Worst job you have ever had?
Discussion
Worked in a Waitrose for 16 months, the worst job, and the worst supermarket I have ever worked in. I was first in operations, which was pretty much what I am good at, working the stores systems, ordering stock, discounting wastage etc etc, I was asked to temporarily do some work in the store café, myself being 17 and retarded I agreed to it, and signed a bit of paper permanently changing me into a café kitchen staff member, I hated it, and I was awful at it, seriously you take a quiet guy who displayed competence at numeracy, and sitting down at a desk and just getting his work done without yacking away or browsing on his phone... and you put him in a position he hates that he also displayed absolutely zero competency in (I can't cook to save myself, I also ain't great at cleaning as my quarterly reviews CONSTANTLY pointed out), seemingly just out of spite, kicked up a fuss as I was told it was only a temporary move, oh nope turns out the jnr manager that made that move left after 3 months of working their so it was now permanent.
The jnr management where inexperienced and untrained to the point that the 'normal' (i.e min wage) staff where doing their jobs for them, the snr management seemed to be so entrenched in their positions that they could not be shifted even after openly displaying gross negligence of their role. We had a guy who very frequently took 2 week 'sick breaks' for the most inane reasons (his misses bought a new puppy, needs 2 weeks off on self certed sick), was accused on 2 separate occasions of sexually harassing checkout girls, on both occasions they where 17/18 (he was in his 40s). The company constantly, at every opportunity tried to drill their 'partnership' ethos into all their staff due to the supposedly different way they structure their upper management, of course at the bottom all it means that instead of getting paid ~10% over the minimum wage like some other super markets do (Tesco, Asda etc) they give you a ~10% bonus once a year, which of course you don't get if you don't happen to be employed by them at the time of the bonus. (i.e for my 16 months only ~8 of which I got bonus pay for due to the time period I left). Aforementioned ethos indoctrination also made some of the staff who actually bought into it absolutely intolerable, aforementioned snr management also held it over your head every time they decided to ask you to do unpaid overtime, or change a shift at short notice, or miss a break. It was fine because it was 'for the partnership', oh and said actions where frequent and numerous due to the constant 'cutting of budgets' as the store never seemed to be doing well.
Not to mention the pitiful discount that they constantly amped up, who, on minimum wage, in their right mind would shop at waitrose/john lewis? Even with the 15% discount you can get the same thing in Tesco for the same price and not have to put up with going into your workplace for shopping.
This isn't even my general opinion of supermarkets, after working in Waitrose I got a job in Tesco, similar position (warehouse, stock boy), it took a good 12 months of throwing my CV everywhere, seriously f
k getting a job as a 18/19 year old in a relatively rural area in ~2013. The job was a hell of a lot better, management actually had some modicum of sense, they treated the job for what it was, a stopgap for students, a part time time killer for the nearly-retired, or a staple for those who never had a large career interest in life. No goofy indoctrination system, no big weight held over your head due to some stasi-esque entity you where a part of, nope, just a job that you show up to for 9 hours a day, give them your undivided attention, and take home your £7/hour. As an added bonus they let me loose in their delivery vans for the last ~3 months of my 7 month employ with them, that was literally my dream job, still is if I am honest just don't think I'd be satisfied with the pay forever.
Thank god I got an apprenticeship after that and actually started doing stuff that I enjoyed. Currently going into my 3rd year of my engineering degree and working part time as a technician.
/rant
The jnr management where inexperienced and untrained to the point that the 'normal' (i.e min wage) staff where doing their jobs for them, the snr management seemed to be so entrenched in their positions that they could not be shifted even after openly displaying gross negligence of their role. We had a guy who very frequently took 2 week 'sick breaks' for the most inane reasons (his misses bought a new puppy, needs 2 weeks off on self certed sick), was accused on 2 separate occasions of sexually harassing checkout girls, on both occasions they where 17/18 (he was in his 40s). The company constantly, at every opportunity tried to drill their 'partnership' ethos into all their staff due to the supposedly different way they structure their upper management, of course at the bottom all it means that instead of getting paid ~10% over the minimum wage like some other super markets do (Tesco, Asda etc) they give you a ~10% bonus once a year, which of course you don't get if you don't happen to be employed by them at the time of the bonus. (i.e for my 16 months only ~8 of which I got bonus pay for due to the time period I left). Aforementioned ethos indoctrination also made some of the staff who actually bought into it absolutely intolerable, aforementioned snr management also held it over your head every time they decided to ask you to do unpaid overtime, or change a shift at short notice, or miss a break. It was fine because it was 'for the partnership', oh and said actions where frequent and numerous due to the constant 'cutting of budgets' as the store never seemed to be doing well.
