I have had some dreadful jobsI spent two weeks at a games factory pulling counters off the plastic mould things when they came out of the machine, and two weeks in the dog food factory directing dried dog food into packets which made me smell beeeeyootiful, as well as a couple of months worht of evenings putting silly health supplements into boxes. I also spent two weeks on the PC world coverplan helpline when they appeared on watchdog and spent a memorable summer washing up in a stately home kitchen for something ridiculous like £1.50 an hour. I spent nearly three years working part-time at Ladbrokes watching smelly old men smoking roll-ups obsessively put all their pension / dole money / child allowance on small men making really large animals run as fast as they can. I'm sure I've got some amoosing stories from Ladbrokes, but my mind's gone blank, how useful.
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100% kitten better than ever,
Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:47,
archived)
Blimey you have had a colourful life.All I've done is tedious office junior-temp jobs - photocopying, stuffing envelopes, answering the phones. I feel quite deprived now.
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MizEmma,
Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:50,
archived)
Well can anyone beat this???Here's a list of all the jobs I've done/places I've worked in the last 25-odd years that I can remember. Most are in order but it gets confused as I've done so much temping:
Paper boy, asst. to window dresser, kitchen asst./waiter, McDonalds, barman in City luncheon club, grape picker (also involved interpreting between Catalan farmer and 3 Welsh lads), satsuma/orange/olive picker (France, Germany, Crete), drink seller (beach in Nice), drill warehouse, print warehouse, commissionaire, furniture mover, post-room for Readers' Digest & Olivetti, filing clerk in family planning clinic, driver's mate on laundry truck, butter stacker at Tesco, night clerk at 7-11, catering asst. at Kew Gardens, filing clerk at DHSS, admin. asst. at Kew Gardens, asst. to woodworker, burger flipper, Saturday yard boy at builders' merchant, self-employed cabinet-maker, asst. to product designer, line-feeder in razor factory, milk-bottling plant (fishing notes out of bottles), video library for Scandinavian satellite company, turkey abbatoir, barman, bar supervisor, odd-job man, gardener, and lastly 5 years in an insurance company.
In there somewhere are 1 year on a catering course, degree in art & design technology and a year's teacher training.
"There I throw my gauge!"
(,
Wed 12 Nov 2003, 14:14,
archived)
Paper boy, asst. to window dresser, kitchen asst./waiter, McDonalds, barman in City luncheon club, grape picker (also involved interpreting between Catalan farmer and 3 Welsh lads), satsuma/orange/olive picker (France, Germany, Crete), drink seller (beach in Nice), drill warehouse, print warehouse, commissionaire, furniture mover, post-room for Readers' Digest & Olivetti, filing clerk in family planning clinic, driver's mate on laundry truck, butter stacker at Tesco, night clerk at 7-11, catering asst. at Kew Gardens, filing clerk at DHSS, admin. asst. at Kew Gardens, asst. to woodworker, burger flipper, Saturday yard boy at builders' merchant, self-employed cabinet-maker, asst. to product designer, line-feeder in razor factory, milk-bottling plant (fishing notes out of bottles), video library for Scandinavian satellite company, turkey abbatoir, barman, bar supervisor, odd-job man, gardener, and lastly 5 years in an insurance company.
In there somewhere are 1 year on a catering course, degree in art & design technology and a year's teacher training.
"There I throw my gauge!"
she's a mastic asphalt spreaderi don't know why i bother saying this, noone ever knows what it means
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new_matt,
Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:59,
archived)
www.b3ta.com/board/163117
it was part of our "careers" lesson when i was at high school. for some reason this chap called neville sponge wanted to be one. i never understood why.
(it was part of our "careers" lesson when i was at high school. for some reason this chap called neville sponge wanted to be one. i never understood why.
new_matt,
Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:08,
archived)
Neville Sponge!!!! Yes! Neville Sponge, wanted to be a brain surgeon but was convinced to be a mastic asphalt spreader!! Thank God someone else remembers it... Nostalgic sigh...
Oh, and the worst job I ever had was in a packing factory (certain theme emerging here) putting shampoo bottles into cardboard boxes. Not bad, except the corrugated cardboard was so sharp and the box so badly designed that every time you tucked the flaps in (ooooer) it took a neat little roll of skin of the back of your fingers.
