Let's talk about our crappy jobs.

[missxgaia]

I am a full-time ASM for Radioshack here in Saint Louis. I was scheduled to work 4-9 this evening so I didn't go to bed until late last night. Well lo and behold, my manager's wife called me at 7:45 letting me know my manager (who, though I love him and he is good at his job, makes significantly more money than I do) wasn't coming in today and that I had to open the store (which meant, I had to be ready for work in a half hour.) Now, I don't know about you, but you know those zombies in The Walking Dead that came out of the well in season two? That's what I look like in the morning. A half hour is not enough time to wash off the ugly.

Anyway, I text my part-timer and asked if she could close tonight so I wouldn't have to work open to close. Her response? "Can't. I have stuff to do."

As if I don't.

So now, I am stuck working 8:30 am - 9:00 pm for 8.70 an hour.

Long story short, I want you to bitch about your job with me so I:

a) Feel better about it all because there's other nerds out there who hate their job, or

See how bad others have it and learn to stop complaining.

Quick disclaimer, I do love my job. I've been doing it for years and I have no intention of leaving. I just wish I was compensated for effort, and not just for presence.

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

What about c)Find a job that pays you what you're worth?

[Atalan]

I get paid more per hour, but right now I'm getting 5-10 hours a week. Trade until end of the holiday season?

[rketterman]

I'm an assistant manager at a restuarant and I've got some horror stories. I had a to close down production one night because 2 of my cooks got into a fight and we couldn't find the ones teeth...never did find them actually...had to toss, wash, sanitize, re-prep my entire kitchen. I've been cussed because of cold food (which is really an easy fix if you just let us remake it). And my district manager was going to refuse to let me have a day off for my uncles funeral (I was VERY close to him) so I had to threaten to quit before he finally caved.

I enjoy my job MOST days but in all honesty I feel underappreciated more often than not. Employees don't seem to understand the importance of what I do, guests just think I'm there for them to gripe at, and my boss makes me feel like I'm not really wanted a lot of times...but I like my job...how I'm not sure but I do.

[Nocturnis]

I work in a factory 12 hour shifts. 7pm to 7am. The good thing is I only work 36-48 hours a week. The bad thing is it wears out your body. I have been there 6 years and can run all the machines which means I get stuck doing the hard stuff. On a hectic night I am running 4 fast machine and can lift a total of a few tons all through the night. Its a good work out I lost 40lbs my first 3 months but after awhile it gets old. The plus side is that its one of the best paying jobs in the area and hardly anyone last more than a couple days so I have job security. Well speaking of work I need to go back to sleep because I work tonight.

[Tocho]

I work at.. actually no, I haven't yet. Because I got the job yesterday! Starting this Saturday. I'm looking forward to it despite it probably being incredibly stressful. I don't dislike my job though (I hope I don't, at least)

Going to work during night at a fast food restaurant, on the main street in our city. During weekends. This is also known as "hell on Earth for sober people" during weekends, if you get my point.

And I'm hoping working at a fast food restaurant will make me hate fast food!

Oh, nearly forgot... Want fries with that?

[rketterman]

Working fast food will just make you hate people who buy fast food...they can be unbelievably evil at times lol

[Kristen]

I'm on call 24/7. If I don't do what my boss says, I could go to jail. If I show up for a shift late, I have to stay for an extra 2 hours every day for a week or two. I don't get paid for those extra hours. Once a week, someone I don't know comes into my room while I'm not there and checks that I'm keeping it clean. I work 3 rotating shifts: 6am-2pm, 2-10pm, and 10pm-6am. Next year, I'll go to a 9 month school that's equivalent to junior and senior year at a university. After that, I'll be assigned to a ship where I'll spend 9-10 months a year at sea, working 12 hours on, 12 off, 7 days a week. My personal space will be 3 feet wide by 6 feet long by 18 inches high, enclosed by nothing but a thin blue curtain. My current paycheck is roughly equivalent to minimum wage in California.

All that known, I still chose to do this. I have a pretty sweet job. Sometimes the work grinds me down, but I feel over-appreciated at times. Considering both the insanely high satisfaction I have with my work and all the garbage I have to deal with (literally and figuratively) I realize that it all evens out.