Not to mention the pitiful discount that they constantly amped up, who, on minimum wage, in their right mind would shop at waitrose/john lewis? Even with the 15% discount you can get the same thing in Tesco for the same price and not have to put up with going into your workplace for shopping.
This isn't even my general opinion of supermarkets, after working in Waitrose I got a job in Tesco, similar position (warehouse, stock boy), it took a good 12 months of throwing my CV everywhere, seriously f
k getting a job as a 18/19 year old in a relatively rural area in ~2013. The job was a hell of a lot better, management actually had some modicum of sense, they treated the job for what it was, a stopgap for students, a part time time killer for the nearly-retired, or a staple for those who never had a large career interest in life. No goofy indoctrination system, no big weight held over your head due to some stasi-esque entity you where a part of, nope, just a job that you show up to for 9 hours a day, give them your undivided attention, and take home your £7/hour. As an added bonus they let me loose in their delivery vans for the last ~3 months of my 7 month employ with them, that was literally my dream job, still is if I am honest just don't think I'd be satisfied with the pay forever. Thank god I got an apprenticeship after that and actually started doing stuff that I enjoyed. Currently going into my 3rd year of my engineering degree and working part time as a technician.
/rant
Edited by caelite on Tuesday 25th July 02:54
Clearing cow sheds by hand was pretty grim but OK once you got used to the smell. I could just about manage cleaning dead flies out of industrial-sized greenhouses (never a job to do with a hangover).
The worst was working in a tyre remoulding factory. I was supposed to be doing some temp work in their lab. There was a change in requirements and I spent a few days grinding rubber flashing off remoulded lorry tyres. A whole days worth of tyres were rejected because the halfwit who "trained" me had forgotten to tell me something. The grinding bells were constantly going out-of-true and I would wake up every night with HAVS related pain.
The team lead got the hump when he asked me to come back the next week and I politely declined.
The worst was working in a tyre remoulding factory. I was supposed to be doing some temp work in their lab. There was a change in requirements and I spent a few days grinding rubber flashing off remoulded lorry tyres. A whole days worth of tyres were rejected because the halfwit who "trained" me had forgotten to tell me something. The grinding bells were constantly going out-of-true and I would wake up every night with HAVS related pain.
The team lead got the hump when he asked me to come back the next week and I politely declined.
jakesmith said:
Admin job for Amec Facilities at Monsanto chemical plant over summer at uni, had no work to do but they had to keep the position filled or role would be removed. Had to sit in front of a PC with no internet all day. Passed the time by filing in a cell red in Excel every 15 seconds and watching the row turn red over the day
Lasted 3 weeks and got sacked for being late which was one of the best career moves I have ever made
I still remember the moron bloke who was my boss, and his ridiculous economic theories, and his belittling of me for being a student. His lifetime ambition was to go to Vegas with his sad mate and fk a hooker.
Wonder if he is still working there 20 years on, might get my PA to give him a call on Monday! Joke.
Christ! Lasted 3 weeks and got sacked for being late which was one of the best career moves I have ever made
I still remember the moron bloke who was my boss, and his ridiculous economic theories, and his belittling of me for being a student. His lifetime ambition was to go to Vegas with his sad mate and f
k a hooker.Wonder if he is still working there 20 years on, might get my PA to give him a call on Monday! Joke.
My first job after leaving college was doing cold calling selling Enron electric, they basically had a bunch of idiots like myself in a room, chucked us all a phonebook and told us to call everyone and to net let up until they either bought it or hung up on us. I left after a week
I worked for Derby council as a temp in their accounts office, not sure why they hired me as there were already 3 people there with nothing to do, time has never moved so slowly
I also worked for BT internet back when it was dial-up and they used to do the anytime for £15 a month or "surf time" which was free on evenings and weekends, problem being our service couldn't cope with the amount of connections we had sold but we still had to waste people's money (50p p/m) taking them through their PC settings etc rather than admitting our service was st
Best of all was a one off job I had where I had to dress in a Coca Cola Polar Bear suit at a local radio station roadshow thing, they were doing a competition to win a car (a Rover 200 I think) and the DJ would occasionally play a Jingle and shout "go for it polar bears" at which point I had to dance around in front of the Rover, it was boiling hot and I can't dance. on the plus side I got £50 for it which at 17 I was over the moon with
I worked for Derby council as a temp in their accounts office, not sure why they hired me as there were already 3 people there with nothing to do, time has never moved so slowly
I also worked for BT internet back when it was dial-up and they used to do the anytime for £15 a month or "surf time" which was free on evenings and weekends, problem being our service couldn't cope with the amount of connections we had sold but we still had to waste people's money (50p p/m) taking them through their PC settings etc rather than admitting our service was s
tBest of all was a one off job I had where I had to dress in a Coca Cola Polar Bear suit at a local radio station roadshow thing, they were doing a competition to win a car (a Rover 200 I think) and the DJ would occasionally play a Jingle and shout "go for it polar bears" at which point I had to dance around in front of the Rover, it was boiling hot and I can't dance. on the plus side I got £50 for it which at 17 I was over the moon with
Probably the worst were the cr*p jobs I did whilst at school / sixth form in an effort to earn a bit of spending money.
