I would just stumble in at 9AM still pissed from the night before on the ale in the student union and sit there reading the papers in between taking payments until 5PM. When we had Chelsea away in the cup I even got a stream up on my laptop and sat watching that Pretty easy work really.

20-21: Placement year - Search Marketing. Took a year out from uni to get a proper student placement. It was at a decent media agency, Carat Media. Good job in terms of most of the people working there and the culture of the place. 3 Christmas parties all with paid for drinks was brilliant! Only down side was the job itself. My studies were in advertising and marketing, so I'm interested in the more creative side of advertising. Instead I was doing search marketing, which is basically getting clients to the top of the Google search for specified search terms. Interesting at times but being the intern of the office I spent most of my time in excel running reports. Also had to read through the hundreds of search terms clients were showing for and deciding which ones were irrelevant. Trust me, that can get boring by the time you're on the thousandth row. Also came across some sick and twisted searches for a client we had that sold dolls.

 

21: Maintenance at a School - My Dad's a carpenter at a school so I helped out over the summer between my 2nd and 3rd years at uni. Painting stuff, lifting stuff, knocking down classrooms, ripping up tiles. Pretty decent really. Just felt like I was mucking around and made a decent amount in the process.

22: First graduate job - Marketing Graudate. Was working at The Hut Group - The guys responsible for Zavvi, MyProtein, Preloved, IWantOneOfThose and a host of other e-commerce retailers. Took it because I didn't really have anything else on the cards. I spent so much time making the most of my last year at uni that applying to jobs sort of fell down my list of priorities. Making sure I got a 2:1 was hard enough work with the amount I was drinking so I just made sure of that over anything else. I was optimistic, though. Thought it could be decent. I was promised that I would be rotated around all marketing departments. That sounded promising - wanted to gain more experience. As it turned out they just chucked me in to PPC with no way out. The way the company is ran makes Nazi Germany look laid back. Absolute nightmare. I'd get calls at 9AM on a Sunday morning with my manager shouting at me to do work, and if I didn't I would get lectured on a Monday. My manager was an absolute nut-case. Everyone hates him and it's no wonder the average stay in the team is at about 4 months. One example that springs to mind is putting a holiday request on his desk. He absolutely lost his sh*t, just because I hadn't written the dates in, even though he knew precisely when I was on about as we had already had the conversation. All he needed to do was sign the piece of paper. The worst thing was that we were contracted 9AM-6PM but the culture of the place was that you were visibly judged if you left on the dot at 6 (which is late anyway!) Most people would stay 'til 7 so I ended up doing that. Just had no life at all. Very close second for worst ever job. I ended up applying to my current job and got sacked by my manager about 5 days later anyway Everyone hated him but I was the only one who would stick up for myself. Apparently that meant I had an ego that wasn't welcomed in the team! Worked out quiet nicely cause I got a bit of a pay out and had over a month before starting my current job. Just lucky that I ended up getting my current job else I'd have been in a sticky situation.

 

22: Marks & Spencer - Logistics. Worked over Christmas taking delivery orders for 3 weeks to keep the money ticking over. Not enjoyable and really looked forward to the end of shifts but it was easy money. Just crushed cardboard and organised food in the chillers and freezers.

 

23: My current job. I work at a marketing agency which thankfully is much more reasonable than my last job. It's really tricky for me to gauge how much of a good job it is, because as you can tell my previous experience of jobs has been nothing short of terrible. It feels decent though. I don't get any stress from it. My job in the short term is to market the agency. However, I haven't been able to do that because our new website is in development, so I can't start until that's ready. I started in January and it's still ongoing. Been very frustrating in that sense but we finally have a concrete go live date for the middle of July. In the meantime I have launched a PPC division within the agency - so I'm stuck doing PPC again for the time being, which we've established I hate! However, the company realise this and have assured me it isn't something I will be doing forever. They appreciate that I'm doing them a favour by launching it for them, and I have been contributing towards other bits and bobs which has been interesting. My only other concern really is that it's a small team of about 15 people. The problem with that is everyone else is older, so it's terrible in terms of any sort of social scene. Also, I'm not sure about the level of prestige the job is going to serve me with. Not that that should matter, but I worry I won't get exposure to national level advertising campaigns, which is what I really want to be involved in. Having said that, the plan is to expand to 50 people and my job is going to involve getting on to new client pitch lists, so essentially if I do my job well in the short term it will serve me well in the long term. This company could grow into something ideal for me, and if I'm part of the reason for that I will naturally progress. I just hope it works out that way. Who knows!

