Worst Days on the Job – Part I
(A three-part series)
February 1, 2003

We've all had those bad days on the job that all other bad work days are measured by. For some, as time passes, those days can reach urban legend-type notoriety, and are looked back upon with light humor. For others, those days are forever erased from memory, for fear of curling up into a fetal position to cry ourselves to sleep.

Our writers are not immune from these rites-of-passage moments in every working person's life. Whether it be getting yourself in deep shit (knee-deep to be precise), being a fly on the wall in cubicle hell, or finding yourself horribly up to your eyeballs in breasts and beer – we've been there, and we feel your pain. Here are a few of our staff's worst days on the job.

Smooth Sailing
by Chris Orcutt

This is a little odd – but my worst day on the job happened during one of my best jobs ever. I worked for a summer as a deck hand on a cruise ship. It was great because I got to see lots of great ports, dated many stewardesses, ate tons of great food, and was out on the water. But even great jobs can have shitty days.

My cabin was right above the huge holding tank for all of the passengers' waste – shit. The way it worked was, every night whichever deck hand was on duty would go around to all the passengers' cabins while they were at dinner and push this button that ground up each cabin's waste and dumped it into the main holding tank. When we got to port, whichever sorry-ass deck hand was on duty would have to hook the tank up to a truck (via a VERY nasty hose) and pump away. You could tell how full the tank was by reading a gauge, though it was a little tricky (not a good thing for a shit-tank-fullness-indicator; more on that coming up).

So. I'm snoozing in my cabin after 12 hours on duty and I start having this horrible dream about being totally covered in shit. I slowly come around and realize that what woke me up was this smell that's burning the inside of my nose. It was like an outhouse had been soaked in ammonia and then set on fire. Really bad. Instantly I'm awake, I jump down, open my bathroom door and, sure enough, there's brown ooze coming up my shower drain. I think for the first and only time in my life, I yelped, which I'm not terribly proud of, but it was that kind of situation.

Anyway, I didn't even put on any clothes, just grabbed a pair of shorts and ran up the stairs in my boxers. It was dinnertime for the passengers and here I come into the dining room in my underwear. The captain (who was a super guy and amazing in pressure situations) saw me and immediately motioned for me to go back downstairs, and then excused himself from the table. He came over and as I put my shorts on I told him what was going on and that I hoped we were in open water so we could just pump a little of this crap overboard – enough to get us to the next port with a little bit of class. We both looked out the window. We were in a closed lock, and had just started locking down. I even saw the deck hand on duty watching the boat go down from the shore, making sure everything went okay. He was the one who was supposed to make sure the shit tank didn't overflow. He saw me and waved at me. Fucker. I gave him the finger.

So we're stuck in this lock for at least 20 more minutes, and the captain tells me that it will be another hour before we make port. We went over to look at the gauge and it says the tank is three quarters of the way full. Fine right? We all knew that you had to tap the gauge to get it to give you a good reading, which the captain did. It sprang to full.

We went down below to see the progress in my cabin. The shit is now all over my bathroom floor and soaking into the carpet. The smell was horrendous. I was hoping that something would clog up my shower drain (a shit log, maybe?) to keep more shit from coming up. The captain said there was a pair of waders in the engine room and I could put them on and salvage whatever I could and move to another cabin. While he went to get them, my carpet became so saturated that the shit wasn't soaking in any more; it was starting to collect into a small pond. He came back and gave me the waders and in I went. It was vile. I was gagging like crazy. The smell was so overpowering it felt like heat coming up from the carpet, and here I was, wading around in it. I got all the clothes that I could (which was a surprising amount) and threw them in a basket to be washed, even if they were nowhere near the shit. My shoes were a total loss as were some clothes I had left on the floor. When I was done I threw them and the waders out and closed the door.

By the time we got to port the shit was flowing out under the door in my cabin. I had taken some bags of flour and made a little canal for it to flow down into a drain that emptied into the bilge, which someone would certainly have to clean later. The captain had called ahead and ordered two trucks in order to totally empty the tank. About 10 minutes into the pumping the shit stopped coming from underneath my door and 10 minutes after that I got the nerve up to open it up. You know how you can see the high tide line on a beach? Well, all of my cabin walls were stained brown about 10 inches up from the floor. And the smell finally got me – I spewed – right onto the floor of my cabin. Any other time I would have worried about the mess.

The stewardesses eventually cleaned the cabin (bless them) and the carpet was replaced. But for the rest of that trip I stayed elsewhere. I was all for sealing up that cabin and never opening it again. We got a new electronic gauge for the tank and had it wired so that if it hit 7/8 full an alarm light would go off.

The one lasting effect this incident had on me, is that I stopped leaving my clothes on the floor.

MicroTragedy
by David Brown

For a brief period of time, it could have been two weeks or two months (I honestly don't remember), I worked for a large company in Northern Virginia which shall remain nameless. Okay, it was MicroStrategy, the brainchild of CEO/Madman Michael Saylor. Saylor went on to make headlines as one of the many ill-fated tech-boom savants who lost billions of dollars of paper wealth while being investigated by the SEC. But during my tiny stint, the company was riding high.

I was working in the PR department having been reassigned from human resources which I found damaging to my psyche (not to mention beyond boring). It's depressing to see people being hired for salaries far greater than yours, especially when they are 5 years younger than you. The feeling of being passed by was palpable and flying across my desk with great urgency in the form of offer letters.

