Areala Asks: Creepiest Job Ever? (20160331)

[Areala]

Beloved denizens of Retromags-land, your Warrior Nun once again draws you together into random discussion. This week, the red-headed one wishes to know:

"What is the creepiest job you've ever had?"

Alternately, if you've lived a life of relative luxury such that you've never taken freaky or weird employment merely because you were young and needed the money, what job would you absolutely never apply for, regardless of pay or benefits because it's just too creepy to contemplate?

This is your own personal definition of 'creepy', by the way, so if you've always been weirded out by something otherwise ordinary (clowns, for instance, or elevators), that's totally fine. That said, nobody's going to argue with 'night watchman at the old city morgue' either...at least, I'm certainly not going to.

You've got one week to satisfy my morbid curiosity, then we move on to something else!

*huggles*
Areala

[marktrade]

I was a janitor for my old Catholic school and church. Absolutely that place was creepy when I was there all alone in the middle of the night.

It was also pretty fun.

[Areala]

I was a janitor for my old Catholic school and church. Absolutely that place was creepy when I was there all alone in the middle of the night.

It was also pretty fun.

God, what is it about schools that make them so freaking creepy at night? We did a lock-in back when I was in 8th grade, and walking down the hall to go to the bathroom was just...eerie...

*huggles*

Areala

[kitsunebi]

God, what is it about schools that make them so freaking creepy at night? We did a lock-in back when I was in 8th grade, and walking down the hall to go to the bathroom was just...eerie...

I won't go into the details of whys and whatnot, but last year I made a short film which was a sort of ghost-hunting type of video at one of the schools I work at. I shot it alone at night with all the lights off using a night vision camera with IR light. My "ghost" was just a dummy wearing a Sadako wig and costume which I would "accidentally" stumble across. Obviously, I knew it was there, but every time I would be away from it working on a different shot or leave the room, I'd forget about it just long enough for it to scare the crap out of me when I saw it again out of the corner of my eye.

As for jobs, I've had lots! Oh wait, you said creepy, not crappy.

[te72]

About the closest thing I can think of to creepy, always seemed to involve night shifts. I worked at Blockbuster for a few years, and when we would do inventory, we had our scan guns connected via a LONG cord back to the computer. Every time you scanned something, you heard, "BEEP," into headphones that you were wearing. Well, being as busy a store as we were, we had oh, about... 40,000 items to scan in a night. Needless to say, the beeping became a torturous sound, and would deprive one of sleep. For days afterward, you would begin to question your own sanity, eventually lashing out at a customer whose sneeze just happened to sound a bit like a "beep."

It wasn't their fault, but it is what tends to happen with those first jobs. But hey, free rentals, woohoo!

I guess there was that one time when I was on the freight team at Home Depot, the power went out. We're not a big city by any means, and when the power goes out, you're left with what little star and moon light there is. However, inside a building with foot thick concrete walls, and nearly no windows to speak of, it is DARK. With only the spaced out flash of the alert light on the lift machine I operated to provide any sense of spatial awareness in such a large building, my imagination may have gotten the best of me.

Worst one though, was for a job that I fortunately DIDN'T take. I was getting a drink at the gas station that a friend's mom worked at. Buddy of mine and myself are in the store with the night clerk, and this one guy comes stumbling toward the store. Something just felt... off... about this guy. Strange guy shuffles in, finds his way to the coffee machine, and grabs a cup. He then proceeds to fill said cup with sugar packets. Next, he begins to eat the sugar packets. Note, he is not opening them and eating the contents of said packets, he's just eating them, paper and all.

Ok, so that's a bit odd, sure, but all the while, this guy is muttering to himself about how there are spiders everywhere. I can't say I recall everything he was saying, it were the utters of a madman, clearly. Eventually the clerk gets the guy to leave, but man... it was a tense few moments. It was then that I decided that the Clerks life was not for me.

[MisterXiado]

Computer repair at a brick and mortar. Boss was a goddamn moron who outright refused to pay employees so she could buy literal crates of adult DVDs. Paying for porn proved her stupidity well enough. The things I had to put up with. Saw her charge customers for new hardware when all I did was re-solder loose components, or epoxy and solder broken boards. Even had the fun of having the FBI hang up on me when I found ████████ on a customer's computer. The only good thing I got out of that mess was a Commodore 64 power supply as a gift, from an associate of the who came by, amazed that there were people who could carry on a conversation without looking all over the ceiling and scratching their arms constantly. I don't just mean at the store, I mean, on the planet.

