I've had a lot of jobs.
My first job was working a counter and later the drive-through at a Jack in the Box. The irony of this was that it was actually quite a difficult job to get. Partly because I was shockingly shy as a child - shut up it's true. I ended up stopping in at the same restaurant several times a week for six months. I suspect the manager interviewed me out of sheer exasperation. I was so nervous during the interview that I almost lost my voice. Shut up, it's true.
So I got the damn job and since then I have had seventteen more jobs. Why seventeen jobs? I've never been fired. Officially. I've been laid off and twice I've had jobs just stop scheduling me which I think is the PC don't-bring-a-shotgun-to-work method of firing these days. But mostly the jobs /hours dried up or I moved on to a better position somewhere and then there was school getting all up in it too. So of alllll the jobs I've endured, tolerated, savaged, and survived, which was the worst?
Some might think it would be my time as an F-16 crewchief at the ass end of Honshu working stupid long hours in literally all weather. But no, that was a challenge but I got a great deal out of my time in Japan and in the military and don't regret a minute of it. Okay then, what about working in a sweaty dangerous deli or fast food? What about temping at a candy factory working overnight steeped in the reek of chocolate and stale sweat? Taking notification calls from bereaved family members? How 'bout janitorial work or housekeeping? Working three jobs at once? Navigating an office full of lunatic women with twisted values and no sense of mind-your-bidness? What about being forced to sell credit cards with criminally high rates or lose your job? No?
No. The worst job in the world was a very special, very terrible, and very very depraved gig. Partly because it looked so great from the outside that I gave up a shot at working for R.E.I to get it.
See, it's not just that the job was fucking awful - though it was, and it wasn't just that my coworkers were vile evil heaps of human refuse - though most were and all of management absolutely was, and it wasn't even just that the hours were shit and the conditions primitive though again, they were. It was all of these things flavored with desperation and the sure and certain knowledge that none of it had to be that way.
See, the thing is if you've had a good job or even a decent job when you wash up on the shores of destitute horrifying ineptitude and malicious managing tactics... the whole experience is exacerbated by a factor of at least one thousand. And, say what you will about the military or basically any other job I've ever had, they all had their ups and downs but all of them were highly functional healthy and successful endeavors compared to the Worst Job in the World.
Now I'll need to set the stage a bit here. Firstly when I left the military in '06 my carefully laid plans took a flying leap off the side of the highway of life when my mom died. These things happen, I put my plans for going to school on hold, handed over all the ready cash I had to my Dad - because even with Mom's catastrophic health insurance and charity care from the hospital where she died we still had a few thousand in medical bills plus funeral costs etc - and went to work. Dad couldn't cover the household bills alone and I couldn't afford to rent my own place so we basically teamed up. Sorta.
Eventually I enrolled in our local community college and managed to juggle various crap jobs then I got hired on through a friend at a place that did background checks for a particular industry, mostly union labor so no big deal. But it took a lot of concentration and training so I chose to skip a quarter of school so I could concentrate on the job more - mind you half of my income at this point was coming from the GI Bill monthly stipend. So I quit school confident - as I had been promised that the usual spring / summer layoffs this particular business was subject to were not going to occur that year - that I would have a couple months to focus on work and be the bestest little researcher I could be and then re-enroll in school again.
Except that they laid me off with less than a paycheck's notice.
So, with about ten days notice I had a last paycheck and fuck all else. Bring on the food stamps! No, seriously. And y'know what when the state gives you a couple hundred a month for groceries and you can only spend that money on food it is amazing how well you can eat. When all you have is $30 and you have to get groceries for a few days and gas for work the food quality suffers but when all you have is nothing and $30 on your EBT card ... well, you get the point.
Now let me make something clear, from the time I left the military until about two months ago I have lived paycheck to paycheck. So it wasn't like I had that mythical 'three-months-of-funds-to-cover-monthly-expenses-cushion' all the online money planners advise the wise and industrious person to maintain. So basically I was staring at a future where within 11 days I was not only going to be broke but in the red.
Anyway, I ended up ricocheting from temp jobs and landed a sweet gig as a steady temp working 5-7 hours a night on swings at the nearby R.E.I. distribution center. The work was physical but the pay was a fuckton better than the zero I had been getting, I got to listen to my MP3 player most of the day, and I liked the people I worked with. Not just my fellow temps mind you, R.E.I to their extreme credit, made the privileges and differences between temps and regular hires very clear but aside from those guidelines we were all treated very well and morale was surprisingly good.
