That "one" job nobody wants...

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Okay everybody, what's the job/department/task at your workplace everybody hates doing and tries to get out of it if they can?

For me, it's outdoor lawn and garden. Here's why:

• It's pointless shitwork to the extreme. Lots of condensing and expanding and moving stuff around to conceal empty areas or make space for new product coming in. (Corporate fanatically insists that the lawn and garden compound have no empty spaces)
• Lack of product knowledge. My company calls its outdoor lawn and garden employees "Lawn and garden consultants". "Consultant" implies specialized knowledge about some specific thing. When I was picked to go outside, my training consisted of the manager going on the computer training program, skipping to the quiz at the end, putting in all the correct answers, and having me sign off on it. Congratulations Irv, you now know everything there is to know about plants--NOT! And lawn and garden requires a lot of specialized product knowledge to make sales because people ask for specific types of plants, or which plants do best in shade or sun, what fertilizers they should use, which soils they should plant their stuff in..
• Two words: Watering plants. It takes hours upon hours to do correctly, and by the end your shoes and socks are soaked and your feet are freezing because the hose always leaks.
• Because we can't find people inside the store to go outside, we end up hiring a bunch of useless high school kids who treat the job as a paid break to sit around and work on their tans. They've been known to go over to Mickey D's, Burger King or Dairy Queen WHILE STILL ON THE CLOCK, pick up food, bring it back and sit in the tent and eat it. But heaven forbid I should be caught with a can of soda from the vending machine outside--that's for customers only.

Yeah, today the managers were going around asking for volunteers to go outside. I was nice about it. I kept a straight face when I told them no.

[edible_hat]

At my store it seems to be serving customers. We all argue over who gets to hose down the car wash (which can get pretty nasty), restock shelves (move heavy boxes of stock around), fill gas bottles, etc.

[Ad_Astra]

Vacuuming...

The vacuum is constantly broken, you have to tear down shelves just to get to the outlets (of which there are far too few for far too much floor space), and usually this involves picking up the nasty snot covered tissues, chewed on chicken wing bones, toothpicks, gum, and other little bits of gross that our customers leave for us, we're sure, as tokens of love and affection.

[blas]

Dusting the tops of machines.

Although, from a biased view, I'd say training. Well, maybe I'm not alone in that opinion.....not many people apply for training jobs. I'm pretty sure as soon as I demote myself I'll still be training for a good month or so before they'll find a replacement.

[AKWalMartCartGuy]

it's impossible to get sales associates to do carts at my store

the only job I would refuse to do is zoning a department with a lot of little things, It's a big store, they can find someone else to do that and I'll go do something else, but I get hyper trying to move around little things for a long time

I'm not saying I would do other jobs well, if they gave me a cart full of softlines returns I would be lost, and would take forever, but I wouldn't refuse to do it. I may not be happy helping out in a department(other than foods and pets, they were the only one who would actually go help when we had 2 courtesy clerks)

[crazylegs]

Washing the cars and doing the weekly kit checks, its like pulling teeth trying to get those done!

[SubwayGirl]

Everyone hates cleaning the bathrooms. That includes me too!

[Ringtail Z28]

Electronics department. The absolute worst customers come through there. It was the department management put people in that they wanted to rid of, hoping that they would quit. The overwhelming majority of employee breakdowns happen there. Carts was a blessing by comparison.

[iviles]

At my job its working. Trust me we have some pro's that do everything in their power to get out of it.

[Knightmare]

Entering the chlorine contact chamber, which is an enclosed space full of poisonous gas. It's also hot, humid, wet and cramped.
Or going down into an empty aerbay during the summer. The walls are painted with a black epoxy which reflects the sun and heat back to you, you are 20 feet down and only have a ladder to get back up should anything happen.

[Bandit]

From a couple of jobs ago - see the name of a couple of the worst sales critters on a work order. You see them, you immediately reach for the aspirin and the beer.

B

[tropicsgoddess]

When I had my retail gig in Winter 2007 the one department people said sucked eggs was the clothing department. Mainly because we had to stay so late compared to the other departments and close and it was always a disaster area within minutes after somebody organized the area.

[Enigma]

At my store it has to be the self-checks. Everyone hates it because it basically consists of you standing there for two hours, bored out of your mind- and occasionally being yelled at by a customer because of a machine error, or their own stupidity.

For me personally, it's cashiering. I am a cashier, but I've been trained in all the front end duties, and I usually end up working more at the service desk, which I love!

[powerboy]

it's impossible to get sales associates to do carts at my store

How it was when I was a cart pushier for Wal Mart. No one wanted to help out, but who would they try to get to help them out.

Where I work now, it would have to be cleaning out the units, where people left their stuff in. We had 15 units like that. I finally got it taken down to 6 units. The largest yet. And what is bad is that one of the owners does not want us to stay out with the people, to watch and make sure they take all the crap. Also, it was like that because none of us wanted to do it. So I finally decided to just clean them. My direct boss has a bullet cart from Walmart.

Hey Walmart left it out in the parking lot. So he took it. Also they treated him wrongfully. He was passing out fliers for the storage, and they told him that he had to stop. But they let everyone try to sale things from food to CD's of the local band. I complained to a manager about it, and he said there was nothing that he could do about them. How about telling them to stop.

[Peppergirl]

When I was in retail, I used to volunteer for any shit-work that involved getting away from interracting with the customers.