By the end of the day my fingers looked like those novelty butter curls your mum used to impress dinner guests with in the 70's, except bloodier.
Quit that day, went home to cry.
(,
Mon 10 Nov 2003, 17:24,
archived)
Oh, and the worst job I ever had was in a packing factory (certain theme emerging here) putting shampoo bottles into cardboard boxes. Not bad, except the corrugated cardboard was so sharp and the box so badly designed that every time you tucked the flaps in (ooooer) it took a neat little roll of skin of the back of your fingers.
By the end of the day my fingers looked like those novelty butter curls your mum used to impress dinner guests with in the 70's, except bloodier.
Quit that day, went home to cry.
I remember that!There was a YTS (or YOPS, whatever) leaflet doing the rounds that had my then assistant Venture* leader on it!
There was a photo of him accomapnied by a quote about why he chose to work in a dark room**...
*big Scouts- you got to wear (pale) brown shirts & march a lot...
**Not as exciting as it might appear
(There was a photo of him accomapnied by a quote about why he chose to work in a dark room**...
*big Scouts- you got to wear (pale) brown shirts & march a lot...
**Not as exciting as it might appear
Duncan Disorderly,
Mon 10 Nov 2003, 18:18,
archived)
Bill Tarmeyaka Jack Duckworth out of Corrie, started out as a mastic asphalt spreader
( smutch,
Mon 10 Nov 2003, 19:07,
archived)
Yes I remember that tooChrist I never thought I'd hear someone else remember that mastic asphalt spreading joke. It's pretty obsure. I recall that also Neville Sponge was drawn with extremely phallic-shaped ears (or did I just imagine that?).
My list of shit jobs is endless.
The first one was washing up in the kitchen of a local hotel at 16. Evening shifts ended at 2 in the morning, the washing liquid gave me severe eczema. I gave up when my arms starting bleeding badly.
Another one that sticks in my mind was working in a almond processing plant one summer. There was a particularly nasty boss there called Maurice. I never truly understood the power of hate until I met Maurice. His favourite pastime was bollocking the girls on the production line when they stopped momentarily to turn over the tapes in their walkmans. He started to pick on me when I got a broken finger from a motorbike accident, purposefully giving me jobs like lifting heavy sacks to exacerbate my pain. Most of these jobs were superfluous, it's just that wanted me to give in. He said so. His only motive for hurting people was pleasure. He was an evil man.
Anyway I studied hard, went on and got a degree and do better things while I like to think that he squandered the rest of his existence in that same shithole doing nothing useful with his life.
After I graduated I got a hotel bar job just to tide me over until the big offers would come rolling in.
I quit after one evening. The job wasn't bad but by chance I noticed a chef from that first hotel where I worked 7 years ago. This was symbolic.
For me, the circle was complete. I started in a hotel kitchen, I ended in a hotel kitchen. My life was a rags to rags story.
I was gutted. And I'm sure Maurice would have loved that.
(,
Mon 10 Nov 2003, 23:13,
archived)
My list of shit jobs is endless.
The first one was washing up in the kitchen of a local hotel at 16. Evening shifts ended at 2 in the morning, the washing liquid gave me severe eczema. I gave up when my arms starting bleeding badly.
Another one that sticks in my mind was working in a almond processing plant one summer. There was a particularly nasty boss there called Maurice. I never truly understood the power of hate until I met Maurice. His favourite pastime was bollocking the girls on the production line when they stopped momentarily to turn over the tapes in their walkmans. He started to pick on me when I got a broken finger from a motorbike accident, purposefully giving me jobs like lifting heavy sacks to exacerbate my pain. Most of these jobs were superfluous, it's just that wanted me to give in. He said so. His only motive for hurting people was pleasure. He was an evil man.
Anyway I studied hard, went on and got a degree and do better things while I like to think that he squandered the rest of his existence in that same shithole doing nothing useful with his life.
After I graduated I got a hotel bar job just to tide me over until the big offers would come rolling in.
I quit after one evening. The job wasn't bad but by chance I noticed a chef from that first hotel where I worked 7 years ago. This was symbolic.
For me, the circle was complete. I started in a hotel kitchen, I ended in a hotel kitchen. My life was a rags to rags story.
I was gutted. And I'm sure Maurice would have loved that.