Meanwhile I kept digging and snuffling for a 'real' job i.e. one where there was a hint of security. Seriously, just a hint, like set hours, I didn't give a fuck about benefits, benefits were a golden rumor that people with Careers had. So I kept sending out my resume to every place I had any shot at being a fit for, literally, and applying to probably twenty or more locations a week until it got to the point where I had memorized the various job listing available from worksource, craigslist, monster, etc and could spot a new posting from ten feet away. That's not really an exaggeration either, if you spend two hours a day working over job sites then you get to a point where you can recognize the rhythm and shape of text from across the room or spot a few initials or key terms and know exactly what the job advert is. Ahh the skills you pick up.
So, I was contacted by a person I will refer to as Dick (his real name does start with a D but ...yeah) with an offer for an interview. I could barely remember applying for the job and tap danced the fuck out of the phone interview. I had initially answered the phone on a whim after working a swing shift and waking up with a headache at seven A.M. (this is important, in retrospect I should have realized that anyone that makes phone interview calls that early has to be playing by a different set of rules than the rest of us). I nailed the phone interview.
At the time that made me feel pretty good, I mean, here I was, laid off with no notice scrambling to keep afloat and finally there was light at the end of the tunnel, light that I had seen thanks to my still-silver-though-tarnished tongue. So, I went on the interview and nailed it - I kept working at R.E.I. for another week.
One of the leads, a fine fellow whose first name was also part of his lastname and was a shining example of R.E.I's leadership - no sarcasm here, seriously great bunch of people - inquired if I was planning to apply to stay on. I told him that while I had entered my application I had already accepted a full time job at forty hours a week and just over $9.50 an hour with benefits and a union. He asked a few questions and it was only after he had walked away that I realized he had been feeling me out likely to offer me a few hours as a semi-regular.
Fuck, I thought, fuck, I could have probably worked something out. Then I thought about the golden word that Dick had slipped into the phone and personal interview... benefits. Well, I thought, I'm twenty-whatever, it's time to grow up, time to get Benefits and a Career. So I finished my time at R.E.I. on a high note and prepared for my New Career.
At this time I was also trying to find a Bachelor's program I could get into ASAP and would result in some flavor of B.S. I didn't want a B.A. but was too stressed and tired to really stop and think about a good program. I had once had pipe dreams of going to UW for an environmental science degree until I saw the prerequisites and realized that if I could pass all the high level mathematics and physics courses it would still be at least six years and high two figures in loans before I could even think about walking away with a degree and that was only if I actually passed everything. I eventually turned my eyes on to online programs and as I kept digging I started my new job. At this point, to be honest, I was mostly looking for a feasible program so I could like, pay my bills with the GI Bill, y'know?
Now. About the Worst Job in the World. It was at an industrial laundry. Prior to this little adventure in hell my biggest exposure to large scale laundry operations had been via prison movies. Reasonably confident that shanks and gang rape were not going to be integral parts of this experience and further armed with an abundance of self confidence bolstered by the sure and certain knowledge that I had to keep this job and therefore failure wasn't even on the table let alone likely (man we're good at lying to ourselves) I walked face first into misery.
The biggest problem from the outset was the complete and utter lack of training. This turned out to be one of those places that didn't exactly have a corporate hand book. It was family owned and operated - though the only time I met the Family was for about four seconds during my deceptively successful interview and from afar as they wrote checks and yelled at people. So because of this ad-hoc we-do-it-this-way-literally-because-we-always-have-and-for-no-other-reason-take-your-fancy-digital-computers-and-fuck-off system training was, at best, haphazard.
Throw in the fact that the the two women who ran the supply section were sisters one of whom - the sane kind one - had been diagnosed with a serious health condition and the three new hires - including myself - were intended to replace her and they and their family had married into the company though not in the Family and you can begin to get a feeling for the baroque mob-style politics, power plays, and mental illness shrapnel I was about to joyfully face plant into.
