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Post by crazy4scraps on Apr 23, 2024 13:25:32 GMT
The first job thread got me thinking and reminiscing about the various jobs I’ve held in my life which made me curious about people’s best and/ or worst jobs. In my working experience, the best job I ever had came along not long after I quit my first job. It was a weird time because I had just graduated high school, I broke up with my boyfriend after I caught him with my best friend, my family moved across town, I didn’t have a car which made my previous job a lot more difficult to get to which was part of why I quit, and I quickly realized I wasn’t going to be able to afford college so that was off the table.
My mom was hassling me about getting another job, so as a stopgap I applied for a job at the State Fair vs. getting a typical summer job. It’s kind of a weird place to work because you basically apply for the type of job you want and they stick you where ever they need a warm body. Since I had experience as a cashier, my assigned job was to work in a ticket booth for the little train that runs around the fairgrounds. BEST. JOB. EVER!
Yeah, it was hot in those little booths and the people buying the tickets was either feast or famine, meaning that I’d get swarmed with people all at the same time followed by doing nothing for a while until the next train was due to arrive. In the downtime we would deface the inside of the ticket booths like generations of ticket sellers before us also did, and the whole inside of the booth was scribbled up with drawings, initials, music lyrics, etc. Because we would rotate to the different booths along the train route on different days of the fair, I learned the fairgrounds like the back of my hand and part of the appeal of working there was you got into the fair for free every day. I got to be friends with all the teenage hotties that drove the trains around the fairgrounds and they would bring me free food, LOL, because once I was locked inside my little box I was stuck in there for four hours until the supervisor would come around to give the cashiers an unpaid half hour long lunch break. So the drivers took pity on us cashiers and would ask us if we wanted anything and would bring it back the next time the train came around. (I even dated one guy for about six months after the fair ended, but life took us in different directions.) The last night of the fair was a little bittersweet because in that short span of time working long days, our crew had really become like a little family of sorts. Someone on the crew threw a rager in the parking lot after the fair closed on that last night and everybody got a little drunk but it was so fun. I’ve never had another job quite like that.
Now on the flip side of the coin, the worst job I ever had was working for a telemarketing company. OMG. WORST. Job. Ever! It was so boring and the people we had to call were usually annoyed at best and would just hang up on me or they would be downright abusive at worst, cursing and swearing. Most of the people we had to call were farmers with surveys about feed and such. 🥱 Maybe one out of 25 people would be nice. Then we would also have to do other surveys where they would hand you a phone book for some random place and we would have to cold call randos and try to get them to do the survey. It sucked so bad and I hated it so much. I only worked there part time and had a different job elsewhere (thankfully) because the telemarketing place fired me. It was the only job I was ever let go from.
Ironically, they fired me right after I had helped out with a huge by mail survey project where that supervisor actually praised my work highly. I had to hand stamp thousands of paper surveys with a numbering stamp and then hand stuff them into envelopes, put a corresponding mailing label on the envelopes and get them ready to send. When my other supervisor told me I was no longer needed, I was kind of stunned but demanded my final paycheck as was my right, and she refused saying they would mail it to me (which in hindsight is illegal, they should have produced it on the spot when I asked). I should have stood my ground and insisted they give it to me then and there, but I was young and inexperienced with things like that so I caved and they mailed it. Because it was only a second part time job that I only did for about 6 months, I never did include that job on any work history or resumé. I’ve had a lot of sucky jobs since, but that one was by far the worst.
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scrappyesq
Pearl Clutcher
You have always been a part of the heist. You're only mad now because you don't like your cut.
Posts: 4,029 
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Post by scrappyesq on Apr 23, 2024 13:40:06 GMT
The best job I ever had was as a bus driver.
When I was a senior in college my last fall semester I decided I needed a better paying job. Better being relative of course. Campus bus drivers got paid training to get their CDL, then of course tons of shifts because the buses started at 4am and ran until 1am. My salary? $8/hr. Finishing CDL training made me feel so accomplished; it was one of the first times that I put my mind to accomplishing something that was an outside of my box challenge. During training and the whole time I drove, I was the odd woman out, Black from Brooklyn so I didn't have the same family vibe but it was ok. I drove It was the best job to just be independent in my own little world. You could drive with a radio (quietly) so I made cassette tapes with my favorites at the time and would just enjoy driving around the town and some of the outskirts. The bus was a campus bus but it also overlapped with city transit so people had multiple options. I drove in ice, blizzards, extreme heat, tornado season (one hit on the opposite side of town when I was driving. emergency sirens and everything going off).
