The Worst Day Jobs In The World
Was this you once?
Is this you now?
When I was working as a technical and marketing writer in the corporate universe, I endured quarterly “team luncheons,” which consisted of long sandwiches featuring very sad lettuce and a conference room in which we were told what a great company we were and the many ways in which we, those of us who comprised the company, sucked at our jobs.
These to-dos weren’t technically mandatory, of course, but when the send-all email hit the inboxes with a closing sentence consisting of, “The CEO looks forward to seeing all of you there”, it was clear that it wasn’t the brightest idea to be found at one’s desk during the Team Hour, scrolling through vintage Atari cartridges on eBay.
My strategy was to nip in at the very last second, which usually meant that all the uncomfortable folding chairs were taken and I was left—oh, gosh darn it!—to stand in the hallway next to the folding table with the lettuce, which frankly had a more winning personality than many of the office people. I braced myself up against the wall, faced the ice bucket, and was free to not feign raptures over PowerPoint clip art.
Each day job carries with it tiny moments of redemption, of clarity and grace—even if it’s the ice bucket. Even if it’s only the fact that your job could be one of these:
Selling Roses in Horrible Scary Bars
This is worse.
I know, because I did it. For those of you unfamiliar with the practice, several pubs in the United States welcome the presence of “Rose Girls,” who sashay through the crowd with a little bit of clothing and a whole lot of wicker basket, selling flowers at outrageous prices to men who wish to flirt with, impress, or placate the women around them. Everybody loses: The Rose Girls are degraded, the men get hosed, and the recipients are bought off for less than the cost of a glass of good wine. Opponents of capitalism would do well to look to the Rose Girl.
The job got me out of the office, but it also got me into some of the worst dives on the Space Coast—some haunted, some perpetually empty, some hosting Vanilla Ice in concert. I was precisely the wrong person for the job, as it required me to talk to people one-on-one, perform mathematical calculations in my head, pretend I wasn’t chronically depressed, smile when groped, and walk in high heels without creating the acoustical impression that many, many angry horses had been unleashed onto the dance floor.
One night the black bag I used to tote the cash and change were stolen out of my wicker basket. The culprits followed me from my car, through a dark parking lot, and into a pub before making away with an entire night’s worth of stem hustling. Blessedly, they left it at that.
My psyche did not. I took many deep breaths in my petal-fragrant little car, slapped myself around a little, and changed into clothes which actually provided some sort of breast coverage. The tiny little uniform was left in a plastic grocery bag on my boss’ front porch with a tiny little note and a great big replacement check. I was a terrible sashayer, anyway.
Airline Customer Service People
This is worse.
This is absolutely the only soul-destroying day job I’ve had the sense not to take. People. Details. Numbers. Confrontation. Homicide. I was
Tired, hungry, disoriented travelers whose luggage is now on another continent have just received the glad tidings that they are facing an evening in a motel which likely features a Tuesday Crack Whore Special. They want to cry on, shoot into, and jab index fingers at the next Official Person they see, and that person is… you. People, I once saw a fully armed security detail form a perimeter around a particularly raucous queue at a ticket re-booking counter. After eight hours of that, imagine going home and opening your inbox to find messages from freelance clients wondering why lines four and seven of your invoice are transposed.
I would rather take my chances with the haunted pub and Vanilla Ice.
Guy Who Had to Interview Bill Belichick After the Super Bowl
This is worse.
I thought I had analyzed every terrible job available in the free world until this position unexpectedly opened on February 3. For those of you who don’t follow American football, the crowning achievement of the entire business is to win the Super Bowl, which this year was played between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants. The Patriots were undefeated, and everybody up to and including God was predicting a huge win for them.
The Patriots are coached by the extremely terrifying Bill Belichick, who cuts the sleeves right out of his sweatshirts and stomps about the sidelines in search of puppies for the punting team to use during practice. And… his team lost the biggest game of the entire season, before an audience of over 97 million people. And… somebody had to take a microphone, and stand next to him, and ask him how he felt about it.
