Bad Jobs

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Have you ever been in a bad job? When did you know? What made it bad? Why did you ultimately leave?

My first job, when I was 17, was at the parking lot payment booth at Great Adventure. It cost $3.00 to park back then, and we collected it from thousands of cars each day. The work was so repetative and mundane, I would go home at night and dream all night that I was at work. It wasn't my worst job, but I had the worst nightmares from it.

-- kritter (kritter@adelphia.net), March 08, 2000

Answers

kritter,

All of my jobs are the worst job ever. :) Kidding, as overall I have been lucky in my professional career.

But when I was 16, I worked at a Wendy's for a few weeks. I couldn't take the smell anymore, so I quit. I used to be really skinny, and the smell of the food cooking made me not want to eat. That wasn't healthy.

Another "winner" was when I was 17. I graduated high school early, and wanted to work for a few months before I started college in the fall. I worked at the national head quarters for Blue Cross and Blue Sheild. WOW, what fun (not)! All I can say, is that hospitals get a little testy when you send them collection notices for insurance premiums that are past due. [And the boss gets a little testy as well, as you don't send a collection notice to your biggest "customer" as they might just refuse your insurance ...]

Donna

-- (Sheeple@Greener.Pastures), March 08, 2000.


That would have to be factory work.

I pulled almost 1 and 1/2 years in a handbag and belt producing factory. You know how when you get a new purse, it has all of that tissue paper inside of it too give it a "full" appearance? That is what I did for most of the time there: stood for 8 hours a day stuffing tissue paper into handbags, one after the other, for I think at that time, about $4.50 an hour. Now, you want to talk about paper cuts! Bandaids where a work expense, and we where not allowed to talk.

During that time, I was pregnant, so at some point, I got to much belly to be able to "reach" the table in front of me, so I was transfered to making zippers. You take the two sides, stick them in a machine, add the pull, and zip them together. At least it was sitting down.

The upside though, expecting for the first time, it was like having 101 big sisters; some mighty nice ladies.

-- Lilly (homesteader145@yahoo.com), March 09, 2000.


Clean up and feeding detail in a pet store. In order to clean the rat cages, I had to reach into big glass aquariums full of rats and catch them one by one. They have to be caught by the tail and lifted quickly to keep them from biting you. My eye hand coordination went up while my barfing response went way down. Sometimes the owner would catch wild rats and put them in with the 'tame' rats, and the wild ones were much faster and ten times more prone to bite. Bubonic plague and rabies was often on my mind.

That job was five nights per week and every Sunday. My two day jobs amounted to the other six days and nights per week. One restaurant day job was an early evening job too. The other day job was a morning secretary job.

I started my work day in pantyhose, moved on to a uniform, and finished up in nasty work clothes. I got the kids off to school by 7 AM, went to work at 8 AM and got to bed after midnight. I kept up with husband, kids, farm, school work...

The baby was second trimester before I knew it was there. (Who had time for sex?) Two bosses let me go out of concern for the baby...I argued that starvation was bad for babies too, but they were firm. The third boss made it clear that the pregnancy was a big inconvenience for him (?) and when I had the baby I missed only seven days of work out of guilt. I kept the baby at work with me while we searched six weeks for my replacement. Never skipped a beat, never missed a deadline, never failed at anything.

Looking back, I can't imagine why suicide never crossed my mind at the time. Guess I must have been too tired to notice. I sure was buff though. :)

-- helen (handbasket_helena@hotmail.com), March 09, 2000.


Helen, you are amazing! and it's amazing what women are capable of when it comes to survival! I could never have done so many things at once. Come close..but WOW!.

-- kritter (kritter@adelphia.net), March 09, 2000.

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