Your Worst Job Ever

[GenuineRisk]

While we morn the loss of our daily dose of in-fighting on the Politics Board, let's take a trip down a different path of misery-

What was your worst job ever?

Mine was being a teleresearcher. Not a telemarketer, as I was quick to tell people, trying to catch them before they called me names and hung up on me, but a researcher. I was in college, going to class five days a week and working in the evenings at my work-study job five days a week, but the weekends I also had to work, from 10-6, at this gig. It was in a huge windowless room, and you would spend your day dialing supposedly random numbers, trying to get people to talk to you and answer questions about commercials they were seeing, or products being developed, or whatever. The supervisors all sat in a glassed-in room and you could hear them "click" onto your phone line when they listened in on you, which they would do throughout the day.

I remember one job was trying to talk to young men about advertising they'd seen for the military and whether it inspired them to join. The full survey took about 45 minutes and you only got credit if they stayed on with you for the entire survey. I remember one young man using the 45 minutes to hit on me. It was mortifying, and of course ALL of the supervisors clicked in to listen to that one and they just laughed and laughed at me.

But what made it the worst was a job for a medical company. We had a series of questions to ask at the start, in order to make sure the person fit the needs of the survey- have you had a heart attack, have you been treated for diabetes, have you had a partial or complete colostomy, and after the third call I realized EVERY NUMBER we were given was for someone who had had a colostomy. So hospitals or insurance companies or somewhere was providing these numbers (so much for medical confidentiality). And most of the people were elderly and housebound and so incredibly lonely and just wanted to talk to someone, even if "talking" meant graphic descriptions of how their colostomy bag didn't work and they had "sh*t running down their leg," to quote one of them I'll never forget. And so I had desperately unhappy, lonely people wanting to keep me on the phone and supervisors clicking in to write me up if I didn't get off promptly.

I fled the job at the end of the school year, warned that because I didn't give them three months' notice I could NEVER come back. Yeah. Feature, not a bug.

On the bright side, I am always incredibly kind to teleresearchers when they call me, even if I don't have time to talk to them.

Anyone else? What's the worst job you ever had?