Post about your worst workplace experiences.

Got hired by a corporate office in their payroll department in January. I was responsible for printing out all of the proof reports for the payroll processors, all of the payroll reports and checks for their 75 facilities throughout the U.S. plus the corporate headquarters, and since it was tax time, all of the W-2's for the same facilities plus a W-2 for everyone who was no longer employed by the company. I also had to put all of this together, package it and mail it out to the facility on time.

Each report/check/W-2/proof needed to be printed on different types of paper and I only had two printers. Printing checks for 125 workers for just one office took time but I was constantly badgered by each payroll processor to print their proof so they could continue their work. The two office managers complained that I was too slow and I was let go after four months.

I later heard from someone I knew who still worked there that after I left, the two office managers had to do my job because they didn't have anyone to take my place. The two of them together couldn't keep up with what they expected me to do alone and were both let go less than a year later for that and a few other reasons.

 

Started a new job a few weeks ago loading trucks for UPS. The atmosphere is quite nice, although the workload is rather intense.



I kid, of course. It is physically demanding work, and I wish I wasn't doing such punishing labor since I'm closing in on 50, but my other options were far worse.

At least I'm not ankle-deep in raw sewage. Or worrying about getting shot at. Or putting up with idiot tenants. Or working 6pm-3am. The list is endless...

 

I'm glad to hear you landed on your feet (I've thrown the lollipop pitch).

I'll write what others here are (most likely) also thinking, but won't say for fear of being offensive. I think, or at least hope, that you and most people here know me well enough to know I'm not trying to offend. It's a shame that some company is not putting your humor and creativity to good use.

 

I've been relatively spared from shitty workplaces. I guess one of the worst was a warehouse I worked at when studying. I worked nights in a barely heated building during swedish winter. The first night I managed to tip over a giant pallet of cat litter trying to load it into a truck. In my defense that tower of litter bags was barely secured at all, but that was a lot of litter to clean up.

The shift manager was a communist who went on rants about the working class and how a revolution was the only solution to the world problems. One guy working there was a kleptomaniac and kept stealing useless shit from the office. And then there was this 60 year old guy who insisted I teach how how to download porn. Which was awkward.

I didn't stay too long at that job, but instead started cleaning at the psych ward at the hospital in town. Strangely there seemed to be less crazy people there than at the warehouse....

 

Thought I'd update this thread, seeing as how many jobs I've worked in the past few years...

I quit UPS after 20 months. God, I hated that place. Every single day I came home aching and stiff after moving 160-pound boxes into trucks all day. It was the only place where working hard gets you punished with even more hard work. If you were lazy, you were rewarded with less work and co-workers pulled from their jobs to help you out. They cut my hours down to the point where my paycheck was $175 a week after taxes. I gave them one week's notice, and got the hell out.

I then landed at a food-packing warehouse, where the first day had me pulling a pallet jack and making small boxes. The second day had me working nonstop for five hours at a conveyor belt in a refrigerated room where I was sweating from working so hard- but stopped sweating because I was dehydrated! Some days were WORSE than UPS, some days were in the middle, and a scant few were downright nice. Still, that place had me in a back brace, a knee brace and a wrist brace. They were determined to break me, and even though I wore a mask religiously the whole time. I caught COVID and quit while I was recovering.

(On a side note, that place kept asking me to work weekends, and I always turned them down. Then, they transferred me to another department where Saturdays were mandatory, and the workload went from 40 hours to 60. Also, you were given only one 20 minute break the entire day. I only worked that department for a week before I landed my next job.)

Then I ended up at Aramark, where all I had to do is fold clothes. You'd think it was simple, but it somehow was one of the most stressful jobs I've ever held. I suspect my training was substandard, and they wanted me gone as soon as possible. Very few people spoke English, I was constantly berated by managers for less than stellar performance (like I said, there's a trick to doing it all, but no one told me what it was) and spent more than a few times sobbing in my car before my shift would start at 4am. I was stuck there for 8 months before leaving yet again...

On a side note, I began to despise recruitment companies for calling me in for interviews, telling me they have several positions for which I am highly qualified, informing me that they just need to do a background check and they'll get back to me- which none of them ever did.

(In case anyone's wondering, I have no criminal record, so it's not as if I failed the background check.)

Currently, I am employed at WeatherTech and the workload is somewhat heavy, but well within my capabilities. Still, I am constantly searching to get back into my field of expertise. If my marriage were not in shambles, I could stay where I'm at, but it won't pay for an apartment and I stand to double my income if I can just get one chance to be a video editor again.

 

^^^^

That 20 minute break shit sounds illegal.

 

Given how few people there also spoke little English, I doubt the management cared. 20 minute breaks were even worse when I was on a ten-hour shift, as they always had the break after the first two hours, leaving employees to work eight hours nonstop.

 

I'm ignorant...

How is the job market for video editors?

If tight, is just a limited amount of work?

Is it a regional thing? Yeah, I know a place like LA might have more opportunities.

Is working with non-profits (most likely for low pay ) a possibility? Please remember my gift for pointing out the obvious.

 

Years ago I fell out when the 2008 recession happened. As it was, people were starting to do fancy editing on their iPhones, so the need for editors dwindled a bit.

