on the subject of 'the millenium bug'
4 of us were paid to go into work on the 1st Jan and basically muck about on the HP-UX server.
worked for 1/2 hour and got paid for 4 hours at double time + travelling + TOIL
[and we still thought we were hard done by, when we heard the kinds of dosh other people were getting]
(essexfriend, Fri 10 Sep 2010, 21:29, 1 reply)

Some call me The Watcher...
One summer during my degree, I worked in a plant that made those big plastic bottles of water for water-coolers. My job was to wash the used bottles half-heartedly then put them on a conveyor belt which whisked them on to a big machine marked 'bottle washer,' which actually washed them.

Then they put me in charge of a traffic survey, which was their way of proving to the council that they weren't increasing traffic volumes in the little rural village where this place was based. They were right- I spent a full fortnight reading a book on a grassy knoll in the sun, pausing once every two hours to put a tick on a notepad as a mini drove past. Brilliant.
(just pouring lizards, Fri 10 Sep 2010, 20:33, 1 reply)

"Run away, before they find out you did it properly!"
Many years ago, I went to the council depot for a job on Special Collections. This involves picking up old mattresses, fridges and the like, all stuff that won't fit the bin. They gave me a labourer and a small tipper wagon. There were 30 jobs on the sheet, none more than 5 miles away.

Started at 7, knocked out the first 20, went to the tip, knocked out another 6, which took us to lunch. Finished about 2.30 and went back to the depot.

All hell broke loose. First, we'd done 3 days work in 7 hours. Second, we hadn't flogged the metal items (gas cookers, radiators etc.) to the scrap merchants. Apparently we were supposed to leave half the money under the seat for the regular driver. Third, we'd not taken 10 hours, the minimum for ANY day's work. And last, the diesel we'd used for the mileage done, was WAY below what the regulars used.

I'm supposed to be still on the union blacklist, 19 years later.
(all my scars face forward possesses 2.5% of a hyperalloy combat chassis, Fri 10 Sep 2010, 20:15, Reply)

Accord, smug, croissant eating moment.
Second of January 2000 (not the first for some reason, would have got double on that day :-( ), I had to sit at my desk reading news websites for 4 hours...for 200 quid an hour, a free mobile phone with 50 quid credit on it.

Apparently, it didn't matter that I'd always stored dates as ccyymmdd and was using SQL Server 7 (which internally uses unix time so no worries until 2037 I believe), I still needed to be there.
(dchurch bah, Fri 10 Sep 2010, 20:11, Reply)

Counting pedestrians...
I left school with very little idea what to do. For the most part I took massive drugs every two weeks when a little green cheque would appear through the letterbox of my parent's house; however, getting this little green cheque involved having to get up early once a fortnight and signing something-or-other in a place where they displayed cards with really shit jobs advertised on them.
One of these rather inconvienient times involved some lady saying something along the lines of "...so I'll just pop your application into them shall I?", I vaguely remember mumbling something along the lines of "...errr...if you want".

And so it began. The next thing I know, it was the middle of summer and I was being paid around 80 quid a day to sit in a field and count pedestrians along a path that used to exist circa 1789.
I took plenty of fizzy orange with me, loads of books, a walkman and a board so I could put the bits of paper that they gave me on to tick when pedestrians walked past.
For 12 hours a day.
It was bloody brilliant. It didn't rain once, and I got to read loads of books - I was a huge bookworm in those days - would be now, but work and life gets in the way.
On one occasion though, I'd fallen asleep, and was woken up by a couple of ramblers who had a map with this particular path on it.
I say woken up, but I couldn't move. I could hear them speaking: "Shall we wake him up?, "Nah, leave him, he's asleep", "...but it looks like he's doing some sort of survey..." etc...
I was paralysed from the neck down - I'm lead to believe that this is what happens if you wake during an REM state, but I don't know for sure. It was bloody terrifying.
Eventually I snapped out of paralysis with a jolt, to the surprise of the ramblers.
I actually took the job quite seriously, and asked them which path (there were two, I was sitting (sleeping) at the intersection) they were intending to continue along, and ticked the box. In my half-awake state I forgot to ask which path they'd walked down, so I made it up.
The only two "pedestrians" I'd seen in two weeks and I had to make it up!
When I went back to see the bloke who dished out the money, I handed my expenses form to him.
He looked up and said "Are you sure?"
I said, "Well, yes, I had to drive 4 miles each way to the field for 10 days, so I put 40 miles."
He replied, "No, you misunderstand me. The bloke who handed his form in before you lives 2 miles from the field he was in. He's put down 560 miles. I'll just pop another zero on yours shall I?"

Gobsmacked wasn't the word. They seemed to like throwing money down the pan, literally in my case, as I'm pretty sure I spent the money on beer.
(dchurch bah, Fri 10 Sep 2010, 19:33, 2 replies)

I used to sell Sainsburys Mobile back in the day.
That was brilliant. My mate got me in on it with him which made it so much more fun.

Basically a two day training course all expenses paid in a hotel outside Birmingham. This was one of those things where you put your name on a bit of card and then do the ice breakers, where you had to introduce the person next to you(I swear people get paid to make these things up!). Dinner and drinks in the bar which was a much better way to get to know people. Most of them were a really good laugh, especially the ones from up north.

After that we all got sent out to our designated stores with our (real live working) mobile phone which got good use and sales materials and a promise of £80 a day plus petrol and £10 per contract we sold. Money for old rope!

So basically the job was turning up at Sainsburys for a nice breakfast, then chatting to people all day about phones and having a laugh flirting with women and then leaving early. Might do 3 or 4 contracts on a weekday, but Saturdays would be easily 10+. Best week with petrol and sales i made £750 which was loads to me then. There were not even any sales targets as this was a new thing they were trying out to see what the take up of it was going to be.

Funny thing when we did one week in Milton Keynes, we did loads of sign ups, like 20 a day easily, but hardly anyone passed the credit checks so we did not get paid for them ones! We quickly sussed out that the best customers were the ones coming out of Waitrose opposite and homed in on them instead of the Sainsburys customers!

Good times.

My mate went on to do another job where he got to hand out free packets of Marlboro fags in pubs and concerts but only if people surrendered their other brand fag box first. He was my hero for a while.
(Beaverman Opulence, I has it., Fri 10 Sep 2010, 19:06, Reply)

Tea? Coffee?
Morning Sir,
This way. Any tea or coffee?
Enjoy your breakfast!

That is my day, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. A big smile and serving tea and coffee. Tomorrow however, I am 'shift leader' as the usual one has called in sick, or all refused to work. Which means controlling my team... Five people who don't enjoy their job, don't want to talk to the customers, don't like being told what to do and definatly don't like the idea of me leading them. My easy job, will not be easy tomorrow. =[
(MissFlee tried again on, Fri 10 Sep 2010, 18:30, Reply)

Stuffing Geese
with grain so there Liver enlarges so Foie Gras Pate can be made...Not a very pleasant job
(Daw the Cunt Deffiency in keeping Wind since 1970, Fri 10 Sep 2010, 17:50, Reply)

When I was 17
I had the pleasure/misfortune, of working at the Grand National as part of my college course. Me & two mates landed the job of waiters which involved wearing black pants & tie & a white shirt, & serving a massive gang of wankers. After one shift, we realised that we hated it, were massively over staffed, completely irrelevent & wouldn't be missed or noticed where we not there, so, the next day, we decided that along with the shirt, tie & pants ensemble, we would also bring our suit jackets. Long story short, 3 lads suited & booted, an employees "All Access" pass & a variety of bars (some free!) & canapes for two days, under the guise of "Were working mate" to any security & they gave us £180 at the end. Sweet.
(Dr Fishfinger Want's to see a fat man give a tit wank, Fri 10 Sep 2010, 17:12, 4 replies)

weekend job
while in the 6th form at school i got myself a sunday job at the new DIY store " payless". I also got my best mates in there for sundays too. This was back in the 90s. We did no work, just spent all day in the office with the letch manager making silly announcements over the tannoy. " Mr Kay to the office, Mr Maxwell / Mcdonald / McVitie to see you" Depending on what was going, coffee burgers or biscuits. Best of all was that we all got paid double time coz it was a sunday. That was £40.99 for one day's work. ( considered lots back then ) oooh, and lots of free walkers crisps and kitkats . I wonder why they went bust.....
(a girl called harry, Fri 10 Sep 2010, 17:03, Reply)

a long time ago...
I used to work as security for a government firm, was easy enough, standard uniform, we even got housing on site. However this firm had a lot of protest against it, so much so that some protesters stole the building plans which let them find a weakness in the building and they actually used that to blow the building up!
I hear the government has now been brought down with the help of some primative teddy bears!

