Work is Hell - Freeze-Frame Radio

JD The Jazz Doctor · Grand Poobah

Work is Hell

Music Junkie · Living Legend

Before I started my current profession in international widget sales, I was unfortunately employeed as a McManager at a McDonald's in a small town.

My first night there (i was closing) I fired an employee, had the shake machine blow up, and as I was checking the doors right before I left for the night the big security door in the back of the store fell off its hinges... I called the General Manager who asked if I wouldn't mind staying until the opening manager came in as he couldn't get anyone to fix the door until the morning. He hung up before I could even manage a response. I could see this was already shaping up to be a great job.

I kept at it for about 6 months with all sorts of horrible things happening (one of my deposits was stolen, that was a horrible). But the straw that broke my back was one of the worst experiences in my life.

I had just relieved the day manager (I was closing again) and was just settling down into the dinner rush when a very pregnant woman came up to me at the counter crying hysterically...

I asked her if i could help her, she looked at me and started screaming that I Killed her baby... I said "excuse me?" thinking I hadn't heard her right... so she says it again pretty much screaming at the top of her lungs that I had killed her unborn baby... (people started leaving the store at this point) I was so shocked that I sputtered out "how did I do that? " she proceeds to throw her half eaten quarter pounder with cheese at me and screams that i am poisoning people by giving them raw hamburgers" (this was during the big raw beef scares in America) I picked off the hamburger off my chest and realized that it was raw in the middle...

With the luck of the gods I managed to convince this woman that she would be fine and that nothing was going to happen to her or her baby (although i was a bit freaked out myself) I calmed her down, gave her her money back, gave her the regional managers phone number and managed to get her out of the store.

I walked into the back, checked the grill, and sure enough, they had never changed over from cooking breakfast sausage this morning. So, instead of the 3 minutes that they were supposed to be cooking they were only cooking 87 seconds...

I instructed the crew to throw away any burgers and fix the grill times. Then I walked back into the office and burst into tears.

I guess the woman was OK, i never heard or saw her again... but I left the fast food industry shortly there after... and never looked back.

-BeccaC

Jeremy Riggs · 2011 Super Bowl Champions!

Wow, that IS A HORROR story MUSIC JUNKIE. I think that would have sealed the deal for me too!

Boy J.D., I remember that night as if it happened just last week.

At the time the company was on a security binge because of some shenanigans certain employees had been pulling, so they sealed off the front offices with locking doors (originally the hallways had no doors).

I remember realizing that night just how stupid they were, that they installed the door with the hinges on the OUTSIDE of the room

Many a night from that point on I would pop those hinges so I could sit up front and play on the internet or watch TV.

Oh yeah, I should mention, I was one of those employees that was causing the shenanigans

JD The Jazz Doctor · Grand Poobah

holy crap musicjunkie, that story freaked me out! man....

Riggs- I knew it was SO YOU going up front! LOL this was when the internet was brand-spanking new- you knew TOO QUICKLY that we could just "BUST OPEN THE HINGES!"

Sparky · Phat Cat EL Presidente

When I was in High School I worked at a store simular to K-Mart and Walmart, it was 10 minutes to closing time and we had to have the store faced (things pulled forward on the shelf) before we were able to go home. My Departments were House Holds and Automotive where all the laundry detergent and every other liquid in the store was. The Whole back wall of the store was liquids. I thought I would save time and step up on the first and second shelf to reach the stuff on the top...needless to say this was a bad idea VERY BAD IDEA! The shelving along the length of the store (250+ft) pulled away from the wall sending detergent, motor oil, etc crashing to the ground.

At the time I didn't know not to try and mop up the mess with water, another VERY BAD IDEA with laundry detergent. (cat litter my friends) is the best for soap and oil spills. I didn't get to go home that night as planned...and I think if I hadn't gotten electricuted (as stated in a previous post on how I got my nickname Sparky) I probably would have been fired.

MzHartz · Permanent Vacation

My first job was at McDonalds. Although my experience wasn't as bad as Music Junkie's, they lost my timecard several times, and they kept losing my checks. One night when I was a cashier on front the night manager was ringing people up on my drawer. My drawer was $20 short that night, and I was written up for it.

But that was definately not my worst job. I started out at the last place a worked, a publishing company, as an account manager. I was responsible for over 300 accounts. I had a few nervous breakdowns in that job. So when I was offered a job in promotions, I thought I was saved. I was so wrong about the manager of promotions. I should've turned him in for sexual harassment, but other girls had done that, and they were either forced to quit or fired not long after. For example, one time he said to me that I should wear a hat so he would have something to look at other than my breasts. He later fired me, and that was the best thing he ever did, although I think he was sleeping with my replacement. Basically, imagine the worst case corporate office, and that was basically it.

Now I have a dream job. When my 90 day review was coming up, I was scared to death. At the publishig house, your review was basically the chance for management to tell you how you had screwed up so far even though they had told you that you were doing an excellent job just days before. My review at my current job was quite the opposite. She didn't havve a bad thing to say about me and kept gushing about how they were so happy to have me there.

The president and vice president took me aside in the conference room the other day; I was mortified. They just wanted to talk to me to make sure I didn't have too much work to do, and to let me know that overtime was available if I needed it!

