Anyone been an abject failure at a job?

Hello, I'm Liz, and I'd like to tell you about my 44 days of running a country.

Hello, I’m Liz, and I’d like to tell you about my 44 days of running a country further into the ground.

Yep, lots of agency jobs in my youth wherein the agency tricked me in to it being warehouse work when it wasn’t. Record was about 15 minutes in a bakery.

If I make any sort of mistake at work I tend to think I am a massive failure.
My colleagues usually tell me otherwise, but that's not how my brain works.

Gardening. No interest at all in gardens/gardening. Hate bending down and despise being cold. Walking off the job and into a warm pub was one of the most pleasurable experiences of my life. How the **** do people get out of a warm bed to go and do that? Arranging hanging baskets in a tropical butterfly house maybe, but otherwise, no.

Yup, my current one, just in the process of jumping ship before it all explodes. Feel bad as it's mostly external reasons that caused me to be so shit but not a lot I can do about it.

At least I'm not a cabinet minister though, eh.

A few months of attempting to flog sickness insurance door to door about twenty years ago. Hideous.

I’ve walked off two jobs in my life.

First was a cornflake factory. Put in front of a conveyor belt of hot cornflakes and told to pick out the burnt ones. Sorry if you had a packet from that morning.

Second was a groundsman job with the local council. They didn’t mention day one would involve opening up a double grave for the 2nd occupant…

Oh yes. It's just no-one important has realised yet.

(may not be true, but it's how I feel a lot of the time.....imposter syndrome sucks)

Parenting count? Certainly feels that way.

Front of house customer service at a Ford garage.

Longest two weeks of my life.

Second was a groundsman job with the local council. They didn’t mention day one would involve opening up a double grave for the 2nd occupant…

😮

What was it like?

Never walked off a job, but didn't go back after only one day on a temp job that involved putting a magazine in one side of a transparent envelope and the supplement in the other side. DULL AS SHIT, and the manager liked to come round every now and then and just have a go at everyone. I can only assume to keep them awake....

Selling subscriptions over the phone for the local newspaper. Evening work cold calling people at tea time. Useless at that.

Strawberry picking on Kent post university. Not entirely my fault because the weather had been poor for soft fruit so the piece rate pay was rubbish.

What was it like?

I didn’t get to the critical bit. I wasn’t being paid enough..

Took a job in a printing works. I knew I was a bit colour blind but took the job anyway. Lasted about 6 weeks until it became apparent I was never going to be able to colour match and admitted defeat. Got a forklift license out of it though.

Oh yes. It’s just no-one important has realised yet.

(may not be true, but it’s how I feel a lot of the time…..imposter syndrome sucks)

if we’re allowing imposter syndrome then my job now qualifies. Always under the assumption I’m the thickest person in the room, shouldn’t be there and I’m crap at what I do. Think I’m half right and the rest is down to having a basic education and coming from a rough background yet ending up in a pretty senior roll with responsibility. I’m also still a child at heart and can’t quite fathom being treated like an adult or being asked for advice like I know what I’m talk about. Wholeheartedly agree that it’s horrible and very stressful. I basically live thinking I’ll get found out and sacked at any point.

Cold calling people in an effort to arrange an appointment for a kirby vacumn cleaner salesman to visit. I lasted exactly two calls before going outside for some fresh air and never going back.

One of my first jobs when looking for an electrical engineering job, I ended up with a local contractor. Lasted 2 days pulling in heavy armoured cable into the basement of a hopsital. That basement was about 3ft high. Manual labour clearly wasn't for me when I was 17.

I basically live thinking I’ll get found out and sacked at any point.

Familiar to me here. Any compliments or praise are instantly disregarded

I was a floor sweeper in a factory for a week. Factory made plastic lids for shampoo bottles etc. The machines used to spew oil and discarded bits of plastic on to the floor. My job was to clean up the oil and sweep up the plastic…..
As a 23 year old I absolutely had zero interest in the job. I’d just sweep the oil up and get as much plastic as possible, but this had the effect of pushing oil all over the factory, making the entire factory floor a slip hazard…..
I left before I was pushed.