Bloody rebels!
(eggs and spam *insert witty sig here*, Fri 10 Sep 2010, 16:48, Reply)

caretaker
WTC
(gearanach #wankwankwank, Fri 10 Sep 2010, 16:41, Reply)

Dj'ing at my local boozer
Quite literally getting paid to smoke cigs, play my favourite tunes, drink beer and occasionaly accept the requests of drunk girls to play their favourite tunes.

We combatted the smoking ban by installing an industrial smoke machine into the pub and locked the doors (until it melted).

Good days.
(mr-lizard Hell's teeth man!, Fri 10 Sep 2010, 16:29, Reply)

Nice Work...
Mooching around town, I bumped into a friend - an extremely attractive female friend. "I've got a job for you," she said. "I'm trying to find a pair of jeans that fits properly, and I can't see myself".

Yes, she wanted me to spend the afternoon staring at her arse and telling her which jeans made it look nicest.

Well, I didn't have anything else to do that day (suddenly). And she bought me a shirt to say thank you, so I even got paid!
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Fri 10 Sep 2010, 15:52, 12 replies)

Scanning
One of my very first jobs when I was younger, was going to the Northampton Shoe Museum for 2 weeks and scanning lots and lots of shoe magazines (from the 60s) and save them to the computer, and then put them on floppy disc (this was before USB sticks were common). Very boring, but it was with a good mate of mine which always helped.
(Young Blood wasting 30 seconds of your time on, Fri 10 Sep 2010, 15:51, 3 replies)

It's easy at the moment
I qualified as a power kite instructor earlier this year. Because it's an extreme sport, I need various forms of insurance before I can start taking money to teach people. In three days time (when I get my student loan) I will be able to afford the insurance and can start work at something I've wanted to do for the last five years.

It won't be an easy job in a technical sense, but being paid to do something you'd do for free has a certain cachet. Until then, my job is to wander around the uni campus chatting to people in bars and suggesting that flying kites is actually quite fun...
( MatJ LOOK, Fri 10 Sep 2010, 15:19, 5 replies)

I used to get paid to drink booze
For a while I lived with someone who worked for a major brewer (their slogan is Making Beer Great) and I was literally paid to drink.

She would give me a hundred quid, a notebook and a thermal probe and send me out to some of her clients' pubs. I simply had to order a pint of ale, check it was poured into the correct branded glass, make sure the head was right, point the thermometer at it (as surreptitously as possible) and if I wanted to, drink it whislt noting down my findings. I'd them mooch off to the next establishment on the list and repeat the process.

By the end of an evening mystery shopping the quality of my notes was suffering somewhat.....
(penrose your dog's got tits, Fri 10 Sep 2010, 15:14, 5 replies)

Being a good customer ...

I eventually got to work in a record shop during summers. Most mornings consisted of unpacking the new delivery, listening to the more interesting items, before putting them in the shelves. The other mornings i called the distributor harrassing them why there was no new delivery. They usually wouldn't understand me, as the music was too loud, so i had to call them back later. How I escaped without tinnitus is beyond me.
Afternoons were mostly spent chatting with customers about music, drinking vast amounts of coffee, and establishing my habit of passive smoking. Probably half of the money i earned i took home in vinyl (yep, i'm that old fashioned). And back then, i thought i was earning a fortune...
( BringYourOwnParachute Meet me here on, Fri 10 Sep 2010, 14:50, Reply)

Brick cutting factory aged 17
I was on the last three weeks of my summer holiday working for my Dad's company, so I hovered around different departments doing various bits and pieces.

