Soul destroying jobs

[savoloysam]

Have you had any? Although I find most of the jobs I've had stressful, they haven't been that bad really.

Was sat on the bus earlier where I saw advertisements for bus drivers and thought fuck that, I'd rather be a bin man or something. I would definitely be miserable as fuck driving a bus around all day that's for sure.

 

[Winot]

Assuming plastic fishing tackle boxes (temp job when 17). I was so bored I ended up crying in the loos. Quit soon after.

 

[platinumsage]

Cold calling randoms trying to convince them to make an appointment for a double glazing salesman to visit was pretty soul destroying. It was 9 quid for a 3-hour evening shift which was enough for a teenth of soapbar and some baccy.

Other jobs I've had have at least allowed socialising with colleagues while working or, for the call centre ones, had some calls where you didn't get told to fuck off and get a proper job.

 

[Elpenor]

Having to retrieve invoices from 10 years worth of paper files, and scan them in was probably the worst thing I did. Presume they wanted to digitise their finance records.

It was a temp job for 4 weeks on a table they’d placed in the corner of a cold and noisy warehouse in the middle of nowhere. The files were brought to us in cardboard archive boxes, and there were at least 5 pallets of them.

The scanning was done in the last week, it felt like a bit of a treat as we could do that inside an office.

I did it with someone else around my age who I’d worked with briefly once before who unfortunately I knew to be quite dull.

 

[davesgcr]

Summer job in an engineering factory (a) either sawing up 6 in lengths of metal pipe (b) drilling holes in metal plates.

Both so tedious , that one used to look forward to the half hour sweeping up at the end of the day.

 

[RainbowTown]

Heavy industrial cleaning job for a private contractor when I was 19. Absolutely back breaking stuff, head of our team was the most arrogant person you could meet, and we worked in all sorts of conditions. I walked after about 10 weeks. My only regret? That I didn't do it after week 1.

 

[pbsmooth]

Bus driver would be fun IMHO. Nice way to see the city and fairly relaxed. Thought the same about being a cabbie which also adds in meeting new people.

 

[moomoo]

Bus driver would be fun IMHO. Nice way to see the city and fairly relaxed. Thought the same about being a cabbie which also adds in meeting new people.

I’d rather be a bus driver than a cabbie. I couldn’t be doing with all the inane chit chat.

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Call centre job for Barclaycard via an agency. Quit after a couple of months for a more secure job.

Used to amuse ourselves by trying to get customers to cry by being jobsworths.

 

[pbsmooth]

I’d rather be a bus driver than a cabbie. I couldn’t be doing with all the inane chit chat.

At least you know most journeys are pretty short so an end is always in sight... I've watched some taxi vloggers on Youtube (!) and hadn't really twigged how much of a London cabbies work is in quite a small area of zone 1.

 

[cupid_stunt]

Cold calling randoms trying to convince them to make an appointment for a double glazing salesman to visit was pretty soul destroying.

LOL, I did that for a few weeks when I first returned from Ireland, before I found a proper job. I just walked out one evening, because the so-called manager was treating us like kids, and was telling everyone we would have to stand up if we didn't make an appointment in the first half an hour and until we got one. I just got up and started walking out, she said 'would you mind sitting down', I replied, 'look, I left school years ago, I don't expect to be treated like a kid, you can stuff your job,' which was ironic because I had been the most successful in making appointments in my short time there.

I've a long history of walking out on jobs, hence being self-employed for over 20 years now, at least if a client messing me about I can 'discourage' them from using me again, or if one is seriously pissing me off, I can literally tell them to fuck off and find another mug to do it for them, which I actually did to one a couple of weeks ago!

Very worst was an after school job picking-up up eggs in battery hen sheds for 1/2p a dozen, turned me off eating eggs for many years afterwards.

 

[savoloysam]

Call centre job for Barclaycard via an agency. Quit after a couple of months for a more secure job.

Used to amuse ourselves by trying to get customers to cry by being jobsworths.

Sadistic stuff. No wonder you like seagulls so much!

 

[savoloysam]

Come to mention I did try selling advertising space for a small free local paper for a week. Virtually everyone we called was complaining that they had asked numerous times for us to stop calling them.

The sales manager attitude was that every customer that said no was our fault because we were crap at selling.

I'm surprised I lasted a whole week tbh before thinking fuck this shit.

 

[cupid_stunt]

Sadistic stuff. No wonder you like seagulls so much!

Yeah, he's a proper wrong'un, and that's another thing to add to my file on him.

 

[savoloysam]

Yeah, he's a proper wrong'un, and that's another thing to add to my file on him.

The case for the prosecution is growing, farmerbarleymow how do you plead to the charges against you?

 

[ruffneck23]

I lasted 3 days in a very noisy, very cold warehouse using a machine to cut square bits of paper into circles to go in-between frozen burgers, approx. 10,000 a day.

My only joy was a photo like a noughts and crosses board filled with pictures of animals directly in front of me.

The badger was my favourite

 

[WouldBe]

The case for the prosecution is growing, farmerbarleymow how do you plead to the charges against you?

Sane.

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Sadistic stuff. No wonder you like seagulls so much!

A lot of the customers were awful to be fair.

 

[savoloysam]

A lot of the customers were awful to be fair.

