The Worst and Best Job you've ever had

[bikingjahuty]

The title says it all. Feel free to describe why a specific job was the best or worst as well to keep things interesting.

[tradinggoatgames]

My best job was probably managing my own furniture store. Loved it. Boss let me do whatever i want as long as sales were good. Worst job i ever had Was Subway. And trust me i don't think i gotta explain why that job is shit.

[rayne315]

best job:

The one I am currently at. Although it is my first professional job in my field I am compensated very well especially considering the low cost of living where I live. I live 10 minutes away from work and I have yet to run into anyone who I do not get along with (even though there are ~800-1000 people here). I also really enjoy the kind of work I do. it is both challenging and stressful but in the best way and with all the different programs we are running there is guaranteed work slated for the next 8 years (with new programs being R&D'd all the time).

worst job: Walmart.

Although I was compensated very competitively (I received 3 raises in the 1y 4m I was there) I was always expected to do more than every other worker. I worked specifically in the Frozen/Dairy department on 3rd shift stocking our truck. I was always placed alone in either of those departments to run the entire truck by my self (of note every time I was not working 2 people were placed in my department to cover my shift). I was always trying to make it into a managerial role even from day one and had passed every test and did well in every interview but was constantly told that "we cannot afford to loose you in your current job" to which I would always ask "then why did you give me an interview" "because you are the best candidate for the job" "if im the best candidate then why didn't I get it again" "because we will not have to backfill xxxxx's position" (they would always promote people who were performing less than was expected yet not badly enough to get fired). after a bit of that run around I wised up to it and attempted to perform less than my ability and immediately taken back into the office and given a written warning effectively quashing any hope of being promoted.

there were also quite a number of incidents that were indicative of bad management. the bad managers would berate people for going to the bathroom during their shift. would change peoples aisles they were supposed to work (I get needing cross training but not putting someone in 1 aisle for 29/30 days then change them to a different aisle they never worked before, they should be more like 1 week here 1 week there). they put someone with a full arm cast into the pet aisle (where you are required to lift 20-50lb bags of dog and cat food and litter). and here is the true kicker. on the frozen/dairy trucks we get shipped 10-20 gallon tubs of Icing for our Bakery department. one night we noticed 1 of these containers had a large crack in the lid and there was a trail of ants coming out of it. so of course we opened the lid to find a colony of ants had migrated into the icing and I mean there were tunnels in it and they were living in this icing. I don't know why but we took got a manager to come over and look at it asking them what to do and I shit you not this was the response we got. "Pour water into the container all the way up to the lid. the ants will all float out or drown. at the end of your shift pour out the water and put it with the other tubs." Needless to say I took it to our trash compactor and got rid of it.

TL:DR Version is in bold

[badATchaos]

Worst Job:
Public school IT assistant:  I had this job during summer break while I was still in High School. Since school wasn't in session we did a lot of software updating, and because the IT director was a bloody caveman we did every f**king computer update manually. No automation or remote desktop, nothing. Total BS. Then there was an issue with the janitors. The janitors had to do a complete waxing of all the floors so that meant moving all of the classroom desks and furniture into the hall way in order to get at the floors. Once they finished up waxing they'd move everything back into the classroom leaving us to set back up all the computers and networks. (This was back before schools had laptops or tablets.) And of course they didn't really care and all the wires were just left in a big tangled mess. Things settled down for while, but then, only two weeks later, they did it all again for basically no reason. Everything had to come out and then go back in again. So frustrating. Most of that summer was me untangling (I kid you not) miles of Cat5 cables.

Best Job:
Video Game Quality Assurance:  Two year ago I finally go into the industry after trying on and off for years after completing college. It's not quite what I want to do but it's my foot in the door.  So there's this held belief from some that being a tester means you're just playing games all day. This cannot be further from the truth. I'm trying to break games, not play them - which in its self is a great challenge and mindlessly tedious.  It's not enough to be good at a game, but you have to be creative.  You have to out smart the designers and programmers and find ways to smash their precious creations. Once you find a bug and know how to replicate it 100% of the time it's your respectability to log it and make sure it actually gets fixed but someone.  While it can be a drag some days, its really rewarding being able to make a real difference in the product that thousands of people play.  The benefits are also quite good, especially for a game studio.  100% covered health, dental, vision insurance and 401k plan. The job doesn't pay great, but at least I got that.

