Best & Worst Jobs

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
No this isn't about Steve.

It's about the best & worst jobs you've ever had..

Sometimes we never know what is our worst or best job was / is until we've left well behind. At least that's been the case for me.

So for what its worth....



BEST JOB...

Working as a gardener in the Botanical gardens...

It paid shit money..but was such fun....kinda of my "garden of eden" type job..& I didn't know it till years after I left it.....yeah..good times...



WORST JOB.....

Cutting tail shafts for Chrysler cars @ the age of 14.. Tough F-wit 4 a boss & 40 hour shifts for less than unemployment money..

It taught me some real tough lessons as well as nearly taking two of my fingers off on the cutter..



Hated that job but took it on to help Mom & Dad raise the rest of us kids..tough. times..

but that's life..no complaints.

Somehow I reckon the good & the bad jobs shape us, toughen us up as well as make us compassionate for others...



What about you folks ?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 9
    trumptmantrumptman Posts: 16,464member
    Do you mean to include career type jobs or just entry level type stuff? I have mostly enjoyed all my teaching assignments.



    Best job aside from that was a tie. 1) Delivering pizza in a vehicle that is not your own truck. I worked for a Domino's that had two trucks since they couldn't hire enough people to use their own vehicles. I really enjoyed seeing how fast I could hit a freeway offramp and still manage to stop at the bottom. Terrible thing for transmissions though. 1.1) Disneyland, working for Disneyland in college was pretty cool. The only downside was having to insure you always shave. (Very hard for me) Otherwise you worked in a happy place, got paid well over minimum, and they washed your uniform for you too. When you add in the free admission to all parks Disney and the 12 free admissions you can give out to friends and family ($50x12, pretty decent benefit for basically "cashier")



    Worst job? Direct care staff at a home for children with CP. I enjoyed the kids and caring a ton, but there were some medical things there I just could never force myself to do and sleep with myself at night. Some of the boys were adult-size and you are expected to care for them with bathing and things of that nature. They were pretty much fully immobilized because of CP. I was very good at lifting, feeding, playing, talking, etc. I was tolerable at bathing (yes that is the whole body there folks), clean up (poop and pee, etc) and meds.



    I COULD NOT ever work up the will to give these guys their suppositories. Someone else had to do that because I could not shove things up people's butts. Sorry my failing as human, my weakest link, my fear factor and yes I will be voted off the damn island. No I couldn't put suppositories up 15-16 year old disabled boy's butts.



    Nick
  • Reply 2 of 9
    aquafireaquafire Posts: 2,758member
    [QUOTE]Originally posted by trumptman

    [B]Do you mean to include career type jobs or just entry level type stuff? I have mostly enjoyed all my teaching assignments.





    Yep..I went on to become a teacher/ lecturer...loved the teaching. especially seeing the lights come on in students eyes..that was a buzz..but I hated the politics & paper chasing triplicate stuff for even basics like chalk...sheesh.....



    "Disneyland, working for Disneyland in college was pretty cool."



    I think Steve jobs worked @ Disney for a while or am I imagining this......re the book " Insanely Great "



    Worst job?



    "I couldn't put suppositories up 15-16 year old disabled boy's butts."



    Ooosh ..seriously gross... I don't want this to be a pissing contest, but seriously...... that's a tough one: Nick...



    Ps I'm suprised so few have picked this thread..probably most think it sucks..or haven't had shit jobs...



    Come on ..doesn't anyone work any more?





    \
  • Reply 3 of 9
    rokrok Posts: 3,519member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by aquafire

    Ps I'm suprised so few have picked this thread..probably most think it sucks..or haven't had shit jobs...



    Come on ..doesn't anyone work any more? \




    it's not that i don't have a job, i just son't think i can nominate any job as being "best" yet. they've all kinda sucked, but some have been better than others, relatively speaking. but i am young, so i gotta think i'll eventually stumble into something great.



    if i get up the urge, i'll relate my past jobs... just don't feel like rehashing them now. \
  • Reply 4 of 9
    the only bad job i ever had was hauling newspapers in the middle of the night from moline illinois, to muscatine iowa. in the course of 6 months i was hit by two snowplows and hit one rather large buck.



    my best job was a record store i ran at the corner of farwell and brady, (called mainstream) in milwaukee. it was next to a really huge shop called the exclusive. my owner just gave me free reign because he thought the store was a lost cause, in fact he had already refused to sign a lease, and we were on a month to month deal with the owner of the building.

    anyway i turned it into a pretty nifty used/jazz/r&b shop that turned out to be pretty successful, plus we were a ticketmaster outlet (which is pretty fun), a bunch of the bucks used to shop there, i was really proud of what we'd achieved, then the owner of the building met someone from starbucks and ...well you know the rest.....
  • Reply 5 of 9
    stunnedstunned Posts: 1,096member
    I work as a trainee auditor in an audit firm when I was serving my university attachment. It was so bad that I told myself I will never become an auditor.



