The Most Degrading Job Ever

[venusinpisces]

Having held a number of different positions in the sex industry, most people would think that one of these job would have been the most degrading. No. By far the most degrading job I've ever had was at a place called Disadvantaged Workers of America. I had found the place after arriving in the West Hollywood neighborhood of LA after hopping freight from Tuscon. I was so filthy from dirt and train grease that I seriously looked like I could have been Arabic even though I'm white. But I was determined to find a job and do something respectable with myself besides asking for change. So I asked all the bums I could find if there was any place that was hiring. One of them told me there was a telemarketing place that would take anyone. They had regular orientations and one of them was coming up in a few days. So I attempted to scrub myself up in a gas station bathroom and arrived to the site ready and eager to work. Most of the other people seeking employment were bums crackheads or tranny whores. The woman who welcomed us was brimming over with joy about how we would be "getting our lives together". Next we were shuffled into a little side room and introduced to the business owner, also our supervisor, who was obviously on some type of amphetamine substance. We were to start every call with the phrase Hi, I'm ****** from the Disadvantaged Workers of America. She instructed us on how we should emphasize our disabilities in order to sell the merchandise, which was comprised of American flags, air fresheners and light bulbs, all priced at $100 apiece. I raised my hand and asked her what if we don't have a disability? She said that since you've been living a life of hardship I'm sure you can come up with something. Ok. We were then shuffled back out into the main area/call center where a guy was on the phone talking about how he and his wife had small brains. Most of the calls ended up being to senior citizens who were probably subsisting on social security checks. The supervisor was rushing around in an amphetamine psychosis urging us all to tell them about our mental problems. I kept imagining all the little old ladies thinking they were getting right with Jesus by helping the disadvantaged, even though it was just a bunch of conniving junkies trying to get their next sack. I was at a loss for what to say and made no sales. The supervisor kept harassing me and saying I wasn't working hard enough. One of my friends was also there and she was making a killing. She was saying that she lived in a cardboard box with her mom and infant daughter and they all had HIV. None of this was true. During one call, the old lady on the other end said she couldn't afford to buy anything because her husband had just died and she was broke. I said, I'm sorry to hear about that. Have a good afternoon. The supervisor was on me like a hawk and asked why I didn't tell her I was homeless. I told her what the woman said and she responded by saying, and this is a direct quote, you should have said that sometimes dying people leave behind an unpleasant odor and we have air fresheners that can help with this problem. This was the final straw. I made an excuse to leave early and never returned. I decided it would be more honorable to ask wealthy LA club goers for change than to scam senior citizens into buying $100 light bulbs they couldn't afford. So, back to the corner to look for wealthy benefactors it was.

 

[mylon]

Holy fuck. When was this? Do you think this place is still around?

 

[venusinpisces]

This was in the spring of 2002. I looked them up online and apparently there is a somewhat legitimate seeming national organization, which may be where the light bulbs were coming from. But I would be shocked and amazed if that little LA subsidiary was still there. I got the impression there was a distinct possibility we would all show up on check day to a gutted storefront.

 

[Diagaro]

I lol'd hard!
This is awsome!

 

[SkyeDawg]

Shit man, I've shown up to a couple places like that. The classic charity sales scam. I've seen a couple versions of that...

Hmm, MOST humiliating? I worked 2 years ago for a grocery store where the owner didn't like me. It was right after Obama got elected and he was Republican. He noticed my California-ness and presumed I was the most hardcore democrat in the building (Joke's on him, I' didn't even vote). From that point on he transferred me OUT of the produce department and put me on 7 am janitorial duty. He proceeded to fire the hispanic woman who had been doing it and had me take over for a lower wage.

Every morning as soon as I arrived, he would have my supervisor send me in to the bathroom. Every morning the bathroom would stink like shit when I walked in- as he would take a big shit right before calling me in. He would greet me at the stall door buttoning up his pants and telling me to clean up after him.

MIGHT I MENTION, THIS GUY HAS MEGA BAD HERPES!!!! HE WOULD SHIT AND THEN CALL ME IN TO CLEAN HIS TOILET

I needed the money to pay off hospital fees and vehicle fees in order to travel again, so I did it as long as I could stand. I did the job right, I did it clean, and I had that store spotless...

Then I quit the day of corporate inspection- figured that was a good day for the janitor to quit.

But yeah, it was humiliating. The big brutish egotistical biggotish asshole taking big shits then telling me to clean his herp germs off the toilet. I shoulda sued that sonofabitch.

 

[carnytrash]

That sounds like a shitty job.

The one and only 'real job' I ever had was working in a salon. The owner was a douche and all of the employees sat and talked shit the entire time they're doing people's hair. Wore a wig to hide my stretched ears and long sleeves to hide my tattoos. Even tho I was supposed to be an 'assistant', I swept up hair and washed towels. Towels don't tip. After two weeks and a couple hundred bucks, I just stopped showing up.

No, it's not the absolute worst thing in the world, but I felt the work was not worth the money. Especially when I was making just as much hustling and performing, so that kind of became more important.

The funny thing is, I am a hard worker, which I can thank the Eastern European roots for; just never cared to get a job and now I never have to.

 

[Veil of reality]

I can't stop laughing about the "small brain" sales pitch guy. Is that even a real diagnosis?

Did he and his wife have really small heads? hahaa.

If someone called me and said they wanted to sell me a $100 light bulb because they have a small brain I'd immediately try to figure out which one of my jackass friends is yanking my chain.

 

[xACABx]

That's the most bullshit job ever. I feel bad enough spanging on the streets and the sweet ladies that have their kids put money in my cup... but conning people over a telephone while pretending to have fake illnesses, even a "small brain." That's just downright fucked up.

 

[kickthatshit]

Yah, LA's full of telemarketing scam jobs...

About ten years ago, when I was a naive 18 year old from middle-america suburbia that went to LA for something completely different, I ran out of money fast, and soon responded to a newspaper ad for a telemarketing job. I showed up to a dingy, low-rise, mostly vacant office building a few blocks off Hollywood & Vine - much sketchier then - and was hired on the spot. My work place was a dirty room, roughly 400 square feet, set up with telephones, chairs, and card tables - nothing else. (Quick tear down if the authorities show up...) My co-workers, who I didn't talk to much, appeared to be junkies, professional scam artists, and out of work actors.

The job consisted of telephoning businesses in smaller cities, say, Texarkana or Spokane, and pretend to be the business' usual photocopier repair-person. (We would receive printed out sheets of phone numbers from our manager.) Most often, we'd be told by whoever answered the phone that the business didn't have a photocopier, then promptly hang up. Less often, we'd be put on hold, and shuffled through numerous people in charge of answering phone calls from random weirdos. Once in a blue moon, one of us would actually manage to convince someone on the phone that we were legitimate, in which case we would yell for a manager, who would take over the call, talk the person on the other end out of credit card information, bill them, then send them a bunch of shitty, grossly over-priced photocopier ink they didn't really want several weeks later.

The job was ridiculous. A couple of my co-workers put on fake British accents to lend themselves legitimacy, and the manager, a man oozing with phony over-confidence, spent his idle moments around the office headbanging to pop-nu-metal with a serious, douchebaggy look on his face that suggested that he believed he was *the shit*. He had told me when I was hired that most people - "pussies" - don't last through the first week.

When we went out for a lunch break, I walked out, bought a 69 cent taco, then went to check my e-mail at the ugly, fortress-like, Frank Gehry designed Hollywood library a couple blocks away - and never went back. I figured I'd never get a legit paycheck for the hours I worked, so I never tried.

For the following two weeks, I went to Labor Ready to try and make some money. This mostly involved showing up to a run-down building off of Sunset at the crack of dawn, and sitting in lawn chairs for hours and hours and hours and watching car chases on the morning news. Occasionally, something interesting would happen, such as getting actual work or watching grown men fist-fight in the middle of Sunset Boulevard due to a dispute regarding who was first in line to sign up for work. (Both men would always be taken off the list, and then three hours later, a bored, Ramparts-division cop would show up to half-assedly collect details on who was fighting whom.

The most memorable LA Labor Ready job I had involved moving mainframe computers into a massive Bank of America building with no windows just west of downtown LA. We'd move 1,000 pound rolling computers off of trucks, into a loading bay, onto an elevator, the up eight floors into a giant facility where checks were processed and everyone dressed like astronauts. My Labor Ready co-worker was a middle aged, down-in-his-luck, not-so-bright man who would yell, "COME ON, YA BIG BITCH!!!" every time we had to push the computers up an incline, which seemed unremarkable at the time, and now seems pretty funny.

Ah well, here I am, rambling on like an old man. Hope this was entertaining for somebody...

 

[dprogram]

Looks like I'll never go to L.A....though I lived in Redondo Beach.

 

[acrata4ever]

what makes an arab whore less a money magnet than say a dirty white cum guzzlin gutter slut whore? i dont get it. ive dated mideast call girls like israelis. other semite strippers/whores like lebanese and moroccan women are definately hot. and most here seem to wear dirt and smelling like a sour milk shit like a badge. i mean you made a white traveler looking like a gypsy fortune teller sound like a bad thing and an unemployable outcast. i always found that the more exotic and foreign a whore is the better money she made.

 

[ron]

I was a salesman at fucking Macy's once, they only hired me cause me and my old lady were on a welfare program at the time, which gave them a tax credit thing of some sort. The whole company seemed to hire in a similar fashion. I was a damn good salesman, number 1 in my department most weeks and that was the problem, they were always on my case about sales. I was pretty much pressured all day by sales managers who were under pressure from the store managers who were under pressure from corporate to pressure the customers and get all over their fucking case the whole time they were within my visible range about buying shit they didnt even fucking want. Sales sales sales. I'd send a customer into the fitting rooms with $300 in clothes and some fucker would real quick ring them up when they stepped out. I was fucking tense all the time and fucking miserable. ffuck Macys.fuck shopping malls. and fuck edina minnefuckingsota and all the shit yuppies that breed there.

 

[dprogram]

what makes an arab whore less a money magnet than say a dirty white cum guzzlin gutter slut whore? i dont get it. ive dated mideast call girls like israelis. other semite strippers/whores like lebanese and moroccan women are definately hot. and most here seem to wear dirt and smelling like a sour milk shit like a badge. i mean you made a white traveler looking like a gypsy fortune teller sound like a bad thing and an unemployable outcast. i always found that the more exotic and foreign a whore is the better money she made.

I dont ever want to date another junkie...thats all I know...steal from you when you're asleep and fuck you til give em 20 bucks for a rock. All the same.

 

[iamwhatiam]

i don't really have any degrading job stories, but a buddy of mine once got a job at gay adult arcade. he said he had to sweep up condoms and scrape/wipe dried cum off the walls and seats....sounds like a real fun job to me

 

[godsahn]

i don't really have any degrading job stories, but a buddy of mine once got a job at gay adult arcade. he said he had to sweep up condoms and scrape/wipe dried cum off the walls and seats....sounds like a real fun job to me

That's pretty funny, because I was going to post this as my most degrading job. We had a sign out front with big text saying "Video Arcade".......which was anything but. We would get kids coming in all the time, and have to give them the boot. It's amazing how many married come in to get sucked off......secrets.