Dead-End Sh*t Jobs ... Yours?

[NaPal]

IT admin. Cushy but still shit.

I work 8 hours a day, make almost 6 figures, and can be on the fast lane forum all day if I choose. Did I mention I’m in front of a computer all day?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

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[Joshua Wagoner]

1. Pizza place (worked my way up from salads to subs and slices, then finally became a pizza maker. Oh first I had to tend the ovens, sliding my hand into the furnace to pop bubbles, and rotate them.
2. Bell hop at hotel. I was 18 and realized that I wasn't special to anybody. Wandered the hotel, slept in the bell mans closet, (I had zero work ethic,) tips were sometimes good, was finally let go because I was literally so depressed every time I clocked in. People didn't like seeing me, even though I was trying my best.
3. Honda service lane attendant (porter.) Parking cars, not much to it really, learned to drive stick shift and handle some cool cars. No Lambos though
4. TTY communication agent (basically a typist for the hearing impaireds telephone conversations.) Couldn't pick it up fast enough (ADD?)
5. McDonalds: burger flipper, some cashier and drive thru. Did an okay job there (employee of the month, ooooh!) Eventually quit after 9 months.
6. Host then waiter: Hosted for 1 year, waited tables for 3. Began to see the darker side of customer service. (just felt less than) Was making decent tips (enough to buy a car so Mom could stop driving me) Wasn't enough to live on my own, eventually moved back in with Mom. SMH
7. Online freelancer- Better job as I could work from home. Trouble was finding reliable clients.
8. Brand ambassador work: Best Buy Virtual Reality Headset demonstrator, "virtually" no freedom, LOL just follow the script. Not a fan!
Some of these jobs had their fun spots, but come on there's no way I wanted to do this stuff long term. Slow lane at best.

 

[Knicks]

One question for MJ, I read in your book you have a college degree. So why did you still do all these sh*t jobs after college??

P.S.
btw i'm not a new member i just could not use my old account anymore i think it expired. I have been lurking for 6 years on this forum on and off.

I think the reason why he chose to do these short-term jobs rather than pursue a month-long search after the "perfect slowlane job" is because he value his time so much.

There is no point in finding a "good" slowlane job (like conventional wisdom will tell you to do) if compared to the leverage a fastlane business could bring to your life. The main reason to choose a lower end job with minor responsibilities over a higher end management-like position is that with the former you don't have to work 70 - 80 hours a week.

So in this case you're able to work on your own project without worriying about expenses every second. Altough this can be vital in the beginning to some degree, it can also be crippling.

The purpose of a job is to pay the bills and to take responsibility for your own life.

 

[yveskleinsky]

Re: Dead-End *Shit* Jobs ... Yours?

1. Early shift at McDonalds (first job). Man that was awful.

2. Cleaning lady for (all male) publishing company. This job was worse. ...I had no idea how bad a men's bathroom could look. How can people be that gross- without even trying?! I am actually starting to gag just thinking about it.

3. Substitute teacher. Awful. You walk into a classroom, and have kids trying to manipulate you for 5 hours. ...Or sexually harass you as was my experience working with jr. high kids.

4. 7-11 cashier- graveyard shift. Never got robbed, but had to clean up puke and chase off homeless people more than once.

5. Telemarker for motor club. 'Nuff said.

 

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[Sid23]

bartending jobs ARE shit when you have to clean up the bathroom at the end of then night. which i had to do most night.

sometimes it was puke though. much easier to clean.

 

[Rawr]

Nice lists everyone. One has to experience these kinds of jobs to get appreciation for the latter ones. A thing that can make a shit job tolerable are the little extra perks..which I fully exploited at every opportunity.

So, from the top:

1. Arby's cashier. Oooh boy. First job ever at 15, hired 4 weeks before I turned 16. I was getting paid $5.60 (got a raise after 6 months to 5.75!) Folks who started at 16 got paid 7.50. So I fully made up for this by eating extra Sbarros and chicken fingers. Working here for a year was enough to never make me consider fast food again.

2. Working at Mall of America at those pay a buck try to get the ball in the hoop games - or make a ping pong ball into a cup thats floating around game. The best part was working the baskeball games because I would just work on my jumpshot all day. Taught me how to work under massive pressure (ever had 30 people surrounding you at one time all wanting something?)

3. Sears men's and women's departments stacking clothes. Men changing room is nothing - but women, they would leave piles of clothes on the floor - like 20 items. I would look at this mess and say "No thanks". Fired after 10 days after I went to lunch and saw a modeling contest. I liked the cute girls who were in it and joined the contest- had to do the walk and interview. Came back from 15 minutes lunch two hours later.

