What is the worst job you have ever had?
Discussion
Morningside said:
I went to a job interview for a "Candidate would be preferable to have electrical knowledge, sale and installation" . I thought it would be a washing machine or some such thing.
Walked in and saw rows and rows of empty chairs slowly being filled with other people that had seen the same job. Saw the Kirby paperwork on the wall and realised what it was all about.
Asked where the toilet was, walked down the stairs and went home.
That rings familiar!Walked in and saw rows and rows of empty chairs slowly being filled with other people that had seen the same job. Saw the Kirby paperwork on the wall and realised what it was all about.
Asked where the toilet was, walked down the stairs and went home.
In my case - and probably 15 or 16 years ago now - it was an ad in the local paper for “appliance technicians”. So yes, like you, I too thought that would involve installing or repairing domestic electricals - as a then student of engineering that seemed ideal as a summer job.
The “interview” was conducted in a shabby rented office suite, the “manager” was a chap of about 30 who could have been the inspiration for David Brent, his admin assistant was a scrotey looking teenage lad in a poorly fitting suit accompanied by his equally scrotey looking girlfriend... First impressions were far from good, but I needed a job so I stuck with it.
There were about 8 people there, one woman kept asking “Is this selling Kirby hoovers?”, and when the scrotey admin lad finally stopped avoiding the question and nodded, she walked out. I was tempted to follow based on the “selling” part, but decided to hang around and find out first hand. After all, I was skint!
It was less a job interview, more a sales pitch. The “manager” took us all into a conference room whereby he proceeded to show us a Kirby vac in all it’s glory, demonstrated it against a couple of other hoovers to show how much better the Kirby was, ask how long we expected a vacuum cleaner to last, how much we’d expect to spend on parts and repairs etc, and that the Kirby at over a grand was actually excellent value... It was absolutely cringeworthy stuff, at one point he wrote some buzzword on the whiteboard and explained that if each letter was assigned a value of 1 to 26 based on its position on the alphabet, it added up to 100%. Then he drew a smiley face on the board. Every single candidate in the room had a look of “What the...” on their face.
It only got worse when the guy said that he wanted everyone who signed up to take a machine to 10 friends/family members’ homes and demonstrate it... Apparently this was for practice, and not at all a quick way of generating leads. Oh no, sir.
The final part of his pitch was to invite everyone to attend a “sales rally” the following day. Apparently this would be very exciting, a great day out, lots to learn, etc. He then asked everyone to hand him their driving licence or passport which for some reason he’d need overnight. Christ, if it hadn’t seemed shonky before, now it had all the makings of a con. I got up to leave, the guy asked me if I was going to get my ID out of the car for him; at this point I was a little peeved that I’d wasted time and effort turning up to this pantomime so my reply was a blunt “No, I’m f
king well not”.Strangest job hunting experience ever!
Hard-Drive said:
Did some driving when I was much younger when I was between proper jobs. I actually used to quite enjoy driving a 7.5 tonner and seeing some of the countryside, and if your "mate" was OK at least it was reasonably sociable. However one day the agency changed what I was doing, and I spent a few days at a post office depot. Some postie had got hit and mildly injured by a reversing HGV so they decided that they needed a minibus to drive any posties arriving for work on foot, the 150 yards between the gate and the building door, on H&S grounds. So I had to sit in a van, hazards on constantly, and wait for hours on end for "the call" to take someone one way or the other. For about 10 hours. And about four trips, or 600 yards in total. Utter tedium...walked out after 2 days.
Sounds like my current job. At a loose end on the other side of the world, I am not eligible for dole so took anything going. Not that I need to justify my crap job situation to people on the internet. I sit in a lift at a building site pressing buttons. As it doesn't have buttons on the outside and just a temporary panel inside, it needs someone inside with a phone to take it to people who need it. So about once a minute I get a call or a text, they say what floor they are on and then there is the complicated bit. I press the number above that to take it to their floor or 1 for ground. Then I take them where they need to be. Easy money but bloody boring.Promised Land said:
3 weeks trying to sell Kirby's, that involved door to door to get names/numbers, then you went out at night and did two demo's, 1992 in a recession and flogging a cleaner for £1250.
I shifted 3 then walked, by then I'd realised why there was a revolving door of staff in the office.
