most hated job you have or had in IT

hey guys

What is the worest gig you guys had in IT?

For me has to be my current one i work 47 hours a week and boss gives me work right before i head home.

Find more posts tagged with

SAVE $250 on Your Boot Camp — Use Code "EXAM26"

Exclusively for TechExams members for Infosec Boot Camps starting before April 30, 2026

View Boot Camps

Comments

Essendon

You dont seem to be a happy person southside. Every thread/post you've created/made is full of negativity and gloom. It all aint that bad, 47 hours in just about okay, maybe a few hours over but if you are learning then every hour will make a significant difference when you switch jobs later.

As for the worst job I had was scrubbing dishes at a restaurant. The dishes would come in faster than I could scrub 'em. In a couple of hours, the pile would be taller than me and I stand at 6" 1'. It was crazy as anything, the din in the kitchen was deafening. When I'd head home at night after work, the eerie calm would spook me instead of calming me. I dont miss those days!

ptilsen

Honestly 47 is not horrible. It's not necessarily good, but a lot of us work that or more or have at some point in our career. Frankly, if I weren't in school I would probably choose to work more than 40 hours. If I were paid hourly (without overtime) I would definitely choose to work more than 40. Edit: By "work," I mean actually working. I've never had a job at which I didn't spend more than an average of 40 hours a week at work. IMO, typical or ideal for non work-from-home is 8.5-9 hours at the office each day with lunch break, which is often done at desk or in meetings while still working.

The worst job I had was my helpdesk job. All semblance of challenge was gone in less than a year, and dealing with customer calls constantly was not fun. I grabbed as many extra responsibilities as I could, but at the end of the day supporting external customers on a limited selection of issues is not that fun. Dealing with angry and/or stupid people constantly was not fun.

My last job was a lot of work (easily 47/week) and too much conflict with customers and even co-workers, but I didn't hate it. I made the best of it until it was time to move on. I'd suggest you try the same. If your boss is too hard, try talking about it with him. If he can't be reasoned with, then move on. There's no reason to stick with a job you hate unless there's truly nothing you like doing.

Iristheangel

Crappiest job ever: The customer retention call center for Extenze. We were understaffed and had calls back to back from angry customers who were pissed off that they were autocharged every month or that a certain part didn't grow when they took their magic pill. Needless to say, I was not happy and quit after 3 months

lordy

My worst job:

Credit scoring company. eMail updates were more important than fixing the actual issues. Everything ran based on Outlook templates. I once received a complaint for not marking the update in blue text. True story.

darkerz

I thought 47 hours per week was normal...

YuckTheFankees

Night stock for a grocery store, luckily that was only 3 months.

@Iristheangel,

I think you win lol

southside

darkerz if you get over time payenents then its fine

If You dont then no

If you can take the time off from extra hours you worked its fine

IN my case i work work and since im a consultant i travel alot so that 47 includes travel

YuckTheFankees

Have you thought about finding a new job if you are so unhappy?

CodeBlox

Helpdesk at my former place of employment. Helpdesk at my current place of employment was great!

shodown

Working at a NOC only just logging a router in to see if a circuit was down. Then call someone else who in turned called someone else to fix it. Then I had to call back every hour for each circuit to see if it was back up. I lasted 6 weeks. that was a few years back, the scary part is some people are still there.

MDrver

Worked retail in a really bad part of town. There's just something about watching customers fight with hypodermic needles that sticks with you (no pun intended

paul78

MDrver wrote: »

There's just something about watching customers fight with hypodermic needles that sticks with you.

Do you have any pointers about dealing with those types of customers? (bad pun intended

)

@southside - you seem like you are really struggling with being content in your current job. Most of the threads that you start imply that you are not happy with your current situation or the 47 hours/week that you have to work.

The reality is that 47 hours/week is not exorbitant and for a lot of people in many different industries in the US, it's a norm.

Perhaps there is more behind your discontent. If you cannot bear it, life really is too short and it will start to affect the people around you. If you are young (sounds like you are) and you don't have kids or mortgage, make the change now while it's easier to do that. Move to a different state if you have to.

It's perfectly healthy to try to talk about being unhappy and I'm glad that this forum gives you an outlet. But for all the polling that you are taking, maybe you just need to think about taking some action on your own part.

Best of luck to you.

sratakhin

Working 47 hours a week sucks if you are only paid for 40. Otherwise, I would gladly work 60+ hours. Unfortunately, there are not any IT related jobs where I live, except for what I already have.
I've enjoyed all jobs. Even when I was a housekeeper when I just moved to the U.S.

Krunchi

Iristheangel wrote: »

Crappiest job ever: The customer retention call center for Extenze. We were understaffed and had calls back to back from angry customers who were pissed off that they were autocharged every month or that a certain part didn't grow when they took their magic pill. Needless to say, I was not happy and quit after 3 months

You win Fing hilarious no need to post on this topic anymore I could only imagine how a call would go.

