McJobs

[filkertom]

British business wants to redefine "McJob". So does McDonald's. What a coincidence.

I especially love the words of lawmaker Clive Betts: "I think the description is really derogatory of the employees themselves. It's sort of indicating that the jobs they do are worthless, that anyone could just walk in off the street and do them, that all workers are untrained."

Yeah, let's see how you feel about it ten minutes into the lunch rush, asshat.

So, what's the worst job you ever had? Mine was the single overnight shift I had at a grocery, cleaning the back room at the butcher shop with no training. By comparison, my times at Wendy's and McD's, and even my very brief stint as a dishwasher at Big Boy, were bliss.

Comments

[ericcoleman]

A summer job doing lawn maintenence at Drake University. The only good time I had was when the boss (who was generally a creep, but most of the folks who worked for him were even more of creeps) came around on a 105 degree day and told us to find shade and water and not do anything.

[ozarque.livejournal.com]

The worst job I ever had? The interminable three months I spend typing address cards -- one at a time, in alphabetical order -- for the entire list of "cosmetologists" in the state where I lived. It wasn't a "dirty" job; it wasn't hard labor; it was before air conditioning, but they let me sit near a big fan. The problem was the way the tedium slowed time down to a crawl. It was so boring that each of the eight-hour days I spent doing that was, as I perceived it, at least sixteen hours long. No amount of money would ever persuade me to do that again.

[hanabishirecca.livejournal.com]

I'm currently working my "worst job".

I'm a "coach-in-training" for a inbound call center. I've been a "Coach-in-training" since February of 2006. I've known everything to be a coach since April of 2006. I'm currently coaching my own team. The difference? I'm not salary and it isn't on my actual job title yet. The actual CIT process has been a big 18 car pileup filled with conflicting expectations, trainers who don't do anything, and a company that cannot and will not learn from past mistakes. Heck, I've even had my Constitutional Rights violated at this job.

The only bonus or perk I've had in the last year and a half was a 100 Grand on my birthday. I found it insulting (and I don't even like 100 Grand).

But, I'll continue this job until I'm ready to move out of the state because it also pays more than anything in the market and when I finally DO become a full coach, I'll have an extremely nice resumee even if the job itself was shit.

[cktraveler.livejournal.com]

Working at McDonalds ... I hated that place. That zoo. That prison. That restaurant, whatever you want to call it, I couldn't stand it any longer. It was the smell, if there was such a thing. I felt saturated by it. I could taste the stink and every time I did, I feared that I'd somehow been infected by it.

Seriously. It was not pleasant to spend four months of my life smelling Eau de McDonald's Kitchen every moment. Particularly since I quit the job after three months. I could handle the pressure, I could handle the heat, but I couldn't handle the smell.

Of course, working at Toys R Us as a "game counselor" was probably worse. I put that in quotes because my actual job wasn't to recommend video games ... it was to explain to parents who started their Christmas shopping on December 23rd that no, no matter how loudly they scream or how special their child is, little Johnny isn't getting the Power Ranger that was the only thing he wanted in the whole world.

I hypothesized at the time that they hired seasonal help and stationed them next to the action figure aisle on a flimsy rationale so that it would be replaceable temps and not valuable fully-trained store employee who would be disemboweled if things "went the way they did last year."

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Heh. My month at Toys R Us at Christmas would've been great, if I hadn't been accused of stealing from the cash register and fired. They said they had no proof I'd done it, but I was one of two people working a register that had $168 missing, and therefore we both got let go. But not charged. Which was pretty frickin' stupid on a number of levels, not the least of which is, if I was gonna steal from the till, I'd have stolen a damn sight more than $168. It was the end of the season; if they wanted to let me go, all they had to do was let me go. As it was, I was insulted enough that I have only stepped into a Toys R Us once in the intervening fifteen years, and that was because I was with somebody else who had to go there.

[fair-witness.livejournal.com]

The summer at Pizza Hut. Uhhhhhhhh. Especially because of the TMNJ "Coming Out of Our Shells" album we were supposed to promote.

[raven-ap-morgan.livejournal.com]

I can tell stories about my employment at The Hut. My classic involves accidentally dumping not one, but two, orders of spaghetti onto the lap of a customer wearing a suit during lunch rush. Oops...

Raven

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Oh lordy. I am the queen of bad jobs.

