Some of My Awful Jobs, and Just What SUCKED About Each of Them!
If you've seen my posts, you probably know that I think j*bs suck. But, you may not have seen just what sucks about them! (Although if you've held one, I really can't imagine that you don't know...deep down inside.) Well after reading this list of of My Rotten Jobs and What Sucked About Them, you should have no doubts that words describing such a state do indeed deserve the asterisks I give them!
But first a general overview of the EVILS of employment.
These J*bs (except the first one) are listed mostly in order of SUCKINESS because that's how they're coming to mind!
This Blighter was a typical teenager job that I got when I was 18. I got an extra quarter...for being 18! Oooh. That should have been a red flag. They had to bribe non-minors to touch it!! But, it was my first and there I was, at The Cookie Bin. I wouldn't have touched it--I knew innately that w*rk sucked even before coming near a place myself--but I had to get car insurance and this supposedly was the way to pay for that (a bogus notion but I didn't know that then...).
DUTIES: Make cookies, clean equipment, sell cookies to customers. SOUNDS SIMPLE RIGHT? But, in the sadistic way of low-level management (especially on teen jobs), I was soon confronted with THIS directive: "Make blobs (this was done IN THE BACK), while serving customers (this was done IN THE FRONT)!" Needless to say, it is physically impossible to do both parts of that directive. The bit is, and the managers KNOW IT, TOO, that no matter what the employee does with an order like that, the manager can claim that the employee is only doing half the job! Then they make like they're doing you a f***in favor for not firing you, for refusing to break the laws of Physics to obey their ridiculous order.
EXTRA BLIGHT: Those "blobs". They were ice-cream scoops full of shortening. Each Blob was pre-measured by the scoops we used. Greasy and ecchy and hard to clean up. But that wasn't the worst of it. It included cultured skim milk. This NASTY stuff smelled like rotten milk! (Cultured=they put bacteria that won't sicken you in it, and let that grow awhile. Stinks just as bad as with bad bac. though!) Peeyuuu...and the person stuck making Blobs had to make hundreds of 'em out of this ecch!
THE FLOOR FACTOR: The Floor Factor is the thing that Floored me the MOST about the job. One day a customer came and begged me to tell her the Secret Ingredient to Cookie Bin Cookies. She raved about their flavor (which was...okay, but nothing stellar). She was ecstatic to learn about The Shortening and gave me a tip. I never got to see her reaction when she tracked down an actual box of Tastex Shortening and got a load of the smell for the first time! Darnit... (The rest of the cookie dough came from a mix with unknown proportions. Whether she could replicate it I don't know.)
TIME THIS HELL LASTED: 3 months. STATUS OF EMPLOYER: Now out of business. Lasted about 1 year after I left.
OTHER j*bs, in order I remember them--not chronological order!
Kelly Temporary Services, Manpower, Entech, Somebody Sometime: These all specialize in ONE THING: They match up Places that Cannot Keep Employees, with People who Cannot Keep Jobs!!! And they put lotsa spin, to try to make like what they do is something different than this. Don't be fooled--it's not. THIS IS WHAT THEY DO, for the temporary assignments!
So, if you're looking for a job, and you get it through one of these, IT WILL SUCK! If you're looking for an employee, and you hire through one of these, the employee will either...Show up Whenever, Go Slow, or Quit On You with No Notice. (Legal Disclaimer: There may be exceptions to this.)
Temp Job #1: Dishwashing. One-day assignments to fill in for people who had called in. A surprising BLOWOFF the first time! Busing tables and sticking the dishes into a machine. What was different about the first time? No harassment, nice Company Cafeteria where I could smoke like a fiend and it was ALLOWED(!!!), and plenty of people so concerned about keeping their precious permanant dishwashing jobs (Ack!) that they grabbed up all the dishes as I brought them into the kitchen and wouldn't let me at the Big Dishwashing Machine (and therefore, I was inadvertantly kept away from the truly yecchy part). Jackpot Easy, job lasted 2 1/2 hours, minimum Kelly'd pay for was 4. So it was like Double Time... PLACE: A minor GM Building with White-Collar Workers of Varying Ranks. STATUS OF EMPLOYER: That building is now closed. But GM lives, of course.
