Best Job - Worst Job

In My Humble Opinion
21

Best Job: Radio deejay, afternoon drive. I worked a shift that went from noon to 6pm at a Top 40 station in Illinois. It was a fantastic way to make a living for a kid right out of college, and I reveled in it. After my shift was over, I’d head out to the bar and get bought free drinks until I stumbled out at midnight. I was fairly well-known by people, and it’s the closest thing I’ll ever be to an actual rock star. If it didn’t pay so sh*ttily, I’d still be doing it. :slight_smile:

Second Best Job: The one I have now, Corporate Trainer. I teach computer systems and processes to sales reps for a computer manufacturer, and enjoy the ever-loving hell out of it. Suffice it to say the pay’s not bad, and it’s nice being very well-known among my peers.

Worst Job: Gah. I’ve had so damned many. On the top of my list was deliveryman for Nantucket Nectars in Chicago. The pay was terrible, and I gathered zero respect from the people I worked with, having just come from the radio gig. I wouldn’t have even taken it, except I was trying to save enough money to get married and make a down-payment on a home.

So, in effect, I quit the best job I ever had to take the worst. Yep, I’m a moron. :frowning:

Still, it worked out in the long run. Doesn’t it always?

22

Best job - working at a 5 star resort hotel in Palm Beach. I was the relief attendant which meant that I worked shifts for the beach attendant, pool lifeguard, and beach lifeguard. Great people and beautiful beach and ocean. It was like a dream. The money sucked.

Worst job - I worked at a plasma center. This was gross and disgusting in many ways. And, throwing the Houston Chronicle… especially Sundays. Vomit.

23

Best Job: Working from 3pm-11pm monitoring file transfers worth millions. That meant I worked for about 15 minutes of every hour, and the rest of the time was mine to do with what I pleased.

Worst Job: After being informed that it was a customer service job, finding out it was actually a collections department for student loans. It’s not a service, it annoys the hell out of people. It could have been tolerable if not for the bullshit that I had to put up with. False incentives, horrible hours, unrealistic expectations of the actual agents. For example, if someone had promised to pay or send in required paperwork, then did not, it was your fault. It was very unprofessional, and had a very high rate of turnover.

24

Best Job: My first bartending job. I kept the job 3 years–quit when ownership changed. The (original) owners were smart enough to know that they didn’t know anything. They let management (eventually I became a manager) make decisions that needed to be made. Everybody made money in a fun environment.

{BTW I now work for a bar in which the owner knows nothing–but thinks he does, and interfers non-stop, steps on his mgrs toes, and makes horrendous business decisions, simply because he’s never worked in a bar himself. He inherited the place from his Dad. It makes me appreciate that 1st bar job much more.}

Worst Job: I sold Trolls at a Kiosk in a mall, about 4 years after the 2nd Troll “Craze” ended. Luckily this was not a sales commision based job. Also, luckily, there hasn’t been a 3rd Troll craze. I now despise Trolls.

~S

25

Best job: Magician. It’s fun entertaining people, and kids love magic. Some of my friends kids’ still talk about tricks I showed them years afterwards.
It’s great getting applause at the end of a “work shift.” Never happened in any other job I’ve had.
The production company would always send along a coordinator to handle all the details, including hotels and restaurants. I can see how people get used to that.

The best thing about magic, is that you lie to people (there’s nothing in my hand) while taking money from them (admission fee). Normally this would be called fraud, and would get you jail time.

I had other dreams, and left it, but I’ve been thinking about it lately. . .

Worst job: Furniture assembly line worker. Doing the same damn thing 40 hours a week drove me nuts. This was a temp thing after high school for a couple of months, but I thought that I was going to die. (You can die of boredom, right?) I think it’s great that other people can do the same thing day in and day out, but I’ve got to have more adventure in my life.

26

Best: current job, writing advertisements. The account executives and the clients get a bit frustrating at times, but the work lets me be creative and I’m respected by the folks around me.

