The Worst Job You Ever Had

[Pretty Boy]

The sequel to the first/favourite job thread. What's your worst?

Mine would be managing a couple of bars in a hotel. It made Fawlty Towers look like an example of competence and luxury.

The owner was older and was stuck in a time warp. The hotel had been a 'place to be' sometime in the 1970s but little had changed by the time I pitched up in the early 2010s. The choice of wine in the bar was 'red or white' and any suggestion of change was shot down. Most of the power lay with the General Manager who was an utterly bizarre individual. He had absolutely no social skills whatsoever, not ideal for a job that involved regular dealings with the public. He was both totally disinterested and hands off yet micromanaged in the most ridiculous ways (hoarding boxes of teaspoons in his office and demanding an explanation if you wanted a box as one example). He was clearly an alcoholic and regularly stank of drink yet maintained he was teetotal and regularly raged about people daring to be drunk in 'his' hotel during functions.

The hotel was then bought by someone else who was a very, very good businessman with a litany of success to his name but no experience in hospitality. He put his trust in the wrong people and replaced the aforementioned individual with someone he headhunted from Hilton. In itself not a bad move but Hilton thrives on brand standards, a Hilton in Manhattan looks and functions much like one in Melbourne, and this guy would have been great in such a place but had no real clue how to build a brand standard or cope in an environment where they had never been allowed to exist. He walked out after a month and was replaced by a total chancer. He left after being caught packaging up bottles of drink and using a courier to send them to his home address. Not before he had recruited a whole load of his mates for various roles without the owners consent or knowledge; by this point I was Food and Beverage Manager and he appointed a Head of Restaurant, Kitchen & Bar Operations to do the same job. The Front Office Manager had a Head of Reception and Administration pitch up with broadly the same tasks. On the one had it was great as we were paid management salaries to do nothing, on the other hand we were just the fall guys when it went wrong. The latter individual won a case for constructive dismissal, I was just so glad to get out that I couldn't be bothered pursuing it any further. It was discovered what was going on when a full audit took place not long after and all hell broke loose by all accounts.

It was an utterly soul destroying place to work and how I survived nearly 3 years I'll never know. Long and unsociable hours, crap pay, incompetent and unpleasant bosses and towards the end a constant air of suspicion and mistrust. I wish I had been a bit older and wiser at the time, I was never a walkover but I stood for much more than I would now.

[O'Rourke3]

Working at The Golf Tavern. Took the job around 87 as a part timer. New owner, new management. I missed the first week of the reopening due to having something booked. In that time all the existing and new staff were all sacked.... I lasted for about 3 months before packing it in. New folk nearly every week and a management that were humourless and on your back the whole night. Despite a 1pm finish, no transport home or an end of shift drink, all of which I'd had in previous gigs. There was usually decent banter behind the bar but not this one.

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[Bostonhibby]

Had a really crap job as a teenager carting around reupholstered furniture for customers of the guy who owned the business. Always seemed to be upstairs in big swanky buildings lived in by tight erses who rarely even said thanks, pay was terrible. Lasted about 3 months.

Thought I was hard done by until years later I met a guy from norwich who is now an enduring friend and he used to work as a turkey de-beaker for a well known Norfolk turkey processor. Winner of the worst job competition in my book.

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[speedy_gonzales]

Thought I was hard done by until years later I met a guy from norwich who is now an enduring friend and he used to work as a turkey de-beaker for a well known Norfolk turkey processor. Winner of the worst job competition in my book.



Maybe!
Knew a girl who worked at Fenton Barns near North Berwick, she had to extract semen from turkeys with a vacuum pump.

[Bostonhibby]

Maybe!
Knew a girl who worked at Fenton Barns near North Berwick, she had to extract semen from turkeys with a vacuum pump.[emoji2961]

How do you know it was a vacuum pump?[emoji6]

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[sleeping giant]

I had a job selling Kirby vacuum cleaners when I was 19. It was as crap as it sounds.
Had to sing song in the morning and stuff.
I lasted 2 weeks 😄

[Keith_M]

I've worked in a few dodgy and/or unpleasant places in my time but my last job was the absolute worst.


Bullying, intimidation, late/unpaid wages and constant lies from management. I had to leave before I did something that I would seriously regret.


"We're all one big family!" :rolleyes:

[ErinGoBraghHFC]

Had a really crap job as a teenager carting around reupholstered furniture for customers of the guy who owned the business. Always seemed to be upstairs in big swanky buildings lived in by tight erses who rarely even said thanks, pay was terrible. Lasted about 3 months.

Thought I was hard done by until years later I met a guy from norwich who is now an enduring friend and he used to work as a turkey de-beaker for a well known Norfolk turkey processor. Winner of the worst job competition in my book.

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My father in law used to cut the ********s out of pigs in a slaughterhouse.


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[Bostonhibby]

My father in law used to cut the ********s out of pigs in a slaughterhouse.


Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkOuch[emoji16]

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[ErinGoBraghHFC]

Ouch[emoji16]

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I assume they were deid well before they came to him to be de-ersed[emoji1787]


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[Bostonhibby]

I assume they were deid well before they came to him to be de-ersed[emoji1787]


Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkStill ouch[emoji6]

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[Scouse Hibee]

I’ve only had a total of 6 jobs before my current one and I can honestly says none of them were really bad nor could I decide on the worst.I have had some extremely testing times in a couple of them including being assaulted but looking bad I still really enjoyed those jobs. Guess I’ve been pretty lucky.

[Northernhibee]

Managed a Blockbuster store. £16k per year in 2011, no bonus, no overtime, no hope of TOIL. Was working 70 hour weeks sometimes in a store that was falling apart with a computer system that broke down every other day. Was threatened with disciplinary for how the store looked but didn’t even have a working Hoover, was told to offer the window cleaner a couple of free rentals instead of paying him, all sorts of ****.

Did not like my boss at all, and had no assistant manager to help with the workload. Made myself very ill with stress, being physically sick every single morning. Had what I can only describe as a meltdown at a training day when I was presenting to fellow store managers after the fire alarm went off overnight in the store when I was several hundred miles away and was trying to deal with it in a hotel room at 3am and no access to the store


Absolutely awful.

[marinello59]

Derek and Clive and lobsters spring to mind.

Only very old posters will get that one.

:greengrin

[Bostonhibby]

Derek and Clive and lobsters spring to mind.

Only very old posters will get that one.

:greengrinWhat? Coughing? That's the worst job you ever 'ad?

Glorious comedy.

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[Bridge hibs]

Working for my Brother dry stane dyking was brilliant, out in the fields day by day in all weathers, working with my Brother was another story , fair to say we got on most of the time but there were times it wasnt safe to be near stones, spades or hammers 😬

[Just_Jimmy]

I've worked in a few dodgy and/or unpleasant places in my time but my last job was the absolute worst.


Bullying, intimidation, late/unpaid wages and constant lies from management. I had to leave before I did something that I would seriously regret.


"We're all one big family!" :rolleyes:Never knew you'd worked for old rangers.

Mine was just after school. Worked on inbound calls in a call centre. Literally just morons phoning up to complain about their own stupid fault.

Jacked it in cos Hibs were away to Dundee Utd on the Tuesday night and I was sitting on a back shift thinking I'd rather be there and if I left now I'd make it. Went into the managers office and said I was away. Picked up my stuff and left.

Got a bar job the next day.

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[McD]

Managed a Blockbuster store. £16k per year in 2011, no bonus, no overtime, no hope of TOIL. Was working 70 hour weeks sometimes in a store that was falling apart with a computer system that broke down every other day. Was threatened with disciplinary for how the store looked but didn’t even have a working Hoover, was told to offer the window cleaner a couple of free rentals instead of paying him, all sorts of ****.

Did not like my boss at all, and had no assistant manager to help with the workload. Made myself very ill with stress, being physically sick every single morning. Had what I can only describe as a meltdown at a training day when I was presenting to fellow store managers after the fire alarm went off overnight in the store when I was several hundred miles away and was trying to deal with it in a hotel room at 3am and no access to the store


Absolutely awful.



Sounds similar to a job I had a couple of years earlier, not with blockbuster but with another well known retailer, now gone.

I was the asst manager in the biggest store in the country, hourly budget getting cut back again and again, and being told that salaried staff had to deal with the fall off (so me and the manager). I went from doing circa 48 hours a week to 70-80, all while getting screamed phone calls from the area manager 3-4 times a day. I used to actually get shivers down my spine when the phone rang, and gradually went from a job I enjoyed and took pride in, to dreading going to work. Even a day off became ‘but I’m back to work tomorrow’, was barely eating or sleeping with the stress. Kept telling myself I shouldn’t complain as the salary wasn’t bad, til someone pointed out that when you see a salary, it’s broadly looked at as being a 40ish hour week, when you’re doing nearly double that, it’s not a good salary at all. Hard but fair targets for KPIs were doubled arbitrarily, making it impossible to achieve. Had to beg for my 2 days off to be together once so that I could move house. Regularly expected to travel 3-4 hours each way on my own time to head office, and openly told I should think myself lucky that I got fuel costs.

The area manager was a complete *******, I get he was under pressure too, but he treated everyone (across all his stores) so terribly, including screaming at a supervisor in front of customers because several hours work hadn’t been completed in about 70 minutes. I finally jacked when he started disciplinary action against me when I hadn’t finished another huge chunk of work (2-3 days of rearranging the store) in about 2 hours.

Years later I was creating a training course on bullying and discrimination, and it hit me that almost all of the symptoms experienced by bullied staff, I had experienced them during that period of time. I’m actually a pretty easy going person, but I wouldn’t spit on that guy if he was on fire

[Edina Street]

The sequel to the first/favourite job thread. What's your worst?

Mine would be managing a couple of bars in a hotel. It made Fawlty Towers look like an example of competence and luxury.