Full respiratory gear, rubber boots, apron, gauntlets, ear defenders - all to put bricks on a conveyor belt into a machine.

The highlight was changing to the other end of the machine to take cut bricks and stack them on paletts after a fortnight!

Your brain just switches off. It's almost like meditation. You stop having to think and your mind clears through repetition.

I feel sorry for the blokes working there in silence (in reality, deafening loud machines) waiting for lunch to talk to people and doing it for a full time living.
( moohalaa, Fri 10 Sep 2010, 14:42, 1 reply)

The Pope Must Die
A mate of mine worked as a freelance satellite engineer for TV news. Basically he sets up the computer controlled satellite equipment (which generally takes minutes) and points it at the sky. All he has to do then is make sure it doesn’t break down. He’s being paid for his knowledge of all things satellite – if anything does go wrong he can sort it out, but 99% of the time it doesn’t, so he just sits around on his arse, often in five star hotels, watching other people work.

That’s not the easy bit though – due to the nature of his job he’s had to visit various war-zones: Afghanistan, Iraq etc, so the handsome pay is mostly justified just for risking his neck in such places in the first place. However, he also gets quite a few less dangerous assignments – mainly assorted sporting events, which is a waste since he has zero interest in most sport. But his easiest assignment was surely back in 2003…

The famous sexist and homophobic AIDS spreader Pope John Paul II had been ill for years. Rumours swirled around media circles about his failing health and possible imminent death. The big news organisations know they need to be on top of things like this, so my mate was duly dispatched to Rome with satellite equipment so that when the old bloke carked it they’d be ready.

Now obviously Rome is not quite as remote as Kabul and has pretty reliable power etc already and as a result, when my mate had done the initial set-up, he had very little to do, except sit around, drink coffee, eat pizza and watch the Romans drive into each other (as anyone who has been to that city will know they have a tendency to do).

The only rule was that he had to be within 30 minutes of the equipment in case anything went wrong. So no trips to the seaside, but as long as he stayed within a Dan Brown-novel’s-plot-distance of the Vatican he could essentially do whatever he liked. Full expenses, nice hotel and every penny of his pay going straight into his already considerable savings account.

His initial run of this was six weeks, after which someone else took over for the next stint of Pope-death-watching, whilst my mate took a not-at-all hard earned break. After this break the Pope was still apparently on the verge of going to a better place (probably one populated by small choir-boys), so my mate went back to Rome for another stint of café slouching.

This happened three times in all - meaning he ended up spending the best part of a year waiting for the Pope to die…and the best part was JP lived another 18 months and didn’t actually get to meet the big boss man until 2005, by which time my lucky bastard mate was living the high-life in Australia, playing with his satellites at cricket matches.

I hate him.
(wombler, Fri 10 Sep 2010, 14:33, 4 replies)

My brother's first job back in 1977
was at a cardboard box factory. He would stand at one side of a large machine and feed in the sheets of cardboard. The machine would then fold, staple, fold some more, add some glue and a box would emerge from the far end about 3 seconds later. From there, another guy would go stack it nearby and then call 'Next'.

At 9am , my brother was thinking "this is money for old rope, it's piss easy" earning something like 80p per hour. However, by 11:30am my brother was truly sick of it and started feeding in the cardboard faster and faster until he was feeding it in as fast as the machine would take it.

"Hang on, I didn't say 'Next'! Hang on. Hang on, slow down, stop. Pack it in, fuckin' pack it in. Arghh" said the other guy. My brother peeked around the corner to see the other guy buried under about 20 large cardboard boxes. At this point the foreman wanders over, sees the guy on the floor and starts laughing. The guy got quite annoyed and scrambled to his feet which apparently took quite a while. The foreman stopped laughing and then said "Right SLVA's brother, clock off get your wage and piss off."

My brother got about £3 for his trouble (including an extra 50p from the foreman for giving him a good laugh) so he went to the pub and got rather merry.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Fri 10 Sep 2010, 14:15, Reply)

Injection moulding II
Having read a couple of tales of injection moulding employment, I am now officially fucked off. I, too, worked in an injection moulding factory during summer hols. However, I didn't even have the distraction of having to press a fucking button. Nothing that exciting happened. My job insisted of smoking fags, drinking vending machine coffee and occasionally trimming off furry burrs (fnarr, fweep) from whatever plastic shite was being turned out, while listening to local radio.

