No thanks
There are a lot of jobs out there that no one wants to do.
I was once offered a position at a rendering plant… except they called it ‘fats and proteins’. I don’t know how that was supposed to make it sound any better.
I didn’t have to visit the place to know I didn’t want to work there. You could smell it over half of Lancaster on a good day. A sort of sweet, decaying meat odour that really hit the back of your throat. No thanks.
Then there was the time, just out of university, when I applied to work in an ‘environmental laboratory’. Perhaps I was naive, but I didn’t consider that it was specialising in asbestos removal. In itself, that’s not so much of a problem, mostly because you wear protective gear and follow proceedures, but calling it a laboratory was a little misleading. and worse than that, the owner was not available to interview me because he was ill, and the man who did kept coughing all the way through it. No thanks.
So, the question I’m asking, is which jobs have you turned down, and why?
I was almost in a band, not because I could play keyboards very well (I couldn’t, I totally faked my audition) but because the “manager” thought I looked good.
A few weeks after the audition he called to offer me a gig and said I had to learn something in two days and said where we would be playing. I knew the area well enough as a sort of park between two bus stops where there had been a few shootings. I was 13 at the time, and preferred doing nothing with my meager musical skills than possibly getting a lungful of bus exhaust fumes while trying to fake-dance around behind a strange synth while mangling a Janet Jackson song I had already gotten sick of the year before. So I called him back and turned it down.
I have no regrets, really.
(No really, if the band had been like School of Rock, that would’ve been one thing, but it was going to be the guys’ two kids, me, and a smoke machine.)
Yeah, that sounds like a good bail… I mean how is the band now, are they still going (I would have thought that without your talents they’d fold pretty quickly).?
I never even knew the name of the band (“Two Kids in a Basement” might have been fitting*), but a Google search of the manager results in nothing. There are other people with his name, but not him. I’m all over Google, though. I win! BWAHAHA!
(Seriously, I was more into playing classical pieces because I used to cringe at piano arrangements of pop tunes and I sucked at keeping time with others. I still do, come to think of it.)
*Why hasn’t there been a band named Two Kids in a Basement?!
Given the recent trend of child abduction in the UK, possibly not going to happen any time soon… it has a slight ring of imprisonment to it, no matter how true.
…er, yeah, that would be a good reason.
“Two kids in their own cozy finished basement supervised by their not entirely creepy dad” doesn’t have the same ring to it. Even shortening it to TKITOCFBSBTNECD seems unmarketable.
TKITOCFBSBTNECD rock!
Yeah, I’ve heard of TKITOCFBSBTNECD.
I dunno, has a certain ring to it
I recently turned down a writing job for a Bulgarian Real Estate company looking for investors that had all sorts of warning bells going off in my head signaling scam.
Ah, the classic ‘warning bells’. My advice on that has always been listen to your instincts. If something doesn’t seem right you are better off leaving well alone. Still, Bulgarian real estate… that’s a niche market to be writing in.
I’ve started a few jobs that I’ve left quickly, realizing my mistake. I lasted four hours at a furniture factory because I was so awful at assembly line work the poor guy next to me- also new- was doing his job and mine. He kept insisting that he didn’t mind helping me but I doubt that was really the case.
I lasted two hours as a housekeeper at a hotel. They “created” their own cleaning fluids and a few of them were just this side of mustard gas. And I was expected to be in very small, enclosed rooms while spraying the stuff around. But my actual “I quit” moment came when some good looking businessman referred to me as “the help”. I was a bratty nineteen year old and that was all I needed to literally throw down my supplies and storm out.
I’m currently wishing I hadn’t accepted a short term project of transcribing motivational speeches. They’re motivating me, all right- straight towards the bar.
The help!
Great name for an average band…
Mixing your own cleaning products seems like an interesting quirk though, I mean, watering them down, sure, but creating an ad-hoc laboratory for bleach is just plain bizarre.
The head of housekeeping didn’t think the commercially available cleansing products were strong enough. So she mixed who-knows-what together in bottles without labels that were only distinguishable from each other by their shade of yellow or gray.
It tastes like ‘I might die’.
Hopefully they knew enough not to mix ammonia and bleach.
I’m not that sure that they did. Part of the reason I split
Ammonia and bleach mix great together, best way ever to clean out the sinus’.
at the place i worked last year they let about half of the staff go because business was getting really bad. it was nice though, they gave us a choice, asked if we wanted to leave and said they would call us again when business got better. i really liked my job but i was getting really pissy because i thought they werent giving me any shifts EVER, so i did quit then, but it turns out my phone just wasn’t working and i wasn’t receiving texts or calls from certain numbers, including that of my boss. so i felt kind of bad. they did end up offering me my old job back a few months later, but by then i had a lamer one
Lame job swap and all because of a rubbish mobile phone?
