At times after grad school I was hard up enough for cash that I signed up for jobs with a temp agency. These could be anything from office work to manual labor.
My shortest job, one day, was moving the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant. Me and another guy had to lift and carry out stoves coated with years worth of grease and other heavy equipment. I don’t think I got all the grease off me for several days.
Another time, one of the one-day jobs I had at a temp agency in New York was delivering gift baskets to all the HR directors all over Manhattan who used their services. I had to figure out how to get to all the locations by subway in the days before on-line maps.
I had a few other jobs that were a few days or weeks, including checking data entered on punch-cards on the graveyard shift, and landscaping a construction site.
Shortest job I ever had, I didn’t have. A temp agency told me to show up at a newspaper printing place; no other details were offered. Turned out the job was to be hauling open barrels of liquid printer ink around. The room was completely covered in it. The people explaining the job to me were completely covered in it. And when I explained to them that I couldn’t bring myself to do the job, they accepted that without protest, said they weren’t surprised, and calmly sent me on my way.
There were a couple other temp jobs that I only worked one day. One that comes to mind was a night shift loading newspaper inserts into a giant machine to be folded into the newspapers for the next day. It was hard, fast-paced, and tiring work, but it wasn’t too dirty, so that one I did.
One was at a lawyer’s office. This was pre-word-processing. The lawyer had a bunch of boilerplate that I had to type up in a legal complaint. A layman would look at all the harsh language and panic, but a lawyer would probably say, “Oh, that’s just paragraph 17.”
I also did typesetting for one day for a small local paper.
I wrote up a manual for the state. The job was set for 20 days. I finished in 15 and they insisted I come in the other five – with absolutely nothing to do. I wrote an award-winning story in my free time.
I did that as well for about a year and a half. It’s not so much the hard and fast and tiring qualities I minded as much as the loudness and apparent dangerousness, but this particular newspaper was somewhat flexible on hours – I had another job and they let me go early if I needed to get to it. The downside was that in the busy seasons, they needed every warm body they could find so I tried to be available. Another downside was that my other job as a dishwasher also had a busy season in Christmas (in addition to the newspaper’s other busy seasons around major shopping holidays) so I worked 70+ hours a week without much overtime in December.
I think the reason they were flexible is because they were starving for workers - my first day on the job, I was half an hour late because my rustbucket car stalled on the road halfway there and it took a long time fiddling with it to get it started again. When I walked into the job site a half hour late for my first shift I reported and the admin looked shocked and said “thanks for coming in! We were afraid you just signed up and then just bailed on us! Hurry up and get to work!”
One night as a security guard at a Coca Cola bottling plant in Orange County, CA. Told my supervisor that the next day I had a job interview for electronic technician work; he told me that if I wasn’t committed to security guarding, to not bother coming back.
My one night’s pay went toward the $50 “security guard license” that they signed me up for. I think I still owe them the rest, but it was in early 1991. I’m probably going to stiff them.
When I was in college, I signed up with Manpower one summer. One job they sent me on was at a motel, and they told me that I would be scrubbing newly installed tile.
Nope - I was cleaning toilets. I walked out after about 30 minutes, went home, and called them to say that the job was not what they said it was, and they later did send me on a few jobs where I was told the truth about what I would be doing.
I lasted a week at a gas station. The owner was a hothead. When he died a year later of a heart attack, I wasn’t surprised.
I worked as a substitute teacher for a year after college. I only subbed for Muncie public schools one day, as I recall. It was for the head basketball coach, and it was during sectional tournament week. I showed a 16 mm movie to two classes and then I got to leave. Two and a half hour’s work for $35 was pretty good in 1983.
Inventory. A team from the company would go into a store and inventory everything. I had to have a kind of adding machine on a cross-body strap on my right hip and had to type in counts without looking at it. I’m left handed, but I couldn’t use my left hand to enter the data. They fired me after the first day because I was too slow at typing.
Not at all sad about it.
Wow, some real horror stories here. I’ve been relatively lucky by comparison.
My first “job” was probably the most pointless. I was about 14 and my parents decided I needed to start learning how to earn my keep, so they lined up a job as a caddy at a golf course about ten miles out of town, during the summer school holidays. The job was for tips only. I knew absolutely nothing about golf.
