I thought I’d share My Very Worst Job ever with you, since I haven’t ever met anyone with a worse story than this one. I found myself looking for work last year, after the economy had tanked. Unemployment in my part of the country had jumped, so when I finally got an interview with a local hotel chain, I was pretty excited. I was hired right away, and asked to start the next day.
My first indication that this would not work out occurred at about 10 a.m. on my first day, when a homeless man, reeking of alcohol, stumbled up to the desk and asked for a room. Since he couldn’t afford one we sent him away, but a few minutes later the janitor came in to tell us he’d found him in the bushes outside – with a hooker. That’s when I realized who the parade of slutty women paying monthly rates in cash were.
Later on I was shown the emergency procedures book, which included policies in case of drug raids, suicide attempts, rapes, assaults, hostage situations, and bomb threats. I was told that I likely wouldn’t need to use most of them, but last week there was that guy who overdosed, and on Thursday there was a major assault in the lobby, and some guy died in his room a few weeks back.
As if this wasn’t bad enough, I then found a note about a spate of car robberies happening in the parking lot. I basically spent the rest of the shift watching my own car through the front window. I quit over the phone that night and never came back, not even to pick up my paycheck.
Fortunately, I haven’t had anything nearly as bad since. I moved to Australia a few months later, and wound up in a couple of great jobs. Since I’ve been back in Canada the job market has really picked up again, so I’m hopeful that I will never, ever need to work in the kind of hotel that caters mostly to prostitutes, drug addicts, and one room that was either about illegal labourers or human trafficking – I left before I found out which one.
When I was 24, I got a job at a dog grooming salon as a receptionist/dog grooming student. It was a small business, just the two owners (who were in their late 20s) and I. Everything was normal for the first few days, but by the end of the first week, it felt like I was babysitting instead of working. They’d say they were going to pass out fliers around the neighborhood but instead they’d end up sitting in the break room, smoking and talking which, of course, meant hardly any customers. And even when they had customers, they’d still spend most of the day hanging out in the break room. Then when 2 o’clock rolled around, they’d do a spit n’shine on the dog, call the owner and say they had an “emergency” and then take the rest of the day off.
Even worse, starting the second week, I would get to work, wait 10 minutes (they lived a couple blocks away), call them and ask where they were at and they’d say, “Oh, we decided not to come in today.” Since I took public transportation at the time, it was a major pain to get there. I asked them to let me know when they were taking the day off, but I guess it was too much trouble. I stayed there for three months since I didn’t want to leave without a backup job and never even got paid. Last I heard, the salon closed down four months after I left. Suprised it lasted that long.
During the summer of my sophmore year of college, I decided to pick up a second job to have more money for the upcoming semester. During my search I found out that a local Japanese/sushi restaurant was hiring. It seemed like the perfect fit for me, since I was studying Japanese and I figured I could practice with the owners. I placed the call and was told to come in the following day for an interview. I showed up early only to find no one else at the restaurant. After waiting 10 minutes past our meeting time, a girl (the daughter of the owner) about my age pulled up. We went into the restaurant and she quickly interviewed me, just mainly asking about my history as a server. I told her my experience and the reason I was interested in working for them. She said it was great and I could start the next day.
When I arrived the next day, an old Korean woman, who turned out to be the owner, was the only other person in the building. I learned quickly she neither spoke nor understood English. This and the fact I never filled out an application or tax forms should have been enough for me to realize something wasn’t right. It turned out that not a single person involved knew anything of Japan. The owners were Korean and just liked sushi, the cooks were Mexican and the servers (other than myself) were Chinese, but hardly spoke any English. The owner would yell at us in Korean to do things and I ended up running in circles until the daughter came over and yelled at me.
On top of that, the way they handled our cash tips was sketchy. After each table, we had to take the cash tips up to the old woman at the register where at the end of the night she would divide them evenly between us all. Even though it was my first night, I had been taking on more tables than the other two waitresses, who were just talking to each other. The last straw for me was when I got a call from the daughter asking me to come in one night for work on a night I had specifically told her I was working my other job. Her response? ”Make up something to tell them; tell them you’re sick.” Yeah. Right. Lie to the restaurant I’d worked at for four years. I told her I would see what I could do and never called her back. To this day I avoid that restaurant like the plague.
