Job Discussion Forums

merlin · Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2006 12:07 pm Post subject:

Security guard Laughing

Great job. Luxury condominiums. After midnight I'd work out, take a sauna in private, flirt with drunk residents coming home ... and read all kinds of books. Decent pay too - If only it led somewhere ...

UPS - unloading every object known to man from aircraft containers then after a month I got "promoted" to loading the busiest route on the island all by myself because they couldn't find an assitant able to keep up with me.

Both places I was offered a management position but declined.

OH! almost forgot! National Guard infantry officer. What i remember most vividly was running around in circles near exhaution screaming at the top of my lungs various methods of comitting genocide. Glad I got out of that in the nick of time - and hope they NEVER contact me!

Then there was multilevel marketing. Never really did it as a "job" but I let myself be dragged to several meetings and did some "training" sessions - so I know from the other side of the fence various sales tricks and gimmicks.

Jizzo T. Clown · Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2006 1:50 pm Post subject:

Very cool thread! I mentioned in another post that I worked in tomatoes, then...

Dishwasher
Busboy
Waiter
Pizza Delivery driver
Hotel desk clerk
Customer service rep at a call center
Oyster shucker
Parts puller in electronic warehouse
administrative assistant
sales rep

ALL crap jobs until I began teaching EFL.

thelmadatter · Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2006 1:57 pm Post subject: crap jobs

Ive had my share of crap jobs, including the closing shift at McDonalds where I never could quite get the smell of grease out of my uniform. Bringing home leftover Big Mac's to my starving college roomates (in the days before microwaves) was cool for all of 3 days ha ha ha

But the worst was being a substitute teacher in Tucson. Lasted one day. The final straw was an ESL student who had been in the country all of 6 months came up and called me a "b__ch" to my face. Thats part of the reason Im in Mexico. While there are lots of ESL jobs in the public schools, I refuse to teach in them until they wake up and realize they have a discipline problem.

Boy Wonder · Joined: 29 Mar 2004 Posts: 453 Location: Clacton on sea

Sweetsee · Joined: 11 Jun 2004 Posts: 2302 Location: ) is everything

Drove limo out of LAX for 8 months in '99.

Famous people: a Playboy bunny, Ben Stiller's dad, Jesse Jackson's son, and I met Stacey Keach at a promo.

Biggest tip: a Ben from a supermarket chain owner. Picked him up from his jet, took him to sushi, waited while he visited a hooker and then home where there were no fewer than 10 killer rides in the drive.

Scariest thing: Being the first car to arrive at an accident on the 105 late at night in pouring rain, corpse lying splayed out perpindicular to vehicle just meters away. Scarrrrrryyyyyy!

Funniest thing: My Brazillian buddy getting busted for having an inflatable doll in the passenger seat while zipping along in the Diamond Lane.

Might have an early morning pick-up, maybe something in the afternoon, usually something in the evening and something late, probably going to Orange County--drag! There is a 15% gratuity added to the bill but cool people will kick you down something extra, most don't.

keepwalking · Joined: 17 Feb 2005 Posts: 194 Location: Peru, at last

I was a stripper! On an Aussie banana farm. Still, it beat being a humper which is what most of the men got stuck doing, in that heat it just wasn't fun....

Stripper, by the way, is the name given to a machete wielding backpacker who chops leaves off the trees (strips away the unwanted branches) and a humper is the guy who carries huge bunches of bananas from tree to truck. Sometimes for variety I was a stringer, and that means I tied trees together which were falling down.

Whenever I get fed up of teaching, I look at the many scars on my hand from that machete and think, it could be worse...

JZer · Joined: 16 Jan 2005 Posts: 3898 Location: Pittsburgh

Justin Trullinger · Posted: Tue Jan 31, 2006 6:22 pm Post subject:

Lifeguard

Chef

Dishwasher

Detassler

Barman

Security guard

Cloakroom attendant

Nurses aid

Telephone Phone sex voice

Voice over for dubbing eastern European pornography

Pre paid funeral salesman

Living Statue

EFL Teacher

DOS

dmb · Joined: 12 Feb 2003 Posts: 8397

And the next question is how did your experiences in your previous crap jobs help you in EFL. (Justin I'm intrigued how you explain the telephone sex job on your CV to a potential employer)

ls650 · Joined: 10 May 2003 Posts: 3484 Location: British Columbia

valley_girl · Posted: Tue Jan 31, 2006 9:27 pm Post subject:

Guy Courchesne · Joined: 10 Mar 2003 Posts: 9650 Location: Mexico City

I took a job as a door to door frozen meats salesman, one summer long ago. These weren't just any meats, but expensive frozen varieties. Rolling Eyes

Anyway, they had taken me on four days of training. Looked pretty easy. Then came the day they gave me a pick up truck with a strapped-in freezer full of meat.

I took the keys, went out to the parking lot, found my truck and got in. The truck turned out to have a standard transmission and during training, they had driven us around in one that was automatic. I had never driven a stick before, but felt too ashamed to go in and tell them so. So, I spent the next 6 hours stop/start teaching myself how to use it. I didn't properly learn downsifting until trying to go from 4th to 1st on a highway. Now there was a learning experience.

How does that relate to teaching? I suppose I could say that the best teacher is experience. I could also say that like borrowing someone else's car, don't expect classroom work to be automatic or have cruise control. There's a lot of manual shifting to be done.

merlin · Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 7:14 am Post subject:

Sweetsee · Joined: 11 Jun 2004 Posts: 2302 Location: ) is everything

"And the next question is how did your experiences in your previous crap jobs help you in EFL"

Driving limo made me realize how good I had it teaching English: more money, fewer and regular hours, personal satisfaction, higher self-esteem, less stress, etc.

One day I told someone I had been teaching English in Japan and the client just said, "Why would anyone want to do that?"

SueH · Joined: 01 Feb 2003 Posts: 1022 Location: Northern Italy

Now look what you've gone and done, made me feel all boring and inadequate..Ok let's try;

Christmas postal worker

tobacco picker (and I'm a non-smoker)

packing factory worker (emptying packets of tea back into the chests!)

building site worker (mainly sweeping and making the bacon sarnies in the canteen, but one day a lorry-load of 11,000 bricks came in...)

systems analyst (in the end, following company reorganisation, I was so bored I volunteered for redundancy - the pension is useful:-) )

summer school teacher

social survey interviewer

relief hostel worker

and Italian and English teacher.