The worst? Selling knives on the street, I kid you not. I quit by lunch

Other bad: Ice cream truck driving. (1 day) Telemarketer selling security systems with a pitch that sounded like "Let us come over and case your place." (1 week) Graveyard at Hardee's. (3 mo)

OTOH, I've been driving a truck for over a year and I love it.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

A summer job selling knife sets. It wasn't door-to-door, but we theoretically generated our own leads (ha!). And I totalled the car going to one appointment, mostly not my own fault (someone came zooming out of a driveway and I missed them but slammed the car parked on the street (when THEIR driveway was empty!)). Not fun, for an 18-year-old who had to report same to his parents.

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

Summer job selling knife...were they Cutco knives, by any chance? I've had the "pleasure" of working for that "company" myself. I quit after I was asked to lie to customers.

As for my worst job...it'd either be the two months I spent recently at a local McD's or the one month at DHS.

At the McJob, no matter what the situation, I was Always in the Wrong. Even when handling a situation exactly as the MoD herself would have (by the MoD's admission). Did NOT get along with that bitch. At all. Small wonder, after she clocked me out once with neither notice nor permission; I wouldn't have known, had I not seen the receipt printing out.

DHS was just...it was a job filled with despair. The "don't forget, you're here forever" sort of job. The "there is no escape, this will never end" kind.

[bryanp.livejournal.com]

One week as an assistant in a daycare center.

After that I moved up to washing dishes at the NCO club.

Squawling kids. Crappy food (we were expected to eat the food served there). Got kicked in the nads lowering a kid down from a high place he had managed to reach.

Scrubbing pots and pans was a step up.

[bryanp.livejournal.com]

Oh, and let's not forget when I picked up a kid who was screaming and held her in my lap to calm her down.

"You can't hold her like that."

"Why not? It's keeping her from yelling."

"Thanks to that big scandal with the day care in Boston we can't hold the kids in laps anymore. They might think you're a molester."

"Eeeeew."

[phillip2637.livejournal.com]

I lasted one day working in a factory that made metal barrels. I had worked other factory jobs before, but was not prepared for the heat, the filth, and the sad zombies workers in that place.

I also lasted about a month in a sweat shop that made pressed wood (etc.) parts for school and hospital furniture. My job was to take processed slabs and scrape the edges with a metal bar to knock off the excess material. Over and over and....

But in spite of the intrinsic horror of those places, my really worst jobs have been made that way by the efforts of various bosses and disruptive people rather than the work itself.

[pixel.livejournal.com]

Overnight security at a medical waste processing facility for minimum wage, in February.

The place dealt with all the rubber gloves, smocks, needles, etc that hospitals need to dispose of, they did this by heating them to 500+deg then grinding them up. The place *stunk* in a way I can't begin to describe. So if I stayed in the building I had to exist in this cloud if extremely nasty funk. Or I could stay in my car in the parking lot. But being February I had to leave it running so I didn't freeze, which cost me nearly as much in gas as I was making. And it was midnight to 8am Friday and Saturday nights(which precluded a social life), and midnight to 6am Sunday night, with classes at school starting at 7:15am, 45 minutes from work.
Also the day-shift guards would regularly call out, so double shifts were common, with one 32 hour shift once when 1st&2nd shift were no-shows and I had to cover my 3rd shifts at the beginning and end of that stretch.


Graduating school a month later and quitting that job was a very gratifying day.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Waiting tables at a tourist restaurant, one of those fried-fish joints that were ubiquitous in the upper Great Lakes when I was in college. Grueling work, grumpy customers (big, travel-weary families were the worst tippers in the world), and I went home every night reeking of the deep-fat fryer. Put me right off food for that summer, it did.

Ever since, I've overtipped at cheap restaurants.

[birder2.livejournal.com]

Worst job? Working at Woolworth's my first quarter as an undergraduate--especially at the Halloween costume counter late October. How do I know what size your kid takes?

[mrfnord.livejournal.com]

No question about it, working as floor crew in a theater back when I was in college. Never had to clean up anything seriously nasty (thankfully), but the smell of buttered popcorn makes me shudder to this day.

[tinrat.livejournal.com]

Discounting the stint in an apple packing plant, my first paycheck was Burger King. The bastards made me cry.

At times I was required to dismantle unsold burgers and count the meat patties. There was plenty to count, but they wouldn't feed their employees. They didn't even give me a discount.