I got a job with them, when i applied i made then aware i was mid final exams at uni and they were okay with this. Went for the training day and they told me to start work tomorrow. Pointed out to them that this would interrupt my finals and as discussed during the interviews i would only start work after exams, their response was that uni is a waste of time (this may be true but after 2 years 11 months there was no way I wasn’t going to finish). Luckily their response told me everything i needed to know about what working there would be like so i never went back. I shifted 3 then walked, by then I'd realised why there was a revolving door of staff in the office.
While I was at college I worked for a recruitment company that specialised in either very boring or very unpleasant work and got paid 50 pounds a day for the privilege. Two examples spring to mind.
1 - The job that involved cutting lengths of metal for further fabrication all day, every day. As well as spending my evenings picking metal shavings out of my hands I had the dubious pleasure of working with some very strange lads and their insufferably smug git of a foreman; a man who was despised by everybody and could often be seen walking around with his special cup and spoon annoying people and telling them how best to do their jobs while stirring his tea.
I found out just how hated the foreman was one morning when one of the fabricators announced that as an extra special treat he'd rubbed the spoon somewhere private before the foreman got in and we were all about to watch him have his first cup of the day. Thankfully I got moved on not long after, which brings me to:
2 - Working in a packing plant packaging the plastic-wrapped fruit and veg for supermarkets. This place had pumps for the trucks to fill up - which explained the neighbouring field full of the wheeled folk I saw when I first arrived. On day two the scamps had gone, along with every drop of fuel from the pumps which made the father and son team that ran the place very angry indeed. So they took it out on me, the other temps and the pleasant but downtrodden immigrant slave labour that sweated their guts out in that dimly-lit hellhole.
Anyway, after a day of picking brown leaves and insects off the fruit and veg I was sent outside in the rain to use the compactor to get rid of the cardboard boxes that had accumulated in the yard. The father comes outside after 20 minutes, obviously displeased.
"What are you doing?"
"Piling the boxes so I can compact them all in one go, why?"
"You're messing about - go home."
"Eh?"
"Sod off home, you're wasting my time."
As I trudged toward the gate I could feel the red mist and sense of injustice building, and unfortunately for the manager my path took me past the rotten produce skip. He'd already turned his back so I reached in and grabbed a couple of overripe tomatos before throwing them at him and then running like the wind all the way back to the recruitment agency where my talents were apparently no longer required. In truth I don't even know if I got him, but knowing that he'd have to replace a lot of stolen fuel helped take the edge off losing the job.
1 - The job that involved cutting lengths of metal for further fabrication all day, every day. As well as spending my evenings picking metal shavings out of my hands I had the dubious pleasure of working with some very strange lads and their insufferably smug git of a foreman; a man who was despised by everybody and could often be seen walking around with his special cup and spoon annoying people and telling them how best to do their jobs while stirring his tea.
I found out just how hated the foreman was one morning when one of the fabricators announced that as an extra special treat he'd rubbed the spoon somewhere private before the foreman got in and we were all about to watch him have his first cup of the day. Thankfully I got moved on not long after, which brings me to:
2 - Working in a packing plant packaging the plastic-wrapped fruit and veg for supermarkets. This place had pumps for the trucks to fill up - which explained the neighbouring field full of the wheeled folk I saw when I first arrived. On day two the scamps had gone, along with every drop of fuel from the pumps which made the father and son team that ran the place very angry indeed. So they took it out on me, the other temps and the pleasant but downtrodden immigrant slave labour that sweated their guts out in that dimly-lit hellhole.
Anyway, after a day of picking brown leaves and insects off the fruit and veg I was sent outside in the rain to use the compactor to get rid of the cardboard boxes that had accumulated in the yard. The father comes outside after 20 minutes, obviously displeased.
"What are you doing?"
"Piling the boxes so I can compact them all in one go, why?"
"You're messing about - go home."
"Eh?"
"Sod off home, you're wasting my time."
As I trudged toward the gate I could feel the red mist and sense of injustice building, and unfortunately for the manager my path took me past the rotten produce skip. He'd already turned his back so I reached in and grabbed a couple of overripe tomatos before throwing them at him and then running like the wind all the way back to the recruitment agency where my talents were apparently no longer required. In truth I don't even know if I got him, but knowing that he'd have to replace a lot of stolen fuel helped take the edge off losing the job.