[soera]

Worst job : countless

Best job : Never experienced

[bikingjahuty]

Worst: Clinical Case Manager

I have a B.A. in psychology and my original plan was to get some practical experience in order to prepare myself for graduate school where I wanted to earn a Ph.D in clinical psychology and either work as a professional psychologist or be a college professor. Needing at least a bachelors to get your foot in the door, I sorely needed practical experience to reach this goal and be accepted to a Ph.D program so I got a job as a case manager right our of college. Working with the chronically mentally ill was a real eye opener to the nature of human beings and I saw things that I wish I hadn't while working there, thing that still effect me negatively to this day. On top of that it really fucked me up in regards to my relationship with coworkers; you'd think working in the mental health field that your coworkers would be paragons of mental health and stability, but this couldn't be further from the truth. There was constant politics, back stabbing gossip, and passive aggressive behavior all over the place making it really hard to trust the people you work with. I gave up on the Ph.D plan for a variety of reasons, however I still stayed with this jobs years more than I should have (worked there for over 5-years) mostly because I didn't know what else to do with my life. I eventually earned some tech certs and made my way into the IT field. Unless I was down on my luck and unemployed, I'll never return to the mental health field, ever again.

Best: I haven't found it yet

I have had about half a dozen jobs since I began working at 14, but I honestly can't say I've really liked any of them. Sure, I have good days where I feel accomplished and feel like I did something good, but overall I have yet to find a job that I look forward to going to. I envy those people that love their jobs and look forward to going to work; their reality is something I can't even fathom given my history with work.

[thegouldfish]

Worst Job:
Working for Echo Peak, Unity 3D was (most likely still is) an utter mess of an engine and had to constantly work around issues that the developers never would acknowledge. Ended up working 9am to 11pm for over 2 months with out a day off (including weekends) to get that turd out of the door on the one platform where the Unity runner would actually pass cert (this was the Xbox 360). the Ps3 version was so bad it took Unity another 6 months to turn it around.

Best Job:
Working for Lionhead,  Great studio great people and a great project.  Was sad when the studio closed.

[marvelvscapcom2]

Worst Job-  The worst job I ever had was at a soup factory that packaged and shipped soups throughout the whole east coast.  The shifts were 13 hours long,  the days were 5-6 per week.  No medical and just brutal and I mean brutal heat. An awful boss that would call you down. He used to call everyone knuckleheads. It got redundant fast. People would pass out mid shift from dehydration.  It was pretty much hell lol.  I quit within a year.    My job there was to make sure the soup's had their plastic films on top and they were perfect before the lids were placed on.  I'd have to watch thousands of these things and my boss would scold me if I ever messed up. I actually had one of the easier jobs in the plant.  Some people had to carry 150 pound boxes of soup to load on trucks all day. 


Best Job-  The best job I ever had was when I was an errand boy for a rich family where I grew up once . My father knew a man who owned a gentlemen's club a few states out.  Not sure how they met but I guess they hit it off. But long story short the rich friend was looking for an errand boy (essentially a butler) to do everything him and his wife didn't have the time to do while he was away on business ventures. My dad let me know and I agreed .   It sounds like an awful job being a servant but it was really fun when the people hiring you are nice.  The pay was great considering I was young and it was typically the daughter who was home and she didn't really care enough to scold me over anything and was too busy on social media most of the time.  It was a pretty leisure and relaxed job working at your own pace. A complete opposite of most jobs. The house was massive and beautiful and the people weren't the greedy kind of rich that look down on you.  They treated me well and were down to earth.  They didn't treat me like a slave.  They treated me like a hired butler which was nice.

The job entailed of many things.  I was essentially A babysitter, maid, landscaper, cook and chauffeur all in one .  Their was a list of things for me to accomplish by the end of the day and I always met the list.  If anything I was taught things.  I was treated nicely which is why this was my favorite job.  A good boss goes along way.  Mr. Horace even had me go golfing as his caddy (club boy) once while his other caddy was sick. another job that sounds awful but is truly a cake walk.  You literally carry clubs for a rich dude so he can show off this his millionaire/billionaire friends .  He paid me extra for that too.  Outside of the list they gave were mostly things the daughter would demand while they weren't home.  Things I doubt they'd condone but I wanted to be on the daughters good side and be relatively cool to the person in charge of putting in a good word for me anyway, I wasn't out to give her a hard time which is probably why she didn't give me a hard time.  She'd have me fetch her and her friends McDonalds ect... which is basically 90 percent of the job considering how often they sent me for it.  I did their homework more times than I could count. A break from more physical B.S anyway.  The parents mainly wanted me to do dog walking, dish washing, lawn mowing and snow shoveling. Cleaning, sweeping, and every spring i'd lay fresh mulch. Every now and again they'd supply me with paint to paint something or do some sort of odd job like replace the mail box.  When I was done with what they asked i'd go home. Some days were long, some were short.  But I was always paid for the work I did.  The family eventually moved too far for me to travel .  But I do wish I could find more rich people to enslave me 

[zenimus]

