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.
After being unemployed for eight or so months, I got fed up of looking for jobs for what I really wanted to do and decided to simply get back into the working world one way or another. The unemployment check wasn’t cutting it and the indent I was getting on the couch certainly wasn’t helping my life at all. I began applying for any job I felt I could do well in order to get my resume beefed up a little more. I eventually landed a job as an Administrative Assistant that paid next to nothing, but offered more than unemployment and seemed like it would be a good step. On my first week working there, the individual who I was supposed to be directly working under was off because of his vacation. I was fitting right in and picking things up easily. At the end of that week, one of my coworkers gave me a warning regarding the person I was supposed to really be supporting and how this week as ‘easy’ and everything will go downhill from here. She then proceeded to tell me that I was the fourth person to be in my chair in 10 months and that they simply couldn’t get the right person for the job. I should have paid more attention to that warning but blew it off and figured nothing could be worse then a long stretch of unemployment and being completely broke.
The first day of D’s return from vacation, all hell broke loose. He would constantly be hovering over my desk watching me work which I said made me feel uncomfortable and slowed me down. He ignored that and would do it more. He would physically write full page emails he wanted me to send to people and ask me to type exactly as how he had written it. I was then to print out a copy, return it to him and wait for him to bring it back. He would bring these copies back full of red ink marks and exclamation points outlining mundane changes, like using a semicolon here instead of a period or introductory words like “hi there” needed to be “hey.” I made all changes and would return them to him and then he’d fine more problems with that and return it to be, full of red ink and corrections. These papers would go back and forth at least four times before he would finally be satisfied with whatever he had me change. I would waste hours upon hours doing this. A simple paragraph email would take nearly two hours to get to his satisfaction. I finally explained to him that I would be happy to type whatever he needed but it would be far more efficient if he would simply spend time on what he really wanted to say and keep it to a maximum of two revisions so I could focus on my work.
He got really heated and explained to me that he didn’t always know what he wanted to say and part of my job was to make sure he was getting out all the needed to be there. I took this issue to the boss and was ‘sat down’ and told that my problem was I expected perfection out of him and that I’m not perfect and I shouldn’t expect other people to do so. I looked at my boss completely in awe as to how he came to this conclusion and said I never said that nor do I believe that, but I think it is necessary to see where we can be more productive and efficient and this was a problem I recognized. I was yelled at for an hour and told my job was to be concerned with my work and typing emails and memos and I was too sensitive to do my job. One of my coworkers also asked me once to type something for him exactly as written. I did so and when I printed it out and returned it, he said it was garbage and incorrect. I asked what exactly did he see wrong and offered to correct it. He told me that he didn’t have time to babysit and train me (as he was playing on Mafia Wars) and balled the memo up and threw it at me. He said for me to go down to the local Barnes and Noble, purchase a book on how to do the job of an Administrative Assistant and figure it out.
My boss also decided one day, without telling me, that I was no longer hourly and I was instead a salaried worker. He said any overtime I did would not be paid any further (I had been putting in three or four hours a week of overtime) and I needed to be prepared to simply ‘work for free’ since they were doing me a favor by providing me a job. When it came time to discuss a raise, they refused to give me a dollar amount and instead offered to give me a ‘reduced tax payment’ which they simply moved my withholding status from a ‘0’ to a ‘2’ so I’d see more money per check. I eventually gained employment elsewhere doing what I love. When I gave my two weeks, my boss kept asking what my new role would be and was very pushy regarding my reasons for leaving. I explained I didn’t feel the need to tell him where I was going, that was between me and my new employers, but I was unhappy here.
On my last day of work, I deleted all of my emails and tried my best to wrap everything up. When it was time to receive my final paycheck, the money never arrived. When I called to inquire about it, they said by deleting emails I had destroyed company property and therefore vandalized their system and they were holding my last check as compensation of that. I explained that I never saw nor signed a computer policy while working there and that I had access to very sensitive information (credit card numbers, personal accounts, etc.) and that I felt by deleting those things I was removing liability from myself and the company. They insisted I was out to get them and so I had to have the state sue them for my check. Since then, they haven’t bothered me aside from tracking down where I work now and have called me once at my new job, but hung up as soon as I answered.
MVWJ was right before my current job, which happens to be My Very Best Job. I worked my way up in a barbecue chain restaurant. I started out as a cashier, then a server and was eventually a cook/meat slicer. I loved this job at the beginning. My boyfriend had recently lost his job and since we had two kids to support I threw myself in, working 50 to 60 hour weeks, usually double shifts. In the morning I would serve and then change clothes and be in the kitchen at night. The owner was a family guy, the managers were all younger and pretty cool. Like I said, I loved it. That was before they asked me to become a manager. I was so excited they had asked. I’m the type of person that does my absolute best and was just happy that someone had noticed how far I would go to be a team player. Picking up shifts if we were short, sometimes managing to do two jobs at one time, being the first girl to learn how to run the slicer and being amazingly fast in the hot, smoke-filled kitchen! I started working more and more. Once you become manager you are on salary so I was working 60 to 70 hours a week and barely ever saw my kids. I was committed to this job!
