Just Quit a Job That Almost Drove Me Insane

Off Topic
1

Literally.

 So I picked up this job to make a shitload of money for next semester of school. Working at a car plant making car seat frames. The job was absolutely terrible.

Has anyone else done manufacturing line work? I almost snapped. Load a seat frame into an auto welder. Pull it out the other side and test the recline thing. Thats fucking it. for 8 hours.

Couldn’t do it. I feel like a giant pussy right now but son of a bitch. The physical nature of it was a breeze. It was the same shit over and over. My brain was dying. There was nobody to talk to. I couldn’t make ANY decisions. I was a robot that was basically deemed cheaper to be there than a PLC controlled mechanical arm.

About 3 days in, I started getting these hard panic attacks. Like my mind was just screaming at me to do something else, to leave, to say something. anything.

The worst part is that not only it is insanely boring. you cannot slow down. So its not even boring like working a security desk of a cash register. It’s boring and stressful at the same time. If you are keeping up, you are likely working up a frenzy. the kind of aggressive go getem feeling you get when you are having a good day at the gym. But you have to maintain that for 8 hours. If you fall behind, you are fucked.

I would rather just draw from my student line of credit next year than go back there. There wasn’t even a fucking word to read. There was nothing to figure out. All of the other students that got hired for the summer got cushy order picking job. I got weld line because of my score on the grip strength and dexterity tests.

Anyone else work a job like this? I’m sorry if I offended anyone but really. This is as close as I ever have been to seriously having a violent outburst or nervous breakdown. Just could not do it.

I need to read a book or learn something right now to begin the purification process

2

I worked at a worldwide suit manufacturing company a few years back taking EVERY suit that came off the line, reading the number on the wrist, and inputting it into a computer. Same deal, can’t slow down, or the line backs up. 8 hours a day. I actually held it out for about 6 months. But when I got back to a real job, I felt fucking retarded.

But it was for the same reason, I had wicked dexterity when it came to the tests in the interview. There were 5 more floors above me FILLED back to back with tiny Asian women with a sewing machine and barely enough room to breathe… as least I was downstairs in the dungeon.

The only thing that kept me there was that I was also the mail boy and got to deliver the mail to some hot chicks who I could talk to and get away for 5 minutes.
That, and we made a few suits for some elite athletes and one for George Bush senior. I know, exciting.
I tried on a suit coat for Andreas Bargnani. The sleeves were past my knees.

Fuck, I hated that job.

3

Pussy. Haha no I feel you, I had a summer job last year for 2 days. I worked in a greenhouse making hanging baskets. It sounds fairly pleasant but it was more like a conveyer belt, we had to just go around a large table placing flowers in specific places, and I can’t belive how stressed out the people got when you got it wrong and it was your first day!

It was seriously shit, but because it was in a greenhouse in summer you can probably imagine how how it was, so when I wasn’t allowed to get a drink of water (dirty might I add) and was being paid less than minimum wage I was out of there. Assholes.

4

Hey dude !

i havent tried that kind of job. But i feel for you and i hope and think that having this job really inspired you to study harder so you wouldnt have to do the same thing in the future !!!

good thing you got out !

5

Maybe that exaplains all the Foxconn suicides in China.

6

I had a summer job as an automated tester the summer before I went off to university. It wasn’t as bad as you make that job out to sound but it was extremely boring, on the night shifts sometimes my biggest challenge was just not passing out due to sheer boredom for hours on end. But it was necessary to get me where I am now posting on T-Nation while getting paid :smiley:

7

Could you wear an ipod?

V

8

Oh and I worked in a bean packing facility for one week when I was in highschool. Beans come down a conveyor, you pick out anything that isn’t a bean. YEA RIGHT, so much shit got past me, even when I was trying as hard as I could. The other job was making the crates the beans get packed into, that was a little better, there was a pallet full of crates, but the crates were just fat sheets of wire and wood, you had to fold them into a box and use a screwdriver to bend the wire the right way to make it lock the sides up.

That was beter because I could crank out WAY more boxes than the machines could fill which means I got to take periodic breaks. And I played with legos alot growing up, so making something was actually a little bit satisfying.

