What's the worst place you've worked?

general topics
101

I was teaching pre-K at a franchise day care center that had pretty much been a disaster from day one. But, I needed the money and part of my compensation was care for my infant daughter which, if you’ve ever tried to find childcare for a 4-month-old, you know that basically doubled my salary.

But the place was a mess: no supplies, curriculum that was nonsensical where it wasn’t outright wrong, maxed-out child-to-teacher ratios and turnover like you wouldn’t believe.

The last straw was when a parent asked if she could hang out in my classroom for a bit. “Sure!” I said “We love when parents visit!”

She replied “Good, because there’s a cop in the parking lot and I lost my license with my last DUI.”

Now … I know that she’s driving illegally, and I’m a mandated reporter so I can’t let this woman pick up her kid with a suspended license. So I told my supervisor. Who replied “Well. I didn’t hear her say that and maybe you didn’t either.”

As soon as my class graduated I quit. The place got shut down eventually.

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102

I think I love you.

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103

I’ve delivered papers, worked at McDonalds for a couple years, Sears for one summer, in a hidden location of a bank shipping and receiving massive amounts of cold hard cash day in day out, delivered pizza … only professional job has been in IT. Worst job was a year at Dow Jones – a full year of doing virtually nothing. I don’t know why they hired me - there was no need whatsoever. And the people I was with were in the same boat - and none of us were able to stay adequately busy. I did in year what I could have accomplished in a week. I know, a job that required literally nothing of me. What a nightmare. Coolest job was the one where I shipped and received cash – one of the places we got it from was Yankee Stadium. Filthiest source of cash you could imagine!

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104

This is exactly why I don’t want anyone other than myself bagging my groceries. So few people bag conscientiously as @wrecksdart did.

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105

Have you ever had to explain to a bagger that cans don’t go on top of bananas? And have you had to do it more than once?:rage:

How can someone that clueless get any job at all?

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106

The number of times I’ve purchased bananas can be counted on one hand, however, the number of times I’ve found bread, chips or burger buns under cans is maddeningly high. When Cub Foods opened in the Twin Cities, it became pretty much the only place we shopped. My mom has poor spatial reasoning abilities, so food tetris (thanks @nungesser, that’s exactly what it is) was my job.

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107

Wait, what? Who doesn’t eat bananas in the U.S.? It’s literally the number one selling fruit here!

Or were you making a subtle joke, since “hand” is the terminology for referring to the tiers of bananas growing on a tree?

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108

Not kidding at all. I hate 'em. Bought them a few times for the boy.

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109

The jobs they used to have watching cans go by at the factory are now done by robots? And now they get these jobs…

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110

The ones available in the US are pretty bad, compared to the ones that are available in the tropics. I love bananas, but that’s because I started out with the really good ones. My grandfather would pick hands of little bananas for me, and I would eat them all, then ask for mangos. The ones I can get here are only reminiscent of the real thing, sadly. By the time they are ripe enough to taste right, they are mush.

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111

They’re all Cavendish here. But if you have a local Central American market, check their produce department for a lot more variety.

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112

I’m a bit to far out in the boonies for that, but there are a couple of Asian markets in the somewhat nearby big town that sometimes have reasonable bananas. There is a latino market about an hour away in the other direction, that has good fruit & veg and fresh cheese, even a meat counter where they cut it up the way I remember from my childhood. But it’s just so far.

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113

Once I was getting really tired of the hotel job and looking for something more translation-related, I found an almost perfect job - working in a hospital interpreting for patients from other countries. The hospital was literally across the road from our apartment, and they offered a much better salary. I passed the interview just before Christmas and was told that I could start work on a certain date toward the end of January. I wanted to make sure, so I confirmed that I was actually being offered the job and that I could give in my notice to the hotel. I called again just after Christmas, but the interviewer was away and the person answering the phone couldn’t tell me anything about the job. The interviewer was actually going to return after the date I was due to start, so after calling again I was told to wait for her to return. When I did, she told me that she didn’t actually have the authority to give me a job and there wasn’t one available anymore. The hotel had taken on someone else by that point, so I searched for a couple of months before finding a job security wrapping luggage in the airport.

