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In college I worked as a real, honest-to-goodness spy for ASCAP (American Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers). My partner and I were basically paid to shut down strip clubs that weren’t paying their licensing fees. With hidden Dictaphones and a wad of singles, we’d spend a couple hours in a club, sometimes traveling across three state lines to get there, and notate every song that was played.
Recently there was a story in the Seattle Times about the kind of lawsuits we helped bring in. From the article:
ASCAP says that besides broadcasting songs over the radio, television and Internet, the definition of performing copyrighted music includes playing it “any place where people gather,” with the exception of small private groups.
“As long as it’s [played] outside a direct circle of friends and family, it is considered a public performance,” [a spokesperson for ASCAP] said. “A musical composition is somebody’s property.”
Working as a spy, sticking up for the rights of other musicians was fun in a top-secret sorta way, but still, what 20-year-old aspiring classical composer wants to admit he earns his money in strip clubs?
What’s your all-time worst job?
***EDITOR’S NOTE: This post has been changed from “Humiliating Jobs” to “Worst First Jobs” because some of the comments were coming across too harshly. I think David’s post is genius (his posts generally are!), but because mental_floss is a happy place, we wanted to clarify that we want to keep the stories fun and about awful personal experiences, not being disparaging about any professions. OK, now go ahead and comment!
Comments (27)
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Working at Santa’s Pen kiosk in the mall, where I personalized Christmas ornaments with Sharpies by drawing dots on the ends of letters. Luckily I didn’t have to dress like an elf.
posted by katie on 8-9-2007 at 6:59 am
when I was in high school I use to work in a butcher shop cleaning the cutting boards, meat gringers and bone saws.
posted by Joshua Tutt on 8-9-2007 at 7:00 am
Painter’s apprentice. I painted inside closets and unfinished basements.
-Stew
posted by Stew on 8-9-2007 at 7:17 am
I’m with Joshua on the bone saw. I worked in a small grocery store in high school and worst 5 words to hear were ‘go clean the meat room’. I could still take that saw apart in my sleep.
Another high school job: cleaning bathrooms . . . at an elementary school. Those kids piss everywhere.
posted by EV on 8-9-2007 at 7:28 am
I’d say the humiliating part is working as a spy for ASCAP. What a joke. Why do music companies think they should get paid over and over for something a musician created in the past? Musicians and record companies get (or should get) their cut when they sell an album or sell tickets to a show.
The real world just doesn’t work that way, and rightly so.
posted by Jam on 8-9-2007 at 8:24 am
hilarious!
posted by Mangesh on 8-9-2007 at 9:01 am
Dish Washer at Shoneys
posted by Twitchings on 8-9-2007 at 9:06 am
When I was very young, I was a concert promoter. That involved driving all over a 100-mile radius of the venue, putting up posters on telephone poles. Every week. Which is illegal in this state. I only got caught once, wasn’t arrested, but the police made me take the posters down in that town. I think the statute of limitations has passed by now.
posted by Miss Cellania on 8-9-2007 at 9:18 am
The worst job I had was doing laundry for a seedy motel. Rubber gloves were sooo not enough to feel safe from the disgusting things you find in the sheets of those places.
posted by Sarah on 8-9-2007 at 9:56 am
While not terribly humiliating, I did work at McDonald’s when I was in high school. One of my jobs was to filter and change the grease (sorry McD’s, shortening). never a fun job, though I did set one of the vats on fire once.
Probably the most disgusting was when they had shut down a flat grill (all grills at fast food places have a top part called a clamshell that sits on top of the meat now). Apparently the person who last used it didn’t empty the grease traps on the sides. Needless to say that what was left after sitting for 3 months was probably the most vile thing I have ever seen.
Anyone hungry for a quarter pounder?
Mar’s friend takes the cake.
posted by Dusty on 8-9-2007 at 10:06 am
my friend worked at A&B Sound selling records / cd’s etc…, his boss didn’t like him i guess and requested he cut back the weeds in the alley with an EXACTO KNIFE !!! …he did it just in spite of the situation then quit .
posted by puffy_jacket_78 on 8-9-2007 at 10:51 am
While not humiliating, this job was pretty mind numbing. In college, I briefly worked in a small winery in Lubbock, Texas. I stood on one side of an assembly line, and a guy named Louis stood on the other. We stood next to a corking machine, a bottle would come out every second, and I would put the foil cap on every other one. Louis would get the other one. We had to wear ear protection, so we couldn’t talk to anyone. There was no clock in the room, so we had no idea how much time had passed. To amuse ourselves, we would sometimes skip a bottle so the other guy would have to run down and catch the skipped one. We would do that for 8+ hours a day. I still have nightmares.
posted by Anthony on 8-9-2007 at 10:53 am
I worked in a BGL bar as a shot girl for a while. I had to go make jello shots & then walk around & try to sell them to the club goers. The scariest of people would pay me money to lick the jello shots out in front of them & give me all kinds of instruction on how to do it.
I did that job for about a week before I went to work in a comic book store.
posted by tara on 8-9-2007 at 11:01 am
I was a housekeeper in college…there is great humility to be found in scrubbing other people’s toilets. But at least I can say that I worked my @** off for my education, which is more than many of my clients can say. Nonetheless, it’s still surprisingly humiliating to show up for a job and see the disdainful face of the chick who sits in front of you in Chinese History 320.
posted by natlynn on 8-9-2007 at 11:06 am
What a great topic! High fives all around.
My most humiliating job was a temp gig, working as a receptionist at a garage door installation company. The reason it was so humiliating is because I was so incompetent. Every single conversation went like this:
Caller: “Hi, I don’t know why but my garage door won’t open and I’m late for work and can’t get my car out. Can you just tell me what I can do? I know you know so much more about this than I do.”
