I used to work reception in a welfare office. So we were between the clients and the case workers. And the clerical supervisors were awful, so we were taking it from both ends.
I also used to work for Sony as a game tester. That was an awesome job, although the 13 hour graveyard shift for three weeks without a day off (including weekends) was a bit of an endurance test. Especially since the game sucked. Two guys on that shift went on anti-anxiety medication...

with this entry. You picked my job! I'm an archaeologist although I have to say, I have never had the good fortune to work with anyone who looks like Indie. It's a small community so I'm not going to contribute to the complaint department because, for the most part, I like my job.

When I was a teenager, I worked for a very small furniture company that made reproductions of shaker furniture. I sanded and stripped both old and new furniture. I worked with a couple other teenagers. We stood next to each other all day scraping away at chairs, tables, shelves, etc... However, we were not allowed to talk to each other. Our rather avaricious believed we were less productive when we chatted. Rubbing sandpaper on a chair leg was more intellectual than you would guess! To give you another example of how truly evil this man was - he sent divorce papers completely unannounced to his then wife on Valentine's Day.

Okay, I have some bad ones. I'll share one.

My last full time job was horrid. Gawdawful. One of those places where if you are good at what you do, they keep throwing more and more at you until you can't do it, and then they can say, "see, we knew you were no good." I wanted to quit, but refused. After 5 years there (average turnover was 12 months), I knew the end was near. I was up to 80+ hours a week (on salary, and not that good of salary), and couldn't even begin to catch up with everything on my desk, 80% of which had nothing whatsoever to do with my actual job description. The week I was finally let go I sat one afternoon in my cube, just outside the office of one of the department heads, and listened to three people I was more or less reporting to discuss what to do with my work after I'd been fired. :-) I just sat there, listening to them, trying to decide whether or not I should tell them I could HEAR them. In the end I just kept quiet, and waited for them to break the news to me on Friday. I think I managed not to whoop for joy when they informed me they were terminating my employment, and I've never been so happy to see the end of a job before or since.

OffLead Blog - Dogs and other of life's joys.

The department I work in used to be uniformly cheerful, and the faculty all arrived early so that we could talk for a few minutes to someone who understood English, rather than parroted back phrasebook sentences.

That changed this semester when he got hired. Anyone who ignores the endless old-man stories (repeated verbatim 3 times each hour, even after he acknowledges hearing you say you've heard this one before) is a "bitch" or "stuck up" and not friendly, the way teachers were back in the day. Of course, friendly people don't speak either, only listen, because he's been around the block a few times, and he's learned a thing or two, things these goddamned kids would do well to listen to, and we all look stupid because we don't sit down and have meetings to plan, the way his father taught him to when he was eight years old. Then, at the meetings, he only talks about what he'd like to do with the young women in the office.

If I could figure out a way to pin the murder on that kid that sits in the front row with his iPod going loud enough for me to sing along with...

During one interlude between colleges, I worked for a concrete crew. Not the sexy glamorous brick laying concrete side of the crew, but the "dig the ditch the gets filled concrete to make a foundation" side of the crew, the "Once the walls are up, fill them concrete and oh by the way, if the walls spring a leak, grab a sheet of ply wood and hammer it onto the wall, then grab a shovel to scoop up the spilled concrete, and when whatever is left over, break it up with a jack hammer after it dries". all of this in Southwest Florida so its 90 degrees and 85% humidity.

More than a few days I literally wrung sweat out of my shirts. And I wonder why the women folk weren't lined up to smothering me with kisses.

Nobody else has a crazy story from work? I simply don't believe that that many people have good jobs. Come on, share it with the rest of us:)

Steve Sharam
www.whenrealityknocks.com

1) The most boring job I ever had was formatting documents for the Navy. (I wasn't in the Navy, I worked for a support facility.) I made sure that all the torpedo manuals had 1" margins and all tabs were .5" apart and all bullet-points were font size 8. It was horrid, really horrid. I quit after two months. The working conditions sucked, too -- hospital green, windowless rooms and armed guards everywhere. (And the place was located in the middle of gang territory -- the surveillance camera used to record drug and gun deals going on across the street, and the company passed the tapes on to the police. Scary.)

2) I had a boss who was the female version of the one in Dilbert. She'd been a cheerleader in high school and college and really was the stereotype of a bubble-headed blonde. In her attempts to be professional, she would say words wrong or use words incorrectly. If she had been a nice person, we wouldn't have thought much about it. But she was a vindictive backstabber, so we employees always had a great laugh over her verbal stumbles. Like "carsht blanc" for "carte blanche", and "paragon" instead of "paradigm." She could mispronounce any buzz word on the planet. It was hysterical, especially when she did it in presentations for senior management...

--
Steff
[ blog | photos ]

I would just like to state at this point, that if you're in a store, and all the staff are dressed to leave, and the music's off, and the lights are off, and everybody looks angry...please don't browse for 20 minutes AND THEN NOT BUY ANYTHING!!! Thank you:)

Steve Sharam
www.whenrealityknocks.com

office supplies
presentations
performance reviews

...dave
insomnia cure

always....

while in first year university I worked at an electrolysis clinic...part of my duties included waxing men's backs.

GAH!

OK here goes.

I was a caddy. Not like those guys who tote one bag for a pro golfer. We carried two bags and ran all over the course when golfers sprayed their shots. And we did this 36 holes a day.

I moved pianos. Nothing like getting an upright goliath of an instrument to a third-floor walk up. And when we didn't have deliveries, we got to strip and refinish rental pianos in a less than well-ventilated area.

I worked in the meat dept. of a grocery store, which was one of the dirtiest, smelliest jobs I've ever had...and I'm not a vegetarian, yet.

Now, I'm in the corporate world, but enough said about that.

When I was in my teens I was asked to be "Twinkie the Kid" and hand out free Twinkies at the local Acme. I remember the head/mask was big and really hard to see out of and I tripped over something and fell losing my head... I hurried to put it back on so I wouldn't disappoint any little kids who thought Twinkie really did exist...LOL

Proof: http://ButterflySis.smugmug.com/photos/217393520-L.jpg

My first job was at a department store so I can related to the above comments. I too hated when people would linger around the store after you had announced its closing three times. I especially hated having to stay late after closing to "straighten" and having to go in really early (earlier than store opening) on those special days like the day after Thanksgiving. Ugh! I HATED working there. I felt trapped there and would show up late (30-45 minutes) and would pray they would fire me. They never did. I eventually went to work at a high school. Kids are rude. Not all of them...but enough of them that made me remember why I don't want kids!

Now I work at a college extension office that sponsors the non-profit I actually work for. Though I often grumble it's not over anything truly horrible. For the most part I enjoy my job and the people that I work with....and that I don't have to turn in an empty pen to order a new one. :-)

- Jen