Worst Job Positions To Have (letters, degrees, bankruptcy, owner)

[annerk]

Originally Posted by StinaTado

Hotel cleaner- I mostly had to clean the lobbies/public bathrooms, but I did a few shifts cleaning the bedrooms when they were short staffed. People can be so disgusting in hotels.

Fortunately it didn't last long. They found out I knew how to sew and I got promoted to tailoring corporate uniforms.

That would be up there for me--I stay in hotels about 10 nights a month, and see a lot of rooms when the doors are opened by housekeeping or the occupant as I walk by, and I'm stunned by what slobs people are.

I'd hate to see what their homes look like.

[mb919]

Originally Posted by annerk

That would be up there for me--I stay in hotels about 10 nights a month, and see a lot of rooms when the doors are opened by housekeeping or the occupant as I walk by, and I'm stunned by what slobs people are.

I'd hate to see what their homes look like.

They're probably spotless. Lots of people take full advantage of having "staff" whose job they think it is to clean up whatever unholy mess they feel like making.

[GreenScoutII]

The absolute worst job I ever had was being a warranty rep for a new home builder. I only lasted eight months in that job before I just said F&*k it and quit.

What made the job so horrible is that every single person I'd talk to was mad as hell about something that went wrong with the construction of their new home. What that means is, since I was wearing a uniform with the company's name on it, they were mad as hell at me!

After some consideration, I determined that I have the wrong personality entirely for that kind of work. Here's why:

First, about 50% of the people who bought new homes from this company, the warranty dept would never hear from. However the company wanted us to chase them down and have em' fill out surveys, questionnaires, and do a visit with them to see if they have any issues with the home. That was opening Pandora's box.

Of the remaining 50%, about half of those were either flat out scam artists trying to get something for nothing, or, they were just plain crazy. There are a lot of crazy-azz people running around unsupervised who could really benefit from inpatient, long term, institutional care. Just ask any retail clerk or restaurant worker, they deal with these folks every day.

The remaining home buyers oftentimes had legitimate problems with the home, and of course, the company didn't really want to do anything about it. These are the people who I had genuine empathy for. The sales department would promise them sunshine and roses and a perfect Utopian existence. The superintendents while the house was being built would assure them any concerns they had would be addressed. We just really need to close on this house, just sign, we'll get the problems taken care of, we promise....

They would just turn it over to warranty. The problem was that the warranty reps had very limited authority to actually get a problem fixed. If the rep could pin the problem on a particular sub-contractor, such as the electrician, plumber, or HVAC guy, then sweet, the home builder didn't have to pay, but if it was something else (and it was always something else), the company would use all kinds of confusing language in the closing documents to get away with not fixing the problem.

It was disgusting and morally repugnant. I couldn't be complicit in screwing people over like that. I couldn't take the scammers and squeaky wheels, and I damn sure couldn't deal with the crazies. They were making me crazy.....

When I finally snapped and quit, I tossed my uniform shirt, my company cell phone, and clip board at my boss, told him, "GOOD LUCK!", and I ran, whooping, hollering, and turning cartwheels to my truck. I drove away as fast as I could and never looked back!

[RogueMom]

The worst job I ever had was the one I left recently in retail management at a large department store. Which is a shame, because it used to be the most rewarding job I ever had.

As with other jobs on the lower end of the "economic spectrum", the downturn has brought out the greed and true colors of the filthy-rich CEO's and boards-of-directors who run these major chains.

I used to love my job; putting out new merchandise each season and striving to make it look nice, waiting on customers and helping them to select merchandise, enjoying working with and supporting my fellow sales associates, etc. We always had enough staff to do our jobs and provide good service to our customers. Not a lot of pay true, but not a lot of stress either. We felt valued and good about working there. It seemed a fair trade-off.


Flash forward to the past few years - working with skeleton crews of part-time only workers that quit left and right, or don't show up at all due to low hours, pay and lack of benefits, everything being about the bottom line and meeting "numbers" by pushing extra and often unwanted "add-ons" at every turn at customers, Store Managers stressed to the max about meeting those numbers, customers pissed off due to drop in level of sales staff and customer service, more and more lame-brained "initiatives" coming down the pipe-line and added "tasks", meanwhile no more raises, benefits cut back to nothing, and increased "threatening" work environment, with everyones morale in the toilet. Where's the incentive in all of that? Just be "happy" you have a job? I think not.