It was exactly the comfortable chat you’d expect, with Belichick drawing his lips in a very thin line and shooting laser death rays from his eyes. It was like the worst blind date you have ever been on multiplied by a factor of seventy billion. Whatever the reporter got paid needs to be tripled with a combat pay incentive.
My Husband
This is way worse.
We have, in Freelance Switch, a support group for freelancers, but where do our spouses go?
At my best, I alternate between euphoric fireworks and black hole sobbing in a one-hour period. At my worst, I make Bill Belichick look like an Anime character. My husband doesn’t just work at the airline ticket counter– he lives with the entire mob of furious travelers, with no armed guards in sight.
The meals I prepare in the morning are carefully placed in a slow cooker, which by dinner time are transformed into room temperature chicken floating in a reproachful sea of basil and white wine, because while the slow cooker has been turned on, it has not been plugged in. My husband is an air traffic controller, responsible for thousands of lives a day, and then he comes home to an unshowered wife in a dusty house who has spent the entire afternoon staring at a single stubborn paragraph and deciding that hey, Rose Girlism maybe wasn’t so bad, because that at least involved leaving the house once in a while, even if it was to get robbed. And then he hugs this mess.
Fortunately, the position has been filled.
Mary Beth Ellis runs BlondeChampagne.com. Her first book is available at DrinkToTheLasses.com.
Whether you want to learn while you work out or to make that commute useful, Freelance Radio is the place to hear all the tips, tricks and news of freelancing.
Freelance Radio
With over 100 weekly strips and counting, Freelance Freedom is an institution around here. Check out of all NC's brilliant work in the archives.
Freelance Freedom Archives
Interested in contributing to FreelanceSwitch? Write for the foremost freelance community and help share knowledge for the benefit of all!
Become a Guest Writer
My worst jobs have been the ones working in call centres in the customer service/sales areas. I hate cold calling with a passion, and I hate being shouted at down the phone because their bill is more than normal, which to the caller means it’s my fault. I will never go back to that life!
Mine was a night-shift security agent in the middle of nowhere. I was in my car in front of the gates of this hydro-electrical center waiting for something to happen. Canadian winters are really cold in a car.
Awesome Article!
Freelancing all the way!!
Keep Rocking!
Aloke Pillai
Oh my God… that was the most hilarious article I think I have ever read!!!! I busted out laughing several times. GREAT WORK!!!
Renee
I once worked as one of those annoying guys in suits who hang out in shopping malls and train stations trying to get you to sign up for a Credit Card you don’t need.
Im sorry. But I was desperate and I really needed the money.
While it was a truly awful experience I really learnt a few things…
1) How to talk to people without being shy
2) How to sell ANYTHING to ANYONE using a variety of sleazy techniques
3) No matter how much money you make it’s hard to sleep at night knowing that the lady you just signed up does not need another credit card because she’s already 50k in debt
PS- When you say Space Coast, do you mean the Space Coast in FL?
Well done!
A short stint counting Tic Tacs takes the cake for me. After two years working for VH1 as a producer, I decided to call it quits after a crazy boss drove me nuts. Finding a full-time gig proved more difficult than originally thought. Without many options I turned to gig where I had to walk into stores of all sizes – corner bodega to monster price club – and count the number of Tic Tac products. What a nightmare. However, it was the kind of humbling experience I needed to open my eyes on what I really wanted to get out of work. Long story short: sometimes the worst day jobs can lead to good things.
I’ve served my time in cubicle prison, and reading articles like this make me realise how lucky I am to have been released early… it could have been a lot worse! Love your style
Hurrah for husbands!
