LAist: Labor Day Weekend Air Contest

zombiejesus

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 23:56:21 -0800

In IT, it's important to keep a distinction between personal & professional IT support. One of those situations: So, I'm doing tech support for a firm when I get a call from another worker that's away on medical leave. Obnoxious guy, always acting like he was in sales when he clearly wasn't. In any case, he's having problems trying to import stuff from work to home w/ a particular type of software. Whatever he's doing @ home isn't exactly work related, he's just trying to make a personal copy of his contacts. Suggested a few importing steps that are somewhat complicated and that he get the same version of the software we use in the office instead of the latest and greatest. When that didn't work, I said, "Well, there's not much else I can suggest..." His response, "No, why don't you do your fucking job and get this to work." I gently fobbed off his remark since I was @ the reception desk when I talked to him, but it left me pretty livid. I got my revenge later when we fired his ass, but that's a different story. Oh, and the reason he was away for a week on medical leave? Hair plugs.

igraffiti

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 21:19:34 -0800

I worked at the best job ever for 2 years. Usually, my days consisted of taste testing pizza, tacos, hamburgers and other hearty foods. I was paid to drink booze(sometimes in the office), visit various sorts of clubs, attend shows, dance and mingle. I went to work when I wanted and left when I wanted. If I worked 12 hours one day, I worked six the next. Sometimes I didn't have to put in 40 hours a week to get paid for the time. The pay was not meager and I worked with a bunch of friendly lushes.

gingerous

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 20:12:53 -0800

I worked for a married couple that should have divorced many years earlier. Their acrimonious relationship poisoned the entire office, and the staff were constantly on edge because of the couple's fights and power plays (one would say do this, the other would overrule behind the first's back, etc.) Most of the tension arose over the fact that the husband was a horndog philanderer who had bedded the previous office manager and just about every attractive female client of the firm. The wife, oblivious to this until fairly recently before I joined, was full of hatred (for him and herself for staying, natch). She would ask the office girls to send cards to women she suspected of sleeping with her husband--cards that read, "Close your legs; you're attracting flies." She slipped him mickeys without him knowing, causing him to fall asleep at the office. Meanwhile, the husband chased tail right in front of her eyes, culminating in a literal chase around the office that should have resulted in a lawsuit--but due to the fact that the girl was a naive young virgin, she got a tiny raise and a separate working space.

writepudding

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 17:41:22 -0800

worst working experience: All throughout college, I had a job as a chocolatier( or the less glamorous, sales associate) at a very popular West Coast private chain manufacturer of quality chocolates. One day, I was assigned the morning shift alone. There were customers the minute I opened up the store and I knew from then it wasn't going to be such a pleasant day. With the line of customers growing slowly around the store, I was already in a bit of a panic. The next woman in line approached me and ordered a 2 lb custom made box of chocolate delicacies, which is definitely not an order you want to hear when you've got a line of angry chocolate addicts watching your every move. As I started packing her customized box, I noticed she kept giving me strange glances. I finished up, took her box to the counter( which she preceded to open in front of me and stare at, as if something was wrong), and charged her for it. She took her box and left and all I could think about was the 20 people I had left to serve with no one there to help me. A few minutes passed by and I saw the same woman I had helped a few moments earlier slowly creep back in the store and whiz past the line to confront me. "I need to speak to you," she said. Ok I said, is there a problem? "It's a private matter I need to discuss with you, I don't think you would want anyone else hearing what I have to say to you." All I could think was, who was this crazy woman and what did she want from me? Couldn't she see I was already stressed out?? She patiently waited until everyone cleared the store. She then proceeded to accuse me of the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard of in my life. "I saw that you licked all of my chocolates before you put them in the box," she said. I couldn't help but laugh. "I beg your pardon?," I retorted back. "I saw you," she continued. "You licked each one and then put it in my box. My friend is a nurse and she told me to be very careful about these things. I saw that you took each piece of chocolate, licked it and put it in my box." At this point, I felt like I was taking crazy pills. Why in God's green Earth would I ever do such a thing, I told her and continued to explain that there were cameras all over the store, so I must be stupid if I actually did what she was accusing me of. She wouldn't take no for an answer. That's when I felt my blood boil from my neck to my face and knew that if this woman kept talking, I was about to unleash my temper and tell her how wrong she was, I was entering the death zone of sales associate and customer relations. M'am I DID NOT lick your chocolate, understand? I told her. What do you want me to do about your box, I asked her as I tried to keep my composure that was slowly crumbling away. She then asked for another box which I packed directly in front of her so she could see that I was not some chocolate Nazi that went around licking pieces before I put them in the box. At this point, she knew what a horrible scene she had caused and darted out the store the minute I turned around. I ran to the back room, tears streaming down my face. I could not believe that a nut case had come in and accused me of licking chocolate behind a glass case in front of her and a line of customers. The only thing that could comfort me, strangely enough was chocolate. I sat in the back, wedged in between stock boxes of over 50 flavors. There was only one thing left to do. I opened a box, licked a chocolate and shoved it in my mouth. This one's for you,you dumb bitch, I said, picturing my accuser's ghastly face in my mind. I couldn't believe someone who consumed chocolate could be so mean spirited. Needless to say, my quite generous and naive attitudes towards the customers of the world changed from that day forth. She broke me.

uclabruin

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 13:22:20 -0800

p.s. if you could not tell ... i think have to categorize mine as best experience.

