Outside of the jobs that have to do with sex or are illegal (prostitute, stripper, pimp, drug dealer, etc.).
Id say, its working for a maid service.
By the way, this thread does have an actually purpose; I need to describe the atmosphere of the worst job a human being could possibly have for the introduction of an essay.
Thanks,
culov
Since this is your essay you are writing, I’d really love to hear your reasons for why a maid service is the most demeaning. (I’m not disagreeing with you or anything; I just am curious to hear your reasoning.)
I believe it is demeaning because by using a maid service, the customer sort of implies that he is too important to do menial the tasks. So the customer calls in some maids and has these people clean up after him, do his bed, scrub his toilets, etc. Naturally, one would think that being a slave is the most demeaning job, and nothing comes closer to a slave than a maid.
Yes I do understand many people simply don’t have time to do these chores, but using these services out of sheer laziness is unacceptable (IMHO).
I do not think demeaning is a feeling that necessarily goes with one particular job. Some folks perform all sorts of work with great dignity. So, it is a matter of attitude. Now, as for when I have felt demeaned… I can think of several times but one that stands out is the time when I was a lifeguard and someone climbed the fence overnight and took a big dump right in the middle of the high dive board. I had to clean that up, and I was feeling pretty sorry for myself.
Have you ever had a job that you knew was so mindless and repetitive that your labor would be replaced as soon as it became feasible to automate it? I’ve had such a job, and it was the most demeaning I had, and I’ve done jobs which require cleaning and housework.
Picking fruit, slaughtering cattle, certain types of office work, they dont’ really require much human input, they are increasingly being phased out in favor of automation. So you’re just there cause it’s not cost effective for a machine to do this job yet. Ouch.
I realized this when I was about sixteen and working for a huge mortgage refinancer. All I did was look at one piece of paper, choose a certain string of numbers, and type it on a different piece of paper to be sent out to a customer. Coincidentally, the week I started, they were testing a new computer operated printer that did the same thing. One person could operate that computer and do it as fast as 6-8 people working on a typewriter. I could see this was not gonna be a long term position. I’m sure that job was eliminated within a few months of my quitting.
In contrast, there aren’t really any machines that can effectively clean your counters and scrub your toilets. You need a person to do it. Sure, it’s not prestigious, but there’s a human quality to it.
Being a cashier at Wal-Mart is pretty demeaning.
My employer treats me like a criminal- I am not allowed to count down my cash drawer at the end of a shift because my employer assumes that I will steal any overage. Of course, this leaves me with no recourse if the cash office makes a mistake and says I’m over/short… Also, if a customer finds he has left his wallet home, or his ATM card is not working, I need a manager’s approval to suspend the transaction. They used to let us do it without management approval, but somebody decided it created an opportunity for “integrity issues” to arise. If a customer’s credit/debit card has become demagnetized and the number needs to be keyed in by hand, I need a supervisor’s approval for that, too. Nevermind the fact that I have to check ID when a credit card is used, and if it’s a debit card, I don’t know their PIN, honest, I don’t. Wal-Mart thinks I will steal.
Other department stores have no problem with their cashiers hand keying credit card numbers if the card won’t swipe, but Wal-Mart doesn’t trust their employees to perform this simple task.
I think that automatically treating employees as though they are dishonest when there is no evidence of dishonesty is the mark of a dishonest employer. I mean, hell, yes, you do have to take adequate security precautions, but Wal-Mart goes beyond what would be considered normal precautions and takes it to the extent that they’re making it more difficult for employees to do their jobs, and inconveniencing long lines of customers in the process.
