Your First Job & Your Worst Job

[Tequila Cowboy]

Saw an article on this today and thought I'd throw it out there. I bet we have some interesting ones around here.

First Job:

McDonalds as a 15 year old. Worked for them off and on for years. Was a store manager at 19 before I went to college. A guy was quoted in the article that working at McDonalds taught him "patience and not to take life too seriously". He definitely worked at a different Mickey D's then because fast food folks take themselves very seriously. I spent time as a Burger King Manager and District Manager later on and once had a boss tell me that fast food managers were more important than doctors and we could never take vacations or be out of touch from our jobs. "Visualize burgers and fries" when you wake up every morning he would say. Ummm no thank you.

Worst Job:

The summer after I graduated college I worked with my college roommate at a large ceiling fan warehouse. It was a hot summer and we had to unload truckloads of ceiling fans a few times a week. On the days without a truck the supervisor had us move the contents of the warehouse from one side of the warehouse to the other and then back again in the afternoon to keep us busy. All this in 100 plus degree heat most of the time. There were only three of us me, my buddy and a year round Mexican guy called Juan (they only kept one employee through the winters). One day I went in to work and the supervisor fired me because me and my buddy were "intimidating Juan" by working too hard and that he couldn't have Juan quitting on him since we were temporary guys only. He also asked my buddy not to try so hard and take his time more. He said the moving of the warehouse from one side or the other should take all day not half a day. Yeah, good times.

[dime in the gutter]

first job. loader boy for a crop duster.

worst job. loader boy for a crop duster.

best job. loader boy for a crop duster.

working in the pit.

[cortez the killer]

Nobody told me it'd be easy
Or for that matter it'd be so hard
But it's the livin' and the learnin'
It makes the difference, it makes it all worthwhile

[GW in IA]

First job other than paperboy and a few farm chore related diversions was attendant at a gas station/garage. Boring as hell, but I figured out really early that I could sell myself beer at the end of my shifts. Then I figured out that when my buddies came in looking to buy beer, I could just sell it to them, put it out in the car wash, send them through,and delay the wash until they had loaded up

Worst job was in my second year of college, I worked in a weird little gift shop in a mall. (Teddy bears inside of balloons were big ) but the real shine on this apple was the many trips around town as a singing/balloon carrying gorilla. And one time... Swear to God... They tried to dress me like a Chippendale dancer and send me to a birthday party(I can't decide which emoticon works best here!) I put on the whole get up the day before and decided nobody else needed to see that. EVER. Thats not when I quit, but it did speed my decision along.

[ScottyC]

First was as an elf for Santa at the mall over Xmas. Really wasn't too bad, milfs abound and didn't have to wear tights. This lead to me being asked to be the Easter bunny a few months later, which again wasn't bad especially when folks came up that I knew but didn't know it was me in there..........maybe he does know everything! The job took a turn when I was asked to find a friend to help, which I did. He was doing fine until one busy Saturday a kid pissed on him, which he response was to remove the helmet/mask immediately in the middle of the mall. Every child at Haywood mall that Saturday was scarred for a while.

Worst job: ironically I had this job at the same time I had my favorite job. I was working during the days at a record store with my to this day best friends (complete high fidelity), but I had to get money for college soi started working third shift at a place called The Muffin Ma'am. We made the coffee cake type pastries that were sold at grocery stores. The problem was working third shift and the eggs, dear god the fucking eggs. We would have to put all the ingredients in to huge mixers which included the eggs. There would be a pallet with a 4ft square plastic container with a nozzle that would be open for the eggs to come out. They were already cracked but would just glug glug glug into the buckets, because the recipe would call for 3 buckets of eggs. I swore off eggs for a long time and there would always be runoff or drizzle that would start to go bad and smell.........dear god the eggs

[Zip City]

First job: volunteered as a docent at a local museum (a mansion and adjoining chapel).

First paying job: Wendy's in high school

Worst job: Camelot music at Lincoln Square Mall in Chicago. Terrible company, almost no training, overpriced CD's, and after 3 months, they store was down-sized and no one was relocated. Fuck that store

[bovine knievel]

First job: stock boy for a local clothing store.

Worst job: too much teeth

[Smitty]

First job - doing residential remodeling for my uncle
Worst job - physically, it would be either roofing or working on the pipeline, but neither one of those compares to working at a college bookstore. Fuck that shit.

