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The Worst Job I have Ever Had

Friday, 25 January 2008

On Digg today was a story about a woman who deleted 7 years of her company's files because she thought they were going to fire her. This reminds me of a story from the dot.com boom days of the late nineties.

I was working for a video streaming company as art director/lead designer. I ended up leaving that job to take another one for higher pay and more creative freedom. This was before the bubble burst. As things started taking a turn for the worse, the creative director(my boss) was later let go among several others en masse. One friend of mine who got canned described it as being made vice president of pack your shit and get out.

Here is the funny thing; they called the creative director in on the carpet under the pretense of talking to him about something important. While he was meeting with the boss, the IT guys came and dismantled his Mac. They were afraid that he might password protect his machine and make it impossible to retriev files, so instead they distracted while he was still logged on and went in and took the thing. He came back to a ransacked cubicle with his computer missing and oh yeah, by the way, 'You're Fired.'

Shit was uncool back then. I ended up leaving my new job when I found out it was a scam. I never knew if the boss really knew what he was doing or if he was trying to pull the wool over people's eyes. That guy had us doing all kinds of stuff without the benefit of insurance, such as lifting carpet without a forklift and soldering near an open flame. This guy was so cheap that he had a room full of Mexican's all soldering circuit boards by hand. The building was a concrete warehouse so it was cold as ice. The Mexicans were kept warm by an open flame generated by a propane gas tank in the middle of the room. I swear I waited for the day that thing was going to explode. I was expecting to one day have the uniform that he expected us to wear drenched in the blood of blown up migrant workers.

The boss of this new job also saved money by hiring people who 'looked' professional without really being professional. He hired people with mental disabilities just so he could look like he had a shop full of workers. It was all for show to get huge funding. I suspect that once he cashed that check he was going to bail and skip town. On more than one occassion, my paycheck bounced. My most vivid memories from that job are running out to the parking lot, hopping in my car and racing to the nearest Alberson's to cash the check. I would look over in the next line and see my co-workers looking at me to see who would reach a teller first. We all knew that the first person to cash the check would drain the account and whoever was left would get a check that would bounce. It was both funny and fucked up at the same time.

Now the only person who I would classify as having a genuine mental problem was the janitor who liked to hang out by doors and listen for gossip. I think he had a real learning disability. This guy loved to spread gossip. The dumb shit told the boss' girlfriend, who also worked there that he was sleeping with the bank manager. The girlfriend was livid. Our boss was putting the wood to that lady so she would make sure that we were being paid, even when there wasn't any money in the account. The girlfriend stormed out and took off in a spray of gravel. But still the boss wouldn't fire this guy. The other people who he hired would probably be classified as mentally unstable, but could be managed with drugs. I can't count the number of times some of those women would lock themselves in the bathroom and cry or have an anxiety attack.

The reason that the boss hired so many of these people was that he got a rebate from the state. If he hired these people with disabilities, then the state would pay for half of their paycheck. It seemed like the only competent people there were me, the Chinese programmer without a green card and my creative director. The creative director ended up hiring his best friend, who although was a nice guy, didn't have any computer skills. All he knew was pen and ink. I ended up doing both jobs because his friend couldn't do it. The funny thing was I was accustomed to being run so ragged from the first job that I didn't even notice that I was shouldering the responsibility for two people.

Anyway, one Friday, the accounting lady brought up the fact that the SEC had gone after our boss on a previous occassion in another state. That weekend I looked him up on the SEC website and it had basically said that he was barred from doing business for running a scam. The whole time I worked for him I never knew if it was a real job or a scam. I was always given something to make me look 'busy', not any real work that would be seen. On top of that, the boss didn't understand how the internet work. He knew just enough to drop words here and there giving the impression that he knew something, but was keeping a secret. That weekend, I read the details of the scam he ran in another state and it was exactly the same thing he was doing here. I quit the following Monday.

By far, that was the worst full time gig I have ever had. There's nothing quite like the relief of quitting a shitty job.