What jobs have you had and what was your worst/best one and why?

[youngfarmer]

OK so I'll start;
waitress in a cafe (weekend job at school)
department store assistant (weekend job)
silver service/catering company waitress (uni p/t job)
travel agency adviser
hotel receptionist
hotel deputy manager
owner of my own corporate/event catering business & still hotel deputy manager p/t

Worst job was the dept store assistant, awful uniform and some awful customers too (it was a very high end store with some very 'entitled' customers), best job is what I do now, although it's a bit exhausting juggling both jobs!

Best was working as a lifeguard at a holiday camp in UK. The pool I watched was outdoor and unheated and although it was a warm summer hardly anyone went in it. I’d sit in the sun for 8 hours a day, reading my book on my great big tall chair and I’d always be a bit miffed if anyone actually swam in the pool.

Worst was working in a trifle factory. I was a teenager and there was me and a bus load of Polish women who’d been hired in Poland and arrived at the factory with their suitcases straight off the bus. The guy in charge of my bit of the factory was also Polish, explained what we needed to do in Polish and we watched some health and safety videos in Polish. Then we were stuck on this production line for 10 hours. At this point I felt it was too late to say that I wasn’t Polish and didn’t know what the fuck I was supposed to do. So I stood in front of a conveyor belt of trifles for 10 hours a day for 6 weeks.

All the others in my area seemed to tap the trifle lids as they passed and occasionally find one unsatisfactory and pick it up and put it in the bin next to them. So that’s what I did. All I could think was maybe we were checking the plastic lid but was glued on properly and if they weren’t they got chucked. But there were about 5 lid tappers which seemed an awful lot just to check the lids. Sometimes when I can’t sleep at night I get to wondering what the hell I was supposed to be doing to those trifles and if anyone had a bad trifle due to my inefficient lid tapping.

My best was as a data inputter for the prescription pricing service. It was easy, nice people, near my home. The pay wasn't great though so I had to leave in the end.

My worst was a very brief stint for a large high street bank. The others on the training course were uncontrollable, the trainer just sat while they screamed and messed about. God knows where they recruited them from or how they were going to do the job. I left after 2 days.

Worst...sausage and pie factory..one day I had to pat sausages down to fit under the packing machine for hours on end. Or working in a children's home when they all rioted and I had to call the police.
Best.. can't think of one, barmaiding as a student was ok

Jobs I’ve had:
Waitress
Bar person
Travel agent
Sold advertising for a newspaper
Marketing for a hotel chain
Recruitment for antraining company
Sales for a minibus company
Training admin for the nuclear industry
Admin for local government
Local government systems development

Worst job - one travel agency I worked for was owned by a family who’s first language wasn’t English. ALL their customer had very little English. I think they only employed me as I had the required experience to allow them their ABTA licence. I couldn’t help any of their customers and spent 3 months bored out of my mind and feeling completely useless.

Best job/s - loved the travel agency (different one to the above). Great customers, making people’s homiday dreams a reality. Fab colleagues. But shit money.
The job I do now. Love the challenges every day. Massively frustrating and busy but I hope what I do makes the day jobs of child care social workers less faffy and I hope let’s them spend more time with families whilst ensuring we meet our statutory duties for recording / reporting. Plus, it has released my inner geek and that pleases me.

If anyone who knows me reads the above, I’ve pretty well outed myself but hey, this is a big forum.

@NameyMcNameChange1 I am sat here howling with fat tears running down my face at your story! Brilliant

I really want a trifle expert to come and tell us what Namey was supposed to be doing.

Cowhand while I was at school. Good for the soul, putting your hands on a big animal.
Lab technician. My colleagues were weirder than I was.
Motorbike courier. Mad, dangerous, highly paid.
Taxi driver. People = shit. Drunk people = shitter.
HGV driver. A variable trade, containing my very worst job, and my very best. The bad one: when the firm went bankrupt after I left, the employees smashed the boss's windows. The good one: still exchange Xmas cards after 20 years. Lovely man, held a Christmas party still legendary in the Fens for the amount spent on booze and the massive fight at the end.

mornings I’ve never found anyone that worked in a similar environment that knew what I was supposed to be doing. I always make sure I watch the full segment on tv whenever a food factory is visited. I’m hoping hope the presenter will say something like ‘here are the lid tappers who are doing the absolutely vital job of checking the lid is on/ making sure it’s not over full/ checking it’s not about to explode’ but it’s never happened. Maybe lid tapping is automated these days? It was about 12 years ago so maybe trifle production has moved on.

Retail - big supermarket.
Office - data entry.
Cleaner.
Leisure centre - receptionist and sales.
Retail - small branch of a large high st store. (Current job)

Best, maybe the leisure centre. Less difficult customers than I've dealt with in retail and I liked the mix of face to face work and over the phone/online.
Worst - data entry. I never felt like I was cut out for office work, I hated just sitting in one place doing the same thing so I was bored most of the time!

Oh I missed one actually! I only lasted 3 weeks...'customer assistant' in a bank when I was 19. Every single shift I'd arrive then be sent to another branch, some local, some across London, and stand at the door handing out leaflets. Not really customer service and it was never explained when I was applying/interviewed that I'd be moving from branch to branch every day!

Retail - big supermarket.
Auxiliary Nurse - back in the day we were called AN's not HCA's.
Chicken factory.
NHS - Senior ODP theatres.