[LBRod]

First - church janitor. Those kids pee everywhere.

Worst - picking grapes

[Iowan]

First: picking rock on my family's farm

Worst: working sales at a shoe store in college. I couldn't stand the rape-the-customer-when-they-walk-in-the-door sales approach that the company took, and I heard from tons of folks that they hated shopping at Tradehome shoe stores. I only stayed there a month or two, because I realized I could make just as much money donating plasma as I could with the hours I was putting in there, and I could study while I did it. Every night I got off work at the shoe store, I would come home and drink until I passed out. I hated that fucking job.

[pearlysnaps]

First job: gas-jockey, light-duty mechanic, heavy equipment greaser, fuel truck loader and all around bitch boy at a service station whose owner also dabbled in fuel oil, various backhoe-related jobs, sporting goods, propane, etc. I learned a ton on this job, but the 12-hour days wore on my 15-16 year old self.

Worst was probable working as line-supplier, fork lift operator, utility bitch boy at an adult diaper factory. This was over the summer after I graduated college. I worked long, sweltering days, always asking for overtime and extra shifts. Lots of fun pranks to pull, like putting the absorbing gel in a coworker's water bottle, which would be gel the next time it was hoisted, wearing the Xxl diapers (whose waist size went up to 54") as capes, being asked to baptise a coworker in the diaper testing station, etc. It was a long summer, but that's how I scared up the loot to move to New York, so it was all worth it.

[The Black Canary]

First job-waitress at an Bickfords, while in high school-the apron and hat just made all my coolness even well cooler

Worse job-best job taking care of my mother as she was dying...

[cortez the killer]

First job: stock boy for a local clothing store.

Worst job: too much teeth

The doors that stock boy must've opened for you...

[Jonicont]

First Job

Summer 1967, 13 yo, Messenger at Lincoln Graphic Arts. Meat packing district (no jokes please) in downtown Manhattan. Very chi chi now but back then was all cobblestone streets slippery with animal fat and smelled horendous. My neighbor Andy ran the mail room. They printed ad paste ups for magazines and periodicals. I'd make 2 runs a day, arms laden with large manilla envelopes, delivering the final product and picking up the new stuff. Hot and dirty subway (one line was air conditioned at that time) twice a day. My favorite stops were Cosmopolitan (always hot models) and the Village Voice (braless hippy chicks). Andy told the guys on the loading dock "watch out for the kid" so of course I learned to shoot craps and was given a switchblade and instructed how to use it. Between runs, I would package the books for their mail order business, you know, those ads that were in the back of Playboy. Coffe table sized books of playboy nudes, 101 positions of sexual intercourse (illustrated), vintage erotica, Kama Sutra (illustrated), and a bunch of books by this guy Marquis de Sade. Needless to say, I got quite an education that summer (I've always been an avid reader).

Worst job

Summer 1972, Biomedical lab. This was before they had automated machines running lab tests. I had the urine station. Opening hundreds of bottles of urine a day and dipping in a reagent strip. No gloves. Urine all over my hands all day

[Duke Silver]

First job: clerk at the only bookstore in town, which happened to double as a religious gift shop. Worked there for three years in high school, selling Bibles and stealing CDs on the rare occasion we would get something good in. I only made about $70/week, but back then I could fill my gas tank for under $20, so it was plenty.

Worst job: spent a summer on the line at a chemical bottling plant (packaging WD-40, Off, etc). The plant only hired three types of people: desperate college students, criminals on work release, and slow adults. I'll leave it your imagination which group(s) I belonged to. Ever see that episode of King of the Hill where Bobby gets a job at the state fair? It was a lot like that. I did that for three months and I have no idea where the money went. All I remember is a 30 year old dude in a Backstreet Boys t-shirt telling me his favorite movie was "Simon Sez" starring Dennis Rodman (he pronounced the title "Simmons").