I used to copy medical records. Finding them in a sea of unorganized chaos, at least four dozen floor-to-ceiling shelves of medical records in a dimly light, hot basement, lugging stacks to the only crappy copier available, reading the order to see what needed to be copied, painstakingly taking the record apart, trying to ignore photos of open sores or whatever sometimes lurked in the file, copying each page one at a time, making sure everything was up to HIPAA standards, reassembling the record, try to put it back it the order between 1.999A0004764. and 1.999B004765 or whatever, and repeat. For eight hours. Minus a half hour lunch off the clock, on your feet in front of a hot copier, for $8.00 an hour. Telling the customers over and over that yes, you have to sign the form for your own record, its the law. That yes, its a medical record about them but its the hospital’s record, so yes they have to pay a dollar per page for the copies. No, I can’t fax it, email it, or give it to your neighbor’s cousin twice removed because you didn’t give them a signed release. Eight hours. Logging in each record copied because you are outserviced to the hospital, which gives every “real” hospital employee right down to the lowest man on the totem pole an excuse to treat you like crap and second guess your work.
All of that, and I’d still take it any day over Rose Girl. You have my sympathies.
You poor thing. All this time I thought those flower peddlers were doing community service for tax evasion.
Two words to add: Sonic Carhop
(Delivering Greasy Food Come Rain, Sleet, Snow or Shine + Unruly Rural Customers) ^ Roller Skates = NIGHTMARE
My Dad, had a job in a meat-works, on the kill-floor, in lovely tropical North Queensland heat. Some kind of process where they’d use a rod with a hook to seal the contents of the beasts gut to stop it leaking. He got the hook in his eye once and had to go to hospital. But then this was the kind of place where your co-workers would think you lucky if you got meat-germ from a knife wound, as that would mean compensation.
The worst job I had was working at IHOP, serving pancakes and bacon {yeech!} to non-tipping non-english speaking customers who obviously couldn’t read the menu and didn’t know that the tip was not included in the bill.
Thankfully soon after I graduated from college and then the internet got all commercial and stuff.
Really nicely written article. Made me laugh. Thanks.
loved the last paragraph! so true.
Supercenter/Grocery Store Cashier
Stand on your feet for hours at a time wondering why your break is almost 2 hours late. Listen (with a smile) to people curse at you because they didn’t read the sale paper or sale sign correctly. I actually had a woman threaten to kill me because I showed her a sale sign that she read incorrectly. Have people literally throw their grocery items willy nilly and piled high on the belt and then glare at the cashier because things fall off the belt when the belt moves. Customers who can’t be bothered to look at or speak to the cashier at all even when the cashier says hello or goodbye. Have people put 50 pound bags of dog food on the belt and expect the cashier to squeeze it through the small space between her and the register when there is obviously not enough room. I used to scan the bag with my hand scanner and tell them to take the bag back and they would get mad at me. Do you know how many people put very heavy items on the belt all day long? Maybe its no problem for them to lift it a few times, as many have told me, but multiply that by 50 times a day and you’ve got a cashier with serious back problems. Work schedules that are flexible only for the store’s convenience, never the same start time day to day, or the same number of hours per week.
And much much more! And all this for minimum wage!
Great post! Makes me feel better, as I think I’m stuck in the worse job right now. I’m in sales. I also do customer service. The company gives me little or no support and I always end up the day with a sick feeling that I’ve been screwing customers over.
Oh well, I’m jumping on the freelance bandwagon, so there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
In regards to you being a “Rose Girl”: pics or it didn’t happen.
I definitely have to agree about having a bad job helps determine what you really want to do with your life. After I graduated college, I landed a job working at the pathology department in a hospital/research facility. I was warned to make sure to keep the doctors happy. However, no one told me that my co-workers would be even harder to please. I got suck with a manager that was new to her role and had not patience. I was told to be receptionist and an office assistant….somehow I just could not swing being at the desk and be half-way across campus at the same time. I was crushed at first to lose my job….but over time I was grateful. I am currently now freelancing and working part-time as an editorial assistant.
I never realized how important it was to work with people who not only respect you, but are willing to work with you and not just lord over you.
The Bill Belichick part really made my laugh!
I don’t get the picture… Great article, though!
The Night Shift Call Center was my worst too. For the first time I realized how the ancient people treated slaves and also the fact what Freedom of Speech and Action really was. Thanks to the Internet, I am a liberated man.
I know the “deliver fast food no matter to who, where or under what conditions” part really well, Laura. Just too well, I’d even say.