I took over a paper round off a mate as he didn't want it anymore (lesson here!), every morning up before school to cycle a good few miles delivering the dailies. What broke me was turning up on the Sunday morning and realising the Sunday papers were easily twice the weight of the weekday ones requiring two trips from the shop and really struggling on the bike. I gave up halfway, not sure the bloke who owned the newsagent was particularly impressed!
Ended up getting a different paper round delivering the free papers on a Thursday evening. The wasn't so bad despite the massive quantity of them I had to deliver. Out in all weathers too. We'd occasionally get a separate leaflet drop to do in the week which lead to a decent pay packet.
Not sure paper rounds count though so the worst would be at the supermarket as a general dogs body, mainly in the grocery warehouse. Again just a job to earn some cash before going to Uni and I did well out of it but it made you glad that you would eventually be moving on to better things. Luckily as I was pretty good with computers I got trained up on the systems they had (positively archaic by today's standards, scanning tills only arrived a few months before I left). I did quite a bit of the stock keeping keeping computer work, there was a lot of manual entry and was also eventually entrusted by the managers to do the picking at the end of the day i.e. going down an aisle with a shelf edge barcode reader and working out how many cases of each thing we needed to refill the shelf. In spite of this I still had to do a lot of box shifting and labouring. There was one particular manager whose job it was to make sure you were always doing something but he didn't seem to grasp that I was being productive when sat in front of a computer so would instruct me to sweep up the warehouse instead and thrust a broom into my hand. We had fun though, going in on Sundays was good for stock taking or other such tasks, supermarkets didn't open on Sundays back then so no uniform, music on, and double time!
Only had proper jobs after that one
I took over a paper round off a mate as he didn't want it anymore (lesson here!), every morning up before school to cycle a good few miles delivering the dailies. What broke me was turning up on the Sunday morning and realising the Sunday papers were easily twice the weight of the weekday ones requiring two trips from the shop and really struggling on the bike. I gave up halfway, not sure the bloke who owned the newsagent was particularly impressed!
Ended up getting a different paper round delivering the free papers on a Thursday evening. The wasn't so bad despite the massive quantity of them I had to deliver. Out in all weathers too. We'd occasionally get a separate leaflet drop to do in the week which lead to a decent pay packet.
Not sure paper rounds count though so the worst would be at the supermarket as a general dogs body, mainly in the grocery warehouse. Again just a job to earn some cash before going to Uni and I did well out of it but it made you glad that you would eventually be moving on to better things. Luckily as I was pretty good with computers I got trained up on the systems they had (positively archaic by today's standards, scanning tills only arrived a few months before I left). I did quite a bit of the stock keeping keeping computer work, there was a lot of manual entry and was also eventually entrusted by the managers to do the picking at the end of the day i.e. going down an aisle with a shelf edge barcode reader and working out how many cases of each thing we needed to refill the shelf. In spite of this I still had to do a lot of box shifting and labouring. There was one particular manager whose job it was to make sure you were always doing something but he didn't seem to grasp that I was being productive when sat in front of a computer so would instruct me to sweep up the warehouse instead and thrust a broom into my hand. We had fun though, going in on Sundays was good for stock taking or other such tasks, supermarkets didn't open on Sundays back then so no uniform, music on, and double time!
Only had proper jobs after that one
Software testing. Department of a large company I worked for had a bit of a lull in work, so loaned me out to another department for a bit, I was supposed to be writing test scripts for automated software testing, but they lost the contract about the same time as I moved over, so got shunted in to doing some manual testing on another project. Dear god that has to be one of the dullest jobs imaginable, entering a loads of data over and over again according to a specific script to test each new software revision hadn't broken existing functionality.
On the plus side I did learn a lot about the laws regarding badgers (software was for court services and in a vain home of making it slightly more interesting I tried to always use laws about badgers)
On the plus side I did learn a lot about the laws regarding badgers (software was for court services and in a vain home of making it slightly more interesting I tried to always use laws about badgers)
My first full time one.