To this day when I need a little smile thinking of being a bus driver is guaranteed to work.
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Post by Merge on Apr 23, 2024 13:41:49 GMT
One year when I was in college, I spent Christmas break doing temporary work with my boyfriend. I had previously done office temp work and that was fine, but he didn't have office skills, so if we wanted to work together, we got factory work. Two stand out in my memory as the worst: taking potatoes out of a moving line and removing any bits of peel left behind by the mechanical peeler. The potatoes were kept at near-freezing temperatures and my hands were completely numb within 5 minutes. The other was boxing lasagna noodles as they came off the line. Ten per box, on and on, for 8 hours a day. No talking allowed and bathroom breaks strictly timed. This was prior to the days of walkmen or else I just didn't have one. Absolutely mind numbing and I don't know how anyone survives doing that kind of job.
My best job in that time period was working in a small independent bookstore. I loved it.
During my teaching career, the worst was my one year in middle school where my job was to teach choir to kids who hadn’t signed up for choir, in groups of 40-65. Next door was the select choir director who gaslit me and talked down about me to my students every chance we got, and the toxic admin who insisted the behavior problems I had were my own fault. Oh and when I tried to take up a girl’s phone one time, she threw a fit and said I had put my hands on her (I had not), and her mom came up to school and threatened my life. That was fun.
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Post by Tearisci on Apr 23, 2024 13:46:32 GMT
I think my best job has to be the job before this one. I left because they eliminated our section and put us into other roles which I didn't like.
What made it so fun was my work besties. We really bonded and are still friends to this day even though one quit to have a baby and another is working two jobs and going for a masters.
My other fun job was in high school. My BFFs and I worked food service at a local college that hosted summer camps. We would go early and they would feed us then we'd work for a couple of hours and that was it. I never got to work as a server though so I didn't get to ogle the cute boys at football camp. My BFF was lucky and she could flirt with them.
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Post by librarylady on Apr 23, 2024 13:53:01 GMT
WORST--WORST--WORST!
Freshman year in college. I had a job in the chemistry department. Professor gave me the job of cleaning up tubes/bottles and ?? in the lab. Everything had a HORRIBLE odor--horrible! I would go to the lab for 3-4 hours on Tuesday and Thursday afternoon and clean up the lab. This was for most of the semester. After you are in bad odors for awhile, your nose no longer smells the odor. I learned that the odor was penetrating my clothing, hair etc. After work one day, I met friends in the dinner line and after awhile one of them said she smelled something, did the rest of us smell it. I learned I was the stinky one. After that day, I made that dress the official lab cleaning dress, and only wore it to go to the lab. It stunk, so I would hang it in the laundry room of the dorm until the next time to wear it. (no worries about that being stolen!) I was more than happy when I finished that assignment!
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Post by librarylady on Apr 23, 2024 13:57:26 GMT
BEST JOB: School librarian
I love learning new things, in just about any subject. The librarian has to help kids find what they are seeking, so I had new things to research almost daily. I could enjoy the kids and had not grades to submit, no parent conferences to attend. I think the only better position would be a research librarian in the public library. That job would not involve shelving the books.
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Just T
Drama Llama
Posts: 5,544
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Post by Just T on Apr 23, 2024 14:12:55 GMT
My first job was at a dry cleaners. It was not fun at all. LOL I spent my time taking in people's piles of dirty clothes, writing up the ticket after I counted them, then pinned little numbered tags in them. (This was the late 70s, early 80s, LOL) But, the people I worked with were so fun. I ended up making one of my best friends in HS working there. And there were some perks. Like the St. Louis county police department had a contract with us, and there was one policeman who was soooo cute and so friendly who brought his uniforms in every Friday night. LOL My friend and I lived for Friday nights. Also, we were in a strip mall next to a Kroger, and there was a super cute guy who worked there who we got to know and loved watching him collect the carts. LOL
The worst job I ever had was in college when I worked at 24 hour Hardees that was smack in the middle of all the college bars. I mostly worked the 8PM to 2 AM shift, and the grossness and asshole behavior I witnessed and dealt with was mind boggling.
