At the start of my sophomore year of college, my aunt had hired me and my roommate to work at a store she was opening up in the mall in November.  Unfortunately, it was September, and I was out of money.  Since I had to find a way to pay rent and buy groceries, I found a job listing for a haunted house. J was the owner of a laser tag arena and he thought it would be goldmine to convert said arena into a haunted house for the month of October.

My roommate S and I were both desperate for money and decided to go to the orientation for potential employees or “spooks” as J liked to call us. Attending the orientation were about 30 people, all high school or college age. We were all hired on the spot.  The haunted house would be open every day, from 6-closing (basically, whenever J felt like closing). We were to be paid per shift, not per hour, getting paid higher on the weekends. All of our wages were to be paid at the laser tag/pizza party J was throwing on Halloween after our final shift. We were required to show up an hour before the shift started to get into costume, makeup, and take your place. This meant that we were all paid the same amount, regardless of what you did, or how long you were there.

This all might sound like a good idea, in theory, however, there were many haunted houses in the area. I should have been clued in to how horrible this would be on my first tour of the arena…I had attended haunted houses before. This looked more like a spook alley my middle school put on to raise money for a field-trip, not a Haunted House that people were supposed to shell out 10-15 bucks to get into. It was more of a maze of black lit rooms then anything scary. And how could we compete with the man with no legs that chased you on his hands at the Haunted Trails just 20 minutes away? How?

S and I were assigned to be skeletons. We were to hid in the darkness, and jump out at you, with only our white skeleton face and costume showing up in the black light. J had advertised for this heavily at the local colleges, so there was a good line the first night. During my first shift there, I got punched in the stomach. Having never been punched like that  before, I ended up vomiting. Awesome. Since I was required to work the whole shift to get paid for it (J’s words), I stayed my time and got made fun of by my fellow spooks. After a couple of other near misses, I got good at evading punches or scratches or other various things people do when you jump out at them.

Word started to get around town about how much this haunted house sucked. Most people attended the other, more terrifying haunted houses close by.  Because of this, most of my shifts were spent lying or sitting on the floor trying to read my flashcards or talking to whichever spook was close by until someone would shout “someone’s coming!” and we’d all take our places. The weekends were a bit busier, but never the steady flow of people J had envisioned. We would all do the best we could with what we had, but all we had were crappy costumes, bad makeup, and an even worse location. We managed to get a few scares out of some people, but most people were only mildly startled.

The most frightening part was when a guy in a Jason mask would chase people with a chainsaw. Since this was all in a relatively small laser tag arena, the chainsaw made the entire place smell of gasoline. Both S and I would dread coming into work, as it was spectacularly boring, but neither of us ever missed an assigned shift. We both needed the money. Finally, October 31st arrived. The last day! And, it being Halloween, we actually had a good amount of people show up. When it was over, the party began. And by party, I mean J making us tear down the haunted house and set up for laser tag. But we at least had pizza. At about 2AM, J sat us all down to talk to us about the last month. He stated that “he didn’t do as well as he thought” and that “I’m gonna have to pay you all in 2 weeks instead of tonight” since he just hadn’t figured out the “numbers” yet. I was pissed. I needed that money to pay rent. After much complaints, he pretty much told us that there was nothing HE could do and we were free to leave.

Two weeks went by, and I hadn’t received a check or even a phone call. So I called him. He said it would be another two weeks. After a week, I called him again to remind him that he needed to pay me in a week. He tried to push it to two more weeks again. I told him that he had one week before I took action. He laughed, and scoffed at what I, a 19-year-old kid could do. He then offered me free laser tag for life in exchange of paying my the $500 he owed me. Um, no. After the week, I called him again. He hung up on me.

I then, along with S, made my way to small claims court and filed a claim. When they served him, he called me up, cursing me out for being a “trouble-maker” and “instigator.” He said I should just accept his free laser tag offer, because neither I nor Stacy were ever going to see a penny from him. I laughed at him and told him that if he didn’t pay the entire amount, plus court fees, in cash or money order, I would see him in court.

Another week went by, and he called me again telling me my money was ready. I don’t know why he had the change of heart, but I went to pick up my money as fast as I could. As S and I were picking up our money, he yelled at me again and told me he never wanted to see my face in his place of business again. Um, no problem, man. No problem.

A year later, he went bankrupt.

I am currently employed at MVWJ. I work in the shipping department of an online retail company.

One major rule is not to put items that are very similar into the same bin. Today, someone in stocking decided to break The One Rule and put pink Doc Big Johnson ringed plastic dildos and purple Doc Big Johnson ringed plastic dildos in the same bin. I had to get 21 of them. Twenty-one Doc Big Johnson ringed plastic dildos. Twenty. One.