Worst was the chicken factory, I lasted 2 weeks. It was horrid. I will never eat any chicken nuggets again.

Best SODP. I loved my time in theatres but I do agree with SDTG, A few of the surgeons could be nasty and have no appreciation for the work done behind the scenes whereas others were amazing. It could be very cliquey and bitchy at times. I mainly did anaesthetics but 'scrubbed' 1 day a week, I don't miss standing at the table about to wee myself as there was no qualified staff to scrub in so you could get a break.

Half the jobs in the city. Cleaner, bookie, call centre (various), retail, grocery, general admin.

Retail was the best, but actually cleaner wasn't bad as you were left to your own devices and it kept u fit. Had washboard stomach xD

Most call centres were soul destroying but the bookies was the worst (not the job or customers, they were actually fine) as there was such a culture of bullying amongst the staff, it was horrible. But you get nasty ppl everywhere I guess.

Wondering what to try next xD Uni degree has been useless clearly! But seems I might have to go back to college. Sigh.

Best Job: working on a static ice cream van with my best friend aged 15. We’d take turns having naps In the drivers seat, ate unlimited ice creams and flakes and our friends would come and see us.

Worst job: retail for The Works. Absolute hell on earth. As part of an internal investigation a colleague had their split personality/imaginary friend interviewed

prinstress an internal investigation into an imaginary friend sounds amazingly bonkers! Has the colleague been accused of nicking stuff and she blamed her imaginary friend or something?

I’ve done loads.

Plucking pheasants in a pub cellar (deffo the worst)
Washing up in pub
Walking around town wearing a sandwich board advertising stuff
Chambermaid
Nanny
Lifeguard

Now I’m a surgeon and I bloody love my job!

Worst job: retail for The Works. Absolute hell on earth. As part of an internal investigation a colleague had their split personality/imaginary friend interviewed

We need more details about this!
As a side note, I had a friend who worked for The Works and the management was atrocious.

Best - my current admin job is OK, I suppose. I really like my manager and my working hours are flexible.

Worst - a smoky, dusty factory which paid next to nothing wasn’t fun.

But working in a call centre was the absolute pits. We were treated like robots and under constant pressure. Also, one of my colleagues was a sanctimonious know-it-all with a foghorn voice who drowned out my poor callers.

Jobs I’ve had:

Washing up in a cafe
Manning a till part time in a Spar
Waitress in a restaurant
Manager of a restaurant
Office manager/kitchen manager of a residential care home for people with learning disabilities
Manager of a restaurant
Manager of a restaurant
Current job: Head of Events/HR manager

Worst was the washing up in a cafe. I desperately wanted to chef and they just stuck me in the sink. I quit when the guy I fancied left!

Best and worst is my current job. The stress is endless. And I have to fit working insane hours around my lovely 2 year old as a single mum. But I absolutely adore it. I have an incredible team who make my working days endlessly great. I wake up desperate to get to work (and home to dd afterwards!) I was only looking for part time work after having 18 months off with dd and kind of fell into it. Feel like it was meant to be. The salary is also massively more than I ever expected after taking so much time off. Eternally grateful to not have money worries for the first time in a very, very long time.

Best - Hospital Porter.

Worst - Cleaner in a mental health nursing home, I lasted one day and that was one day too much.

Worst- chip shop because I smelt of chip fat permanently (the people I worked with were lovely though, so that outweighed the worst bits really!)
The last couple of years at my last school- rubbish management, bitchy brown-nosing staff!

Best- my new school! Lovely management and cooperative, supportive colleagues.
One season working in Mallorca as a kids holiday rep.

Ah the imaginary friend saga. 1000s of £s went missing over a few weeks, internal investigation launched.

All staff members hauled in and grilled. A telephone interview conducted with imaginary friend (I’ve seen the notes)

“Did (imaginary friend) take money from the safe?”

“Does imaginary friend have any information regarding missing money”

They went on long term sick after investigation was launched and handed in their notice a week before decision was made. Everyone knows they took the money but no concrete proof. All other colleagues involved were sacked, as they couldn’t pin it on one person.

It was hellish working with this person, they are clearly very ill, but would make comments like “imaginary friend is getting very angry” “imaginary friend doesn’t want to do that” “imaginary friend doesn’t like working with such and such colleague, imaginary friend wants to hurt them”

Yet despite reporting feeling unsafe and a intimidated and not able to support/understand how to treat staff member, we had to pander to it all with no questions asked.

The world has gone mad.

Naboo

They are truly the worst company I’ve worked for, I loved that store as a customer before I joined the company. There is a real culture of bullying ingrained in the mid level management it’s absoltely pathetic to witness.

The damage that place has done to my self esteem and mental health, I’ve never known such a badly organised business.

Worst = waitress, only because I was/am very clumsy 🙈
Or working in a forensic MH unit, with less than ideal staff:patient ratios, that was just unsafe

Favourite job is probably my current one, even though most of the people I work with have a specific, mostly life limiting condition, I love the charity I work for, the people and (mostly) the work

Trifle lid tapping will make me chuckle for weeks!

I used to work at a clotted cream factory in Cornwall. One machine was 100 years old and very finicky, I got my sleeve caught on a nozzle and double cream came shooting out and filled my sleeve and then it was gushing down my legs! But that was pretty funny!

prinstress that’s awful! Did they not have a proper HR department to deal with it? I’m going to be extra nice to the staff next time I go into The Works now.