Worst job: Campus security - occasionally this job was fun, but the college had two tiers of security: the uniformed officers who got to deal with any major problems or disturbances on campus, and the lower tier "safety" officers. I was one of those lower tier guys. We got all the disgust you'd expect college kids to have towards a "rent-a-cop", minus any of the respect an actual police uniform would bring. We just had these red "Campus Safety" jackets, and let me tell you, the red jackets were the most hated guys on campus. While all the students were in class, we had to be out in the parking lots writing tickets to their vehicles. Don't get me wrong, they definitely deserved all the tickets they got: parking in handicap spots with no placards, not having permits, fake permits, not paying the meters, using an old ticket from the day before to try to fool me into not writing another one, etc. When you're writing a ticket, you can always sense an incoming screaming match by the sound of flip-flops shuffling rapidly toward you along with a "WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MY CAR??!". When you're not doing that, you're usually having to chauffeur overweight students across campus in your golf cart, including some who leave menstrual remnants in the passenger seat. After all that, you'd think it would be nice to simply park in the shade and chill out for a few minutes, but that's when one of the upper tier officers will pass by and chide you about needing to patrol the lot for tickets. That officer then drives to the far corner of the parking lot where no one will bother them and nap in their car. After a year and a half, the boss called me in and announced he was cutting me. "We don't have quotas for writing tickets, but you're usually last. I don't know what you're good at, but it's not this."

Best job: Broadcast graphics operator - This is a side job that I don't get to do full time. Normally I work as a motion graphics designer. During the high school football season, Fox sends out a number of crews to cover some games and broadcast them on TV and the internet. I work in the truck running the graphics systems, the scoreboard, lower thirds, promos and all that stuff. It can be stressful doing a live broadcast, since you can't stop time, and the audience will see if you make a mistake. Generally though, everyone on the crew wants to have a great show and does their best to make the program as smooth as possible. This year I got the chance to run the graphics for a couple NHL games! There were two pre-season rookie games between the LA Kings and the new Vegas Golden Knights. I've been a Kings fan since I was a kid, so for me it was a pure treat. And it was the first ever official NHL game played by the Golden Knights. If I could somehow get into doing that full time, I'd be happy as can be.

[DreamsDied13101]

Worst Job: Front End Supervisor for CompUSA. The job wasn't too terrible in the sense that it wasn't a hard job or particularly demeaning. Although the verbal abuse I received from customers was ridiculous. The worst aspect was the manager of the store (who had recently been hired after I had already had my position) just hated me. He told everyone that he wanted me gone, he made up rumors about my fiancée (now my wife) that were disgusting, and he took every opportunity to wreck my career with the company (removed me from a manager university program, tried very hard to revoke my vacation for my honeymoon, etc...)

Best Job: Analyst for Coca-Cola. This stands out the most because it was when I started working from home full time. At first it was just nice not to have a commute, gasoline savings, stuff like that. Later it allowed me to see my kids growing up and being around for first steps and similar milestones.

[ignition365]

Best: Gamestop.  I was in a weird place at the time where I wasn't really looking for a job nor did I really need the money.  This Gamestop was paying $11+/hr.  Co-workers were really cool.  Customers were always pretty much top notch.  Even the few bad customers were really just funny stories in the grand scheme of things.  Down time was spent productively reorganizing the store, I like this kind of stuff.  Plus, free used game rentals, first dibs on clearance and salvaged products, knowing when and which games hit sku conversion, access to inventory management system, and the employee discounts.  I had really considered trying to get a managerial position, but I knew the amount of work/pay wouldn't balance out so I left when our store closed and moved on to my current job.

Worst: Lacky at an oil change shop.  Only did it for a couple of days under the table as a favor to my brother.  Manager was a dickbag and essentially wanted to treat me like slave labor.  Mostly organizing inventory, not an issue and I enjoy and excel at that.  But then when I would take my lunch break during store down time I would get yelled at for goofing off.  I was outside of the building, sitting at a picnic table, eating a cup of ramen.  No phone, no games, nothing, just quietly eating my food.  I very quickly told him off.  I don't need this, I don't need the money, you needed help because you were under-staffed and I was volun-told to help.  I will gladly leave and go home and play video games if you are going to pull shit with me.  Manager didn't speak to me again for the rest of the week.  One of the employees quit or something while I was working so I had to start doing oil changes because they didn't have anyone to do them.  Just generally not fun and didn't pay well at all.

[oldgamerz]

 I used to volunteer at my high school store. before school started. Selling pop candy and chips and eventually school merchandise. back when I went to school some of the the teachers let us student eat and drink junk food during class. true story

 I  also worked as one of the managers of my school store. on my senior and junior year in high school and also. I had a job in assist principals office. During school's last hour and a half final semester. just running errands fetching the bad kids, and I also helped the secretary set up the phone computer that would call students houses that skipped class or weren't reported in classes that day

after high school, even though I graduated with honors.
I never really needed a job not now or growing up. Due to my mental and physical  health I am currently receiving  a nice pension and a place to live where the rent is low. all the while supporting my grandma's household. I have all day to play video games but little ambition at the moment to play more,