Worst Job You Ever Had
RetroGamer87
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Joined: 30 Jul 2013
Age: 37
Gender: Male
Posts: 11,103
Location: Adelaide, Australia
I eventually started taking Adderall and Ritalin to help me focus and multi-task.
I've read a lot of posts on the internet about people who used Adderall and Ritalin to help them study or work. I saw a video on Youtube about a young woman who used Adderall to pass her finals. I could really use some of that stuff.
How did you get it without a prescription? The pharmacy requires a prescriptionand the doctor says I can't have one because I don't have ADHD.
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The days are long, but the years are short
I don't know how difficult it is to get where you are, but I worked with a guy (here in the UK) who ordered it a few thousand tablets at a time over the internet without any problem. It came in unmarked brown paper packages, customs can't check them all.
I realise now though, needing Adderall or alcohol to get your job done probably means the job isn't for you. The main reason I won't get back into cheffing is because i'm healthy and sober. And for the first time I feel good.
Working in the oilfield repairing electrical submersible wells. I hated the noise, some of the people I had to work with, and the long hours ( 12 hour shifts). However, after working 10 days straight, I did get 4 days off. And I learned a lot about wells in general, which is helpful in what I do now.
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When everyone is losing their heads except you, maybe you don't understand the situation.
RetroGamer87
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Joined: 30 Jul 2013
Age: 37
Gender: Male
Posts: 11,103
Location: Adelaide, Australia
Also I was thinking of getting a degree but I can't stop work. Isn't getting a degree while working full-time incredibly hard? At th moment I'm only in community college but a degree would be 10x as hard, right?
I'm just worried I won't have the energy. Also when I take amphetamines I lose weight lot of weight, which I like.
Did you say you were a chef? Is it hard? I'm asking because my girlfriend wants to be with chef. I'll support her ambitions but I hope it's not to hard for her. I'd hat to see her suffer.
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The days are long, but the years are short
I don't know about being a working professional... but I do know you should not study full time while working full time because your grades will suffer and you will have wasted your money. Either save up or get a student loan. You can still work part time (many students do this) to cover your room and board and borrow for your tuition.
No man can handle a 72 hour work week. If you need drugs to function normally then it isn't something you should be doing. Even a 40 hour work week is hard enough for me, so I can't imagine working 2 jobs.
It's hard but whether or not it's worth it depends on how much genuine interest you have in the industry. I like cooking but lack that real Gordon Ramsay passion for food. 80 hour weeks and 45c heat in the summer were basically torture for me. But if your girlfriend really loves working with food that shouldn't matter. Plus I think I worked for one of the worst places and therefore had a bad experience.
I hear that the bigger companies look after their kitchen staff far better than smaller, independent ones. Bigger companies can't get away with the crazy hours and unpaid overtime so I'd recommend she works for a large, reputable company.
RetroGamer87
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Joined: 30 Jul 2013
Age: 37
Gender: Male
Posts: 11,103
Location: Adelaide, Australia
I don't get why you Americans all have to study in a different city from the one you live in. Why live on Campus? Is it because it gives 18 year olds a taste of independence for less cost then paying rent on a house? Is it a part of your coming of age ritual that you have to live with a stranger in a tiny room on the other side of the country?
Here in Australia everyone just goes to university in their own town, unless they come from a very small town.
Also students studying for 16 hours per day (I never did 'cause I'm soft), before their college finals or in Chinese high schools, etc. I read about a medical resident who had his hours reduced down to only 80 hours per week. It used to be well over a hundred but they made a new regulation.
Closer to home, I heard a rumour in the office that the guys who sit on the other side of floor 7 from me work 14 hours per day, I'm not sure if that's the normal hours or only in the lead up to the quarterly release. I only have a little contact with those guys. One of them sent me an email that was time-stamped with 8:00PM. And this guy always comes in at 8:30AM (my shift starts at 9:00AM because I'm a slacker).
I want to get promoted to a higher position but I worry that if I get promoted into that guys team, I won't be able to handle their hours because I'm soft. That's why I want to get used to longer hours. When I hear about people working longer than me it makes me feel like I'm slacking off.
Maybe I'm too stressed out, I've gained 15 KG in ten months from stress eating, too many Kit Kats. I don't need 3,000 calories per day. I went on a weight loss forum and read posts from students who get straight As while they're on a 500 calorie per day diet? How can they get better grades than me on such a meager diet? How can they concentrate in class or work when they're fasting? I can only fast on weekends because I turn into a useless blob whenever I fast. When they fast they go to work and/or class.
No wonder I get worse grades then them if all the other students have better quality amphetamines than I do. Also think of how much weight I could lose if I had Adderall.
40 hours might seem like a lot but one of the managers at my work does much longer than that and she's a single mother with an 7 year old daughter. She says she's always tired. I believe her. Speaking of parenting my girlfriend says she wants me to give her two children before she turns 30.
I wonder if two kids would take time away from my work and study? Maybe I could go to work and school and she could raise them. But she wants to be a chef. Will motherhood make it harder for her to become a chef? Maybe I can just get my unemployed mum to babysit during work hours. She's been bugging me to give her grandchildren for years so she can have them.
