Starting a new job

[HTHM]

I am staring a new job on Tuesday, Technical consultant for a green roof company. In light of the other post I was wondering what was your worst first day on the job you have ever had?

For me it was starting a job in a concrete block factory at the tender age of 15. I had to stack the fresh blocks on a pallet. I think I weighed all of 150 punds sopaking wet, on a 6' 3" frame none the less. By lunch time I was DONE!, but kept on going till 5 on determination alone.

[Dozer]

First day out my boss took me to see if I was any good. Broke about 150 bucks worth of equipment. I thaught I was out

 

Still have the job.

[smitter]

In highschool I worked for about two weeks at a gocart track. I though it would be an awesome summer job.

 

The owners were a father daughter combo and they were horrible! They fought with each other all day and took out their collective anger at their lot in life on me.

 

I never though I would look forward to going back to being a bricklayers helper, but when I got the call to go back, I jumped at it. To this day, it's the only job I quit without giving proper notice.

[JohnF]

Be a tossup between the railway spare gang lifting track and the meat packing plant. I guess the spare gang would win.

 

I'll never forget that first day, 8 hours of walking along the roadbed picking up old escutcheon plates and chucking them up into a gondola car. If you can imagine a big tough 18 year old nearly reduced to tears from the fatigue and pain, you can picture me that day. I think what saved me was that when they'd stripped the plates off the ties they'd left them close to the ties so I was able to hook an elbow into the ladder on the car and let the car drag me along.

 

A friend of mine would probably argue that the packing plant was worse. His first day he got the job of stripping leaf lard off the warm intestines. That is a really crappy job. I had the job one day but was smart enuf not to let myself puke in front of the rest of the gang.

 

JF

[fishing n autograph]

I was dumb enough to accept a job working with a truck drive hauling pool chemicals across the province for $7 a stop...not and hour...a stop...

 

so the combination of toxic chlorine smell and the road rage and traffic on the 401 I was pretty much done on the first day lol....

[Radnine]

My first day as a high school teacher and I was photocopying a transparency for the overhead projector. I didn't realize that I had grabbed a transparency that could not go through the photo copy machine (I didn't know there was a difference) and it melted in the photocopier. The $500 repair bill was bad but the fact that anyone that waited until the first day of school to do their copying was screwed was worse. I felt awful.

I got over it though.

Jim

[Phil 65]

My worst first day was working as a painter on an exterior job stripping paint on an old bank downtown toronto.

2 hrs in I set the bank on fire and had to run in to let the manager know the ceilng and underhang were smoldering away and that we should call the fire department and evacuate the staff & customers .4 hrs later after the caos was over and fire department came and went the boss shows up on site sees the black fire damage the closed notice on the bank doors an # 6 painters standing around ready to throw me under the bus . i will never forget his face when he walked up to me and was waiting for an explanation as to what just happened and i said guess you never had the fire department show up to one of your jobs before have you ! I have worked with him on many projects off and on for the last 20 years hes a good man Oh and he fired everyone of the guys who pointed a finger at me and didnt help out .

[Greencoachdog]

I remember my first day at the Three Mile Island nuclear facility, and when I spilled that Pepsi on the control board!... what a fiasco that turned out to be!!

[irishfield]

[Governator]

My worst first day was working as a painter on an exterior job stripping paint on an old bank downtown toronto.

2 hrs in I set the bank on fire and had to run in to let the manager know the ceilng and underhang were smoldering away and that we should call the fire department and evacuate the staff & customers .4 hrs later after the caos was over and fire department came and went the boss shows up on site sees the black fire damage the closed notice on the bank doors an # 6 painters standing around ready to throw me under the bus . i will never forget his face when he walked up to me and was waiting for an explanation as to what just happened and i said guess you never had the fire department show up to one of your jobs before have you ! I have worked with him on many projects off and on for the last 20 years hes a good man Oh and he fired everyone of the guys who pointed a finger at me and didnt help out .

 

 

Winner!

[Fang]

Never even got through the interview process at a science lab in Mississauga. This place used to prepare all the disecting samples for biology classes. Rows upon rows of 55G drums of worms, frogs, fetal pigs, cats in formaldehyde. Just a real nasty, dirty place. I kindly excused myself about halfway through the interview because of the smell in the front offices alone.

[TJQ]

His first day he got the job of stripping leaf lard off the warm intestines.

Umm that wins .. hands down..

[JohnF]

Umm that wins .. hands down..

 

He puked the first time his thumbnail pierced the intestine. There's warm green stuff in there.

 

JF

[Cookslav]

A Labourer position at a Sheet metal mechanical Shop, that my Dad set me up with.

The company he worked for got a job for a hospital renovation, and the job called for Specialty insulation to be installed inside the duct work....very tedious stuff, and they needed a temporary summer helper to accommodate the new duty from May to September.

 

I had to cut a specialty fibreglass insulation to fit each individual piece of duct work, then wrap the Insulation in some sort of special cloth that was supposed to trap and kill airborne virus's which is why it had to be "inside" the ducts.

Then glue the insulation pieces to the sheet metal duct Pieces, and pin them in place with a soddering gun....doesn't sound all that bad until you see the work station LOL...

 

It was situated in what I would call a tin "add a room" built off the side of the building...totally a make shift endevor to accommodate this new duty. It was about 10' x 10' including the shelves, and soddering station, so I had very little room to work in this mini oven.

The journeyman thought it would be funny to put a thermometer in the door way to point out the temperature that would range from 30-36 degrees thanks to the hot tin roof.

 

Doesn't sound too bad yet?

Well being the first day do you think anyone told me to wear a long sleeve shirt?

It was hot so I assumed a short sleeve would be fine being all I was told was to wear jeans and a shirt I wouldn't care about if it got dirty, well....Imagine this

30+ degree sweating your nads off in closed tight quarters with fibreglass insulation and sticky glue, sharp metal edges & burrs....along with some great glue fumes.

Yup...I was itching head to toe by noon.

 

I'd try to wipe the sweat from my face with my forearms so I didn't have sweat in my eyes...only to rub the glue and fibreglass into my forehead which eventually would find its way into my eyes via that running sweat.

 

It was like some rare form of torture....

The Journey man tried to help by putting a fan in the door way, but yea....a fan and fibreglass insulation don't mix

Next thing I know I'm in a wind tunnel of hurt!

My throat is burning, eyes are burning...I guess breathing in fibreglass didn't make it any better.

 

I learned, got some good gloves, sweat band, eye goggles, and a dust mask...

I learned to push through the heat...only because I knew that Dad got me that job, and the fear of telling him I quit kept me going.

It got better thank God But man that first day sucked LOL!

Edited February 1, 2010 by Cookslav

[Beans]

After coming off a two year bender with the booze I found a job working in a crummy factory for a crummy minimum wage of $2 per hour welding lampshades...

 

I had to hold two pieces of wire together while a point came down and spot welded them together...try doing that with the shakes so bad I had to hang on to the grass to keep from falling off the world...

Edited February 2, 2010 by Beans