PurpleTurtle said:
Commission-only Life Insurance sales for an outfit called General Portfolio in Birmingham in 1990. I walked out on the Friday of the second week of my “training course”.
I worked opposite their office in a decent job before that, but had my head turned by their fleet of salesmen turning up in great PH metal, the boss had an Aston Virage and one of the reps a TVR S3, another an Esprit Turbo. I wanted part of that action.
They were a horrible bunch of shysters, offering anyone who could write their name a job, provided they could bring a list of 40 ‘contacts, that the newly trained recruit could cold-call. I was 18 and knew about five other working adults outside my immediate family, all of whom would’ve told me to fk off if I’d cold called them. Therefore after the second forced phone call on a Friday night I told them I wasn’t going to do it any more, walked out, refused to give them my list of people, which they got very shirty about. It only dawned on me then that they didn’t give a st if you were any good or not, they just wanted your list of 40 names for a hardened sleazeball to hit hard. I’ve never felt so good to tell someone to ps off as it did when they phoned me on the following Monday to reconsider.
In the end it did me a favour. I found myself skint, out of work, needing a job having passed up the opportunity to go to University by ditching my A levels. It was a short, sharp reality check, I got back into education via evening classes at my local college, A levels done, degree, boom.
Whenever I get cold-called now I try to be polite to them, as I know the person calling would probably prefer not to be doing it, and probably has some proper c u n t of a sales manager breathing down their neck. Never again for me.
ETA: I never really cared for what happened to that bunch of w ankers, but pleased to see it all ended in tears for them. Unfortunately the people at the top haven't seen the inside of a prison cell. https://www.theguardian.com/money/2001/dec/08/pens...
I got caught up with that lot too, lasted a week before I’d had enough.I worked opposite their office in a decent job before that, but had my head turned by their fleet of salesmen turning up in great PH metal, the boss had an Aston Virage and one of the reps a TVR S3, another an Esprit Turbo. I wanted part of that action.
They were a horrible bunch of shysters, offering anyone who could write their name a job, provided they could bring a list of 40 ‘contacts, that the newly trained recruit could cold-call. I was 18 and knew about five other working adults outside my immediate family, all of whom would’ve told me to f
k off if I’d cold called them. Therefore after the second forced phone call on a Friday night I told them I wasn’t going to do it any more, walked out, refused to give them my list of people, which they got very shirty about. It only dawned on me then that they didn’t give a st if you were any good or not, they just wanted your list of 40 names for a hardened sleazeball to hit hard. I’ve never felt so good to tell someone to ps off as it did when they phoned me on the following Monday to reconsider. In the end it did me a favour. I found myself skint, out of work, needing a job having passed up the opportunity to go to University by ditching my A levels. It was a short, sharp reality check, I got back into education via evening classes at my local college, A levels done, degree, boom.
Whenever I get cold-called now I try to be polite to them, as I know the person calling would probably prefer not to be doing it, and probably has some proper c u n t of a sales manager breathing down their neck. Never again for me.
ETA: I never really cared for what happened to that bunch of w ankers, but pleased to see it all ended in tears for them. Unfortunately the people at the top haven't seen the inside of a prison cell. https://www.theguardian.com/money/2001/dec/08/pens...
Edited by PurpleTurtle on Friday 23 February 11:01
Fckitdriveon said:
alorotom said:
BigMon said:
Two for me.
Aged 14 in 1987 had a job delivering free papers. I got paid a penny a paper! When I'd finished my 500 my hands were black with ink (some of the more enterprising scrotes used to just dump them behind the local council garages).
I recycled, at my local Sainsbury’s, my allocation of the Sunderland Star that I received for delivery every week for about 2yrsAged 14 in 1987 had a job delivering free papers. I got paid a penny a paper! When I'd finished my 500 my hands were black with ink (some of the more enterprising scrotes used to just dump them behind the local council garages).
never got caught or questioned about it lol
Edited by alorotom on Sunday 25th February 13:34
I was paid 1 or 2 pence a paper as I recall.
Most of my round was one huge residential area, but there was one street that was separate and on it's own, by the time I got there I'd normally ran out of papers, or inclination to deliver them. I did get caught out once or twice but generally pushed them through the letterboxes so was ok.