TeKniques

Since people are mentioning non-IT jobs. My worst job ever was doing maintenance for Toys 'R' Us when I got out of high school. Had to clean bathrooms, sweep floors, gather carts from the parking lot (still having nightmares of doing that in winter), and of course the best one is having to clean up puke from the kids. True story -- around Christmas a kid puked up hot dog and the puke was too chunky to mop up so I had to literally sweep it up first. All that for $7.35 /hr.

That job however made me be a good customer when shopping retail stores; I always try to clean up after myself.

Hypntick

I worked at a relay call center. For those not familiar with relay, it's a service that's provided for those with hearing or speech disabilities that allows them to make/receive phone calls. It's a great service and with the people that actually need it, it actually did make you feel pretty good about yourself. Unfortunately, they also had a web application, which required no authentication or regulation. Now picture you're a bored 12 year old kid that's discovered that you can go to this website, tell them to dial a number and they will say every single thing you type out. Also for those not familiar with 419 scams, also know that they used the service as well in order to purchase items with stolen banking information. With FCC regulations being what they are, you as the operator had no control over the call, could not disconnect it due to inappropriate use, and were required to say every single thing typed.

Worst position ever.

Iristheangel

Sorry, Hypntick... I was one of those bored 12 year old.

Roguetadhg

Worked on a farm. Stepped in cow poo. ... I went swimming in cow poo.

Might as well liquify it, can it and call it "Organic WD-40"

Mind you, this was common place trying to mend fences with barbed wiring.

Node Man

i've never hated a job. i've hated horrible bosses, moving targets, unclear objectives and people more eager than me.

J_86

Can't say I have really outright hated a job, but definitely a few I did not enjoy going to every day.

First IT job I had out of high school was for a small collections agency. I was expected to be a miracle worker and know everything about every software and make do with 10 year old equipment. I was on call 24/7 , had to use my own laptop, and other tool/equipment. I gained valuable experience, but got burnt out quickly.

I worked as a corrections officer in a county jail for a few years. The was by far the most interesting job I'll probably ever have.

J_86

Iristheangel wrote: »

Crappiest job ever: The customer retention call center for Extenze. We were understaffed and had calls back to back from angry customers who were pissed off that they were autocharged every month or that a certain part didn't grow when they took their magic pill. Needless to say, I was not happy and quit after 3 months

Oh my, you win hands down! The turn over rate at a job like that had to be pretty high.

Iristheangel

Oh, that's not even the half of it. In order to not get them to cancel, we had to give them "tips" to "maximize" the effects and convince them to try it for 3 more months. The tips were quite graphic. To give you an idea, look at the top response to this Yahoo question:
Do extenze ***** enlargement pills work? - Yahoo! Answers
Now imagine being a girl explaining this to some tiny tiny man on the phone.
Oh and it increased their blood pressure so sometimes we'd have housewives calling in after their husbands died of heart attacks.

About that time, I decided that being unemployed was better than that job.
Yep. Worst. Job. Ever.

MAC_Addy

darkerz wrote: »

I thought 47 hours per week was normal...

Like wise - My week is usually around 50 or 60.

Roguetadhg

For the micro-sized man there's operations to make it bigger. It can be claimed as medically needed, too.

Somehow I feel a negative rep coming...

knownhero

My worst job was in a NOC. All we did was look at screens and call someone who would then call someone else. After a year of this they then thought they would add cleaning duties to our list and made us clean the NOC and the kitchen.

They also pushed us to get certs but never allowed us to touch the equipment. So I left after getting my MCSA: 2003

JustFred

My current job,

I have never felt so miserable. I'm much more happier when am stuck at the datacenter and don't have to go to the office. Then's there's the co-worker who spends most of his time making my life hell. I have said something about it to the boss, but so far nothing has happened. Ah well am looking for a new job and hopefully i will find something soon. I really hate going to work in the morning. Other than that, I'm very cheerful and happy with life

jibbajabba

47hrs a week ? Sounds like a half-day job in IT to me

glenn_33

I think the most hated job I had in IT was probably doing Help Desk for the local county government. I made $10/hr which wasn't too bad but I didn't receive any benefits. It was 90% sitting at my desk an 10% answering phones. I cringe when I think about it actually lol

Akaricloud

I haven't ever had an IT job that I truly hated. While the work at my early support jobs wasn't very fun, coworkers and users made it very enjoyable. In my current position I enjoy my work but dislike the leadership (or lack there of).

It's my opinion that the best thing you can do is learn to enjoy your work. Not everything is going to be enjoyable but you can always find enjoyable parts to focus on. Likewise if you're out to find reasons to dislike a position that will always be possible as well. At the end of the day I would much rather go home thinking about what I enjoyed that day than what I disliked and it truly is nothing more than just a change of perspective.

W Stewart

The worst job I ever had in IT was a work at home job for an ISP. I was inbetween jobs and got screwed over by a job who gave me the offer letter for employment and cancelled on me after I put in my notice at a previous job. This was after doing the background and drug test. I took the crappy work at home job and did it for a week before finding something better. My job was to basically prove that the modem was working and try to get them off the phone as fast as possible or try to upsell them a higher level of support. I would have rather been that higher level of support but I'm still better than what that company would have been willing to pay me.