Friday, January 7, 2011

Jobs From Hell

For most of us, work will consume the majority of our adult lives. It's kind of an awful prospect. It's especially awful when you are stuck in a job that you hate. I have had a few jobs from hell and they made me miserable. Even the good stuff in life can't really be good because you still have to deal with work.

My worst work experience came the summer after my second year in law school. For reasons that are still unknown to me, I was hated by pretty much everyone in the office the moment that I started. On my first day, I walked into the office reporting for duty. While I was doing a quick tour with the office manager (and number one bitch of the office) we stopped at last at the managing partner's office. She introduced me to him and then he said to her: "Do you have the retainer agreement for the Johnson's? They are coming to the office in about 10 minutes." The office manager swore and said she had to finish it up. Then she brought me to the front desk with the instructions that I was to sit there until the Johnson's came in, when they arrived I was to bring them into the main conference room and then go and get the managing partner and let them know his clients were here.

Listen, I can follow instructions and these were fairly simple. I did as was told. When the managing partner got to the conference room he turned to me and said "Can you go and ask Joanie (his legal secretary) to bring some coffee into the conference room for the Johnson's." It was an order and he was my boss. I do as I'm told. This was the biggest mistake of my life. I found Joanie and told her that the managing partner wanted her to bring some coffee into the conference room. She gave me a dirty look and made a beeline into the office manager's office and began loudly asking her "Who in the hell does that girl think that she is?" It was awful.

Many days at this job I would go into the bathroom once an hour to compose myself from a breakdown. It was the worst summer of my life. I could tell you a million stories from this job that would make your toes curl. My point is work sometimes sucks a whole lot and there's nothing that you can do. Because basically we all need a paycheck. I'm having one of those days at work. Hope you all have a fabulous weekend!

2 comments:

Grace said...

Well I'm glad it was FRiday, because that post was hella depressing. I'm glad that you don't work there. It's all about the culture, I can remember the jobs I liked the least were the ones that had really mean people working there, it's like, why can't everyone just be nice? Wasn't there also another story from this place involving cake? I could totally be making this up.

Molly said...

It is totally all about the culture. I don't remember a story about cake, there was the time someone brought in powdered sugar doughnuts and the candy troll spilled powdered sugar all over the floor and they asked me to clean it. They didn't have a vacuum cleaner and told me I'd just have to get down on my hands and knees and clean it up. That was pretty awesome.