FunWiki: JobRating

Describe your most pointless (Dilbert-esque) or horrible (burger-flipping) time at work. The collective will rate it on pointlessness and horribility.

I get paid to play the wiki.

	Pointless-ness		Horribility
	Scores: 6,3,5,...		Scores: 1,1,1...

For the last hour of each day, all of my bosses go home. I am left with nothing to do but email and reading online comics. For weeks (although not today) I have spent an hour of company time doing this every day.

	Pointless-ness		Horribility
	Scores: 6,5,6...		Scores: 1,1,2,...

Okay, how about the job I HAD was actually VERY interesting, usefull and exciting. Then they fired me. Now I don't have that one any more, and whatever I can get at this point will probably really suck. I think that takes the cake as far as horrible goes.

Ack, that does suck. Did they have some reason to fire you like blowing up the lab, or just being jerks? -- Zeckel

Eh... They decided that I wasn't what they were looking for. Okay, fair enough. But that would've been nice to know when I could still have made other plans!!!!

	Pointless-ness		Horribility
	Scores: 3,1,...		Scores: 8,7,7...

KimEspinoza: I got to save the dolphins for a day. This meant working 2-10pm M-F to get paid $250 a week assuming you raised a certain quota of contributions for the dolphins. While it was not exactly pointless, let me tell you what I had to say to people.

Greeting: Hi, how are you today? Introduction: My name is Kim and I am here with Defenders of Wildlife. For 50 years we've won campaigns to protect wildlife such as the grizzley bear, the bald eagle, and the grey wolf. Purpose: Today we're out campaigning for the dolphins. Problem: You've probably seen or bought cans of tuna in the store that are labeled Dolphin Safe? Well, that label, and the fishing practices it requires has reduced the number of dolphins killed by tuna nets by 97%. Unfortunately, pressure from international fishing compaines has resulted in President Clinton lowering that dolphin safe standard. Solution: We're trying to get that standard back, and that's why we really need your help. Clipboard: Here, take a look at my statement of support. (Show clipboard) Membership: The best way you can help is by becoming a member of Defenders of Wildlife with a suggested $60 contribution. You'd be joining over 300,000 members nationally who help to give us the resources we need to win this fight. Closing: With your membership, you'd also receive Defenders magazine and the best way to contribute is with a check.

uh, i quit and now employed elsewhere.

	Pointless-ness		Horribility
 	Scores: 1,1...		Scores: 8,6...

working in new construction, just framed. wiring a home for security. put our home run in an alcove marked "closet" on blueprint. wires for door contacts, window contacts, keypads, smoke alarm, strobe, siren, motion detectors, camera all run there, then cut off to the right length. talk to builder. not a closet. gotta rerun everything somewhere else. next day. trimming a house. they used cat 3 for the phone lines. ugh. we always run cat 5. shitty wire, we can use our old shitty decora phone plates. all day hooking up these stupid plates, takes 3 times as long as using the new phone modules and mod plates. talk to builder, doesnt like decora plates, gotta use mod plates. back the next day, replacing plates. next day. installing a home theatre in a $2 million house a mile from the edge of the bobcat fire. put together a 133" screen, cut a hole in the wall and put in an $11k projector, put in 9 speakers and 2 subs. ... need a new amp, satellite receiver doesnt fit in our cabinet, dvd player wont output right, and i stepped on a tack strip. 3 times. and the

house will probably burn down tomorrow. grrrrr.

	Pointless-ness		Horribility
	Scores: 2,1,4..		Scores: 9,7,7..

If it does burn down, I'll increase the Pointless-ness rating, keep us informed. --JohnWalseth

ok, never mind. except for the few houses that sucked ass, my job rocks my world. i could wire houses all day, and have to rerun everything, and have to reinstall everything because nothing works, and it would still be fun. oh, and that house didn't burn. bobcat fire got put out. too bad, actually. the homeowner was an asshole.

Files. Lots of files with invoices for florists. 3 weeks, 8 hrs a day: put individual invoice packets into corresponding florist's file. 3 weeks, 8 hrs a day: copy relevant bits of each florist's file. While standing. Without a copy feeder. Highlight: replace toner.

	Pointless-ness		Horribility
	Scores: 1,2..		Scores: 3,3..

So, the engineering firm I worked for didn't have any engineering I could do, so I was basically the office go-fer. That summer, they were in the process of transferring old job files from floppies to CD-R's. I was the lucky person who got to copy the floppies onto hard drives. I also had to check all of the backup disks to make sure that the most recent version of the files were saved to the hard drive...

make folder with appropriate job number, insert floppy, copy contents, remove floppy, insert backup copy, check creation dates and file sizes, copy over newer versions, repeat with next disk, ad infinitum. When I wasn't doing that, they had me clean out and organize their tech library.

What fun!!! But hey, it paid better than any other job I've had, so it was all worth it (?).

	 Pointlessness:			 Horribility:
	 Scores: 3,1,3..			Scores: 6,4,6..

The ISP I used to work for sent out floppy disks for a while (netscape,some scripting) before some server side changes + going with preinstalled IE. I got to help the other workers make copies of these disks when they ran out (about once a week). Copy the original labels, xerox onto sticker sheet. put on disks, put disks through machine making sure not to lose ordering. 100 floppy copies later = done. And unlike above, I was poorly paid. -- Zeckel

For the first two weeks of my job I looked at 25,000 images of mars. The images were on a webpage, only there was no index of the images on the page, so I had to cut and paste all of the links from the sourcecode into the browser. For two weeks, Ctrl-C, click, Ctrl-V, enter, click, Ctrl-C, etc. was my life for 7 hours a day. (Then Ben Zeckel saved my life by writing a perl script that took the sourcecode and created an index page.)

After I was done looking at the images I had to print out tectonic profiles of all of the ones that had tectonic images in them. Then I used a ruler and a protractor to measure the angles of the slopes in the images, of which there are approximately 2,000 (not done with that either).

My newest project is to go back to those 25,000 images, find ones with boulders in them, print them out, and COUNT the boulders. ALL OF THEM. And I have to record the size of each boulder (1 pixel, 2 pixels, 3 pixels...) So far I've gone through HALF of ONE image and counted 1,347 boulders.

	Pointlessness:				Horribility:
	Scores: 7,3,4,..					Scores: 9,7,9,..

unless I really needed the money, I would be sorely tempted to quit. no one should have to deal with that kind of tedium (yes, I know there are worse things, but still...) Is this project funded with tax dollars? I hope not. -- Zeckel

I worked for an engineering firm for eight months and finished my one huge project like three weeks before I was leaving to come to school. I had nothing whatsoever to do, so my boss suggested that I read. He gave me electrical manuals, which I proceeded to read eight hours a day for the next three weeks. I have very little interest in electrical engineering and I would bet my boss (who was an electrical engineer) never would have read more than a paragraph of the books he gave me.

	Pointlessness:				Horribility:
	Scores: 5,4.....					Scores: 5,6...

I also (sadly) worked for Taco Bell for about four months. I usually worked the front register which included the fun task of cleaning the dining room. When there was very little business, my boss insisted that I should always be doing something, to the extent that I recleaned the same dining room every five minutes even though no one had eaten at any of the tables since it was last cleaned. This, however, was not the low point, my boss got on this kick where everything in the restaurant should be very neat and orderly, he somehow managed to convince me that costumers would like it better if the packets of ketchup and hot sauce were neatly placed in the containers instead of randomly thrown in. For this reason I spent many hours of my summer neatly lining up little packets of mild sauce, over and over.

	Pointlessness:				Horribility:
	Scores: 7,8, 9....					Scores: 3,3, 7....

I worked as a temp for a law firm. They used this as a chance to have me do "all the jobs they've always wanted to do, but never had someone who would do them." (Those words are straight from my boss' mouth.) They decided they wanted to computerize their file room. The file room has about 45,000 files. Each one had to be typed into a computer, and then the computer would print out labels with bar codes for all of them. When I finally finished entering all the files, my boss put the label sheets into the printer and told me to print them out. She put about a third of the label sheets in upside-down. You can't reprint multiple labels at a time. I had to print out about 15,000 labels one by one. Then I had to stick each label on a folder. For one week I had an assistant temp. He put half of his labels on the wrong folders. Luckily, he didn't do much, so I didn't have too much to redo. It still really sucked. A lot.

	Pointlessness:				Horribility:
	Scores: 7,4...					Scores: 6, 4....

I work for free, answering questions of people who can't find several fundamental parts of the keyboard, including the shift key, the period key, and the idiot deleter. I enjoy the subject of my expertise, but it is widely misperceived and attracts annoying people.

	Pointlessness:				Horribility:
	Scores: 8,2.....					Scores: 5,3.....

sounds like my school job, too.

I used to work at what might have been called a dinner theater, except instead of theater, they did music. Kind of like a club, except a little bit nicer. I worked in the ticketing office for a while. I would get a long list of people that had come to some random show that could have happened anywhere from a week to three years prior, that supposedly had something to do with another show that was coming to the club in a few days. I got to call people up and say "Hi. We have on record that you came to see _____ on ______. We thought you might be interested in coming to see ______ on ______. Ticket price is _____. Please call us if you want tickets." There could be anywhere from 10-200 people on the list. The most common response: "This number has been disconnected." The second most common response: "I went to that? Oh. I had no idea. Well, goodbye." Yay telemarketing.

	Pointless-ness		Horribility
	Scores: 5,...		Scores: 3...

For two days, I worked at a marketing company that sold (crappy) knives. We were given a training manual and a book of pictures of knives (oh, and just about everything in the manual was also written in the book with pictures). We were told that in order to sell knives, we should read the manual to the customers word for word. Not that it was well written or anything. Anyway, I was in training for two days with about 8 other people who asked questions like "How do you spell 'planned'?" and "What's propaganda?" I couldn't count the number of times the boss said "world's best cutlery." It was pretty sad. So I left. Just as well. I don't know anybody stupid enough to buy crappy knives.

	Pointless-ness		Horribility
	Scores: 8,...		Scores: 7...

Come on, it's a job selling knives. It can't be that pointless!

Evidently you've never seen these knives...

Let me guess... you were selling Cutco knives? Yup.

There's nothing much more pointless than a crappy knife. What makes knives crappy? When the metal doesn't extend into the handle. When the metal is flexible. When it is dull and has no point. When it doesn't have naked women painted on the handle. All of these things are problems.