best/worst jobs?

[emily]

What were some of the best jobs that you have ever had? What were some of the worst?

I have only had two paying jobs in my life, and both sucked in their own rights. Working in a customer relations call center sucked because you have to listen to people complain, yell, and degrade you for something that you had nothing to do with. And working in food service sucks because people once more place blame on you for things that are out of your control.

My favorite jobs were the ones that I didn't get paid for, such as being manager for track and football. I learned alot and always had fun.

[heathwaldrop]

Good topic.

I wrote a column when I was in college about my first job, which probably was my worst. I was "package help" (euphemism for grocey bagger) at Smitty's Food Warehouse in El Dorado when I was 17. The manager was a jerk and looked like Bozo the Clown without makeup. Actually had I or my family been that type, I could have sued him and won because he physically shoved me around while on the job. This was the summer before my senior year of high school and I was around 5-3 and 110 pounds.

The job itself was painfully dull, the customers (85 percent of whom were on welfare) were incredibly rude and sometimes outright hateful. A lot of the time they'd schedule me as the only person up front for my entire shift. Other times they'd schedule other people but they'd sneak off to the storage area and disappear for two or three hours at a time.

The best day that I ever had on the job was when a sub-manager asked me to scrape up old gum off of the floor. No joke, this was the best day that I ever had.

I'm always really considerate when dealing with the employees at grocery stores because of my own experiences at one.

Worked there all summer basically just to prove that I could do it, then quit before school started. Two days before school started back I ended up being called in for an interview at an advertising agency, and I got it. That might have been the best job that I ever had.

Maybe it just seemed good because of the contrast with working at that stupid grocery store, but it really was a cool job for a high schooler. I was a production assistant (euphemism for the guy who took proofs around town for approval and sometimes did filing). Had a lot of freedom, didn't have somebody sitting over my shoulder the entire time telling me what to do, as was the case at the store, as if I was too immature to handle the job. Also worked in air-conditioned buildings all day but got to leave and drive all around El Dorado taking proofs and samples to different clients. We had some pretty big-named clients--politicians etc.--so I thought that was pretty cool, to be able to meet these people and become on a name basis with them. Also got my first useful computer experience in this job. Saw what the advertising and marketing business is all about, very cool and interesting. Worked with a lot of really nice people but a TOTALLY different demographic than a grocery store in a bad part of town that caters to welfare recipients.

My boss and co-workers really took care of me. When I went to my senior prom I didn't have a date and my boss bought me my boutineer. When I graduated from high school they got me a congratulatory ad. When I went off to college they gave me a party and a nice send-off. When I came back the next summer I got to do something that still ranks up there as one of the cooler things that ever happened to me...I was asked to sit in on a big meeting with a client with all of our execs to help come up with a new promotional strategy for a car dealership. It was just like what you've seen in movies and TV shows when ad agency execs are sitting around a corporate table throwing balls at each other or tossing out "buzz words" to try to come up with something to wrap a campaign around. The client (and my boss) liked my slogan and promo idea the best and I got a pretty nice bonus for it! Unfortunately it never was used because the client decided later on to break ties with us and begin doing its promo work in-house.

Within a few months, my old boss took the job as the El Dorado Chamber of Commerce president and closed her business. But I put her on my resume as a job reference and got a summer job at the El Dorado News-Times later because of it. And even after that, when I graduated college, I got an offer to freelance for the Arkansas Times because of her. There were no openings at the time so freelancing with the possibility of going full-time later was the best that they could come up with. I never did it because I didn't move to Little Rock and couldn't afford to try to live off of freelancing

[estbh]

Bascially any job working with the public will have moments that suck. The public can be rude, angry, stinky, ignorant, hostile, and inconsiderate. Did I mention stinky?

You can't focus on those that are - you have to focus on the good people who come in and out of your work. It's the only thing that will save your sanity

[Mr. C]

My favorite job I've had was at Food Giant, because it's the only job I've ever had in the air conditioning, and there was no 'hard' labor to be done really. Second best was actually working in the tomato sheds, because I like being outside and doing different things.

The worst job I've ever had was out at Mechanisms, just because my job was pointless....I swept metal out of the lathes and off the floor, carried them to the trash bin with a wheel barrel, and dumped them. I had metal shavings in my room for weeks from my shoes. And I only worked there one day. My current job kinda sucks too, because no air conditioning and I work 10 hour days lol

[heathwaldrop]

I had a two-day job once, followed by a five-day job. Got better offers and got the heck outta there. First one was the graveyard shift in pricing and labeling at a chicken processing facility. Thing was I also had a job in the afternoon, so I had these weird gaps of time that weren't really enough to sleep or do anything else either. Got an offer to go into the warehouse at the same facility but that job started at 4 a.m. every day, plus I lived half an hour away so I was getting up when it still was dark. Did that for a week and was about to go insane since I still had the part-time job in the afternoon. Finally got an offer then to go "upstairs" and work in export sales. Had a good time doing that, especially since I was in college and had two different very attractive co-workers.