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Post by cmpeter on Apr 23, 2024 14:52:52 GMT
Best job - in college I was a paid audience member at a studio that taped infomercials.
Worst job - file clerk for an accounting firm. I hate filing!
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Post by ntsf on Apr 23, 2024 14:54:07 GMT
the worse job.. grading potatoes in a factory.. you looked at potatoes and pulled off the belt the odd looking ones and the rotten ones. high motivation to finish colleg
the best job-- national park service ranger. or ski instructor.. a toss up.
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Post by workingclassdog on Apr 23, 2024 15:28:13 GMT
Best job was working for the airlines. TWA. LOVED that job. But the pay was terrible and job security wasn't all that great. I wish I could have made it work.
Edited: Most fun (at times) when I worked at a restaurant.. meeting new friends. First serious boyfriend.. those were fun times.
Worst job was at Maaco Auto Painting. I was an office worker. It was pretty boring and my boss smoked a pipe. YUCK.. I hated that so much. He was very nice to me but that smell. The owner of the company was a real jerk but I didn't deal with him to much. He did have me go to all his franchises to pick up bank deposits occasionally and once he was out of town and it snowed really really bad and I couldn't make it out of my driveway much less to five different shops, he was so pissed. After that, I quit. But my direct boss 'fired' me so I could get unemployment if needed. (I didn't).
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Post by epeanymous on Apr 23, 2024 15:36:44 GMT
Best job I had was interviewing prospective students at my college the summer after I graduated. It was a true 9-5 job with an actual lunch hour and you never took work home (interviews were scheduled so you had breaks to write them up), and while there are always annoying people out there, I had a half-dozen really interesting conversations every day with talented high school students and got to gush to them about my college. Really, a great way to make a living, if you don’t have real expenses  . My worst job was between grad school and law school (and was part of how I ended up in law school). Part of the issue was that it was a new office and hadn’t figured out workload, so I didn’t have enough to do. But a big part was also that we had cubicles. I found cubicle life intrusive, overstimulating, and annoying (our job had a lot of phone calls), and I will do pretty much anything to never be in a cubicle again. |
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Post by mom on Apr 23, 2024 15:40:14 GMT
Worse Job Ever: To help us get out of debt, I have decorated Christmas trees for clients. Sounds like fun, eh? Not so much. On multiple years I started decorating Christmas trees before Halloween and decorated them all the way until mid December. Sure it paid well -- but I would get so sick of trees. Most of the time I used clients own decor and just put the trees together and decorate their home. But some of them I had to buy the supplies and work with the clients to purchase the materials. Those were the worst. It was always the people with 20ft trees that only wanted to buy $200 worth of decor to cover the tree and that wasn't happening. But I was eager to make cash so I put up with their BS. By the time I got the time to get my tree up, I was just so over it all.
Best Job: I sat for a couple of statues with an artist so he could have a live model. While it didnt pay super well, I loved getting to see the artist work. My favorite sculpture he did using me was cast in bronze and now is in the front of a nearby towns library.
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The Great Carpezio
Pearl Clutcher
Something profound goes here.
Posts: 2,920
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Post by The Great Carpezio on Apr 23, 2024 16:28:17 GMT
As a teacher, it is my best and my worst job---but it is also my career.
Going by jobs:
Worst: Corn rouging and detassaling (fieldwork) and also working for Green Giant as a cutter (at a factory sending cobs through a cutter that takes off the corn to can it)
Best: Working at a scrapbook store and working in merchandise flow at a department store (5 AM unloading the trucks and putting clothing on hangers). We just had a lot of fun...a lot of joking, singing, etc...
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Post by needmysanity on Apr 23, 2024 17:51:05 GMT
My best job was the one before we moved from California. I was the CFO of a non profit agency and I loved it so much. The CEO was my mentor and friend, we will making great strides in our community and making real change. I worked a year remote but it just wasn't the same. Being so far away from my staff was hard and in the end I resigned and found a job here in TN.