I used to leave a cache of papers at strategic points around the route as it was impossible to carry them all, once or twice the other kids on the estate would find them and steal them. I was obviously devastated as it meant going home early and having a genuine excuse for non-delivery.
Still the worst job I've ever had to date.
Hard-Drive said:
Did some driving when I was much younger when I was between proper jobs. I actually used to quite enjoy driving a 7.5 tonner and seeing some of the countryside, and if your "mate" was OK at least it was reasonably sociable. However one day the agency changed what I was doing, and I spent a few days at a post office depot. Some postie had got hit and mildly injured by a reversing HGV so they decided that they needed a minibus to drive any posties arriving for work on foot, the 150 yards between the gate and the building door, on H&S grounds. So I had to sit in a van, hazards on constantly, and wait for hours on end for "the call" to take someone one way or the other. For about 10 hours. And about four trips, or 600 yards in total. Utter tedium...walked out after 2 days.
I think the hazards tick-tock would've sent me crazyUsed to baby sit annealing furnaces for 12 hours (days & nights) The room was poorly ventilated and we had to wear thick overalls. In summer it was hellish. Money was very, very good for what it was but I could never hack the nights.
Most recent was probably having to cut leather shapes out for high end vehicles / yachts using perspex templates for 8 hours a day. Repeated use of the blade and the pushing down ensured you rubbed the skin of the outside of your finger over and over leading to blisters. On reflection, it wasn't that bad but I walked out on day three.
Most recent was probably having to cut leather shapes out for high end vehicles / yachts using perspex templates for 8 hours a day. Repeated use of the blade and the pushing down ensured you rubbed the skin of the outside of your finger over and over leading to blisters. On reflection, it wasn't that bad but I walked out on day three.
Jimmy No Hands said:
Most recent was probably having to cut leather shapes out for high end vehicles / yachts using perspex templates for 8 hours a day. Repeated use of the blade and the pushing down ensured you rubbed the skin of the outside of your finger over and over leading to blisters. On reflection, it wasn't that bad but I walked out on day three.
If you'd stuck it out a bit longer you could have won the prize for most apt username on PH.Never had a Job I hated but the one that probably had the most hassle with was a valet in a BMW dealership.
I was about 17 at the time with no driving licence..
I worked for a company that was contracted to the dealership to do post service wash and hoover, new car prep etc.
The guys I worked with were great and came from backgrounds I'd never had any previous interaction with, really opened up my eyes.
The only pain came from management types and some of the sales guys, bossy, not polite, look down on you.
It was only a stop gap for me so I had no concern but some of the guys at the time were late twenties so I've no idea how they put up with it.
The shenanigans that used to go on was mind boggling, long strip of tarmac at the back where they would try and accelerate and brake before getting to this small concrete wall at the end.
One of the guys didn't stop in time once and caused some minor damage to the front bumper of the customers car this was sorted by taking the front bumper off a car on the forecourt (matching colour obviously).
The most enjoyable part was lunch time, 4 of us eating sandwiches in an X5 watching TV
After 6 months I got into a huge argument with the owners "unofficial" manager as he wanted me to clean the customer toilets which was categorically not our role, he told me to get off site which I did (big fat guy with a short temper so didn't want to risk it). Owner called me the next day to say he'd have to side with him as they were friends but paid me a months extra wage for the hassle.
The dealership burnt down a year or so after but was rebuilt into one of those glass palace type dealerships, it was taken over by a bigger BMW dealership last year.
Funnily enough some of the bossy management/sales types still work there, they're quite pleasant to me now that I'm a customer, who'd have thought eh!
I was about 17 at the time with no driving licence..
I worked for a company that was contracted to the dealership to do post service wash and hoover, new car prep etc.
The guys I worked with were great and came from backgrounds I'd never had any previous interaction with, really opened up my eyes.
The only pain came from management types and some of the sales guys, bossy, not polite, look down on you.
It was only a stop gap for me so I had no concern but some of the guys at the time were late twenties so I've no idea how they put up with it.
The shenanigans that used to go on was mind boggling, long strip of tarmac at the back where they would try and accelerate and brake before getting to this small concrete wall at the end.
One of the guys didn't stop in time once and caused some minor damage to the front bumper of the customers car this was sorted by taking the front bumper off a car on the forecourt (matching colour obviously).