4. Pizza delivery - great money for a kid, pulled over twice within 5 minutes once and got away every time since I am a delivery boy (didn't even have the pizza in the heating bag at the time) Free food, pop. Not bad.

5. Chipotle. Did you know those carnitas (pork) and barbacoa (Spicy beef) meats come in one solid frozen block, and then you have to use your hands to pick them apart so they are nice and shredded for serving? Ever worked in front of a deep fryer and made a day's worth of chips? And all this fun started at 8am 2 hours before the store even opened. I lasted 2 months.. I honestly don't know why.


6. Dominos Pizza driver - nothing new, except that I worked on the college campus (private school at that) Can we say PERKS?! Especially during those 1-2am runs when I was offered such tips as: Shots, weed, makeouts, games of beer pong.. etc. I've also met a stripper who was.. umm naked and invited me in. and a few cool people along the way.

7. Cingular. Sales. Since working as the delivery guy I realized that working is dumb unless you are getting commission or tips. Got decent commissions here, and was making $14/hr average (this is just 2 years after making $6 an hour at Arbys) Learned sales here

8. Bartender. Enter Joy and Bliss. First in a semi- college crowd bar, later at a private golf course. I believe no further explanation is needed. Hot co-workers, great money, fun atmosphere. You learn how to deal with stress and pressure when times get busy, how to keep your cool, how to be witty and how to flirt. And just for MJ - I had to pick up shit off the bathroom floor and clean the toilet once.

I am just 23, and don't even know what to try else - It seems I should just work for myself since there isn't much else that's as fun and makes money. Or I shouldn't work much at all and just go travel for months at a time.

 

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[mlsalters77]

Excellent Thread!!!!! It's funny when I was young working my share of "crappy shitty hate to go in-kill to leave" jobs, I always felt like I was racing against the clock and if I didn't make something happen soon I would suffocate! lol. One thing is for sure (and all will agree...) my desire to succeed was never stronger or more tried. I started working very young, too many jobs to list so I'll start with the most important and biggest shit job of them all...

U.S. Army!!!! (the best-worst job I've ever had and wouldn't change it for the world!)
Pizzahut delivery driver
home depot stock clerk
telemarketer (I once had a house full of people take turns telling me to f##k my self)
wakenhut security (those guys really took that job too seriously)
Electrical wiring tech for kemtech (this might have been considered a good job to some but I felt like I had finally
reached the production worker grave yard. I was 26, prior army and had an associates in Audio Engineering and I was wasting away in a production factory with a bunch 40+ men and women who where thankful to god for their day to day death march. I loved those people, on my lunch breaks I would work on my music projects and they would stop by my station and say thing's like "remember me when you make it." or "Young man, why are you wasting away your youth here with the rest of us old farts?" I really loved those people they made me feel like my success was immanent.

One of the last shit jobs was as a cable guy with comcast this job was a great motivation because I would do 8 to 16 installs a day in these huge homes half a million dollars and up and I would just stand in aw of the accomplishments of these well to do people. I remember each time I went into an expensive home I would just stop for a second and inhale deep and tell my self, "its just a matter of time, this is my future!" I meant that shit! there where times I would sit in my driveway and think about what their lives must be like and I would literally be wiping tears from my eyes. I grew up basically homeless so that had an effect on me that I carry to this day.

I could go on for days about the jobs I've worked to not have enough money put food on the table at the end of the week. I love shit jobs because the fight to escape them fuel our drive a nuclear power plant up my a$$! lol

 

[Vigilante]

When my wife was pregnant with our first child, we delivered newspapers together to make ends meet...

 

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[JackTackett]

I worked a lot of jobs both before college-I worked for 5 years before dragging my butt to college. The three crap jobs I've had we're bad, but I tried to learn from them.

1) grave yard grounds keeper. We used a machine to dig the graves, but we filled them in by hand. Which means after the mourners left I,as the smallest dude, would jump into the grave and pack down the soil. Gives a young person an interesting perspective - we all die with some pimply faced kid jumping up and down on our dead body.


2). In college I worked for a group of researchers who had a grant to estimate how much garbage coming into the landfill could be composted. For several weeks we were in the dump with like every third trump dumping its load of garbage in front of us and we then proceeded by hand to sort it into a compost heap and other piles. I can still remember the stink now twenty years later. One of the rules was if you didn't puke in the compost pile you had to pick it up and move it to the pile. We all puked into that pile.
So for 8 hous we sorted trash and then we went home. Without showers since there were no facilities at the dump. My first day I walked into my apartment and not three seconds later my roommates are yelling what's that smell. They proceed to pick me up and toss me outside. Where I had to strip to my shorts and then run into the bathroom for a shower. Yes, the stench was that bad.

