You know that was the thing about working that RPS job. You either : 1) Got in ridiculous shape doing it 2) You quit because it was too much work 3) Or you dropped dead. Luckily I was in great shape back then. I remember I worked that job when I was starting college. In our PE program they calc'd my fat % back then at something like 9% or something and I was working out and playing basketball 3-4 days a week at UH. I thought I was in shape until I started at RPS. lol. Wow. I built up more cardio endurance working that job for 3 or 4 months than I ever did working out and playing. The squatting, bending, reaching, lifting, running back for the next package non-stop for 4+ hours tore me up initially, but by the end of my stay there, I was doing ok. I left that job to pursue a career in IT making chump change... ah the memories. After I worked there, I'd take a shower, go to school, come back, nap, go to work at a pharmacy, come back, nap and repeat. I couldn't do half that much work now. It's great not being a kid and in college...
Also DoD, I had a buddy in college who did the package-loading thing for RPS. That guy looked like he'd gotten his ass kicked whenever he'd come off a shift. I will admit that I was just a tad envious of him doing heavy manual labor for a job. I tend to be a bit lazy when left to my own devices. I don't want to derail the thread, but one of the coolest jobs I ever had was when I was dating a stripper when I was in college. There were a few times when the DJ didn't show up, so she had the boss call me in for the night. I was paid with free booze and I was surrounded by strippers all night. That ROCKED.
Wow, I've pretty much had every job you guys are b****ing about. I've worked for UPS unloading the brown package trucks, the bigger brown package trucks and the eighteen wheelers. It wasn't too bad, good exercise and it was only for about 3.5 hours a night. I've also washed dishes, I did alot of cutting up with the waitstaff cooks etc. I had fun most of the time. The only time I absolutely knew a job wasn't for me was when a friend got me job waiting tables at a local FIVE STAR restaraunt, I didn't make it through my first night; it was the whole snootiness of the place that bothered me. I politely told the manager after my shift that it didn't look like this was something I would enjoy, he thanked me for not wasting their time and I was on my way. DoD had it right about looking like you had been through a war zone after working one night unloading at UPS, I left that place bruised, dirty and bloodied many a nights, they expected you work hard and fast but there was no real thinking involved in my job, just get in there and bust ass for your shift.
Trust me in food service people are always doing weird things behind your back and as a dishwasher you're the lowest of the low so everyone else is making decisions for you. Over the summers when I was 14 to 20 I worked in restaurants going from dishwasher up to sous chef and I'm never planning on going back to foodservice.
Not trying to top you - the grossest it ever got was when I had to clean the men's room. (quit dripping in front of the urinal, guys...) Just sharing random stories to keep me distracted from the stress that my current nice, white-collar job is causing me...
I worked for two weeks at the one at W. Alabama and Kirby. Thought it'd be a fun side job, but I didn't like having to work nights and weekends.
I worked at Footlocker in college for about a semester. One day I just stopped going. I didn't quit or get fired; I literally just stopped going. Very Office Space-esque. My boss was sleeping with some chick that managed a women's shoe store there in the same mall. That was interesting, at least. I'd damn near forgotten about that one. I also did the waiter gig at a local Tex-Mex restaurant. That was fun. Hard work, but pretty fun all the same. I wound up leaving that one when my boss started being an ass about not working with my class schedule.
I did the busboy thing at a pizza place for three weeks before I got fired. The work didn't seem too bad but the store manager was a jackass. I put in my two weeks notice at my current job on Tuesday because I'm moving back to Texas, but they offered to let me work from home so I'll try that for a bit.
I was a telemarketer. Not physically hard...but try going to work when you hate the people that do what you are doing. Furthermore, you know that everyone else hates your guts as well. Plus it's quite possibly the most boring thing I've ever done in my life. The only thing that kept me coming back was decent pay. Funny story about quitting though. My friend that worked at the same telemarketing place decided to quit one day. He told a manager and handed in his badge. Well, a month later (no exageration) the place calls and goes "you haven't been into work for a while, are you going to be able to workt his weekend?" The place is so desperate for workers that he misses a MONTH worth of shifts and they still want him to come in!! It is almost impossible to get fired from telemarketing because of the quick turnover rate leaves the companies letting tons of things slide. I personally saw the general manager get cursed out in front of everyone and the lady cursing him did not even get written up.
Worst job for me (other than the obligatory bus boy/dishwasher days) was working as a maintenance mechanic trainee at a packing and gasket plant in summertime Houston. I had to keep 150 or so steam presses running which entailed changing the gaskets when they blew. Also had to clean out the gutters behind the steam presses. Yuk. They ranged in size from presses making hub cab sized gaskets to deisel wheel sized gaskets. Pistons with diameters raning from 6 inches to 4 feet. With braided brass steam hoses waiting to burn you while working. Spewing scalding steam everywhere. Drop the piston supporting the steam press, lowering the press down on to four 4x4's. Then crawling underneath to undo about 24 6" bolts holding down a round steel collar, lift the collar and pull the gasket and replace it. The collar was about 5 feet in diameter and weighed about 120 pounds. Oh, yeh, don't bump the 4x4's or you get crushed by 6 tons of steam press balanced on the 4x4's. Did I mention the part about spewing scalding steam? You would go outside in 100 degree heat to cool off. This was the job that convinced me to go back to college and vow to never perform manual labor again. Thanks to whomever started this thread...I will have nightmares tonight.
I just got back from Fry's today. I've got to say the service there is the worst I've ever experienced. No one there wants to help and I was just looking to see where the dvd-r's where placed. I can't imagine what they would do if I had a real question.
I was looking for an MP3 player last week and no lie, a rep told me "I work in the portable audio department, but I don't know where the MP3 players are, but you can check over at the computer accessories to see if what you want is down there and if not, just come back here and look for me" my gf was pretty pissed and left shortly afterwards....
Everybody's tough job stories are turning this thread into the Monty Python sketch about old timers talking about bad their childhood's were. "We used to wake up at the crack of dawn, clean out the lake and our dad would slash our throats with a bread knife if we were lucky! You try to tell kids that today and they never believe you..."
Busboy at a Chinese restaurant at age of 15 so no one else would hire me. The thing was they wouldn't tell me how much they would pay me, want to see how I perform. Went to work the first day 10 a.m., they inform me I would be working till midnight+ because they just took on a wedding reception that night. After the noon shift (which was dimsum, which was hell), then the other busboy had to leave for "personal reason". After a lunch at 2 p.m., I worked till twelve being the only bus boy for a party of 100+ with 6+ waiter/waitresses b*&tching at me for not working hard enough and fast enough. My hand had blisters on it though the pain helped me to distract from my hunger. Then the next day I worked another noon dim sum shift and I still don't know how much or when I was supppose to be paid. When I told my mom this, she flipped out, called them and basically quit the job for me. We went there for my pay and they ended up giving me 70 bucks. I was like "holy crap, i got 70 bux for 17 hours of work, that's almost 5 dollars an hour, that's almost minimum wage, sweet". Keep in mind, I was 115 pounds at 5'8 at the time. It was sad But the last part time job I had, I got paid 10 bucks an hour as a research assistant for a UT project which I had to leave give up to my work at my full time offer, which is even better To those waiter/waitresses, who's laughing now (though given that they're asian, the teenage waiter/waitress prolly just graduated from Harvard law or something"
Weird, I had the opposite experience when I told a guy I was going to build and overclock a rig, he actually recommended some pretty important stuff (and they were stuff you would actually need). I endup not doing it out but instead buying a Emachine (I know, complete oppsoite spectrum) but still I was actually impressed by their computer guys (or maybe it's just that one guy).
