Worst summer jobs

Let's see...

I had a rather unpleasant job working as a proof machine operator.

That takes some explainig.

When you get your canceled checks back, you'll notice that at the bottom there is some computery looking type on them that has the amount of the check and your bank number.

When you pay for something, your hand written chicken scratch doesn't magically go into computer. It has to be fed into a sorting machine. But before it can do that, someone or somethign has to look at your chicken scratch adn then encode the acual amount along with the bank number into nice clean type on the check.

This is so that when it goes to the master computer to be inputted into someone's bank account the computer can read the amount.

So my job was to sit at a big computer console and look at people's checks and then type the amount onto the proof machine keyboard and then run the check through it.

On a good day, I could do around 7,500 of these. That represented me or some other loser like me sitting there for 8 hours doing that.

Now that job SUCKED.

Wow, the suck factor on that one took my next comment right out of my mouth.

I just want to expand on Draginol's pain. I knew him at the time he had that job and there is something that he also left out. If I remember correctly he came up with a programmactical suggestion on how to improve the process, which they implemented and his boss took the credit for it. He may have even programmed it himself but I don't remember.

Well yes, that just added to the suckitude of the job.

Each check has the same bank number on it. We proof operators had to type the same 7 or so digit number on every check.

But during lunch one day I went throught he manual and saw that the machines had a macro programming language. I programmed a "macro" to make it so that i could hit one of the function keys and it would automatically encode the 7 digit bank number.

This greatly speeded things up. But my boss yelled at me for implementing it without her permission. I later discovered that she took credit for the feature and got a promotion.

I guess no one else here ever had a summer job.

Or nobody else has a summer job that sucked.

When I was a kid I had a job over the christmas school holidays at a place that made/packaged hot-dogs. I worked in the section that put the hot-dogs in those shrink wrapped packages. The amount of fat and horrid oily gunk that the hot-dogs were covered in was disgusting....needless to say I quit the job after only 2.5 days.
The funny thing is that two weeks after quitting they called me up and offered a full-time job doing the same thing.....of course, I declined the offer and went back to school

....other than that I've never had another summer/holiday job!.....and these days when I'm on holidays that's exactly what they are

...I should add that I couldn't eat a hot-dog for many years after that!

No matter how much your summer job sucks you know it's going to end with the summer. There are quite a few days in which I wish I had that to look forward to.... Working every season sucks!!!

There are some awful jobs out there in the world. I mean awful beyond belief. Even in the United States there are awful jobs. And I'm not talking jobs like garbage collection or whatever.

For example, when I go to trade shows there are almost always "booth babes". Basically girls in costume to fit the theme of the product being shown who just stand there and dance.

At E3 one year, there was a girl dressed up as a "sexy lizard" up on a platform about 20 feet in the air and her job was to dance around...all day - 10 hours (minus lunch break). That is a sucky job. And to think, girls like that in highschool wouldn't have gone out on a date with me in a million years.

Yeah, but you didn't pay them.

My parents always complained that I needed to get a summer job, so one summer I went to the employment office and said I was looking for something web related. They set me up with the job of cleaning holiday bungalows (typical). I can't say no, so there I went. It is unbelievable what a mess people make when they go on a holiday. Cloths and trash everywhere... That was the last time I ever went to an employment office.

Oh and the payment sucked too.

Once apon a time I worked at a buisness school for a summer job, they wanted to pay me in classes for reprograming their old Apple 2C's to work with the schools mailing list instead of cash. Then I grew up and I think I joined the Marines....... I think or I might just wake and and have a real job..... or that might just be me dreaming about 2 years from now when I retire

/me Goes back to waiting patiently for the Coffee Mugs to be on sale with the Lizard on the side..... Hey Crae time to Spring/Summer clean the basement

Hmm, I'd say we wait for two more years with that cleaning. Seems someone will have plenty of time by then.

my worse summer job that I can remember was working the register at Ricks In & Out Burger joint, it was nasty and so were some of the guys that came in for Burgers and thought when they gave me their money to pay for their burgers taking/grabbing my hand when I gave them back their change was part of their orders... yuk!

My parents were the type who actually believed that to have a summer job would take away from my studies, and that I should enjoy my youth while I still could..

But I did have one summer job, but unfortunately for this thread it hardly sucked. I basically trained my own horse, so word got out that I was good, and of course much cheaper than a professional trainer.. so I usually had about three or four horses I was training at any given time in the summer.

I was really lucky...unlike my own equine monster... they were all sweethearts.

plainsong the thread says "Worst summer jobs" hehe

I had to get a summer job to pay for college. I came from a pretty poor background (for an American anyway). The only way to go to college was to work crummy jobs to pay for it.