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Friday, September 02, 2005

Worst Job Ever

Worst job, hands down:






A Mr. Burgas was doing a contest (actually three contests.) One involved describing the worst job the reader ever had. There were even prizes involved. Of course, that was really a secondary consideration. The primary thing is that it gave an excuse to write this piece, appropriate for the beginning of the Labor Day weekend.

You might think it would be a job cleaning huuman feces from a wall (mentioned SOMETIME last month) would be the worst job I've ever had, but you would be wrong.

I worked in a box factory. You know the cardboard that separates cans or bottles in a case of beer or soda? There was a conveyer belt in which four people, women as it turns out, took these innards and put them together. My job was to tie them into bundles of 20.

These women were developmentally disabled with IQs of about 70. Perhaps that is why the repetitive nature of the work did not seem bother them, but it certainly annoyed me. So they were much faster putting together the box innards than I was tying them into bundles, using a specific knot that I did not know. (Why that specific knot, I never knew.)

The work was 2 hours on, 10 minutes off, 1 hour 50 minutes on, 30 minute lunch, 2 hours on, 10 minutes off, 1 hr 50 minutes on, go home. No variation. No one with whom to have a decent conversation.

And since I couldn't keep up with these women, the boss was screaming at me by day 2. Moreeover, the women on the line were resentful of me, because if they slowed up, it meant that they didn't reach their bonus goals. Not so incidentally, the guy doing the tying was not eligible for any bonuses.

My back was very sore every night from the bending and lifting.

By day 3, I decided to quit at the end of my second week, even though I REALLY needed the money for college. It was after that when I learned that the previous person on the job had the position for one week, and his predecessor for one DAY.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Roger

LOVED the box tying story! You forgot the Paul Harvey punchline-- years
later, those very same women who were your co-workers became regular
Fantaco customers! But I kid...