Worst place you've ever worked?

[MONKMAN]

How many jobs did you go through before you completed a full day?

Stayed a full day, or completed what could be described as a full days work? If it's the latter, I'm still waiting to tick that one off.

[Dee Dee]

I had to leave my last job, as a meteorologist, due to ill health. I was under the weather all the time.

[Marsh]

I got paid off from my job at a consultancy engineers and was offered a job at Central Chambers which I accepted as I'd been out of work for a couple of months. Turned up and the "supervisor" showed me my tasks, which was basically copying and pasting names and addresses from a spreadsheet to a database. She was genuinely dumbfounded when I was able to complete this task first time without any mistakes. It was near Christmas time and one of the mouthbreathers who worked there started talking about the woman in her close putting too many lights up. The guy across from me piped up "I'd just take my shotgun down and shoot her in the face". I made some excuse about having to take my P45 to the recruitment agency and just went home, this was about 45 minutes in. Luckily I got another job about 2 weeks later.

[Monster]

I formerly worked as an appraiser of farm machinery.

Left the job a while back, I'm an ex tractor fan.

[forever_blue]

I got paid off from my job at a consultancy engineers and was offered a job at Central Chambers which I accepted as I'd been out of work for a couple of months. Turned up and the "supervisor" showed me my tasks, which was basically copying and pasting names and addresses from a spreadsheet to a database. She was genuinely dumbfounded when I was able to complete this task first time without any mistakes. It was near Christmas time and one of the mouthbreathers who worked there started talking about the woman in her close putting too many lights up. The guy across from me piped up "I'd just take my shotgun down and shoot her in the face". I made some excuse about having to take my P45 to the recruitment agency and just went home, this was about 45 minutes in. Luckily I got another job about 2 weeks later.

hmmmm i dont get the pun in this one?

[SodjesSixteenIncher]

I used to work in a start-up business support agency but I also dealt a bit of weed to the clients.

It was a Gateway drug.

[Sweet Pete]

Left school at 16 and worked in a jeans place in Glasgow city centre on a government YTS scheme, so you do the same full-time hours as everyone else on the staff but you get a fraction of the wages. They often sent me to work in other city centre branches if they were short staffed. Worst was the St Enoch Centre branch, the manager hated me from the minute he clapped eyes on me, though I've genuinely no idea why, maybe plooky, shy teenagers are a bugbear of his. Used to try and set me up to be uncomfortable, like searching my bag at the end of the shift in front of other staff under the auspices that "you might have stolen something", or storming into the break room 25 minutes into my 30 minute break and demanding that I get back out on the shop floor as I was "taking the piss with these long breaks". One afternoon a guy walked into the store and exchanged knowing winks with the manager and then walked purposefully into the back staff area, the manager came over to me and told me "get him out of there, no customers are allowed back there", I told him I'd seen him acknowledge the guy so it was obvious he was staff I hadn't met yet. He got really angry at that and demanded I tell the guy to get out of the staff room, so I popped my head round the door and said "no customers in here, pal" and the guy came out and started howling with laughter with the manager that their plan to trick the new kid had worked so well. Odd c***s. I left after 6 months.

Next job was at What Everyone Wants as a store hand / supervisor / stock room guy split between two stores and two different shifts, so some days I was at a store close to home as a store assistant, weekends I was at that same store as a department supervisor and Tuesdays and Thursdays during the week I was a stock room guy at a big city centre store in Argyle Street. The city centre store was huge, over 6 floors (ground, basement, sub-basement, first, second, third) and they owned the whole building that made up that block but it was only partially open as the chain was nearing its demise. There were very few staff (6 or so on any given day) and I was the only male and the only one assigned to stock duties, so I had to unload all the deliveries etc on my own for the whole place and then carry them up or downstairs to the various departments. There was an old lift with a manual lattice frame door that would stop intermittently and leave you stranded between floors, there were whole floors of storage without working lights, which was terrifying given the total lack of security in the place. One day the manageress came running up to me and told me a junkie had tried to steal something from the tills at the far end of the store and a young store assistant girl had chased after him and disappeared, so I was to set off and find her. After half an hour racing around Clydeside I returned to the shop and found her sitting in the staff room having a tea break, she'd only walked out after the guy as far as the next door to the department through the wall and then went on a break unannounced. Another time a shelf fell on my hand and trapped my thumb while I was in one of the abandoned storage floors alone upstairs. The staff room was in the sub-basement floor and infested with fruit flies and the whole building stank of rising damp. Locking up at night meant going round the entire building closing up about a dozens entrances and exits, several of the rear of which were in alleys that the local junkies used to shoot up (or just sometimes piss in). There was a sauna across the road near the MOD building and I'd occasionally watch the prossies welcoming their johns in skimpy nurses uniforms at lunchtime.