The most enjoyable part was lunch time, 4 of us eating sandwiches in an X5 watching TV
After 6 months I got into a huge argument with the owners "unofficial" manager as he wanted me to clean the customer toilets which was categorically not our role, he told me to get off site which I did (big fat guy with a short temper so didn't want to risk it). Owner called me the next day to say he'd have to side with him as they were friends but paid me a months extra wage for the hassle.
The dealership burnt down a year or so after but was rebuilt into one of those glass palace type dealerships, it was taken over by a bigger BMW dealership last year.
Funnily enough some of the bossy management/sales types still work there, they're quite pleasant to me now that I'm a customer, who'd have thought eh!
McDonald's.
The public are utters and the pace you had to keep up working in a shopping centre McDs to keep the metrics of serving everyone in less than 1 minute.
The smell you ended up with that just couldn't be scrubbed out for days. The pain in my feet (since I have plantar fascitis) and the sheer hatred of the self entitled dheads who were morally outraged if their stty sugar-riddled food took more than 20 seconds to produce.
The pay itself was ok compared to other retail work but they got their pound of flesh from you for it.
The public are utter
s and the pace you had to keep up working in a shopping centre McDs to keep the metrics of serving everyone in less than 1 minute. The smell you ended up with that just couldn't be scrubbed out for days. The pain in my feet (since I have plantar fascitis) and the sheer hatred of the self entitled d
heads who were morally outraged if their stty sugar-riddled food took more than 20 seconds to produce. The pay itself was ok compared to other retail work but they got their pound of flesh from you for it.
GroundEffect said:
McDonald's.
The public are utters and the pace you had to keep up working in a shopping centre McDs to keep the metrics of serving everyone in less than 1 minute.
The smell you ended up with that just couldn't be scrubbed out for days. The pain in my feet (since I have plantar fascitis) and the sheer hatred of the self entitled dheads who were morally outraged if their stty sugar-riddled food took more than 20 seconds to produce.
The pay itself was ok compared to other retail work but they got their pound of flesh from you for it.
A friend's mum used to bring home McDs for dinner after her night shift. she'd put it through the microwave and stink their entire house out and it looked utterly vile. Wasn't brave enough to taste it 'refried'.The public are utter
s and the pace you had to keep up working in a shopping centre McDs to keep the metrics of serving everyone in less than 1 minute. The smell you ended up with that just couldn't be scrubbed out for days. The pain in my feet (since I have plantar fascitis) and the sheer hatred of the self entitled d
heads who were morally outraged if their stty sugar-riddled food took more than 20 seconds to produce. The pay itself was ok compared to other retail work but they got their pound of flesh from you for it.
Delivering papers for the local post office a teenager. I started when I was 13 or so and packed in a couple of years later.
It was a st job and the shop owner was a tight and miserable bd. The bag I got to carry the papers in was knackered and on my first shift alone, about half a mile from the post office, the battered strap slipped out of the buckle on one end and the whole bag and contents hit the soaking wet ground. I had to put all the contents back in some sort of order and press on. I ended up taping the end of the strap up with gaffer tape to stop it slipping the buckle as the boss man wouldn't provide a new, working bag.
The route wasn't too bad but it was quite long and involved around perhaps 20 to 30 papers. Enough that it could be done in one trip on a weekday. On a Saturday, the papers were too big to fit in one bag so I had to make a trip back to the shop at the halfway point. Because I was doing a select few addresses on a long route I did plenty of cycling, which was fking miserable in the rain. I worked out when I packed in that I'd cycled enough to take me to Sub-Saharan Africa by distance travelled. It took a toll on my back and I came off the bike a few times on ice. It was peaceful work though. Often in hours of darkness and working alone, it wasn't so bad.
It was an absolutely st time for st money and I was always grateful on poor days when my dad took me round the route in his car. It made me £11 a week, which was fking nowt but at the time it meant that I could afford a bus fare to town, something to eat and a new CD every Saturday. I supplemented this with pocket money and could afford a new game for the computer every few weeks.
