Fanswag Weekly: Dishwashin' Samurai tees [update]
by Dustin Burg 
{ Nov 28th 2007 at 12:00PM }
The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai's creator James Silva was just a special guest host on this week's Fancast and what a fine job he did. And to commemorate Silva's A+ rated Fancast appearance he sent us a few black and sexy The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai T-shirts to giveaway. So, that's what we're doing, giving them away to you, our fellow fanboys. To win, just make a comment on this post (once a day through Friday) telling us about some of your worst job experiences. We know washing dishes isn't the most glamorous job and is pretty horrible in its own right, but we know you can one-up our samurai friend with your own job horror stories. Contest specifics are below.
- Leave a comment on this post telling us about some of the worst job experiences you've had. You can leave one comment per calendar day (eastern time).
- Be sure you only leave one comment per day. Posters of multiple comments during the same day will be disqualified. We'll accept entries until Friday, November 30th at 12:00PM Noon, eastern time. You must be at least 18 years old to enter and this giveaway is open to U.S. residents only.
- On Friday, we'll pick three winners via a randomly random drawing
- Three individual winners will receive a super neato The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai T-shirt (totaling three T-shirts) valued at $10 in each.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
JAKEJAX @ Nov 28th 2007 12:08PM
Working at the VA hospital up in North Dakota. I was pulling staples out of old documents and re-stapling them. It was easy money, but talk about BORING!!
Gombard @ Nov 28th 2007 12:09PM
Why only the US folks!? Why?! WHY!?! ;) No love for us Canucks... :(
R0B3RT @ Nov 28th 2007 12:12PM
Working office max with people who didn't know anything about any technology lol.
HazyCloud @ Nov 28th 2007 12:13PM
My first job was actually a dishwasher at Taco Bell. It lasted all of about a week.
MorphNeo @ Nov 28th 2007 12:23PM
I was a dishwasher at the "Golden Onion"....
FROSTYSMOOTH @ Nov 28th 2007 1:26PM
lets see worst job is a toss up between butcher and janitor...they both stank
punkjediguy @ Nov 28th 2007 12:17PM
All I'm gonna say is that turkey poop is the worst kind. It's really difficult to shovel because it's neither solid nor liquid. It smells worse that pig poop and horse poop and every other poop smell I can recall...except for my roommate's. It sucks shoveling turkey poop in the middle of a hot summer day in a pen the size of a hobbit's house. That's right. I said hobbit.
Gh3tt0 Child @ Nov 28th 2007 12:18PM
Never really had a REALLY disgusting job besides taking out the garbage at chic fil a
therza2169 @ Nov 28th 2007 12:19PM
Working at wal-mart would have to be the worst job ever.
Jigsaw hc @ Nov 28th 2007 12:20PM
Does changing my son's diaper count?
Matt @ Nov 28th 2007 12:21PM
I had this one experience that was absolutely horrific.
I work in the Seafood Department at my local supermarket chain and on New Years Eve I was asked to shuck clams for a woman.
So I started shucking them and midway through, I felt a painful sensation in my finger. I looked down and saw that a piece of the clam broke off and imbedded itself into my finger. I immediately stopped what I was doing, removed the shell piece, and bandaged myself. I continued the task and thought little about what had just taken place.
Few days later, I notice that the wound isn't healing so I take a look at it. I squeeze and squeeze until a half-inch piece of clamshell slides out of the cut.
Yeah. It was horrible.
DjChad @ Nov 28th 2007 12:23PM
Tech support for a dialup ISP... never again!!!
ragingtofu @ Nov 29th 2007 11:44AM
I worked in Customer Service.
Listen, I'm sorry if you're a professional customer. I respect your duties, but MAN. It sucked.
Hockle @ Nov 28th 2007 12:29PM
I had a job where they wouldn't let me look at this website during the day - that company has been wiped clean from the Earth.
Avaren @ Nov 28th 2007 12:29PM
Once, I accidentally deep fried my hat.
dubbuzz @ Nov 28th 2007 12:33PM
i actually still wash dishes in a college cafeteria, and one of my bosses does nothing but play ninja gaiden in his office, it rocks yet sucks because i have to work while he has all the fun...
paranoidman @ Nov 28th 2007 12:33PM
Busboy at restaurant with some of the cheapest mofos EVERRR
Sofun @ Nov 28th 2007 12:35PM
Washing dishes, done it.
Digging drainage ditches, done it.