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Post by cadoodlebug on Apr 23, 2024 18:07:04 GMT
My first right-out-of-college job was the best. Working in trust investments in a bank with fabulous people and the opportunity to take business trips (Chicago twice, Pittsburgh and San Francisco where I met DH.) I worked there for 15+ years.
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smartypants71
Drama Llama
Posts: 5,701
Location: Houston, TX
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Post by smartypants71 on Apr 23, 2024 18:10:48 GMT
My worst job was working at a global oilfield service company. I was using a company-sponsored vanpool to get to work. The driver of the vanpool was in charge of maintaining the information for all of the riders.
Well, that driver became my stalker. It lasted for months. I complained to our employer, but they said there was nothing they could do because it was happening outside of work. Not only that, they kicked me out of the vanpool since the driver had been there longer.
Fortunately, I lived in a city in Houston that had their own police department, so they took my complaint seriously and put an end to the whole bad situation.
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Post by crazy4scraps on Apr 23, 2024 22:14:56 GMT
The best job I ever had was as a bus driver. When I was a senior in college my last fall semester I decided I needed a better paying job. Better being relative of course. Campus bus drivers got paid training to get their CDL, then of course tons of shifts because the buses started at 4am and ran until 1am. My salary? $8/hr. Finishing CDL training made me feel so accomplished; it was one of the first times that I put my mind to accomplishing something that was an outside of my box challenge. During training and the whole time I drove, I was the odd woman out, Black from Brooklyn so I didn't have the same family vibe but it was ok. I drove It was the best job to just be independent in my own little world. You could drive with a radio (quietly) so I made cassette tapes with my favorites at the time and would just enjoy driving around the town and some of the outskirts. The bus was a campus bus but it also overlapped with city transit so people had multiple options. I drove in ice, blizzards, extreme heat, tornado season (one hit on the opposite side of town when I was driving. emergency sirens and everything going off). To this day when I need a little smile thinking of being a bus driver is guaranteed to work. DH drove school bus for a while when he was in college. He liked it well enough once he figured out he to best deal with the kids. The little kids were the easiest, he would bribe them with marbles if they were good and then would sweep up all the marbles they dropped on the bus and would hand them out the next day. 🤣 The high school kids were the second easiest because most of them would just sleep on the bus ride. The middle school kids were hell but he can be loud and intimidating if necessary, so he did okay. He also wasn’t opposed to using bribery with candy. Once they had an understanding he had it made. |
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Post by crazy4scraps on Apr 23, 2024 22:19:38 GMT
One year when I was in college, I spent Christmas break doing temporary work with my boyfriend. I had previously done office temp work and that was fine, but he didn't have office skills, so if we wanted to work together, we got factory work. Two stand out in my memory as the worst: taking potatoes out of a moving line and removing any bits of peel left behind by the mechanical peeler. The potatoes were kept at near-freezing temperatures and my hands were completely numb within 5 minutes. The other was boxing lasagna noodles as they came off the line. Ten per box, on and on, for 8 hours a day. No talking allowed and bathroom breaks strictly timed. This was prior to the days of walkmen or else I just didn't have one. Absolutely mind numbing and I don't know how anyone survives doing that kind of job. My best job in that time period was working in a small independent bookstore. I loved it. During my teaching career, the worst was my one year in middle school where my job was to teach choir to kids who hadn’t signed up for choir, in groups of 40-65. Next door was the select choir director who gaslit me and talked down about me to my students every chance we got, and the toxic admin who insisted the behavior problems I had were my own fault. Oh and when I tried to take up a girl’s phone one time, she threw a fit and said I had put my hands on her (I had not), and her mom came up to school and threatened my life. That was fun. One of my many part time jobs was at a B. Dalton store in the mall. It wasn’t bad and I liked looking ant all the books and magazines. One of my jobs was to tear the covers off of all the outdated magazines. We would send back only the covers for credit and trash the actual magazines because they cost too much to send back. It seemed so wasteful to me. The store location wasn’t ideal and I think they ended up closing it. Retail in general just kind of sucks though. |
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Post by sideways on Apr 23, 2024 22:22:15 GMT
First job: I worked at a taco place in a mall food court.