Dishwashing Redux: Not so lucky. Idiot employees had left. Smoking, banned. Staff, less. So, I got YECH+Nicotine Fit+Spent Longer There.
PLACE: GM
THEN there are the times they call with a job--and when you show up, you end up doing a DIFFERENT job!
STATED JOB: 'Nother dishwashing job, but I was out of dough so I said "okay". ACTUAL JOB: Serving food to teenagers at a private high school!!
This place wanted to be NO help. I asked what to do, they said, "oh, you know, just serve the food"! Get real!! Heck no, I didn't know--did they think I really ATE Cafeteria "food" in high school? WROONNGG... I didn't know how that worked and wasn't inclined to find out until I was getting paid to! Then I asked 'em how much to serve. They said, "Oh, you know what's a normal amount!" Heh heh heh...I said, "fine be that way", and proceeded to give out what I would consider a normal amount. A HEAPING plateful of spaghetti, 2 scoops of Beans to go with that, at least 4-5 meatballs...and a couple of rolls.
They soon let me know exactly what a "normal amount" meant.
TIME: Was supposed to be ONE DAY. Was called back in 2 days, to come back. I could tell they'd call every day, claiming it was just "one more day", forever! I made up some Hockey. Didn't go back. PLACE: Cranbrook Upper School STATUS: Alive. Hard for a place to die when a LAW mandates it and the only alternative is the Lousy Public Schools!
JOB: Serve hot dogs at a fishing show.
BORING! This dud came from Kelly. Boring says it all. A bunch of Old Fishermen, getting drunk on watered-down beer and eating rubbery hot dogs while looking at reels and junk like that. At least they could have given me a Country Music Show, but hell noooooo...it wouldn't be a KELLY JOB if they had something desireable like THAT! Bad.
TIME: One day. STATUS: The show still comes around every year. But I don't!
JOB: Unpacking crap from a big box from China, and repacking it into retail packs.
For some unfathomable reason, these d*mn packing places all think, that person should INSTANTLY have 100% dexterity, with some sticky plastic JUNK that the new employee has never, ever, worked with before in her life--and be faster than a machine, too!
The "intellectual" part was, well, nonexistant. You just take some stuff from the big box, get a clamshell open (ever do a mechanical puzzle???) put the Item in the clamshell, and staple it shut. Never mind the paper-cut-like nicks this stuff gives you, pain's Part Of The Job.
The FLOOR FACTOR: It was a FIRING OFFENSE, to put your arms on the work table. I got fired from this one. For that! Putting my arms on the table!!! I'm still too floored to be all that peeved..and it's been over TEN years since I darkened the door of Deados, Incorporated. STATUS: I think this company is dead. May it rot.
JOB: More Rotten Packing Junk. Was supposed to be a "permanant" position--no temp agencies.
This BLIGHTER is one to blow stereotypes away! Stereotypes? Yeah...you know those steroetypes about a toy factory being a fun job??? WELL DITCH 'EM, BECAUSE IT SUCKS! First of all, the Assembly Lines were going inhumanly fast. I found out later, that that's because the plastic mold men were trying to set RECORDS! Never mind the fact that a molding machine can kick out a part in like, 3/4 of a second...but it takes One Minute to do anything else with the part! So you have this Charlie Chaplin-like effect going on! If you don't know what that effect is, turn on some of those old shows where they have the speed up and the characters are hopping around (These shows were made in the 20s and 30s or so...).
If you incorrectly assembled, or wrongly packed, a toy, the supervisor would literally throw it at you! And not so you could catch it! But so it'll crash onto the floor. That would make the toy self-disassemble down to its individual components! That a place would treat people this way will forever FLOOR me!
Yet if someone *swore*, THAT was a BIG DEAL! (Huge eek seal here!)
They also demanded that people show up 5 minutes early, off the clock, to get their assignments for the day. This is an illegal practice in the United States, and occasionally the Labor Department will kick azz and slap huge fines on places. That's because, 5 mins, times 100 employees, times a few years=a heckuva lot of cash lost by the labor force there!!
