Jobs That Suck

Driving back to Philadelphia last week, I heard a song that I haven't heard in years. This particular song reminded me of a job that I had not long after I got out of the Army in 1997.

My official title at this company (that I won't mention by name because they're small and I don't want the lawsuit if I impact their business) was "Data Processor", but I'm pretty sure that the truth in advertising law should have required them to list the title as "Piss Boy", which certainly is a more accurate description of how I was treated. Looking back, they really missed a bet with my talent. I'm no smarter now than I was then; I'm just better paid and more appreciated. Then again, how much can you respect the skills of an employee who only costs $6.50 an hour?

They basically kept me on with a promise that I would be doing "database programming" while I wasted away doing mind-numbing collation, sorting, and printing (I was young, and needed the money). When I did have ideas, they were either completely ignored, or worse: stolen from me without any credit.

I left that job with a smile on my face at 2:00 on a sunny afternoon in December. It was the only job I ever walked out on without giving notice, and it felt wonderful.

But that wasn't my first exposure to corporate America. The job I had before that was as a Carousel Operator in a distribution warehouse for Maiden Form. I'll spare you the boring details of what was involved (except to say lots and lots of bras and panties).

Part of what I had to do at the end of every shift at Maiden Form was figure the gainshare time for the Carousel employees on my shift. This was a horrendous process involving a pencil with a large eraser, lots of hair pulling, and about 45 minutes. It made no sense to me, so armed with MS DOS 6.0 (which our computer ran) and a good knowledge of QBasic (a downsized version of QuickBASIC that shipped as part of DOS) I whipped up a quick program that would compute the gainshare time automatically. You plug in the numbers; it spits out the answer. Viola! The company is saved 40 minutes of labor on every shift (that works out to 120 minutes, or two hours a day for those who don't want to do the math).

About 5 weeks later I was summoned to HR. Would I be getting an award? A big raise? Perhaps some type of recognition for the personal time I spent saving the company money? Well, sort of. What I got was a first hand lesson in the old adage, "Oh, how we fear that which we do not understand." coupled with a healthy dose of corporate politics.

My supervisor (I'll call him Don) came along with me to the HR Manager's office. We stood there dumbstruck while the HR Manager launched into a nice little condescending lecture: "When I hired you, didn't I explain that you were not to reprogram the Carousel?" The answer was, of course, yes. She had in fact told me not to reprogram the Carousel, and true to my word, I hadn't touched a single line of the Carousel code. My little program ran on a separate computer entirely. I tried to explain this, but I only got the glassy eyeballs and featureless expressions that they must teach in HR school.

About that time I started to realize what was going on. So, like a drowning man reaching for a cynder block, I turned to Don.

"Don, you're my supervisor", I told him accusingly. He nodded dully, apparently unaware that there would be a tough quiz that day. "Well, say something!" I pleaded.

"What do you want me to say?" he asked.

I decided this was my last chance to salvage that $200 a week I was taking home, so I followed up with a question I thought the HR manager might be interested in hearing about: "Are you generally happy with my performance?"

He flashed me a grin and said, "Yeah, you're doing a great job."

Realizing that Don wouldn't answer any question he wasn't spoon fed, I continued. "Do I come to work on time?"

"Yeah, you're here early every day." (Thanks for noticing)

"Would you say that I'm a good worker?" (Except for maybe being a little too efficient)

"Sure - I don't have any problems with you at all." (How nice of you to say -- so tell me why we're standing in the HR office again?)

I glanced over at the HR manager. She was clearly unimpressed. That's when I had an idea: if I was going down, I might as well go down in glorious flames and at least get some self-satisfaction and a neat story out of it. "Jump up on her desk and take a dump!" that inner voice said.

Unfortunately, logic, reason, and a healthy dose of fear that I'd be telling the story to my cellmate took over, so instead, I put one last question to Don: "Can I use you for a reference?" He told me that I could, then escorted me back to my work area to collect my belongings.

Looking back, I should have seen it coming when, in the job interview, that HR Manager had asked me, "If you could be any kind of car, what kind would you be, and why?" With the benefit of hindsight, I now know that what I should have said was, "How about the garbage truck that backs over your Volvo you self-important jerk!".

But that wasn't my only experience getting fired. I've actually been fired twice: both times from menial jobs, and both times for the dumbest reasons. Six months after leaving Maiden Form, I got the corporate prostate exam by another company, again for a stupid reason.

This time I was working as a temporary contractor through SOS Staffing for American Stores (later bought by Albertson's). My job at American Stores was to create company access badges for a newly built highrise building that was the new company headquarters in Salt Lake City. This job simply involved taking pictures of people, creating a record in the security database, granting the individual the appropriate permissions to the access the areas of the building needed for his or her department, and finally printing out a spiffy access card complete with their picture. Truth be told, it was a pretty cake job, even if it didn't pay very well, as before, I was well liked, and respected by my supervisor.

Then, one Thursday night at 10PM, I got home from picking my mom up at the airport and found a message on the answering machine. It was from SOS, and in a nutshell, said "Don't come to work tomorrow."

I found out the next day that during the course of taking pictures, I had made a comment about a picture (I don't know what), to someone (I don't know who) who apparently objected to what I said (I don't know why). That person complained to HR, who picked up a phone and had me removed faster than you can say "unemployment".

Since I hadn't even gotten a chance to retrieve my personal belongings, I stopped by American Stores after I left SOS to see my supervisor, who was the head of building security. He wasn't even aware that I had been sent packing, and he seemed pretty disappointed (and disgusted) to hear it. I guess HR never thought to notify the person who would have to feel the pain of my sudden departure. Go figure.

As it fate would have it, losing the job at American Stores was a good thing for me personally, because it forced me out into the job market at just the perfect time. My next job turned out to be my first programming position.

So if you're stuck working for a jerk in a job that sucks, keep your chin up. You might just be lucky enough to get fired for a stupid reason, and land that great job you've always been hoping for.