Best job: teacher
Worst job: teacher
Working customer service sucked pretty bad, too.
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Post by Merge on Apr 23, 2024 22:29:01 GMT
One year when I was in college, I spent Christmas break doing temporary work with my boyfriend. I had previously done office temp work and that was fine, but he didn't have office skills, so if we wanted to work together, we got factory work. Two stand out in my memory as the worst: taking potatoes out of a moving line and removing any bits of peel left behind by the mechanical peeler. The potatoes were kept at near-freezing temperatures and my hands were completely numb within 5 minutes. The other was boxing lasagna noodles as they came off the line. Ten per box, on and on, for 8 hours a day. No talking allowed and bathroom breaks strictly timed. This was prior to the days of walkmen or else I just didn't have one. Absolutely mind numbing and I don't know how anyone survives doing that kind of job. My best job in that time period was working in a small independent bookstore. I loved it. During my teaching career, the worst was my one year in middle school where my job was to teach choir to kids who hadn’t signed up for choir, in groups of 40-65. Next door was the select choir director who gaslit me and talked down about me to my students every chance we got, and the toxic admin who insisted the behavior problems I had were my own fault. Oh and when I tried to take up a girl’s phone one time, she threw a fit and said I had put my hands on her (I had not), and her mom came up to school and threatened my life. That was fun. One of my many part time jobs was at a B. Dalton store in the mall. It wasn’t bad and I liked looking ant all the books and magazines. One of my jobs was to tear the covers off of all the outdated magazines. We would send back only the covers for credit and trash the actual magazines because they cost too much to send back. It seemed so wasteful to me. The store location wasn’t ideal and I think they ended up closing it. Retail in general just kind of sucks though. LOL. I got so many free issues of Seventeen and Sassy (remember that?) after the covers had been torn off. The mall I worked in supported both a B. Dalton and this independent store for years. We never had a Barnes and Noble in our suburb so they did well. |
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peabay
Prolific Pea
Posts: 9,605
Jun 25, 2014 19:50:41 GMT
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Post by peabay on Apr 23, 2024 22:31:17 GMT
best job is the job I'm working now - working in the office of an elementary school. I really enjoy the camaraderie with the staff and my daily hilarious interactions with the kids (like when I told a third grader where to wait for the nurse and he said: "Mrs. B? This isn't my first rodeo.")
worst job was when I traveled all over the state of IL doing psychological evaluations on people in nursing homes and rehabilitation hospitals in the early 90s. It was the saddest, most depressing work. The facilities were disgusting and these people were warehoused and forgotten about. Medicated into submission. They were so delighted to have my attention for a half hour or so and I had people begging me to get them discharged. I had one guy who was physically disabled, not at all mentally incompetent, beg and cry to have someone look over his charts and be sent somewhere else: "I don't belong here!" (he really didn't.) The nursing homes were taking the state's money to just stick these people away - it broke my heart. I would come home and cry and cry - there was no way to put up an emotional wall. It was truly the saddest thing I've ever seen.
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Post by crazy4scraps on Apr 23, 2024 22:33:52 GMT
I think my best job has to be the job before this one. I left because they eliminated our section and put us into other roles which I didn't like.