I remarked about this to a friend, who did some research and found that in my absence, the demand has gone back up- there are many things an iPhone cannot do, and the increasing power of technology has made editors in demand again, with a (much) higher scale of pay.

My friend insisted I try to get back into the game, so 18 months later here I am, still plugging away. If my marriage were not in shambles, I could try doing freelance (there is a site for strictly YouTube editors that caters to freelancers) but I cannot do an occasional project while I worry about making rent. So, I need to land a full-time gig with benefits.

Also, although L.A. is probably the place to be, working remotely has made it easier to get an editing job. (In theory, anyway.) I've applied to local places looking for a reasonable commute, or a hybrid position where I can go in occasionally while editing at home, or pure remote.

 

I'd love to post something seriously meaningful to adequately express my positive thoughts & hopes you get back into your career of choice, but all I'm coming up with are clichés.

Support clichés go here:
________________________________.

 

Ok...after school job highschool Era.
Pulling asbestos insulation from a dirt crawlspace with thise ghosty looking basement spiders. In the late 70s when nobody was concerned about asbestos.

First formal job at a real corporation...McDonald's :^/ after school again. Was given pants too big. So my pants were constantly falling off -before it was cool.

Later, after college in real life land..
Custom metal for 1% folk...bathroom had a high impact turd stuck in the bowl and it stayed for well over a month.
Same bathroom had sugar ants crawling on the toilet seat and into a box of tampons. One immigrant fellow was from a place where toilet paper wouldn't flush so the trash can was filled with brown smear paper. Nobody would explain it to him.
Company owner here would yell at you to stand while working, it's not 'professional' to sit...then he'd come back an hour later and ask you to score him some weed for the weekend. Before it was legal of course. He would also spray highly toxic polane clear coating without any ppe.
Metal etching patina chemical would flow out the entry ramp like a river and down the street a block away from a river.
Homeless women would be hooking out of their garbage pile tents across the gravel street - while you are building railing for multi million dollar projects.
The business all crashed....

Now, my job is the same, the shop I'm at is owned by a previous co worker. We're friends. It's about as dream job as I can imagine except there's no real heat in a giant 1940's steel building.

Side note, good to stay hydrated while watching tentical porn all day, yes ?

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 14, 2024, Original Post Date: Jan 14, 2024 ---

MeltedMetalGlob....
I'm going to suggest using ai to generate your own (tentical ?) porn and set up an only fan's page. I'm reading that a lot of ai creators are setting up shop on only fans lately.

 

Probably need to pass on that, thanks.

(I'd rather not go down in history as some tentacle-porn legend.)

On a more serious note though, I'm already trying to learn two separate types of software and I'm stretched thin doing so. (DaVinci Resolve and Blender, one is a relatively new coloring software with superb editing capabilities and the other is a 3D animation program) I know AI is starting to come up frequently in these fields, but I just don't have the time to take on one more thing. If I land a job, then that means I don't have to spend time looking for one, which would free up some time. But until then...

 

That's awesome !
After 911 i.went to school for Softimage, at the time that was used for jurassic park. 3d character building and animation.
At this time I also learned photoshop from folks at an online gaming art site, Polycount.

Good luck with it !

 

I thought this was really funny....
In an old tin industrial building, broken up into several small manufacturing shop spaces there was a shitty bathroom for the whole building.
Also a building superintendent who was an ass hole.

The bathroom has stalls with toilets whose seats were loose, or disconnected. Several were always full of water and poop cause they were clogged. The super didn't bother with it.
It also had one of those long urinals on the wall where 5 guys could stand and pee.
Nobody in the building really took any responsibility for the bathroom. It was foul.

One morning I came in to work and went for a pee, there was a big log on the edge of the urinal trough. I thought it was hilarious someone dropped a duce in the urinal and the building super was really pissed off.
I think I know who did it but nobody ever admitted.

 

Fortunately the worst of this didn't actually happen to me...but easily could have.

From '79-'82 I worked for the leading (maybe one of, it depended on who you asked) oil field products company. As the domestic drilling was dying off (thanks to Ronald Raygun) the company was laying people off using seniority.

One of my lower level jobs as I was being pushed towards the door was Outside Maintenance. Our crew was power washing the stubborn crud out of some old tracks used for carts, kind of like the old mines except the tracks were recessed into concrete. Buddy, the foreman, decided to show me the correct way to use the spray gun. A few seconds after he took it from me the hose broke, or became disconnected, and nailed him across the right side ribs. He was relatively calm about it, said his beer belly & fat stopped the hose from doing any real damage, & one of us skinny guys probably would've had cracked ribs. The welt was very substantial, it was probably extremely bad the next day, not to mention painful.

He checked the hose, & the compressor. I don't remember the exact numbers (maybe 8K PSI & 2K PSI), but I do recall the pressure going into the hose was about four times what the hose was rated for.

I don't even recall who turned off the compressor. They must've done it very quickly because the hose didn't do any damage other than nailing Buddy across the ribs.

--- Double Post Merged, Mar 4, 2024, Original Post Date: Mar 4, 2024 ---

Yes, I'm necroquoting...for no real reason.

I'm not sure if I noticed the NPD Trump box the first time around. That's phuqing hilarious!!!

@MeltedMetalGlob