By this point the bottom had really fallen out of the tourist industry and sometimes I would have whole shifts where there were no flights to my terminal and nothing to do. I had brought some small flashcards to learn vocabulary, but this wasn’t allowed. I just had to stand to attention for eight hours, in the knowledge that I might see two or three passengers all day. I had some interesting co-workers though: an Andalucian guy who loved flamenco (“you really like flamenco, don’t you?” “No. I am flamenco”.), a Russian guy who excelled in getting drunk and finding all of the local festivals, a Polish guy who loved learning swear words in other languages and basically sounded like he had Tourettes, a Colombian guy who creeped on all the women who passed by and an Argentinian guy who loved 4Chan and internet trolling (and also introduced me to IT Crowd and Black Books, so I had good memories of him). We also had a really nice Argentinian woman and a really cynical German woman who were sales assistants. Despite the fact that I was trying to avoid UK tourists, I had to be the apologist for their bad behaviour. “Why do the British never learn any other languages? Why do they not respect our culture? Why do they have no class, especially when drunk? Why do they just sit around on the beach and in their British cafes and drink “real Nescafe” rather than proper coffee? Why is British food so bad - apart from the breakfasts?”

It wasn’t a bad environment and I liked my colleagues, but I was going crazy after four months of doing basically nothing. Still, I was considered very lucky by my friends, who were often working illegal jobs with no security at all.

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114

YAS!! HELLO! BANANAS ARE NOT GOOD! My people!

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115

Ah, a plantain person.

Aren’t bananas done for, anyway? Cavendish ones, anyway? (just like the Gros Michel ones were before them)

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116

I like the little red ones when I can find them. Much tastier.

I occasionally go on “eat a healthy banana for breakfast” kicks, but those aberrations from my poptart routine don’t last long.

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117

Food of the Gods. Brown sugar, cherry, or, if you’re extra-special lucky, grape. Do I care that this is not the best possible breakfast food? No. Do I care about the amount of sugar contained therein? No. Do I care that the ingredients are probably all derived from industrial grey water and unnamed chemical paste? No. Have I ever had a job making poptarts? No. And I’m okay with those answers.
Did I mop and squeegee the basement, basement bathroom, and brew room last night? Why yes, yes I did.

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118

Did your basement floor drain backup? (really hoping the answer is “no, I accidentally spilled the wort.”)

119

I haven’t seen grape in ages and ages! My choices locally are brown sugar (the best), strawberry, or blueberry; I haven’t ventured into the zone of insanity that is Watermelon or Cake Batter or any of those other wacky things. I was very excited by the recent addition of peanut butter filled Pop-Tarts, but it turns out that hot melted peanut butter isn’t my idea of a good time.

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120

I’ve had a lot of jobs that were pretty crummy jobs made better by having decent bosses.

The main exception was the six months where I tended bar.

Now, for the first few months, “tending bar” isn’t a good description of what I was doing, as the place didn’t have a liquor license yet. It was me working behind a bar, selling near-beer and 0.5% alcohol bottled drinks. I still got paid a server’s salary, though (even though I got nil in the way of tips, putting it below minimum wage).

When it started up as an actual bar, it got a bit better, but I still didn’t get too much in the way of tips, as I was a young, long-haired, shy guy. According to the girls who worked other shifts, they were making lots of money on tips, but no such luck for me.

The job itself wasn’t too bad - serve bar food that basically went from the freezer into the deep fryer, sell drinks (they didn’t ask for specific mixed drinks, which was fine, as I didn’t know how to mix them), and kick people out when they’d had one too many. Towards the end of my tenure there, they also started selling cigarettes - don’t ask me why.

Of course, the kids who had come by to play pool (but not buy anything) when it had been a “café” still came by and wanted to play pool and listen to 50 Cent (ugh) and not buy anything. Once one of those “regulars” stole a pack of cigarettes while I was cleaning up to close the place for the night, which I had to explain to my manager. Luckily, there was a camera which showed it happening, so I didn’t get in trouble for it.

For some reason, my manager insisted on having the bar open on Christmas Day, and guess who the only one that he could find willing to work that day? The bar, of course, did not make enough in sales that it was worth it to have me there, but I spent Christmas working anyway ( and had to chase down someone who tried to leave without paying, in the true Christmas spirit).

Luckily for me, I was going back to school in January, so I had a good excuse for leaving and not coming back. As a non-drinker myself, I always felt bad about contributing to other people’s addiction (especially once the cigarette sales started), so I felt nothing but relief to be out of there.

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