[DR]

Working as a bagger in a grocery store has to be one of the worst. I did that from Aug 2001 to Feb 2002 at a place in Jonesboro.

Most of the managers were idiots, and power-mad, at that. You don't have to have an IQ above fifty to do their kind of job. Not to mention, half the people are on welfare, buy about fifty pounds of ground beef and chicken always around the first of the month, and are as rude as it gets. I found out later why they buy so much meat.

I got to where I absolutely hated going to work. Only job I've ever had where I hated it, and my attitude continally got worse the longer I worked there. Not to mention, minimum wage barely covered my gas bill. And this was when gas sold for around $1.25 a gallon. The work was demeaning at times. Some customers look at you like you're a drooling idiot. As well as the occasional black person who'd buy only a loaf of bread, but want me to carry it out for them, because:

A. They were too lazy to do it themselves; or
B. They wanted a white person to have to carry their, a black person's, groceries.

I don't know which.

The morale was always low. God forbid treating your employees like human beings. I'm firmly convinced that the better you treat your workers, the harder they will work as an overall group. Sure, you have to be firm, but you don't have to be a jackass.

There was one mid-manager who was my age and on a collossal power trip. He and I didn't get along from day one. He was bigger than me, but I'm not Heath-sized and there was no way he or anyone else there could've physically pushed me around. That guy was the bane of the store. Easily the most hated person there.

He'd tried to fire me in November of 2001 when I directly disobeyed one of his orders. The guy books me intentionally as one of only two baggers on a Friday evening (we usually had four on that day, which is the busiest of the week), then a half hour before I was to clock out, he handed me a stack of things to do. We had four or five other guys there, and I got the entire stack. He let two of them leave early. I asked if I would be paid for the over time I worked, and was told a flat no. Time comes to clock out, I do so and leave with him staring holes in the back of my head. He fires me right in front of the store. I ended up going over his head to the president of the entire chain, and got my job back. Like I cared about cold-calling the big boss.

In February of 2002, I'd had a wreck that gave me a mild concussion and a banged-up, swelled knee. I was back at work a few days later. My first day back, he notices me in the break room adjusting my knee brace. I was sitting down, obviously, and I begin to get berated for it. I told him what I was doing, he, looking for any reason to can me, told me I was fired. I lost my temper, and told him a few colorful adjectives of what I thought he should be branded as, as well as power-mad. Feller got in my face and drew back at me. Bad knee or not, I grabbed the guy by the throat and hit him square in the mouth, before telling him what he could do with that job. The cameras got it all, or so I heard. Walking out, I heard him screaming at me, saying he'd press charges and sue me and all that. Nothing happened. He drew back first.

The guys I worked with and hung out with ended up throwing me a small party for giving that sucker what he deserved. We went through a few thirty-packs.

That was over four years ago. Employee turnover in a grocery store is obviously high. Hardly anyone I know works there now, except for that jerk who is still there. My name is still known at that place for being the only guy who stood up to him.

Best job I ever had...probably working at the local electric cooperative for a few years. I got to be good friends with many of the guys there, and really learned a lot. Plus, the pay was a great deal better than any grocery store, and I was able to build up savings. I know how to do a lot of electrical work, even several different ways to turn a house's lights off, which is a neat trick to have to annoy your buddies.

I also worked the summer of 2002 doing underground pipe work for what would be the new water plant here in Wynne for a pipe crew from Mena after I'd worked through May and half of June for a Paragould company who was re-doing the pipe work for a subdivision. I'm not talking about little pipes, these things were 16" ductile iron, 1500 lb suckers, black and hotter than a two-dollar pistol in the July sun. Those mega-lugs weren't light, either, although on my first day I was scared for a little while that I broke it when one of the nuts popped off. Turns out they're meant to do that.

I thought I was gonna die my first week on the job, because I wasn't acclimated to the heat. It wasn't the best job I had, but we worked our tails off and were so busy, nobody had time to argue much. The pay was good, too.

That kind of job separates the men from the boys, and rather fast. That crew had had trouble keeping workers from here; they'd work a day, half a day, then quit because it was too hard. I ended up working from May to the end of August, when the job was finished when we bored underneath a railroad to link up with city water.

A side effect of it was getting tanned, toned, and going down a pants size but going up a shirt size because my old shirts were too tight around the arms, shoulders, and upper chest. That work will definitely get you in shape. I wonder if Eddie's ever worked on one of those crews back in the day.

[emily]

well, I am on job #3 now. I work at McDonald's. I started yesterday. Anyone looking for a job in Crossett should try McDonald's. I turned in my application on Wednesday, had an interview on Thursday, and was working on Friday. In 3 days, Kathy had me on the schedule for 19 hours, where as it would take me over 2 weeks to get that many hours at Pizza Hut. Plus I am making more money at McDonald's too. I will be happy when we move into the new store though... the old one doesn't have very good AC, and it gets extremely hot in the kitchen.

[jwh]

congratulations emily......i want fries with mine....

[emily]

haha...actually the fries are pretty much the only thing I know how to do, since that is all I have been trained on...lol