FLOOR FACTORS: Plural for this one. One day they didn't like how I packed things on the Bulk Line (this was a line that put all the stuff the reg. assembly lines couldn't handle, into big crates--at Charlie Chaplin speeds) so they THREW the hundreds of Items in the crate, onto the FLOOR! Surprise, surprise...I wasn't like the others, who would race to pick it all up. I let it rot. When somebody said, in shock(!) "aren't you going to pick that up?" I said, H No, *I* didn't throw it down there!!!" FLOOR FACTOR 2. One day a plastic molding machine lit on fire, and spewed toxic crap smoke all over the place. Everybody kept working like nothing happened! I said, "aren't you going to open the Shipping Doors to let some air in here?" They said, NO! And they were serious!!! I would have made a huge stink but I knew that that job's days were very Numbered. FLOOR FACTOR 3: Delayed. On a retail job later, a guy who had worked there saw me and asked, "How could I stand a Retail job--the toy factory was so much BETTER!"
On my second day on the Bulk Line, they gave the person next to me TWO part types to pack. They gave me, EIGHT part types to pack. Then she (the co-worker) had the GALL to look disgusted that I wasn't going as fast as she was, and some of my EIGHT part types, were making it down the line along with her TWO part types.
So I decided that since my speed wasn't adequate enough for her, that she should go ahead and pack them all herself.
TIME BEFORE MID-SHIFT WALKOUT: 10 1/2 days.
PLACE: American Plastic Toys. STATUS: Last I know, they quit directly hiring and now use Kelly Temporary Services.
UPDATE: Something about getting Kelly Employees in a real SUCKY place like this is hilarious! See, Kelly employees won't put up with any of that BS. None. Not a drop, not for a minute! The reason is simple: It's just a temp job, at a temp place, and they can go ahead and Walk Out and be working tomorrow through Manpower instead. And they know it. Also, Kelly employees tend to have no real responsibilities...at least none that they'd let make them stay in a place like APT!!
So the Immovable Inhuman corporation which (I believe) previously would have administered beatings if they thought they could get away with it, got EDUCATED with multiple walkouts. Last I heard, their production speed had dropped, and toys-as-missiles only happened occasionally. But they still have a bulk line and it still sucks.
This was the Worst Job Ever.
JOB: "Detab and Box"
PLACE: Argent Automotive Systems. Or, Argent Adhesive Systems. Or, Argent Automotive Solutions. Whichever's convenient. (All 3 were seen on different boxes at varying times.) Was doing business as Argent Automotive Systems at the time. This was a long-term Kelly job. Yes, Kelly has a few of these extended positions.
This was a blowoff Night Job, with quite a cast of employees! Situated on the Freeway a bit up from Southfield and a bit further up from Detroit, it was an anomoly in Novi Mich. The job itself was boring as rocks so we occupied ourselves by talking during this 4-day/week, 12/day gig.
This job would have been fine, if not for one jerk called Greg B. I could actually put his full name on, because he'll never get on a computer...or read anything...but I won't. Somebody with some sense may see it and get within range of him (fat chance in hell). You can probably detect my disdain for this overgrown 3-year old boy, and you probably would disdain him too, if you had to sit in his work-area while he blew 3 industrial-sized fans on you in 45 degree (Farnenheit!) weather night after night, while making LAME come-ons, until finally you QUIT to maintain your sanity!!!
A clear case of a j*b being wrecked by one jackass, with the help of a supervisor who kept sticking me back there with the Idiot.
THE FLOOR FACTORS: WAY too many to list! But here's some! Like, trying to tell people things, and having them say "I DON WANNA KNOW!!" What was I trying to tell them things for? Usually, because they had asked! Or people who said, very proudly, "I'm broke as Hell!" Um... A guy who said he had no problem. With being homeless... (He said he was too old for that now and that's what he was doing working. But that he'd rather not have a place!! He seemed serious!) An Alcoholic Guy who was a local, who said he drank a "40-ouncer" to "sleep"! He was driving on a Revoked (Not suspended, Revoked!) License. I knew it was revoked because he mentioned being busted more than 3 times for drunk driving. That's revoked! He staggered in there more than once. TEENAGERS who had lied, and said they were 21 to get the job. People who walked out mid-shift...to go to parties. One who came back and was surprised there was a problem with that! Two weirdos who came in all dressed up (like for a secretarial job), w*rked in the Factory for about 7 hours, and then stormed out in a huge huff. People who thought they would get to run a Production Machine on their first day. Never mind that they'd never before seen that type of machine in their life, or the fact that one blown run would cost Argent about $3000!