B2B utilitiy junior salesman. Lasted 8 months 2 weeks before I was told I wasn't what they were looking for. I used to walk in everyday to find a reason why we weren't able to take a break, why we wouldn't be paid our monthly commision or why our targets had suddenly been increased midway through a month and we weren't going to now be able to achieve them. It was genuinely horrific, them letting me go was the best thing to ever happen to me as 18 months later I'm in my dream job and on course to do much better than I ever would have there.
B2B utilitiy junior salesman. Lasted 8 months 2 weeks before I was told I wasn't what they were looking for. I used to walk in everyday to find a reason why we weren't able to take a break, why we wouldn't be paid our monthly commision or why our targets had suddenly been increased midway through a month and we weren't going to now be able to achieve them. It was genuinely horrific, them letting me go was the best thing to ever happen to me as 18 months later I'm in my dream job and on course to do much better than I ever would have there.
I worked as a roustie as a summer job between school and college. Basically after a sheep has been shorn you throw the fleece down on the ground, remove any crap attached to it, fold and roll the fleece up, then stuff it into a sack. That's it. Over and over again.
I think what made it worse was that some of my friends were traveling NZ and Aus at the time and I was stuck in a massive shed in the middle of summer with a never ending line of sheep coming in ..
I also had to load lambs onto the back of a lorry to go to the slaughterhouse which was pretty depressing.
I think what made it worse was that some of my friends were traveling NZ and Aus at the time and I was stuck in a massive shed in the middle of summer with a never ending line of sheep coming in ..
I also had to load lambs onto the back of a lorry to go to the slaughterhouse which was pretty depressing.
Wobbegong said:
All sports shop assistant.
Didn't sell any sports equipment, just overpriced stty sports fashion clothing. I remember the management demanding why we were not selling any products and were not amused when I pointed out that they were trying to sell England rugby jerseys for £70 when they were
1) out of date
2) selling for £10 at the shop next door
Following that they sent in 'industry experts' to teach us to sell. No wonder the company closed down
Hateful job. Company was run by morons and the customer base was benefits-for-life chavs
I worked in a family owned one with the same issues. Would sell rugby gear mainly by went into general sports and fitness too. Went in under the impression I would be looking after the website and the DB the stock was on but instead was picking and shipping eBay and Amazon orders and running the shop, serving chavs. They wouldn't spend on better website software, never did any advertising as that cost money, kept things at full price far longer than they should have. The final straw was when someone left, workload increased further but they didn't replace them so was working 7 days a week for about a month to keep it going. One guy had been there for years and yet made no effort to move on. I started to panic as I didn't want to be in the same boat and applied for any job I could use my degree for. I got the job I have now within a week of applying and interview. Yes there have been some long runs of working several weeks in a row to get a factory build done but I learned loads and was a useful experience where I've started to work my way up. Didn't sell any sports equipment, just overpriced s
tty sports fashion clothing. I remember the management demanding why we were not selling any products and were not amused when I pointed out that they were trying to sell England rugby jerseys for £70 when they were 1) out of date
2) selling for £10 at the shop next door
Following that they sent in 'industry experts' to teach us to sell. No wonder the company closed down
Hateful job. Company was run by morons and the customer base was benefits-for-life chavs
Did a summer temp job in a factory that put together the yellow pages, basically you had to put together the various sections so they could be bound/glued. It was hell, hot, noisy so had to wear ear defs all day and mind numbingly boring. To top it off at the legally minimum required break times I was the only one speaking English so there wasn't even any conversation. All for minimum wage, fk that. Got a job delivering pizzas for slightly more money.
k that. Got a job delivering pizzas for slightly more money.p1stonhead said:
I'm amazed at how many people on here have said they quit after a week or even a day!
Presumably we were all doing these crap jobs because we were at the bottom of our respective ladders or first jobs etc so it staggers me how could anyone just give up that easily?
I thought everyone on PH had a trust fund. A days work was likely the minimum required to avoid getting cut off and temporarily banished to the middle classes.Presumably we were all doing these crap jobs because we were at the bottom of our respective ladders or first jobs etc so it staggers me how could anyone just give up that easily?
p1stonhead said:
I'm amazed at how many people on here have said they quit after a week or even a day!
Presumably we were all doing these crap jobs because we were at the bottom of our respective ladders or first jobs etc so it staggers me how could anyone just give up that easily?
I often find quitting a job to be the fastest way to the next rung of the ladder.Presumably we were all doing these crap jobs because we were at the bottom of our respective ladders or first jobs etc so it staggers me how could anyone just give up that easily?
That aside, I think many of these are student jobs, etc. Not so much on a ladder as dipping a toe in the market for beer tokens.
Gassing Station | Jobs & Employment Matters | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff