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I've done some pretty hard jobs to make ends meet in my younger days..some backbreaking with endless hours and others utterly disgusting. However, I'm a man who loves to work hard. I simply did what I had to do.
The worst job I had wasn't necessarily "hard", but just loaded with politics and that was at Office Max. Not only did I have to deal with many whiny customers, but store politics and backstabbing co-workers. If you had more than a 5 minute conversation with a member of the opposite sex, you were sleeping together seriously. That's how petty this place was.
In short, I don't mind the actual physical labor or hard work, per se, but when you mix in people, bs and politics, that makes a job "bad". Hope I answered your question.
I don't know that any of my jobs were bad. I've always enjoyed the work itself. But I've worked with people who made jobs hellish.
I'd say the most enlightening was with a financial firm. Good grief, the things millionaires whine about. And the way they treat the people who help make them rich is disgusting. Then again, the people who help make them rich aren't all that, either, because they're part of the same game, which I call GreedQuest. As Dorothy Parker once said, "If you want to know what God thinks of money, look at the people he gave it to."
I used to work at Circuit city where you were forced to stand 10-12 hrs a day and have to deal with annoying backstabbing co-workers always tried to steal your customers .
This was a draw vs commission base and if you didnt make enough commission you would make very little.
The only time i made any money was during the holidays.
My experience and forte is the construction industry. The worst job I've ever had was Regional Customer Service Manager for a national home builder. I pretty much handled homes that were in litigation. It's amazing just how bad some of the national home builders can build a home and expect the folks who bought into their company can treat their homeowners. Obviously I won't say the company name but they are still around. The biggest issue I had with them was they would string the homeowner out as long as possible knowing full well they are going to have to fix the issues. I've had them hand me houses that required piers, new kitchen cabinets,, new flooring from the repairs, regrade the lot for drainage, relandscape, repair all drywall cracks, repair or replace broken brick, and the job must be complete in a week. That's kicking subs 24 hours a day to get the work done and obviously a sub is not going to do his best work at 2AM after putting a 10 hour day before. In mt area at one time they sold over 3000 homes a year. Now it's less than 300. Best job though was Director of Quality Control for the 5th largest home builder in Texas. We made LOTS of changes and by the time the owner decided to sell the company, we closed some of the best houses in the State.
There were no benefits, no nothing like that, but thats not the worst.
You had no set schedule. What they would do, is negotiate some contract to inventory a retail location, and then call a crew up the night or morning of when it was supposed to be inventoried, and expect you to show up, rain/snow/sleet, who cares. The jobs usually lasted 2-4 hours.
I did that job about 3 weeks and I was done after they expected me to drive 30 miles to do a two hour job, on solid ice roads. Told them to shove it, and turned in my "belt" the next day.
I've done some pretty hard jobs to make ends meet in my younger days..some backbreaking with endless hours and others utterly disgusting. However, I'm a man who loves to work hard. I simply did what I had to do.
The worst job I had wasn't necessarily "hard", but just loaded with politics and that was at Office Max. Not only did I have to deal with many whiny customers, but store politics and backstabbing co-workers. If you had more than a 5 minute conversation with a member of the opposite sex, you were sleeping together seriously. That's how petty this place was.
In short, I don't mind the actual physical labor or hard work, per se, but when you mix in people, bs and politics, that makes a job "bad". Hope I answered your question.
That's exactly the answer I was looking for. Physical labor usually isn't hard overall, and in the instances that it is, you can use tools or some way of making the job easier. It's the micromanaging and the BS you described that make jobs difficult or in a lot of cases unbearable. I'm not surprised at you saying that Office Max was a nightmare; as a customer I find OMX to be another American corporatosaurus that's going to drop over like a stuck pig. Once I tried to find a cheap pencil sharpener in their store and only found a model that cost $3 but looked like it cost maybe $0.30 to make and didn't work. I didn't even bother to return it but I can agree with you on them sucking. What kind of office supply/business store doesn't even sell basic business equipment anyways?
There were no benefits, no nothing like that, but thats not the worst.
You had no set schedule. What they would do, is negotiate some contract to inventory a retail location, and then call a crew up the night or morning of when it was supposed to be inventoried, and expect you to show up, rain/snow/sleet, who cares. The jobs usually lasted 2-4 hours.
I did that job about 3 weeks and I was done after they expected me to drive 30 miles to do a two hour job, on solid ice roads. Told them to shove it, and turned in my "belt" the next day.
I assume that this is RGIS you're talking about. I'm not surprised that they suck too!
Even though I also had my share of not-so-great jobs, still, I consider the few times I was jobless for several months as the worst. Having no job was worse than the worst job I ever had.
Are you still a CPA? I'm planning on going into accounting. My mother is an accountant and has worked with some catty people as well.
I'm an accountant, not a CPA. I'm eligible to take the exam but I'm seriously considering getting out of the field, primarily because of the people I have had the misfortune of working with at all three of my accounting jobs. Most of them are miserable, bitter people who like to take out their frustration on other people. If you sit at your desk and concentrate on your work all day, you aren't a "team player." You get all sorts of nasty comments. I can't tell you how many openly rude co-workers I have dealt with over the years. I guess I'm just not very good at the corporate game.
Besides, accounting is incredibly boring and tedious. The subject matter was interesting to me in college, but once you do it in the real world, it gets old VERY fast. I'm there for a paycheck and nothing else.
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seriously. That's how petty this place was.