What made it so fun was my work besties. We really bonded and are still friends to this day even though one quit to have a baby and another is working two jobs and going for a masters. My other fun job was in high school. My BFFs and I worked food service at a local college that hosted summer camps. We would go early and they would feed us then we'd work for a couple of hours and that was it. I never got to work as a server though so I didn't get to ogle the cute boys at football camp. My BFF was lucky and she could flirt with them. One of my bank jobs was like that. My last stint in the bank was at a branch in a grocery store. The job itself sucked pretty bad but my coworkers at that job were awesome. We had a great crew. I worked there for two years while I was in college and I think during that time we must have cycled through no less than five or six branch managers, but the rank and file employees pretty much stayed the same. We were all pretty goofy and got along great. Eventually by one people started graduating college or moving off to other grown up jobs toward the end of my stint there. I don’t know to this day where everyone landed. After eight years total at that company I was so over the whole corporate BS thing and I just needed a complete change. I couldn’t believe how many of the women who worked for that company stayed with them for literal decades when every year I was there I could feel my soul being slowly sucked away. |
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Post by crazy4scraps on Apr 23, 2024 22:38:26 GMT
WORST--WORST--WORST! Freshman year in college. I had a job in the chemistry department. Professor gave me the job of cleaning up tubes/bottles and ?? in the lab. Everything had a HORRIBLE odor--horrible! I would go to the lab for 3-4 hours on Tuesday and Thursday afternoon and clean up the lab. This was for most of the semester. After you are in bad odors for awhile, your nose no longer smells the odor. I learned that the odor was penetrating my clothing, hair etc. After work one day, I met friends in the dinner line and after awhile one of them said she smelled something, did the rest of us smell it. I learned I was the stinky one. After that day, I made that dress the official lab cleaning dress, and only wore it to go to the lab. It stunk, so I would hang it in the laundry room of the dorm until the next time to wear it. (no worries about that being stolen!) I was more than happy when I finished that assignment! I hear you on the smells permeating your everything. DH and I met when we both worked at a pizza place. You would go home and shower, wash your hair, change clothes and still smell like pizza even after all that. After a while you couldn’t smell it on yourself but other people could. It was probably a slightly better smell than chemistry lab but still pretty much  . |
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Post by crazy4scraps on Apr 23, 2024 22:43:34 GMT
BEST JOB: School librarian I love learning new things, in just about any subject. The librarian has to help kids find what they are seeking, so I had new things to research almost daily. I could enjoy the kids and had not grades to submit, no parent conferences to attend. I think the only better position would be a research librarian in the public library. That job would not involve shelving the books. I’ve always thought being a school librarian would be a pretty fun job.  Librarians are the bomb. My kid has a class called Design & Model where all they do is learn how to use stuff like 3D printers, laser cutters, a commercial embroidery machine, electronic cutter, sewing machine, commercial vinyl printer, etc. and all the software to make stuff with all of them. For a teaching job I think that would be pretty cool too. |
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Post by crazy4scraps on Apr 23, 2024 22:49:20 GMT
Worse Job Ever: To help us get out of debt, I have decorated Christmas trees for clients. Sounds like fun, eh? Not so much. On multiple years I started decorating Christmas trees before Halloween and decorated them all the way until mid December. Sure it paid well -- but I would get so sick of trees. Most of the time I used clients own decor and just put the trees together and decorate their home. But some of them I had to buy the supplies and work with the clients to purchase the materials. Those were the worst. It was always the people with 20ft trees that only wanted to buy $200 worth of decor to cover the tree and that wasn't happening. But I was eager to make cash so I put up with their BS. By the time I got the time to get my tree up, I was just so over it all. Best Job: I sat for a couple of statues with an artist so he could have a live model. While it didnt pay super well, I loved getting to see the artist work. My favorite sculpture he did using me was cast in bronze and now is in the front of a nearby towns library. This would be really cool! I think being a live model would be pretty hard. I had to draw from live models for an art class a few times in art school and I couldn’t imagine sitting in the exact same position for so long. |
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Post by mom on Apr 23, 2024 22:50:53 GMT