Well, on the good side, there was at least one person who wanted out of that "downtrodden" way of life. Good luck to K.D., wherever she is. Unlike Greg, KD just may end up reading this someday!
TIME: 8 months. A near-record! STATUS: They now hire directly from what I could determine.
JOB: Bagging Groceries, Take 1.
This Blowoff entailed two locations of the same store. An old one, nice and laid back. And a new store, tight-*ssed as it gets! Needless to say, one location SUCKED!
The first location was kind of fun. This place does Not think "the customer is always right"--in fact, every single day I was on, there was one vowing to "never come back"! Funny how I'd see the same person back the next week buying $200 worth of stuff. Could be because the nearest Competing Grocery Store was 5 miles away! That's what they get for being too lazy to drive a bit more :p
The Second Location was too much the other way! Every little thing was the Employee's Fault. The fact that it takes more than "10 minutes" to sort 1000 cans? The bagger's fault! The fact that the prices were screwed? The cashier's fault! And the a-hole customers thought I should have had the layout of the store memorized. Never mind the fact that I had just been transferred there the DAY BEFORE! Idiots. And the manager was a b*tch. That word says it all...she delighted in being insulting and mean!
TIME: About 4 months. PLACE: Kroger STATUS: Both locations still live. Amazing, the first one never runs out of customers! The mean manager was booted out of the second store. Haw haw haw!
JOB: Bagging Groceries, take two.
When I talk about "the Grocery Job", I mean this one. At this one, I decided to make the most of my time "incarcerated" in the state of employment. I would try out different approaches with the customers, and see what went over. And to kill boredom, I figured I'd try to get 'em to buy different things than they were going to.
There were about 1000 customers a day that went through there, and I got to interact with a few hundred of 'em per shift. Each interaction lasted 1-3 minutes! So if I was going to make an impression, I had to do it fairly quick.
JOB DUTIES: I must dispel the myth that "baggers" only throw things in bags. WRONNGGG! Baggers also, take care of bottle machines (at least there's machines now--if customers don't like the speed they can yell at IT!), clean up messes, get carts through both sweltering heat and freezing snow and wind, and carry crap to cars like 80lb bags of salt (while smiling because there's usually a good tip for that).
And baggers have to deal with every idiot customer who is too chicken to go to the Manager or too dumb to realize that the people in the second-lowest tier of Rank, does not have the authority to do much of anything about anything!!!
When I started at this store, the Policy was to have to ask the manager for permission even to switch an obviously defective, smashed-up POS for a good package! (It's fairly obvious when the damage is the store's fault because it happens in a certain way) Needless to say, I ignored that PITA and would just do it. They only changed the Policy to "just do it as long as the price is under XX," after seeing how much more efficient that was and how much less of a pain it was, for them!
So after a few months, I learned what goes over with customers, what doesn't, and when it's no longer worthwhile to bother trying to appease one. Appeasing them has a calculable cost in labor and goods and therefore it's quite simple to know when to "cut 'em off"--IF the store isn't brainwashed with that "the customer's always right" BS, and worse yet, the WRONG IDEA that every "customer" is worth having! (They are NOT. Some are a liability.) In keeping with this, I also learned what'd drive a DUD out of there within 5 minutes. I finally proved my point after driving out a group of complainers who were also petty theives...and it was noticed that profits went up by $200/week!!! I said, "it's cuz I drove out those crooks" and they finally had to admit that it was a help to be rid of the jerks, but they never really got it on a basal level. I cannot understand what is so hard for Retailers to get about this concept. It's simple mathematics! A customer costs $X in labor to serve, and it costs $XX to buy (wholesale) what is sold to that customer. IF the costs of serving the customer, replacing nibbled-on stuff they wrecked by opening it, and replacing items they let go stale (and them blamed the staleness on the store) exceed the revenue gained (this is the difference between the Wholesale Cost of the items actually bought and their Retail Cost) then send the "customer" to the competing store! It's really not that hard of a concept!!!
But enough ranting about brick-blind store management.