The boss’s son was a big party kid. He had just came home from college and was thrown into being general manager of the store. He would often come to work drunk and or late. One time he even came in and slept on the desk in the office because he was so hung over. He would be late opening the store, hired all his drinking buddies to work there and he stayed in the office his ENTIRE shift. I mean he would literally sit in there and watch the security cameras and call us up front to complain or ask one of the other managers to do something for him. The front end manager was a complete nightmare. She couldn’t write up a server schedule to save her life and we always had to find people to cover shifts because she would give everyone off if they requested it because she couldn’t tell these young college kids no! They all learned that pretty quickly and would suck up to her constantly for better shifts. But, I still loved it. I thought I was doing a really good job, I was always tired, called in on my days off constantly, always worked longer than scheduled, was actually scheduled as a cook most nights to conserve labor costs. I thought I was an appreciated member of the team and loved working hard for the owner.
In the end he fired me for coming into work on time and sick. I didn’t call in at 8am and leave everyone in a bind. He fired me because I spent too much time in the office on this one shift because I felt so sick. Two years of working like man for him, forgoing my family and my kids. I was in shock and wasn’t able to articulate anything when he called me into the office and fired me in front of all the other managers! I just stood there with my mouth open. I still want to find him and hurt him. Fucking ungrateful jackass.
This is my second submission to My Very Worst Job, so I’m not sure the superlative technically applies. Either way, it was a terrible job.
Just before the end of my junior year of high school, I decided to quit my mediocre job at a large retail store in search of greener pastures. I’m a huge film buff, so I was thrilled when I got a job at a nearby multiplex.
My first shift was on the night that Spiderman opened. For those of you that don’t know, Spiderman broke all kinds of records its opening weekend. I walked up to the entrance and was greeted by massive lines of fans that had been waiting for hours. I slipped into the back were a manager handed me a vest, a clip on bowtie, a schedule of when the movies got out, a broom, and a trash can with wheels on the bottom. I was told to pick up the trash in the theaters after all the patrons left and to do it quickly because they needed to get everybody in for the next screening. And that was all the training I got.
That first night was just awful. My co-workers would constantly go missing for hours at a time to smoke pot in the parking lot and leave me to clean massive theaters by myself. Each theater had an insanely long line in front of it that seemed to be ready to riot by the time we finished cleaning.
Somehow, I made it through. I was completely exhausted when I finished and, for some reason, didn’t quit after that night. In fact, I stayed on for nine more months. Each night I would be amazed at the disgusting things people would leave in a theater. Some of the worst things were cups full of chewing tobacco spit, used baby diapers, and cups full of urine (which, by the way, deteriorates the cups so the bottoms are prone to fall out when you pick them up). Once, when I was emptying the trash in a restroom, a single poop fell out of a rolled up paper towel and landed on the ground. Also, you would be surprised at how frequently people throw up at movie theaters.
I tried to take advantage of the free movies but employees were only allowed free passes on weekdays and only during the day. In retrospect, I have no idea why I stayed that long. I had made a few friends, but it was not worth the work. I guess it was pride or something. I eventually quit after I was denied a raise and then found out that they had started paying new hires more than me.
I was sixteen and so excited to start my new job at the grocery store. My first day was reserved for training. Another girl and I were instructed to go pick things off the shelves that were misplaced and put them in a cart. Once we were finished we were told to scan them. This was a small grocery store, so at the most, we had 20 items. We scanned them on a register and one of the assistant managers showed us how to pay using the system. Then we were put on bagging duty. For two weeks I bagged groceries, and never got more training. It wasn’t terrible, but I would have enjoyed checking out customers. And there was one assistant manager, D, who complained about having to “babysit” the new employees, but overall I liked it.
One day I came in and D told me I was going to be on the register. Excited, I arrived to work for the next shift, only to notice he wasn’t around. I checked out people without too many problems, impressed that I even remember how to use the system. But then my first mistake came when a man was trying to buy some green onions. Green onions were something my mother had never cooked with and I wasn’t familiar with them. I counted six green onions in the bunch and put it in as six green onions. The man told me that was too much so I went to find D to clear it out. He grumbled about how I should have known that it was only one. I apologized and went back to work.
Soon we got a crowd and D came and worked in the register behind me. I checked out an older man with a bunch of groceries and a giant bag of dog food I could barely get it over the scanner. I had to drag it over multiple times before the bag even scanned. The old man came back in, I had accidentally scanned it twice. D unhappily gave the nice old man his refund.
Again I got back to work. Several customers later, I got a man who wanted to pay for his groceries with a pay check. I had never been taught to do this. Knowing D was annoyed already I looked for it myself on the screen. Cash a check was an option and I chose it. And gave the man back his extra money, minus the $2.50 check cashing fee. The man told me that he never got charged a fee, so I went to go ask D. D told me I did it wrong, I just put it in like a normal check and give him cash back.
I checked out more people out but after awhile, I noticed I had a rope across my lane. I went to D about it and he angrily yelled at me, “You’re stupid, lazy and don’t know what you’re doing! You’re back on sacking groceries again.”
So I went back to sacking groceries for about an hour before my shift ended. I went home and cried. I had never had an older person say anything like that to me. I hated going to work to bag groceries. I finally got the courage to give my two weeks notice, and the manager told me not to worry about it and to just finish out the week.
Shortly after I got a job at my town’s local bank where I became the fastest teller in a few months. During my school breaks I would work at different locations for extra hours. About a year later I was at the branch the grocery store went to make their deposits. D came in and hit on me, he didn’t remember his former stupid and lazy employee he had to babysit.