Sure, your boss might be a jerk, dealing with customers sucks (I did it for 10 years), and working for crap pay also sucks. But you can do whatever you want in your off time, you can wear whatever you want, cut your hair however you want, eat whatever you want, sleep wherever you want, and you don't have to salute your boss. Rewards vs. cost, it all evens out. I wouldn't trade you though!

[leadchipmunk]

Long story short, I want you to bitch about your job with me so I:

a) Feel better about it all because there's other nerds out there who hate their job, or

See how bad others have it and learn to stop complaining.

I am a part-time, on-call armed security guard at a company with only 1 contract. That contract is HUD (US Department of Housing and Urban Development), which means I am a guard in the low-to-no income housing projects. I work 8 hour shifts, mainly 7pm-3am, weekends are 8pm-4am. I am also on call for day shift at the Housing offices (8am-4pm). I make less than Ohio minimum wage ($7.70/hr) due to a technicality that my boss is excited to exploit. In Ohio, if a company makes less than so much money, they can pay employees as low as federal minimum wage. If I only get my normal "scheduled" hours, meaning if nobody gets sick and calls me in, I walk home with $110 after tax for 2 weeks' pay, that is actually held back 6 weeks.

Oh, and if we hire someone new, they get my normal schedule until enough has been taken out of their checks to pay back the company's costs of hiring/licensing. Then I must share my normal one day a week with the new person/people.

So, to sum up:

• Risky job
  
• Housing projects (an area stereotypically filled with drugs, guns and illegal activities/violent people)
  
• Low pay
  
• Late pay
  
• On-call, and in the actual projects, only on-call person, so I must work if somebody calls off. So I can't really make plans, even holidays.
  
• Common to work doubles and, on occasion, triples
  
• No overtime/holiday pay/weekend pay
  

Don't get me wrong, I like my job. It is actually pretty peaceful. And I love working nights and get many miles of walking in. I just need more pay for the risk and more hours.

[missxgaia]

It seems there's no shortage of short ended sticks around here. I've got less thanan hour and a half left in my shift and I am brain dead. I find it interesting that people will list (myself included) all the not fair/not right things about their jobs and then footnote it with "I do like my job, though." it's interesting, I wish there was a cool, sci-fi way of calculating one's give a shit when it comes to their job and pay them accordingly. Like, oh, that guy never does more work than he has to, so let's pay him less than the guy who is not only able, but willing and eager to work hard simply for the betterment of his company.

I know it's so far-fetched, but a girl can most certainly dream.

A couple notes:

Mad respect for Kristen, the military is no easy institution either. You guys should ESPECIALLY be treated better financially.

To rketterman and Tocho, I worked several fast food jobs through school. When I was sixteen I really wanted a new computer (so I could play Freelancer and Neverwinter Nights, two games that are required reading for me) so I got a job at Pizza Hut. Six months after quitting them I got a job with Subway at a very busy mall and let me tell you--Black Friday that year was ten times worse than any I have ever experienced in retail in all my years combined. After that, I paid my way through college working in a god damn gas station deli. Kill me!

[rketterman]

Kristen I just want to say thanks for what you do. I also wish military personnel were better compensated for what they do. Instead we have political "leaders" that make more than many of us will see in the next 10+ years. I personally feel that a political position should pay what the average middle class American makes but this isn't about politics so I'll stop there.

missxgaia and tocho...I love the food service industry (or parts of it at least). That's why I went to culinary school and I'm persuing a career in the field. The job itself can be stressful and I may not be where I was hoping to be at this point but I'm still enjoying it.

What I'm noticing is that even though I hate my job some days there are others who have it worse than I do.