Trish · The Procrastinating Red-Head

I can honestly say that I haven't really had a job that I didn't love on some level. Some were harder to love than others. I do know that I hate to work at corporate offices of a very large company. I worked for one of those once. I have never seen such backstabbing in my life. I absolutely loved my job. I was good at it and I knew the customer's appreciated me. One customer only wanted me on their account and that spoke volumes. However, my boss was not easy to work for. She was a power hungry, man-hating biatch from hell. I know, don't sugar coat it, Trish, tell it how it really is. She would fire someone and then hire a friend of hers to take their place and then go to the personnel files and add things to them after the person was fired to make it look like they had just cause. It was ridiculous. They also had unreal expectations for their employees. I am a very loyal employee, I stay until I get the job done. However, when you work from 7 to 4 and you have to call your husband at work to go get the kids because it's 11:30 at night and your boss won't let you leave because if you do you will be fired, I have a problem with that. As I said before, I loved my job, but it put such a strain on my marriage that we were talking divorce, my health was being effected and my son didn't have a mom at that point. He had someone that took him to the babysitter. I ended up quitting and taking a job locally that, amazingly, after the cost of the commute and the babysitter ended up being a higher paying job in the long run. My health returned, my marriage problems were resolved and I got to spend time, glorious time, with my son.

MzHartz · Permanent Vacation

Trish, are you sure you're not talking about the publishing company I worked for? It's like you described it to a T!

Trish · The Procrastinating Red-Head

No, I wasn't in pubs then (I am now, but I love the company I work for now.). Hate to see that someone else went through that. I should have said that she fired someone and then would hire her "friends". With an emphasis on the quotations. They were all of an alternate lifestyle and if you didn't have an alternate lifestyle, well, then you were going nowhere and were bound to be replaced soon anyway. It was a very difficult position to be in. I never thought that I would say that I was being discriminated against by a woman because I was straight. That was just too bizarre. I have nothing against the gay people (a quote from Everybody Loves Raymond). I don't, however, like being descriminated against because I'm not gay. It was like working in bizarro world.

MzHartz · Permanent Vacation

We have a large gay community in our town, so when I first started work at the publishing company we had quite a few gays and bi's. I have quite a few gay friends as well (man, are they good songwriters!). But then, one winter, all of our gays got fired. Not forced to quit, not laid off, just plain fired, all within about 2 months. There was one lady that really stood up for them, and she got fired too. I was really scared that I was next on the chopping block!

WFTR · Prophet of the Posts

I work in an odd part of advertising, POP corrugated design, and I could fill three pages with horror stories about the corrugated industry (the worst of marketing & printing combined with much lower profit margins).

BUT THAT IS NOT MY WORST STORY!

I worked two summers during college as a packer for a moving company, and I was the shlep who got the basements and attics. Now, having someone come in and pack your house for you ain't cheap, so I don't know how this particular family managed our services, but there we were. I was told to start on the basement and bring dish packs because there was a lot of canning that need to be packed (jams, jellies, etc.). Well, there were a lot of mason jars, not all of them sealed, and many of them moldy! Our rule was always don't question, just pack so I wrapped the snot out of the open jars (mold and all) with packing paper and in the boxes they went.

Did I mention that they had a toilet in the basement? Not a bathroom, just a toilet. Right in the middle of boxing these little science experiments, their young son comes down and decides its time to cop-a-squat. Add that smell to the visual.

Ya know, right now the box industry don't seem so bad. I love my job!

Jeremy Riggs · 2011 Super Bowl Champions!

Yikes, that is an ugly story!

I almost got a job in the POP Display industry about ten years ago. It seemed like a cool business. I envisioned my apartment filled with mis-cut standups of famous people hawking every product imaginable. I just know I woulda been saving EVERYTHING. I've always been a sucker for cool advertising peices.

WFTR · Prophet of the Posts

I'm sitting on a Brett Farve full size picture, not mounted to corrugated, but still cool.

Y'all want it? I'm from Chicago, and just having that pic could get me killed. I also have a mounted and die-cut C3PO, but that is MINE!

Jeremy Riggs · 2011 Super Bowl Champions!

R U Kidding me?!?!?! I'd kill for Farve!!!!

Whaddya want for it?!?!?! That's EXACTLY the kind of thing I was talking about. My house woulda been LITTERED with that stuff!

Dang it, time to head to work. I'll catch ya later!

WFTR · Prophet of the Posts

Tell ya what. Contact me on the one-to-one link with a FedEx # and an address and it's on its way to you.

Zim · Chairwoman Of The Board

The only job I quit on principal was at a liquor store. I was hired at 17, which wasn't appropriate, but they always told me if a short, fat business-looking guy came in, to dart back to the deli section (that was the liquor license guy). Anyway, it was a great job until these two little old ladies came in and proceeded to the counter with three separate orders of hard alcohol. I rang up the first, they paid. I rang up the second and they insisted they had paid for that too. We're talking $75 worth of liquor. I brought the on-duty manager over and she assessed the situation, decided the customer is always right, and assured me we'd settled it all at the end of the day. Well, at the end of the day when we were $75 short, they took the money out of MY check, and the manager never accepted blame. I left within the month.

There was another incident at that store I think I was fortunate enough to avoid by paying attention. Late on a Sunday night it was dead at the liquor store. Me and another woman were just hanging out at the counter. You know how liquor stores always have all the windows covered with sale posters. Fortunately, I had enough of a view to see a guy sitting in his car for the longest time before shutting it off and heading in. I got a bad feeling and told her, so she got on the phone to the owner. The guy came right up to the counter, looked around a bit, settled on some miniature or something and left. She never got off the phone while he was at the counter and talked about this and that. When he left she told me she'd been talking to a busy signal the entire time!

MzHartz · Permanent Vacation

I have a feeling somebody requested Take This Job and Shove It after reading this thread!

confuzzed · Permanent State of Confusion

work can be hell if you aren't able to get to your ffr!

Trish · The Procrastinating Red-Head

I'm with you there! I have been without FFR for over a month now, I think. It seems like a year. I'm also not allowed to download my media to my media player, so if I want to listen to something else, I have to change discs. What a pain. Sigh. I miss the good old days of FFR and posting non-stop.