THE FLOOR FACTORS: Mostly are from customers. One day a Bottle Machine was in an advanced stage of dismantlement, to be rebuilt. Some idiot guy came in, carefully moved the front-plate from where it was balanced against the wall, slid the dismantled machine guts aside, and then put his bottle in! Needless to say, the machine made a horrid ranching sound and then jammed! To top it off, the Psycho who always worked the bottle room (My non-degreed opinion--it'd take a page in itself to describe this one...) came out and--as I had thought she would--SCREAMED BLOODY MURDER and cussed him out with full flames as bad as any on any board! Only loud--the whole store knew!!! Haw haw haw, it served him right and becuase of some never-stated reason, N.R. never had to worry about being fired for this behavior. Too bad she also would yell at the rest of us! And sometimes throw bottles!!
Floor factor 2. One day some kids blocked up all the drains in the men's john and turned on the spigots! That mess provided a welcome break from sticking groceries in a bag but the other baggers did not agree with my contrarian viewpoint. But it was cleaned up well enough until it came to the last job: Picking a nasty wet paper towel out of the floor drain. We did "paper/scissors/rock" to determine who was the "lucky" sod who'd get to take that out of there. My people-watching came in handy, and I used it to guess out which thing the others'd pick based on their personalities. I was right and got to avoid that...
Floor factor 3. Idiots who would back out of their parking places, even though they could see a cart train was behind them! One actually got out and yelled, "Why didn't you move that?!" Physics Fact: When a long, heavy object is in motion, it does not instantly stop, nor reverse. Psychology Fact: Nobody in their right mind will speed up, and have their BODY there instead of the carts! Conclusion: "Where did you think I was going to GO with it?!" He ended up saying, "oh, um, I guess you couldn't go anywhere...sorry..." (with the expression of someone who got busted).
I could write a whole book about this place but enough of them for this site.
TIME: 9 months. Record! STATUS: Update, mid 2007--Farmer Jack Michigan is NOW DEAD!! Double-Update: the ENTIRE CHAIN is DEAD!
INTERESTING SIDE-FACT: What I learned on this job, probably is what enabled me to quit working altogether later! Due to that, I award this one Best Job status. After all, what better job than the one that provides the skills needed to AVOID more jobs!
Still, I'm glad that it's dead. The Curse of Leader, against j*bs that went bad, continues!
JOB: Packing Coupon Pads AGENCY: Performance Personnel
BORING! Dull as ROCKS! The Duties were simple. Places like Kmart, QVC Drugs, Rite-Aid, etc., have these pads of coupons where customers can tear one off when they buy the related item. These pads typically have offers like, "Buy 2, send in the UPCs with this coupon, and get a million bucks off!"
These are shipped to the stores, in packs. Each pack has a set amount of each pad in it.
This job was to count out the pads and pack them up. Unlike most rotten p*cking jobs, there is actually enough CLEARANCE in the package to easily fit the goods! In other words, this is a job to do while thinking of something totally different and more mentally challenging!
PROBLEM/FLOOR FACTOR: Every time I would start thinking about something that actually TOOK A NEURON, the Neanderthal Ladies would tap me and say to not think about anything besides the (no brainer) job!!! And that they thought it would get screwed up if my mind wandered! AUUGGHHH! Seriously, this is a job a baby could do the minute the baby had a big enough hand to hold the packs. It does NOT take any conscious attention AT ALL! Yet all attempts to think were interrupted.
TIME: Two long weeks before I was bored right outta there. STATUS: DEAD! Time of death unknown. They likely died due to way too much reliance on K-Mart as a customer. PLACE: Rebate Express.
JOB: Inventory, GM AGENCY: Kelly Temporary Services
Duties: Count small truck parts, like nameplates, mirrors, that kind of thing.
Just a job. Dusty warehouse. A bit of a floor factor in one somewhat strange lady but nothing spectacular.
TIME: A one-day gig. STATUS: The attached plant ended up being moved to Canada or somewhere for a few years, but I think they retooled and reopened it awhile back.
JOB: Inventory, Kelsey-Hayes. AGENCY: Kelly Temporary Services
Actually a pretty cool job, as far as jobs go. They provided donuts for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, and basically kissed our butts! It ended early, too. The thrill of beating it early always outweighed the fact that it's less $$$, for me.
CON: It started at 7 AM and was so far away I had to get up at 5:30! Due to that, even with the perks, it wouldn't have lasted more than one day even if it had been scheduled to.
FLOOR FACTOR: (Updated) I can't believe I forgot to put in the Floor Factor for this. After all of this time, here it is: I was the one who discovered that somebody had made off with 7, $700 parts. I didn't realize it when I counted the 1 or 2 left and put the number on my sheet, but the sudden influx of top-level managers heading directly for me let me know that something was drastically wrong! Cue a search of the entire area, along with several other working areas. Too bad for Kelsey-Hayes - those suckers were GONE. Cue lots of drama, searching, and then a review of the door-cam tapes to corroborate my statement that I'd only gone outside for cigs. I think being a smoker was actually good in this case, because there I was on every break, puffing away in full view right under the camera.
JOB: DISassemble parts, Kelsey-Hayes AGENCY: Forgot, but it was probably Kelly.
A nice quickie Night Job that ended when the last part was done. Some automated equipment had gone haywire and produced about 100,000 defective parts. So we had to take 'em all apart to salvage the good components.
Non-automated assembly line and nice easy-to work-with Anti-Lock Brake Assemblies to take apart. Drinking pop, allowed. Smoking, Allowed! Never mind OSHA. Puff puff puff, the feds aren't up at that time of night! Laaiiddd back.
FLOOR FACTOR: A guy who kept passing defects, so they'd get re-rejected and sent back through, to prolong the job. As if the 5000 or so defects he probably passed (cumulative), would prolong it more than one day.
TIME: Two weeks. STATUS: They ran out of defects right on schedule despite that guy and ended the project. I still call any sort of screwing-up of work, especially if done on purpose, "Bucking it up" after his nickname - Buck.
STATUS OF KELSEY-HEYES: They were eaten by Varity Corporation a while back but still operate plants as "Kelsey-Hayes" or "Varity Kelsey-Heyes".
I have to say, Kelsey-Hayes is probably a good place for permanent empl*yment, if somebody actually wants it.
JOB: ASSEMBLY ASSISTANT
Duties: Slide parts into a track so this other woman could stamp them with a little press.
Agency: Kelly
At this gig, all I had to do was sit there, grab parts out of a box, and slide them one-by-one down this grooved track. A woman at a press would then put some other part on top of them and stamp them together. You ever see metal parts that have two pieces of metal that stay together as if by magic? That's how they get so tightly jammed in place. It's a setup that will eventually fall apart, btw, so if you can replace such a gizmo with one that's actually screwed or welded, do so...
This was a night job that took over an hour to get to. Way the hell out and gone! Kelly said it "wasn't that far." By the time I got there, they had all but given up on that production run, but I rocked up after all, so off we went. Overall, it was a blowoff.
FLOOR FACTOR: There is always a floor factor for every job. On this one, it was that they handed out earplugs, but all of the permanent employees just pretended to use them. They sat them at the edges of their ear canals where they wouldn't do any good. Meanwhile, I put mine in properly. I noticed that it took the same level of yelling to talk to the old employees as it did to me - meaning that the main workers had gone SO DEAF that to them, everything sounded as soft as if it was coming through earplugs! Which, of course, means that their hearing permanently sucked thanks to wanting to be macho/macha. I happily wore my plugs properly throughout the shift, and did not get permanent hearing loss as a souvenir.
Time: One night. Too bad, because I could have milked that one some more...
PLACE: Obidos. STATUS: Unknown. Google search reveals no relevant results. It is not the city in Portugal!
JOBS: VARIOUS FILING JOBS
Duties: Alphabetize stuff that hasn't been looked at in (Months, Years, Decades! Depending on place).
Office Resource: This place hadn't looked at their files in months since their last secretary who was responsible for that, walked out. I was supposed to Work Miracles in One Day and straighten out the mess! Pbbbt, got about 1/5th of the way through. Floor Factor: Dented the car I was driving on the way in to this Min. Wage Wonder. A One Day Kelly job. This place is now out of business. This serves it right. These twats actually made microwave popcorn and didn't share any with me because I wasn't a permanent employee. Pbbtttt.
Vlasic Pickles Offices: This Vlasic office had some months-old files. But they weren't as bad as the others. Nice carpet, people were nice too, but they stuck me in an unused room so I didn't get to talk much. I could have done better on this one, but I was too busy listening to the guy in the next room loudly making deals and paying attention to how THAT worked! Place was actually okay...especially since I picked up some business Negotiating Tactics! It was another one day Kelly Job. Might have been two if I quit listening to the Master Salesman but I made up for that later since I finally got to put that Negotiation skill to use! Only for me it was with a Merchant. Update: The Vlasic brand is alive, but the company that owned it at the time is now either dead or they divested the brand. Not sure which.
Perry Medical: Part of Perry Drugs, this filing job had files that had not been alphabetized in DECADES! Perry Drugs had decided to sell this division, so they had to get everything in order (huge eek seals!). They hired about 25 people and set us on these old, moldering shelves. It was just overwhelming and I removed myself from that endless morass in two days. Kelly...
In the above three, one thing was brought home quite clearly: I HATE FILING!!! And wouldn't do it again! Yes that does mean, that I don't do any filing for myself either. Fugheddabout it! BLEAGH!
JOB: Getting Carts. And put a few items of stock up. PLACE: Wal-Mart.
Considered by many to be the very definition of Sucks, Wal-Mart has got to have some of the biggest amounts of institutionalized blight.
I applied for "Stock/Carts" at this one because I remembered that getting carts at Farmer Jack was pretty much of a blowoff. No pesky customers bother the outside employees, and the j*b can be done while having 99% of the neurons on something else! Just bring in the carts and don't get hit by a car. Easy, you think? WRONG! See, this one is advertised as "Stock/Carts." See that STOCK part? You're supposed to put up stock most of the time, and get carts every few hours! Or, at least, that's what the j*b description says. But they LIE!
This entire j*b counts as a bunch of FLOOR FACTORS:
In reality, the job was to get carts for 8 hours in a row! This was in the dead of winter in Michigan! Pure physical torture! As for breaks, those who did not know the break/lunch laws were chiseled out of their breaks and lunches as a routine method of operation! Unfortunately for the management, I know employee rights--so they couldn't steal one single break from me. The m*n*ger right above me almost dropped her pants when I reminded her of the law! Also I had enough sense to refuse all w*rk orders that came AFTER I punched out! They actually took on a threatening posture over this last part, which fooled the teenagers they had working there, but my "make my day, I'm just itching to sue" facial expression took care of that.
UBER floor factors: The manager who came out when I was absolutely miserable and yelled I LOVE SNOW! The rotten wank! She ended up with laryngitis, ha ha ha! The (different) manager that tried to steal breaks and lunches. She tried to say I had to bring in ALL the carts (an impossible task--it's a very busy store which was always full--literally hundreds of customers going in and out) before I could have a break or lunch. This was an obvious ploy to STEAL the breaks since she certainly knew it couldn't be done! I pity the poor teenagers who are unaware of their rights--and unaware of the ROTTEN PLOYS of bad managers.
The amount of managers there is a floor factor in itself! There were about 10--for the front end alone! And they'd all be on duty at once!! Also they had this stupid game. The one with "the key" was supposed to be in charge. They'd pass the key around between themselves (with magician-like moves so employees didn't notice it) and then give conflicting orders.
When I gave my notice (I don't know why I gave a notice. It's the only place that got one!) they actually *demanded* a letter of resignation! Amazingly I gave them one. I must have been worried that they wouldn't fork up the last check if I didn't. They actually begged me to stay! They should have thought of that before they were such a ^*(%&...
TOPPER: When I went back to pick up my last check, I had to sign a form that said the "reason for leaving" that they had on record was correct. On it, I noticed that they had checked the box: Rehire: Yes. AS IF I would want THAT j*b back!! Dream on, Wal-Mart!
STATUS OF PLACE. Alive. Seems invincible, too - but there was a time people said that about K-Mart, so...
JOB: Delivering Pizzas.
High School redux! Like I stepped into a time warp, I found myself surrounded with large KIDS! AAAKKKK! Ew, the immaturity. Fortunately drivers don't have to endure it much as long as people keep ordering deliveries.
Imagine trying to find streets that you never even heard of, 5 hours a day. That's "pizza delivery". And you'd better do it quick, but not get a ticket. Plus there was no streetlight facing the pizza place, so RISK YER NECK going out into the busy intersection! Is it Red for the other guy, or is he just asleep at the switch?? You'll never know, till you go...
Amazingly I avoided cracking it up on this 6 monther. (Praise to God!)