[Jcannon98188]

By no means does my job suck, but I hate it. I work for a dotcom, where we work with Camera systems. When I got hired on, I was excited that I was going to learn all these cool things, and be able to fix broken stuff. Quickly it became "Do these 4 trouble shooting steps, and if it still doesn't work throw money at it and buy a new one!" which really really really is mind numbingly boring. Learning web development now to hopefully break out of this hellhole I lovingly call work

[leadchipmunk]

It seems there's no shortage of short ended sticks around here. I've got less thanan hour and a half left in my shift and I am brain dead. I find it interesting that people will list (myself included) all the not fair/not right things about their jobs and then footnote it with "I do like my job, though." it's interesting, I wish there was a cool, sci-fi way of calculating one's give a shit when it comes to their job and pay them accordingly. Like, oh, that guy never does more work than he has to, so let's pay him less than the guy who is not only able, but willing and eager to work hard simply for the betterment of his company.

I just like the perks my job gives me. I love working midnights. I get tons of walking exercise in (some days I've counted upwards of 10 miles or more). I get to carry a gun and am licensed to shoot someone (not that I want to, just that I can). Free certifications and ammo too.

As for the pay idea (pay based on motivation), I do as little as I possibly can, while doing slightly more than the full-time guy ahead of me. But I only do that little because I make next to no money.

[Frost of the Gloaming]

I actually like my job, I just wish the one a*hole who brings down the office morale and gives the office a bad name would just retire/quit

I work in the Office Services Unit; which is basically our job is to make sure you can do yours. Really not all that complicated to understand, but a typical conversation with said employee goes like this

Me: "Hey blah blah needs blank, for a meeting, yes it's last minute but can you get it done?"

AH: "Why can't they come down and get it themselves, I'm sick of catering to these people."......

Me: "Hey we have office moves going on, we need to move panels around to fit in some extra new people"

AH "Why, why are they hiring new people, can't these people do their own jobs, blah blah blah someone has political connections and is getting in , blah, and these people should be lucky to have jobs and they should just sit in the middle of the floor and be happy about it"

seriously trying to get him to do work in next to impossible, and the upper managment has told me I can't write him up and they refuse to do anything about him, so like a cancer his negativity has spread to the point of where no one wants to do any work because they aren't making him do anything

I've worked many of the jobs you guys are at, and I know it can be a pita, but please please don't become as jaded as the person who I described above, because you won't be liked or respected by anyone

[pippitha]

Can't work right now, but I'll tell you about my old jobs.

Worked at a gym in the babysitting room. It was a gym/spa, so it's pretty much just rich people there. Most of the kids were awful. Got to listen to how ugly I was everyday, and how I'm not their boss, lol. Then this one mom tried to get me fired for not smiling enough at her. Then she lost her keys somewhere and blamed it on us (all the staff) for not finding them and calling her before she had to go to work. Then when there were no kids, I'd do front desk/janitor work. Got to clean the burnt skin and sweat out of tanning beds, and you have to GET IN THERE to reach it all. That was pretty gross.

Then for CNA training, just had to take care of old people. Had to change diapers, feed them, dress them, stuff like that. There were some really overweight people that you had to move, so it was a pretty physical job. Some of them were very cranky and would attack you, bite you, and you can't do anything about it. Oh, and if someone dies, you have to still dress them, brush their teeth, clean them up and make them look nice before the family comes.

[Buliaros]

I work in a Pharmacy, so it's basically a game of Russian roulette whether or not you have a pleasant shift. Work's fine, we get paid for all the hours we do work, but the company is incredibly stingey about authorising overtime.

The main problems with the job are that i'm basically a glorified clerical worker and the general public don't seem to understand that, so if I can't do something for legal reasons (like sell someone medication without a prescription) they think i'm just being an a-hole; and that 90% of the problems I face are due to someone else who works for an entirely different organisation not doing their job properly.

It's frustrating and I'm scraping by on just enough to pay all my household bills, but on the other hand my manager and I get along great, I get to work with one of my closest friends who's a pharmacist, I have a lot of downtime that allows me to work on my potentially viable writing career and other projects as well as muck about on videogames and generally spend time with my friends, and because I'm single and have no children I'm basically free to an extent.

If i had a choice, for now i'd probably stick with this job, the last one I had was in the same industry but full time and working for a poorly managed company and I was miserable. So It's an improvement, and staying positive is a good thing

[Leimanu]

Lol, thanks for posting this. I've been rolling this idea around in my head, but didn't know how to ask it - just wanted to hear how other people deal with a rough job.

