Comments (26)

1. my favorite job was a summer job up on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. I worked on a pier, selling tickets and selling trinkets outside a small marine science center. I was right on the water, could watch the boats go by, had a stunning view of the mountains and Victoria BC, and when I was bored, I could go inside and pet the sea cucumbers and feed the octopus.

   I had a coworker once (different job) who was afraid of everything–birds, elevators, heights, mayonaise. She also was in the process of convincing her parents to pay for liposuction, but since she had too much fat to lipo, she was also considering gaining an extra 50 lbs so she could get gastric bypass. Oh, and she was embarassed to meet her grandmother for lunch because “she’s so gross and wrinkly. Old people shouldn’t be allowed outside.”

   posted by Jen on 8-31-2007 at 9:42 am

2. Worst co-worker was nicknamed Crazy Dennis. He constantly talked to himself out loud(sometimes violently), often cursed at himself in the restroom, and stomped around a dirt field near our workplace. My friend and I refered to this as “stomping out the demons”. That was scary.

   Favorite Job is the one I have right now, which is manager and lead engineer for an IT company.

   posted by Scott on 8-31-2007 at 9:43 am

3. http://www.jetdrytacos.com is the weirdest registered domain name for me…

   posted by Yerg on 8-31-2007 at 9:59 am

4. My least favorite coworker is finally quitting…

   Take Dwight Schrute, but without the loyalty to Michael Scott, add a total lack of understanding of social interaction, no work ethic, the complete inability to communicate, the anxiety of someone with OCD, the tantrums of a eight year old, the pseudo-know-it-all attitude of Ignatius Reilly, and story-telling that would likely come from a five year old (meaning, there is no reason or moral to the story – simply senseless babbling and lies).

   Throw in the fact that he acts like the hall monitor when people want to leave early, and TA DA! My least favorite coworker.

   Thank God he’s on his way out. No one has ever bothered me more in MY LIFE.

   posted by ac on 8-31-2007 at 10:19 am

5. This is not technically a ‘road trip’ but is a road-trip ;-)
   I was leaving one job to start another and knew I would not be able to take any vacation time that summer so I convinced my sister to take a long weekend with me to…Dublin,Ireland. We stayed at a B&B near City Centre, took guided bus trips, rode the trains and public buses, visited 2 castles, St Pat’s, The Guinness Warehouse, took a ‘duck tour’, 4 museums, crossed the Ha’Penny bridge twice daily, saw Hags & Bags and had the best 4 days 2 crazy American women could possibly have!

   posted by JaneM on 8-31-2007 at 10:32 am

6. Wow, ac. I thought we were the only ones who had a guy like that! You have my sympathy.

   My worst co-worker: well, its a tie. But they worked the same job, and were friends. The first could be summed up in two words: sexual harassment. On a lighter note, the second also hit on me, but was actually humorously lame about it.

   He approached me one day as I was killing time with a book and said, “You sure read a lot, don’t ya’? Ahyep- only book I ever read out side of school was the Bible.”

   At which point he winked at me and suggestively licked his lips. I kid you not.

   My all time favorite job was performing in an outdoor pre-show at a Shakespeare Festival. We did Shakespeare-themed comic sketches, sang madrigals, and step-danced in the spirit of Riverdance. Good, dorky fun… and we were paid!

   posted by ShinyKate on 8-31-2007 at 10:36 am

7. Joba “The Stilt” Chamberlain (rimshot)

   When I was a screenprinter, we had this guy join our team who dressed like it was 1955. Boot cut jeans, white t-shirt with a pack of cigs rolled up in one sleeve, greased hairdo, and he called himself Elvis. The kicker? He would only listen to Social Distortion, and proclaimed all other music to be ‘gay.’

   posted by Johnny Cat on 8-31-2007 at 10:47 am

8. Strangest domain name: wikikiwi.org – at the moment it is a pick your own adventure wiki, since the friend i made it for hasn’t used it at all

   Weekend road trip: Up north to the Michigan UP – we had plans to see all sorts of things, but ended up just having a great time hanging around the hotel room and watching the lake

   posted by Jon Anderson on 8-31-2007 at 10:54 am

9. My best job ever was teaching sex education workshops in middle and high school classrooms. It was fun, made for great cocktail party conversation, and I felt like I was really doing something important!

   posted by Lauren on 8-31-2007 at 11:16 am

10. Ahh, Todd. This man produced a stench that could peel paint from walls. Garlic balut omelettes have a more appealling fragrance.

    posted by natlynn on 8-31-2007 at 11:43 am

11. Hrm…

    Worst co-worker:
    Well I have an annoying supervisor now, but the worst ones were just downright irresponsible. I worked at the YMCA doing summer camps. The worst camp I worked was Magic camp… basically keeping 6 year olds cooped up in a room for hours, with the only real activity being a pedophilish “magic teacher” who came in an hour a day to teach really dumb tricks. Well, the supervisor for that camp did not like kids. She yelled at them and didn’t care if they had nothing to do. She basically left me to watch the 30 or 40 kids. But the best was when she left, in the middle of the day, taking another coworker… to go to Starbucks. :-/

    Best job: I haven’t had too many, but favorite was also working at the YMCA. The second summer I worked there, I worked with a training course for 13-15 year olds. I was 19. So it was basically hanging out with cool teenagers… playing dodgeball and mafia, and teaching them how to relate to 6 year olds.