Ive done call centre work and yes people are bigger cunts down the phone than in person. Still I didn't like it when customers who had fallen on hard times broke down on me.

 

[A380]

Cleaning strowger selector contacts ( Google it) with a thing like a glorified electric toothbrush but with a shoe lace in place of the bristles at a NW London telephone exchange that we will call Northwood because that was it’s fucking name.

When me and another apprentice turned up for (I think) a three month posting the lazy fuckers were three years behind with their cleaning schedule. When we left they were two years ahead. We spent alternating days actually learning stuff and cleaning the fucking mechanisms.

Now of course the whole exchange probably fits in a box the size of a small fridge. I bet the fuckers never cleaned it again.

 

[newme]

I'm being paid too much and not enough. Last 4 roles I had they ignored my qualifications and put me on something else soon enough. Now on data analysis when I did that for 2 months. Designing a sheet not updating a live one for 60 charts

They also sorted workload on 3 weeks when I had 1.5 weeks off. With new base data to unfuck the mess they left.

 

[cupid_stunt]

Come to mention I did try selling advertising space for a small free local paper for a week. Virtually everyone we called was complaining that they had asked numerous times for us to stop calling them.

The sales manager attitude was that every customer that said no was our fault because we were crap at selling.

I'm surprised I lasted a whole week tbh before thinking fuck this shit.

Funny enough I spent many years selling advertising on pirate radio in Ireland, and local newspapers & magazines back in the UK, but it was face-to-face and very much about coming up with ideas that would help local businesses to get a decent response, spending time on them and building long-term relationships.

It's when the 'big boys' started taking over all the independent publishers, run my accountants only interested in short-term sales figures and not building long-term relationships, targets became more important than looking after the staff and clients, and that resulted in me walking out & telling them to shove it on a number occasions.

 

[cupid_stunt]

When I resigned from the Worthing Herald*, they talked me into staying with a promotion, more money, and promises of changes in how the business operated, they failed on that last part, I resigned again and left.

After I left, they contacted me not once, not twice, but three times, trying to get me to go back, I was like, 'sorry, you had your chance, you didn't deliver on important promises, I'll not be coming back.'

Twats!

* now under new ownership.

 

[19sixtysix]

Taking meter readings on the transmitter station. Same fucking numbers day in day out. It was just busy work.
My line of business seems to generate busy work enthusiasts. I have similar check lists in my current post.
Opens door, yes room is still there, tick all boxes. Now leave me alone till something breaks.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

I think the worst one I had was in a bank cash centre. The place was like a fortress so you basically didn't see any daylight all day, and you were relentlessly monitored all the time. There was a massive rush in the morning when all the cash came in then nothing to do once that was done, but you weren't allowed to not look busy. It was just a shit job tbh. I jacked it in as they wouldn't let me have Christmas Eve off to travel home.

 

[pinkmonkey]

Screen print designer and prepper in a Leicester garment printer/sweatshop in 1990. Got paid £90 a week and could only just live on it. Had to walk to work, couldn't afford the bus. It was 2 miles from my home. We did mostly counterfeiting because you'd get 50p a print, compared to 19p for something that wasn't. Ninja turtles when I was there. I'd prep the screens in the afternoon in a locked room, with a heap of garments infront of it. They'd print overnight, the garments would leave before dawn and then they'd burn the screens and also my designs. All incase of raids. So yeah, IP protection made my working conditions far worse. I hated so much that we got repeat orders and I'd have a garment to copy from and have to do it all over again I hated the job but when I went back to Poly after the summer was over (it was a summer job), my tutor exclaimed how much my drawing had improved. Yes mate I never stopped for 40-50 hours a week.
I saw all the recent scandal re. Boohoo/Leicester sweatshops and I realised one of our customers for the prints (Pinstripe) his son is the founder of Boohoo. Apple never falls far from the tree.

 

[A380]

A mate of mine got a job at Kodak’s photographic paper factory, when that was a thing,

His job for months was to sit at the end of the process where the paper came off the machine to its final rolls looking for flaws. If he saw one he had to press a button to stop the machine. I don’t think he ever got to press the button.

I imagine these days they would do this with a camera bit of code that took someone a day to write…

 

[pinkmonkey]

My mate had a job in a chicken processing factory where he had to remove the chicken arseholes (I think they're called cloaca) with a sort of punch/tool thing. Grim.

 

[krtek a houby]

Yes.

Most of the jobs have been soul destroying . Literally on my knees for a few of them.

 

[rutabowa]

Cold calling randoms trying to convince them to make an appointment for a double glazing salesman to visit was pretty soul destroying. It was 9 quid for a 3-hour evening shift which was enough for a teenth of soapbar and some baccy.

Other jobs I've had have at least allowed socialising with colleagues while working or, for the call centre ones, had some calls where you didn't get told to fuck off and get a proper job.

yeh telesales is pretty bad (though actually I met a few interesting people doing it and the line manager used to take a few of us to the pub at lunch break and try to down as many pints as possible which was fun at the time (about 25 years ago). The soul destroying part was that i was unnervingly good at it like me and Taz (weird how I remember her name) were always vying for top place on successful calls, but the firm was an actual proper scam and I was helping them basically... so i gave it up (but then I was in a position where I was able to give it up with no ill effects, dunno what I would have done if I had a family to support or something)