My advice is to never feel bad leaving a worse job for a better one… as an employee, you do not owe your wmployer, it is always the other way around.
I have never turned down a job. I’m a writer for fuck’s sake.
Ha! Fair point.
Really, though, is there anything you wouldn’t write?
I always thought it’d be kinda fun to take a job writing the dialogue for cheesy porn flicks. It’s sort of like doing art for metal bands — lay on the cheese, you can never have too much.
‘The help’ comes in and says, “Hey baby, I’ll polish your hardwood floors.”
I’m excellent at coming up with porn titles:
“Bone, Sweet Bone”
“Bone Free” (a lesbian title)
“The Lights are On But No One’s Bone”
I have turned down any number of sales positions because they entailed selling expensive goods to a low-income but easy-sale demographic. If they actually made it through the credit check, you could earn a commission, but you would hate yourself.
The latest position I turned down was for a major international telephone company, who offered me a position but would not tell me anything about it (such as the salary, the hours, or even the start date) unless I first accepted. I found that extremely unprofessional, not to say suspicious, and said I wasn’t nearly curious enough to accept a job just to get answers that any normal company would volunteer up-front.
I did that kind of sales job for a while. Door to door sales of mobile phones and house phone packages. Commission was actually decent, but any mistakes in the paper work and the entire amount was forfietted to the admin. Felt bad about selling an over priced, un-competitive product to gullible ppl.
Don’t take advantage of the vapid? Good call.
Even the secret service tell you what job you are applying for.
Never turned down a job offer, but then I usually avoid applying for jobs I don’t want.
Apart from one instance, where I turned down a job I simply hadn’t started yet (although still didn’t want) because something better came along the day before I started.
/b
I turned down a job selling knives. My first day there I knew I was being pigeon-holed into selling these to family members and friends; not strangers. The things people do. Wish I were a writer for fuck’s sake=).
I turned down an offer to cook meth for a group of sellers aimed at the gay and lesbian market.
There is a world of difference between using and casually supplying and cooking the crap.
I turned down a few retail jobs because the salary wasn’t enough to lure me away from my roofing work.
Since my back injury, I have turned down several managerial roles with roofing companies. I am hands on and couldn’t handle not being able to work with the ppl I was responsible for making work.
ironically, that’s just the sort of person i think i’d want managing me
Oh, turned down a request to dance at a night club, pay was good, but I dance like a retard on fire.
Adam, I did the whole asbestos removal thing. Sucked. Was really shite. Pay was ok, but damn heavy work and soooo bad for your health. If you don’t wear all the protective gear, you risk asbestosis and cancer and if you do wear it, you risk getting heat stroke and falling off the roof/scaffold.
Yeah, you pay with your lungs…
I wasn’t keen on the protective face gear because it requires a shave to get an airtight seal… not that I mind shaving, but I wouldn’t want to risk my health by waking up late and not having the time to run a razor across my face.
…is there a manly job you haven’t done? I suspect not.
I haven’t served in the military yet, tho I did come close recently.
thats just nasty…although it is mulder…i’d watch too
I did one nights worth of delivering newspapers at 3:00 AM in hail, thunder, and lightning. For some reason they didn’t let me just throw the paper, i had to get out and put it inside these peoples doors. So i never went back the next day.
I probably should have turned down the position at the clam farm i worked at. absolutely horrible job, Sharks, Mosquitoes, red imported fire ants (ouch), asshole coworker, had to work during lightning storms (in the water no less) also i got paid below minimum wage $4.50/hr. One day i just dropped what i was doing and went home to never return.
turned down being a superhero, too much responsibility saving lives and all that
then there is the risk that government officials, the men in black [who apparently don't exist] and area 51 scientists will kidnap you and dissect you, plus I’m not one whose a fan of arch nemesis’ and all those cheesy lines…so I’ve decided a job in Primark using my super-powers to destroy Christmas shoppers and their screaming, selfish children is much better suited to me…
Yeah, being a superhero must be a drag, I mean then there’s the whole costume thing, right? To spandex or not to spandex…
That said, people in Primark are known for their unusually high level mutant abilities. That’s why the clothes are priced so reasonably, they’re manufactured by telekinesis and spun by silk producing ‘managers’.
I also think that’s the first mention of Christmas this year on the site, so I guess it’s time to get the decorations out.
being one of those Area 51 scientists sounds like a good job though.
it does sound like a good job…do you think you would get to meet mulder and scully???
sometimes adam its to lycra or not to lycra, i mean the only person who looks good in spandex is logan…that said
whip on the evil christmas tree
Oh, Lycra, the rich man’s spandex!
