Registering It All

My Very Worst Job started after I was laid off from my last job. I had been out of work for about six months and was getting desperate. My best friend told me that the family-owned organic grocery store that she had just been hired at was still looking for people, so I went and handed in my resume. After a quick interview, I was hired, and although they were minorly concerned that I never had any cashier experience before, they told me that they’d spend time training me and I assured them I was a quick learner.

I got into work the next day and was led on a tour by my manager, who had the world’s most rancid breath. I’m pretty sure something crawled in her mouth and died, there was no way a human could smell so disgusting naturally. The other manager liked to stand around and stare at the cashiers and yell anytime he noticed us being idle for a split second or talking and asking each other questions about work.  Thankfully, the rest of the day went by uneventfully.  However, at the end of the next day my manager called me into her office to tell me there was a scheduling conflict and I wouldn’t be working the next day and to expect a phone call from them at the end of the week telling me the time and date of my next shift.

I waited until the end of the week, with no phone call. I finally called them myself to find out was going on, and was told by one of my managers that she didn’t have my schedule on her and I would have to call back in an hour when the other manager was working to find out about my next shift. So, an hour later I called back only to be told that they had over-hired and I was fired. I’m sure the other manager knew I was fired, seeing as it was family-owned, but was just too chicken to tell me herself.

A week later, my best friend, who was still working there, was told a secret by the manager (who had no idea we were best friends, as we thought it best to keep our friendship secret while working there) – he did not fire me because they over-hired, I was fired because “I had no cashier experience and it was unacceptable.” I was completely upfront about my lack of cashier skills in the interview and they told me they had no issues with training me at my first cashier job. The manager also said a slew of negative things about me to my best friend, which was pretty impressive considering I had only worked there and known the manager for two days.

Two weeks after that, my best friend was fired for taking too much time off (five days).  Why did she take so much time off?  To go to her grandmother’s funeral halfway across the country.

Luckily, I’m now working at a great cashier job where I am told that I was the easiest to train cashier they’ve ever had, so I’m still not sure what the cashier skills drama was about.

Rotten Retail

leather jacket

I worked in a store selling leather jackets, wallets and bags for three months. Our sales manager was a really poor leader and the store’s policies towards employees really sucked. We always had to be at work 15 minutes prior to the store opening, to clean the floors and get everything ready. For my first timesheet, I put those 15 minutes down as working time, but was told that the policy was not to include that in the hours, nor the time taken at the end of the day to close the store. Essentially, this was half an hour that we didn’t get paid for. In addition to this, we were constantly given shifts that lasted 7.5 hours – an 8-hour shift would have meant a half hour lunch break, which we didn’t get.  The manager was unable to give feedback directly, but just passive-aggressively left notes or told other employees to pass on messages. Employees were constantly given feedback about not cleaning the stores properly and told that everyone had to chip in equally to make the store look good, but the manager never participated and left the store in a mess for us to clean up.

Since it was a “specialty” store, on some days sales were poor because we just didn’t get enough customers who were willing to pay up for expensive jackets and bags. On those days we were told we weren’t trying hard enough and that we should fix our attitude to make more sales. When we did make lots of sales, we were rarely, if ever, were given positive feedback. None of the stores had proper break facilities, just a toilet in the back, so when we had our coffee breaks, we had to sit on the toilet lid, drinking our coffee! The manager seemed to despise all the younger employees, especially if they were pretty, and hassled us no end. None of the older employees had any problems with her, but she kept us all terrified of losing our jobs over the tiniest little things. She even told off one of my colleagues for wearing a sleeveless t-shirt on a warm day, and was told that store policy forbade armpits showing. The manager herself always wore really low-cut blouses. Obviously boobs were less offensive than armpits. We always received our shift timetables at the last minute, and never had two days off in a row, which made it impossible to ever go away for a weekend.

Just before I quit, one of the older employees was sacked for stealing thousands of Euros from the store by selling jackets and bags for cash without logging the sales in the till. I was almost disappointed that she was caught.

