It’s been a while since we’ve had a contest around here. Let’s rectify that problem right away, shall we? For your chance to win a copy of ‘The Office: Season 6’ on Blu-ray, all you have to do is tell us all about the worst job you’ve ever had. You’ve had a bad job, haven’t you? Of course you have. Follow after the break for the details on how to win.
We’ve all had bad jobs at one time or another, I’m sure. Maybe the job itself just stunk. Maybe you had an impossibly demanding boss. Maybe your otherwise tolerable workday was repeatedly ruined by one obnoxious co-worker. Now is your time to vent. Describe what that sucked so bad about this job, and you might win the Blu-ray edition of ‘The Office: Season 6‘. That’s 25 episodes of awkward hilarity, yours for free!
Me? My worst job happened the summer after my freshman year of college. I was a telemarketer for all of one and a half days. I had to cold call random strangers to sell tickets to a country music concert for some singer I’d never even heard of. Let me tell you, these were not the Glengarry leads I was working from either, not at all. I sold precisely zero tickets and was fired. The cherry on this sundae? One of the people I called was also a telemarketer, who heckled me for doing such a lousy job. And he was right! That was the longest day and a half of my life.
What’s your story? Put it to writing in the comments below. Try to keep your entries to less than 500 words, if you can. (Please, no epic novel-length rants. Be concise.) The stories can be funny or sad or angry, or anything else you want. A winner will be chosen at my own subjective discretion based on whatever mood I’m in and whatever strikes me as being my favorite.
One entry per person. This contest is only open to entrants from the domestic United States. We will not ship internationally (whether you’re a U.S. citizen or not). Employees of High-Def Digest or Internet Brands and their families are not eligible. Standard contest rules and conditions apply. Winners of our previous contests are also not eligible to win, but may get Honorable Mentions.
The deadline for entry is Friday, September 3rd. The winner will be announced the following Monday, September 6thTuesday, September 7th. (I just realized that Monday is a holiday, sorry.)
Sadly, we only have one copy of ‘The Office: Season 6’ to give away. So there can only be one winner, and no Runners Up this time.
Good luck to everyone who enters!
that1guypictures
In order to please my fiancé, I needed to get a job closer to where she lived. So I replied to an Internet ad. (Yes I’m aware it was a bad idea.) I went down and interviewed with a very nice middle aged woman who called me the next day and told me I got the job. I kept trying to figure out what the job was, and was told over and over again that it was “sales” and I would have different types of jobs within the company, get promoted all the time, etc. So I show up for my first day only to meet my “boss” who was 19 years old. I was 24. He told me that he was the president of the company and that he started it 2 years before. He then told me to go out and cold call people to see if they wanted me to join my team and the people I hired would have to pay a portion of their cut to me. Finally I was told that I would be making commission, but given no details. At this point I still hadn’t provided a social security card, or even shown them a drivers license! I decided to give it at least a day before giving up, so I went on to my first “sales task.” With absolutely no training, I was given an AT&T badge, and told to go door to door and sell AT&T u-verse service. The nice middle aged woman drove me to a subdivision and just left me there. Saying she’d be back in 3-4 hours. I coildnt believe she just left me there to walk around without a way back to my car. After trying one house and realizing that I had no clue what I was doing, I called my fiancée…Had her pick me up, drive me back to my car. And I never returned their phone calls. They probably assumed I was abducted. 🙂 One week later, the “company” no longer had it’s website up. I’m pretty sure it was a scam…so I’m glad all they had on me was my name and phone number. Fool me once….
Ned
The worst job I ever had was a corporate services job at a reinsurance company. I was easily discriminated on for having long hair and tattoos and my boss consistently micromanaged me while being the biggest slacker I had ever seen. I ultimately was forced to cut my hair by getting written up by HR and quit my job days later because I was sick of all the bs. There was no policy stating that I couldn’t have long hair, tattoos, piercings, etc. it had personal written all over it. The beauty of it all was when I put in my notice… my boss practically begged me to stay because I was such a good worker. He obviously thought he could scare me into losing my job and control me but I had none of it. I moved on, found a much better job that was much more laid back and years later… I inevitably cut my hair short on my own. How ironic.
