A desolate plateau

June 7, 1998 - November 18, 2005, inclusive.

I've been trying to recall my dullest experience, and I think I just created it by doing so.

I know for a fact that it is possible to pick up the phone, call someone, and say exactly the same thing more than 180 times in a day. That would be the most stupefyingly boring experience I have ever known.

This thread?




I keed!

A seasonal job proofreading taxes. . this was, like 1969-70, hence no computers.

I started smoking and coffee then. . .the smoking went away. .the coffee didn't.

Well, there was the time a couple weeks ago when we went to visit my husband's grandmother. It started with her saying, "I found out my third cousin was dead last night. It was on c-span," and ended with her reading us inspirational poetry. *sigh*

Hmm, yeah telemarketing was pretty dull. As was working to stock shelves at target.

(scarabic, that's a great story.)

Hmm. Well one of them would have to be working the graveyard shift at a bakery, making muffins. Yep. Scoop out 150 dozen muffins, bake, remove from pans, pack. All night. Usually alone. I didn't eat a muffin for years after that.

(and scarabic, you are one seriously talented writer. Thanks for pointing us to that story.)

One kinda word: webinar

Oh, yeah, and that job got considerably less dull when they hired a psychotic 'helper' who was no help at all and, when he actually showed up, displayed an inordinate fondness for knives and related harrowing first-person tales of violence and animal torture. They refused to fire him. I quit.

Gotcha all beat:

Traffic flagging. Out in the sticks. Perhaps a dozen cars in a day. No relief. Two solid weeks.

God, that was dull.

Sweeping construction debris out of hot, hot incomplete houses. And being told, alternately, that I either worked too slow, or that my work was too shoddy.

I once had to wait at court for hours with a client who was one of the most mean-spirited naggy bitches I ever represented. She was a liar too, because when I saw her face-to-face she couldn't hide the pregnancy fathered by the new boyfriend, both of which she'd denied the existence of for months.

When you attend court as part of your job, you get to know people, so a lot of the boredom of waiting is taken away by yakking with your mates. One of my best friends was, in fact, representing this client's ex-husband, so I thought the 3 hours we had to kill would be spent in me and my friend going off for coffee and a girlie natter in the lawyer's Robing Room while the client went off to the cafe.

But the client was having none of it, she refused to allow me to talk to the 'other side' because she thought I was trying to stitch her up and come to a deal behind her back. (To be honest, I didn't care enough to be bothered about what happened to her.)

So I had to sit in this 6 x 8 'conference room' with her for the duration, while she rehashed every single resentment she'd ever had against her ex-husband (who I thought had had a very lucky escape).

Geez essejan that sounds positively torturous.

Mine was field surveying 400 identical enlisted quarters townhouses in blistering heat and humidity in the summer of '92ish. 5 meaningless weeks of my life I'll never get back.

These things were at least 50 years old, they were all exactly alike, and the gubmint was using the money it was granted for the year on things like downspout and handrailing repair. If they didn't use the money they would get a lesser amount the following year.

Our contract required that we go into every single one. It sucked sucked sucked.

stocktaking a hardware store. We had to count individual screws, nails, etc. Gah.

Right out of college I took a job as a security guard. My first assignment was to sit in the lobby of a building in downtown Rochester from 11 PM to 7 AM. I was locked in. There were no other responsibilities, none. No rounds, just sit there in a chair until morning. There was also no phone, so I had to go out to a pay phone on the street to call the security company to see if there was anything I had to do at 7 other than unlock the door and leave. There wasn't.

At first I was very conscientious and stayed up all night. But it soon dawned on me that it just didn't matter and for the remaining weeks I just slept.

I worked at a plastic factory pulling fresh laundry baskets out of an injection molder. One every fifteen seconds or so, stack, push the buttons, open the door, pull out the basket, sweep inside for sprue and excess plastic, close the door, rinse, lather, repeat. The only relief from this drudgery came when I'd spin a dial here, or leave a door open there, and the injector would get plugged with a cork of hard plastic. Wait a moment, and splat! The backed-up plastic would shoot out the sides and an engineer would come running, screaming at the top of his lungs, and I'd go have a few cigarettes and a couple Carlsbergs over the next hour or so while they fixed the mess.

Also I worked in a toy factory, that was even duller, I went crazy there every day, I don't know if I want to think about it this morning.

Usually my dullest experiences involve going someplace with someone I do know to visit people that person knows but who I don't know, or don't know well, and it is invariably excruciating. Visits to in-laws are a subset of this category.

I was assigned to a water delivery company ("Oh, Culligan Man!") for one of my temp assignments. It was data entry (entering the daily invoices - hundreds of them). I didn't know it was possible, but I'd doze off as I was working on them. I don't know how, but I never fucked up.

I worked in the stock room of a company that made electronics for a couple of summers.

A not insignificant part of this job was counting out specific quantities of resistors, capacitors, etc.

Oh craps! I just realized, there's a department lunch today at some crappy buffett restaunt. I may need to change my answer this afternoon.