And the bad jobs continue. . .
Yes, I have several jobs that I should never have said yes to, such as . . . INVENTORY TAKER.

As an inventory taker, you go into stores at night after they’ve closed, and count all, and I mean, ALL of the items in the store. This is for end of year records or tax purposes or torture …something like that. They “sell” you on taking this crappy job because they say you’ll have your days free to interview for a “real” job. What they forget to tell you is that after you’ve spent 18 straight hours counting magnets (because you stay until every piece of lint in the store is counted), you rarely ace a job interview the next day. Hence you create a really nasty cycle of counting marbles, sleeping through prime interview hours, and then counting marbles again.

And the job sites were never near my house, so I had to carpool with other lint-counters by meeting them at a spot off the freeway after 10 p.m. . . . like a drug dealer only drug dealers were looking forward to their jobs. We then would drive 50 miles away to some Mart store with a K or a Wal in front of it and get our assignments. And, as I said, we stayed until everything was counted. I learned a few things at that job. One night I was counting a huge bin of marbles or safety pins or something when one of my fellow bad-job-choice-makers (aka colleagues), said ‘WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” I’m thinking, what do you think I’m doing, there was only one job task listed on the want ad – counting. He then taught me the word “guestimate.” That’s when your eyeballs do the counting; which is much faster than your fingers and gets you back to your car parked on the freeway much faster. . . hopefully before the drug dealers steal it.

I hated that job, though one night as we were all leaving, one of my fellow commuters told me that she really hated to wish time away because we’re only on this earth so long. . .I agree, however some parts of time, like store inventory, really aren’t worth remembering. I lasted a few weeks at that job. . . because of that whole, work-sleep-miss-the-job-interview cycle I mentioned where I just couldn’t get out to interview for another one. But alas, one night I just couldn’t take it anymore, so I stood up my fellow commuters and the only thing I counted that night was sheep in my sleep. This was not one of those jobs where you give 2 weeks notice. I did go in and get my last pay check though, and the boss asked me if I would be showing up to my scheduled stores and I thought for a nanosecond and said, “naw, I think I’m done.” She didn’t bat an eye, I think she was used to it.

Yep, another bad job down, many more in my future I’m sure. Recently at one of my shows, the winner of my bad job contest is this guy in the video:

Jan McInnis is the author of Finding the Funny Fast; how to create quick humor to connect with clients, coworkers and crowds. She can be reached at www.TheWorkLady.com
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