Worst job that was also strangely fun: a buddy and I spent a weekend on a crew building those huge pull-out panels that they use to divide ball rooms, hotel conference rooms, etc. We should both be either dead or dismembered. To move the panels--each of which weighed close to a ton--into position for us to cover them, they would wrap a couple straps around them and use a forklift to lower them onto a line of saw horses. The saw horses would start to slide out as soon as the panels touched down, so we had to stand under the panels and use one leg to steady the horses until they were down. Once the panels were finished, we would load them onto a truck. When the truck was 3/4 full, one of us (usually me) would have to climb over the panels and guide the rest in until it was full. Did I mention they weighed a ton? But it was only 3 or 4 days and the crew was a ton of fun to work with. That was also the weekend I realized that classic rock radio really does play the same 20 songs over and over.

The worst part was that I got a speeding ticket on the way to work the first day, so every penny I made went toward that.

[Duke Silver]

First job: stock boy for a local clothing store.

Worst job: too much teeth

The doors that stock boy must've opened for you...

can't stop giggling

['Scratch]

First job - outboard motor mechanic. My dad used to work part time for a small boat rental shop and they figured if they hired me, he'd be able to bail me out if things got sticky. Crazy job for 15 year old kid. One time I rebuilt a 70 Evinrude by myself. When it was done it ran perfectly but somehow I still had a box of parts. I made sure nobody was looking when I threw them into the weeds.

Worst job - summer lawn mower/landscaper. It wasn't the job that sucked so much as the toothless hillbilly's I was working for. Those guys were full-on retards and did some of the dumbest shit. When I realized that I was probably going to get my foot chopped off if I stayed, I subconsciously decided to cut a big chunk of my finger off with a dirty lawnmower blade I had to use as a machete. The doctor couldn't understand why I was so happy while he was stitching me up.

Job stories? I've got a million. Barn restoration, pool construction, restaurants, forestry, urban EMS, sales, headunting...just to name a few.

[ScottyC]

First Job

Summer 1967, 13 yo, Messenger at Lincoln Graphic Arts. Meat packing district (no jokes please) in downtown Manhattan. Very chi chi now but back then was all cobblestone streets slippery with animal fat and smelled horendous. My neighbor Andy ran the mail room. They printed ad paste ups for magazines and periodicals. I'd make 2 runs a day, arms laden with large manilla envelopes, delivering the final product and picking up the new stuff. Hot and dirty subway (one line was air conditioned at that time) twice a day. My favorite stops were Cosmopolitan (always hot models) and the Village Voice (braless hippy chicks). Andy told the guys on the loading dock "watch out for the kid" so of course I learned to shoot craps and was given a switchblade and instructed how to use it. Between runs, I would package the books for their mail order business, you know, those ads that were in the back of Playboy. Coffe table sized books of playboy nudes, 101 positions of sexual intercourse (illustrated), vintage erotica, Kama Sutra (illustrated), and a bunch of books by this guy Marquis de Sade. Needless to say, I got quite an education that summer (I've always been an avid reader).

Worst job

Summer 1972, Biomedical lab. This was before they had automated machines running lab tests. I had the urine station. Opening hundreds of bottles of urine a day and dipping in a reagent strip. No gloves. Urine all over my hands all day

Well the award for worst job has been claimed.

[cortez the killer]

First Job

Summer 1967, 13 yo, Messenger at Lincoln Graphic Arts. Meat packing district (no jokes please) in downtown Manhattan. Very chi chi now but back then was all cobblestone streets slippery with animal fat and smelled horendous. My neighbor Andy ran the mail room. They printed ad paste ups for magazines and periodicals. I'd make 2 runs a day, arms laden with large manilla envelopes, delivering the final product and picking up the new stuff. Hot and dirty subway (one line was air conditioned at that time) twice a day. My favorite stops were Cosmopolitan (always hot models) and the Village Voice (braless hippy chicks). Andy told the guys on the loading dock "watch out for the kid" so of course I learned to shoot craps and was given a switchblade and instructed how to use it. Between runs, I would package the books for their mail order business, you know, those ads that were in the back of Playboy. Coffe table sized books of playboy nudes, 101 positions of sexual intercourse (illustrated), vintage erotica, Kama Sutra (illustrated), and a bunch of books by this guy Marquis de Sade. Needless to say, I got quite an education that summer (I've always been an avid reader).

Worst job

Summer 1972, Biomedical lab. This was before they had automated machines running lab tests. I had the urine station. Opening hundreds of bottles of urine a day and dipping in a reagent strip. No gloves. Urine all over my hands all day

Well the award for worst job has been claimed.

I missed the part where he was a lawyer.