[Zen Archer (Raconteur)]

I used to be a gynaecologist, I work one day a week just to keep my hand in.

[throbber]

I worked as a pantomime horse, i quite while i was a head

[Dee Dee]

Then there was the job at the concrete plant, which just got harder and harder.

Seriously though, my current job has just went from being pretty good to downright dogshit! Time for a change methinks.

[BFTD]

Next job was at What Everyone Wants...

That all seemed very familiar. Two floors was bad enough; must've been hell in a store that big.

[Marsh]

hmmmm i dont get the pun in this one?

Me either?

[Zen Archer (Raconteur)]

I used to work as a ferryman in Skye. That was 20 odd years back though, it's all water under the bridge now.

Mods please.

[cracowjambo]

Me either?

^^^^

Trying for a greenie

[Boo Khaki]

I used to work as an astronaut but quit because of the lack of atmosphere

[banana]

Mods please.

[banana]

My first job was researching quantum fluctuations, but it was just a temporary thing.

[Sweet Pete]

That all seemed very familiar. Two floors was bad enough; must've been hell in a store that big.

Yeah it was ridiculous. The people who shoplift in clearance stores like that are weird. One family of local Glasgow eejits got caught trying to shoplift, bearing in mind this was a shop where the end of line stuff was sold for as little as 10p and nothing cost more than about £20 in the whole place, and they started knocking over rails, displays and anything else within arms reach as they were escorted out.

Some of the staff were proper odd as well, one was a middle aged woman who talked to herself and had a nervous tick. She would start a conversation with you about her cats and then you could wander off while she was speaking and she'd just keep talking like you hadn't left. She was in charge of the shoe and luggage department and referred to the suitcases in the first person and treated the sets of three suitcases as families of father (largest suitacse), mother (medium sized) and baby (smallest suitcase).

The other store I worked in was fine and was just like any other discount department store. Only amusing anecdote I have from there was more to do with my incompetence than the store's. Me and another kid of 17 were working in the section nearest the side door one day putting out cushions and refilling quilt displays etc. There were some sale rails of womens clothes near that door, all end of line old stock at heavily reduced prices. We heard the store alarm go at the doors at that end and both walked over to find a mother and daughter hurriedly leaving and walking away. We caught up with them outside and asked them to come back in as something they had bought must still have a tag on it. They came in, we opened the bag the mother was holding, which was from a different shop entirely, and took the tag off the trousers she had balle up inside then wished them well and they left. We stood for a good 5 minutes before figuring out that we had just assisted some shoplifters in making a clean getaway.

[Guest The Phoenix]

Ashfield Dye Factory

Summer job whilst at University.

Got promoted to Storeman within a week because I could read and write.

Unloaded a lorry load of bags of Urea (in simple terms a solidified form of urine used in dye making) and it started raining. Some of the bags had holes in them and the skin on my arms was turned red raw.

Didn't last long - I (accidentally) drove the forklift into the adjacent river and was promptly sacked.

[Colbert]

Left school at 16 and worked in a jeans place in Glasgow city centre on a government YTS scheme, so you do the same full-time hours as everyone else on the staff but you get a fraction of the wages. They often sent me to work in other city centre branches if they were short staffed. Worst was the St Enoch Centre branch, the manager hated me from the minute he clapped eyes on me, though I've genuinely no idea why, maybe plooky, shy teenagers are a bugbear of his. Used to try and set me up to be uncomfortable, like searching my bag at the end of the shift in front of other staff under the auspices that "you might have stolen something", or storming into the break room 25 minutes into my 30 minute break and demanding that I get back out on the shop floor as I was "taking the piss with these long breaks". One afternoon a guy walked into the store and exchanged knowing winks with the manager and then walked purposefully into the back staff area, the manager came over to me and told me "get him out of there, no customers are allowed back there", I told him I'd seen him acknowledge the guy so it was obvious he was staff I hadn't met yet. He got really angry at that and demanded I tell the guy to get out of the staff room, so I popped my head round the door and said "no customers in here, pal" and the guy came out and started howling with laughter with the manager that their plan to trick the new kid had worked so well. Odd c***s. I left after 6 months.

It wasn't Madhouse you worked at, was it? I worked in the Edinburgh branch while I was at uni, and the St Enoch's manager came through to cover our manager's day off a few times. That sort of stuff is exactly the kind of thing he tried with us as well. The man was a colossal p***k.