"Adventureland" - What Was Your Worst Job Ever? (Our Staff Weighs In)
Adventureland is one of those great, funny and fun movies that somehow managed to fly below the radar this year. Our reviewer called it "A sweet and slap-happy mix of indie coming-of-age drama and Judd Apatow’s scatological but heartfelt manchild comedies...a winning look at the pleasures and frustrations of dead-end jobs and
teenage kicks as viewed through a filter of mid-‘80s pop culture". As someone who has had, count 'em - 27 jobs in 14 years - I can relate to working a crappy "what the heck am I doing here?" job. And while plenty of them were just about as miserable as you can imagine, there have been a handful over the years that made an impression, long after I clocked out. I admit that I'm kind of the biggest sucker in the world for a coming-of-age tale, regardless of whether it happens at 11, 19, 24 or 60, but that's what I love about this movie. It's made me remember those long hours where I was berated by mean customers, or left stinking of fried fish for days after, or locked in a dusty file room for 8 hours straight - kind of fondly, or at least in an "I'm so grateful I went through that to get me here" sort of way.
So after this long walk down memory lane, I started getting curious about what some of the folks I work side by side with were doing before making their way to Amazon. Here are some of my favorite responses to the following question - "What was your worst job?" Read them, feel better about your own crappy work history, and tell me - what was your worst job?
Lisanne:
Mind-numbing job post college when economy was crap (and pay was even crappier). Log expense reports into database. 10 key. Repeat all day long until you want to poke out your eyes.
Job perks: Feel like you are permanently stuck in Office Space. Get told you are a slow filer and asked if you have “medical issues”. Get whopping $0.05/hour raises and pretend to be excited about that and your “future career”.
Kirk:
As a temp I had to paint the inside of a machine shop and got electrocuted. Went to work the next day; my mom owned the temp agency. I also worked in a potpourri factory and spilled the concentrated liquid all over me. I can’t go near a Crabtree & Evelyn.
Amanda:
Children’s gymnastic coach. Before you get all warm and fuzzy- picture 15 screaming 5 & 6 year olds on trampolines, foam pits, and balance beams; fighting with each other, ignoring me, and me trying to make sure they don’t break their necks while their parents watch from a balcony overhead.
Meredith B.:
I was a waitress, which sounds fairly boring, but the kicker is I was required to wear a bolo tie and a denim shirt. You can imagine how pretty that made me feel.
And the winner of the Amazon Movies Very Worst Job Award goes to...
Sara:
I’ve held my silence for long enough, but my true identity (for about 2 months) was the bird at Red Robin - Red, he really has a name. It was horrible, you could only be out in the restaurant getting poked and stepped on by little kids for 15-20 minutes at a time- at which point you would overheat and the staff would waddle you back to the huge meat freezer to cool off and start all over again. Perk: free steak fries and soda.
Daniel on June 29, 2009 at 10:57 PM
Love this. Kisses to "Red"!
angela on June 29, 2009 at 11:38 PM
27 jobs? Kraiky woman! Nice post. Can't wait to see the movie.
katie on June 30, 2009 at 08:35 AM
My worst job ever, seasonal ham pusher at a Honey Baked Ham store at Christmastime. LONG LONG hours, lines out the door and around the block by 5 am of people insane to get the perfect Christmas ham, and coming home every evening with arms aching from lifting 20 pound pork over and over for 10 hours and smelling of ham and brown sugar (not as sexy as it sounds, trust me). I actually did this two Christmases in a row.
This movie, and this blog entry made me think about a song by the band Slow Runner called "Moody Suburban Teenage Love Song," the perfect song about being young and working a lame job and longing for love. Check it out.
iowahawk on June 30, 2009 at 04:30 PM
I grew up on an Iowa pig farm, with a confinement barn that held around 150 hogs. Simply put, pigs are liquid excrement machines, and thus their quarters must be cleaned frequently. Between the ages of 10 and 17 one of my jobs was to clean the concrete floor with a broom-handled scraper. In the winter it would turn to a slippery, crystaline-liquid pigcrap slushie, and more than a few times I took a whoopsie-back slam splash right into it. Believe me, there is no known bath soap on this planet capable of getting that smell out. I used Lava. Keep in mind this was my dad's farm, so I didn't even have the option of quitting.
Long story short, the experience prompted me to eagerly pursue career opportunities in the exciting Not-Pig-Farming field. And if you're curious: yes, I eat bacon. Not because I like it -- for revenge.
Sgt. Mom on June 30, 2009 at 04:37 PM
My worst job ever is the one that I have now, in a phone-bank run by a company which will remain nameless, taking reservations for a hotel chain which will also remain nameless, with a branch in a city which shall also remain nameless ... hey, I hate it with a purple passion; the company, the client, the hotel chain (I have sworn a blood-oath never to set foot into one of their properties ever again, or ever visit the city in which my specific specialty is located...)... and I even hate a lot of the clients, especially the ones who mumble, are calling from a cell-phone with crappy service, don't have their account number handy and haven't read the fine-print. Or are drunk. Or deaf. Or as thick as an oak plank.