Worst office job: marketing for an internet start-up that I still suspect was just a venture-capital scam. We had a tech-whiz CEO with no business sense, and a BS-artist COO with no tech kowledge or leadership skills. He was deathly afraid of having his ignorance revealed, and so compensated by making his presentations as unintelligible as possible, then berating people for their stupidity when they questioned him. He was also fond of adopting a completely new ‘business strategy’ eack week based on the last magazine cover he’d read. On top of this, we never produced a product; when I interviewed in August, their ‘beta-launch’ was scheduled for the following month. It was still scheduled for the following month when I got fired/laid-off the following February (along with almost everyone else. The company was going bankrupt, but to hide that fact the directors simply told each person privately they were being fired for incompetence). My job in all of this was to write press releases and marketing reports for a product that never existed and changed concepts weekly.

Worst semi-office job: radio station intern. I had to call people up all day and ask survey questions. Basically, it was telemarketing without sales. To top it off, all they used my work for was to check if the data from the real telemarketing company was accurate. I quit after three weeks.

27

Best job - current job as insurance biller

Worst job - while I was temping in the mid-80’s, I had a one-day stint in a paper manufacturing company. This other guy (who lasted 3 hours) and I (lasted 7 hours) had to stand at the end of a conveyor belt and take this huge bale of some kind of yellow fibrous material (imagine taking 500 baby chicks and putting in a large pillowcase and making them explode (without the guts), pull it apart into smaller chunks and put them onto the belt where they would go through the factory and become sort of paper at the end (I never did see that part). I had to wear a mask. It drove me absolutely insane.

28

Best Job: Army officer. As a young man I cannot think f any other job where you have so much responsibility. Literally life-or-death stuff. Often you are left alone with your guys and the pressure is all on you to get the job done.

Worst Job: Army officer. The rank structure works against you when you have an over-controlling boss. Look, I just came off a long day in the motor pool. I really do not care about filling out your silly little form.

Great friends though.

29

Chastain86 - what station?

Best job: Working with manufacturers and distributors of art supplies, testing the gazillions of free products they’d send me, writing articles about those products and getting paid by magazines for the articles, and then getting paid AGAIN for the same work from the manufacturers who gave me the free supplies to begin with! As an added bonus, all that testing resulted in gazillions of crafty projects, so family and friends got lots of handmade gifties that I got to have fun making!

Second best job (when I was 18): Hostessing at a fancy-schmancy restaurant in a tiny, toney suburb. I got paid $6 an hour, plus tips. TIPS! For hostessing! The place only had 15 tables and usually an hour’s wait even on a Monday night, and servers tipped the hostess 10% of their tips, which usually ended up netting me close to a hundred dollars a night…not counting my actual paycheck. All for standing around looking cute and cracking jokes with wealthy patrons.
Worst job: Working as an inside sales rep for a lighting company. The work was OK, but the co-workers! Oy! One stunk, foully and continuously - we’re talking the constant overpowering stink of unwashed body and stale urine, and I worked in close quarters with her. EVERYONE complained about her horrifying personal habits, but no one ever mentioned them to her. My immediate supervisor was just a pig of a human being. I was the second-to-last of eight female sales reps in a row who worked with that guy - the last one sued him for sexual harrassment, a pre-existing condition that caused me to leave. It never occurred to me to sue, but I should have.

Other worst job was the one I quit halfway through my first day. I was only 16, and I’d answered one of those “management trainee” ads that turned out to be door to door sales of laser-foil “art” - I went out in a big van with a supervisor, who went into a diabetic coma on our first stop. I accompanied her to the emergency room and called for a ride home.

30

Best job: Wardrobe Mistress/Assistant House Manager for a theater in the town I grew up in. It has been built as a vaudeville stage in the 1920’s, then became a screen theater during the 40’s & 50’s. . .by the 80’s it was a porn theater, and by the 90’s it was dark. Then it was bought by a foundation as part of an urban renewal and declared a landmark. I was there through the restoration and ran the costume closet during every production. The hours were brutal, the pay was so bad I had a second part time job, but the people were wonderful, the work varried, fun and satisfying. I learned a wide range of skills, from carpentry to marketing, graphic design, dealing with divas and egos, sewing just about anything, fundraising, finding high heel shoes in a mens size 13. . . We had a benefit concert not long before I left, and I remember looking out at the packed house with 1500 people dressed to the nines and shaking my head thinking how far we’d come in 4 years, from spending hours scrubbing the vilest crud you could ever imagine (it was a PORN theater) off the floor. Never since have I felt so proud of my work.