Oh, and then there’s the dreaded “pinks”. If a cashier’s till is short or over, they inform them of this by giving her a screaming neon pink piece of paper with the amount of the shortage and a demand for an explanation of why the drawer was over/short. These are usually handed out weeks after the fact, long after the cashier would have forgotten anything unusual that might have happened on the day in question. They are given out at the podium, obviously designed to advertise to the universe at large that this cashier made a mistake. Of course, at the store where I work, cashiers who were very meticulous about their jobs were getting them at an alarming rate, because the cash office didn’t know how to count. Which is why we wanted to count down our tills. During the period of time when we were counting, the cashiers who were counting their drawers stopped getting “pinks”. But Wally World put the kibosh on that real quick.
I feel bad for buying batteries at wal-mart last week. I’ll make sure that that never happens again.
Lucky you specified human being because the most demeaning job on earth is obviously the equine task of teaser stallion. Oh the shame, you’ll have to look it up.
How ironic, I was going to post the same thing!
I think I saw a special on salt mining in the Great Rift Valley once. But I don’t know if it was demeaning.
I find pretty much any job in customer service is the most demeaning, especially if you work for a fast food restaraunt like McDonalds or Jack in the Box. For one thing, they’re hardly ever happy people, so you can see right there they don’t feel they get enough respect for the shit they do. It’s a menial, repetative task, and if you screw up someone’s order and hand them a burger with tomatoes on it, you’re liable to get run over nowadays.
You may not be one of those people, but the next time you go to a fast food restaraunt when it’s busy, take a look around at the other people and see how they respond to the workers.
Customer service, customer service, customer service. Hands down. Especially any kind of customer service where you deal with people face-to-face, rather than by phone or e-mail.
I was a cashier at Staples for a while, and my experiences were a lot like Thea’s at Wal-Mart. (They weren’t quite as dehumanizing, but it was close.)
Just have to say that I love to clean and used to work for a maid service company. I don’t think it’s demeaning at all.
The pay isn’t bad either.
I hate to clean, but I wouldn’t feel demeaned by doing it for someone else. Mostly I agree with the others that many customer service positions are demeaning. It really depends on the company, though. I waited tables in a family-owned Chinese restaurant, and I wasn’t at all demeaned. I worked at a Sonic Drive-In, and because of the management, it was a very demeaning position. The manager actually had a camera facing the front portion of the building from the pawn shop across the street. It was supposedly to prevent anyone from stealing free drinks/ice cream, not to prevent people from monetary theft (which would’ve been very easy to do). Found out later it was really because he was embezzling funds and wanted to know if the owner showed up unexpectedly.
a cum-mopper.
These really do exist in France and Holland (and probably other places too). In these countries there are sex shops that have small cabins that have a chair and a coin-operated TV in them. Your 1 euro piece gets you access to around 100 hard core porn films.
The door is locked, the euro inserted the hard core porn is on - you get the picture.
In these establishments there is a person with a mop and bucket who’s job it is to go in and mop up afterwards.
That’s the worse job I’ve ever come across
Isn’t demeaning relative to the person doing the job?
All jobs can have demeaning aspects, I would think that it would be up to the person on whether they think it’s demeaning or not.
Police work can be an exciting job, arresting criminals, solving crimes and such. Or the officer can think it’s demeaning because they have to go and direct traffic or listen to people tell them how “they pay thier salary”
Firefighting can be exciting too, putting out fires or saving lives. But also demeaning when they have to clean hose or mop the floors at the station.
There’s thousands of examples like that.
Years ago I worked at a fast food restaurant with a friend of mine. She quit to start her own house cleaning business, and we both considered it to be a step up. Hell, I envied her!
The kind of thing happened to me when I was working as a life guard and some on the ground RIGHT IN FRONT OF the bathroom. Whoever that guy is, I hate him. :mad:
The OP said, “Id say, its working for a maid service.”
Nah…I did it for a while, and would definitely do it again. It ain’t demeaning, and it pays relatively well.
A bull jacker-offer would be the all-time low as far as I’m concerned. I know there’s science involved and all, but christ… a bull jacker-offer?
Busboy has GOT to be near the top of all self-esteem sucking jobs.
But, no job when work is available is worse than almost any sucky job.