 

23: Revolution - In order to afford a holiday and festival this summer without destroying my finances I've decided to work in my local Revs! It's a mix of good and bad. Bad in the sense that each Friday I work 9-5 in my day job, then 11PM-5AM in my night job. Also in the sense that sometimes I'm on glasses which is an absolute nightmare. A 23 year old graduate from a top 10 uni shouldn't be collecting glasses really. As much of a snob that makes me sound, it is true. It's something for 16-18 year olds. However most of the time I'm on the bar which is fine. Get decent tips and just get paid for serving Jaeger and pints! Get 10p for every double I sell as well which stacks up. Also a 50% off revs card is useful for nights out! Will probably stick it out until August.

 

So 12 jobs for a 23 year old! I could probably do with sticking with this one for a while but if things don't go as planned no doubt I'll end up on the move again.

[Wymsey]

23: Revolution - In order to afford a holiday and festival this summer without destroying my finances I've decided to work in my local Revs! It's a mix of good and bad. Bad in the sense that each Friday I work 9-5 in my day job, then 11PM-5AM in my night job. Also in the sense that sometimes I'm on glasses which is an absolute nightmare. A 23 year old graduate from a top 10 uni shouldn't be collecting glasses really. As much of a snob that makes me sound, it is true. However most of the time I'm on the bar which is fine. Get decent tips and just get paid for serving Jaeger and pints! Get 10p for every double I sell as well which stacks up. Also a 50% off revs card is useful for nights out! Will probably stick it out until August.

I bet most students would love to have a job, including 'low-level' ones, even those who went to the more 'prestigious' Universities.

 

It's a customer service job; put it this way: the role you're doing has many valuable skills (verbal communication, commercial awareness, active listening, organised, etc) that you can get from it and essential for any type of organisation that it wants its most-productive employees to have.

 

I know people who graduated 3 years ago (from decent Uni's) who are doing roles like you - like pub work.

 

You may think that you deserve 'better', which probably is true, but just be grateful you're doing something that stops a gap in your CV.

[ramboacdc]

worked in a call centre for eon for their pre payment department.  that was awful work! never been called so many names and had so much abuse. 

[Nod.E]

I bet most students would love to have a job, including 'low-level' ones, even those who went to the more 'prestigious' Universities.

 

It's a customer service job; put it this way: the role you're doing has many valuable skills (verbal communication, commercial awareness, active listening, organised, etc) that you can get from it and essential for any type of organisation that it wants its most-productive employees to have.

 

I know people who graduated 3 years ago (from decent Uni's) who are doing roles like you - like pub work.

 

You may think that you deserve 'better', which probably is true, but just be grateful you're doing something that stops a gap in your CV.

True I guess.

It isn't something that I'll be putting on my CV though. I already work full time at a marketing agency. The bar job is just for a few extra pennies!

[Parafox]

Whilst looking for something else, came across this thread from 2 yrs ago.

 

Mine was selling door to door insurance for an American company. Commission only. Had to use my own car, never got paid for fuel, had to develop my own leads. Had to borrow money from the area manager to get started which I then had to repay from my commission. Also a percentage of anything I earned went to the area manager. I was expected to recruit others to work under me and take a percentage of whet they earned, (never happened). Basically pyramid sales. I lasted 3 months and never made more that a tenner a week for myself.

[lee7]

A warehouse when I was 19 full of foreigners. It was only agency work and I took the job purely because my ex was pregnant with my son at the time. 

Must have been about 20 staff with me being the only English one & I kid you not one of them spoke English. 

It was awful and I hated turning up everyday purely due to there lack of English. 

 

I then moved to another warehouse after 3 weeks at this place & it was the exact opposite every member of staff was English. 

 

 

[Milo]

Probably working at tights factory in Hinckley just after I left school (anyone remember the name?? Was it Atkins or something?). Was opposite the leisure centre...

 

Best but was going for a cheese and chip butty and a pint at the pub for lunch (The Bounty)??? 

[TiffToff88]

My current one (and that's saying something, because i used to work at Sports World in Thurmaston!). I hate every second. Used to love it until about 6 months ago. Won't give my reasons publicly.

 

Several people have left the company for the same reason as why i hate the place. If i could afford to do the same i would. But there are very limited job opportunities in my field so i'm stuck here for the foreseeable future.

[Parafox]

22 hours ago, Milo said:

Probably working at tights factory in Hinckley just after I left school (anyone remember the name?? Was it Atkins or something?). Was opposite the leisure centre...

 

Best but was going for a cheese and chip butty and a pint at the pub for lunch (The Bounty)??? 

I think it was H&J or similar, Hall and J.... I can't remember. Anyway, they used to be the biggest manufacturer of socks for the military as well as making other hosiery. They went under about two years ago and now the site is due to be demolished, presumably for some brownfield development. The leisure centre has been demolished and is currently an area of bare land. 

[Jattdogg]

Dont know if this counts  but sometimes (50% of the time it seems) being a dad is a cvnt of a job compared to any crap job ive had.