Fortunately, I only do this part-time and to support my books. After all, one doesn't actually deliberately quit a craptacular job in this economy - not of the hours are reliable.
I may yet run out of there screaming ... anyone want to buy advance tickets?
Tom W. on June 30, 2009 at 04:37 PM
Door-to-door framed prints salesman at strip malls. Pushing heroic deer or elk, mountainous landscapes, Native American warriors, fly fishermen, sunsets, time exposures of cities at night. We barged into offices, ignoring the "NO SOLICITORS" signs, and pitched our horrible, tacky prints as the prospected customers demanded we leave before they called the cops.
Minimum wage; endless confrontations; success rate of less than 1 percent; and trapped in a van all day with a monologist who suffered from halitosis and uncontrollable flatulence.
Maybe cleaning streets with your tongue would be worse, but I don't know.
Tom W. on June 30, 2009 at 04:38 PM
Prospective customers, not prospected. Dammit.
Mark Eckenrode on June 30, 2009 at 04:46 PM
Working at a funeral home in high school. Cleaning the embalming room was always a challenge, and driving a hearse at 17 was a little disheartening.
Foobarista on June 30, 2009 at 04:57 PM
My worst job was probably my most educational job: working for my uncle doing interstate furniture hauling. I got to see the country, one truck stop and warehouse at a time.
The really fun part was loading and unloading houses in the deep South in the height of summer. I learned to dread big houses owned by little old ladies. Those beautiful antiques are fricking heavy. And I nearly got killed in a place called Stuttgart, AR, when an air-raid siren went off just as I was going up the truck ramp carrying one end of a massive solid-oak bureau. (It was "only" a test...)
That job convinced me that I better get with the program, go to a college, and study something where I didn't have to wreck my back daily for crap wages.
But I got to see much of the country, so I'm glad I did it.
Mikey on June 30, 2009 at 05:00 PM
I spent a year working in a factory that made redwood lawn furniture. I worked in the packing department which doesn't sound too bad but that's where the furniture got stained (redwood certainly doesn't get that lovely red-brown hue naturally). Staining involved dipping the pieces in a monstrous tank filled with a combination of mineral spirits and iron oxide (i.e. rust). It also smelled awful. Uniform of the day was a rubber apron that ran from the collar to the top of rubber boots, and rubber gloves that extended just far enough up the arm so that if you slipped on the wet floor they wouldn't quite keep from filling up with the stain. Once that stuff got on your skin it would stain you until you got new skin. The only thing that took it off was liquid toilet bowl cleaner. That is even less fun than it sounds since we consistently had splinters in our hands. Ouchies.
It could have been worse--one time, my buddy sawed his hand clean off. Double ouchies.
Buford Gooch on June 30, 2009 at 05:01 PM
Crappy job? I worked one summer in a steel mill. For a very short period, I had the job of re-bricking the furnaces. The first time I was to go in, they gave me an asbestos coat, asbestos gloves, an asbestos hood, and two inch wooden cleats. I asked them how long I was to stay in the furnace before taking a break (they had just poured molten steel out of it). They said, "You'll know." I was in the furnace, pulling out the bricks used to line it and putting them in a container, sweating furiously. I smelled wood smoke. I looked down, and flames were rising on my wooden cleats. It was time for a break.
Joan of Argghh! on June 30, 2009 at 05:07 PM
I enjoy work, and can make the most of almost any job, waitress, press operator, call center for a Major Brand of beer (college kids crank-calling all the time). It's not usually the job, but the insane managers that ruin a job for me. But the worst ever in my long, long career was just this past April, working as a legal clerk for a Tax Attorney's office. Truly, truly horrid, miserable human beings that were a puzzlement to me, had me sitting in with clients reviewing their receipts and I'm not even a law student or accountant. I mean, I could do it, but really I wasn't getting paid diddly for doing their job! But when they started throwing files at me, well, time to go.
I quit! on June 30, 2009 at 05:08 PM
I've done the waitress thing. Someone once sh!t their pants in the mens room and the customers wanted ME to go in there and clean it up. Tip be damned, I said no. I've done the bartender thing Tie for worst memory: (1) 8 year old girl calling the bar at 1AM on a Tuesday...looking for her mommy, and (2) got into work-related argument with boss's alcoholic wife. Boss yelled at her. Next day she came in with a black eye. But nothing can compare to my brief tenure as the once-a-week cleaning lady in people's homes. The worst: a family of heavy smokers, one of whom had an intestinal problem. Whenever I wiped the TV, the paper towel turned a dark rust color. (This was EVERY week). And, the toilet. Dear God. To this day, I choke back vomit just thinking about it.
Faith+1 on June 30, 2009 at 05:14 PM
I worked one summer as a septic tank repairman's assistant. It was, literally, a crap job. I shoveled crap out of crush sewer lines, mopped out plugged septic tanks and learned not to puke no matter how horrible the smell.
It's been 25 years and still the smell lingers.