My current job I’m well out of my knowledge/comfort area. I’m a Programme Director for a large US organisation (responsible for mergers and acquisitions). I don’t understand the new business we have purchased and have to align the two businesses (processes and technology), neither want aligning and neither are willing to play ball. Very much a feeling of imposter syndrome. I’ve been responsible for loads of M&A’s, but this one is driving me nuts and making me look like I have no idea what I’m doing!

Not me but a job I worked on… early 2000s and we were on power station shut downs. We had a couple of students sorting out the showers - 3x in a 12hr shift they had to ensure clean towels, bars of soap and a quick mop down for the lads coming out of the boilers who’d been sweating their nuts off. In between they could read a book, crack one off, whatever took their fancy.

It was a 4-5 week gig and the students were taking home a grand a week. One lad lasted 3 days before declaring this wasn’t a career for him. Ffs, it wasn’t a career, it was just a way to make a lot of cash quickly whilst doing sweet FA!!

My last 3 or 4 years as a prison officer weren't great. I just lost interest. It was like plaiting fog or folding gravy. Shit management & cons who weren't interested in anything apart from being dickheads or the king of the wing. That & spice where there's general alarms going off 10 times a day cos some dopey arse is convulsing & frothing at the mouth.
So pleased I drive a minibus full of autistic/Downs kids to school now, It's much easier.

When I was made redundant from my previous job when I was 18 I did 5 months as a labourer on building site during winter in the early 90’s, it was hideous. The site backed on to the Dudden estuary in Cumbria so we got the full force of the howling SW winds. One particular bad day was final straw for me. The weather was awful, blowing a gale with rain and sleet thrown in for good measure. All the brickies had gone home (couldn’t work in those conditions) The boss however made me and another lad dig a trench out for the drains using spades and a pick axe. Even though there was a JCB that could’ve done it in an hour. All for £2 an hour…

I remember working in a shower factory, packing bits into a box. Shower face plates came shuffling down a line, my job was to bag bag them up and pack them into a box with a selection of other bits.

I'd been on that for a week or so when my boss came by, plucked a face plate off the line and said "Oh, it's a reject that one, the printing's wonky". I kept quiet, having packed stuff like that (and worse) for the previous week.

I got moved onto the motor testing line after a while, that was fun in that you had to connect the shower motor up to water feeds and pressurize it to check for leaks. Every so often one would go off pop, which helped keep you awake 😂

Went along for an 'orientation/interview' at an implausibly vague media-related job in Leeds promising great opportunities and lots of money. Absolutely none-the-wiser after an hour of waffle, then they bundled us into some cars and took us down to Denby Dale and released us into the suburbs to knock on doors and flog restaurant loyalty cards. Turned out to be some kind of pyramid sales thing where you get a slice of the commission earned by those you recruit. I don't know if I'd have been better at it had they actually prepared me properly, or if it hadn't been pissing it down, but I quickly decided it wasn't for me. Unfortunately I had to see the day out as I had no means of getting back to Leeds.

Picking potatoes.

Was in a homeless unit aged 16 in Aberdeen when a farmer came round looking for people to pick potatoes. About 8 or 10 of us agreed and got a lift in the farmers crew bus to the farm some 5 or so miles outside the city.

I started, which involved standing astride a furrow(or whatever it was called) after a tractor had gone past, lifting the spuds into a box.

It was less than 5 minutes before I thought Fk this and left. No lift home so i walked it.

In the evening the other returned, coated head to toe in mud and all very dejected. They earned about a tenner for the days graft(£1/hour)

On the plus side pretty much all of them said I'd made the best decision by leaving(or words to that effect) as the work was horrific.

Tore a ~1.5ft long gash in the side of a nice shiny new extra long wheelbase delivery van while temping. Had told them my doubts before they sent me out but reluctantly took it. The backend caught on a slab atop a wall pillar while reversing. Getting free of it was akin to a Chinese finger trap. Strangely walked off site on return and told never to come back!

Possibly not failed but certainly walked out through utter boredom.

1st was a a medi-plastics company where they made stuff from inhalers to bottle tops. As I was “junior” I was at the end of a press that pressed bottle tops out; they all fell into a box and my job was to pick up the leftover sheets of plastic and move them about a metre onto a trolley & stack them (to be recycled). I did this & actually had a supervisor who was special educational needs (fact - he was at school with my brother in law). I lasted until 1st break.