The 21 dildos I had to pick had to be pink, but there were 20 purple dildos mixed in. I had to separate all of the dildos. So there I was, sitting in the floor with a lap full of dildos. I counted out 18 pink dildos. Three short of how many I needed. Employees must get a supervisor when they have missing items, so I had to leave my giant pile of dildos and get my boss.

Sadly, the only supervisor available was a lady, well into her 40s.

I brought her back and simply pointed at the pile of dildos, ashamed. She sat down and said, “If I’m going to sift through these fake dicks, you’re going to sit down here with me.”

She would hand me one, I would scan it, hand it back to her, and she would put it into the bin. After we determined that I was indeed three dildos short, she had to fill out paperwork saying that I was correct in counting. The paperwork had my name and ID number as well as a line where she had to write in what item was missing. All day, I carried a piece of paper in my back pocket about my dildo shortage. I had to turn it in to another supervisor that night.

This unbelievable experience wasn’t even a job, it was a job application.

I saw an ad in the paper for help wanted at a place that claimed to be “a nurturing after-school environment,” basically a glorified daycare which promised to help with homework. I was sixteen and, for some unfathomable reason, thought this could work out. I need to have a service dog with me at all times, but since my handicap doesn’t affect my range of motion or anything like that I didn’t think there’d be a problem.

I was envisioning a nice, peaceful environment with kids calmly doing homework around a table, but what I found when I showed up to apply was at least 75 kids packed into a big, cold, tile-floored basement. Their screams echoed off the walls. There were no toys, no furniture, and no color. Even the walls were stark and white, and my service dog and I had suddenly become the most interesting things in the room.

I had about one second of “Oh, snap!” before I got mobbed by shrieking kids. Before I could leave the one adult in attendance grabbed my by the wrist and demanded to know what I thought I was doing, bringing a dog in here.

“He’s a service dog,” I said.

“WHAT?” She shouted over the shrieking.

“A SERVICE DOG,” I yelled back. “I WANTED TO APPLY FOR THE JOB!”

She looked at the kids, then back at me, then dragged my by my wrist over to a door on the opposite wall. My dog and the mob of kids trailed along behind us. She shoved some forms and a chewed pen into my hands, opened the door to reveal a coat closet, and pushed me in, saying something about my being a distraction. I probably should have left then and there, but for some reason that I can only assume was shock, I actually sat down and started filling out the forms.

The screaming and echoing outside never stopped. Eventually it sunk in that:

A. this place sucked,

and

B. I had just been shut in a dark closet by a potential employer.

I came out (nervously) handed over the forms and got the hell out of there. The woman, whose name I never learned, shouted after me that I would be called for an interview. There was no call, and if there had been, I probably would have hung up.

My Very Worst Job was at a funeral home when I was 19. It was during summer at college and I was actually working three jobs at the time: full time days answering phones at a law firm, part time at a department store and on-call at the funeral home. The funeral home was a family owned affair and housed in an older home. The offices and viewing rooms were on the first floor, the basement held the embalming room and other gross functions (the door opened off the kitchen area) and the upstairs was actually an apartment for the director (creepy, no?). They had a full time receptionist/office manager, but they did not want to pay her any overtime, so they had me on call for anytime there was an evening visitation. Someone had to man the phones and direct visitors to the restroom. Also I later found out that part of my duties would be to go into the visitation room (where there would be prepped bodies) and write down details about all the floral arrangements: who sent them and what they were. While I think this is a nice service the funeral home provides to the family, I certainly didn’t want to be the one who did it and it wasn’t in the job description.

I really had no training and wasn’t there very often, so the worst part was when the office manager went on a week long vacation and they asked me to fill in. I had to answer the phones, which wasn’t too bad, but then the director came in and needed me to send a newsletter to all the other locations. I had no idea how to even consider doing this. None of the other employees were helpful, as all of them hated their jobs but also had no clue what the office manager did or how she did it. There was a terrible video I had to watch about selling pre-paid burial plans and caskets and while I know this is a part of life (and death) it was just more than I bargained for. Then the director, who was a jerk and made me feel uncomfortable, took me upstairs to the apartment to show me some stuff that he easily could have brought down to the office. I was so nervous I didn’t comprehend any of it. I managed to muddle through the week, barely. The next time they called me to come in for a visitation, they woke me up from a nap and I mumbled, “I’m sorry, I can’t come in, I have to … do … something … else.” They never called me again.

MVWJ was at a place that sold exotic birds. There were hundreds of them, and I had to take care of them AND sell them. I had to feed them and change their water, which involved emptying all of their poop-filled water and food bowls into a huge bucket, which turned into the most nauseating smelling concoction ever. I also had to clean their living spaces, which just meant grabbing the poop-covered wood shavings with my hands and dumping it into the garbage. I also wasn’t allowed to remove the birds from their living spaces when I did this, and most of them were extremely territorial. They would scream and bite my hands and arms while I was covered in their poop.