[Cole Younger]

First job- Worked as a baseball coach for the local rec department one summer. 9 and 10 year olds. Only a few of them were very good but it was a lot of fun.

Worst job-Worked for the Natioanl Park Service for a time. There are people trying desperately to get into that line of work but my advice is to really, really research it. It may not be exactly what you are thinking. Some people get in it and love it and that great for them. I hated every second of it. The majority of your time is spent answering the same four or five questions all day long, over and over. I'm talking about stuff like telling people where the bathroom is etc. And the folks that visit those places love to tell you all about how they pay your salary, they are tax payers etc. Some are nice but there are a bunch of them that have a big time sense of entitlement. The majority of what is left of your time is spent answering emails/office work and trying to keep from going insane because you have absolutely nothing to do.

I have had jobs where I worked A LOT harder, working at a saw mill, farm work, welding, Marine Corps, and others, and I enjoyed them a lot more.

Everybody is different and some people would never want to work outside or do anything that requires them to get dirty and hot. I much prefer that standing or sitting around iside all day or working in an office.

It's all in personal likes and dislikes.

[Steve French]

First job: my father owned a pub ("bar") and I used to clean it at the weekends. Sunday morning after a big Saturday night was BAAAAAAD. But the money was OK, and the deal was my Dad paid for my first motorbike, and I paid him back by working. I did OK in my school exams after I had paid off half the bike, so he gifted me the balance..... $400 was a reasonable chunk of money then.

Worst job (apart from this one?......) Worked at McDonalds while at university. resisted entreaties to become a manager and stuff (lot extra work tiny little bit of extra money). Better when made the cashier. Felt like a drug dealer lining up those 20s at the end of the night. But never worked so hard for so little money

[Swamp]

First Job:

McDonalds as a 15 year old.

My first at 15 also.

Worst was running the stick machine on a popsicle conveyer. Depending on what you were making, ice cream or flavored pops, they would
freeze at different places along the line and you would have to have the machine in the right place. Not frozen enough and the sticks went all
the way through. Too hard and they shattered sending shredded sticks everywhere. Single sticks weren't so bad but those double sticks would kick
your ass.

[beantownbubba]

First job: delivery/stock boy for a small neighborhood grocery store when i was 14. Highlights: Getting robbed at knifepoint and once (and only once) getting to deliver to one of the 5 or so most beautiful women i've ever personally met. I always found it suspicious that the run to her place somehow never occurred during my shift.

Worst job: Too many to choose from, mostly involving horrible bosses. OTOH, I never had to dip my ungloved hand into urine on a regular basis.

[Iowan]

Some of the best jobs I've had involved the regular handling of fecal matter. My brother and I used to get into shit-snowball fights when we had to scrape the manure out of hog barns in the winter.

[RevMatt]

First Job -- Working in the kitchen at a nursing home when I was sixteen.

Worst Job -- When I was in seminary I took this job as a youth minister at a church near Atlantic City, NJ. My ex was preggers and she didn't like me pushing rolling chairs on the A.C . boardwalk which wasn't all that bad a job. So I got word that this church was hiring and interviewed for the job. The board was unanimous in hiring me but the real person who ran the youth group -- this awful, controlling woman with the worst breath I ever smelled on someone less than eighty years old -- had been on vacation. She was the mother of one of the kids and the previous girl who ran the youth group had lived at her house. She made life hell for me the moment I took over. Found fault with everything I did and began a campaign with the board to get me fired. The final nail in my coffin happened in December. We had this pizza party and didn't eat all of the pizza. The leftover pizza was put in a commercial freezer and for the next two weeks I was supposed to get the kids to eat this freezer burnt crap at every meeting. They didn't touch it. Finally, when I thought nobody was looking, I pitched the crap in the dumpster. The janitor pitched it out and said it was a shame to throw out perfectly good food. The bitchy lady picked up on it, told the board, and I was fired from a church a week before Christmas.