After 3 years of that I moved out of the rollerskates and into the kitchen and it was even worse. Just try to picture yourself in a closed place at 43ºC+, with a tight uniform (even the tie), trying to explain to some customer that handmade food is not 5min from order to eat. That you actually gotta *make* that damn chicken extra sandwich, and that you’re making the food for him and 50+ more customers. That while he’s insisting on shouting “I’m right and you’re wrong”, his food is overcooking, cos I’m listening to him instead of making his stupid sandwich, and that I’ll probably end up tossing some black mass aka sandwich into the bin and start it all over. He’ll probably shout at me again in another 3mins that I’m retarded or something worse *Sob* . That’s a quiet day. On a busy one, just add 200 more customers, and some more heat.
Now, go do that 11 hours a day. For a wage that can barely pay your rent.
Thanks god I’ve gotten out of that!!
Worst job I ever had was selling knock off perfume in parking lots of low income neighborhoods. I did that for two days. Oh My doG. You had to basically bum rush people and was it any wonder they thought you were a psychopath? Obviously this was before the internet was the way to sell crap. I think my friends and family bought a thousand dollars in fake perfumes that week. Yeesh.
Great article, MB! Makes me appreciate where I am now!!!
I sold knives door to door once for Cutco. I had two sales over a three month period and one of them was to my parents. They had a script for making appointments but it translated to “Hello, I’m a stranger and I’d like to come into you home while your husband is away and show you a large knife collection” Terrible stuff. Thank God I found a good IT job.
I don’t understand the picture either. But the article was great.
My worst job was working at TCBY when I was 15 or 16. One of the lead “team members” was just a few years older than me and about as mean a person as you could find. She was rude to me all day long, and I dreaded having a shift with her.
To top it off, the owners kept the store at about 80 degrees (this was in Texas) to save money. So it was a little difficult to explain to customers why their ice cream was melting as I put it on their cone. And finding a gecko in the ice cream scoop slot wasn’t much fun either!
So glad I’m not a teenager anymore …
I worked at a dry cleaner’s with a drive-in service. All day, I got to run out to cars to be handed puked-upon silk ties, sweaty band uniforms, and comforters. Comforters were the worst, because well after I already had the giant thing gathered in my bare arms and had just noticed a dampness, the owner would say “I think my cat might have peed on that.” Generally, there was no thinking to be done. I could at that point, assure them that the cat had peed on it, more than once. This job beat out working as a parking lot attendant at Dollywood during the hottest summer in the South while being told just how stupid I looked in my uniform for the most papercuts-to-the-soul crushing, minimum wage nightmare I’ve ever had to experience.
Many thanks for all the kind comments! I’m really enjoying reading about everyone else’s day jobs. I have to say some of those sound worse than what I went through. And to the reader who asked about the Space Coast– yes, indeed, this was in Florida. I was also working as an education specialist at the Kennedy Space Center at the time, and the pay was so low that I had to take on two other jobs at the time to make rent. Cool gig, though.
I spend 2 months once treeplanting in northern Ontario. We got there May 1st, but we couldn’t start for a week because the ground had yet to thaw.
Basically, the job consisted of getting up at 6:00am, getting dressed in your tent, eating breakfast in a rush, andhopping on a recommissioned schoolbus for the hour-or-so long drive to the site.
Then, you fill up two largish sacks hanging from your hip with tiny podded trees, generally 50-200 depending on the size of said trees, then traipsing around a plot of land popping a tree in the ground every 6 feet. That’s a lot of bending over, especially when you’re carrying 50-100 pounds worth of tiny tiny trees.
After 10 or 12 hours of this we’d all hop on our schoolbus, go back to camp, eat dinner, and go to sleep. Showers happened maybe once a week for most, and did I mention we all lived in tents?
Good times. A least it doesn’t sound as humiliating as Rose Girl did.
this article totally just changed my day around, thank you!