Anyway this place had shockingly little turnover (aside from the purge that was rumored to have occurred prior to my hiring due to the company taking on several federal contracts and having to part ways with a large portion of the workforce who lacked proper documents). They specialized in hiring desperate people and keeping them on the hook until the mediocre union benefits kicked in and they got to enjoy little perks like annual physicals and life insurance. Thus treated to the decadence of being considered a human being worthy of security they would decide that being treated like utter shit, bullied by coworkers, and run into the ground on a daily basis until Eeyore the clinically depressed cartoon donkey looked like an optimist was a fair trade off.
Now, back to the job on hand. When I first started I worked in supply and, to be honest, to this day, I'm still not sure what the hell my job description really was. I didn't have a title, I didn't have a job description. I was given the broadest of guidelines by management - who, in retrospect, clearly didn't know what the fuck supply did either - and handed off to the de-facto queen bitch of supply, Katherine. Her name wasn't Katherine, I won't say what her name was, but I will say that she shared her real name with some of the worst people I've ever known. Seriously, I don't know what it is about that name but whenever I hear it I flinch and start looking for a weapon.
Katherine was not stable. At first I assumed that she was hostile because she was busy and her sister was ill. After all I was an ignorant noob the fuck did I know about shit? I should also mention that we started work at 0400, yes gang that's at least two hours before dawn. So, being a dedicated nightshifter/nightowl I was usually too zombified and zeroed in on my tasks to give Katherine too much thought aside from the basics.
But then I woke up a bit and started to talk to my other coworkers, who, it turned out, were only two weeks 'older' than I. When you had a question, needed clarification or guidance, you were better off going to one of the other new people than Katherine. With Katherine you had a one in three chance of getting an answer and a two in three chance of getting your shit reamed and ignored, being flat out ignored - and I mean blatantly ignored too like standing in front of her calling her name and she doesn't even look up, or insulted and ignored.
Whether or not her decisions were conscious I'm not sure but she's pretty much the worst person I have had to personally interact with on a regular basis. She would seemingly at random choose one of the three of us to treat like a human being everyday and none of us could ever figure out how or why she made the decision. That one person would be able to ask questions and the like just fine the rest of us didn't dare approach her until 0900. Mind you that was after our lunch time. After half the day had passed. Half of the day where we couldn't ask questions, get help, or accomplish our work in anything resembling an efficient manner.
This went on for about six weeks during which Dick and other management persons and nosy outsiders would screw with us demanding to know what was wrong with the section and shying away when we pointed out that there were no materials to reference for guidance when Katherine was gone, that Katherine herself was a lawsuit waiting to happen and may as well have been sabotaging the section, and that management themselves couldn't make heads or tails of our section.
Then Katherine went on vacation. Yes folks less than a month after hiring all new personnel in the section all leadership was gone and the clueless management was left to 'supervise' us as we did our level fucking best to do whatever it was we were supposed to be doing. Again, remember, I'm still not sure.
So, after awhile we started to let management know what the hell was going on I may have been a tad impolitic and, eventually, I was moved to a new area. At first it was because someone was on vacation, then someone else was on vacation then someone was promoted etc etc and suddenly I was no longer working supply but spending eight hours a day handling coveralls and uniforms fresh from the 'tunnel'.
The tunnel was a little slice of hell. I still have a scar on my arm from the button on a set of coveralls fresh from the oven that gave me a third degree burn. Basically damp/wet items would be hung and run through the tunnel which was a fifteen foot free standing oven with a conveyor system. By the time the damp items exited they were dangerously hot but there was no time to let them cool they had to be moved to the correct racks so the delivery drivers could load them up for delivery the follow day.
Dick kept an eye on me. Not sure why maybe they had a bet or something. I spent another month or so working the tunnel and the line, putting wet clothing on hangers to run through the tunnel. It was back breaking work made worse by a muscle I tore in my back a few years previously.
Then I was moved again. I'm not sure what specifically spurred this move, I suspect it had a good deal to do with my agitating the women on the tunnel and oven against Katherine's tyranny and encouraging them to speak to their foreman - I worked there long enough to be a member of the union for about six weeks - and get some justice, or at least try.
So I moved to a new area, I'm not sure what it was really called but I always thought of it as intake. This was where deliveries of soiled clothing arrived first. Here's the thing though, most people who have foul laundry usually make a point of chucking it into the laundry as soon as possible because it's gross and nasty and letting it sit is stupid. But not this place.