Worse Job Ever: To help us get out of debt, I have decorated Christmas trees for clients. Sounds like fun, eh? Not so much. On multiple years I started decorating Christmas trees before Halloween and decorated them all the way until mid December. Sure it paid well -- but I would get so sick of trees. Most of the time I used clients own decor and just put the trees together and decorate their home. But some of them I had to buy the supplies and work with the clients to purchase the materials. Those were the worst. It was always the people with 20ft trees that only wanted to buy $200 worth of decor to cover the tree and that wasn't happening. But I was eager to make cash so I put up with their BS. By the time I got the time to get my tree up, I was just so over it all. Best Job: I sat for a couple of statues with an artist so he could have a live model. While it didnt pay super well, I loved getting to see the artist work. My favorite sculpture he did using me was cast in bronze and now is in the front of a nearby towns library. This would be really cool! I think being a live model would be pretty hard. I had to draw from live models for an art class a few times in art school and I couldn’t imagine sitting in the exact same position for so long. It was hard! But he took tons of photos and I only had to actually sit still for a few hours at a time. He'd turn on a movie and he would sculpt and I would watch the movie. Him doing my hands was the hardest though. That took forever. |
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Post by crazy4scraps on Apr 23, 2024 22:56:43 GMT
My first right-out-of-college job was the best. Working in trust investments in a bank with fabulous people and the opportunity to take business trips (Chicago twice, Pittsburgh and San Francisco where I met DH.) I worked there for 15+ years. One of my better jobs was to travel to retail trade shows and do demos. The company I worked for would fly us out to trade shows all over, put us up in nice hotels and then after the show floor closed at night they would take us out to really nice dinners and shows like Phantom of the Opera, Wicked or Medieval Times. People from other companies would come up with their stuff all the time and ask if our products would work with theirs and we were allowed to experiment. It was fun. |
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Post by crazy4scraps on Apr 23, 2024 23:07:54 GMT
My worst job was working at a global oilfield service company. I was using a company-sponsored vanpool to get to work. The driver of the vanpool was in charge of maintaining the information for all of the riders. Well, that driver became my stalker. It lasted for months. I complained to our employer, but they said there was nothing they could do because it was happening outside of work. Not only that, they kicked me out of the vanpool since the driver had been there longer. Fortunately, I lived in a city in Houston that had their own police department, so they took my complaint seriously and put an end to the whole bad situation. Your stalker story is way worse than mine! At one point when I was a teen cashier at my first cashier job, there was this weird guy who worked at the gas station directly across the street from the store where I worked. I worked at the register right in the front so I was visible through the huge plate glass windows of the store. The guy would come over on his breaks and hang out in our store asking a bunch of questions, ugh. Eventually it got to the point where he would call the store asking for me when I wasn’t there (reason #8,793,241 why I *HATE* wearing a name tag for any public facing job) and the boss told me “your boyfriend called again” and I was like, “What? Who?!? I don’t have a boyfriend!” Yeah, it was the gas station creeper! 😱 The worst part was that I didn’t have a license or a car at that time and my mom never gave me a ride anywhere so that weirdo could have very easily followed me when I was walking home alone in the dark. I think my boss finally told the dude to stop calling the store or he would call the cops because he finally did stop, but I could still see him watching me from across the street. |
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Post by peano on Apr 23, 2024 23:12:35 GMT
Best job was working as a children's tennis instructor one summer during grad school. It was for an organization called Grassroots Tennis, which was aimed toward bringing tennis to urban kids. However the urban area merged with a highly affluent area on the Connecticut coast so we got privileged kids too. I always had to chase after the wealthy little shits to pick up balls, because they tried to sneak off without helping.
Worst job was working as a customer service rep for an HMO, which at the time, was a new concept for NY and Connecticut, where the plan was sold. I took scads of calls from irate New Yorkers coming from indemnity plans (the old 80-20 type of reimbursement plan) and were not happy about it. There's nothing like an irate, high-powered executive yelling at you for something you have no control over. I cried at lot at that job.
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Post by Zee on Apr 23, 2024 23:52:54 GMT
Best is nursing, it's what I like to do. Worst was also nursing, in a big university hospital. Very little support, shitty teamwork, archaic charting and orders, poor communication with doctors and residents and fellows.
Most boring: data entry as a temp job while in nursing school. Mind-numbingly boring.
Least dignity: Taco Bell, 1992. Unlike other food service jobs I've had, this one had THE WORST co-workers I've ever encountered AND the final straw for me was requiring us to wear Bullwinkle antlers for the movie tie-in. I refused and quit after 3 days. Also, I was a size XS at that time and the smallest uniform pants they had (required to wear theirs) were a medium and I was comically swimming in them and had to wear a belt just to hold them up. The antlers were insult to an already existing injury!
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Librarians are the bomb. My kid has a class called Design & Model where all they do is learn how to use stuff like 3D printers, laser cutters, a commercial embroidery machine, electronic cutter, sewing machine, commercial vinyl printer, etc. and all the software to make stuff with all of them. For a teaching job I think that would be pretty cool too.