SO glad to be gone, never going back.

[RogueMom]

Just thought about another awful job I had, for all of about two weeks.

Took a very-low paying job (minimum wage) at a bakery, the ad said "bakery clerk". Well, I thought, I would be bagging cookies and donuts for customers and kiddies and wishing them a nice day, right?. Not too bad for a little while, I thought. Well, after just a couple of days, I was left to do the following for 8 hours solid BY MYSELF:

- Take out donuts, pastries, and cakes and glaze and frost them, put out in bakery case
- Constantly check out front to re-fill bread and roll dispensers and other bakery goods
- Get out pans with bread dough and roll large racks into extremely hot, greasy ovens, set timers
- Continually race to get bread racks out of the ovens as soon as timers go off, cool and wrap all bread, roll next racks into huge, hot, greasy ovens, set timers again
- Wash a huge pile of mess left by the morning bakers: bread and cake pans, rollers, sticky roll pans, utensils, etc.
- Answer constantly ringing phone and take down in-depth and detailed cake and other bakery orders
- Slice loaf after loaf of unsliced bread on dangerous cutting machine for the deli department
- Mop all floors, clean all rubber floor mats, wipe down and sanitize all baking surfaces and ovens
- Wait on constant line of customers dinging the bell and wanting service at the bakery counter

On and one it went, and ALL of this for minimum wage. There should have been at least three people doing all of this. One day I got off work, took off my apron and silly hat, called up a manager and quit. I've never quit any other job in my life without notice. But that was ridiculous, not to mention unsafe.

From that time on, and for the next few years while I lived there, there would appear a "Help Wanted" ad every few months on the door of the store for the "baker clerk" position.

[annerk]

Originally Posted by mb919

They're probably spotless. Lots of people take full advantage of having "staff" whose job they think it is to clean up whatever unholy mess they feel like making.

One of the reasons I don't have a cleaning lady is because I'd always feel like I needed to clean the house before she came over. My husband thinks it would be a waste of money because I'm compulsive about cleaning anyhow.

I really don't think that people change all that much between how they live at home and how they live while traveling. Neat people tend to be neat whether they are at home, in their office, or on the road, and slobs tend to be slobs no matter what.

[annerk]

Originally Posted by GreenScoutII

The absolute worst job I ever had was being a warranty rep for a new home builder. I only lasted eight months in that job before I just said F&*k it and quit.

What made the job so horrible is that every single person I'd talk to was mad as hell about something that went wrong with the construction of their new home. What that means is, since I was wearing a uniform with the company's name on it, they were mad as hell at me!

After some consideration, I determined that I have the wrong personality entirely for that kind of work. Here's why:

First, about 50% of the people who bought new homes from this company, the warranty dept would never hear from. However the company wanted us to chase them down and have em' fill out surveys, questionnaires, and do a visit with them to see if they have any issues with the home. That was opening Pandora's box.

Of the remaining 50%, about half of those were either flat out scam artists trying to get something for nothing, or, they were just plain crazy. There are a lot of crazy-azz people running around unsupervised who could really benefit from inpatient, long term, institutional care. Just ask any retail clerk or restaurant worker, they deal with these folks every day.

The remaining home buyers oftentimes had legitimate problems with the home, and of course, the company didn't really want to do anything about it. These are the people who I had genuine empathy for. The sales department would promise them sunshine and roses and a perfect Utopian existence. The superintendents while the house was being built would assure them any concerns they had would be addressed. We just really need to close on this house, just sign, we'll get the problems taken care of, we promise....

They would just turn it over to warranty. The problem was that the warranty reps had very limited authority to actually get a problem fixed. If the rep could pin the problem on a particular sub-contractor, such as the electrician, plumber, or HVAC guy, then sweet, the home builder didn't have to pay, but if it was something else (and it was always something else), the company would use all kinds of confusing language in the closing documents to get away with not fixing the problem.

It was disgusting and morally repugnant. I couldn't be complicit in screwing people over like that. I couldn't take the scammers and squeaky wheels, and I damn sure couldn't deal with the crazies. They were making me crazy.....

