Best and Worst Jobs

[Karen J]

What is the best and worst job you've ever had? I'm not asking about money, I'm talking about the actual work experience.

Without a doubt, my personal favorite was running a small bookstore up in the mountains, in a small resort town. I especially loved snowy winter days when hardly anybody came in the store. I didn't make much money, but I got to hang out all day and read stuff, drink coffee, and listen to music, while looking out the big windows at the snow coming down. That was in the days before the internet, and a bookstore was the very best place to learn all kinds of things about all kinds of subjects, in addition to reading entertaining fiction.

Second place goes to bartending at a golf club. It was the opposite of the bookstore; social rather than quiet and introspective. I didn't do that nearly as long as the bookstore job.

[Tropical Breeze]

Bookstore seems like a good job especially if its not busy.

My best job was my last two jobs. Both were banks. In my very last job i enjoyed working with some of the people there. I think that makes a huge difference in a job, whether you get along with the people there. The one before that i only worked the drive thru (Edit: the drive thru was at a separate location from the main branch) and we were short staff so i mainly worked there alone, by myself for part of the time. I enjoyed the solitude. It helped that it was not busy. So i would do a lot of reading, exercise, throwing the ball against the chair and catch it as it bounces back, etc.

Worst job was Macys. They wanted me to work crazy, unreasonable hours. So i only lasted a few days.

[Karen J]

Money! Too bad banks don't give out free samples to employees.

[Beach Ball Bitch]

My best job was also my worst job. Great company but ppl I worked directly with were awful. Enjoyed ppl outside the department.

I loved my first job of cleaning tarps at 10, self employed. Working in a newspaper factory through high school was pretty good as well. Dirty job but it kept me going and had little office politics BS.

[Meliai]

Best in terms of just being a fun job....this little sandwich shop I worked at as a teenager. I worked with a cute guy and we worked next door to a cd store where another cute guy worked. Neither places got very much business so we all spent most of our time sitting outside getting high. It was pretty much a dream job for a teen.

Best in terms of job satisfaction, working customer service for a medical billing place. Most of the people who called were elderly and I heard some really sad, terrible stories. I went well above what my actual job responsibilities were, spending hours on the phone with their insurance and, if we couldn't get their insurance to pay, finding charitable resources for them.
I really wanted to get into non profit patient advocacy work after that but..well, I dunno, it just never happened lol

Worst, working at a call center. i think I'm still traumatized from that job

[Undies]

pizza delivery. i got to drive around all day smoking weed, and got paid pretty decent money for it. plus i was young, and our delivery area included a college campus, so it was not unheard of to deliver to a college party where everyone thinks it's great to get the pizza guy to shotgun a beer with them, or hit their bong, or check out their boobs.

worst job was pizza management. all the stressful parts of the job with hardly any of the good parts, for lower pay.

[tumbling.dice]

As a teen I worked for an appliance store delivering and installing dishwashers, washers and dryers, refrigerators, freezers, window air conditioners and shit like that. I spend most of the day just driving to and from customers houses...went by real fast. The best part was the early morning deliveries. The husbands would have left for work and the wives were sometimes still in their nightgowns. Good eye candy for a teenage boy.

Worst job? I worked for a window manufacturer for a couple years, a big company you've probably heard of. I worked 10 hours days, 6 days a week and still could not catch up on my work. I was the receiving clerk and was responsible for both incoming inventory and outgoing product and my supervisor was a complete idiot.

[Sooz]

Best job was my last one when i was working at an asian grocery store stacking shelves with their goods they had boxed up in the back of the store.

Worst job was my first one when i was folding up newspapers that people didn't want delivered into their letter boxes.
Ink would get on your hands, angry people throwing stuff back at you because you were doing your job.

[Amerijuanican]

Best in terms of just being a fun job....this little sandwich shop I worked at as a teenager. I worked with a cute guy and we worked next door to a cd store where another cute guy worked. Neither places got very much business so we all spent most of our time sitting outside getting high. It was pretty much a dream job for a teen.

Best in terms of job satisfaction, working customer service for a medical billing place. Most of the people who called were elderly and I heard some really sad, terrible stories. I went well above what my actual job responsibilities were, spending hours on the phone with their insurance and, if we couldn't get their insurance to pay, finding charitable resources for them.
I really wanted to get into non profit patient advocacy work after that but..well, I dunno, it just never happened lol

Worst, working at a call center. i think I'm still traumatized from that job

Wow, I wish someone had done that for me. I was never told about options ..