Week Long Weirdness

When I was 20, I was hired as a undercover security guard at a book store. Once I was hired, I was given a training schedule, which was to report to the book store and train for a day with the security guard for all the duties, which included locking up the store.  At the first training shift I went in at the scheduled time and spoke with the store manager only to find out that there was no one there to train me. I was told to go home and come back tomorrow. So I went in to train the next day. This time however, the security boss was there, he trained me for 30 minutes, sent me home told me to come back the next day to learn the closing duties.  So I go back again, but it’s the same story; Friday rolls around same thing happens again again.

Now at this point I was expected to work Monday with no training, no keys to lock up the store and no codes to arm the security system. I figured since I didn’t have the security boss’s phone number he would call me over the weekend to sort out new training times, but this never happened.  So on Monday, I decided to go down to the head office and get the security boss to take me through closing procedures so I can at least close up that night.  Of course he was not there; I was told by the store manager to head home and my boss would contact me later. He calls me that night at home and fired me. Two years later my friend applied for the same job that I had at this bookstore and he was scheduled for an interview which the boss forgot about.

Service With a Smile

Fried catfish

Like anyone who works in restaurant service I saw my fair share of insanity. There was the bartender/manager who drank away the profits, the line cooks who popped pills and juggled knives and the fellow waitstaff who stole tips. But at this plastic-plate, greasy-everything joint, the worst of the worst was far and away the customers. On Valentine’s Day, because I was the only single waitress on staff, I got tapped to pull doubles. Alone. After 12 hours of serving crappy food to cheap couples, enduing endless jokes about being dateless and watching several couples break up and storm out, leaving their checks unpaid, I finally took my last table.

At first, the group of 15 obese diners seemed like a godsend. They were polite, calm, orderly and friendly. I muscled up my last smile and gave them the best service I could manage, hoping for a tip big enough to cover the dine-and-dashers. But when the orders started to arrive, it all went to heck. The shrimp-to-catfish ratio on the fry plate was off; the burger buns were too small; the lettuce wasn’t crunchy enough; the Sprite tasted like 7up and it was all my fault. When all was said and done and all 15 lumbered off into the night, I searched the table for my tip. They had left me 37 cents. I ran out after them and saw them laughing and exchanging high-fives as they walked away.

Other tales of greatness include: the puker who, after vomiting onto the table next to him, wiped his mouth and ordered another basket of onion rings; the prostitute who stretched one cup of coffee for four hours while trolling unsuccessfully for dates; the belligerent who arrived at 5pm every Friday for cocktails and was forcibly removed by 6pm, drunk and swinging fists; and my favorite, the flash-n-grabber who would hang his member out of his pants under the table and, when he caught a waitress noticing, would reach up and goose her while she was still immobilized in shock while yelling, “Caught you lookin’!”

I was fired from this job when, after getting food poising from my employee meal, I missed two days of work. The manager actually sent one of the line cooks to my house to retrieve my apron. I told him I had lost it and later ritually burned it along with my left-over order slips.

Ignore The Signs

After college, I saw an ad for a sports marketing position. When I went in, I was told that the interview would actually be a full day of work. I was introduced to the sales team I’d be working with and we all got into someone’s car and started to drive to a strip mall in the suburbs. The job ended up consisting of trying to sell coupons for the local baseball team to workers in retail stores and restaurants. We were told to ignore “no solicitation” signs. Between stops at strip malls, I sat in the backseat of the car with the “sales trainer.”  At one point, he asked if he could lean on me and put his head in my lap! After putting in a long degrading day, I was told that I had gotten the job. My parents begged me not to go back, but I did. The next day, we headed out and our trainer announced that he didn’t feel like selling that day and we were going to go to the movies instead. As if this wasn’t awkward enough, he whispered to me that he needed to go behind the movie theater and get high beforehand. Much to my parents’ happiness, that was my last day.