Worst job: Well, the above scrubbing was pretty foul for a while, but that worked out in the end. A few days ago, I would have said my current job, just for the borderline verbally abusive demon woman I work with, but that’s starting to turn around. So I’ll vote for the college bookstore. At the begining of the semester, I was on my feet for 16 hours straight. At the end of the semester, people screamed at me all day because their $50 book was now worth $12 at buyback. In between, I was bored out of my skull.

31

Current Job
Sucks, but not my worst. I hate being a consultant - budgets are always too small, timelines are always too short, and the client usually hates the amount of money they’re spending on you, or fears that you’re making their job obsolete, or both. And I’m tired of travelling.

Best Job
Tech support in a tiny computer lab in a remote part of campus that apparently only 20 people knew about. Spent most of my time getting my homework done or browsing the net, for above minimum wage. It was great!

Worst Job
Has to be working for a crappy local pizza chain. Incompatent management and terrible co-workers. The place was always dirty, they were ALWAYS open (no breaks for Easter and Thanksgiving), and I could never work fast enough/well enough. I learned a lot, though, particularly how NOT to manage.

Second Worst Job
Working in a cabinet factory for 3 summers. Each time I went back, I got more money, and the pay was good for the work I did (I could never score an internship for some reason). It was crazy hot in there (over 100 degrees in the summer), and I spent most of my time on my feet moving wood around. This was still better than food prep because I never had to work nights, and I never really had to deal with people. Just keep up with the machine, and nobody bothers you.

32

I once waited tables at a restaurant where one of the servers (who pretty much failed to function properly unless she was stoned) was ordered to go smoke (which activity generally took place in the alley behind the joint) by the owner, because it was a busy night, and she was getting flustered.

And actually, in my more nostalgic moments, I think of that job as my best job; I was well-fed, absolutely adored damn near every one of my coworkers and, between work and play (a thin line between, really), spent nearly 100% of my time with them. :smiley:

In my less-nostalgic moments, I think about what it’s sometimes like to deal with Customers, and don’t miss it so much. Besides, if I were still waiting tables at my age, I’d be hella burnt out, with bad knees to boot!

But them was the daze . . .

Now I’m hoping that my Best Job will turn out to be the one I’m starting in two weeks. I’ll keep you posted. :slight_smile:

The award for Worst Job would be a tie between:

a) Working as a telephone survey person (the only job from which I’ve walked away without at least 2 weeks’ notice–in fact, I gave him about 20 seconds’ notice), and

b) Working as a receptionist at one of those hair salon chains that offer $5 haircuts. I had a supervisor who did not understand the subtle differences between being an employee and being an indentured servant, and so she thought it was perfectly reasonable to send me grocery shopping for her (and then to deliver the groceries to her latch-key kids at home), or to threaten to fire me if I didn’t come in on my day off because the other receptionist had called in sick. I mean, she was my BOSS, right, so that meant I had to do anything she said, right?

She cried when I quit.

33

best jobs

Summer camp counselor - hard work, lots of fun, came at the right time to save me from a disastrous relationship.

snowcone and bratwurst hawker - easy job, ate all the brat and snocones I wanted. Haven’t touched them in years.

current one - writer for an arms dealer.

worst ones

clown damn that suit was hot. I could drink all the soda pop I wanted, though, but standing on the sidewalk waving in customers in the desert was killer.

boiler room phone jockey - why yes, you may be a winner, but can I interest you in some of our lovely subscription services today?

unknown category, maybe ‘wierd’ job I didn’t get

test subject at the local medical college - they needed someone for the students to practice GYN exams on. I failed the ‘interview’ by being too tickilish. A shame because it was an easy 12.50 an hour (in 1992 buying power).