 

My 4 year old son is like a dictator, tyrant yet loveable little bunny. I go from looking at him with so much love ,amazement to wanting to snap crackle and pop when he is being a little crap head lol.

 

[Turbogre]

Can't really say I've ever had a job I've hated and dreaded going to.

 

Used to work the doors on various pubs and clubs around Nottingham for 6 months in 2011, got the odd abuse and threats of violence, but wouldn't say its the worse job in the world.

[Countryfox]

On 6/10/2015 at 14:38, Nod.E said:

I've had all sorts of jobs I've dreaded turning up to ever since I was old enough to work. I don't think I've met anyone else at 23 who has had more jobs!

14-16: Paper rounds. Lots of them. At one point I had a morning round Mon-Sat, free papers Tue-Thu (with all the leafleting too), and a Sunday round. 

16-17: McDonald's. Wasn't too bad in the most part but being bossed around by managers thicker than two short planks on power trips wasn't enjoyable. The cleaning was the worst part. Being on 'dive' at the end of shift was grim and having to empty the oil vats from the side of the grills was rank. Got a few burns as well that I am still scarred from. Then I went on Customer Service and had to deal with Shelthorpe's finest clientèle. Was not 100% successful in terms of biting my tongue.

17-18: Café - Waitor - One of the worst managers I've ever had. The woman was some sort of maniac. Plus I finished McDonald's for there on the provision that I would have decent hours. Ended up getting one 6 hour shift per week. The customers were mostly stuck up, too. I ended up just not turning up to a shift and didn't go back again. Couldn't afford to run my car and my girlfriend at the time lived in Newcastle so that wasn't a good mix.

18: Golf Club - Started working on the bar at a golf club. Best job I've had I think. Just had a laugh and served pints. Really laid back culture.

 

*WENT TO UNI*
 

19: Door-to-Door Sales. After my first year at university I decided it would be a good idea to get some 'marketing' experience. That's where my worst job came from. The job ad was very vague and didn't give much indication as to what I'd be doing. Turned out to be door-to-door sales. Had to get people signed up to giving money to a charity. I would leave my house at 8AM to get the train in to Leicester, before having training and then entering the field in Nottingham at about 1PM. Wouldn't get home til 10PM and all of it was unpaid. You would only get paid commission on sales made. On the first day I didn't manage a sale. Second day I got 2. Third day 1. I had to pay all my travel expenses so by the time I got paid I probably made £30 over 3 days. When I rang the manager to say I wasn't getting paid he said I wasn't getting paid. I argued for a bit before he ended up threatening me that he would find me and 'gouge my eyes out'. I lied and said I had the phone call recorded, and he soon paid up. Still, it remains comfortably my worst ever job.

19-20: Petrol Station - Just turned up each Sunday and took payments for petrol and snacks. It was the only day off for the owners so I would just stumble in at 9AM still pissed from the night before on the ale in the student union and sit there reading the papers in between taking payments until 5PM. When we had Chelsea away in the cup I even got a stream up on my laptop and sat watching that Pretty easy work really.

20-21: Placement year - Search Marketing. Took a year out from uni to get a proper student placement. It was at a decent media agency, Carat Media. Good job in terms of most of the people working there and the culture of the place. 3 Christmas parties all with paid for drinks was brilliant! Only down side was the job itself. My studies were in advertising and marketing, so I'm interested in the more creative side of advertising. Instead I was doing search marketing, which is basically getting clients to the top of the Google search for specified search terms. Interesting at times but being the intern of the office I spent most of my time in excel running reports. Also had to read through the hundreds of search terms clients were showing for and deciding which ones were irrelevant. Trust me, that can get boring by the time you're on the thousandth row. Also came across some sick and twisted searches for a client we had that sold dolls.

 

21: Maintenance at a School - My Dad's a carpenter at a school so I helped out over the summer between my 2nd and 3rd years at uni. Painting stuff, lifting stuff, knocking down classrooms, ripping up tiles. Pretty decent really. Just felt like I was mucking around and made a decent amount in the process.