3). A few years into my computer career I had worked my way into management on the fast track to prove the Peter Principle, and I wanted to get back into development and away from management. So I was offered a job and took it. The first Friday my boss calls me into a conference with hr and her boss - usually not a good sign, where I was pleasantly surprised to find an offer for my boss's job since she just resigned. Te short story is one employee was running amok in the our group - borderline emotional issues aka she was crazy as a loon. And my boss had enough. I quickly found out this was a quasi government and thus unionized group we could not just fire the individual. If I had taken the job I would have been the 5th manager in that group in 18 months. I passed much to their displeasure. So for the next six months I was tormented my the crazy lady and tormented by the upper brass since I would not take the position. I finally finished writing the 3rd edition of my Linux book which sold a large enoght number that I got to go to my boss and say bye. I used this knowledge in other positions to either contain bad employees I can't fire or to get them transferred to another department. I don't like using cliches but in this incident, a bad apple really did spoil the whole bunch.

I'm so much more happy to be running my own company now where if I mess up and hire the wrong person I can quickly fix the issue and NOT let others in the group suffer.

 

[Schmidty]

I bartend at a nightclub in downtown Santa Barbara, CA. At 22yrs old, working every night making $200+ in tips, I thought that what I was doing was great for my age. But after reading the Millionaire Fast Lane, I now deem this job as shitty and am now on the constant pursuit of taking everything in my life to the next level.

I've never been one for posting in forums, but I see this one much different. This is my first post of hopefully many more...

 

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[SteveO]

Blaming jobs or anything else for being at a dead end is the real dead end.

Remembering where to put the emphasis when we write something online is critical, right? This is something that I learned from the B&P.

BLAMING jobs or anything else for being at a dead end is the real dead end.

This should be clearer.

 

[Stubbers]

My first job at 16 having already been accepted into the British Army was emptying street rubbish bins in Glasgow! It was the best paid job for my age and full of real hardcore Scottish characters ... The guys there were a real scream! I knew nothing else would ever be that bad

 

[Trivium iz rC]

1.) Coffee Shop General Manager
2.) Automotive Technician For Ford Motor Co.
3.) Currently working 3rd shift for a Coffee Shop/Sub Shop doing baking, prep work, and other food business things to pay the bills. While working on my business during the day. Even though the work I do is shit work, The only benefit from working third shift, besides paying my bills is i'm the only one in the store and I get a lot of reading done while working, kinda like in TMFL when MJ said he'd be using his time efficiently. While clients were in the local pub getting hammered he'd be reading books to keep growing the business. I'm hooked on audible now.

 

[LIkeafox]

I've had so many shit jobs over the years, I'll just share some highlights

• Dunkin' Donuts - learned to clean chewing gum off of asphalt and how degrading it was to clean the tiles of a vestibule with a toothbrush during a weekend morning rush. I should have learned here to just never work for someone else again. I lasted three or four weeks.
• Dishwashing (one semester) - worked with an insane person who wasn't allowed to have access to knives since he chased the person who previously had my job around the kitchen because of some kind of screw up.
• Working in the bottle redemption place at a grocery store (a summer break)- breaking bottles and killing bugs that have taken up residence in empty bottles for minimum wage!
• Delivery person for Rent-A-Center (three months) - this should have been my wake up call. Renting furniture to poor people would make a great fast-lane business. You rent shit to people for x amount per week, if they make all their payments for the next two years they get to keep the item and end up paying about a 400% mark-up on the item. If they miss some payments someone like me would come by to pick it up and take it back to the store. Here's the great part though, you rent the item back out, but you don't give it to the next person for just the number of weeks left on the original contract rather you decide how new the item is based on it's condition. So if you rented a couch to someone who kept the thing in really great shape and then defaulted after 70 weeks, you can re-rent it out as being almost new and get another 90 or more weeks on the item. The highlight of this job was repossessing a washer and dryer from a house with countless numbers of mangy little dogs and dog shit almost covering the entire floor and smeared all over the washer and dryer. Awesome job.
• Landscaping (1 day, about a month to get paid for that day) - No. Actually I wouldn't like to be paid in a discount to buy some records at the store you own. I'll take some cash please.
• Selling meat door to door (three hours) - My first lesson in deciphering scams in classified ads.
• Grocery store cashier (two months) - the only job I've had more mind-numbingly boring than this is to be a grocery store bagger.