There was this guy that worked there in his 70s who wore the most awful toupee I’ve ever seen. He was very nice to me when I started working there, but I quickly realized that it was because he was a total perv. He would go into the back room with this other older woman who worked there and have sex, leaving me to take care of the entire store. He also had a wife in the hospital. One time he grabbed my waist and told me I had a flat stomach in front of this older woman (who he was trying to make jealous). I snapped and told him he was creepy. After that he told me he hated me (mature) and that he wished he didn’t have to work with me because I wasn’t “nice.”

I finally had enough and gave my two weeks notice, telling the store’s boss everything about this guy and why I couldn’t work with him anymore. A few months later, I learned that he was fired because he was caught on the security camera stealing thousands of dollars over the many years that he worked there

I just quit/got fired from my very worst job about 30 minutes ago. It was one of those typical movie scenarios:  I said “Hey, I quit.” and they followed it up with “You can’t quit you’re fired!!”

Desperate for some extra money while I was completing my social work internship, I decided to accept a part-time job as a janitor for a community health center in my town. I was in charge of cleaning the gynecologist office as well at the family practice.  I could go into work whenever I wanted after the doctors left, so it fit my schedule perfectly. Sounds great, right?  Wrong.

Right away I got a lot of stares. A few of the nurses knew that I am openly gay so that quickly spread around the practice. Eventually I was called into the HR director’s office for a stern lecture about my dreadlocks and my love of only owning and wearing men jeans (I’m a girl), I was warned that if I didn’t basically fem it up, I would be written up. Did I mention that I worked completely alone at night, and the only time anyone saw me was when I was walking from my car into the building?

My first day at work had me on my hands and knees picking up the remnants of Taco Bell cheese and Subway lettuce that the nurses left behind at the gyno office. Did it hurt my pride? Sure. But, I was all about the $12 an hour I was making. The following week, the nurses at the gynecologist office decided to test my will by throwing away KFC chicken, leftover Jimmy John’s, and whatever fast food junk they happened to be eating that day into every single exam room. Even the ones that weren’t used that day, meaning that I wouldn’t usually have to clean them. But, once something is thrown in the trash, it’s considered used and the room had to be cleaned. Eventually fed up with all this food nonsense, I told my supervisor who confronted the nurses, and they were eventually given a verbal warning, and they admitted to everything.

But the bullshit didn’t stop there.

The receptionist at the family practice took it upon herself to “throw away” scissors at the beginning up the day, and of course throughout the day dirty diapers and urine sample cups were piled upon these “broken” scissors at the bottom of the waste can.  Imagine my delight when I lifted up the trash only to have diapers, piss, and dirty latex gloves fall at my feet. This time when I told my supervisor, nothing was done.

The final straw was last week, when I threw away a week old, half-eaten cake that was starting to attract ants. Of course, the next day the nurses were in the mood for some coffee and cake, and were appalled to find that I had thrown it away. After spamming my work e-mail with their ridiculous complaints, I decided to purchase them a new cake. I had the baker write “Sorry about the old cake. From, J.” Obviously this action was completely rude on my part, so I got written up for it. Sick up the bullshit, I quit today.

Although, my supervisor made sure to add that I was going to get fired anyway because the picture frames were too dusty in the building.

When I was 17, the summer camp I was working at folded, and I was left without a job for the summer before university. Luckily, my friend Eric had recently quit his job at the fish market and found gainful employment as a clown in a balloon store.  He was pretty sure he could get me a job.  I liked kids, and figured, what the hell.

I got the job without an interview (warning bell number one), and soon went about learning the trade of a clown, tying balloon animals, doing magic tricks, and so forth. So far so good.  It turned out, though, that most of my duties revolved around adults, not children. I only did one kids’ party the whole time I worked there (warning bell number two). The rest of the time, I was a singing delivery clown–you know, the kind that shows up at an office with a bunch of balloons and sings “Happy Birthday” to some cubicle gnome. OK, I thought, surely this won’t be so bad. I don’t consider myself to have a good singing voice, but my boss told me not to worry about that (warning bell number three).  Aside from being bad-tempered, he was also the cheapest bastard I’d ever met, and refused to shell out the few extra bucks for clown make-up that didn’t run.

