Stories
Stories

My Worst Job
Topics: Jobs and Positions-GeneralLabor-Working ConditionsCareer-Managing Careers

My Worst Job
Topics: Jobs and Positions-GeneralLabor-Working ConditionsCareer-Managing Careers
My Worst Job
Dan Morrell: Hi, this is Dan Morrell host of Skydeck. When I was in high school, I worked as a dishwasher at a steakhouse chain in upstate New York.
It was not glamorous work. I would clock out covered in a thin greasy orange layer of muck. Somehow chicken wing bones would find their way into my shoes.
When my mother would pick me up, the stench was so bad, she would roll down all the car windows, even in the dead of winter. It was easily the worst job I ever had. But I learned the responsibility of work, how to operate within a team and, you know, how to wash dishes, all skills I carry with me today.
At spring reunions, we asked the alumni to share stories of their worst experiences in the working world. And this episode includes all sorts of life-altering lessons from the labor force.
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David Chellgren (MBA 2004): Hi, I'm David Chellgren, and I'm class of 2004. The worst job I ever had was making rubberized asphalt as a summer job. My dad was a paving contractor and he had a little side business where they would blend crumb rubber from ground up tires—and they would put it into asphalt and use it for paving.
And so you'd wake up at four in the morning and come down and get a propane tank and a torch, light it, and let the fire run on the valves to melt the asphalt so that you could actually turn the valve and start the morning. So I start every morning light in a fire, trying not to get too much rubber asphalt on me and getting a lot of burns that are kind of like napalm, because it'll cool on the outside but not on the inside.
And so it was a very dirty job where you'd go out and you get 2,000-pound super sacks of crumb rubber, run a forklift. Open everything up, smelled, you know, all of that, and, uh, you would walk home every night covered with, crumb rubber, and, um, it was a little rough. But it was one of those inspiring things that makes you want to continue your education.
You would have thought it would taught me I didn't want to be a contractor, but it didn't work that way. I ended up, buying a piece of and running a dredging marine construction company for about 12 years, which I sold in 2018. It ended up coming a little more full circle.
It certainly was not part of the grand career plan. But I've had a little bit of a random walk in that respect.
Torarie Durden (MBA 2004): Hi, my name is Torarie Durden, HBS class of 2004. The worst job I ever had was with a small business credit card company run by an enigmatic CEO who was a gigantic control freak, but also always felt he had to be the smartest person in the room. He also used some tactics to drive revenue that made every customer dislike us, and I got to be the recipient of many of their phone calls.
I think that being an empathetic and positive leader became a hallmark of what I wanted to do next. I never wanted to be the person that no one wanted to talk to or no one wanted to interact in the boardroom. And it also let me know that you don't have to be a good person to be a success in business, but it's definitely my preference to be a good person and be successful.
Idette Elizondo (MBA 2004): Idette Elizondo, 2004. In college, to make a little extra money I was assigned a job by my school. And it was in the engineering library. The engineering library was like a little bit far from campus. So it wasn't something you could get back and forth to easily. Basically, they would pack together like a hundred journals in a book and I would have to stack those and file those. Being kind of the efficient person that I am, I would grab like armfuls of them and try to like get the work done because I wanted to get back to … whatever else I needed to plan or get back to class or whatever.
So I ended up getting sick as a result of this job. I didn't know that you could get inflammation between your ribs. So anyway, that was the worst job.
Grace Wade (MBA 2009): My name is Grace Wade, formerly known as Grace Licorice, which is class of 2009, section D. So, I was working at a Fortune 500 company, and I had just started—so this is before my HBS career, so it was right after undergrad—and I had to do a rotational program. And it was a trial by fire, because one of the rotations was at night, so I worked the graveyard shift, and I was a team supervisor in a plant environment, and I am not built to be nocturnal.
It was horrible. I couldn't figure out, was I supposed to eat breakfast? Was I supposed to eat lunch? Was it dinnertime? I fall asleep at work, you know. And then the end of your shift is when most people start for the day. And I had to do like a recap report of what happened during my shift, and it was a disaster.