2nd was a similar job at a cardboard box company that made boxes for Boots drugs. By then I had a mobile phone with snakes… I spent about 4hrs on the shitter and 10 mins at my work station. Again, I walked out at first break.

Used to do a lot of agency work when I was a teenager. Once got a job sweeping up in an animal food factory. There were corners of the building that hadn’t been touched for years - with old bags of feed and spillage just left to fester. It stunk so bad. And there were rats everywhere… you’d move something and they’d come spilling out, swarming past your feet. They stunk too. I lasted a week, which I thought was pretty good.

Also had a job in a meat processing plant. Which by comparison was quite nice. I worked on a machine called a fat press where you’d take the fat that had been scraped off the dead cows, pile it into a machine and it’d get pressed into a flat sheet that would then get wrapped around a joint of beef. On a cold day plunging your hands into a big vat of warm, wobbly bovine fat was lush.

One of my mates was tasked with cutting the ears off freshly killed cows heads. He lasted the morning. I gave up eating meat.

And the cheese factory. I hate cheese. The smell of it makes me want to vomit. I didn’t last long.

I have failed at jobs but only due to bad management. I don't let it trouble me any more but a bad manager is probably the worst thing for anyones confidence.

Not me but a job I worked on… early 2000s and we were on power station shut downs. We had a couple of students sorting out the showers – 3x in a 12hr shift they had to ensure clean towels, bars of soap and a quick mop down for the lads coming out of the boilers who’d been sweating their nuts off. In between they could read a book, crack one off, whatever took their fancy.

@dashed AGR vessel entry?

My last job/project before I got made redundant. I’d already been given notice of redundancy on my previous role and was approached to take on a project for which I was a subject matter expert - will a good final salary pension I wanted to stay in the organisation. However, the director that hired me left shortly after and I was assigned a role in a part of the organisation that had little interest in the project as it had its own problems. My immediate boss then changed in an organisation reshuffle and then spent most of the next year fire-fighting a major project cock-up and I never saw him. I was also supposed to be working with a Navy guy who has been promoted into post and knew next to nothing of the subject and wasn’t inclined to learn. I spend most of the next 18 months on my own in an office at the end of a corridor in a building at the far end of HMNB Portsmouth. I made good use of the naval base gym, got to know the 10 mile run to the end of Eastney Esplanade and back in all weathers and vanquished over a 1,000 levels of Candy Crush. Redundancies were announced at the end of the year and I’d gone by the following April. An ignominious end to my professional career.

At 19 I was an assistant Chef in a hotel in France, it was a promotion from being a pot washer the previous season.
I was hopelessly under qualified and inexperienced, and more interested in skiing and drinking. Chefs day off I was responsible for feeding the 130 guests and 20 staff. There were some horrific evenings in that kitchen. Chef didn’t seem to offer much help, tried to bail out into an alternative role, but got persuaded not to. Went back the season after as a pot washer again. Learnt lots.
Edit, Also Feel bad about some of what I served the punters!

Hop tying. You have to go through and make sure the little hop vines are nicely trained up the wires. Me and a mate spent all day on it and did about half as much as everyone else. Too embarrassed to go back and pick up our paltry day's pay at the end of the week.

18: deep freezer. Picking orders for supermarkets. 4 shifts on that.

18: walkers crisps. Sweeping up flavour dust. 2 shifts.

18: cleaning a residential home. 20 bedded. Onsuites. 3 hours. But unrealistic. Did that once. Got sacked.

18: burger king. 2 weeks.

18: plastic moulding factory. Turning over those trays like in choccy boxes. 1 shift.

18: The cheeser. Turning over lumps of cheese on a belt. Digital clock in my face for 12 hours. 2 shifts.

At 18 I just wanted to smoke weed and play on my PS1. If I'd tried harder I may not be sitting here at 0430 eating a pot noodle and browsing stw.

I worked in Gap BITD and left after a clash with my Supervisor who seems to think North Londoners in the 90s wanted someone to say “Have a nice day” to them as they left the shop

dyna-ti

Picking potatoes.