Car washer

[moquif.livejournal.com]

The only nice thing about my worst job was that I could walk there. But I had to pass the house of the neighborhood bully. I didn't encounter him, but every time walking by I was looking over my shoulder scared he'd jump me. The job itself was pretty lame. I had to dry and clean cars as they came by. My boss/manager/whatever actually grabbed me under the arms to push me higher because he didn't think I was stretching enough. I don't remember if I quit or I was fired or given so few hours that it wasn't worth it. But the absolute worst thing is that my Mom suggested I apply for the job in the first place so I had to tell her it didn't work out.

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

Jones, Frost and 13 others said in a letter to the Financial Times that the dictionary should change this "to reflect a job that is stimulating, rewarding and offers genuine opportunities for career progression."

If it was stimulating, rewarding, and had advancement opportunities, it wouldn't be a McJob, morons! Why don't Jones and Frost take pride in wearing the uniform they've earned?

My worst McJob? Pouring hot tar on roofs, in August, for four bucks an hour. And I was too young to share in the beer afterwards!

[rook543.livejournal.com]

Probably as a dishwasher at a Birmingham, mich. coney island!
(It's not there anymore...)

[jhayman.livejournal.com]

Our daughter worked "window" (front counter) at MacDonald's part-time for a couple of years. Summers in university she work at a steel plant, in the mill. Totally aside from the pay, she said MacDonald's was FAR tougher... but she acquired really great customer relations skills.

No "worst" job for me. But bits of some jobs have been awful. Doing "constant observation" on suicidal psych patients was ungodly. You sit in the semi-dark and watch them sleep, with no getting up and walking around and it's too dark to read and anyway you keep falling assssssssssssssssssssssssss

[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<aargh!>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]

Our daughter worked "window" (front counter) at MacDonald's part-time for a couple of years. Summers in university she work at a steel plant, in the mill. Totally aside from the pay, she said MacDonald's was FAR tougher... but she acquired really great customer relations skills.

No "worst" job for me. But bits of some jobs have been awful. Doing "constant observation" on suicidal psych patients was ungodly. You sit in the semi-dark and watch them sleep, with no getting up and walking around and it's too dark to read and anyway you keep falling assssssssssssssssssssssssss <aargh!>

[timemachineyeah.livejournal.com]

Jumping on the Toys R Us bandwagon. I've had a "spend hours doing nothing but typing names" job at a medical office, which was boring as all get out, and made worse by the fact that I was working for my mother. And I've worked as a janitor at another medical office, which was awful because people don't seem to be able to aim properly when they try to pee in a cup, but Toys R Us was definitely the worst.

I never had a problem with the kids, but I slowly grew to hate parents, who show their worst side when entering a toy store. From the parents who would bring their four-year-old in and then refuse to buy them anything while they stocked up on their collectible action figures to the parents who bought their kids 6 carts and $1500 worth of crap to the racist parents, and just all of the bad parents...

*anger*

And then I really hated selling toys I didn't agree with, whether it was the crappy First Start guitars (which are only worth about $15 and sell for over $100, especially when I knew a good deal on mini-Fenders or otherwise at Music Machine) to the Bratz dolls, which went against everything the feminist in me stood for...

And then there were the parents who thought that any toy even close to educational (INCLUDING LEGOS) because they thought it was boring...

And of course, there was the fact that within a week of working an ex-manager who had threatened to shoot up the store came in with a gun visible under his coat, and rather than calling the police, the managers had me ring him up, which made me feel like I was oh-so-important to the company and that my position was really valued.

*anger*

[timemachineyeah.livejournal.com]

*And then there were the parents who thought that any toy even close to educational (INCLUDING LEGOS) was worthless because they thought it was boring...

[wildcard9.livejournal.com]

I had to think on this one. It was while I was in the Navy, my ship was in dry-dock being overhauled in Hoboken, NJ. Between the *smell* of things (the ship was an oiler and the tanks were being worked on), and all the paint chipping with needle guns, I *hate* that period of my time in the Navy. It did not help that the Captain and XO of the ship at that time had been assigned to it as punishment (for what I don't know), so no one was happy being on the ship at that time. Plus there was nothing to do in Hoboken, and I had no car to get out of the area (so I was restricted to things within walking distance).

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

Oh, honestly.

But Jones, Frost and 13 others said in a letter to the Financial Times that the dictionary should change this "to reflect a job that is stimulating, rewarding and offers genuine opportunities for career progression."

