Best job, Worst job?

[BigChickenStrips]

Im sure everyone in here has had good jobs and bad jobs. lets hear about some ofthem and why they were awesome or why they stunk.

I'll start:

BEST: Ice Cream Store, yea, working for min. wage sucks but lots of good looking teenage girls around (i was 16 at the time) and all the free ice cream i could eat. i did gain some weight tho.

WORST: pool boy, cleaning pools is not a rewarding or very proffitable job, also i worked customer service for a major home appliance brand whos name rhymes with "irlpool" and getting screamed at and cursed out by people becasue they have to wash dishes by hand for 2 days before i can get a repair man out there to fix their dishwasher was not fun but the pay was better than pool cleaning.

currently i work for a magazine distributer and its cool, i get to be on the computer all day, and i get all kinds of free magazines!

ok... your turn-

[Scott58]

Best job - Chemist for a small company. had a whole floor to myself outfitted with full kitchen and sleeping quarters. Bonus checks at the end of the year often exceeded annual salary. Company got sold to a real jackass so I split.

Worst job - Plant manager of a small company. Owner was nuts and spent money faster then I could make it for him and his daughter was a spoiled brat.

Life in maintenance is much simpler now and almost zero stress.

[zarakand]

Best Job - Working the customer service desk at a mall. The desk was hidden, had a computer with internet access, they allowed me to read and study. Only paid $8 an hour, but man do I wish I hadn't quit after H.S.

Worse Job - US Cellular, selling cell phones. I've never seen such unethical treatment of people in my life first hand. We'd spend two to three hours a week in meetings with corporate, where they'd tell us how to better lie to the customer. Sales suck, I still work in commissons sales but not for this company. Can't wait to graduate and start teaching.

[Ninja Geoff]

Best Job - Pumping gas. Tips, I'm outside, bosses are all cool.

Worst Job - Dishwashing.

[Loonette]

Worst Job - 1986, Roseville, Michigan (Detroit blue-collar 'burb) waitressing at the Ram's Horn Restaurant on Gratiot Avenue. I was used to waitressing and I was used to working midnights as well - didn't mind it that much as long as I was making good cash. I could smoke cigarettes and drink coffee all night and have lots of talk time with coworkers and customers. Then I took a job with that Ram's Horn, and it ruined waitressing for me. Dealing with the management was like dealing with apes (no offense to the apes of the world). The uniforms were dark, brown polyester zipup dresses. They were repulsive! We were not allowed to wear pants - only their uniform dresses. It was one of the few jobs that I absolutely had to take. When the rent is due, you've got to have an income. But I only stayed at that job for about four weeks.

Best Job - I'll have to name two. I've had many jobs, all of which but one came before the birth of my first child almost 11 years ago. I counted once - it was a lot for the amount of years working. Anyway...

1. One of my best jobs was working for two years as the secretary and then two years as raw materials buyer for a small gasket manufacturing company in Detroit. We were the Gasket Division of the Zatkoff Seals & Packing Company. Zatkoff's four other branches only bought and sold rings and seals from overseas manufacturers, but our gasket plant was the only facility that actually produced anything. This was my first job that had real benefits like health coverage and paid vacation. It was also my very first taste of real urban living (also, we were living in Hamtramck, Michigan - another experience of unique living. http://www.angelfire.com/de2/detroitpix/Hamtramck.html ). The plant was located in the Russell Industrial Center, which at one time had been an automobile plant - built in 1911 for the Anderson Electric Car Company, they later built (I'm not sure) Hudsons. Grand Trunk RR was also located in the complex. Anyway, the center was eventually divided up into rental units for smaller industrial companies such as our gasket plant. The building was old as sin. There were a couple of other businesses in our building with whom we had to share the freight elevator, and that was always entertaining. Everyone got along great until someone needed that elevator.

We had about 20 employees; about 10 in the office and 10 in the shop. All of the office personnel knew how to run at least one machine, so on Saturdays it wasn't unusual to find some of the office workers putting in a five-hour shift in the plant. My favorite was the platen presses. One false move and it's off with your hand! We had a die maker to produce a lot of our own cutting dies. We had people working there from every part of life (only 20 people, but very diverse anyway). We'd go out a lot after work together. My bosses would fuss over me for secretary's day (they took me out to an upscale restaurant every year for lunch). During my pregnancy, Scan would have our car at his job and there was always someone at my work offering me their car to use for my prenatal appointments (even though I would joke about the possibility of my water breaking while driving). After my son was born, I didn't return to work, but my boss would still let me come in after Scan was home in the evening just to do paperwork. They really didn't need my help, but they knew that we could really use the money, so they would come up with about two- or three-hour's worth of work for me if I wanted it. They were all just great people.

I went to visit the shop during a recent trip to Detroit, and they've moved. They're now in Warren, Michigan in a facility that was custom built for them in the late 90's. Very nice, modern, clean, and quiet shop now. They deserve it.

2. My other best job is the one I have now. For two years I've worked at a small independent film theater in our village. I did concessions for awhile, and as soon as a projectionist opening came up, I took it. I love running film - it's the best. Part of my job involves splicing together the small reels of film that arrive at our theater in their heavy, clunky metal cans. We work in a confined space, and hauling around film is a big pain, but I still love the job. I also tear the film back down if I'm working the last night of its run. We use two rather old projectors which require a lot of babysitting in case something goes wrong. When something does go wrong, it sucks big time, but we have a forgiving audience and can usually find a remedy rather quickly. This job gets me out of the house for a couple evenings each week (I didn't want to ever work full-time while raising the kids), and I get to meet and greet lots of people (the projectionist sells tickets as well - only two employees per show). We do everything the old-fashioned way. We don't even have cash registers. All the employees work for sub-minimum wage in order to support the theater's existence. I have a lot of fun working there.

Sorry for being so wordy. I love strolling down memory lane.

Cheers,
Loonette

[DivideOverflow]

Worst:
Movie Theater during highschool. I loved getting to watch movies for free (which was why I applied), but I was probably the only person who worked there that had a chance of going to college. It was really bad, I had to do all the hard stuff because no one else could remember (or figure out) how to do anything. So I basically did a little of everything. I had to run the projectors, fix any problems with registers, start the popcorn machine for the idiots, and still had to clean the theaters and take tickets. I worked there for one summer. It was like $7 an hour, and it felt like a waste of time.

Best: Engineering for Progress Energy Florida. I started as a summer intern, and did that for 3 summers. Each summer, they move you to a different engineering department so you can get an idea of what each one is like. You also make a lot of contacts and get a lot of experience that way. Now I work there part time during the year while I am in school. It is great! My boss is flexible with my hours, and I get off work when I need to study for tests or do homework.

This summer I'm working in the same department I am now, but not really as an intern. I have enough experience now where I'm doing real engineering work (the same stuff the engineer I work for is doing). It pays great too for a college student, $20+ an hour. It is beneficial to both parties, they get a "cheap" engineer, and I get a job that pays well and has good experience.

[BuzZz]

Worst job....

Making and shipping strawbales for racehorses in Japan. Seriously. Still can't figure out how or why this made money.

12 of us would stand outside in -30 weather with a 3-sided hoarding trapping the dust in our breathing air. Moldy hay dust... it was horrid.

We would take old, moldy round bales the owners bought for next to nothing, run them though a round baler backwards to unravel them, feed that into a square baler and make square(actually rectangular) bales. Then we had a machine that would take 1 and a half 'square' bales, compress that into an actual square 12"X12", bind them and then take 10 of those and hydraulically shove then into a shipping container, 10 rows high. 10 of these bales were wider than the container so they put lots of stress on the container, about 1 in 3 containers would burst about 2/3's full and blow straw all over hell's half acre.

Both balers were older than Moses and constantly broke down, plus running the round baler backwards is something it was never built to do. When they broke, the owners would come out of their heated office and scream at us until we had them fixed.

The place finally burned down one night due to a spark from the round baler falling into the piles of straw dust laying everywhere and smoldering away. Thank God. I needed a job, but that was beyond sanity.

Sev, you know that old barn/storage yard located on Hiway 16 and Cloverbar road? That was where the original barn/hoarding was. They put up that rickety metal shed on the ashes of that hellhole.

Best Job?

Still waiting on that.

[flynrider]

Best job : I'm stumped. I never one that I really enjoyed.

Worst job : It's a tie.

Cowboy : Making hornless steers out of young bulls. Not fun, and difficult to stomach at first.

Plumbing supply warehouse : Spending day after day picking up 21 ft. joints of steel pipe that had been baking in the desert sun and carrying them out to plumbers' trucks. You could get burned less juggling flatirons for a living.

[oldnslo]

Best Job: I never really loved it enough, but I was a sales rep in the electrical supply biz for about 35 years. New company car every other year, nice expense account, golf with customers can be addictive, and the pay was good, too. Best part was seldom spending time in the office. Occasionally called on customers on my bike.

Worst Job: Working at a lumber yard in freshman year of college, delivering sheetrock and lumber to construction sites without unloader on truck, carrying on my back through the mud.

[iav8]

Best Job: Snowboarding Instructor: working outside 6 days a week all winter; great excesize, almost everyone you deal with is happy and it is usually easy to make the unhappy ones happy. It doesn't pay much but when you aren't teaching you get to ride! I'll be out there again next winter.

Worst Job: Summer job on an engine production line: I made a lot of money that summer but it was boring and dirty. Worst of all, the first week on the job my foreman warned me that if I don't slow down some of my fellow union workers would be on my case... I was given limits for each machine that I was supposed stay under. It is frustrating to not be permitted to do the best job that I can.