Me: “Um, I’m just a temp. I really don’t know anything about garage doors…”
Caller: “What? Please put on someone who can help me.”
Me: “Um, I’m the only one here. The technicians will be back tonight. Could I take a message?”
Caller: “Why would a garage door installation company hire someone who knew nothing about garage doors?”
Me: “Um…is that your message?”
It was a long summer.
posted by Jason on 8-9-2007 at 11:35 am
My worst job was back when I was a teenager. I was paid to clean/muck out fertilizer spreaders (a big tank truck that sprays crap).
I quickly found a step up from that job that still sucked… working irrigation pipe.
posted by Jason! on 8-9-2007 at 12:03 pm
Easy: I cleaned up Talladega SuperSpeedway after all the rednecks had left. EVERYTHING. Never seen such a mess. Never will again. :)
posted by Evan Travers on 8-9-2007 at 12:27 pm
In high school I worked as a janitor at a truck stop. No further details needed.
posted by Telemath on 8-9-2007 at 3:33 pm
I just finished my degree in sound design for film. one of my internships was fixing the sound on a softcore porn film. the kind they play on a certain movie channel in the wee hours.
I had to get rid of the pops and clicks that came from a bad original recording, and then put in music for the silently-recorded “action” scenes.
because it was for internship credit, I had to show a segment of the “work” I’d been doing in class. I have no problem with porn, but given that I went to a catholic school I chose to show a fully clothed segment with some really cheesy pickup lines.
I was also the only girl in the class…
I heard a lot of those pickup lines again in the next few months.
posted by RG on 8-9-2007 at 5:29 pm
wow, some of these top mine, for sure! SuperSpeedway Cleaner? Now there’s something for the resume…
posted by David on 8-9-2007 at 10:26 pm
My first job lasted only a few weeks. It was maintenance at a convent for a Sisters of Charity organization. A crowd of mostly older nuns who dressed the old fashioned way(black uniform with the habit). I swear some of them where lustfully eyeing the new young guy(me). I was mopping the huge kitchen one day, watching all these old nuns dottering around, looking like penquins, thinking “I gotta get out of this.” When I was sweeping in the garage area, a long time employee who was frustrated about his life, freaked out (at me) about something, grabbed me around the neck, choking me and threw me across the hood of a car. I used that as an excuse to quit.
posted by Tdave on 8-11-2007 at 2:10 am
I lasted 4 days as a photographer at the Sears Portait Studio. On my last day, a teenage mother was diapering her baby directly under a sign imploring people to use the restrooms ten footsteps around the corner instead of our waiting area. Her equally teenaged spouse showed up and threatened to pound the sh*t out of me and everyone else in the children’s clothing/toy/furniture department (where the studio was) who had a problem with his ‘woman’ cleaning their stinking crotchfruit in front of two sets of formally dressed families waiting (standing because she took up most of the seats) for their portrait appointment.
I swore off photography for 12 years till I married, of all things, a photographer.
posted by Chief-Ten-Bears on 8-11-2007 at 7:35 am
Many, many years ago I temped as a receptionist at a small office that sold trade show displays. Voice mail was in its infancy, and the boss thought answering machines were too impersonal. So she put a 50 ft cord on the multi-line phone, and I had to carry it with me whenever I left my desk, and that included going to the ladies’ room. It was bad enough being “tethered” like a parolee, but the rest room had an industrial-strength fan hooked up to the light switch, so there was always a thunderous “vroooom” in the background when I answered the phone in there. I just hope the customers bought my “our office is near the airport” story.
posted by Kara on 8-11-2007 at 7:59 pm
I have to say, after working last summer at a temp agency, I kinda feel sorry for anyone who has to work on an assembly line of sorts. One job that I worked was stacking crates all day. Another time, all I did for 12 hours was stand next to a grinding machine and throw pieces of excess plastic cut off of buckets into it. Man did my feet hurt after that.
posted by cody on 8-12-2007 at 12:09 am
I was about 16 or 17, fresh out of theatre school, of course, could not find work in plays or else so I had to do singing telegrams… was kinda fun until I got to a house with a cute lil toddler, and her dad hired me for her birthday. So I’m wearing a monkey suit and the lil girl want me to eat a banana. I laugh and put it aside and continue on, but the lil girls eyes started to fill with tears and her steroid-huge dad grabbed a pool cue, and looked at me with crazy eyes while a vein started to pop on his temple. So I mushed the banana through my mask for the kid… bad bad bad experience, but at least I got a good tip
posted by Helniev on 8-12-2007 at 12:55 pm
damn, i have to narrow it down to one??
OK: parking garage attendant, i.e.-the guy in the booth everyone hates. you are the most unpopular person with every shopper in the mall. i only did for one summer after my bachelor’s degree, but there was a guy there who had been working full-time there for 15 years. the only good thing about the job was i got a lot of reading done.
posted by chris on 10-22-2007 at 9:55 am
Okay, here are mine:
For a work-study my freshman year in college, I did research for an economics professor (I was an English major). He was doing a study on philosophy and economics for a book he was writing, and I had to index it. I often fell asleep in the library while I was supposed to be working (not on purpose!). The next semester, I was saved by the English department asking me to tutor.
Another job, which I don’t recommend to anyone, was working at Gap Kids. I was at a newspaper at the time, college educated, in my early thirties, bringing in decent money. But I was also a single mom looking for a little extra Christmas cash, so I took the job for evening-and-weekend work. For minimum wage, I had to stand for four hours at a time folding and refolding clothes. I wasn’t even allowed to work the cash register, because I would have to “work up to it” in a few months (as told to me by my boss, who was only just out of high school). I quit after two days. My paycheck was something like $34.
posted by Jena on 10-22-2007 at 2:42 pm