[Meliai]

Wow, I wish someone had done that for me. I was never told about options ..

Yeah thats the thing, there are so many resources out there but few know how to access them

If you ever find yourself in this situation again and we're all still climbing about in the tree fort, feel free to shoot me a PM

[Din Djarin]

Best job: probably my current, working in the family business. 3 days a week, from feb til november I don't make much money, but plenty to get by
edit: I mostly drive around delivering the product to the sellers (markets, supermarkets and stores). So lots of scenery, lots of short visits and talks with lots of people of which the far majority seem really happy to see me dropping by :-D

Worst: probably the one at a shrimp processing factory. Often boring work for hours on end and very smelly. Excellent pay, esp at night which I did as much as possible at the time (I was a student).

[tumbling.dice]

Best job: probably my current, working in the family business. 3 days a week, from feb til november I don't make much money, but plenty to get by
edit: I mostly drive around delivering the product to the sellers (markets, supermarkets and stores). So lots of scenery, lots of short visits and talks with lots of people of which the far majority seem really happy to see me dropping by :-D

Worst: probably the one at a shrimp processing factory. Often boring work for hours on end and very smelly. Excellent pay, esp at night which I did as much as possible at the time (I was a student).

I have forgotten what the family business is. Dairy or something?

[Din Djarin]

Fresh sheep cheese. So fresh that when we are out of production we're also out of sales. They're in stores one day after production and have to be cooled in the fridge to be kept good. No other ingredients than full (unskimmed) pasteurized milk and rennet.

[Youfreeme]

Worst job was probably a cafeteria I worked in. I made minimum wage, and the kitchen was HOT and smelly as hell. Sometimes, I go into other cafeterias and catch a whiff of that same scent--shudder. All of the chef there were assholes. My job was usually to tend to the pasta station, so I'd have to monitor it and when the pasta/sauce was almost out, I'd go to the kitchen and ask for more. Every time I'd ask for more pasta the cook would start screaming at me: "Why the fuck do you keep asking for more pasta!!?!" Dude. It's my job. I worked almost exclusively with older women--maybe 40s-60s who were kinda ghetto and would literally just bitch about how much their baby daddies sucked and how much they hated men. It was miserable.

Easiest job was probably at an upscale banquet facility. I used to make really good money for a college student, and probably only worked for 25% of the shift, the rest would be spend sitting around in the back and chatting, or hanging out in the wedding/party. Usually, we would work these very fancy weddings or parties hosted by very wealthy people, social elite, celebrities, etc. It's really hard to work a wedding and not be in a good mood afterwards. They treated employees very well, and the food was amazing.

[mallyboppa]

best job / and the worst I ever had is my current one ! Been doing the same thing basically since 1972 and to be honest I am fucking amazing at it , Which can be a blessing or a curse !
That's all I got sorry !!

[Karen J]

What kind of work is it?

[Youfreeme]

For some reason I feel like you work with carpets, lol! Carpet sales? Carpet factory or warehouse?

[mallyboppa]

very Good YFM I build and maintain carpet machines !
Google "Carpet loom tuner "

[JoeKing]

From 14 to 17 I worked on a dock unloading fishing boats. It was fun and at $5 an hour I was doing pretty well in the late 1970s. And from 18 to today Ive been commercial fishing. The jobs the same but the boats have changed. I've been lucky as far as who I've worked for, in the early years it was tough. Fishing wasn't that great and the pay wasn't so good. So getting reliable people season after season was difficult. That's where it could get hard. On boat with people not willing to do the work made people testy so arguments were common.

The boat I got on in 2002 was amazing, a very fun crew to work with and the money was incredible.

The worst was probably a boat I was on when we got caught in a huge storm, we didn't catch any fish so no money was made. But the terrible part were the life lost, boats were in trouble, losing windows and equipment, we busted up our pretty well and almost lost the boat. The saddest part was we're about 10 miles from a friend, is wasn't doing so well, call for help, the coast guard was to busy and we were fighting for our own lives. As we talked to him on the radio he gave me all his personal info of his and his crew. The last thing he said was to tell his wife he was sorry.

[Karen J]

Wow, what a sad story. For many years, I didn't realize that fishing ranks right up there in the top five most dangerous jobs. Commercial fishing is so different from the kind that most people do, so our understanding is limited.

[JoeKing]

Karen, it's a different world. It's an amazing way to make a living but also incredibly tragic at the same time.

[Beach Ball Bitch]

I know you