34

Best job: Physicist at a national lab, my current job. It pays better than academia, I don’t have to kill myself trying to get tenure, and I get to focus on research without having to spend a lot of time teaching or sitting on commitees. Plus, it’s always interesting and challenging, with frequent opportunities to learn new things. It’s pretty much my dream job.

Worst job: Working at Burger King when I was 16. Minimum wage, the hours crawled by, and two of the four managers were total assholes. They never let us throw anything away no matter how long it had been sitting there or how nasty it looked (I got yelled at for throwing away some lettuce which was limp and completely brown).

35

Best Job: - My current one, but before we were acquired. I was working on some very cool projects, learning a ton, and people were disinclined to pick nits provided the software worked and came in on time. It did. Then we got bought by Current Giant Corporation, and life went downhill. The work is interesting. The management are scum.

Worst Job: Pick your choice -
[ul][li]The roofer who threatened to throw me off the third story roof for bumping him with the load of slate tiles I just carried up the ladder. I was the seventh person he hired. He fired the other six in the course of a bad week. I dropped my tiles, climbed down the ladder, and found myself another job (in a plating factory, as it turned out.) [/li][li]You know those little lights they hang over portraits? I made the shades for those lights. For eight hours a day, five and a half days a week, pick the sheet off the pile, stick it in the machine, pull the lever, unlock the machine, drop it on the other pile. Pick the sheet off the pile, stick it in the machine, pull the lever, unlock the machine, drop it on the other pile. One of two people in the whole fricking factory who spoke English. I spent two summers and Christmas vacation muttering, “I am going to college so I don’t have to do this the rest of my life.” [/li][li]Bus boy. In a f*cking Howard Johnson’s. Nuff said.[/ul][/li]
Regards,
Shodan

36

Worst job…

Assembly line nuclear bomb decorator. My job was to place a dollop of whipped cream on the top of each warhead, and then a cherry. Then I was supposed to move it onto another belt behind me. Well, one day, they speeded up my belt and I just couldn’t keep up with it, you know? So I dropped one. And you all know what happened after that…

OK, seriously folks.

Worst jobs:

Library book shelver. I love libraries, but this was the most boring job ever conceived. In addition to shelving the books, we had to “read” the shelves, which means you just eyeball the spines, looking for any book that’s out of place. There were guys and girls doing the same job, but it was harder on the guys because those two things were all we did. The girls got to work the circulation counter sometimes, which meant they got to sit down.

Ledger clerk at a magazine wholesaler. This was in the mid 1970’s, before the days of onsite computers in most offices. In the magazine business, if the retailer can’t sell out their stock, they get to send the covers back to the wholesalers for a credit. Some other drone actually took in the covers and made out credit memos, and then my job was to enter each credit memo in the ledger. This job was sooo bad, so monotonous, that I took care not to notice the position of the shadows outside, to avoid thinking about how much time was left in the day.

Best low-paid summer job.. File clerk in a law office. This job was actually fairly enjoyable. Most of the lawyers and secs were nice, it wasn’t hard to keep up with the filing, and there were actually enough different tasks to be done during the day that it didn’t get too boring. Of course the pay wasn’t good but it was a nice place to be. One bonus point, it was interesting to me to realize what a mass of detailed information I’d picked up. “Where’s the Joe Blow file?” someone would ask. And I’d tell them I’d seen it six weeks ago in so-and-so’s office, and it would be there.

Best job. Where I am right now! Computer programmer for a major satellite TV company.

37

Best job: Driving Range ball picker-upper and range attendant at a super wealthy golf course. Most of the guys were nice and I even met a few retired pro-athletes. There was practically no supervision and it was extremley easy and fun. You just had to have a good attitude when they aim for you…

Worst: Working the closing shift at a national sub chain. It closes at 3am so I wouldn’t get out until 4 usually. Making subs is the fun part, but having to clean the whole store and have a nit-picky manager is really a bummer.