uclabruin

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 13:20:58 -0800

i arrive at royce on a weekend evening. i suspect i can drop by my office and take care of a few items quickly prior to the event we were holding later that week. this would be the final concert of the year and the first show programmed by my boss, the co-chair of the committee for the arts at the time. seeing him as i get in the office on an off-day, i realize that my quick stop would be greatly delayed. he of course had plenty of other items for me to do as he struggled to get the show ready. then he, and another student co-programming the event, decide it is best, no needed!, that we have wine. ten minutes later we are drinking wine while quickly and socially breezing through the needed pre-production. finally, he also suggests we have a smoke and walk around. now this is no smoke break from the '50s. this is a smoke break for which only willie nelson can find the time. a "jazz cigarette" break as i enjoy to call them now. we end up walking out to a rarely seen and reached balcony atop the third story of the most historic building on campus. there we are smoking and enjoying the night. any work yet to be completed was, eh, slightly delayed.

supaphreak

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 10:27:16 -0800

The best boss I’ve ever had allowed me to come into work stoned and surf the internet for hours. Then we’d smoke more, get some lunch, and make up fake reports for calls we didn't make for the rest of the day. I was a telemarketer and after a few months was subsequently fired along with my boss.

sdiggityd

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 10:04:58 -0800

Sadly: I just left my very best job, complete with my very best boss. I did this because, you see, I am in love. With my friends. With Los Angeles. This wacky place sort of grows on you after a while. And so I am moving home. I went to New York after finishing school and was hired -- sans any freaking experience -- as an editor at a major magazine. This job was three days a week, paid five times what I had ever been paid, ever, and I could work from home. If I went into more detail you'd slap me. In fact, My boss was this very funny, wonderful lady who, when I told her that I needed to move home, helped me find a comparable job in LA. Sure, sure, I have a whole slew of restaurant horror stories, but why bother. Good jobs exist. Good people happen.

guest

Sun, 02 Sep 2007 21:53:15 -0800

my boss used to send me to wendy's for big orders for work staff and ask me to ask them to cut the corners off. ("make them round" he would yell).

wigginOUT

Sun, 02 Sep 2007 20:59:14 -0800

My very first job was answering phones for Pizza Hut when I was a senior in high school. My boss, (who I will refer to as) Donald, was a morbidly obese thirty-something who wore his Pizza Hut attire on his days off, and continuously drank soda out of those gigantic 64 ounce foam cups that are usually only used by truck drivers. Donald frequently relayed tales of bravery and triumph from the previous night's game of Dungeons and Dragons. Donald sat down all day and barked orders as he picked at the acne on his face and neck. And Donald was a very avid Sheryl Crow fan. Working with Donald was not as bad as working with a sexist or racist boss. But when you are a seventeen year old wearing a pizza hut visor and praying that your friends don't call in to order a pizza, having to listen to "Soak up the Sun" 18 times in a row makes you feel like you've hit rock bottom.

sred4

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 14:11:29 -0800

My worst boss wasn't just MY worst boss, he was THE worst boss in the industry. Though he was seemingly nice around the hallways his assistants would cower in fear from being fired daily - they were lucky to last more than a week at the job. This guy had the temper of Mount Vesuvius. Upon my first week on the job I noticed a power strip with 8 different phones charging, all with different numbers labeled on each of them. I asked one of guys there why there were so many - the answer? Because the boss THROWS them constantly, they have to have phones to replace on standby. Upon taking the job, my first task was to be on trash duty: often the boss would eat with nice china and silverware but get so angry he would throw them in the trash. It was my job to make sure that didn't happen. If the boss was in a bad mood and was coming into the office, the other assistants would tell me to "get out of here!" or "go hide!" so that I didn't get in the way of his stampede. I'd spend most of my time in that office, sitting on a stepstool in the filing room, waiting for the boss to leave. Oh, and did I mention it was an unpaid internship?

FutureShipwreck

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 11:02:05 -0800

The summer after high school, I got a job at a local fast food joint to pick up some extra cash. The boss was a 24-year-old acne-scarred college student who was always giving me weird looks. I tried to avoid his "witty" banter, but on my third day there he came up to me on my five-minute break and got a little too close for comfort. He leaned over as if to whisper something in my ear and then just started breathing heavily. Naturally disturbed, I backed up a bit and felt something hard, cold and flaky brush my arm. I looked down and saw that he was holding a frozen chicken strip and he had just used it to caress my bare skin. Seriously. I was molested by a stale chicken strip. Of course, he tried to pass it off as a joke, but it was just too creepy. Just because I'm gay, doesn't mean I want to feel up your nasty-ass chicken strip! I didn't show up to work the next day, and have lost my appetite for that particular brand of fast food.

chennessey

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 23:31:21 -0800

In my first job when I was a young, impressionable high schooler, I dressed up for work in what I thought was a nice outfit for my new job. The boss asked me when I came in, "did you think you would be working in the attic today?" (implying that my clothes were old/ratty). Aw, so sad. I was so self-conscious about my clothing for the rest of the summer job.

hipsterorbum

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 18:15:39 -0800

Best AND Worst Boss Ever: My boss bought me some gelato, and then felt me up. (awesome) Then he asked me to ATM. (not awesome (well at least for me))

smartifice

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 17:29:03 -0800

As you might see- It is after five on Friday. I am still at work before the holiday weekend. But my story is about the best job and boss. So my typical day went like this: get there around 10:30 Check my email (work and personal). Figure out what I actually had to work on eventually. Browse the web until about noon. My boss and I went to the Galleria to shop and have lunch for 2 hours or more. Come back, my boss would go home soon after and I could do whatever I wanted as long as I completed my work which never took more than an hour or so. I could go home whenever I wanted to. That was the best job for me. At 15 dollars an hour during college wasn't bad either. After all, I DID work 8 hour days. At least that's what my timecard said. One time he took me shopping for a plasma tv during lunch just so I could help load it in the car. We always got away with doing nothing. Those were the days..