Stupid Jobs I Have Held

I recently started a second job to bring in a bit of extra money. I want to get some bills paid off so I can sleep better at night and slow the advance of my ulcer. This will also hopefully let my wife get back into school and maybe she can get a better job and I can quit this part-time thing. Actually, other than missing night time tv and time with my wife, the job isn't that bad. It keeps me moving for 3 to 4 hours constantly, so it helps with the diet, and it doesn't require a huge amount of my brain, so I can think up crap to blog about. Like this entry.

Before and shortly after getting my license, I supplied underage illegal child labor to the local farmers, hauling hay, cutting, spiking, hauling and hanging tobacco, cleaning fence rows and ditches, all the stuff now done by illegal immigrant labor.

Now there are three jobs I think everyone should be required to have in life, and I think it should be a law. First everyone should have to do at least 6 months in a newly opened fast food chain restaurant. Second, everyone should have to do at least 1 year working as a retail clerk, not in one of the big box stores, but in a little store where you have to keep the customers happy, or the whole place goes under. Third, they should have to spend at least 4 months in customer service, preferably over the phone for at least 50% of the time.

My first real job was at a brand new McDonald's. I was in high school. This job taught me many valuable work lessons. First, orientation tapes are boring. Second, never believe the training programs or company propaganda. Third, store managers are not born, made, or trained, but are instead spawned in hell and shit out by demons of low intelligence. Third, promotions go to the best at kissing ass, not at actually working. You see, if you are good at your job and work hard, you get left at the job, because they can't replace you. If you suck at your job and screw stuff up, you get to be crew or shift leader, because it kind of keeps you out of the way and there is less you can fuck up. If you brown-nose enough, they might even make you manager. Of course, if you piss off the people actually working enough and enough of them quit, you might even get sent to the management training school.

Now this was a long time ago, and McDonald's had a much smaller menu. Basically, McNuggets were new. Micky D's had hamburgers, cheeseburgers, quarterpounders, Big Macs, McNuggets, Fillet O'Fish, and apple pies. The kitchen was divided into areas. There were 2 grills, one for regular patties and 1 for the larger quarter pounder patties. You had 4 deep friers, one for fries, which the register people ran, one for nuggets, one for fish, and one for apple pies. The friers were on the opposite wall from the grills. The middle was taken up with a dressing table and bun warmers. The idea was that one person would run the quarter grill, and toast and dress his own buns. No, damn it!!! You know what I mean, get your mind out of the gutter you perv. Another guy would run the grill for the regular patties. Another person would toast the buns for the burgers and big macs. He and the grill guy would dress them. A separate individual would run the friers. Now what actually happened was the guy running the bun toaster would also run the friers. There was also a steamer to steam the buns for the fish sandwiches that he also got to run. Both grills were run by the one guy too, so this operation designed for 4 people would be staffed by two. That wasn't how you were trained, though, you were trained with 4 people. You were shown films on all four stations, but trained on only one. Then you had to run stuff you were never actually trained to do. Anyway, the first week our store actually opened, two of us were run ragged when a bus stopped and let 5 thousand kids loose to trash the place. We were slinging burgers, dropping nuggets, burning buns, and generally going insane. The assistant manager was barking out orders left and right, but not actually helping with anything. Then, while dressing buns for burgers I got dressed down for committing a most heinous offense against the Great Ronald. I put the ketchup on the buns BEFORE I put the mustard. Never mind that the other guy had the mustard gun doing the quarter buns, I did the unforgivable. Now, why in the hell the idiot supposedly running the show would stop everything to bitch me out for doing something that didn't make a bit of difference, I don't know. I was young and new to the work place, I learned to work on the farm. There all that mattered was that the job was done and what the end result was. No one cared whether I cut the tobacco stalk from the left or the right, or whether I hung the stick of tobacco from the left first or the right. I don't know of a single customer returning a hamburger or cheeseburger that day because the ketchup went on before the mustard, but you would have thought I gang raped the govenor's daughter or something from the bitch cussing I got. Having mellowed as I have aged I know now 27 different ways to have choked the chicken-necked bastard unconsious, so it probably is as well that this happened before I met Foster Sensei and learned jujitsu, or I wouldn't have my present job due to the assault charges.