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The days are long, but the years are short
RetroGamer87
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Joined: 30 Jul 2013
Age: 37
Gender: Male
Posts: 11,103
Location: Adelaide, Australia
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The days are long, but the years are short
I'm itching & scratching phantom glass fibers just thinking about it...
Worst job I've had:
As I was winding down college I moved in with my now-spouse from my folks' place and needed to pay my share of our expenses. For a month I was the (sigh), ::bubble girl:: at a toy store in a busy local tourist area. I'd stand out in front of the store on a raised platform, with a (new to the market) bubble blowing gun. When I got a break, I had to go inside and check several hundred battery operated toys (think wiggle balls and flipping dogs) to see if they needed new batteries. It was a sensory and crowd nightmare. I lasted one day on the register before they decided to make me the last-in-line backup - I couldn't concentrate and made too many mistakes. So I gratefully took the bubble-blower and battery tasks no one else wanted. This was decades before I even knew AS/ASD/sensory issues existed as something that didn't get you locked up. After that I moved to retail and ended up managing a plant nursery - much better, but still too much potential for interaction awkwardness. Then I discovered IT... (ahhhhhh), where I am surrounded by fellow geekettes, geeks, introverts and fellow spectrumites.
Update: I totally forgot (blocked?) the year and a half I worked as a software installer/user trainer. Twice-monthly random traveling (think: airports, hotels, strange cities) and training new customers/selling them on upgrades. And although I was the best at modifying the code & recompiling onsite they wouldn't let me move to that side b/c they needed installer-trainers more.
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“For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.”
―Carl Sagan
Last edited by Edenthiel on 12 Oct 2015, 11:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
BirdInFlight
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Joined: 8 Jun 2013
Age: 63
Gender: Female
Posts: 4,501
Location: If not here, then where?
A position as a live-in nanny for a wealthy family, where the wife/mother was a screaming, raging psychopath. I mean that seriously. She could turn on the charm (in my interview I thought wow, what lovely people!) but her true self was like something out of a Hollywood movie.
She was verbally abusive to me beyond belief; I was 47 and had never been treated that way in my life in a work situation. Every day was a living hell around her. Trouble is, she was also a respected barrister, her husband was a millionaire, they had power in high places, and she actually threatened me that if I ever tried to bring a case against her for abusive treatment of me or unfair dismissal (she fired me with literally no reason, I mean actually NO reason, just a fit of temper) she would make sure I didn't win and also got my life ruined, as she was personal friends with all the judges or whatnot. I later learned from someone else who worked for her that she'd gone through something like twelve nannies in eight years or something. Her grownup daughter who visited actually apologized to me about her mother's behavior.
The trouble was, for the time I was there, I desperately looked for other options but had to stay in the job because I literally had no money (had to stay as long as possible to save some), and nowhere else to go, for either a job OR a place to live. It was the most vulnerable time in my life and I very nearly just threw myself off a freaking bridge. I cried every day.
She was verbally abusive to me beyond belief; I was 47 and had never been treated that way in my life in a work situation. Every day was a living hell around her. Trouble is, she was also a respected barrister, her husband was a millionaire, they had power in high places, and she actually threatened me that if I ever tried to bring a case against her for abusive treatment of me or unfair dismissal (she fired me with literally no reason, I mean actually NO reason, just a fit of temper) she would make sure I didn't win and also got my life ruined, as she was personal friends with all the judges or whatnot. I later learned from someone else who worked for her that she'd gone through something like twelve nannies in eight years or something. Her grownup daughter who visited actually apologized to me about her mother's behavior.
The trouble was, for the time I was there, I desperately looked for other options but had to stay in the job because I literally had no money (had to stay as long as possible to save some), and nowhere else to go, for either a job OR a place to live. It was the most vulnerable time in my life and I very nearly just threw myself off a freaking bridge. I cried every day.
That sounds so horrible. I don't know what else to say except she was obviously miserable herself & likely knew you needed the job & took emotional advantage of that.
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“For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.”
―Carl Sagan
BirdInFlight
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Joined: 8 Jun 2013
Age: 63
Gender: Female
Posts: 4,501
Location: If not here, then where?
I worked as a "sticker man" for one of the big towing companies in Houston - my job was to go down a list of properties - mainly apartment complexes - and walk the property looking for abandoned cars or cars which had infractions such as out-of-date inspection and registration stickers. I'd jot-down the license plate, take a pic of the plate and car, and place one of those orange stickers saying the car would be towed if it was not moved or the infractions resolved. Now a good deal of the apartment complexes were very low-income and people always thought I was the wrecker driver going to tow their car and they would get very agitated and I had several close calls - one incident I had @ 15 people surrounding me and barely made it out of there. The worst part was the company was paying me a flat rate of $75 a day so long as I met my quota of cars but the wrecker drivers were making $1500-3000 A WEEK...I had one woman approach me as I was getting ready to sticker her car at one of the projects we worked - the people are already living on govt assistance and here we were vulturing off extremely poor people - she had two small children with her and she broke-down crying begging me not to put her on the list as she said they had towed her car twice in the past two months - just the first day in the lot is @ $220 to get your car out- I tore the sticker up and didn't add her to the list. The job disgusted me and also there was the reality I could easily get shot - it just wasn't worth it and after 3 weeks I quit.