Those are the real shit ones, but I've also delivered newspapers on a bike as a kid, in a car as a high school student, worked at Burger King (ok ,that's another shit job, but I was over-weight when I started there and after a couple of months working there I was so turned off of even the smell of food that I lost a ton of weight really fast), delivered Pizza, delivered other food, worked in a record store, worked in a bookstore, various temp positions, worked for Kinkos, worked the overnight shift in a gas station, worked in a library, delivered AV equipment to classrooms. I think that just about covers my illustrious resume of crappy jobs.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Oldie, but goodie.

 

[94blackbird]

Janitor
McDonald's
Concrete (driveways, etc)
Dollar Rent A Car
Chemistry supply clerk
Jarhead (haha)
SAT prep (God awful job)

Wonder how many will catch that!

 

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[ryanbleau]

Worked as a waiter for 13 odd years. at the same time i worked construction during the day. Drove a truck to new jersey from massachusetts every day for 2 years. diesel mechanic third shift for 2 years. Auto body tech for a while. ran seamless gutter . now my day job is a commercial plumber while i get this business thing going. So I guess this would literally be the shittiest job I've ever had.

 

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[IrishSpring600]

Anything where you're not your own boss. If you can't set your own goals, are you living your life?

 

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[dave773]

here it goes..

1. Supermarket nightfiller (good job as a kid, shit later on)
2. tiling assistant for a neo-nazi boss (two days)
3. landscaping assistant (for same neo-nazi boss two days)
4. courier warehouse - loading and unloading heavy boxes from a trucks full of dust
5. english teacher for passive aggressive bosses - shit pay and shit bosses
6. labourer/painter 5-6days a week

Did the WADM.. now looking for a new job. It's time to move out to gain some psychological freedom.

 

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[jpanarra]

1. Retail
2. Entertainer (costumed at a theme park)
3. Waiter at a chain restaurant
4. Chemist- basically a glorified monkey that learned complex chemical concepts to press a button daily...
5. Teacher- SO MUCH WORK, rapport, scheduling, problem solving..all for chump change.. and you're supposed to have a 6 year degree after all of this.. no thanks

 

[andviv]

Just watched a compilation video of this guy saying "damn". That's 3:46 min of my life I'll never get back.

Damn!

 

[Mattie]

1. Salad Bar Attendant
2. Cashier, Stocking products in department store. 3 different stores.
3. Nurse Aide 4 places Inhome care 2 places.
4. Factory Temp Jobs
5. Mental Health AFC Group Home.

 

[Keenan G]

Iʻm a firefighter for a large city ( ~ 1 million population) I love it, and the schedule allows us to easily have side businesses. I donʻt have anything yet, but I read the book and am trying to find my niche

 

[grindmode]

Starting from the day I turned 14 and could legally work in my state.

1. Unloading rolls of sod from inside of semi truck trailers which where stacked on pallets onto empty pallets on the ground... (boss was too cheap to invest in a forklift used 14 year old kids instead lol).

2. When I turned 16 quit job #1 to work at a debt collecting agency... 16 calling people who were all over at least 60 days on payments. Bomb threats and calling people at 7:00am on Sunday morning to hear a squeaky voice teen preach to them... Lasted 2 months.

3. Car wash drying off cars for tips after they ran through an automated wash system.

4. Crime scene clean up, sewage backup cleanup, and mold remediation. Mostly crime scenes or natural deaths but the person was not found few a few days/week............

5. Estimates/Sales for a home remodeling company.

6. Adult Entertainment Industry.......

7. Gym rat/"muscle building supplement sales"......

8. Licensed Insurance Agent at a brokerage pure phone sales leads provided.... First time I ever wore a tie to work and experienced "water cooler chat" among grown adult sheep that made me work the hardest I ever could to quit and start my own business....

9. Hired myself as a "wantentrpreuner"!!!! Have been a SUCCESSFUL "wantenpreuner" for the last 3-4 years....

10. Became a "volunteer" to a few people who are "entrepreneurs" roughly 1 week ago....

 

[mike24601]

I've had a few sucky jobs that would have led nowhere, but I did learn something useful at each one.
1. Flipped burgers for major fast food chain in high school. I respected the franchisee who owned the place, owned about 5 or 6 locations at the time and was doing pretty darn good. While we were tarring the parking lot one day he drove in and splattered his brand new AMG Benz and shrugged it off like it was nothing. I learned about the franchise business, and about how much a company can rape you if you decide to become part of one.

