sockmonkey wrote:

Anyway, it was a lot like what I imagine being an intern at a recording studio is like, but with better pay.

Unfortunately, most recording internships don't paying anything! You'll work 12+ hour days for free and you'll be lucky if you ever see a mixing board. There is one place I was interning at (a big nameless studio in Chicago) and I wasn't allowed to talk to the band under any circumstance and was told that I would probably never be able to sit in on a session. That internship was short lived! I was basically a free janitor and gopher.

So now I'm trying to do it on my own, and finally gaining some ground. I'm working a lot of hours and picking up a lot of useful info as opposed to fetching coffee, not being able to speak, and never having a shot at sitting in on a session!

I wouldn't have cared about not being paid....it was the fact that I was supposed to be this little drone nazi machine without a voice or any ambition to grow to be an engineer.

ugh, i hate jobs. but i have had to have them to eat. record store pretty much sucks if your the token girl, i quit that after a week. call center is frightening and if it's for internet technical support, so are the coworkers -- quit that after two weeks. tried some activist thing from the paper where they end up dropping you off in the middle of nowhere and ask you to ask people for money for a cause you know nothing about... i tried to walk home but it was too far so i sat on the curb for 5 hours waiting for the van and then handed them my own two dollars and said it was all i could get. weak!!! coffee shops are usually pretty fun if they're independant, but i always end up quitting and then regretting it. now i just have to treat me quitting any job as an inevitability. assistant to pastry chef (3 months) was fun. borders (2 months) coffee shop was lame of course, i don't know what i was thinking with that. upscale independants restaurants are fun but then you have to get use to all the cokeheads and escorts. a few years ago i worked at a small pizza shop owned by this italian family, all males who worked there. after awhile (like, 4 days) the owner, which the shop was named after, was like trying to marry me into the family via his 5'7" son who was into racing civics and angelina jolie... and then there's a shit ton other jobs. i think maybe working is just not worth it unless you are famous or have a very good sense of humor (or kids).

McDonald's -

I worked in a McDonald's drive-thru for seven months. When I was new, there was still an investigation going on. Some managers there were stealing drop bags with about two thousand pounds in each bag.

The main suspect was cleared, though it seemed obvious that he did it, so the new manager embarrassed him and made fun of him until he quit on his own. His girlfriend was transferred out of there, to another store.

Later in the year, while the boss was on holiday, this eighteen year old piece of shit bullying asshole new manager logged into the boss's account on the office computer and increased his hourly pay to the maximum (not sure how much, but it worked out as a nice chunk of cash for two weeks). He got caught, and was fired.

There was this twenty year old guy manager, he was really handsome and nice, I'm sure all the girls liked him, but he was a thieving asshole too. He stole money from my float at least a few times.

There are these statistics which go out to all the McDonald's stores in an area. They show percentages of things like costs for food against profit from food, etc. There was this kid who was the king of conning these statistics. He would not put enough lettuce on a Turdburger etc, and it saved lots of cash for the store. Because his fraud was beneficial to the company, he was promoted. He threatened to quit, because he knew this would earn him a large pay rise. After he enjoyed his large pay rise, he noticeably started to act strange and began stealing money from tills and change money.

As a till worker, I was threatened by customers many times, once for not letting someone use more free-munch vouchers than he was entitled to, another for not changing a twenty pounds note for somebody, another for refusing to serve these regular troublemakers... "Do you know who I am?" one of them said. I repeated my refusal to serve them, so they sat down and sulked for a while, and then left the store.

I could write a heavily detailed book about how shit McDonald's is in nearly every way possible, but this post is already long enough.

I worked in Safeway supermarket for two years as a "hygeine assistant".

I was told (at the age of 16) I would be inspecting store cleanliness and maintaining hygeine levels throughout the store.

So basically, I was a cleaner. I have wonderful memories of mopping up children's urine after "accidents", scooping up dog vomit from the store entrance pavement and also cleaning faeces left by a member of staff from a toilet seat.

I hate those motherfuckers.

I was a store manager for Sam Goody/Musicland. Obviously it sucked to sell CDs for 20 bucks, and it sucked that all the music we sold sucked, but it really wasn't too bad of a job...until Best Buy bought out Musicland and suddenly I worked for Best Buy. Needless to say, I got out quick...What a bunch of fucks that company is...

sw

therecordingart wrote:Unfortunately, most recording internships don't paying anything!

I know that. That's what I meant. It was the same sort of exploitive and abusive atmosphere of a crappy recording internship though with the benefit of minimum wage pay.

When I hear horror stories about recording internships, it makes me angry. Like there's an accepted pecking order and if you're tough enough to take it for a while, you'll be accepted. That's bullshit.

The interns at my current job have it all cushy. They get their own little offices and barely even work a full day. We all make our own coffee and the owners take out the trash. One of the interns just left after a couple weeks for a job at a big advertising agency. Then again, the employees here have it pretty cushy too so I shouldn't complain.

Hmmm worst job eh... Id have to vote working at United Furniture Warehouse... I was the warehouse guy... the only warehouse guy... how the fuck do you lift a couch by yourself... poorly and with much pain.

Now due to my relocation across the country I had to give up the best job i could have asked for (Indie record store manager) to push coffee at a hight end coffee shop... boooourns

At 24, I was installed to be the "right hand" of the director of a city department. This gentleman was absolutely incapable of making a decision, was unfamiliar with the concept of "accountability" and had a bitch of a temper. He communicated almost exclusively in military metaphors, such as "they sent me into the fucking war without the General's phone number!" and "I need our strategic plan to shock and awe those fuckers! A goddamn bomb on every page, babe! A BOMB!!" This would be followed up a day later by winking at me while asking how my "bombs" were coming.

During major projects when his "clout" and direction were most needed, the dude would lock himself in his office, print off all of his emails and spend the day highlighting them. He would frequently invent new color-coding systems for the all-important highlighting and re-do the same emails, over and over. Because he did so little, I learned a ton, but the weight of it, the shouting, the dressing-downs and 12+ hour days were physically and mentally exhausting.

As for the now time, I moved to Chicago 7 months ago to run a gallery that deals in modernist antiques. My clients are, for the most part, well-educated and interesting people that I enjoy tremendously. I have not seen the owner, an old friend, in three months, so I've had the privilege of learning the ins-and-outs of running a small business, knowledge I will put to work for myself in the future. A very cool job. And most days, I do not work until 11am. gihhhhhhhhhh

i once was paid to build scale models of payless shoe source stores. tiny.

now i have the best job in the world.