I can’t honestly say I’ve ever had a job as bad as these on their merits… lets just say that while I don’t actually dislike WHAT I do now, I don’t see eye to eye with the company about how they run things (and it’s their company, they can run it however they want so I generally keep that to myself), and I have some particularly miserable coworkers. One in particular who just refuses to acknowledge that I exist unless our manager threatens to fire her if she doesn’t help me with what I’m doing. Oh, and I was un-promised a raise two weeks ago. Not so happy.
But it isn’t what I want to be doing with my life anyway so I just take it, and try to get back into photo restoration and other manipulations.
When I was in my twenties, I had three crummy jobs in a row. The first was being a dishwasher/bus gal. This was a part-time job at the minimum wage, and oh, boy, did I learn about budgeting during that six-month stretch!
This gig was followed by 2.5 years in a food co-op that had two crummy managers. The first was a washed out graduate student who, when he wasn’t drowning his sorrows in alcohol, took delight in berating the co-op staff. Since I was still pretty young, when he told me that I was a f—-up, I believed him.
The second manager was a martinet who was determined to turn the co-op into a yuppie grocery store in the midst of the ghetto. The co-op had located in the ghetto because the rent was cheap. I left a few months before the store moved to another, much more expensive location that had many more problems than the ghetto. The co-op almost went under, and the staff and board rose up and ran the martinet manager out of town.
My third job was with an academic journal. The subject matter was, at its best, very dull. And the boss came from the Attila the Hun school of management. I lasted 15 months, and let me tell you, walking out of that building was one of the best days of my life.
These job experiences have been highly motivating. I know what crummy employment looks like and feels like, and I’ll work like crazy to avoid going back there.
When I was 19 years old I worked at an Eckerd Drug store in the photo processing department. I only took the job because I was completely desperate. I was newly divorced and the single mother of a 2 year old. The manager knew this and took advantage of the fact that I would never quit no matter what she made me do. Which usually meant opening the store for her everyday and mixing all of the VERY smelly (and sometimes toxic) chemicals used in the photo processing machine.
I found out very quickly that there is no good way to explain that the photo machine accidentally exposed all of your film in the middle of developing. I have never been screamed at more in a job before or since. It really wasn’t the fault of the people screaming though. You can hardly blame them for that when you have just told them that their irreplaceable wedding/birth/anniversary/graduation pictures were eaten by the machine and you can never get them back. They also never took kindly to the fact that our response to the screaming was “well….we won’t charge you a processing fee for this roll….and here….have a 50% off coupon for your next visit…”
I’m so glad those days are over.
Note: All stories in this comment are true.
Worst job was 1-800-Allstate, was there for two years (on the verge of being fired for about half that time).
From the old woman that said, “I’d jump off of a bridge, but then who would feed my little dog?” When she found out about a rate increase.
Or the woman that couldn’t pay her bill who wanted me to pray with her on the phone that her degenerate children would pay her bill for her. Of course I stayed on the phone, it improved my call average (I was able to catch up on prior call notes while she prayed and I mumbled.)
I didn’t get fired until a totally belligerent woman ended a particularly awful rant with, “It’s obvious we are just not on the same page.” My reply was, “You can read?”
I was not shocked when they called me in to fire me
To Mary Beth: I too toiled for 9 years at a Big-Daddy telecom corporation, so I know all about the mandatory meetings and loved your description. However, the meetings I attended were remote telephone meetings. I used to just catch up on e-mail while listening with one ear to the big-shot manager(s) waxing poetic about the wonderful things that had been accomplished that quarter, but reminding us how we had to work faster and smarter (groan, I hate that phrase) in the next quarter.
To jennydecki: I LOL-ed pretty hard when I read your last two paragraphs. Your comeback to the “belligerent woman” was so “clev-air,” and just goes to show how creative you are under pressure! (still chuckling)
I think anyone that has to interview Bill Belichick period has one of the worst jobs in the world whether it’s after a win or loss. Sleeping crickets give better interviews than Bill Belichick.
Oh and on a personal note, selling coupon books door to door for 8 hours a day and getting paid commission only has to be up there as one of the worse. I was desperate! Just out of college after 9/11 happened.
That ending was classic!! Awesome work! haha.
Great quality stuff.