2. Worked at a seasonal plant nursery one summer in college. It was a little less than full time at just over min. wage, with a lot of dirty work, heavy lifting, etc, but the owner was a very down to earth millionaire who franchised several regional brand drugstores and had a lock on almost an entire region, multi million dollar real estate deals, etc. He was about 70 and still would come down and sweat with us while we constructed the greenhouse, and he'd be the last one to leave each night driving the forklift around. Very down to earth guy. He'd buy us lunch sometimes and we'd talk about business. That's when I knew I wanted to hang my own shingle. The work was unpleasant and the money sucked, but I'm glad I stuck around and used an otherwise crappy situation to learn something.

 

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[Andrew Smith]

- my first "job" was cutting lawns for $1 when I was a kid
- paper route in Iowa as a kid
- construction painter
- construction laborer (I still do this for personal projects keeps me humble and appreciative)
- landscape laborer (still do this for personal projects)
- pizza delivery
- pilot focus group attendee (actually fun but incredibly time consuming for not much $$)
- human science MRI and psychology paid volunteer for research experiments
- test proctor (time consuming not much $$)
- college tutor (wasnt shitty but didnt get paid much)

and the most humbling "work" I have ever done is...
- prison sanitation night worker (while I was incarcerated)
- me and one other guy cleaned the entire jail, kitchen, bathrooms, trash everything (took 8+ hours)

 

[EvoX1014]

Working for a small coffee roasting facility/catering company.....Boss is a wanna be boss that has been doing it for over 20 years now, treats employees as if they were his maids and does not listen to anybody else's inputs. Wonders every day when we come in why the company is not making any money and only staying up because of a very generous friend that inherited his wealth and decided to invest in the company with no return in the past years from my understanding. Only been working here for about 6 months and every one of my co workers are looking for another job. Its a miracle the place hasn't fallen due to health code violations but hey! everyone has their luck streak ...... ON the bright side the fresh smell of coffee is always a good thing.

 

[Chris Javier]

So with that said, what Dead-End *shit* jobs have you had? Do you currently have?

Just turned 22 and have done a variety, mostly in the food industry. Not all of them were shit, but most of them taught me that I was being extremely underpaid and undervalued for the amount of work I was doing.

1) Cold Stone Creamery. Couldn't rest for a minute without wiping counters or being forced to do something productive. Worked to the bone, and while I provided happiness to their customers, I smelled like dried ice cream every night, which wasn't pleasant. Paid a measly $8 an hour.

2) Chipotle. OK base pay for its industry though.

3) Customer service for an online food ordering service. No perks for a full-time position. Fast-paced, lots of pressure from micromanagement and shit pay. Ended up with a class-action lawsuit against them where I took home a near 5-digit paycheck a year after leaving.

4) Grocery Clerk at a Grocery Store.

5) Server at a Ramen place. Three hour shifts made it not worth the commute. Lasted two weeks.

6) Little Caesars. Probably the shittiest of them all. Lasted three weeks.

7) Barista at Peet's Coffee.

 

[Ivan2BAlive]

OK my turn. . . . .

Independent Courier - Used my own car, worked full time and only got paid an average of $150 a week, not including gas money or maintenance.

Hardees Cook - A**hole manager kept micro-managing me on how to cook chicken, hamburgers etc. for minimum wage, not to mention cleaning up the grease and dishes I had to do. I thinks she really wanted to get rid of me anyway.

Gas Station Clerk - Need I say more

Gold's Gym Head Porter - The owner of this franchise owned gym was also a gold-medal Olympian a**hole. He was rude, and talked as if everyone was beneath him. Owned 20% of the company. Would've liked to kick his butt if he wasn't a retired Marine. He did this on purpose for probably tax reasons. Now I understood the high employment turn-around rate. Kept looking for things to fire me for. Only worked there for 3 months.

Home Improvement Appliance Salesperson - Could'nt' make commission because that was the job for someone else in the department called a "Sales Specialist". I only made $11.25 hr.

Corporate Courier - My current job sorting mail and packages for guests/employees for $9.25 hr. without a raise in 3 years because the owner of this time-share resort don't give out raises. I kinda got comfortable with this job because I am my own boss and I manage it the way I want. But after I was introduced to TMF and Unscripted that was when I had my FTE. I'm currently working on me and my wife's online business and trying to get the hell out of Dodge.

 

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[Justin1999111710]

Stock boy at local pet store

Stock boy at woman's shoe store

Air duct cleaner

Restoration technician (cleaning mold and sewage)

Pizzza delivery guy (multiple times)

Chinese delivery guy (multiple times) honestly the best kind of food delivery, no side work, good tips and free lomain lol

Gyro delivery guy

Sushi delivery guy

I currently work 7 days for lunch and dinner for restaurant delivery service. No side work at all and have a lot of time to read and try and learn. Having no days off sucks though.