    Best roadtrip: It wasn’t over a long weekend, but it was the same length as one. Two friends were getting married, so a bunch of us piled into 3 cars, and drove from Los Angeles to Killeen, Texas. It was 24 straight hours of driving, stopping only for burger joints and gas. I saw my first snow fall (in Arizona!) and a lot of demonic deer that tried to leap out in front of us and kill us and fireworks in El Paso. In Texas, we went to a wedding, went line-dancing, went to authentic Texas BBQ, and slept. After 1.5 days in Texas, we drove back home. 4 day trip, 2 full days of driving. It was amazing.

    posted by Melissa on 8-31-2007 at 11:57 am

12. ok, i like my job now (working for dad definitely has its perks), but there’s an aspect of my job that i’m glad is finally over: dad can now drive the internet all by himself. before it i taught dad to drive the internet, this was my daily life:

    “ok, click there. now scroll down, go faster, wait STOP! now go back, you went to far. quit moving the cursor all over the place, i can’t read. ok, go back and start over.”

    he swears its payback for road trips as a kid. speaking of which, one of my favorite road trips as a kid involved a brand new tape recorder my brother and i had gotten. we wanted to be spies, so we’d leave the giant clunky thing around (not so subtle) and record whatever went on. we were driving to the beach (about a 4 hour trip) w/ the tape recorder and mom realized about 1/2 way there that she’d left the key at home, so we had to turn around and go back. mom was VERY upset and used some VERY colorful language in front of us by accident. when she was done with her tirade, we rewound the tape and replayed it. she didn’t think it was nearly as funny as we did.

    posted by mri on 8-31-2007 at 12:38 pm

13. Worst co-worker: Not really a co-worker, but a boss. He was buds with a senior suit at the corporate office. Political refugee in the US illegally after his bunch were on the losing side of a coup in Argentina in the early/mid ’70s. Apparently he was a Colonel or some such in the Army. Came into my facility and started telling everybody how to do their jobs, even though he was clueless as to what we did there.

    I complained repeatedly to the corporate suits with no response other than, “Get over it”. After about 3 months of this clown screwing my office up and driving our P&L into the toilet I sent an anonymous letter to the Argentine embassy in Los Angeles telling themm his name and address. He disappeared a few weeks later. Never heard from him again, although I got a nice Christmas card from the government of Argentina.

    Best job? Dunno. I liked most of my jobs, just got bored with them after a while and moved on. Probably best one was touring with an R&B band in the 90s.

    Road trip? I had 30 days’ leave from the US Army after I finished AIT. Had two teeth knocked out at the Chicago Democratic Convention Police Riot, then went to Muscle Shoals Studios and got picked up for the last 10 days of Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen Tour by his music director, Leon Russel, who’d screwed up his hand falling off a horse and needed a B3 player…

    Folks tell me my life has occasionally been like a folk song – I’m just really really glad that the song is not “Tom Dooley”…

    posted by Doc on 8-31-2007 at 12:45 pm

14. Worst coworker. He sat in the cubicle directly across from me. He was a nice enough person, but his personal habits were disgusting. When he had a cold, he would loudly suck back his snots and then hock them into the trashcan. The worst episode was, while having a work-related discussion with me, he proceeded to clean out his ear wax with a paperclip, and without missing a beat in his conversation, put the clip in his mouth and ate the wax! I immediately requested a cubicle relocation.

    posted by Lottie on 8-31-2007 at 12:57 pm

15. My best job was working in Games at Cedar Point in the summer of 1994. It was my first time living away from home, and even though my boyfriend was working there too, that didn’t stop me from taking advantage of being 19 and cute. The hours were long, the pay was shit, but I would do it all again in a heartbeat.

    Best road-trip? Not exactly a weekend, but when I was 8 or 9, the family took a road trip from Ohio to Maine, without driving on interstates or eating at chain restaurants. It took forEVER to get there, but much fun was had and it remains the best family vacation we ever took.

    @Johnny Cat: screenprinters are a weird bunch, aren’t they? My dad owns a screenprinting shop and we have had the weirdest humans walking at work on the presses.

    posted by Rachel on 8-31-2007 at 2:37 pm

16. How bout a Hall of Fame for bald headed guys (guess u could include women but I would rather be provincial and limit it to men).
    Too many great ones out there to settle on the initial enrolee…..Nikita Kruschev comes to mind (can’t picture him in many other Halls of Fame)…..and maybe Curly from the Stooges….he needed someone to love him instead of hitting him all the time.

