To ask what crazy stuff your first employer got you to do?

[TransformationChynaDoll]

Here's my list of my first few jobs;
There was always too much rubbish so we had to take it turns to get in the bin and jump up and down on it so the lid would shut. We're talking about a huge industrial bin.
Ring people and ask them their BMI prior to appointments. For no real medical reason at all.
Arrive early and work unpaid for the first half hour so that the croissants would be cooked on time. No one ever questioned it.
Clean a big grease trap in a dishwasher which flooded the whole cafe knowing that the reason we had to mop for days straight was due to the company being too tight to pay someone to fix it.

Muck out nine stables on my own.

Do a single handed ward round, with all the more senior doctors in clinic, on my first day. Work the day, then the night, then the following day. Work from Saturday 9am to Monday 5pm. Not tell us until the end of the year that we were meant to finish at lunchtime when we'd been up all night. Expect me to come in an hour early every day to chase all results before the ward round. Expect me to stay an hour late every day, waiting for blood sugar results to come back from the lab, so I could prescribe the insulin for every diabetic in the hospital.

Photocopy entire files to create duplicates.

@nocoolnamesleft that's super harsh. Being a nurse is hard! I've seen year 2 student nurses run shifts, be pushed into professional meetings etc.

Sit in a taxi driving all round NyC picking up Christmas presents for boss famous friends!

Sit in taxi dropping off clean pants for boss's child at nursery!

Figure out how on earth to charter a private plane when filling in for the usual assistant.

Yes, I changed careers after my first job b and I'm so glad I did!

@joan12 that sounds exciting but frustrating!

12-13 hour shifts with no breaks and if there were breaks they were smoke breaks, no access to food or water. The only way to eat something was to have it in your pocket (as you had no access to your belongings ) and feign a five min smoke break to sit outside in the rain on the bins and beer barrels surrounded by others actually smoking in order to eat it.

Work behind a bar well before the age of 18.

Regularly get groped and harassed by other older male staff, customers and bosses, absolutely considered normal and happened at least once, every shift, without exception. Several members of staff having “reputations” for it and it being treated like a casual joke “don’t go in the fridge with Paul, he won’t let you out” etc (meaning he’d follow you in, hold the door shut and push you against the wall to grope and kiss you “as a joke”. The young female staff calling the kitchen sniper alley as you’d have to run through top speed to get out without a chef grabbing you.

Being driven out to work in different destinations from our usual place of work and then just left there, miles from public transportation, in the early hours of the morning to make our own ways home (too young to drive).

Not exactly crazy but when I started work for a big four firm I was sent on a stock take in the Durex warehouse. This involved being hoisted up to the top shelves on a cherry picker while I shouted down gems like "100 boxes of strawberry flavoured extra ribbed condoms" and "50 cartons of tingling pleasure lube" to the warehouse staff. The joys of audit.

A colleague once had a summer job sticking his fingers up chickens' bottoms to determine whether they were male or female. Unfortunately this confidence was too great a burden not to share with the rest of the department.

Carry the takings, usually around £1000 (in the early 80s,) to the bank, in a plastic bag, on my own, at the same time every week, aged 18.

Worked in a tearoom where food hygiene meant giving things a test sniff or cutting the mould off.

First "proper" office job. Highly strung boss. One day roadworks were going on down the street and she didn't like the noise and ordered me to go and tell them to stop. I set off, terrified, but before I reached them they finished the drilling thank god.

I worked in a hairdressers as a Saturday girl when I was 15, and one of the women who worked there asked me to go to Boots next door and get her a pregnancy test. 🤦🏼‍♀️

I used to work after school in a care home years ago. My first job of the evening was to milk the two goats they kept for people with dairy allergies!

Not the first, but the second. Had to organise the boss's daughter's wedding. Awful situation to be put in. The daughter is an expert gold digger, she's quite high profile too and still at it. The boss died recently and 'ding dong, the witch is dead' popped into my head when I found out. It was not a happy time.

Wanted me to work 9-5 as a PA for £90 a week (this was in 1999)

I had a summer job as a helper to a woman who ran a very nice art school for children. I was helping with the summer camps.

She sent me in to the local village to buy thrush cream. When I got to the pharmacy, they asked me was it for oral or vaginal thrush. I didn’t know. They lent me their phone (landline obvs) to ring the art teacher and ask her. I did that. “Vaginal” she said, and I had to relay that to the pharmacist. I think I was about 15 or so

Another one here who used to walk to the bank with the takings at a similar time each week. Carried in distinctively branded high-end-highstreet bags 🤦‍♀️😱

See also, trips to the post office with two big branded bags full of high value stock for branch transfers and customer's personal items. Royal mail insurance wouldn't begin to cover most of it even once I'd made it to the counter, but the company just risked it.

My very first office junior job as a school leaver at 16 I had two female bosses. They were a nightmare sometimes. I went on a work conference with them and BOTH cheated on their husbands. Once I had to remove the toenail varnish from one of the bosses feet as she just had her finger nails done and couldn't risk damaging them. Feet make me feel sick and I was even worse at 16 but was too scared to say no as she had a ferocious temper. She also once accidentally trapped my hand against a wall with a table and caused me permanent scarring. Never even apologised. They were something else. Despite it all I leaned so much at that job and don't regret it.

Put dirty dishes into a dishwasher for 7 hours, bending down, filling/emptying.
Nothing to drink, nothing to eat, no break. I was 15.

I was about 19 and worked as a junior secretary for conveyancing solicitors. I was sent off on my own with a man I'd never met before (in his lorry) to check that the property he was buying was vacant. Thankfully he wasn't a perv!

Cleaning 3 story building with no electricity on ground and first floors. So had to hand sweep stairs, floors etc...big building. Back breaking

Wee behind a bush so they didn't have to provide women's site toilets.

Go to Anne Summers on my lunch break to purchase a vibrator for the boss's partner (it was her Christmas present from him).

We had to walk up the side of stairs not the middle as that would wear the carpet out too quickly. We had to fold the linen napkins each night so they could be used for breakfast, unless they were really dirty in which case the guests could have new! Our dinner before serving guests was a tiny pepperoni pizza (for the vegetarian), cold baked beans and some other yucky stuff! When getting a lift in owners car she would constantly throw her arms out when braking because her kids didn’t have seatbelts back in the day 😂 7 days a week. Split shifts. You’d have to be young…with nothing better to do! It was live in so intense but fun at the same time. Wish I remembered more! …sneaking into guests room who were at dinner to slip in the rubber hot water bottle. And being snarled at by their dogs! I always wondered how many appreciated the feel of unexpected hot water bottle in their bed 😂. I went on to do the same job on a slightly smaller scale, I don’t think I’m quite as en centric! But I do jump on bins wearing wellies I don’t ask my staff too though😂

I was a runner for a creative company in London. I used to have to go and buy 4 bottles of frascati at the end of each day for the bosses!