I've been unemployed/underemployed in minimum wage jobs for over a year. It's been a time where I couldn't even figure out what to do next, which was very scary - to not have inspiration and motivation. I moved a couple yaers ago and lucked out with work and a place to stay, but gosh darn it has my broke down over-and-over-and-over and in very expensive ways. So I've been having some hard growing pains as an adult! I thought it was going to be AWESOME to be making $12-$15/d, plus tips, compared to minimum wage (which should only be given to high schoolers!), oh my gosh, it's still hard to cover the basic bills, and not even getting into student loans. And I'm in massage therapy at a spa, so if it's slow and I have no appt that day, they tell me not to come in. A whole day of no work, so no pay. I've been feeling like I've made some bad life choices in my education, but how was I to know?

Plus side - it's given me some time to find some new hobbies and know that I can survive on very, very little. That's a pretty great skill. It's also been a time for me to work on my fitness, so then when things do turn around for me, I'll be strong and fabulous!

[boxerrebel]

My "job" is law school. I work 60-80 hours a week, and I pay THEM $10K a year.

[Tocho]

Okay so after first day (well, night) of working here; it was stressful and quite fun. I'm glad it isn't crappy... yet. The pay is okay as well, $18 (€14, £11) per hour since I work in the middle of the night.

[andygates]

I'm a sysadmin for public healthcare. My job would be fine if it wasn't for the users. And the managers.

[shortstuff]

I have a seasonal job. It's great money for the length of time we work ..... if you can get work, don't mind working in a small office with 7+ other people in it with the doors (leading outside) always opening and closing, during summer, with air cons that just can't handle it (some of them actully freeze and stop working), so unless you are under them you don't feel them, and for the most part of the day you are on your feet. It is also VERY dependent on the weather.

In other words I work for 4-6 weeks in an small warmish office during summer.

[jjhatch]

I'm a manager for a specialty retail store. Full time, 45 hours a week and I get paid about $14/hour I think. I like my job, however I work in one of the busier stores in my area so it gets very stressful, especially during the holiday months. My main gripe is that the way the company works, the only full-timers are managers and a few select associates who have proven themselves. But in my store for example, there are no full-timers aside from the managers. So everyone else is part-time, and even though many of them have worked here for a few years they aren't very responsible since they are part-time. It's very frustrating because for some of them they do have the chance to get more hours if thy just do their job, show up on time, and not call in "sick" once a week.

But I do like my job. While there are the typical angry customers, I typically work mornings so I don't have to deal with them that much. My job is to make sure the store is fully stocked with products and to make sure the displays and shelves are full and clean and that prices are correct.

[TheOtherScott]

Since realizing that being an actual anything pays better than being an aspiring something, I've come to like my job. But a few years back, the company I was working for replaced me during my honeymoon. Rather than tell me formally I'd been let go, they just stopped returning my calls. One of my coworkers at the time had the same treatment of being fired by apathy.

[Kristen]

I'm a manager for a specialty retail store...

That structure sounds familiar. I worked a couple years for a company with the same management structure, as a part timer. That was by far the best retail job I've ever had, but it wasn't for me. I'm not one for wearing hawaiian shirts, and it was really hard on the body. I still shop there and honestly sometimes I miss the atmosphere. It's much better from the other side of the cash register.

[curryfiend]

I am...a hair stylist!! I actually really love it. But, there are definitely some crazy clients out there! It's just hair, people. <.<

Right now I am working part-time at a Walgreens as a cashier. The job itself is not hard at all, it's just extremely tedious. I was originally only supposed to be working there 2 days a week, just to fill in time between my shifts at the salon. Somehow, I got suckered into 4 days a week, two of those days I have to be there right after I leave my main job. So that sucks. I got pretty burnt out after month two and told my Walgreens boss that I needed my time taken down. He's still got me working stupid days and sometimes even 'till midnight, which was something I never wanted in the first place.

Oh, and I am SICK of creeps trying to get my number. I've been sexually harassed twice by customers. We had to call the cops on one of 'em. I just want to be left alone, people!!

So, I am actually planning on quitting next week. Just waiting for car financing stuff to go through. :]