The most disgusting job ever. ( for me at least)

I was hired as a temp to work in the MIS department for a large Mexican restaurant chain. I was working at the help desk, answering calls, repairing computers, installing software, running reports etc... all pretty mundane stuff. I liked the job. It was air conditioned, I got to mess with computers and everyone was pretty cool.

We had an entire restaurant back office setup in my office where we could learn to troubleshoot and repair any problem. Once I became familiar with everything I was put on "field duty"

Being on call with a pager, driving out to our locations and fixing their stuff didn't seem so bad at first. But soon I found out what was really behind the kitchen door...

The dress code for my department was dress slacks, button down dress shirt and nice leather shoes. I soon found out that these clothes were not meant for crawling under greasy slimy counters and cash registers. I ditched the monkey suit and wore jeans and a T shirt whenever called upon to crawl through shit.. which was every day.

Communicating with the folks at the store location was hilarious at best and aneurysm inducing at worst. An assistant manager called me up me up at 3am waking me out of a dead sleep because his back office computer wasn't working.

I went through the whole spiel, is it plugged in? "jehsss.." would be the reply. Is the monitor screen turned on? "jehsss.." would be the reply. On through the list everything checked out.

I got dressed and in my truck at 3:30 in the AM, drive to the gang banger part of town , walk into the back office and there was no computer on the desk. Nearly ballistic at this point, I asked Jose or whatever the hell his name was where his frigging computer went.

"I donno" he replied. The question just begged to be asked. How could you go through 30 min of troubleshooting with me over the phone if you didn't have a goddamn computer?

He said..."I was doing all that stuff you told me to the cash register"

It was all I could do to not dunk this guys head in the fryer and make him bob for tortilla chips.

Did I mention these restaurants were dirty?

Really really dirty...and smelly...and infested with vermin.

Up above the steam counter where they keep the trays of hot food and prepare the plates is a box with numbered buttons that the food server presses whenever they complete an order which takes the order off the screen and prints a ticket.

Electronics and hot steam are not a good combination, so I would have to replace these boxes every so often. When working on these things, I would cover up the food with trays so I wouldn't accidentally drop a screw or a circuit board into the carne guisada. (spicy Beef stew)

Just as I was opening up one of these boxes, one of the line workers moved my tray covering the refried beans so she could fill an order. I yelled for her to stop just as the front of the box came off in my hand and about 15 brown cockroaches and their feces did a syncronized swan dive right into the beans.

She saw it happen. I yelled for her to stop..."no hablo" was her reply. I told her "La cucaracha in el friggin frijoles " She ignored me and continued scooping the beans into tortillas. GRRRR!

It was all I could do not to vomit into the enchiladas... not that anyone would have cared or noticed... I told the manager on duty what happened and he just looked at me with a blank stare. nice....

I was always finding rats everywhere, under the registers, in the computer cabinets, in the food storage but nothing prepared me for working on cables above the ceiling.

It was a normal drop ceiling with those big acoustic tiles you see everywhere. I got up on a step ladder with tools and a flashlight in hand and lifted the ceiling panel.

It was night of the living dead only with rats. Rat shit rained down on me after moving the tile. Looking around, there were hundreds if not thousands of dead, half dead and many very much alive rodents. The shithead manager had put those big sticky paper traps up there. One rat would walk across the paper, get stuck, then the next rat would walk over to see what was up and get stuck himself. The rats would then get bored and hungry and eat each other.

I basically said "screw it. let them fire me" and I went home sick, which wasn't too far from the truth. It was unfortunate that my asshole boss had to go out there in my stead. (tee hee)

Let me tell you about my boss, Ever see office space? Yeah. Uh, did you get that memo?

My boss was about the biggest retard I have ever met. I'll call him Brad. He was a 35ish white guy without a clue. This guy was clueless.. sans-clue. His office was about 20 steps away from mine. He would send daily department memos to me. This was normal. I would read the memo and do what it said or commit it to memory. About 15 minutes later "Bradd" would walk into my office with his memo hot off the laser printer and place it in front of me.

He would say to me..."hammer, here is that memo I emailed you 15 minutes ago"

I couldn't resist... "uhh Brad? why do we have Email? So you can send me your memos from 30 feet down the hall right?" Bradd looked at me dumbfounded with his head cocked to the side.

"Wouldn't it be easier if you just printed your memos out of your word processor, made copies and handed them out to everyone like you do anyway and just skip the Email thing"

"Well, I want to make sure you get my memos" was Bradd's reply.

Sigh...

The Corporate office was not without disgusting incidents.

One Saturday, the cleaning staff urinated in all the restroom soap dispensers. I had to convince several people that they were washing their hands in piss before anyone would take action. Duh! no lather...smells like pee, not soap..isn't the whole point of washing your hands after peeing is to not get more pee on your hands?

There are several more stories from this particular job...to be continued