People Are Sharing The Worst Jobs They Had To Do On Work Experience
Work experience in high school is a very strange time. You’re usually too young to even know what you want to do for a career so there’s a high chance you just pick pretty much any workplace and pretend that you want to be there.
For example, I did work experience at Woolies and was told to spend my days walking down the aisles and moving the products to the front of each shelf. I can’t say this activity prepared me for my current career but it definitely made me despise how cold supermarkets are. The freezer section still triggers me.
I’m clearly not the only one who wasted my work experience on meaningless tasks. Journalist Katie Grant asked her followers for examples of “the most clichéd/ridiculous/horrible task you were assigned to” and the replies are hilarious and far too relatable.
What is the most cliched/ridiculous/horrible task you were assigned when you were on work experience? Mine was being sent to pick up the features editors dry cleaning when I was at a major women’s mag – and being *genuinely* excited at the opportunity to “prove myself” 😂😳😬
— Katie Grant (@kt_grant) June 5, 2019
The response was huge so we’ve picked out some of the best examples of employees making the work experience kid do whatever they want.
You can truly make the work experience teen do anything.
At a film production company once I was asked to use a ruler to draw very specifically spaced lines on every page of a new logbook.
— Katie Collins (@katiecollins) June 5, 2019
Though not all work was rewarded.
Removing staples from 300 training booklets because pages 20 and 21 were in the wrong order. Then re-stapling them. Without a staple remover so had to use a nail file. The training session was then cancelled.
— Duncan Lindsay (@DuncanLindsay) June 5, 2019
This needs to be seen to be believed.
Oh, just in case anyone thinks I'm lying just to make myself sound really super cool… (😂) pic.twitter.com/GYhTsOwrif
— James (@jpsilcocks) June 5, 2019
Buying toast is serious business.
I was asked by a fashion editor at a women’s mag to go across the road and buy two slices of toast – one with peanut butter and one with jam but UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES may they be packed together – they had to be wrapped individually. She also made me pay for it. 👀
— Leonie Roderick (@LeonieRoderick) June 5, 2019
I guess the gardener was busy.
I did my work experience in the UK’s smallest theatre but the manager didn’t like me so she made me pull out the weeds and grass at the front of the building…
— Kelly (@kemaha) June 5, 2019
At least they would have gotten a nice tan.
— Katie Grant (@kt_grant) June 5, 2019
This seems wildly unethical but sure.
Picking up a toothbrush and clean knickers for the PR I was interning for as she’d done the walk of shame into work. I was perfectly happy to help (I fear it may have had an impact on what I consider to be professional behaviour, mind…)
— Rebecca Armstrong (@RebeccaJ) June 5, 2019
This gives the idea of ‘cutting shapes’ a whole new vibe.
I remember at 15 being assigned a position at a children’s art party business. The work ended up at the owners house. I was left alone every day in a small shed in the garden cutting out shapes from paper. No work experience. Parents/school took me out and made formal complaints.
— Rebecca Jane (@BeckieJBrown) June 6, 2019
This is important training.
Cleaning toilets, emptying bins and removing cigarette butts from ashtrays, flowerpots etc. That’s how you learn the art gallery business. Obviously… 🤦♀️
— Felicity Taylor (@FizzilT) June 5, 2019
All eyes on you.
👀👀👀
— Katie Grant (@kt_grant) June 5, 2019
Surely they could have done this themselves.
While a teenage intern at a small local paper, a resident complained that the delivery person had tossed her paper into her bushes, and she demanded that someone drive over and retrieve the paper from the bushes and deliver it to her doorstep. I was dispatched to the address.
— Danny Groner (@DannyGroner) June 5, 2019
This is a classic work experience gig.
One of my earliest summer jobs: sticking 100,000 stickers on the back of hovercraft ticket booklets because the wrong info line phone number had been pre-printed on them. That got prehistoric-level old after a few weeks.
— Edwin Hayward🦄🏹🗡️ (@uk_domain_names) June 5, 2019
But this sounds like actual torture.
I had to send out letters to successful applicants for a training scheme at the newspaper that I had been unsuccessful in applying for
— Liam Thorp (@LiamThorpECHO) June 5, 2019
This was certainly…an experience.
On the second day of my internship at a big fashion magazine, the office got broken into and someone stole all the iMacs. I spent all day sweeping up the broken glass and giving police statements, then just had to sit there because no one had machines to work on lol
— Angela Hui (@Angela_Hui) June 5, 2019
I asked the team at Punkee and Junkee if they had any funny stories and this one, from Patrick Lenton, is the absolute best.
“I did work experience at a museum in Sydney, and I was told to go into the dark room and collect a stack of photos of very old pots or whatever to sort, and I’d never heard of dark rooms before, so I walked in and turned on the light, ruining literally six months of painstaking photography work. After that, they decided I was an idiot and just made me play computer games for the rest of the week.”
I can’t say he didn’t deserve to be given such a meaningless task after that massive fuck up.