It turned out that there was a pecking order, with the senior caddies going out first; newbies like me last. In fact, the first five times my parents hauled me out there, I never even got out on the course. The last day there was a local corporate tournament that required all hands on deck, so I finally got the privilege of toting someone’s heavy bag around the course while not knowing what club to recommend, and earned the princely sum of half a buck for my efforts. When my parents came out to pick me up, they did the math (about ten bucks in gas for all the round trips vs. a total return of fifty cents) and threw in the towel.
Many years later, I did a one-day gig selling hot dogs at a PGA seniors tournament in Denver. The weather was pleasant, I didn’t mind the work and during a break I got to see Arnold Palmer make a really nice drive, so it wasn’t that bad at all.
My first career was working as a caregiver / hospice worker. Before I got into hospice I did standard CNA work. I had recently quit a job that was truly awful, confident that I could find something else quickly. Indeed, one place called me in for an interview and hired me on the spot. It was a graveyard shift in an assisted living facility. I don’t remember the details (this was probably 2000… before 9/11 anyway) but I lasted exactly one shift. What sticks in my mind is that I would have been the only person on staff during the night, which I had been told during my CNA training was against the law.
That was nearly 20 years ago and I still feel bad about quitting after 8 hours. Don’t really know why.
I once signed on with an industrial temping agency. They placed me at “Company A,” where I was to be until Company A said otherwise. Fine by me.
I must have done well, because after a couple of months, Company A decided that I had the smarts to operate an injection molding machine. They trained me, and I worked operating the injection molder for the better part of a year, all while being a temp. Then, things got slow and stuff happens, and they said, “Listen, we’re sorry about this, but try us again if you need a job. If things are better, we’d like you back.”
So the industrial temp agency, seeing that I had “molding” as a skill, sent me to Company B, which did “blow molding.” Not injection molding. The skills in operating an injection molder and a blow molder do not equate. The only thing they have in common is hot plastic. I lasted one day at the blow molder place, and was glad to get out.
Interestingly, a couple of years later, I had gone back to university, and needed a summer job. I called Company A, where I had done injection molding, and said, “I’m trying you again, like you said.” They were thrilled; they needed an injection molder, and as they basically said, “We know you’re going back to school in the fall, but you can handle things for now. We need somebody now, and we can use the summer to find somebody who is qualified for when you go back to school.”
I’m a serial volunteer. It has led me to some funky places. My big deal (other than the animal shelter) last year was the new public library. I went in, along with others and began putting the whole card catalogue on computer. It was long overdue in this little country library. Took us nearly 3 months. We got it done and the head librarian offered me a paying (not much) position. Suddenly, I did not want to be there anymore. As per my usual behaviour, I ran and didn’t look back. One of my volunteer buddies asked for the job. No dice. It was me or no one. Felt kinda bad about that. I loved the 2 cats that lived in the library. I go visit sometimes. Best non-job I never had.
I suspect it was, too. I worked for them when I was between jobs maybe 15 years ago. I was slower than most, but not objectionably so. I was one of the their most accurate and one of the best at doing quick math in my head, so after a couple of months they wanted to make me a team leader. I found another full-time job by then so I didn’t stay on. I didn’t mind the job itself, though the schedule was crazy. Always late at night or very early, after closing or before opening.
I never had a job I really hated, though I likely dodged a bullet once. I saw an ad from a company that just said it was a fun place to work and it wasn’t a sales job, but I got suspicious when I called them and they refused to tell me over the phone exactly what it was that they did. I went to the interview anyway and discovered that the job was selling knives to friends and family. They actually called me back but I turned them down since lying about what the job entailed made the whole thing feel like a scam.
It’s a terrible job. Did it for a month while I was looking for something else. Had to drive to stores up to 100 miles away and do the most tedious, boring task I’ve ever done for hours and hours on end. The only marginally positive memory I have of that job was inventorying the back room at Victoria’s Secret and going through a box of hilariously GIGANTIC fancy panties.
My husband worked there as a team leader, but I never did inventory. I did a couple of mystery shopper jobs.