It was a s
t job and the shop owner was a tight and miserable bd. The bag I got to carry the papers in was knackered and on my first shift alone, about half a mile from the post office, the battered strap slipped out of the buckle on one end and the whole bag and contents hit the soaking wet ground. I had to put all the contents back in some sort of order and press on. I ended up taping the end of the strap up with gaffer tape to stop it slipping the buckle as the boss man wouldn't provide a new, working bag.The route wasn't too bad but it was quite long and involved around perhaps 20 to 30 papers. Enough that it could be done in one trip on a weekday. On a Saturday, the papers were too big to fit in one bag so I had to make a trip back to the shop at the halfway point. Because I was doing a select few addresses on a long route I did plenty of cycling, which was f
king miserable in the rain. I worked out when I packed in that I'd cycled enough to take me to Sub-Saharan Africa by distance travelled. It took a toll on my back and I came off the bike a few times on ice. It was peaceful work though. Often in hours of darkness and working alone, it wasn't so bad.It was an absolutely s
t time for st money and I was always grateful on poor days when my dad took me round the route in his car. It made me £11 a week, which was fking nowt but at the time it meant that I could afford a bus fare to town, something to eat and a new CD every Saturday. I supplemented this with pocket money and could afford a new game for the computer every few weeks. GroundEffect said:
McDonald's.
The public are utters and the pace you had to keep up working in a shopping centre McDs to keep the metrics of serving everyone in less than 1 minute.
The smell you ended up with that just couldn't be scrubbed out for days. The pain in my feet (since I have plantar fascitis) and the sheer hatred of the self entitled dheads who were morally outraged if their stty sugar-riddled food took more than 20 seconds to produce.
The pay itself was ok compared to other retail work but they got their pound of flesh from you for it.
I worked my way through university at a McDonald's. Fortunately, i quickly rose through the ranks(!) to a shift manager which made it a pretty good job.The public are utter
s and the pace you had to keep up working in a shopping centre McDs to keep the metrics of serving everyone in less than 1 minute. The smell you ended up with that just couldn't be scrubbed out for days. The pain in my feet (since I have plantar fascitis) and the sheer hatred of the self entitled d
heads who were morally outraged if their stty sugar-riddled food took more than 20 seconds to produce. The pay itself was ok compared to other retail work but they got their pound of flesh from you for it.
Honestly, was my favorite job by a country mile!...There's me in my late teens, early 20's in a position of power, which made me very popular with all the 17+ girls starting their first job since leaving school / college. Yes, you come home smelling of fat and onions but it's nothing a shower and a washing machine doesn't take care of.
To quote the store manager, when reprimanding me for being caught with the deputy managers girlfriend - "Is there anyone here you haven't f
ked?"He had a point, thought it best not to tell him this included his girlfriend as well.
It was also well paid, in fact it became a bit of an issue after i graduated. I was earning about £5K a year more at McD's than i was offered for any of the jobs i applied for.
Finding myself without a job after flunking my A-Levels I did some agency work delivering rental floor mats, dirty job and ste money, £180 a week in my hand IIRC. A few years later, again between jobs and with a mortgage to pay and a family to feed I took a job as a delivery driver with a bakery. Absolutely brutal work, I was a tad overweight at the time and dropped 3 stone in 3 months. Horrible 3AM starts as well and averaged 50+ hours per week.
te money, £180 a week in my hand IIRC. A few years later, again between jobs and with a mortgage to pay and a family to feed I took a job as a delivery driver with a bakery. Absolutely brutal work, I was a tad overweight at the time and dropped 3 stone in 3 months. Horrible 3AM starts as well and averaged 50+ hours per week.In general I've found that the better-paid my jobs have become the less stress, less actual work and more enjoyment they seem to bring, which seems rather backward to me. By far the hardest, most tiring, least fulfilling and most crushing jobs have been at (or a little below...) the minimum wage.
By far the worst job was one which, on the face of it, was fairly cushy. It was a data entry/management job for the NHS (my second such stint) in between other jobs. It required sitting at a desk completing electronic forms from paper copies of patient A&E admission notes so my department could track various sets of info. On an as/when contract but effectively full-time 8:30am-5pm due to the sheer amount of work.
It was utterly soul-destroying. I was the only data wonk in the department, at a spare computer in one of the consultants' offices (who were mostly in meetings or theatre) so I was entirely on my own and with no-one to talk to who had any real idea what I was doing. My two points of contact were with an A&E nurse four floors and several wings away in the same building while my 'line manager' was in a completely different building a 15 minute walk away. I only saw her once in the 10 months I was there.
