Jesus Juice
My junior year of high school, I had MVWJ at a well-known smoothie chain as a smoothie maker and cashier. I worked with a guy, the night manager, who I was distantly acquainted with from my high school, two teenagers from the owner’s church and once or twice with the day manager, Candy. The night manager was a larger kid and he would take home a six-pack of large smoothies at the end of every shift. We were all allowed to make a drink while we were working, but I thought that was a little excessive. He was nice enough at work, but would leave early when he was signed up to close. He wouldn’t acknowledge that we knew each other at school either, even though we worked together three-plus nights a week.
The two kids from the owner’s church were extremely sheltered and would constantly ask me questions about dating, parties, drinking and smoking, etc. It was like explaining to aliens how not to creep out your date or what kissing “was like,” or other stuff that was extremel weird to talk about with people you hardly knew. They were both 17, but weren’t going to be allowed to technically date until after they turned 20.
Part of my job was to clean the juicing machines: orange, carrot and wheatgrass. Orange juicer was the least disgusting to clean, but you had to go in with a tiny brush and clean 75 tiny grinder teeth individually to get all the pulp and rind out, then spray it down into a bucket and make sure it wasn’t sticky. The carrot machine was the same concept, only everything was extremely tiny, so it took FOR-EV-ER. The wheatgrass machine was just disgusting and the grass left this gummy residue all over. Ugh. It would never fail that 10 minutes to close, we would have just finished cleaning the juicers and someone would walk in and order a 36 oz. carrot juice. Who drinks 36 oz. of carrot juice at 9:30 at night?
The owner, who I never met face-to-face, would stop in the store at random times and take money out of the register to dole out to his eight children (he was the member of an evangelical-type religion). So the register was almost always off, however I don’t think anyone ever got in trouble for it. I showed up for work one Saturday morning and there was a sign for employees on the back door (where we came in and the deliveries were made). It basically said: “The store has closed suddenly. Sorry for any inconvenience. Your tax information will be mailed next February to whatever address we have on file.” I still can’t walk into one of these establishments without cringing, although I do still find the drinks delicious. The only lasting benefit is I can now whip up a helluva smoothie at home and I got my full servings of fruit and vegetables each day for six months!
I… really don’t think this is that bad. You could have just told those two kids to leave you alone, and while I’m nice to the people I work with, I probably wouldn’t acknowledge them as more than my coworkers if I went to school or whatever with them. Don’t expect to be best buds with the people you work with.
If the owner decides to take money out of the register (his money, by the way) to give to his kids, that’s not your business — unless it’s coming out of your pay.
If you know someone’s going to come in and order stuff at a certain time, why don’t you refrain from cleaning the equipment until after they’ve come in and made their order? We have a policy at my workplace to put the coffee machines on their cleaning cycles at 4PM, but we know at 4:15 on some days, there’ll be one regular who’ll come in for a coffee, so we wait for them before cleaning.
Again, maybe it’s because I didn’t actually work there, but your job actually doesn’t sound that terrible for a MVWJ. Not denying that it probably sucked ass, but it could have been way worse.
WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
This was seriously your very worst job? Dear God.
Oh, Brit, go take a pill.
Yes, it was not the most horrible job experience ever, but it was a mildly amusing story. Not everyone has to be shat upon or get harassed to make a good story here.
I think pills were in the previous story.
This one wasn’t bad at all, your job had to clean out a machine with a brush? Psh…you know there’s people that haul garbage? Or work with sewage?
I think it would have been more interesting to read if it was better written, felt like it was jumping back and forth between the coworkers and the job.
Meh…you can’t expect to get along with your co-workers and if they aren’t harassing you or causing you to get in trouble thats about all you can expect sometimes. I’d call that a mediocre job.
And I get cleaning up food is pretty nasty sometimes but all jobs usually come with some sort of crappy task. I worked at a video store for a while where we’d get people that would purposely mess up shelves and stick things out of order and than you have to go through and reorganize the whole store every night which also sometimes meant than people came in last minute and re-messed up what you just organized and faced.
At least the owner made sure you got paid before he paid his kids.
I liked your write up. You didn’t have to kill shelter kitties or clean up rat nests, but there was enough about the job to make it bad. My fast food days are behind me as well, but it always sucked leaving just enough stuff out to help a customer without having to stay too long after close (and risk mgmt breathing down your neck).
Jade Lynn: your video store story sounds bad as well…why not submit it?
by “bad” i mean “good for the site.”
I’ve already got one I submitted that beats the video stores any day and I only worked it for a month.
haha
I’d go back to the video stores in a heart beat compared to the snow plow company that wanted me to work off the clock and tried to cheat me out of unemployment.
Oh – that was a good one…you’re right – hard to top that!
I loved that one.
This job sounds more irritating than anything. I’m sure actually living it was a pain in the a.
I once worked at a place that closed without notifying their employees beforehand (I had quit 2 weeks prior. I attribute the loss of me with their eventual downfall). Very unprofessional.
Sounds like it was terrible because your workmates weren’t awesome and you had to actually do also those not-so-nice parts along with the others. I’m really happy for you, if this was your VWJ, although I’m also a bit (or actually a lot) jealous.
The only part that was bad about this was the closing out of nowhere. The rest of it is a typical fast food restaurant.
As someone who had to deal with making grated carrots 40L at a time (approx 100lbs of carrots), lemon juice 20L at a time (on a hand juicer that did one half a lemon at a time) and the cleanup I don’t think you can comprehend how bad carrots smell in quantity or how much mess citrus can make.