How pizza delivery works is, they pay HARDY-HAR, and then you make it up in TIPS. Together, it's quite lucrative. In the good weather.
FLOOR FACTOR THAT ENDED IT: This job ended like no other. It was 1998! At the end of 1998, and in January 1999, there were two huge BLIZZARDS! I delivered for most of the first one. A big paved road, disappeared down to the width of a frickin' snowmobile track and the place didn't CLOSE! When I finally refused to go back out in that, after getting stuck a couple of times, THEN they closed! Wanks!!!!!
But I still came back and one day it was sn*wing again...much to my chagrin this turned into the second blizzard. Now get this! There was a problem with Telephone Information where sometimes we would get calls meant for the branch that was about 10 miles away. On this day, one of these comes in. The Stoned manager (I can't prove it but YES HE WAS) ordered me to take this Way-Out, Misdirected POS delivery, IN THE BLIZZARD, to a Mystery Street about 12 miles away. Now it'd be a rush to get it there hot on a GOOD day! This was a blizzard day!
In other words...this baby was going to be a frozen piece of ecch by the time it got there in about an hour and a half after being ordered, due to the fact that the maximum road speed, in this BLIZZARD (which had dumped 10 INCHES since I had come on), was 5 mph, not to mention the fact that it was on an unplowed Mystery Street in a delivery area that our location should have refused orders from in the first place!
ULTIMATE GALL/FLOOR FACTOR: When the customer didn't want their frozen pizza, the Stoned Idiot Manager Fired me! Oh, he said I could come back later, when the roads were good in spring. But I DON'T THINK SO!!! HMPH!!!
It was JET'S PIZZA. STATUS: It still lives, but (update) that manager has left. There is also now a proper traffic light, with lights facing all four ways, on the Intersection of Death.
JOB: Water Flowers.
A super blowoff, if it wasn't a m*rning gig. All I had to do, was show up, turn on the person's hose, and water down all the flats of flowers. The lady has a business where she plants the flowers and takes care of gardens. So while she's out doing the REAL w*rk, I got to stand around watering flowers. I would also have to arrange the flats so there weren't gaps in between.
THE FLOOR FACTOR: Yes--there's a floor factor for this! Namely, getting the money out of her! She must have had lessons from LinkShare. The first summer, I would always have to: Go home, call her back whereupon she'd say she "forgot" to leave the money, then go back and pick it up. This was an eccentricity on her part. She'd hide, but I could hear her puttering around in the house on paydays, so I know darn tootin' well that she just didn't put it out, just for some Mysterious Shits & Giggles-type reason. I didn't quit though, becuase nobody else was paying $7/hr to stand around with a hose.
The next growing season, it got worse. She tried to pay LESS. The amount in the Envelope on the Table (an outdoor table she'd leave the pay on), was often incorrect. I would have to complain, then the next week it'd be made up. Then one day she was having a driveway put in. She said I might as well go home (since those guys were using the hose) and that she'd pay the FULL AMOUNT. But the next week, 1/4 of that was in the Envelope. Needless to say, all of this was a whole different ball of wax than just having to make another trip! In fact, it was going over like a lead balloon and I let her know it!
Instead of forking up the cash, she said, "well, I won't need you to come more than 1/2 hour 2 days a week!" as if she was going to punish me for wanting the $$$ that I was entitled to! Much to her shock (and she was really shocked, which makes me wonder about her mental state), I told her to Lump It without missing a beat! That it wouldn't be worth my while to bother with that, and I'd be back Friday for the last pay, buh bye! Before I left she had internally convinced herself that I wouldn't really go (I could tell by the expression on her face) but I think that my years of continued absence has probably made the point by now...
WEIRDNESS: When I picked up the last Envelope, it contained the full disputed amount, the next few days' pay, and some extra.
Even so, when I drove away that last time, I felt a wonderful lightness and even euphoria, because I knew I was leaving MY LAST JOB.
TIME: 2 Growing seasons. STATUS: I still see her trailer occasionally... (Update: I didn't see it last year. Good!)
That was IT. I have not darkened the doors of a Place of Empl*yment since!!! Thank God!
The biggest FLOOR FACTOR of them ALL: Most people seem to think enduring things the likes of those on this page, are not only normal, but commendable! Talk about Stockholm Syndrome...
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