[porkulator]

When I was growing up,(born in 1960) cotton was still king in Arkansaw.The town I lived in had a "cotton mill".The mill was really a factory that took raw cotton in the bale and turned it into corduroy which then went on to make those fine Levis Dockers that were so popular back then.
My first and worst job was at the cotton mill.They hired schoolboys to clean the place up and do maintenance jobs.In my dept. there was an area that had tremendous airborn cotton dust flying all around and had a system of huge ducts that started out about four feet square and narrows to about the size of a dinner plate.It's purpose was to supply humidity to keep the flying cotton down to a choking minimum.As the air and moisture circulates it produces this awful mud/cotton/blood/sweat/ piss/gizz type crap that has to be removed once a week.You did this by climbing in that sucker with a trash bag and a brush and scraping that funk out.The closer you got to the end, the smaller it got til you're on your belly crawling like a snake.When you got out you looked like a big wad of that funk.Covered head to toe.
This job started at 7 a.m. SUNDAY morning.Most everyone came in with a huge hangover,and vocally stated we all be better off if the place burned.One time it did catch on fire and we all worked like damn fool jackasses to put it out,and to show thanks the company gave us all what would amount to a Happy Meal coupon.
Those were the days my friends.

[scotto]

First job: Grounds crew member, dishwasher, and all-around gofor at a Baptist summer camp. Perks: We got to drive around in a beat-to-shit '50s Army surplus jeep, eat all the free ice cream our adolescent bellies could hold, and make out with wild Baptist girls. All in all, not a bad summer.
Worst job: Idiot who attempted to scare patrons at a "haunted house" my freshman year of college. Perks: Apart from some free weed, none. Most of us never got paid and almost all of us got kicked and punched by over-zealous patrons.

[Smitty]

Worst job: Idiot who attempted to scare patrons at a "haunted house" my freshman year of college. Perks: Apart from some free weed, none. Most of us never got paid and almost all of us got kicked and punched by over-zealous patrons.

I worked a haunted house as a member of the vol fire dept for about 10 years - it was pretty fun, I got to design my little area and was in charge of the music until someone bitched about the language. Nearly every theme I came up with only lasted a couple of days, cuz some bible-thumper (or several, lol) would raise hell about my room... all except for the year I hung chicken livers on hooks and made a "butcher" scene, which bugs forced me to cancel that idea...

[Erdlivz]

First Job:

Caddy at Medinah C.C. We could enter the lottery to enter caddy training at age 12. I won and went through training and it was a blast. Show up at the club for a lottery to go out at 6am. Sometimes get out at 11am. Lots of sitting around. Lots of losing money at cards. Free hot dog at the turn. Generally a great membership there. A couple pricks that went apeshit on me for casting a shadow on their putting line. I generally got a kick out of those assholes and still do. Walking course #3 on a daily basis is pretty badass. Ryder Cup this year there. It was our home course in high school. Word.

Worst Job:

Kentucky Fried Chicken in High School. Had some jackasses for bosses. Complete fucking losers. I lasted two months there. My buddy worked there with me so we made it work and ate all the chicken wings, flung mashed potatoes all over the fucking place and definitely made secret batches of cole slaw. If you had KFC cole slaw at the Bloomingdale, IL KFC on Army Trail Road during 12/94-02/95 you were privileged to eat the "secret slaw." Nothing crazy or gross, just secret slaw.

[Penny Lane]

When I was growing up,(born in 1960) cotton was still king in Arkansaw.The town I lived in had a "cotton mill".The mill was really a factory that took raw cotton in the bale and turned it into corduroy which then went on to make those fine Levis Dockers that were so popular back then.
My first and worst job was at the cotton mill.They hired schoolboys to clean the place up and do maintenance jobs.In my dept. there was an area that had tremendous airborn cotton dust flying all around and had a system of huge ducts that started out about four feet square and narrows to about the size of a dinner plate.It's purpose was to supply humidity to keep the flying cotton down to a choking minimum.As the air and moisture circulates it produces this awful mud/cotton/blood/sweat/ piss/gizz type crap that has to be removed once a week.You did this by climbing in that sucker with a trash bag and a brush and scraping that funk out.The closer you got to the end, the smaller it got til you're on your belly crawling like a snake.When you got out you looked like a big wad of that funk.Covered head to toe.
This job started at 7 a.m. SUNDAY morning.Most everyone came in with a huge hangover,and vocally stated we all be better off if the place burned.One time it did catch on fire and we all worked like damn fool jackasses to put it out,and to show thanks the company gave us all what would amount to a Happy Meal coupon.
Those were the days my friends.

Wow, porkulator--that sounds awful..