I was so tired. I was so confused. Fortunately, I was employed there after that rotation was over, but there's a reason why human beings are not nocturnal. I realized that, you know, the stuff I was doing when I transitioned back to another shift on daytime really wasn't that bad. Right? Like, if I could do that, I could do anything. So it built my endurance and tenacity.
William Rauwerdink (MBA 1974): My name is William, but people call me Bill. My last name is Rauwerdink. I'm the class of 74, section D like David. After I graduated from here, I stayed on as a research assistant, and that was the best job I ever had.
But at the end of that, I was offered a chance to work as a special assistant to the chief accountant at the Securities and Exchange Commission in D. C. The chief accountant's name was John. And I said, “John, what do you want me to do?” And he said, “Well, we'll sort of make it up as we go. You're going to be my special assistant.” Oh, okay. So I moved to D. C. And I thought, it sounded spiffy, right? A special assistant to this powerful individual. It was by far the worst job ever. You didn't do anything. The meetings were boring. There was no responsibility.
There was no learning. There was never any opportunity to do anything. I suffered mightily for about six or nine months and I quit. So working for the federal government, at least that job, was the worst job, wasn't even close. Now it could be because I had been a research assistant here, which was my best job, and it could have been the stark contrast between the best job I ever had, to go there, it was absolutely the worst job I'd ever had.
So, that's my worst job, I'm sticking to it, the year was 1975, it's a fact.
Jess Bullitt (MBA 2014): Jess Bullitt, 2014. Right out of college, I worked on a trading floor. [It was] ‘08, so the financial crisis is going on. And everyone was super mean.
I apparently spoke back to one of my superiors and they made me write a five-page paper [about] why talking back was not okay. I was pretty pissed. I found one superior who was somewhat kind and I said “I'm not doing this” and he said “Yeah, just go home.” I came back the next day, and my boss took me into his office and he's like, I think you need to write that paper. So I wrote the paper.
It made me look around me and say, I don't want to be stuck here like all these people so I need some other skills. It's a good story to tell. What the best part of it is [is that] 10 years later I got a message on LinkedIn from the guy who made me write a paper and he said I'm sorry I was such an a-hole to you all those years ago.
Aamir Rehman (MBA 2004): Aamir Rehman, 2004, Section C. Well, the job was great. It was at Boston Consulting Group, but I'll tell you about a project that was quite difficult and challenging. My wife and I had been married for about a year at that time. She was a medical resident, and so her hours were really terrible. And at the time she was doing surgery rotation, which required her to be up and out of the house by 5 a.m. We lived in Manhattan and our client was in Westchester. so I would have to myself leave Manhattan say around 7 a.m. The challenge was that my manager would consistently ask me to do a certain analysis or produce some slides and he would tell me that towards the end of the day and he would say send them to me tonight. The consequence of that is that I would work on that from say 6pm to 9pm. My wife would sleep at 8pm and I would not see her. And it was very difficult and it was very sad. And one day I asked this manager, I said, When do you read the stuff that I send you? And he said, I read it about 8, 8:30 a.m. So I said, how would you feel if I send it to you at 8am rather than 9 p.m.? And without even thinking about it, he said, I'd be absolutely fine with that, makes no difference to me. Made a huge difference, however, to me and to my wife and to our married life. So learned a lot of things from that, mainly to be more explicit in communicating when you need something and also to recognize that some people have different work style, work hours, work needs.
So, you know, by that simple recognition that do it tonight means really do it by 8 a. m. tomorrow, [it] allowed me to wake up at the same time as my wife, send it in at a more comfortable hour, and just make life better for all of us.
Skydeck is the Harvard Business School alumni podcast featuring interviews and insights from across the world of business. It’s produced by the External Relations Department at HBS. Our audio engineer is Craig McDonald.
It is available on Apple, Spotify, and wherever you get your favorite podcasts. And if you could take a moment to rate and review us, we’d be grateful.
For more information, or to find archived episodes, visit alumni.hbs.edu/skydeck.
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