But the real ball buster was pouring concrete. You feel like you're going to die every day.
sambob117 @ Nov 28th 2007 12:37PM
pumping out a church basement after a flood in the middle of winter and my boots just weren't tall enough
Corey @ Nov 28th 2007 12:39PM
My worst job experience is when I was essentially fired for turning my manager for credit card fraud and nothing happened to her... :(
akatsuki @ Nov 28th 2007 12:41PM
Selling overpriced kitchen knives door to door to people who couldn't really afford them.
Haston @ Nov 29th 2007 11:44AM
My worst job experience was that I still work at a pizzaria.
david stone @ Nov 29th 2007 2:44PM
i dont know
danny. @ Nov 28th 2007 12:46PM
Worked in a locker room at a country club shining shoes and vacuuming and other assorted BS. I definitely slacked off though, which was kind of the point I guess.
Clayton @ Nov 28th 2007 12:46PM
working at Wal-Mart... enough said.
Herobotic @ Nov 28th 2007 12:53PM
I worked in the meat department of a chain grocery store, despite having no butcher experience. Starting on my second day, they left me alone with no instructions for the last six hours of the shift. Every once in a while, the store manager would come around and ask me why I wasn't doing anything. If I'd had any idea what to do...
I only stayed there a month, and that would have been less if I hadn't been so poor.
Alex B @ Nov 28th 2007 12:56PM
cleaning t-shirt screens with a turpentine hose. Great.
ReekinHavok @ Nov 28th 2007 12:55PM
Cleaning a bar the next morning. Especially the bathrooms. Girls are worse than guys believe it or not...
Paustinj @ Nov 29th 2007 12:18AM
Roofing a house in Wyoming in the summer in 100+ Degree Weather.
Larry Harmon @ Nov 28th 2007 12:58PM
Working for the local municipality... I actually cleaned public restrooms in every city park. Yeah, women tend to take a dump directly on the floor of public restrooms. It's really bad when it's been tread on so much that it's matted down into the floor. Then you have to scrap it up, and hose it out. Oh memories.
Sunny @ Nov 28th 2007 1:00PM
Last year I had a one-day job at this factory around here. They washed the aprons and stuff from the local sit-down restaraunts. It was in May and it was very very hot and muggy... I had to sort through each type and color of garment, and 90% of it was covered in maggots.
Lucky for me they didn't request me back, probably because I didn't finish until something like 25 minutes after shift ends.
asmonius @ Nov 28th 2007 1:05PM
Had a job cleaning at a supermarket's meat department, using nothing but a hose, soap, and sanitizer. By the time my shift was up, it wasn't uncommon to be covered in blood from the knees down (and it was usually frozen into your pants from cleaning the freezer for long periods of time).
stupendous52 @ Nov 28th 2007 1:09PM
I used to be a bus-boy at Red Robin. Nothing like people bringing their kids in and having them fling cheerios all over the place, somehow mash french fries and ranch dressing into the carpet, and cleaning up their spilled cups of milk. Then having to clean up the whole area on a busy friday and saturday night with the servers nagging you about clearing the table. . . I'm working on it, but these cheerios are everywhere!
0ldb0y @ Nov 28th 2007 1:09PM
Worked at a hospital once, and while pushing a patient in a wheelchair his urine bag burst all over the floor. Not the patient's fault, and sometimes it's just the nature of the job. But still. Not pleasant.
XeonPro @ Nov 28th 2007 1:10PM
I have done the dishes thing (been there done that). I would have to say that the worst job ever though has been in construction as a tile setter. Yeah, it paid descent but not a day went by that my ass wasn't kicked.
doug m @ Nov 28th 2007 1:16PM
worst job experience was actually washing dishes while in training in the army, drill sergeants + water splashing = one long terrible day
skokefoe @ Nov 28th 2007 1:17PM
I guess I can't quite compete with you gents, but I did spend a summer doing nothing but alphabetizing tiny strips of paper in a hospital basement once. Fun.
rabid1 @ Nov 28th 2007 1:18PM
My worst summer job was as a roofer. We were ripping off and redoing flat roof work. The sweltering heat and constant second degree burns from bubbling tar sucked. Made me realize then I never wanted to be a roofer.
cleft @ Nov 28th 2007 1:19PM
one word... kinkos
Tony @ Nov 28th 2007 1:23PM
When you get out of college, the job market is largely terrible. Particularly for anyone interested in anything design related. Job postings ask for every skill known to man, pay almost nothing of value and yet still ask for several years experience. It's a weird and crappy climate.