...I understand they want to spin it, but the OED isn't going to LIE. :P Dictionaries are there to tell you what a word ACTUALLY means, not what you wish it meant. :P

[melaniedavidson.livejournal.com]

Yeah--they want the OED to compromise its integrity and usefullness because they don't like that a word like "McJob" has come into popular usage? Seriously?

I guess they think a dictionary is some kind of magic book that creates, destroys, and changes the meanings of words.

[blueeyedtigress.livejournal.com]

I've had some rotten jobs in my time. But the one that stands out for humour value (and won't make anyone lose their lunch) was the time I sold light-up roses ("LoveLights"!) on Yonge Street in Toronto. Yes, I was a flower girl. What's more memorable is that I walked into this drinking establishment ... oh, on the west side of Yonge up near Bloor? Got thrown out by the very solidly-built female bouncer, for annoying "her boys". I, ever clueless, learned about the St. Charles Tavern afterward ..... ;]

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

Little Caesar's Manager. God all mighty, a nightmare. Tossed me into the WORSE store in the entire chain. The stack of health code violations taller than the stack of unpaid bills. It was 24 hours a day for a month. I did get a bonus for clearing all the health code violations, cleared the unpaid bills, tripled the store income by stream lining the menu, canceling all the "deals" the previous manager had set up. I got a bonus check the same day I turned in my keys. Job I was most happy to put behind me.

I also worked landscape for a condo complex for two months, hated that.

Had a midnight grind job running payrolls on an IBM 360 in college. Nothing wrong with the job, except the Second Monday I came to work and found the door locked with a note on the door to call the secretary. The Boss and Owner sold all the equipment, leased out the building and split, never to be seen again. And no one every got their last week paycheck. So that sucked too

[dadandgirl.livejournal.com]

One of my worst jobs was a stint in the LC, too. On campus, the worst customers of all were the militant vegans: "I don't eat meat, because that's cruel to animals, but I will KILL YOU if you screw up my order."

They never mention being vegan until the food arrives - I apparently have the psychic power to detect vegetarians at fifty paces, and it's my fault for not using it sooner. One woman accused me of "violating her civil rights" and threatened to sue the store because her spaghetti had meat sauce. I'm pretty sure that's what she was screaming. Another lobbed a Baby Pan at my head because it had pepperoni on it. Both dishes come with meat by default, and no warning label, and that is an affront to all that is good and wholesome.

I'm reading your post and wondering which store you worked in. 'Cause the description doesn't narrow it down much. Most people I knew in the chain would have pegged the "worst store" as either Metro Airport, the Michigan Union(*), or one of a dozen one-man hole-in-the-wall rat-trap strip mall stores.

* affectionately known as "The Crypt". Plenty of restaurants have mice and roaches, but I've never before worked in a place that had turtles and newts.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

I would have to say that, overall, the worst job I've had was not a McJob; it was actually a high-tech company which sold mathematical software (not one you're likely to have heard of), for which I worked right out of college. Some of the high (low) points:

I found out shortly after I started working there that no one had been paid in several months.

During my tenure of a month, I was responsible for receiving two subpoenas on behalf of the (absent) CEO whose executive assistant I was, for lawsuits from previous employees for back pay. (I've little doubt that more were pending.)

The first paycheck I received was written on an account that no longer existed. (Not really a 'bounced' check...check fraud, I guess you'd call it). The second one bounced. The last one my bank basically kept sending through until it cleared (all hail Oregon Community Credit Union!).

When I decided that I'd had enough, I typed up a letter to the remaining employees letting them know that I was leaving (with a week's notice), printed out ten copies, and left one on each person's desk. I noticed my boss following me around, and shortly after I was done distributing them, he called me into his office and fired me. He then tried to claim that I was claiming too many hours on my time card (I wasn't claiming lunch because I wasn't taking a lunch break; I ate at my desk and answered the phone as necessary), and when that failed to work, told me that I'd better pay for the copies of my resignation letter, so I handed him a dollar. He was rather taken aback both times. *sardonic smile*

As you can imagine, morale was terrible; it was an incredibly depressing place to work for.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Figures, politians etc all going "OOoo! you can't say nasty things about McBig-Business!!"

When are they gonna learn that they can't spin reality?!

Worst job ever?
Playing meat jigsaws during the graveyard shift at the mortuary.
Following a close second would be being a house-husband. [and if anyone sys that's not a job I dare them to try it for a few weeks!]