Anyway, I quit that job a few months later. My next formal job was as a bus boy at Shoneys. I didn't do well there. I lasted 2 weeks before a dishwasher who didn't think I was bussing fast enough came out of the kitchen, caught me bussing a booth and shoved me into the booth and gave me a little kick in the rear. I announced my displeasure by dropping a full tub of dishes in the middle of the kitchen, telling them what tender part of my anatomy they could press their lips against, and leaving. I never even clocked out. They mailed me that last check.

I worked at a couple of gas stations, was a third shift convienence store clerk, did a swing shift assistant managers gig, before settling down as an office manager. All while going to college. I ended up as the office manager for a swimming pool builder. I was also the sales clerk and customer service department for the swimming pool and spa supply store. I did everything from sweep and mop the floor to ordering inventory and driving the delivery van. Hell, if the construction crew was short handed, I rolled a wheel barrel or used a shovel. I also went on runs with the service trucks to do repairs. In a pinch, I could install a pump, filter, replace a light and do light plumbing and electric. One of the high points of my job was explaining to new pool owners how to operate the pool equipment over the phone. I walked people through vacuuming the pools, backwashing the filters, empting pump and skimmer baskets, ect. all from miles away. This taught me patience. I was also the sales clerk and chief pool water analyzer. So I dealt with the public. I met the rich and the famous. I met the guy who was sure I was over charging him. I met the woman who was sure I should throw in something free since she was such a good customer. I met the people who wanted to return stuff after they had used it for a season and broke it. I met guys who wanted me to tell them exactly what they needed so they could buy it somewhere else cheaper. I especially met the people who wanted me to test their water and tell them how to clear up their nasty pool using the chemicals they had bought somewhere else, and not charge for my information. Yes the world is full of charming people, and you have to be nice to them if you make your money selling them stuff. You have to be nice to the stuck up lady whose 9 year-old brat just whipped his little weiner out and pissed on your freshly mopped floor. You have to be nice to the person who just chewed you out because you can't sell him a part for a 10-year-old pool pump that was discontinued 6 years ago. I think if everyone got to meet these people, then they would behave differently in a store. I know I try to be polite to sales clerks and treat them like real people. This taught me that I could survive not choking the living shit out of rude people and to be nice to people who work for a living. I was here for over 11 years.

I worked my way up to the general manager over 3 retail stores. I then quit and started selling life insurance where I learned that I am not really very good at scaring the hell out of old people by convincing them they are going to die soon leaving their kids and grandkids orphaned and homeless unless they buy more life insurance. I quit after learned a couple of lessons about myself and what I am and am not willing to do.

I then went to work for a rent-to-own company. This company was mob owned. I base this on a few facts. The company was based in New York. The owner was a former police officer who had left the force under mysterious circumstances. Everyone in a position of authority in the company had an Italian last name. The ones that come to visit the store all looked and dressed like extra's from the Sopranos. This was a class act, too. They had a computerized billing and rental system. The program was written by one of the owner's friends. It was written in basic on a trs 80 computer in 1984 and never updated. The damn computer in the store didn't even have windows 98 installed. When it screwed up, we contacted IT and they UPS'ed us a 5 1/4 inch floppy boot disk. And they were proud of this. They also bragged about being mentioned in Fortune 500 magazine. They mentioned this several times in the interview. I never found out what Fortune 500 said about them. I should have. I bet instead of saying something like "this is an up-and-coming company, invest in them, they are going places" it actually said something on the lines of, "avoid this load of shit like the plague. They are going to crash and burn. They are sinking faster than a lawn gnome wearing Jimmy Hoffa brand concrete sneakers in a swimming pool." Anyway, the job was depressing and the company sucked.

Rent-to-own tends to appeal to people with no other options. There are no government regulations governing this part of the retail industry and rent-to-own exists for everything from jewelry up to houses. You see, if you buy a bedroom set on credit, there is a limit to how much interest the lender can charge you. Buy the same set at a rent-to-own establishment and there is no limit to what you pay, because it isn't interest, it is rent.

The place I worked offered weekly and monthly payment options. The way it worked was like this. Let's say you can go down to Big Box Inc. and buy a 20 inch television for $200. The rent to own store might carry the same or similar television. Their cash price for straight out purchase was $300. They would then double that. This would be the final price if the person carried it to full term. So that 20 inch television would end up costing $600 if the people rented it for the full rental term. Say the longest term was 1 year. The people would pay $50 per month or $11.54 per week in rental fees to use the television while paying for it. So basically, the company charged too much for the television to begin with, then charged what would amount to 100% interest on it. If you kept the television for 6 months then decided to buy it, you would get some credit. You had paid $300 already to there was $300 left on it. Half that would be $150 so the $200 television would just cost you $450. If the television was returned, then it would be restocked as used. We would knock 10% off the price. It would now be listed as used and a cash price of $270. The final payout was $540. Weekly rental was $10.38 and monthly $45. We lost our shirts for several reasons. First, the merchandise, at least the furniture, was low quality. Second, we had a very non-southern corporate atmosphere and it didn't mesh with the poor southern people who were our customers. Third, we were ordered to encourage customers to over extend. If Joe came in for a fridge, we were encouraged to sell him on an entertainment center. Third, if you knew Jack made $150 a week, and was already paying $50 per week on a stove and $20 a week on a dvd player, it was nuts to incourage him to buy a television, you were already getting almost half his paycheck weekly, what was he going to live on. We would just end up going out to repo the stuff and make him mad. It would have made better long term sense to let him pay off what he had now before trying to sell him up. Fourth, they picked a sorry location. The parking lot was tiny. It was on a hill in the middle of the old part of town where everything was dying. It was very hard to get in and out of. Fifth, another new rent-to-own company had just popped up in the Wal-mart shopping center. It was bigger, flashier, paid better, and had better prices. It also opened two months before we did. Both companies are now gone so I don't guess it matters much. I worked my ass off for them, though. I ended up running my store for a month when the manager defected, before his replacement showed up. I also opened up three other stores for them and trained their store people. They never offered to make me a manager though. It never occured to them, of course they wanted their managers straight out of college and starving. They also liked to relocate them at least 500 miles from home. They thought this gave them a reason to make to stores succeed. I worked for them for about 9 months under 4 different managers.

I went IT and went to work for a bank information processing company. I did a swing shift between second and third shifts. I enjoyed this job and stayed with it 6 years. If the job hadn't changed and the company hadn't changed, I might still be there. This was my first ever job with actual benefits. This was my latest bout with clueless management though.

My worst experience would still have to be the medical technical school I taught basic education courses and computer courses for. I worked there a little over a year. They hired me to teach from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM with an hour lunch. I was promised many things. Then the managment changed and they started demanding I teach night classes. They also insisted I be on campus the 8 to 5 then teach from 6 to 10 PM if they needed me. For no extra money. I also had to help recruit students. This usually meant open houses and special events at night and on weekends, for no extra money. And heaven forbid if you actually gave a student a bad grade and they complained!!! We were training these people to work in Doctors' offices and hospitals, but some of them couldn't read a complete sentence in English, much less write one. And no, they weren't hispanic. Just Southern people who got government assistance to go to school, so they wouldn't have to live off welfare. Yet, if you demanded they actually learn something, they would complain and management would come down on YOU. Now there were some good students that I really liked, but there were a lot that were just in school because it was paid for and they got free babysitting.

I quit and went to work for a company that made custom bathtubs. That lasted about a month and I was hired by the state. The company had no benefits and I was working 10 hour shifts in an unairconditioned fiberglass plant. I was too old for that shit.

Here I am now. I am rather happy. I now have a second job. I will blog about the new job next round and give you a thrilling, detailed, graphic description of the new job. Sex, violence, and rock and roll up next episode.