Ryan
The summer before my freshman year of college I worked for an unnamed county highway department. You’ve all seen the construction crews standing on the side of the road: it never seems like they do anything. Well, as it turns out, they don’t. My first day on the job, I was commissioned to clean a stretch of highway. Of roadkill. With a shovel. I never knew how many different ways I could see an animal dead. Bloated deer, severed limbs, flat skunk and turtle. And I had the pleasure of scraping all of them off the highway while dodging cars. Thank God for my orange hat and bright yellow vest.
It didn’t get much better after that, although I must say that it was the last time I ever pulled Bambi off the side of a road. I spent the rest of the summer holding signs and driving around on highway cleanup details. And THAT was how I spent my summer vacation in 1999.
will
Grocery Store Bagger- Old ladies yelling at me all day to put eggs and bread in the bottom of the bag…oh wait
Jeff Gleich
My worst job of all time was also one of my favorite jobs I’ve ever held. I was 17 and the place was Circus World Pizza. Think Chuck E. Cheese type place, but owned by Brunswick Bowling Alley. My job description was jack of all trades. Skee Ball machine broke, I fixed it. Short on pizza dough and cooks? Apron on. Some birthday princess wants to trade in her 35,000 tickets for a sticker book? You got it. I even dressed up as Barney the Bear for birthday parties, 4th of July parades, and visits to senior homes. Then there was the Kidz Zone. This was a gigantic tube maze filled with ball pits, dead ends, slides, and a whole lot of accidents.
I didn’t mind changing my duties on a daily basis, and I actually looked at it as an honor that the managers would come to me when they needed help. As a 17 year old, this job was pretty much heaven. Unless it was the Kidz Zone. On the weekends we would have up to 50 birthday parties per day, it doesn’t take long for the Kidz Zone to smell like a raw sewage tunnel. Kids have accidents, and I can always understand that, but there must have been something about those damn tubes and slides that just made kids frightened and paranoid beyond belief that they couldn’t help themselves to dispose something in the never-ending fun that is Kidz Zone. I love kids, but damn they stink. I tended to blame the food at the time, all be damned if a day didn’t go by with at least several accidents. I feel confident I could clean and disinfect just about anything from my endless hours of holding my breathe in those rainbow colored tubes. Maybe that’s the reason we don’t see many of those type of playgrounds anymore, I just don’t think kids can handle it, and for .50 above minimum wage, I can’t believe I did. The job had plenty of perks with after hours employee parties and unlimited games, but I will never forget the raunchy odor of the Kidz Zone. Circus World didn’t quite make it. They went out of business nationwide within the next couple years. So much for management opportunities lol
Eric Alessandrini
My worst job ever was at my college. I was the dean of my department’s assistant, and I was pretty much just a bitch. All I did was sit there, watch him be angry for a few hours a week, and clean up after him. He’d get these temper tantrums where he’d just start yelling and throwing everything within reach around and then yell at me to pick it all up. I thought this kind of stuff just happened in the movies until I worked there.
The worst part is that I didn’t apply for it, I was chosen, and It’s a job that I pretty much couldn’t quit until I graduated because I’d loose so many job opportunities because he knows pretty much EVERYONE! So after three years of putting up with this, I didn’t even get referred for a job! WTF!
Scott Jean
I was a laborer at a construction site. I had to clean up all the trash from the building of the homes and start a large fire to burn it all. When the basements of the unfinished homes flooded, I had to crawl into the basement and dig trenches towards the opening of the basement and pump the water out. The whole place was full of mosquitoes and other insects. Sometimes there was things added to the water that you really don’t want to see, smell, or walk in.
Ryan
I ran a blog for a fairly notable publication. I didn’t find out it was eliminated until a few months into my tenure. My fellow writers and I wrote numerous posts for free. Classy.
Callenby
It was not in an office, but working fast food as a high school student was at turns humiliating and disgusting. Whether I was avoiding eye contact with my classmates or scooping up vomit from the bathroom sink, I never really took to the job.
Noah
I briefly worked for an at-home telemarketer when I was really hard up for a job. Turns out the people I was dealing with were callers for all those late night Girls Gone Wild type infomercials. You only got paid for time spent on calls, which could come in ten minutes apart. If you were lucky, you got paid for three out of every ten minutes logged in.