This Was Probably the Worst Job I Ever Had

I just posted this story elsewhere on the internet. I’d forgotten about it (it was a long time ago) until reading someone else’s post. Due to the amount of time that’s passed, it’s possible I’ve mixed up some of the details, but the main parts of the story are correct.

It was the mid-90s. I was in college and I needed a job to pay the rent. I applied for a few positions that looked desirable. Nothing came through. After a couple weeks, at which point I’m starting to get nervous, I see an ad for a job in a factory. It wasn’t really what I had in mind - it’s a minimum wage job, requires doing physical labor for long stretches, and I’d have to work the 4 pm to midnight shift. After a short interview I had the job. This is just a few hours after first seeing the ad. A red flag. They must have been desperate for workers. It wouldn’t take long for me to find out why.

The next day, following their instructions, I arrived early to fill out the paperwork and watch the HR job safety video. The video finished and I waited for the HR person to return to finish the process. A few minutes passed, so I decided to go look for her, but she was nowhere to be found. She’s the only person I’ve talked to at the company, so I figured I’d go back to the video room and wait for her to return from the bathroom or checking the mail or whatever she was doing.

Eventually someone else comes in, a bit upset, and tells me I’m supposed to be working rather than sitting in the office. I explain that I just started and I’m waiting for the HR lady to come back. “She went home for the day” he tells me in a gruff voice, presumably thinking I’m lazy.

Not having any other options, I tell him I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing. For some reason he’s about to explode. He takes me to the back room where the work gets done, points at one of the other workers, tells me to do what he’s doing, and he disappears. Maybe he was the owner. Who knows. I never saw him again.

So I’m in an interesting situation. I’m new there, no clue what product the company makes, and my training consists of watching someone else operating a piece of equipment. I watched him for a couple minutes, then pulled out a piece of equipment that I hoped would work, and started imitating what he was doing. It didn’t take long to figure out that the two of us were testing the rubber objects the other workers were making. It was our job to identify the ones that weren’t strong enough. Were there particular standards that had to be met? Was I using the machine correctly? Was this the only thing I was supposed to do? So many questions, so few answers.

The only time anyone talked to me was

  1. to tell me I was doing something wrong (happened every couple hours)
  2. to tell me it was break time, and
  3. to shout at me for coming back from break two minutes early.

Turned out that (c) was my supervisor. That was the only interaction I had with him.

I figured it was just the first day. No company could possibly be run that poorly without going bankrupt. Well, I was wrong. The second day went just like the first, with the exception that I made sure to take the full 15 minutes for my break. I didn’t come back for a third day. I called the HR lady, who thankfully had reappeared, to tell her the job wasn’t for me.

At this point you might be tempted to say that I should have just shown up for work and not cared as long as I got paid. Here are some reasons you’d be wrong:

  • The work itself was terrible. It involved doing the same few tasks over and over for hours at a time. After a short break, I was back at it for a few more hours. Since it paid minimum wage, I knew there was no chance I’d make less in a different job.
  • Everyone I interacted with was rude. I suppose I could have responded with “Listen you f-ing moron, nobody told me what I’m supposed to do” but that wouldn’t have improved my situation. The sample of people working the night shift is not a random sample from the population. They’re not familiar with what most of us think of as human interaction.
  • There’s a lot of stress associated with doing a job without any training. I had literally no clue what the company did, what the product was, or what I was doing. I imitated another worker and hoped nobody would shout at me. See the previous point about their ability to interact with others.
  • Leaving for work at 3:30 in the afternoon meant I had to eat when I got home. Around 10:00, I’d be a bad combination of hungry and tired as a result of not eating. A bag of potato chips in the middle of my shift wasn’t a substitute for eating a meal, especially when I was working at a time I didn’t usually work. On the positive side, this was the one bad part of the job that would actually get better if I stuck with it.

There was a little concern on my part about not having a job. I had enough savings to last two or three weeks, and my living expenses were low. I was willing to accept the risk of quitting. I’m happy to say I survived. I found another job before I starved.