I wound up at a job that hired me right away. This is usually a bad sign, but I needed it. I was going to do web design work, but since all of my portfolio was largely weird or abstract and not terribly commercial the next thing I knew they put me in more of a marketing department. Which is fine.
Of course, the job itself was terrible. I had two bosses, essentially, neither of which seemed to communicate anything to each other. They were both pretty sleazy people.
The company had quite a bit of workers, all of whom were in a similar situation as me. They needed jobs, this place hired them and little else was working out. The people I worked alongside were all wonderful, hardworking people. It was just the management and the situations they put us in.
The position I was given hadn't really been staffed in three months. Yet, the entire time they were charging maitenence fees to each of their customers. Large fees on a monthly basis. So, the day I started I get a really bitchy call from someone that a salesman just didn't want to deal with. So it started.
I had to appease so many people about the substandard work the department I was in did. I shouldn't even call it a department. It was me. And I had well over 100 clients that could potentially call me at any given minute. And over the course of the months I was there, they all basically did. We were getting new ones all of the time. I was largely left alone to deal with this, to explain what I was doing and try to assure people that I really wanted to do things right. You can't imagine how stressing this was in and of itself.
Not to mention all the other oddities. The place paid for absolutely none of their software. Even the computer I was on eventually told me the copy of XP I was on was stolen. I never personally installed any of the software, but I soon found out they had an entire server full of the stuff.
We were "contractors". I use quotes because we weren't, it was just an excuse to not have to give us holidays or benefits. We had to show up from 9 to 5 every say of the week and had no say in what jobs we took or didn't take, unlike most contractors.
This also meant we had to worry about taxes ourselves. It was never taken out of our checks. While I added them up and paid them (and so did anyone else I knew), I am absolutely positive they never reported any of us. We never got W2s, they never brought it up and avoided the question entirely. Hell, a guy hired to help me was actually working here illegally. That's a big sign.
In fact, one girl that they hired as a secretary started asking about this very issue. She also asked about health insurance (which they always claimed they were working on getting) and it turned out her first job was to find us health insurance. Yet they never did anything about either of these issues. They fired her right away since she asked all of these questions.
On top of all of this, the main guy in charge loved to yell. He yelled about every thing. He tried to intimidate any client that figured out what bullshit the company was.
So you can imagine how this infects every other aspect of the company. The worst part started being when they got even more sleazy. They had a company paying for SEO and forced my assistant to tell the company we were "putting down the wireframes", whatever that means. The thing is THEY DID NOT EVEN HAVE A SITE. We were doing nothing at all, but they were charging them hundreds of dollars a month.
I did every thing I could to tell people the truth and help them out and do what the ideal of my job implied. But it's hard when salesmen and your bosses juts make shit up.
I managed to get out of there soon after. That was only like a year and a half ago. I just couldn't take it anymore, I found a job that paid less that actually treated me halfway like a human being (and I've since got a great job). I talked to someone who still worked there and in a six and a half month time span seven people had been hired for what I did for almost 8 months. It was that horrible. I wish I had that option, but it was either work or ruin my life even more.
So that's my long story and I'm skipping over quite a bit of bad things. My worst job experience was that entire job lol.
CHINAdeals @ Nov 28th 2007 5:54PM
i had to wear a hello kitty outfit in the middle of the street on a hot california day in the middle of summer
DarthVicious82 @ Nov 28th 2007 1:34PM
McDonald's...need I say more?
Hoyt @ Nov 28th 2007 1:35PM
Dancing for nickels on the street so I'd have enough money for all of the November releases.
T3H WICKERMAN (FDF) @ Nov 28th 2007 1:38PM
washing dishes. and not getting to screw waitresses.
The Cang @ Nov 28th 2007 1:47PM
Being on the dis hcrew at a camp on Sloppy Joe night!
Colin @ Nov 28th 2007 1:49PM
cleaning poo out of urinals at a city pool.... it was horrible. Min. Wage.
Tiggle @ Nov 28th 2007 1:51PM
I worked for a software company answering phones in customer support. People just yelled at me all day. It was horrible... and I was in a cubicle... that was just as bad. I quit.
Bmurph @ Nov 28th 2007 1:54PM
These shirts are sweet! Thanks guys! My worst job was being a janitor at my high school. I was washing boards for money along with others who had to for detention...
Kev Flynn @ Nov 28th 2007 2:05PM
dishwasher lives!
Arnie @ Nov 28th 2007 2:04PM
Working in my college the job was boring and overnight but they allowed us to get our laptops in and play on them as long as we did something every two hours :) It was fun even took in my 360 over the Winter Break and played with a friend. Good times but boring