V

9

no ipod. no leaving station. literally no different tasks where you could leave for a minute or talk to someone or deliver something. none of that.

10

My last job was in a factory that made suspention parts for transport trucks. I lifted, push, pulled on average 60,000 pound per shift by hand. I should mention that it was a furnace line that heated the parts up to 1400 degrees, red hot, you then picked them up with a big set of tongs and put them in a die to camber them, by hand. In the summer the temp gauge didn’t go high enough to record how hot it really was in there.

Fucking brutal to say the least…and boring as fuck. I was mostly on straight afternoons shift so I trained in the morning before going in to face this asskicker of a job, very tough. Atleast you could still talk to people on most machines. Great money though. It’s amazing what kind of shit you’ll put up with when your family is depending on you. Got laid off :frowning:

11

worked in a sawmill right after I graduated college, was given the job stacking green 1x4’s as they came off the production line. Bundle was 304 boards, then banded them, got on a forklift and moved the bundle to a storage area. I’d do about 20 bundles in a 10 hr shift. It was monotanous and redundant, but one hell of a workout.

12

[quote]schultzie wrote:
Literally.

 So I picked up this job to make a shitload of money for next semester of school. Working at a car plant making car seat frames. The job was absolutely terrible.

Has anyone else done manufacturing line work? I almost snapped. Load a seat frame into an auto welder. Pull it out the other side and test the recline thing. Thats fucking it. for 8 hours.

Couldn’t do it. I feel like a giant pussy right now but son of a bitch. The physical nature of it was a breeze. It was the same shit over and over. My brain was dying. There was nobody to talk to. I couldn’t make ANY decisions. I was a robot that was basically deemed cheaper to be there than a PLC controlled mechanical arm.

About 3 days in, I started getting these hard panic attacks. Like my mind was just screaming at me to do something else, to leave, to say something. anything.

The worst part is that not only it is insanely boring. you cannot slow down. So its not even boring like working a security desk of a cash register. It’s boring and stressful at the same time. If you are keeping up, you are likely working up a frenzy. the kind of aggressive go getem feeling you get when you are having a good day at the gym. But you have to maintain that for 8 hours. If you fall behind, you are fucked.

I would rather just draw from my student line of credit next year than go back there. There wasn’t even a fucking word to read. There was nothing to figure out. All of the other students that got hired for the summer got cushy order picking job. I got weld line because of my score on the grip strength and dexterity tests.

Anyone else work a job like this? I’m sorry if I offended anyone but really. This is as close as I ever have been to seriously having a violent outburst or nervous breakdown. Just could not do it.

I need to read a book or learn something right now to begin the purification process
[/quote]

Where was this in Ontario ??

13

I know how you had to suffer.

I once applied for work at a company which hires out unskilled workers to other employes who need them for a short term or to be flexible when it comes to replacing people.

Unskilled work it was.
I had a fair share of crappy jobs.

Stacking cigarette packages on top of each other, putting stickers on mobiles, working at a construction site, working in a warehouse, welding shock absorbers at Bilstein.
To make the shit distribution process a little less one sided, I had to get creative.

I put a scratch into the companies car when I wanted to park it, drove it into a roadside, smashed a fork-lift truck into a stack of cigarette packages, spilled a protein shake onto the mobiles, broke glass at the warehouse.
Whenever one employer had enough, they called the company and I got reassinged.
This had the incredible advantage that I could see a very large array of crappy jobs in a very short amount of time.

I was reminded of Brave new world, where people are conditioned to do certain kinds of work and can feel happy doing that.
I was an alpha++ doing gamma jobs.

In order to enjoy this kind of monotonous work, you have to be retarded.
It was funny, I ve met people who were fullfilled with their job, stacking packages on top of each other.
It was all they could expect and all they will ever do. To them it is just the right challenge to feel satisfied.