Now, remember it's high summer by now and while we might start at 0400 it's still hot as shit out by 0900. So what I got to do was take receipt of bags of laundry that had been sitting on the trucks for, in some cases, as long as a week. This would be gross anyway but when you consider that this joint provided laundry and uniform services for hospitals and produce / meat markets... well.
I clearly remember one day working emptying bags and shaking them to make sure there weren't any goodies in the pockets (I missed a pen once and a load of laundry was 'inked' Dick had a hissy fit because I didn't burst into tears over it, sorry I'm an adult with emotional control and a sense of priorities?) then sorting them by type and sending them off to be washed. I was working away one day listening to my headphones and minding my own business when I noticed a familiar unpleasant smell. It was acrid and cloying, oddly penetrating and lingering. It wasn't until that afternoon that I realized what I had been smelling all day.
Death.
Yes ladies and gents I had been marinating in death all day. I took a second look at the items I was sorting - scrubs and bathrobes - and took a hard look at the goodies falling out. Pens and sundry mostly but occasionally an empty needle-free dispenser of medications. I took note of the name on one of them and on my break used my phone to look up the medication. It was a high end narcotic painkiller used for terminal agonizing illnesses, like cancer. Turns out I had been sorting through the discards from a hospice.
Fine, whatever, I don't have a problem with death. It happens to all of us and I had spent time working at a funeral home so I wasn't afraid or even grossed out so much as vaguely and additionally depressed. Then it got worse I was moved to another area of intake and started dealing with the produce and meat discards.
Let me tell you by this point the writing was on the wall Dick had set up, if memory serves, two meetings between himself and I with our useless steward as witness. Meetings where he said nothing useful aside from veiled threats. I knew that one more meeting and I was likely on the outs. In addition that torn muscle in my back had gotten worse than ever. I had to take ibuprofen horsepills and use icy-hot cream on my breaks just to make it through the day, several times I sat in my car after getting home just trying to figure out how to get out with the minimum angering of my back. Things were bad.
I had also by now started at Kaplan University but was still stuck waiting on the VA to get their shit together and restart my GI Bill payments so I could get on with life (they eventually did almost three months after I got back into class). So, with the writing on the wall and my score in my Statistics course plummeting I decided that the time had come.
I didn't want to be unprofessional, I wanted to grab Dick when he wasn't in a totally shit mood and let him know I was leaving but for once I couldn't find him. He was one of these managers who cared more about busting people than actually improving his workforce so inevitably he was a fly-on-the-wall at the worst time kind of guy too. Thus, when I actually needed the bastard he was MIA.
I kept working with my doubled gloves and pulsing back and then I reached my least favorite clothing types. The uniforms were used by a produce and meat supplier that used what appeared to be navy blue or black lab coats for their meat cutters. They often came wadded up in layers as the users wore more than one for warmth and they were a bitch to sort through and untangle in search of rogue pens and other goodies.
I was still debating keeping my resignation to myself until after a long weekend so I could enjoy the break when I picked up a coat, peeled the layers apart, checked the pockets and felt what I thought was a wad of plastic gloves in one of the hip pockets. The users would often pack the pockets with throw away gloves to avoid having to search for them while they were working. Still half thinking about finding Dick and quitting I opened the pocket and reached in. Only to have my gloved fingers plunge into something horribly soft, nauseatingly warm, and ...moving.
Some clever bastard at the meat plant had stuffed a double fistful of raw hamburger meat into the pocket, fuck knows why but now, a week after it had been put there, an unrefrigerated week, an unrefrigerated week in high summer, an unrefrigerated week in high summer on the back of a metal truck, it had metamorphosed into a maggoty mass of reeking horror. And I had just buried my hand in it. Up to the wrist.
I found Dick at the next opportunity and let him know I was falling behind in school and wouldn't be continuing my time with their fuckhole company. Only y'know with less profanity. Hilariously he asked when I'd like to end my term, I said with my best (worst) poker face that I didn't want to leave them in the lurch so I could stay for two weeks. He made some kind of noise and asked if the next day would be too soon. I smiled and said no.
My last day was a thing of joy. I said my goodbyes, showed my teeth at Katherine and fucked off out of that place with a grin on my face, a swagger in my step, and the sure and certain knowledge that every nightmare I will endure for the rest of my life will feature the fundamentally wrong sensation of the maggot meat engulfing my hand.
