OK, I have three. The first lasted 20 minutes, second two days, and third, six weeks.
My mother got her paralegal degree. I was 18 and had a drivers’ license. She had me act as a process server, at my request, to make $18. Of course she wouldn’t send me somewhere where I’d get beaten or shot. I only had to go to a nursing home. I didn’t know what the papers said, only that I had to deliver them. The family of the old man was there, and apparently I was delivering papers that gave the family legal control over this man, despite his repeated objections. I left, burst into tears and said that despite the money, I was done with process serving forever.
After spending my life savings on cooking school and a culinary expedition via a non-paid apprenticeship when I returned home with pennies in my pocket I took a job at a local hotel. I had to enter through the basement and didn’t even know how to punch a time card (did it wrong and never got paid). They gave me pants and coat of a 300 lb. man who’d been fired in the past week. I pulled the pants up way above my waist and someone gave me a length of rope so the pants wouldn’t fall down around my feet as I worked.
There was one sink in the kitchen area and it was smaller than a household pedestal sink in a very small powder room. It was filled with cans. My job as garde manger was to scrape cheese off French onion soup bowls that had been through the dishwasher. Two days, 16 hours. Done.
My first trip back to my alma mater brought a temp job that corrected applications for college scholarships. Yes, these geniuses couldn’t even fill out an application. As I corrected by school district, I got many poor areas and even my school, in a fairly well-off neighborhood. The numbers frightened me and years later I got to work in education in some of those poor areas. But that’s not the point. The point is the pencil with the name “Ned” on it. Ned was a year-round unionized employee and he labeled all his pencils. We were allowed to use our pencils to edit applications, had scheduled breaks and it was as if we were robots. No time off was allowed.
When I asked for time off for a job interview (this particular job was only six weeks) I was denied. I asked to give up lunch and two breaks was denied. Fifteen minutes before the interview I quit, walked across the street and changed my life. I was offered two jobs that week, each would have sent me in very different directions. In the end I said no to the arts job that would have me as PR person in the summer and secretary in the winter. When I turned down that dream job I told them I had my own secretary.
Cheers, Dee
Cooking with Dee 
Admins all, I was using the terms of the time, pre-computers. Apologies to all the fine people who keep the work world turning.
In all I think it was the nursing home deal that was the worst because the family made me sit there with the old man when he read the letter and he cried. They had no right to make me do that, only wanted to make themselves look better as I gave the bad news. I was a kid. I didn’t know any better and think of that old man often, but not his uncaring family who only wanted his money. Do not let this happen to your family. Make a will. Have plans. Dee
Oh no, there’s a fourth, where I had to hang out in this lady’s bedroom to inventory pashmina scarves. Creepy, too strange to contemplate and I left and never got my $300. Luckily I’ve not thought about that one in years. It’s the “bad jobs” thing that got me thinking about it.
Ah, there’s yet another. Resurfacing clay tennis courts, three weeks during college. A rich kid bossed me and my sister around insisting that only a “man” could manage driving the roller. We spent a week weeding eight courts, laying clay and nailing in all the lines and raking the surface. I made certain never to play tennis on those courts!