    Think the perfect place for it would be on Bald Knob in Cincinnati Ohio….

    posted by al on 8-31-2007 at 2:43 pm

17. For all its craziness and oftimes ickiness, I still miss being a dancer. Um- a BALLROOM dancer, just so none of you get the wrong idea. I did a lot of shows and competetions and taught for a few studios. Among the students and afficianados in town, I had a quasi-celebrity status, it made plain little me instant glamourous at parties, and it was fun to turn it on at nightclubs and watch the floor clear. I still miss wearing my ostrich feather gown. It just isn’t the kind of thing you can scoot around the office in.

    posted by Allison on 8-31-2007 at 3:09 pm

18. Worst coworker was Erica, CPS took her daughter (for good reason) and she went crazy, ruined her marriage, stole from the bank we worked for, and the kicker drove home drunk and put a woman in a coma for 6 months, she is in the pen now and the world is safe again (well at least in my small town)

    Best job was being a seamstrees in highschool, learned lots of neat stuff about venture creation

    Best long weekend was justing hanging out at lake in Austin

    Bawlfing Hall of Fame (reverse bowling) First inductee would be my friend Tommy the best bawlfer ive seen!

    posted by Lindsey on 8-31-2007 at 3:43 pm

19. Worst Coworker was Joe. A member of Mensa, he had no social life outside of work. Monday mornings were the worst – he probably had not spoken to another human being for 2 days. Loved to talk ad nauseum about military weaponry. After I moved out of that workgroup I would stop by from time to time, mention the stealth bomber and say I had to get to a meeting. Two hours later he would still be talking about it to his coworkers – ain’t I a stinker?

    posted by Wam on 8-31-2007 at 4:38 pm

20. Worst person I ever worked with was crazy woman named Anahita. She was the worst manager I ever saw. Completely incompetent–thought the definition of management was “delegation” (as in telling everyone else to do her job) luckily she just had a baby and the word on the street is she won’t be coming back.

    posted by Akanksha on 8-31-2007 at 5:43 pm

21. Weirdest domain name I’ve been involved in registering (my husband actually did it): youstayclassycuba.com (We’ve let it expire, but the only thing that was on it was this: flickr dot com/photos/kirinqueen/115937856/)

    posted by Erin on 8-31-2007 at 6:56 pm

22. Favorite job- I took care of the grounds of a large house in Saratoga Springs. I worked alone (after my worst co-worker quit) and made the place look great.
    Worst Co-worker- Joe quit the aforementioned job when they would not give free health insurance. We were part time and he wanted to be in charge, did no phyical labor, and had no real gardening skills. After he quit I was made full time and got health insurance.
    Hall Of Fame- Mimes. I know most people don’t like mimes, but I do! I would nominate the Orange Mime of NYC. I have seen him perform, both live and on his website, and he is great.

    http://www.orangemime.com

    posted by gus on 9-1-2007 at 5:52 am

23. Worst co-worker boss is easy. I was at a Fortune 50 company and they brought in a new VP. The guy had been at five companies over the previous seven years each time making a small title bump. He knew absolutely nothing about our business but that didn’t stop him from telling all of us how to do our jobs. About 75% of the managers were forced out or quit. Now here is the cool part. One of my co-workers sent a departing email to the #2 man at the time (who is now CEO) about what was going on and he not only responded but called the VP to NY and “reassigned” him, later firing him. Too bad he had completely ruined the Western Region by then.

    This jackass ran for Congress in Upstate NY last year and although he ran as a member of my own party, I donated to his opponent. He got crushed which pleased me greatly.

    Caps (the drinking game) Hall of Fame.

    posted by Boutros Boutros on 9-1-2007 at 10:40 pm

24. Longest (and only) domain name I’ve ever registered:

    http://www.ZoleMexicanCuisine.com

    Even I spell it wrong sometimes.

    posted by Kristen on 9-2-2007 at 10:45 am

25. 1. Worst co-worker was a guy who bathed once a week, who lived at home with his parents. Took a lot of direct hints and secret packages of soap, deodorant before he got the message.
    2. Best weekend trip was following the coastline of Lake Erie & Ontario in NY state. Beautiful country and nice people.
    3. Best job was when I was young in college, running my parents ice cream store for them at nights and weekends during the summer. Met and dated lots of girls because I gave free ice cream plus I could have eat and drink all the time for free and still got paid. Call it the cream job of all time.
    4. Hall of fame for Stupid Politicians; not that I like politics. First inductee would be Bill CLinton for the definition of sex followed by Larry Craig for pleading guilty for fancy footwork in an airport bathroom.

    posted by cam on 9-2-2007 at 7:43 pm

26. My worst co-worker was Brandi. She “worked” at the pharmacy I work at as a clerk and a delivery person. She was supposed to work the register, but usually was on a computer looking at MySpace so one of the technicians or pharmacists would have to ring people up. This wasn’t too bad when were slow, but when we’re busy we need the pharmacists doing pharmacy stuff. She could not stop talking. Even if she was talking about nothing, she could not stop talking. She was frequently getting head injuries while playing soccer, which were bad enough supposedly that she couldn’t work. Thankfully she quit recently so she can go work in another pharmacy. I’m sorry for them.

    posted by Janel on 9-2-2007 at 10:23 pm

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