TL on June 30, 2009 at 05:18 PM
While in college I spent several summers working in the freezer tunnels at a frozen vegetable packing plant. Nothing quite like spending your August shoveling snow and chipping ice at -30 degree temps and 30 MPH winds. At the lunchtime break you would have to go in there with a fire hose to melt as much ice as possible in 20 minutes before the freezer came back on. Take too long and all that water would freeze to the floor so you'd get to spend the rest of the shift walking on ice.
All that for the wonder wage of $7.27/hour.
Dust Bunny Queen on June 30, 2009 at 05:41 PM
For several summers I worked in the apricot orchards of the Santa Clara valley. All gone now and covered with asphalt and tan stucco boxes.
Aaaaanway. My job was to cut the pits out of the apricots and place them on the wooden flats to be later smoked with sulphur and set out to dry. The Mexican guys who were picking would bring buckets and buckets for us to pit, cut out the bad spots. In the beginning of the season it wasn't so bad standing on your feet in the dirt in the hot sun for hours at a time, but later.....the 'cots got really soft, slightly rotten, covered with blue green mold that stank and maggoty. The buckets that we put the pits and ick into were called slop buckets. In addition the super ripe 'cots attracted wasps and all kinds of flies that you had to swat away along with the Mexican guys who wanted to grope us girls.
Every year I would swear that I would never eat a dried apricot again. I still love them and eat REAL California Dried Apricots whenever I can.
ConservaDad on June 30, 2009 at 05:46 PM
Summer of 1968, car dealer, (brand-state-city omitted to protect the guilty). I was the car wash and oil change boy. Sons of dealer went to baseball games in nearby city, not driving dealer tag vehicle, they took new ones off the lot with the speedos disconnected. Brought them back filthy with cigar smoke & liquor stains and wanted me to have them looking like new for customers in 2 - 3 hours. Wash bay faced due west, afternoon sun made it 110+ every afternoon. Dealership decided to add AC to the showroom that summer, not central AC but a huge window unit with the hot end blowing out into - you guessed it - the wash bay! Afternoons went to 125 - 135+ after that. Advantage? 1 beer gave me a really great buzz! All for the princely sum of $1.15/hr. Boss wanted us to move sons to another city to set up another dealership. We started at 6a on friday, loaded one house, drove 250 miles and unloaded, slept 4 hrs in back of truck at 90+ degrees, drove back 250 miles loaded another house, drove 250 miles and unloaded, slept in truck, home at 1A Mon and back to work at 7a. Got $100 for the weekend which was over 2 weeks reg. pay. Thought I was rich - bought my first car for $200 at the end of the summer and said a FOND farewell to the car business!
lutonmoore on June 30, 2009 at 05:56 PM
My worst was right out of high school. Pulling boards coming off the line at a sawmill, ten hours a day (and 7-12 on Saturday). Then stacking them on a small railroad loader-car. It was fair money, but it was the essence of mind-numbing. Hard, hot work. Good thing about it though, it showed me how hard some people have to work in this life. And it drove me to join the Service! And thank God I did.
Keith on June 30, 2009 at 06:33 PM
Working graveyard at a convience store. Obnoxious drunks wanting to buy beer after 2am, clueless drunks getting berr out of the unit one at a time,then stepping on the bottles. getting robbed three times in the last frou months I was there. It was a steady and unpleasant escalation. First time, he had a knife, second gut had a pistol, third guy had a shotgun. I left before the guy with a RPG could come in. My employer was also skimming the insurance from my paychecks. Got the deduction, but not the insurance.
SukieTawdry on June 30, 2009 at 06:38 PM
Cleaning the latrines at Girl Scout camp.
MarkC on June 30, 2009 at 06:41 PM
Giddings & Lewis. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
Eric on June 30, 2009 at 06:52 PM
Painting the eyeballs on fishing lures, also my shortest lived job: 8 hours.
Fat Man on June 30, 2009 at 07:00 PM
I want all of you to stop complaining about your jobs.
Fat Man on June 30, 2009 at 07:01 PM
Uggh. Link didn't take. Go to this web site before you stop complaining.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4954
Tcl on June 30, 2009 at 07:34 PM
I worked at a small town franchise of a famous fast food chain in college one summer. The restaurant used big clamshell grills to cook the burgers; we laid the frozen burgers on the superhot grill, closed the top down, and flash-cooked them to readiness in little more than a minute. We'd turn them off at close and if you were on kitchen duty, you had to scrape the grease and burnt meat off. The cleaning liquid got very hot and would run over and into the puny gloves we were issued. I had new blisters on top of old blisters over all my fingers every single day and every night I got home and put my fingers on ice until they stopped hurting. But that was only second worst.
The worst was as a customer service rep for a local furniture chain. The store delivered furniture and had a huge backlog of customers who had rejected all or part of a delivery, then rejected all or part of future deliveries, to the point where the store didn't know if they had all of what they ordered or not. I got to call them and ask them about it. I couldn't just ask them if we still owed them furniture, so I had to be polite and investigative all while dealing with their anger and insults towards the store and me. I haven't been the subject of so much concentrated invective before or since. I did that for two summers and two holidays; when I finally told my manager I would not be back for the following summer, he seemed genuinely surprised.