[kitsunebi]

The FBI has censored your post. Better watch your back.

[Areala]

The creepiest job I've held so far was working third (overnight) shift at a 24-hour copy shop a few times during the summer months of college. This didn't happen very often, as it wasn't the shift I was hired for, but on occasion there would be problems where the third-shift co-worker would go on vacation or call in sick, and I did fill in from time to time because the shift differential meant I made a buck more per hour working 10pm - 6am than I did working my normal 3pm - 11pm shift.

College towns are weird creatures: during the school year, everything is packed, nothing ever slows down, and it seems like the place never actually sleeps. This is doubly true if you're talking about my college town, which was home to the #1 party school in the nation in the mid-90s. But when the summer arrived, most of the eighteen thousand students that called Ball State home for nine months out of the year tended to melt back into whatever area of the country they called home, and Muncie lost basically 1/3rd of its population overnight. And the 24-hour copy shop, which was packed to the gills with people using the computers, copying essays, creating portfolios, updating their resumes and CVs, or working up new lesson plans, turned into a graveyard.

The people who came into that copy shop on third shift during the summer months were just plain weird. We had a bathrobe-clad woman (that was literally all she had on besides her flip-flops, and I know this because she felt the need to share) who walked there at around 2:30 in the morning to copy pictures out of an old photo album. The pair of goths who looked like they were on break from a Vampire: The Masquerade LARP coming in to enlarge pictures of gravestones they took at one of the local cemeteries. Every so often, you'd get a clearly-frazzled corporate drone trying to put the finishing touches on some massive report that was due at 9am the next morning and upon which his very job hung in the balance. I didn't really mind those types though--they might have been weird, but at least they were working and mostly left me alone except when a paper tray needed to be refilled, or they needed something done on the colour copiers, because we didn't have those in the self-serve area.

The ones I hated were the people who were clearly bored and/or lonely, and had no place to go, so they decided to creep into the only place that was open at 2:30 in the morning after the bars had closed down and talk to the girl behind the counter. 95% of the time, there were two people on overnights, but if one of you was on break in the back, or had left the store for lunch, there'd only be one employee behind the counter, and invariably, that's when the whack jobs would walk in. Thankfully we also had a conference room often used by the police when they were doing paperwork or other stuff because we offered free coffee to them. That tended to keep out the unsavoury sort, and fortunately nothing happened while I was there...although a year after I quit, one third shift co-worker got a gun stuck in his face while two thugs cleaned out the register. Kinda dumb to commit that kind of a felony when there were security cameras all over the place, the safe was time-locked, and the register never held more than $80 at the time, with most of that in $1s and coins, but nobody ever said criminals were smart. Police rounded them up later that night.

I'm honestly not sure what possessed me to agree to those periodic overnight shifts (other than the afore-mentioned bump in pay rate), but there's no way in hell I'd work one now. Thankfully, the bookstore where I work isn't Mr. Penumbra's, and is not open 24 hours.

*huggles*
Areala

[twiztor]

i'm really sorry that i can't add more to this topic, but i've worked almost exclusively retail until recently.

that being said, the "creepiest" job i ever did for money (cue the porn music with that quote) was to help set up a stage and some stuff for the county fair one summer night. i was working thru a temp agency and this was literally the first job they offered me. i was quite afraid that i might run into a bunch of carnies or something (or worse, become one!) but most of the people there were just normal folks. i'm a bit saddened that this isn't a better story.

[Sean697]

