I have done weird jobs since my high-school days. 1) Worked at a firework store during July 4th. Made like 4G in 15 days of work. 2) Worked at a perfume store in a mall. Most boring job I’ve ever had. Sitting there and wait all day so somebody can come and buy a bottle of perfume. I used to sell like 2 bottle/day. At that time I realized that marketing in not my thing. Left after a week.
How was the perfume job a bad job? Was it on commission or hourly? Dude, I totally go out of my way to search for those types of jobs where you don’t have to do anything. You can essentially get paid for doing nothing and use that time to study instead of worrying about being billable & productive every second. This is why one of my dream jobs is being a librarian. Either that or being the donkey at Shrek at one of those amusement parks.
^ You might be surprised how boring it gets…some things just aren’t worth doing even for the pay
I also think it depends on the type of call centre as well. I ended up in another call centre at a discount brokerage. i hated it but to be honest, it wasn’t that bad given the pay. in addition, it gave me the current job that i have now so i can’t really complain (though i did nothing but complain). most ppl i know got out of discount with pretty decent jobs though nothing marvelous.
joemontana Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I got a job as a bouncer at a > bar/restaurant/brewery. Bouncing was cool but > they roped me into hosting during dinners. It was > pretty bizarre in that I welcomed people into the > joint for dinner and sometimes ended up throwing > them out by 11. Anyway, I HATED hosting and I was > quite possibly the surliest and most incompetent > host in restaurant history. The worst part of the > gig was dealing with the waitresses. Every > waitress in that place hated the job, always > showed up late, had some kind of personal problem > (drugs, out of wedlock kids, car problems, > stupidity) and continually demanded that every new > party be thrown in their section. After an hour > of dealing with those b****** I was so irritated > that I greeted every new customer with a scowl and > motioned them to their tables with Mafioso-style > hand gestures. One day the plumbing broke and I > spent about 2 hours literally mopping up s*** as a > it flowed to the kitchen. I quit mid-shift after a > few weeks later. Dude that sucks, bouncing was my second favorite job ever, next to working at a tanning salon on the night shift. Did you have fugs coming in the whole time? I thought it was the best of both worlds, you got to make nice the the girls, toss out d bags and drink for free.
Worst job- worked at a car wash in high school where I had to vacuum the interior of people’s cars. The worst part was getting down low in the car/truck where my face was nearly making contact with the driver/passanger seats. I don’t even want to describe the humiliation of this.
I’ve had my fair share of high school retail and labor jobs, but nothing was worse than being an analyst at a BB IB. I worked at one of the largest firms, average week was 90 hours, with many weeks over 100. All nighters at least 2x per week working for associates who were totally underqualified. Therefore, had to do all of my work while teaching them at 1am , 2 am, whatever. My favorite guy was the one who would come by every Friday around 4:30 and say that he had his “analyst kicking shoes on,” which meant that he was getting ready to provide useless infrastructure projects that would keep us there all weekend. Made some $$, but it wasn’t worth it.
One of the guys that went to college with me (though a few years younger) is finishing his second year as an investment banking analyst at Morgan Stanley. I had helped him prep for his private equity interviews and he just told me last night that he got a private equity offer from TPG in San Francisco. Obviously I’m thrilled for him as TPG is basically as good as it gets in the PE world, and he’ll be making around $300K all-in annually there. He really is a rockstar investment banking analyst, but he also looks like he’s in his early 30’s already (even though his actual age is 24-25) and he hasn’t had a day off from work in the last two months (i.e. he works all days and weekends). Obviously he is big balling it now and I really think he’s the type of guy that enjoys investment banking…however, that lifestyle simply isn’t one that I could personally sustain. Certainly I’ve had a number of 80-hour weeks over the years, but definitely couldn’t do it week after week after week. At one point I worked 17 days in a row without an off-day with an average day entailing 14-16 hours in the office, and was almost ready to go ape. I think I just have too many interests outside of work and also put a tremendous premium on the little free time I have.
Ocean Mist Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > How was the perfume job a bad job? Was it on > commission or hourly? Dude, I totally go out of my > way to search for those types of jobs where you > don’t have to do anything. You can essentially get > paid for doing nothing and use that time to study > instead of worrying about being billable & > productive every second. This is why one of my > dream jobs is being a librarian. Either that or > being the donkey at Shrek at one of those > amusement parks. Because it was so boring. I was not allowed to read any books. Just looking at people’s face all day is not fun. Most boring job ever…
^^ Except for that loss on the WAMU purchase. PE in the banking world is something I may have to explore with you sometime Numi as I have work experience in commercial banking and it seems that analysts dont understand the first thing about banks financial statements and business operations.
Good for your buddy. PE isn’t quite as bad. At the very least, the people will be cool and the politics will milder. I remember that lifestyle. I remember not sleeping for three days, and on the morning of the third day I had to drive down to the valley for a drafting session (pre-IPO meeting). I just remember falling asleep at the wheel a couple of times, cranking the radio, rolling down the windows (in February), etc. It was horrible.
I was in high school, got a summer job at a brand new Burger King in the area. I worked the first day it opened and put in crazy hours. Started working at 6am - 5ish, but then, started doing all 4pm to 3am shifts. I spent 2-3 hours cleaning up the place and they have the burger boiler grill that was brand new, so the branch manager/general managers wanted it shiny clean every night. So you had to get up in the grill and piece by piece make it shiny, it was hard labor. Sometimes worked from 6am- 2pm at night, lol terrible. All I knew was that I wished I was the corporate guy instead of the day laborer at 16 yrs old. Decided to study finance in college. At 16 yrs old that was a wake up call to make sure I never put my self in a situation later in life to have to do this for a living. oh yeah I think it was 6.15 an hour, then i asked for a 25 cent raise and they were grilling me on saving money, lol wt… mom bought me the book “The House of Morgan”, loved it and decided to start a career.
