Worst job - Friendly's Ice Cream/Restaurant - Southwyck Mall, Toledo, OH. First job and 16 yrs old.
1) Humiliating costume - had to wear their stupid white cotton canvas pants and cotton canvas short sleeve shirt, along with one of those
soda jerk hats. The overall look - think 50's gas station attendant. If that wasn't bad enough I weighed about a buck ten and wore size 26 waist pants - their lowest pant waist size was 32. Shirt was equally as large on me. This was the mall, the place where you made/broke a reputation with the wimmens. I was new to the neighborhood and this did not bode well for me though the hair was still kickin.
2) Got Hosed on Breaks & Closing - Was always scheduled from 6pm to close - 4 hours (restaurant closed at 9pm) with an hour for close. IT NEVER ONLY TOOK 1 HOUR TO CLOSE. Paid breaks were mandatory after four hours work. I never got a break cause we were closing and the manager wanted to get out of there. We rarely got out of there before 11:30 since so much had to be done. So ended up working 5.5+ slammed hours and no break most nights.
3) Got Hosed on Work - They didn't have anyone doing dishes, busing or much clean-up all day until the 6 to close gimp showed up. The kitchen/grill is out out in front of the customers and all of the dirty dishes, glasses, utensils, cookware ...from the entire day were there just as the dinner crowd was heating up. No one would touch a dish. Manager, waitresses are on top of you immediately demanding they need more table settings. Then if more than a couple people lined up in front at the ice cream service counter then you had to go up and do that until there wasn't anyone there ...while the dishes piled up. In the meantime still having to bus tables, the waitresses would only clear tables if they had to and certainly wouldn't take the tubs back.
4) Got hosed on tips - Tips were to be shared with the kitchen. Don't ever remember getting more than a dollar or so in change, no folding money ...not once.
5) Manager was your typical mid-to-late 20s chubby loser guy who was a ####. I really hated that guy.
Largest point of satisfaction in my life to that time: Restaurant is getting slammed on an early Saturday night. Manager yelled at me in front of customers at the front counter about how I had inappropriately applied the chocolate "jimmies" to the butter pecan double dip cone. I slowly unpinned my name tag and handed it to him and said "I quit" and walked back to the kitchen to change out of my baggy ice cream guy outfit into my respectably awesome skin tight elephant bells and chess king rock shirt.