Some of them were complete fucking idiots, also concerning their character.
Since I was a student doing this only during the semester break, while they were wanna be thugs who have been doing this sort of crap since leaving school, they thought I was a spoilt pansy.
So some of them started to push me.
Some threatened to bring their wanna be thug friends and do unspeakable things.
As a nice guy I try to be, I gave them the well meant advice of leaving me alone.
They didn t listen.
I picked one up and threw him around, so he could learn his lesson.
At the warehouse, there was a little guy, who would never step aside. He almost barged into me a few times, although he had plenty of space. Accordingly I pushed him into a couple of boxes.
Everyone around me was shocked and looked at me, expecting to beat him up as he was laying on the floor.
Another one found out that I was a boxer and told me my hands were to small for boxing.
I offered him he could find out about my boxing and he agreed to do some sparring but went pale and chickened out when I brought gloves.

Anyways, I did this sort of work for 2,5 months and quit.
Why they didn t fire me, is beyond me although I think one of the disponents was interested in me.
In hindsight, maybe I should have fucked her.
They even thanked me and suggested to contact them whenever I needed a crappy job.

14

I worked in an egg grading facility for 3 years while going to school. It’s kind of funny the places your mind will go when deprived of stimulation, like a plant working it’s way through or around rock.

The job varied a bit depending on what station you were at, but it was all pretty much the same thing. Mostly unload pallet after pallet, or load pallet after pallet, at an unrelenting pace. The boredom and stress made one a little funny. Plus the benefit of tendonitis from doing the same movement 10-30X a minute for 10 hours a day.

It wasn’t all bad though, I learned to swear in Vietnamese and Tagalog. Also, there were enough coworkers that shared my similarly twisted sense of humour and the management accepted unconventional behaviour from people who could do the job, as there were many who would quit after one day.

15

[quote]Ken St.Mich wrote:
In order to enjoy this kind of monotonous work, you have to be retarded.
It was funny, I ve met people who were fullfilled with their job, stacking packages on top of each other.
It was all they could expect and all they will ever do. To them it is just the right challenge to feel satisfied.

Some of them were complete fucking idiots, also concerning their character.
Since I was a student doing this only during the semester break, while they were wanna be thugs who have been doing this sort of crap since leaving school, they thought I was a spoilt pansy.

[/quote]

i work as a technician in such a factory and while my work is different everyday and very good i work with a lot of these people and its funny how some people just have the personality to do these kinds of things… i went to school with some of them(pretty funny being in charge of them now) and back then they were the biggest slops always messy and would never clean or do homework. They still are like that when they are off work. but at work when they are paid they have the best focus… everything must be done as fast as possible and as good as possible and they enjoy to make it so.

16

omfg. I don’t know how some of you do it. I think I would rather die.

17

[quote]markdp wrote:
omfg. I don’t know how some of you do it. I think I would rather die.[/quote]

You do it because you have to.

My gf - “Hey, why don’t we have any groceries… … or power. … . and where did our car go?”
Me - "I really didn’t like my job, I think I’m worth more, so I am just gonna wait this one out. Should be anytime now. … … anytime now… "
MY gf - “Ok good, that sounds like a really good idea. I’m going to go outside and gather some nuts for tonight’s supper while you wait on your dream.”

If only it worked that way.

18

[quote]Im_New_Feed_Me wrote:

If only it worked that way.[/quote]

Yeah, really. I’ve been fortunate to work in custom manufacturing producing a really neat product for a couple of years, but I’ve also had some jobs where the actual work is the least challenge.

Shutting your head off and doing something a thousand times perfectly is just as/if not more difficult than doing something completely different just once.

It really is a challenge and a skill to not go apeshit with your own mind when you have to leave it idle.

19

OP, get a job with a moving company. You get to carry heavy shit up and down stairs all day. It’s great. They’re ALWAYS shorthanded in the summer.

20

I worked in a factory over Summers in college. They shaped and welded steel base bands and the pre-machined turbines for jet engines. I did all sorts of jobs, all involving ear plugs, thick leather gloves, and safety glasses. Sometimes when I was on the chipper or grinder, I had on full leg and arm protection, gloves, a full face mask, and a respirator.

Leaving that place was like leaving a sensory deprivation chamber.

Only thing I regret is that I slept through what my friends still refer to as the best night of their lives because I was so beat.