In PR, I didn't really know what I was supposed to be doing, a trait common to many of my past jobs. I think I was some kind of support person and was supposed to answer the phone if it rang more than 3 times. All I knew was that someone was leaving and I was filling in until a permanent replacement could be found (another trend in my career). If interested I could interview for the position and would no doubt have a leg up on the other candidates. This relied on three massive assumptions: 1) That I knew what the job actually required; 2) That I could perform those requirements well; and 3) That I did not loathe the job or the company so much that I would run screaming for the nearest exit.

I failed to live up to any of these criteria. As a result, I spent most of my time thumbing through press articles about the company and the bizarre Mr. Saylor. As I delved more into his background, it quickly began to dawn on me that this man was not only crazy, but smart enough to convince thousands of employees to drink the Kool-Aid and follow his vision through to the end. Essentially, this vision boiled down to him controlling all information. That is not an exaggeration – all of it, right down to what you're thinking right now. I think I know what you're thinking right now.

As for my coworkers, Most of them spent their days on Ameritrade monitoring the soaring stock price and exclaiming, "Oh my God, we're all fucking rich!" Given that I was a temp working for peanuts and without stock options, I was not bursting with enthusiasm for my colleagues' good fortune. I kept to myself, made eye contact with as few people as possible, and went about my business of killing time and taking long lunch breaks during which I would drive around in my car listening to sports talk radio and eating McDonald's. At least I didn't have to do any actual work.

At first I was impressed by the level of camaraderie at this company, and then it began to frighten me. Everyone seemed to enjoy their jobs, working long hours and socializing with the same people they just spent all day with. The company was most famous for taking all employees on an annual cruise about which I heard many stories of drunken teambuilding and tales of "One night Tiffany got drunk and went up to Saylor and told him she thought he was cute." They all thought this guy was a brilliant visionary rather than a complete crackpot. It's amazing what you can get people to believe if you give them access to free Snapple and take them to the Caribbean.

After several weeks of pretending to look busy, I finally went to my supervisor and told her I was done. I told her that based on my time here, I felt you really had to believe in the vision of the company to work here, and that I just didn't have the passion. Truthfully, I felt it was more like a cult and I didn't want to lose touch with my family and friends because I love most of them. I felt relieved to be done, and somehow happy to be jobless and confused.

Just days after I left, MicroStrategy's stock plunged over 100 points in the wake of an accounting scandal (sound familiar?). Over the following months the company entered free fall mode, forced to cut staff and restructure. The stock – which was approaching $300 during my tenure – dropped to mere pocket change. Michael Saylor went from billionaire playboy to a mere millionaire with a struggling company and a drinking problem. Me, I went on to bigger and better things. Or at least that's what I tell people.

Beer, Breasts and Bourbon Street
by Chelan David

It was the most fascinating bad job I've ever had. Working as a bar back on Bourbon Street in New Orleans during Mardi Gras absolutely blew – but it was liberating as well.

Let me start from the beginning. I was in the midst of a corporate detour and had just taken a Greyhound to New Orleans as I tried to "find myself." Finding myself with about $100 and no job, I figured Bourbon Street would be the logical choice for employment.

I was fortunate enough to get a bartending job on my second day, although I had to lie through my teeth to get it. My prior bartending experience actually consisted of pouring beer at keg parties, but luckily they didn't have time to check references. I envisioned myself as Tom Cruise in "Cocktail" and figured it couldn't be that tough to sling drinks. However, after my second day of fumbling around behind the bar I was quickly demoted to a bar back.

A bar back is a fancy name for bartender's bitch. Among other things, they are responsible for are making sure glasses are clean, trash is emptied and liquors are fully stocked. You probably recognize them as the idiots who shrug their shoulders when you order a drink from them while trying to avoid the long line at the bar. Bar backs are a species that cannot be trusted with the task of serving liquor.

I quickly learned my place in the bar hierarchy. If there was a job no one else wanted, I inherited it. If somebody felt the urge for a Po-Boy, broke a bottle, or puked I was the man to fix the problem. Having recently worked at an advertising agency on Madison Avenue, this was certainly a humbling experience.

As the weeks passed by, Mardi Gras rapidly approached. The crowds grew ticker and my duties rougher. Liquor needed to be replenished constantly and every 15 minutes the ice containers would need to be refilled and the trash emptied. There was no time for breaks. Walking across the bar, I felt like a human bumper car with obnoxious drunks caroming off me as I fulfilled my obligations.

The week before Fat Tuesday another change occurred as our schedule expanded to 24 hours. The bar never shut down, and like a doctor on call, I might get five hours to catch a nap before tending to rowdies again. Although sleep was sparse, the onset of Mardi Gras was titillating. After all I'd heard about the event it was surreal to view it for the first time up-close in the trenches. All of the stories are true. I saw more skin in the six weeks I worked there, than I ever have or ever will see again in my life. Various forms of sexual decadence were a common occurrence in the dark recesses of the bar. Technically we weren't supposed to drink on the job but our transgressions were winked at. Although my job was back-breaking, I was getting paid to get drunk and admire tits.

In addition, I was able to join the society of Hurricane makers. Part voodoo, part Betty Crocker and part Bacchanalia, I'll never forget the experience. The process started in the attic with a faded, alcohol splattered recipe and a rubber trash can. As dozens of bottles were poured into the trash can a pungent odor pervaded the entire room – and by the time the last bottle was emptied, it was all I could do to remain conscious while adding the last few ingredients. After the sour mix and grenadine were added to the mix, a large wooden stick was procured and the rhythmic chant commenced. A southern tradition, the chant was known to ward off the evil spirits but not the spirit of the hooch.

Finally the process was complete as the hose connected to the trash barrel was hooked up to the tap downstairs. And once again the fun began. Merry revelers indulging themselves while I stocked their liquor and picked up their trash. The only thing getting me through was the knowledge that another pair of perfect breasts might be right around the corner.