    All I do is to look at invoices and invoices and invoices and invoices..... Arrgh!!!
  • Reply 6 of 9
    shetlineshetline Posts: 4,695member
    Best job:

    A job where I was writing educational software, and had an incredible degree of creative freedom for how I designed and implemented the software. I collaborated with interesting, educated people on the goals of the software, got input along the way about what I was creating, but I was the sole programmer for my particular projects (save one occasion when another programmer helped out on a particular module.) No need to create UML diagrams, PowerPoint slides, Gant charts, or any of that other anal-retentive busywork.



    This was all Mac programming, too, and as an added bonus I telecommuted most of the time -- I only was in the office typically for part of a day once or maybe twice a week.



    Worst job(s):

    I'd say these two are a tie -- both temp jobs from the same temp agency, however. (1) Cleaning a printing press. (2) Endlessly unstapling, photocopying, and restapling box after box after box, day after day after day, for some health food chain that must have been undergoing some sort of audit.



    Worst sort of possible future job in my current profession:

    If my concept of being a software engineer came from what it sounds like a lot of other people's software jobs are like, I think I might have opted instead for a career as a park ranger, or a waiter, or maybe even a ditch digger.



    This is what I'd hate: 3-6 months at a time of creating silly ball-and-stick diagrams, pretending that you're going to plan your way to success, and that all that will be left when you're done with your pretty pictures is "merely writing the code". Lots and lots of long, long meetings showing PowerPoint slides, discussing said ball-and-stick diagrams, and generally posing and preening to show how clever, how forward thinking, how duly cautious, how security-conscious, etc. you are to management and your fellow programmers. All of this followed by the mad crunch-time of 80-hour weeks when you've got 1-2 months left to code, and nothing's going right because requirements keep shifting beneath your feet and your pretty diagrams turn out to have very little to do with making real software work.
  • Reply 7 of 9
    rokrok Posts: 3,519member
    okay, after some thought, i realize i can categorize "worst of the worst..."



    i was 20 years old, back in Tampa, Florida with my parents from college for Christmas break. Unfortunately, we were so broke, I had to work full-time for two weeks as a temp security guard during that break. The utter bottom was when I was stuck working the graveyard shift at, no joke, a gravel yard, in a shack no bigger than a phone booth, on Christmas Eve. It was raining, about 40º F, I had a small portable heater to try to keep warm and dry, and was listening to "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer on an a.m. radio at around midnight, just before i had to go walk the grounds and turn keys at checkpoints, just to prove i didn't sleep through my shift. and all, of course, for minimum wage.



    It was at that point that I swore to myself that I would never get to that low of a point again in my professional life.



    p.s. since this day, i have NEVER given any security guard crap. it's jobs like these that no one else wants, but at least they're trying. it may have sucked as a job, but i met a lot of good, honest and hard-working guys (and girls) at these jobs.
  • Reply 8 of 9
    fangornfangorn Posts: 323member
    Best Job: that's easy, the one I have now. I'm self-employed. My husband and I own/operate our own Desktop Publishing Service. And we make a pretty good living at it, I might add.



    Worst job? Hmm. Well I have two that probably qualify although I didn't last long at either of them. First one was when I was about 18. I was already working at Target (which I liked) and going to college, but I thought I needed more money so I got a second job working at Domino's Pizza. I lasted two days. And I stuck with just one job.



    The other was right after college. I was hired as an assistant manager at Taco Bell. I don't know why I even applied for such a job once I had my degree; I think I was just scared at the thought of not being able to find a job. Anyway, I started two days before graduation. The day after graduation, when I was supposed to go back to Taco Bell, I decided that I had not worked my butt off for four years to wear polyester and serve fast food. I never went back (although I did dump the uniforms off at the back door one night\ ). I found a real job in less than a week and stayed at that job for about 3 years.



    Otherwise, I have enjoyed my other jobs, which is probably pretty evident by the fact that I haven't had that many.
  • Reply 9 of 9
    rokrok Posts: 3,519member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Fangorn

    Best Job: that's easy, the one I have now. I'm self-employed. My husband and I own/operate our own Desktop Publishing Service. And we make a pretty good living at it, I might add.



    Hey, Fangorn. Check your PM's. I have a favour to ask.
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