You can not compare banking/trading/consulting/biglaw to some of the other jobs mentioned. The person doing those jobs chose to do them full well knowing what to expect and is getting fairly compenstated for their work/energy. I doubt the call centre, ditch digger, fast food people chose to do that by choice, but you gots to make paper somehow at a point.
anonymous007 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Good for your buddy. PE isn’t quite as bad. At the > very least, the people will be cool and the > politics will milder. I remember that lifestyle. I > remember not sleeping for three days, and on the > morning of the third day I had to drive down to > the valley for a drafting session (pre-IPO > meeting). I just remember falling asleep at the > wheel a couple of times, cranking the radio, > rolling down the windows (in February), etc. It > was horrible. anonymous007, – how long did you work in banking for and then what about PE? Where do you work now? My experience in PE at a leading middle-market firm was much more manageable than what my friends at TPG, Cerberus, KKR, and Bain Capital report. I can’t comment on Blackstone as I only have a couple connections there and they’re both much more senior than me. An average work week for these guys is about 80-90 hours versus 65-70 for me in middle market PE. However, because they make considerably more compensation than me, I sometimes wonder to myself, “What’s an extra 15-20 hours a week when you’ve basically traded up most of your free time anyway? Might as well collect all the comp you can…” but then I also take some solace in the fact that I’ve realized that I’m not all that passionate about finance anyway, and perhaps would have burned out anyway (I have occasional problems motivating myself to do things that I don’t really care about). I guess that’s why I’m going back to business school in hopes of exploring other career possibilities… BizBanker – there are a lot of PE guys that don’t understand the nuts and bolts of particular industries, be it commercial banking or other stuff. That was the biggest challenge for me working in PE, i.e. I was responsible for helping to render investment decisions and deploy capital ranging from $50-250 million on companies whose industries I’d never even worked in before. I could go into a manufacturing plant for a prospective acquisition target and not be able to tell the difference between one product versus another. Luckily, most private equity firms including our own have operating partners, who are mostly former C-level or senior managers with executive or operational experience in certain industries. I recognize that other PE guys that only care about deal-making probably don’t have much of an interest in what it’s like to run a company; however, I personally have a penchant for strategy and general management, which is why I’m doing a pre-MBA consultancy at a Fortune 50 company right now. Granted, I have no direct work experience in this industry as my experience to date has all been in finance; however, where my private equity experience DOES help is in my ability to ask a lot of pointed business questions and bring an outsider perspective that people within the industry may not have, as well as my clear focus on the bottom-line and my understanding of the capital formation process. So, certainly one of the weaknesses in PE is that you’re not really an expert in any field besides transacting; however, in PE, you develop an unparalleled understanding of buyout investing as well as a pretty useful generalist skill set in both finance and high-level execution that you can apply in a variety of business situations.
allegro-cpa/cfa Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I was in high school, got a summer job at a brand > new Burger King in the area. I worked the first > day it opened and put in crazy hours. Started > working at 6am - 5ish, but then, started doing all > 4pm to 3am shifts. I spent 2-3 hours cleaning up > the place and they have the burger boiler grill > that was brand new, so the branch manager/general > managers wanted it shiny clean every night. So > you had to get up in the grill and piece by piece > make it shiny, it was hard labor. Sometimes > worked from 6am- 2pm at night, lol terrible. All > I knew was that I wished I was the corporate guy > instead of the day laborer at 16 yrs old. Decided > to study finance in college. At 16 yrs old that > was a wake up call to make sure I never put my > self in a situation later in life to have to do > this for a living. > I already told my terrible employment story, but I didn’t mention that, just like yours, my “worst job” was a strong factor in pushing me towards finance. Realized that if I couldn’t differentiate myself from the rest of the hiring pool, I’d be forced to take godawful jobs like that for the rest of my life. Literally changed my studies to finance/marketing as soon as school started up again.
My worst jobs (in no particular order): 1) Cold caller for an investment advisor (in university) - depressing 2) Skid loader for a department store (in high school) - physically intensive. The supervisor had a whip NO joke. He had this rope that was rolled up like Indiana Jones’ whip on this little golf cart thingy. He said it was his whip as a joke but this guy was a horrible person. 3) Business analyst in the health sector (last year) - worst manager ever
Hi Numi, After IB I went to B-school (top 10) and then into real estate… obviously my timing wasn’t great. Became a partner in a boutique development company, but left in '08 when credit dried up. Now I’m in ER/consulting. Real estate PE is really interesting, but I haven’t seen anything out there in quite some time given that there are no transactions happening. Happy to be working given that many of my B-school friends who went into real estate have been unemployed for a very long time. Most still have little/no prospects. What do you do?
My worst job is the one I have now as a data entry monkey at a finance company. Having a lackluster working environment and a boss who asks me to write simple one-liner emails for him due to his lack of English skills are a drag. But I just take it one day at a time and hopefully greener pastures lie ahead. This job is worse than the job I had in college working at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant doing things like washing dishes in scalding hot water, taking off the grill racks and scrubbing until my arms almost broke, sweating while cooking up some shawerma and chicken, etc.
My worst was the first job out of college, it was a startup with about 12 people. They were mostly all men and mid 40s, and I am not, so I had very little in common with them. There was another girl, whom didn’t like me and said something prejudice to me and the bosses did nothing about it. It was supposed to be a financial analyst position but it was far from, it was more like an data entry analyst job. The men were perverts and racists, we worked in one room, not even having cubicles so we could have some privacy, but literally one big table. I was bored and disgusted at the whole thing but they gave me a sign on bonus for 4k that I would have to pay if I left within a year, so I was stuck in what I thought was hell for a year.
Worst job ever: AT&T Enough said.