I’m saving my spandex-based costume for Halloween, got to have something to scare the kids with.
And if you do get to meet Mulder, you get points for sealing him in a bag and sending him to my house via post. I have plenty of uses for someone who ‘wants to believe’…
…such as decorating my evil christmas tree…
This is the one I want:
http://spandexman.com/Thumbnails/303_G.sized.jpg
Maybe in black. Black for EVIL.
Actually, it just occurred to me, if we ever do take Flesh Socket out gigging, we should all get matching full-body spandex suits to perform in. It’d be totally kick-ass, and hilarious, all at the same time.
AHHHH IT’S ROO!!!!
how did the walk go??? didn’t get bitten by aqny werewolves i hope.
Adam, if i send you Mulder just be forewarned that he could be “slightly used” if you know what i mean lol
watch it doesn’t bite your hand off, you’d have to learn to draw with your feet
Hahahaha! The walk went fine. It was actual really good fun — I’ll have scans of the drawings I did in Wales on Tuesday. They shall be posted, with some notes and stories, over at my much-disused blog.
Thanks for thinking of me.
I want a turn with Mulder too. ^_-
The Mulder will have to be sent for ‘re-conditioning’…
I look forward to the scans and pictures!
i dont know if youve noticed but this is WEIRD
You’re weird!
*pokes tongue*
it is and i did notice… still, do you want it next?
We are referring to Mulder as an it now? When your pets/toys become “it”’s, I suspect it is time to throw them out/give them away and seek new ones.
Well, after what Roo did to the Mulder, it can hardly be described as a ‘him’ now…
Sorry, this IS going to far… David Duchovny will probably file some sort of restraining order within the next 48 hours.
No he won’t.
Not if you restrain him first.
Do you need to be shown knots?
I’m the one that did to it it? I thought it was you. Huh.
The sad thing is, I’m sure we could find some slash fic that would go along with this far, far too well. The dark side of being able to find anything on the internet.
Could have happened in transit… It’s always a possibility when you wrap a mulder in bubblewrap.
I worked one day at an old peoples home once. I quit the next day. I knew what to expect when it came to caring for the senior citizens, It was just a really badly run place. A particularly sad moment was overhearing someone say to an old man “Good morning, you alright?” to which he replied “If I was alright I wouldn’t be here”
Thanks for visiting my blog by the way, and also voting for my comic on Transplant. I really enjoy your comic, and the discussions that come out of it. I’ll be coming back!
Not a problem, I’ll be urging everyone to check out your comics and blog, and more comics, and animation (you really are prolific) soon… indeed right now, but I will add a link and mention you in a post too…
And old people’s homes… sad places most of them. We treat the elderly appalling in the UK. Like they are some burden to shed without dignity or praise, not the people who built our world.
The fact that you overheard that also shows that they are aware of the situation too… it’s sad.
But not everyone in care, whether it be mental, child or elderly, treats them like that.
Ugh, don’t even mention talk of working in a nursing home. Thats where i work now. There is not enough money in the world to enjoy that job!
I’m not even goin to comment on the thought of a spandex costume!
Newho, havent really turned down a job but i think that coming up with cheesy porn dialogue as a job would only be half as good as writing the music!!
Ah! I was just saying, talking about people like you ^ You enjoy your job, and I can bet that you do it well and that you treat these people like humans and not like cattle or worse.
You should be paid more, I really do believe that, along with all nurses, who also get paid less (I suspect because they are mostly women) for doing the really important and very hard job of looking after us all at some point.
Come on, you know spandex is cool
As for the music… wakka wakka.
spandex is way cool!!!!!
honestly i don’t know how mac does it…i worked in catering in a hospital and that was enough for me…i discovered that i have a phobia of hospitals
AWESOME…you did a fozzie bear impression!!!!!
i think EVERYONE wants a go on Mulder
I don’t want or need a shot at Mulder, but I’ll watch
Yeah with that said i want to go into nursing in the end because i enjoy working with and for people lol.
You know that lynx got the music on check, bom chikka wah wah just says it all!!!
Meh i dont think i could do spandex. At all lol.
Anywhere that doesn’t have a union, is a place I will definitely not work. Especially in the grocery industry. There is a reason they boast about their high wages–it’s because they want to bend you over the desk like a metaphorical whore.
I wo’n't work retail that isn’t books, movies or music. I wo’n't work somewhere where I have to prepare food, because working on a line would destroy me (I much prefer washing dishes). I refuse to work somewhere where I would feel scared of being trans and/or pagan, let alone odd. I also wo’n't work in hard sales, or in a situation where having Asperger’s would be a problem (i.e. having to pick up on what people aren’t saying and tones of voice).
Ideally, I want to work at Border’s again. I also would love to be a dishwasher again.