22: First graduate job - Marketing Graudate. Was working at The Hut Group - The guys responsible for Zavvi, MyProtein, Preloved, IWantOneOfThose and a host of other e-commerce retailers. Took it because I didn't really have anything else on the cards. I spent so much time making the most of my last year at uni that applying to jobs sort of fell down my list of priorities. Making sure I got a 2:1 was hard enough work with the amount I was drinking so I just made sure of that over anything else. I was optimistic, though. Thought it could be decent. I was promised that I would be rotated around all marketing departments. That sounded promising - wanted to gain more experience. As it turned out they just chucked me in to PPC with no way out. The way the company is ran makes Nazi Germany look laid back. Absolute nightmare. I'd get calls at 9AM on a Sunday morning with my manager shouting at me to do work, and if I didn't I would get lectured on a Monday. My manager was an absolute nut-case. Everyone hates him and it's no wonder the average stay in the team is at about 4 months. One example that springs to mind is putting a holiday request on his desk. He absolutely lost his sh*t, just because I hadn't written the dates in, even though he knew precisely when I was on about as we had already had the conversation. All he needed to do was sign the piece of paper. The worst thing was that we were contracted 9AM-6PM but the culture of the place was that you were visibly judged if you left on the dot at 6 (which is late anyway!) Most people would stay 'til 7 so I ended up doing that. Just had no life at all. Very close second for worst ever job. I ended up applying to my current job and got sacked by my manager about 5 days later anyway Everyone hated him but I was the only one who would stick up for myself. Apparently that meant I had an ego that wasn't welcomed in the team! Worked out quiet nicely cause I got a bit of a pay out and had over a month before starting my current job. Just lucky that I ended up getting my current job else I'd have been in a sticky situation.

 

22: Marks & Spencer - Logistics. Worked over Christmas taking delivery orders for 3 weeks to keep the money ticking over. Not enjoyable and really looked forward to the end of shifts but it was easy money. Just crushed cardboard and organised food in the chillers and freezers.

 

23: My current job. I work at a marketing agency which thankfully is much more reasonable than my last job. It's really tricky for me to gauge how much of a good job it is, because as you can tell my previous experience of jobs has been nothing short of terrible. It feels decent though. I don't get any stress from it. My job in the short term is to market the agency. However, I haven't been able to do that because our new website is in development, so I can't start until that's ready. I started in January and it's still ongoing. Been very frustrating in that sense but we finally have a concrete go live date for the middle of July. In the meantime I have launched a PPC division within the agency - so I'm stuck doing PPC again for the time being, which we've established I hate! However, the company realise this and have assured me it isn't something I will be doing forever. They appreciate that I'm doing them a favour by launching it for them, and I have been contributing towards other bits and bobs which has been interesting. My only other concern really is that it's a small team of about 15 people. The problem with that is everyone else is older, so it's terrible in terms of any sort of social scene. Also, I'm not sure about the level of prestige the job is going to serve me with. Not that that should matter, but I worry I won't get exposure to national level advertising campaigns, which is what I really want to be involved in. Having said that, the plan is to expand to 50 people and my job is going to involve getting on to new client pitch lists, so essentially if I do my job well in the short term it will serve me well in the long term. This company could grow into something ideal for me, and if I'm part of the reason for that I will naturally progress. I just hope it works out that way. Who knows!

 

23: Revolution - In order to afford a holiday and festival this summer without destroying my finances I've decided to work in my local Revs! It's a mix of good and bad. Bad in the sense that each Friday I work 9-5 in my day job, then 11PM-5AM in my night job. Also in the sense that sometimes I'm on glasses which is an absolute nightmare. A 23 year old graduate from a top 10 uni shouldn't be collecting glasses really. As much of a snob that makes me sound, it is true. It's something for 16-18 year olds. However most of the time I'm on the bar which is fine. Get decent tips and just get paid for serving Jaeger and pints! Get 10p for every double I sell as well which stacks up. Also a 50% off revs card is useful for nights out! Will probably stick it out until August.

 

So 12 jobs for a 23 year old! I could probably do with sticking with this one for a while but if things don't go as planned no doubt I'll end up on the move again.

 

Aren't you a captain of industry now Noddy ? ...

[Bunyip]

I took on the role as a funeral photographer on a commission only basis.

[Mike Oxlong]

3 minutes ago, Bunyip said:

I took on the role as a funeral photographer on a commission only basis.

 

Hope you didn't ask them to say cheeeese !

[Buce]

1 hour ago, Bunyip said:

I took on the role as a funeral photographer on a commission only basis.

 

On the bright side it must have been easy to get them to keep still... 

[Alf Bentley]

1 minute ago, Buce said:

 

On the bright side it must have been easy to get them to keep still... 

 

 

But a bit harder to get them to cough up his commission payment....

[Buce]

5 minutes ago, Alf Bentley said:

 

 

But a bit harder to get them to cough up his commission payment....

 

What you might call a stiff task. 

 

Perhaps it's the relatives coffin up...

[Alf Bentley]

5 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

What you might call a stiff task. 

 

Perhaps it's the relatives coffin up...

 

We need to put a lid on this before it all goes up in smoke.

[Mike the Metal Ed]

Debt management for RBS. Included Saturday work, call volumes became ridiculous, abused constantly, making people who are already in the shit financially suffer more in the guise of helping them and no chance of progression to anything better. All I got out of it was an anxiety disorder and missing out on the majority of the bloody 15/16 City season.