I got shown the car I was supposed to drive–it was an old rustbucket that some previous clown had run into a tree, so the whole front end was accordioned in, and it was missing its sideview mirrors. It was also stuck in second gear. I had to drive the thing in second everywhere I went, including on the highway. The back of the car was always full of balloons, so I could never see out the rearview, and my boss wouldn’t pay for a decent sideview mirror. I took my life in my hands every time I changed lanes (eventually he found an old sideview from a Mack truck or something, and bolted it on the side of the little car…making it impossible to fit into small parking spaces). Also, because it had no reverse gear, I had to park it, get out and do my clown thing, and then when I got back, perform the following ritual: I’d open the driver’s side door, grab the wheel, step on the clutch with my right clown boot, and push off with my left foot, rolling the car backwards until I could hop in, start it, and drive off in second gear (warning bells galore).

A word on clown delivery services: nobody is glad to see you. Businessmen usually order this sort of thing to embarrass their coworkers. I once made a delivery at the end of the day to a high-level government department.  It was the hottest summer ever, and my makeup was running down my face in rivulets. I had five o’clock shadow under it, and I was sweating like a bastard in my stupid suit (the car had no A/C, and I couldn’t open the windows because the balloons would blow around and either fly out the window or blind me). I was late, and double parked the clownmobile outside next to a military truck.

I went through security (not easy), and waited awkwardly for the guy to come down from the 18th floor. In the meantime, all my balloons exploded on the stucco ceiling, and so an angry, impatient man was called away from work to receive limp bits of damp rubber on the end of some string from a melting, shaggy clown who sang “Happy Birthday” off-key in the reception area. I didn’t get a tip.

I also made deliveries to people I knew from high school (mortifying), and to a man who was contemplating suicide (depressing and scary).  I finally threw in the towel when my boss told me that he was expanding the clientele of the balloon store, and that my new duties would include dressing up as Tarzan for middle-aged ladies’ parties.

I never really forgave my friend Eric for getting me this job.

Right after college I worked two really awesome seasonal jobs, but there was about three months of down time between them so I had to start working at a temp agency. Most of the assignments were fine, except one time they sent me out to this company that makes food supplements. I guess they had a huge batch that came out with the wrong dosage so they needed somebody to pop the pills out of those plastic containers with the foil on the back. I only spent two days doing this and it was absolutely miserable. The worst part of the whole thing is that the pills were sensitive to light, so I had to do this MVWJ in the dark.

A few years ago, my mom worked as an admin for a janitorial company. I met her boss several times, and when he heard I was searching for a job, he offered me a job supervising one of his cleaning crews. Since I had no experience, he told me I would work for a few weeks as one of the crew to get a feel for it. I was told the hours were 6 p.m. to midnight and it would be a breeze!

My first few nights on the job, I went out with a crew to clean four office buildings. Apparently, the new girl always gets the worst assignment — bathrooms. I never knew it was such a nasty job to clean so many bathrooms! I calculated I had scrubbed 85 toilets a night. I also found out that since they get paid hourly, the crew wants to make the most of it — we stopped for food and cigarettes constantly, and one night we went and parked at the local jail so one girl could wave to her boyfriend.

After one week in which I couldn’t get the smell of urine out of my clothes and I never made it home before 4a.m., I finally quit. Not even a supervisor job was worth it anymore!

My Very Worst Job was at an orthopedic shoe store. My boss was a moron. She had a nasty habit of bouncing almost every paycheck. Actually, not just paychecks. Bill collectors would call us on a daily basis asking for her payments. Every time I asked her why my check bounced, she would just tell me I had to wait until after the weekend. She would bring in smelly food and leave it in our fridge and her husband came in all the time. He usually made sexist jokes and bossed us around. The real kicker was that she constantly complained about the way we sold shoes, but whenever she made a sale, it always ended up being returned by the customer.

Now let me elaborate on the customers. We had a woman go in our bathroom (which we weren’t supposed to let customers use) and when she left, my coworkers and I discovered that she had a bad case of explosive diarrhea. It was all over the wall and the toilet. And we had to clean it up. There were people whose feet smelled like death, and even people who didn’t bother to take a pumice stone to their feet (It’s a bit discomforting when you look into a shoe and see flakes of skin sitting in the heel). I especially loathed the older women who came in and insisted that their shoe size was a 6.5 U.S., but when measured, turned out to be more like an 8. They were usually upset at me for saying that their feet were “huge” and would refuse to try on their actual size. I forgot to mention that these women usually had bunions that had to be accomodated with wider shoes, and that further pissed them off.

One day, our boss called a staff meeting and brought donuts for us. She sat down and cried and told us that she had to close the store. Why she brought the donuts? I don’t know. Maybe to soften the blow. None of us were surprised but were more annoyed that she spent six months being behind in payments and managed to buy herself a brand new Mercedes. She told us that she would write us letters of recommendation but never did, and even promised to take us out to lunch “next week or so.” I haven’t seen her in a year. She didn’t even leave us a number for any potential employers of ours to contact her.