I got a job at a grocery store in the produce section, but the manager and owner never told me about my duties or what my responsibilities would be. I asked a couple of times, but the answer was “we’ll discuss that on your first day.” So I showed up on my first day ready, excited and motivated. I reported to my department manager, made him aware that I was present and ready to start. I asked my manager if there was anything he’d like me to do or if he needed help with anything. His exact response?
” Whoa whoa whoa kid…you’ve been on the job for about 30 seconds. And you’re already asking questions? I’m not here to babysit you!”
I was a little baffled at this comment, but I just calmly and nicely told him that we should probably go over my duties and responsibilities like we discussed on my interview day so that I wouldn’t have to bug him again. He turned around, red in the face, with both fists closed and screamed at the top of his lungs so everyone in the store could hear.
“IT’S NOT WISE OF YOU TO GIVE ME ATTITUDE WHEN YOU’RE ONLY 30 SECONDS INTO THE JOB!! DON’T PISS ME OFF, YOU DON’T KNOW WHO I AM AND WHAT I CAN DO!!”
Me being 16 and him being in his mid-30′s and slightly better built, I was shaking in my boots. I calmly walked away and went into the owners office to talk about what had happened and to apologize if I did anything wrong (which I knew I didn’t). I was absolutley blown away and disgusted at what the owner hit me back with.
“Oh…so you wanted him to show you your responsibilities eh? Do you want him to hold your hand too? Maybe read you a bedtime story? This is work, not a daycare”.
I thought I was on a prank tv show with hidden cameras. But nope. This was real. I grabbed a broom and straightened things, but that took a whole 10 minutes and I still had more than three and a half hours left to go. I found myself repeating the same things over and over again. Sweep, mop, straighten, repeat. Every time I tried to help a fellow employee, they would say they didn’t have time to train me. I would try to get boxes of fruit from out back to stock the shelves and I would be told I wasn’t allowed back there. I was getting more and more attitude from my manager and my boss. Swearing, cussing, name-calling, you name it. Close to the end of my shift, my manager had another hissy fit on me and called me stupid. I took off my smock, threw it at him, took off my badge, threw that at him too and I told him to fuck off. I then went into the owners office and told him to go fuck himself as well.
My Very Worst Job was working for a lady who worked as rep for a major direct sales cosmetics firm. When I interviewed for this job, I was already working part-time elsewhere but I thought working for this woman on Saturdays at her home office would be great for some extra money. She seemed very enthusiastic and told me I’d be doing lots of things related to her business, inventory, sales calls, etc. I was excited about the opportunity and thought it would be something good to put on my resume related to the administrative field I planned to go into after college. What I didn’t realize is that she also included “light cleaning” in the job description.
This didn’t bother me at first, but it did bother the other girl who was hired to work with me. The first few Saturdays were spent organizing samples and customer information. I thought things were going a long swimmingly until one day this lady asked me to do one more task in addition to watching her young daughter. She first asked the other girl to vacuum the window sills. I kid you not! So the girl got to vacuuming, and was not thrilled about it.
I was then asked to clean the ceiling fan globes in the house. There was a ceiling fan in every single room of this two-story antebellum-style home! I spent the entire afternoon taking down five globes from each fan and washing them in soapy water and putting them back again. The other girl was in a word, pissed. The woman gave us no indication as to when she’d be home, so we were stuck there in the house waiting on her because we couldn’t leave her young daughter by herself. The girl I worked with said she had enough and she wasn’t coming back. I decided although this was all very bizarre, I’d stick it out.
That is until the next Saturday. I got up early, got myself ready and got to the house, only to find that no one was home. No note, no instructions, nothing. I decided then that I too had had enough, and wasn’t wasting any more of my Saturdays on this crazy woman. She eventually emailed me regarding picking up where we left off, but I declined to respond. That may have been unprofessional on my part, but it was hardly as unprofessional as this grown woman’s insane behavior.