I guess fast food is the creepiest job. I worked at Jack in the Box in High School. And it's a job where you see customers from all walks of life. As well as weird co workers. I have 101 Wierd stories from that job. Like the customer who came in claiming his didn't get the right change. My manager counted the drawer even and told him he was sorry but everything was correct, so they guy gets mad and jumps over the counter and chases him upstairs. Boy my manager ran quick. Wierd stoned and drunk people on the drive thru late hours of the night. Walking I the women's bathroom to clean after knocking and seeing a local prostitute naked scrubbing down her nether regions in the bathroom sink. Same lady a few nights before comes up and orders food wearing a fishnet top with nothing underneath, full breaststroke showing. People trying to pass counterweight money. A homeless dude who would come every day and hang out for an hour or two before he would get kicked out. He would sleep between the wall of our parking lot and the record store next door. One day he came in in a full body cast because he got beat up at the bowling alley. Had a coworker who was saving up for a sex change and he would tell me about his past life regressions. He was Eva Braun on one past life. He channeled a past life for me at work life one time to prove it and he turned all red and looked angry and then told me he was some kind of lizard creature filled with rage right before a volcano killed him. Had a lot of loser adult people working there who never did nothing with their lives. I was working the drive thru when I literally heard over the speaker the lady ordering get held up by some dude with a knife as she was screaming for someone to call the police. I had a girlfriend there at one point and sometimes we'd sneak upstairs to the supply attic and get it on. . In the mornings the place was filled to the brim with retirees and old people. They would always order their free senior coffe and some cheap breakfast item. They'd read their papers and play chess and card games and then as if by magic, they'd all disappear before 7 AM when normal working people started coming in. One guy would make me laugh. He'd always say in a deep voice is like a JUMBO JACK and a senior coffee. Eventually he'd just look at me and I'd take his order without him saying anything, although the first time he tried that I was waiting for him to say his senior coffe and he just stared at me till I rang it up. I had E-40 come through our drive thru a few times and there would always be weed smoke coming out the windows. I'd see people get I. Crazy arguments I our lobby. Friday's nights you'd see teenagers come in and fights break out where people would throw chairs. I'd listen to stories from on of our managers who seemed like he was straight from the movie Goodfellas tell stories about his youth in Jersey. We would always ask if he used to be a mobster but he'd never give you a straight answer. I'd have customers come in and order 30.00 worth of food and dump a pile of change on the table including super old penny rolls. Man and that's on;y the tip of the iceberg. Weird job.

[te72]

Sean, I sometimes think those youth jobs that we have are some of the most interesting, for all the reasons you point out and more. Working the video store was definitely a mixed bag of experiences. Ever seen someone get arrested because you caught them stealing an ice cream bar... on their birthday?

Turns out the dude was a bit of a serial thief, and had warrants out for his arrest, and an ice cream bar was the one that finally got him hauled off. We had a bit of a laugh with that one.

[miketheratguy]

Hmm. I've been lucky and have never really had a "creepy" job before. The worst I can think of is when I did a second stint at Blockbuster in 2007, and my manager was a short, pudgy Hispanic guy named Lalo. He was friendly, but he was.....too friendly when it came to the attractive ladies. Not outright sexual harassment or anything like that, but overly affectionate with his words. He'd say something like "hello, what can I do for you beautiful?" or "I can absolutely look that up for you, come over to this register gorgeous".

He did it constantly and it really irked me. What probably irked me more than anything is that most of the women seemed unbothered by this, in fact I'd reckon that several of them felt flattered. Is it really that easy to arbitrarily flatter someone by making throwaway comments about their physical appearance? Either way it was something that we, the cogs, were not supposed to do (and something that I think no register jockey should do period) so it was uncomfortable having a manager who did it.

[kitsunebi]

Not outright sexual harassment or anything like that,

I think a lot of women I know would disagree with that.

[lalilulelo]

this is a really fun topic to read guys, too bad i can't contribute, only had crappy job and nothing crappy...yet

[Areala]

this is a really fun topic to read guys, too bad i can't contribute, only had crappy job and nothing crappy...yet

Thank you, Lalilulelo! Even if you've never had a creepy job, you can write about a job that is too strange or weird for you to consider doing.

I pose a different question every week, so there will be a new one posted here in another couple of days. I hope to see you there!

*huggles*

Areala

[miketheratguy]

I think a lot of women I know would disagree with that.

Good. That's how it should be. These girls were often more flattered than anything. "Oh, what a sweet guy". "What a nice personality".

Oh, okay. So I guess assessing every female customer's fuckability while they're trying to walk out of there with a copy of The Constant Gardener or some shit registers as "sweet" now.

[te72]

Mike, I think it's just a cultural thing bud. The most suave of fellows I've ever known were ALL Latino. Having lived in Arizona for about 11 years, I saw it on a regular basis.

You'd be surprised what "throwaway" compliments can do to brighten a person's day sometimes, even if it comes across as creepy to you.