The A&E clerk on the night shift would send up that day's stack of notes before they left so they'd be there for me to input. Given how quickly I could work and the number of forms there were I would usually finish up on that day's stack sometime between 4 and 5pm - go home, return the next day, fresh stack of forms in the in-tray. Some weeks there would be more admissions so I wouldn't quite get through the stack and I'd come in the next morning to find that the 10 or so forms I had left over from the previous day had been joined by another 90-odd overnight. It was a truely Sisyphean task. There would always be people being admitted to A&E so you would never, ever reach the 'end' of the queue. It was a repetitive, low-skill task requiring zero brain power as part of a project that would presumably go on until the end of time. Just someone (for now, me) sitting in silence in a room by themselves transferring numbers from a box on a bit of paper to a box on a screen.
I know that I was sat in a comfortable, warm office in a nice modern hosptial with a decent canteen and good NHS perks but frankly I would rather have gone back to my seasonal summer job working 70+ hours a week outside doing dirty, tiring farm work for less money. At least that was a job with a purpose, some variety, some skill and a distinct end to the ordeal at the end of the season.
By far the worst job was one which, on the face of it, was fairly cushy. It was a data entry/management job for the NHS (my second such stint) in between other jobs. It required sitting at a desk completing electronic forms from paper copies of patient A&E admission notes so my department could track various sets of info. On an as/when contract but effectively full-time 8:30am-5pm due to the sheer amount of work.
It was utterly soul-destroying. I was the only data wonk in the department, at a spare computer in one of the consultants' offices (who were mostly in meetings or theatre) so I was entirely on my own and with no-one to talk to who had any real idea what I was doing. My two points of contact were with an A&E nurse four floors and several wings away in the same building while my 'line manager' was in a completely different building a 15 minute walk away. I only saw her once in the 10 months I was there.
The A&E clerk on the night shift would send up that day's stack of notes before they left so they'd be there for me to input. Given how quickly I could work and the number of forms there were I would usually finish up on that day's stack sometime between 4 and 5pm - go home, return the next day, fresh stack of forms in the in-tray. Some weeks there would be more admissions so I wouldn't quite get through the stack and I'd come in the next morning to find that the 10 or so forms I had left over from the previous day had been joined by another 90-odd overnight. It was a truely Sisyphean task. There would always be people being admitted to A&E so you would never, ever reach the 'end' of the queue. It was a repetitive, low-skill task requiring zero brain power as part of a project that would presumably go on until the end of time. Just someone (for now, me) sitting in silence in a room by themselves transferring numbers from a box on a bit of paper to a box on a screen.
I know that I was sat in a comfortable, warm office in a nice modern hosptial with a decent canteen and good NHS perks but frankly I would rather have gone back to my seasonal summer job working 70+ hours a week outside doing dirty, tiring farm work for less money. At least that was a job with a purpose, some variety, some skill and a distinct end to the ordeal at the end of the season.
Blue Oval84 said:
Fckitdriveon said:
alorotom said:
BigMon said:
Two for me.
Aged 14 in 1987 had a job delivering free papers. I got paid a penny a paper! When I'd finished my 500 my hands were black with ink (some of the more enterprising scrotes used to just dump them behind the local council garages).
I recycled, at my local Sainsbury’s, my allocation of the Sunderland Star that I received for delivery every week for about 2yrsAged 14 in 1987 had a job delivering free papers. I got paid a penny a paper! When I'd finished my 500 my hands were black with ink (some of the more enterprising scrotes used to just dump them behind the local council garages).
never got caught or questioned about it lol
Edited by alorotom on Sunday 25th February 13:34
I was paid 1 or 2 pence a paper as I recall.
Most of my round was one huge residential area, but there was one street that was separate and on it's own, by the time I got there I'd normally ran out of papers, or inclination to deliver them. I did get caught out once or twice but generally pushed them through the letterboxes so was ok.
I used to leave a cache of papers at strategic points around the route as it was impossible to carry them all, once or twice the other kids on the estate would find them and steal them. I was obviously devastated as it meant going home early and having a genuine excuse for non-delivery.
Still the worst job I've ever had to date.
ts. Only ever one complaint from a crazy old bat whose garden was guarded by 3 Alsatians and mountains of their ste.With hindsight I should have just had a bonfire every week.
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