I did that once! My school mates persuaded me to try it with them as a good way to make money to buy records. It really was slave labour. I decided after the first day there were far better ways to destroy my back muscles. My dad liked buying me records anyway 😀
I had imposter syndrome in my current job. I actually had to get counselling for it... funny cos the bloke they employed after me just doesn't get it at all, so I dunno how he feels 😆

If we’re talking crap agency jobs I had a crazy one in a soap factory working nights. There were giant vats containing animal fat outside and they’d get blocked on a regular basis. Part of the job was to wander outside with a torch and some rags. Wrap the rags around the pipe work and set fire to them (in the dark) to heat up the fat and get it moving. Lots of caustic soda inside the building too. Utter disaster of a workplace.

Had a job adding perfume to a hopper and drinks, smoking and food were banned. A member of management paid a surprise night time visit and was confronted by my head popping out of a hopper, fag in mouth and half a sandwich in hand 😂

Chugger - no interest or connection to the charity, but needed a job.

Couldn’t do it, lasted 2 hours and took $4 (Australian ones). Was too embarrassed to hang around whilst the worked out my commission so I just left it all with them

@qwerty

Hello, I’m Liz, and I’d like to tell you about my 44 days of running a country further into the ground.

For those that worked in Telecoms the LiZ being monumentally crap, is nothing new. She was useless at C&W and TalkTalk.

JeZ

Too embarrassed to go back and pick up our paltry day’s pay at the end of the week.

I managed evening shelf stacking in Asda for a week once, just didn't bother going back, they sent me about £2.50 holiday pay cheque about a month later 🤣

Did a shift as an agency worker in a milk bottling plant, job was to place empty crates at the end of the line, and move the full ones to the loading bay. 1 shift of just boredom and drudgery.

Was a team manager at MPS, a medical indemnity union busy turning itself into an insurance company. They'd hired all these middle/senior managers from places like Direct Line and the like, and they were trying to turn qualified doctors and dentists who'd been providing advice and help to their colleagues into claims assessors. The atmosphere was terrible, my role was essentially a monthly 1-1 where I tell them they weren't meeting their (mostly pointless) KPIs. I lasted 6 months. The Pandemic cam to the rescue and I jumped with a reasonably generous package. Swerved a bullet.

Where to begin? In no particular order:

Cemetery attendant in Finchley. 2nd day tasked with digging a grave “7ft x 2ft x 3ft. When you’re stood in it and can’t see over the top (I’m 6’4”) you’ll know it’s deep enough.” Took me so long the burial party had to wait whilst I finished it off. Sacked at the end of the day.

Travelling in Holland me and two mates were given a job by two likely lads and driven to a disused army base outside town (the fact they drive a 70s white Cadillac with pink leather seats should have alerted us). They unlocked the gate and told us they had the contract to collect scrap metal. My mates were put to work collecting lead guttering from 3-4 storey high warehouses. I rightly refused to go up there. Was ambling around looking for copper piping when I bumped into a very surprised police officer with little English and a gun. Explained it was legit and he left. About 30mins later two trucks full of soldiers screech into the base and cover my mates whilst some of them two time up the exterior stairs. They are handcuffed and despite the fact I’m well hidden I decide it’s not worth maybe getting shot and come out hands aloft. Turns out it’s a disused nuclear base and we absolutely weren’t supposed to be there. Hid in some bushes with the officer to id the crooks on their return and then decided moving to a new bit of Holland would probably be a good idea.

Travelling in Israel went on Kibbutz and worked one shift 10pm - 6am in the mahoosive bread factory. Loaves down production line into stacker and packer at end. My job was to turn a loaf if it was the wrong way round. That got old fairly quickly.

Fish factory in Katwijk in Holland. Containers full of frozen fish straight off the trawlers. Tipped onto a huge piece of machinery that gutted them and sorted by size. We had to then manually pack them into plastic tubs and seal on a lid. Fingers frozen within minutes. The pain and the stink was indescribable. On the campsite the fish guys had their own section. Ostracised. One of the attractions of travelling around in those days was the regular opportunity to amble over and say hello to the latest group of girls who’d fetched up on the site. This was no longer a realistic possibility. I lasted a few days.

One springs to mind. Went from a hectic and demanding environment straight into an public sector non-job, in an office on my own with absolutely no-one to talk to and nothing to do all day. Awful choice, even though it allowed me to live somewhere nice.