Highlight of my time there was when 'we' made those colour change spoons that were given away with every box of Cheerios or Weetabix, or similar. I even worked overtime on that bad boy. Oh yes.

Easy job, but mind numbingly boring. Felt sorry for the permanent staff there. Job prospects included getting trained on how to use the electric weighing scales.
(Tighthead, Fri 10 Sep 2010, 14:13, 3 replies)

Natural risk assessor
Where I work has a big "data centre" in Ohio, which is hired out to various big organisations for storing data, because it is bomb proof.

They hire a team of people whose job it is to escalate any physical risk to the building or the data it stores. The risks are:

1. A war
2. A tornado
3. A flood

and they assess the risk of these each day by watching the television. When I went to visit they had made paper hats and were having wheely office chair races.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Fri 10 Sep 2010, 14:09, Reply)

If you look at the birthday cakes in Asda
amongst their pitiful collection is their own brand cakes. These are chocolate with some writing on and a few white chocolate-a-like stars. These cakes are made in a factory in Hull and I know someone whose job was to sit at a production line putting the stars on the cakes.

As far as I can tell, that must have been the only manual part of the manufacturing process if the program "How It's Made" is anything to go by. Machines would make the cake, coat it in chocolate, scribe the writing and even pipe the icing around the top leaving just the stars to be put on. A machine must park the cake in its box too. I suppose someone at the far end must stack them onto a pallet to go into a van of sorts.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Fri 10 Sep 2010, 14:00, 4 replies)

haha flapmeister reminds me
I was once a "chocolate raisin machine operative"

This involved standing in front of a machine, pulling a lever to fill a plastic bag with chocolate raisins, put bag in box, get another bag, pull lever...

8 hours a day.
( rofl harris, Fri 10 Sep 2010, 13:45, Reply)

injection moulding
My summer job whilst at uni was with one of those agencies that charge stupid amounts of money to pimp out monkeys like me on a pittance, to perform the most mind numbing jobs in the world.

My job involved pressing a button, waiting for the machine to do it's thing, pull said item out of machine, stack item and press button, rinse and repeat for 8 hours (with a half hour unpaid break).

On the plus side, I got to listen to my walkman throughout the day (I managed to get through the cure back catalogue a few times), drink coffee, smoke fags constantly and pretty much rest my brain, as you kind of mong out after a bit.

The only interesting part of the day was when you'd swop cigs with a co-worker to make things a bit different.

Easy job, but the wages were shit.
( flapmeister knows where your mum lives, Fri 10 Sep 2010, 13:24, 5 replies)

Being Wayne Rooney
It appears that even if your international form is crap you still get in the England squad. Go figure.
(kitescreech still here, Fri 10 Sep 2010, 13:08, 6 replies)

I did my college school work experience
On a massive gas import installation at Bacton on the Norfolk coast. I worked in one of the site laboratories.

The lab employed four highly-qualified chemists with a variety of scary postgraduate degrees and, I don't doubt, equally scary salaries. Their job was to watch a variety of instruments and, in the event that any of them showed a critical readout, perform a variety of safety-critical tasks that would help stop the site, and a big chunk of north Norfolk, being blown into smithereens.

Except that in the entire history of the site, it had never reached critical status. So their job basically involved watching some dials, and performing the occasional disaster recovery drill.

The spent most of their time playing cards.
(MattDP (Squiggle), Fri 10 Sep 2010, 12:55, 1 reply)

not me, but a friend...
Had a job so easy, it could literally have been a monkey's job.
Some sort of operation line involving a huge machine that would squash metal objects.
Tasks: Push a huge red button at the right moment.

How to tell when it is the right moment:
1 - Listen for siren that signifies the right moment
2 - look at big red light that will flash when button needs to be pressed.

Why the actual pushing of the button was not automated is a mystery.

Anyway, he got paid 3K per month for that simple job
(Tilde, Fri 10 Sep 2010, 12:52, 2 replies)