The owner was older and was stuck in a time warp. The hotel had been a 'place to be' sometime in the 1970s but little had changed by the time I pitched up in the early 2010s. The choice of wine in the bar was 'red or white' and any suggestion of change was shot down. Most of the power lay with the General Manager who was an utterly bizarre individual. He had absolutely no social skills whatsoever, not ideal for a job that involved regular dealings with the public. He was both totally disinterested and hands off yet micromanaged in the most ridiculous ways (hoarding boxes of teaspoons in his office and demanding an explanation if you wanted a box as one example). He was clearly an alcoholic and regularly stank of drink yet maintained he was teetotal and regularly raged about people daring to be drunk in 'his' hotel during functions.

The hotel was then bought by someone else who was a very, very good businessman with a litany of success to his name but no experience in hospitality. He put his trust in the wrong people and replaced the aforementioned individual with someone he headhunted from Hilton. In itself not a bad move but Hilton thrives on brand standards, a Hilton in Manhattan looks and functions much like one in Melbourne, and this guy would have been great in such a place but had no real clue how to build a brand standard or cope in an environment where they had never been allowed to exist. He walked out after a month and was replaced by a total chancer. He left after being caught packaging up bottles of drink and using a courier to send them to his home address. Not before he had recruited a whole load of his mates for various roles without the owners consent or knowledge; by this point I was Food and Beverage Manager and he appointed a Head of Restaurant, Kitchen & Bar Operations to do the same job. The Front Office Manager had a Head of Reception and Administration pitch up with broadly the same tasks. On the one had it was great as we were paid management salaries to do nothing, on the other hand we were just the fall guys when it went wrong. The latter individual won a case for constructive dismissal, I was just so glad to get out that I couldn't be bothered pursuing it any further. It was discovered what was going on when a full audit took place not long after and all hell broke loose by all accounts.

It was an utterly soul destroying place to work and how I survived nearly 3 years I'll never know. Long and unsociable hours, crap pay, incompetent and unpleasant bosses and towards the end a constant air of suspicion and mistrust. I wish I had been a bit older and wiser at the time, I was never a walkover but I stood for much more than I would now.

I done a few days at Krones Fish Factory in Newhaven when I was around 22-years old. I did not think to include it on my list of jobs on the other thread. It was definitely the worst job I ever had, quite simply because of the smell of fish.

I had an evening job at the time as well delivering Indian fast food, and I had approximately one hour to get home, have a shower, get changed, and get to my other job.

However I found that the smell of fish is so hard to get rid of, that even after a shower and a change of clothing the smell remained and contaminated the new clothes to the extent that it caused me one of the most embarrassing moments of my life when I went to my evening job just to be asked to go back home, have a shower and change my clothes because I smell repulsive.

I decided then that one of the jobs had to go. So I ditched the Fish Factory, as not only was it to dirty and smelly, gutting fish on the assembly line was simply horrible.

[Bishop Hibee]

I’ve had umpteen jobs but none have been awful. I probably left before they felt that way.

I’ve had awful bosses though who have made good jobs seem bad but I’ve either outlasted them or I’ve moved on.

Worst work task I’ve had was having to bury a dead goat in 30C+ heat in New South Wales. The ground was rock hard. Managed to get down about 3 feet then sawed the horns off so they wouldn’t be sticking out the ground. Not sure what future anthropologists will make of it in the future.

[Jones28]

Worked in the kitchen at Craigies as a kitchen porter. They always struggled to hold on the KP's I was told, and I had a few years of experience in kitchens and though it would be fine, I was fairly desperate for money at the time so went for it.

It was terrible. Shifts started at 8, first job was to clean the toilets; catch up on all the prep dishes to be cleaned; work through the kitchen cleaning rota (fridges etc); catch up on the dishes that have been piling up while you've been doing other work; take an instantly regretted 10 minute break because by this point dishes are piling in from the restaurant; catch up on those; suffer through similar cycles until 4:30 when the kitchen closes and all the dishes come through from the kitchen, butchery and bakery; catch up these as quickly as possible; mop all the floors in the back kitchen areas; finish after 5pm and get openly bollocked by the wee **** of a restaurant supervisor for being 10 minutes behind when you've had **** all breaks all day.

Oh, and within a couple of days of me starting that job they BANNED coffee for staff. Literally the only perk of the job was the coffee and they stopped that.

I've never been back since and this was in 2016.

When cleaning the toilets one morning I came across a big Innes Still Game style Jobbie, I think that sealed the deal.

I wrote the manager a stinking email, telling him its little wonder they can't get and keep kitchen porters, they'd been through dozens over 2 or 3 years and were baffled as to why none of them stayed.

[Fuzzywuzzy]

Service advisor. Knew **** all about cars

Started at 7am finished at 8:30pm Mon Fri and 7-1 on a saturday. Got paid for a 40 HR week plus a bonus.

Lasted about 5 months. Horrible place

[GreenNWhiteArmy]

My last job. Local authority. Without giving too much away my role was to find efficiencies and make financial savings and improve processes

Identified key areas for improvement but every avenue was blocked by governance or finances.

Extremely frustrating that they'd manipulated new systems and processes to suit how they work instead of reworking processes to suit the advancing technology we had but wouldn't utilise because it was "too big a job to change"

[Keith_M]

Never knew you'd worked for old rangers.

...


:tee hee: