tspikes51

Just so you all know, I bag (or sack, whichever you prefer) groceries, carry them out to customers' vehicles, bring in carts (or as we call them here, buggies), and do general cleaning around a local grocery store. This store is the only one in town that has people to carry out your groceries, has the largest selection in town, but also has the highest prices in town. The whole town knows this.

First off: scheduling. I work 20-30 hours a week, and go to school all day on Monday and Wednesday, and until 2 on Friday. They are well aware of my schedule. They have called my house multiple times while I was in class, or as I was leaving the house to go to class. They are understaffed, so they have to fill lots of time, but still insist on giving only five or six people in the store over 20 hours a week. So anyways, I get on average 24 hours a week, so you would expect a manager with any level of competency to schedule me for 8 hours on both Tuesday and Thursday, and 8 more on Saturday or Sunday. Not so. The ass schedules me from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM with one 15 minute break on Tues. and Thurs., 3:00 P to 7:00 on Friday, and 6:30 AM to 10:30 AM on Saturday and Sunday. So I can't do anything hardly on the weekdays. Good job.

Second: I only get paid $5.50 an hour. I have both previous experience and have graduated from high school, which most of my co-workers haven't done.

Third: My manager. He told me that I was vacuuming a floor wrong. There's one way to do it: turn it on and move the fucker around until it's clean. I was doing the same damned thing that he showed me how to do. He yells at me if there's a buggy that somebody left in the lot before I even see it. There are about a billion items in the store, and he yells at me when I can't find the lemon-flavored ass wash (or other random item).

Fourth: Ethel. Ethel is a 72-year old woman. She acts as a cashier for the store, but bitch is definately her primary occupation. Example: she drops a jar of pickles one day, and they bust and run all over the floor. She, being a bitch, tells me to clean the mess up. So, I head to the mop room. I'm half way done putting the pink shit in the bucket, and I hear her over the intercom: "Sam, come to the front." I ended up cleaning up the mess much later.

I'll post more reasons later. Anybody else in my shoes???

__________________
"I'm telling you, we need to get rid of a few people or a million."
-Maddox

Coppertop

Not I. You don't want to know what I get paid for what I do. You just might come find me and kill me, and I can't be having that.

I take it that the job is minimum wage where you live? If so, leave and work elsewhere if possible. There's probably something better out there.

OFKU0

Do your job to the best of your abilities and be proactive in knowing you are doing the best you can do. It's all you can do. Trust me. Work hard at any job you have and that will ensure each job that follows will be better and better. Do what you would do if you were the boss, think how you would like to be treated as a customer, and forget about the whiners and complainers. They're going nowhere.

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" In Canada, you can tell the most blatant lie in a calm voice, and people will believe you over someone who's a little passionate about the truth." David Warren, Western Standard.

tspikes51

I'm not really complaining, just letting off some steam. I do my job to the best of my ability, and usually succeed in ignoring assholes, but when you work with them constantly, it gets difficult.

__________________
"I'm telling you, we need to get rid of a few people or a million."
-Maddox

Thunderball

Okay look, this is easy. I am 37 years old. I started right out of high school bumming for a year. Then I decided to get on with life so I became a pile driver. It sucked the big one. I quit and went to variuos other jobs till I ended up at Airborne were I spent a long time 10 to 12 years doing delivery. It was okay but I was tired of the constant go go go and nobody was ever happy. I tried Logistics at Ryder for Target then Moved on to managing drivers at a hot shot company. This sucked so I moved to Texas and started my own Hot shot/ delivery company for 3 years till I got f**ked over by 1 of the owners! So were am I going with all this? Look for something that will be around for along time and you enjoy. I moved back to California took a test at the Engineer union hall and became an Operating Engineer. I work in a building from 9-5 i started out at $17.00 an hour and after 1 and 1/2 years i am making $20.92 an hour plus on top of that $5.00 an hour goes into my pension. If I had been in the Union at this point in time for 30 years and retired today I would be taking home $8,000 after taxes a month. So when I do retire my pension will be like $13,000 dollars a month or more. Long story short, become a Building Engineer the greatest job in the world.

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Bodyhammer86

tspikes, it's safe to say that I have a job that's worse than yours. I'm a fucking dishwasher at cracker barrel (if you don't know what it is, it's a resturant/store type place). Yeah, the pay's pretty decent at 6.70 an hour, but the work is dirty, disgusting, and monotonous. Onto my numerous complaints about my job.

First off: On the numerous nights that I have closed there, they have only two people (myself included) working the dishroom. Any dumbass can tell you that to run our dishroom efficiently, you have to have at least three people working there. Well, the first time we had this problem, me and this other guy had to stay until 2:30 in the fucking morning one night and then the other nights, we have to stay until at least 11:30 or 11:45.

Second off: To add insult to injury, out of all the resturants in town, we're open the latest with our close time at 10:30 PM and it's safe to say that we're one of the busiest resturants in town as well. Not to mention we're also open on most holidays during the year.

Thirdly: This one prick that I've had to work with many times pisses me off to no end. On Thanksgiving, he was bitching at me about stupid stuff like how I wasn't sorting the silverware when there were four racks of clean dishes that needed to be unloaded or else it would have backed up the dishline and he probably would've yelled at me about that too. So in the end, it was a lose-lose situation.

Bottom Line: I know what it's like to have a shitty job and I can feel your pain.

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ElwoodBlues

If you feel the need to see just how good you have it at any job, take a drive down to your local McDonald's and apply for a crew-level position.

Now don't get me wrong, working at McDonald's is a great first job. Great in that every other job you have for the rest of your life will be easier and pay better than this restaurant.

I started working at McD's two and a half years ago, at Mass. State Minimum Wage: $6.75. For that $6.75 they will absolutely work you to the bone. With smaller resturaunts averaging $6,000 in sales PER DAY, it is quite the busy store, especially considering that most items are in the 1-2 dollar range.

After a year of that hell, I finally got a raise, and moved up the chain, and I've now been a McManager for 9 months. Managing this place may look easier, but it is no walk in the park. For $8.50 an hour, you are expected to do the job of a real resturaunt manager. Its not easy, considering McDonald's will hire ANYONE, which leaves us with many less-than-desireable employees.

Long story short; Ya aint got it too bad duder.

yellowchef

holy freakin cow if min wage here was $6.75 I could be making like $15/hr easy.

dishwashers sometimes get bitched at for nothing.. the LAST thing ID ever do is piss my dishwasher off.. I dont want him walking out on me ESPECIALLY on a busy night.

a few nights Ive been in a situation where the restaurant is shorthanded and the staff rotates in and out of the dishroom, or the chef is back there..

one time our dishwasher walked out... at 7pm on a FRIDAY!!!

yellowchef

oops sorry anyways I try to be nice to everyone because I once hated my job too. Try looking for something else, if you're in school see if theres something related to your major or something like serving.

flamingdog

A shitty job is great motivation to find a new one.

thinktank

My friend Eli works at a hospital, he cleans up organs all day. You'll probably never have to pick up chunks of anyone's brain, so you're not that bad off.

flamingdog

I read something quite recently about someone who worked in an abbatoir cleaning out the guts of the carcasses... like, literally, washing out all the shit, piss, bile, undigested food... Nice.

braisler

If you are at school, shouldn't you be able to apply for some cushy work-study job. You might sit at the desk at the library late at night and scan people's books out or sit at the student rec center and scan people's cards. At the very least you would be on campus so you could go from class to work to studying without having to drive across town. Maybe a bit boring, but better than bagging. I've been there, man. I worked as a bag clerk and then as a cashier at a supermarket way back when. Shitty job with scheduling nightmares to add to the fun.

phobs

this is quite minor to your gripe but you should look into your local labor laws. Around here if you work around 5-6 hours consecutively theres a required amount of break time and I'm pretty sure its longer than 15 minutes. I'm in NY by the way.

yellowchef

work study jobs at schools are government funded usually and arent decided by the school. If his parents make decent(and I mean like they dont use food stamps) he wont get the work study. Just try looking for jobs like being a server/host/blockbuster something else!!

hell talk to a councelor at school and see if they can get you a job or know how to look for a job/work study/internship related to your major.. they usually work out better.

Grasshopper Green

When I was in college, there were a lot of jobs available on campus for anyone, not just work study. They'd be a lot more understanding of your scheduling concerns. I work at a grocery store, thank GOD I moved off of the front end (I cashiered and later was the bookkeeper), so I feel your pain. Working with the general public is always a treat, isn't it?

tspikes51

So, adding to my list, after seeing some of the aspects of other shitty jobs:

-Asshole customers. I have to deal with them on the personal level, which I like with normal, non-doucheile types. However, about every half-hour or so, a customer comes in that insists that I'm breaking their eggs by putting another carton of eggs and a loaf of bread on top of them. My manager pulled me into his office the other day. His sister, whose groceries I bagged, complained because I smashed her meat. Yes, I said meat. HOW IN THE FUCK CAN YOU SMASH MEAT??? I still wonder. To add to it, that particular woman likes to come in early on Sunday morning (around 7:30-8:00) and buy upwards of $300 worth of groceries and make me use paper bags. If any of you have bagged groceries before, you would know that using paper is much harder than plastic. I had to use two buggies to take her shit to her car.

-Hours of operation. 6:00 AM-12:00 AM. Longer than anybody in town. People come in at 5:45 to wait so they can get their week's worth of groceries as soon as the store opens.

-Public perception. Because of my co-workers, the general public assumes that I have jackalope shit for brains. They don't even bother to attempt to engage me in any intelligent conversation, instead they treat me like a drone, despite my 140 IQ.

-Watching what people buy. Sometimes it's just funny, like the woman who bought $230 worth of cigarettes, or the one who bought 7 pounds of bacon and a dozen pouches of Red Man. I'm talking about the stuff that makes me want to kill people. People that come in and buy nothing but name brand cereal and pop and pay with foodstamps. People who buy fillet mingon and ribs with foodstamps. The woman I refer to as "Durango Bitch" who has two young toddlers and a 3 or 4 month old. Each one of them has a 20 oz. bottle of Gatorade each time I see them (can you say tooth decay???). She buys about $250 worth of junk food and then makes me load it into the back of her Durango (which is about a 1 1/2' x 5' space).

__________________
"I'm telling you, we need to get rid of a few people or a million."
-Maddox

tspikes51

I live 45 minutes off campus right now.

__________________
"I'm telling you, we need to get rid of a few people or a million."
-Maddox

Carno

This thread is quite amusing.. If you hate your job, find a new one! It's not hard to get a minimum wage job. You have no one to blame for your continued misery but yourself. And don't think that things will be any different when you're older. People still suck, no matter what type of job you have.

And when it comes down to it, any job that pays min. wage is pretty fucking easy. Don't complain about how hard it is to wash dishes or bag groceries. It's fucking easy.

I have worked both of those jobs, and many other kitchen jobs, and they are all easy as hell. Sure, you may hate the job because your boss or your coworkers suck, but the job is still easy. Don't be afraid to quit if you're not being paid enough or if you're being treated like shit. You're there to make money, not to fulfill some kind of favor or something.

Bodyhammer86

Actually, it took me two years to get my first job after I turned 16. Anyway, this is just a way for us to vent our fustrations about our jobs and nothing more. As for trying to get another job, for the most part, places are not going to hire you without any sort of experience beforehand, so it isn't that easy to just pick up shop and find another job. Just thought I'd point that out.

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yellowchef

that depends, working at blockbuster, cashiering, or bussing tables(not serving) doesnt require experience. Serving, something related to his major, and maybe retail sales does.

Being a dishwasher no experience needed.. there are buckets of general labor jobs that dont require experience. Im stuck in the boat of I have 2 AS degrees, on my way to my 1st BS and I cant find a decent paying job in my field because Im unable to work the hours they like.(I go to school 7-5 tues and thurs) and mon/wed I cant be anywhere till at least 11am. My job now is ok(not great not horrible either) so Im going to stay there, work on my experience, get paid and keep going to school so that I can do something with my life.

if you hate your job theres bound to be an ice cream shop, internet cafe, blockbuster type place that will hire you.

Bodyhammer86

I've always had horrible luck getting jobs until I turned 18 in April. and even then, when I did get my first job, my boss gave me the shaft (slashed my hours) after working there for just a little over a month, and it took me the entire summer to find and get my current job. However, that was only my experience, I can't speak for anyone else.

__________________
Pantera, Shadows Fall, Fear Factory, Opeth, Porcupine Tree, Dimmu Borgir, Watch Them Die, Motorhead, Beyond the Embrace, Himsa, Black Label Society, Machine Head, In Flames, Soilwork, Dark Tranquility, Children of Bodom, Norther, Nightrage, At the Gates, God Forbid, Killswitch Engage, Lamb of God, All That Remains, Anthrax, Mudvayne, Arch Enemy, and Old Man's Child \m/

yellowchef

its hard to find jobs if your a minor, and its hard to find jobs if you're in school but since hes on this board hes 18 and/or over and he has some retail/customer service experience. Its going to take some effort to find a job but he can do it. Also he'll probably go through the same thing.. slashed hours for the first month or 2 so they can evaluate you.

Ive had the same problems, because of my school schedule I have all kinds of issues finding a job.

or as soon as I say Im a student they want to drop their pay rate. It always takes effort!

tspikes51

I will get another job, but they seem to be scarce around here in the winter, since a good deal of them involve farms and tobacco/horse growth, which don't happen much in the winter. Anyway, this is just a thread to vent about your job. I'm not really complaining, I'm just trying to talk about those little things that annoy me about my job. I usually turn them into little comedic bits with my friends, but I'm afraid that I've been writing these too late to be funny with them.

Another little bit about my job:

-This town is about 80% old people, and good heavens, they're almost all fitting the old person stereotype well. It's so funny to carry groceries out and talk about the weather all day, and sometimes it's actually fun. Another thing about this area is that it is the only place in the world where it is more acceptable to blow cigarette smoke in a baby's face than it is to have a beer (the fact that our store doesn't offer alcohol but sells more cigs than anything else just backs that statement up well). What's really funny about that is that all kinds of different people smoke. I see sweet little old ladies buy a pack of Virginia Slims Super Slims or Misty Ultra Light 130's and cant help but chuckle. I've ascertained that certian brands attract certian types of people, for example, (don't take offense if I name your brand):

Wave - White trash, mostly women.
Kool - Black people
Camel - Old men and the more well to do.
Viceroy/Lucky Strikes - Bikers and ZZ Top fans.
Marlboro (insert type here) - Pretty much everybody else.

-I play a kind of game where I guess which car belongs to the customer before we get there. More often than not, I'm right.

-I'm pretty well known in the community, so I can't do anything too stupid.

__________________
"I'm telling you, we need to get rid of a few people or a million."
-Maddox

LIMilf

Tspikes, I feel your pain. I used to be a bagger/bitch before and it's not fun at all. You are the lowest of the low. Some of the best things were when it was slow you had to do facing. This was no fun at all, basically it was just putting the products on the racks to the front so it looks like a lot. I hated doing this so when I would I would put one hand in my pocked and the other doing the facing. Well my supervisor (think Lumberg from office space) told me that using two hands would be faster.

Fuck YOU

Another nice thing was getting carts from the parking lot after a snow storm. Very nice.

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My goal is to be rookie of the year...

Blackthorn

Absolutely the formula for success. Learn from your experience and work hard, work smartly, and continue to educate yourself.

At one point in my life I worked for a division of public works for a local municipality. My "job" was to go around to the public parks and clean the restrooms, haul trash, etc. It was a clearly a motivation for hitting the books. Educate yourself and keep that positive, can do, will do, must do, bias for action attitude and you'll be rewarded.

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What are you willing to give up in order to get what you want?

GSRIDER

i did the grocery thing for about a year once.

A bit of advice. never get drunk and yell at customers when you see them outside of the grocery store. Not even if you believe they stole a cart (or buggie), especially not while they are at their job and you think it's ok to jump on the counter while ordering yer big mac and asking why they are cart thieves.

ahhh to be 17 again.

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RogueHunter65

That sucks, I didnt know that the minimum wage was so low there. Massachusetts is like 6.75 an hour but stores like stop and shop usually start people at like 7, with a raise every 6 months. I can see how you could get fusterated working there...I hate when people mess around with their employees hours.

Thats why I got a part time job working as a telemarketer. I went with that because they give out bonuses for sales so it pays better than other jobs I could get. And its easy...you just sit there and talk on the phone. Anyway I feel for you, sometimes the working world sucks.

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DelayedReaction

I have a pretty crappy job. I spend most of my time sitting in front a computer reading Slashdot and posting on TF, and when I'm not doing that I'm conducting research by detonating explosives underneath little plates. Oh yeah, and machining new plates to explode. All that, and they pay me $7 an hour.

Wait a minute, I LOVE my job.

Undergraduate research ROCKS.

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If ignorance is bliss, you must be having an orgasm.

Boo

This is so true. I am in a life sucking job. Maybe I should get off my ass and do something about it.

Thanks!

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Back button again, I must be getting old.

legolas

wow that took me a while to get.

and i came to the conclusion that all job suck. i was really thinking about it recently and about 95% of jobs suck.

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"To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems."

tspikes51

It was hella-windy today. Like the kind where you actually have to change how you move around so you don't get blown over. One of our buggies rolled into an adjacent yard, and since it has hardly stopped raining for the past three months, it took me a while to get it up to our lot. I'm working 31 hours this week, the week before finals. I haven't worked over 30 hours since my second or third week working there. They give me the hours I want the one time I don't want them.

My manager took about a half an hour Saturday to show me how to get the money out of the pop machines. Problem is, the cockwad had no idea when I was supposed to get off that day, and I ended up clocking out about 25 minutes late. Earlier that day, he pulled the three carryouts that were there into the parking lot, and said "Now, I'm gonna kindly fire every one of you the next time I see a buggy out in my lot." Leaving buggies in the lot is the cardinal sin of this store for carryouts, so you could imagine how pissed he was, but still managed to say that he would kindly fire us. How fucking nice.

My fuckin' nametag won't stay straight.

Ethel (the bitch) had her birthday (or bitchday) the other day. One year closer to dying for normal people, but for her just one less year to bitch and have the sun shine out her ass.

__________________
"I'm telling you, we need to get rid of a few people or a million."
-Maddox

tspikes51

LOL!!!! Minimum wage here is $5.15!!! Even lower for agricultural workers.

__________________
"I'm telling you, we need to get rid of a few people or a million."
-Maddox

mokle

I work 20 hour days, am forced to break all Employment Standard laws and Drivers Hourse of Service laws (I have a commercial license as part of my job), go days with only a few hours of sleep, eat terrible, have to put of with inept morons and pshyco supervisors, ect...

Why do I stay? Being 19 and making $20/hour is kinda cool.

But I won't be here much longer. Even for $20/hour it isn't worth it. Every week here is another year off your life, heh.

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Mokle
"Your hands can't hit what your eyes can't see" -Ali

Suave

I worked at Safeway as a company bitch... Isorry, I mean courtesy clerk, just as you are, and I quit after 2 weeks it was so bad. This is from someone who worked for over a year at McDonald's (the place that every apparently hates to work at).