When I finally snapped and quit, I tossed my uniform shirt, my company cell phone, and clip board at my boss, told him, "GOOD LUCK!", and I ran, whooping, hollering, and turning cartwheels to my truck. I drove away as fast as I could and never looked back!

One of the best parts about working with a custom builder and having a construction loan was that the bank held the last 10% until warranty work was done. We had a punch list with about 10 relatively minor items, but we felt that for what we spent on the home and the 18+ months it took to build, we shouldn't have a cracked tile in the bathroom and a door that wasn't fully painted, etc.

That last 10% wasn't released to the builder until those punch list items were corrected.

Most production builders--forget it! Once you've closed and taken posession of the home, getting warranty work done is almost impossible without a court order.

[caldercay]

Originally Posted by MidwesternAtHeart

I feel that being a "server" or waiting tables was the worst job I have had.

As with any job category, there are good environments to
work in and there are bad environments. I've had friends
who have (or are) working in the restaurant business as
servers and who are quite happy.

I'd say a lot of it has to do with the restaurant and the
"class" of patrons. One friend works at 2 different
restaurants and another friend works in the restaurant
in a hotel. All 3 of these restaurants are up-scale and
the patrons who can afford to eat at these are not in
the habit of "mistreating" the wait-staff. I've seen my
hotel/restaurant friend make a $200 tip at *one* table
alone. On a Fri/Sat, he could easily make upwards of
$1,000(+) for the day.

The other friend working 2 different jobs - he loves it.
He says it's rare that he's stiffed and because of the
quality of level of the food and the subsequent pricing,
brings in a higher class of patrons.

I suspect it's quite different than working at a place
on par with a "Chili's" type of restaurant, where you'd
see an mix of patrons, from teens out on a date (or
possibly worse, a group of teens, to the average
Joe/Joan who feel they deserve special attention.

Heck, even in the category I work in, which is in
software development, I've heard the horror stories
of bad work environments.

[bluebelt1234]

Worst job I have ever had: trying to look for a job in this crappy economy then have everyone put you down about being lazy because you can't find one after spending hours filling out applications, interviewing, networking, and pounding the pavement.

[kattwoman2]

I've been fortunate enough to have pretty decent jobs for the most part, but the worst jobs I've ever had normally had two things in common:

1. Overly strict bosses
2. Office setting

If I had to choose one, it would be working as a customer service representative at a call center. The biggest issue was the fact that the person in charge of the call center used to work for major companies so he took that mindset into a small call center. He would threaten to fire anyone who pulled up the Internet on their laptop and after I transferred I discovered that he would only allow his call center reps to stare at the call center box on the screen during slow hours (in other words, no solitaire, no reading a book, etc). I understand that you want your workers to remain focused, but it was a local call center and there were days when the representatives sat and stared for hours at nothing but the logo.

Another thing was the office politics at the call center. There was a lot of deception going on at the office. The boss was doing employee evaluations and a former friend of mine was told that she had the best ranking evaluation. She discovered a month later that she was one of the 12 people that was going to be fired and they did not say why. She was devastated b/c they had told her she was one of the best employees there and suddenly...she's being fired. Also, there was some favoritism that went on in the office.

Oh, and the organization of the call center was messed up. Most of the people who worked at the call center were young and therefore they felt we were not worth trusting with information such as administrative passwords and such (I understand why, but this is where it gets complicated). When someone called or walked in with a problem that required remote access of a computer, administrative access, networking issues, etc. you had to transfer that call to one of 2 people who worked there (and 90% of the time the problem fit into one of those categories). Unfortunately, there were many times when those people were either busy on another call or they both went to lunch at the same exact time. So, you're on the phone or standing at the counter looking like a complete moron b/c all you can do is say, "Well, the people who can fix the problem are unavailable right now, can you call back in an hour or two? Can you leave your computer here so we can work on it when they get back?" And God/Universe help you if there was a network meltdown b/c you would be swamped with frantic calls and there was nothing you can do until one of the two people were available.

In comparison to a lot of the postings on here, it's not as bad as most. However, I like working at places which allow employees to actually feel as though they are part of a business and not a slave or a suspect.