Most pointless job you've ever been given

[Becks]

Being sent to "help" out in the deli when there were already more employees than slicers.

Yeah.

[Gerrinson]

Being forced to come to work during a shut down to lack of orders. The first few days weren't bad, when we all ran around cleaning the machines. But after a week of cleaning, the mill was CLEAN. Almost everyone was then assigned to go around and repaint anything that needed a new coat of paint. Except for me. My day 8 assignment, verbatim: "Clean everything that was cleaned yesterday."

[Sylvia727]

Clean my work area. For the second time in five minutes. Because I used the cleaner that actually worked instead of the brand name my manager had a hard-on for. My brand? Left the station clean and sparkly-shiny. His brand? Left streaks and dulled the shine. And yes, I later confirmed with both of the other managers that the brand I used was perfectly fine.

Every time after that when he asked what brand I used, I told him that it was his. He remarked that he could tell, so it was so much cleaner than the other. That still leaves a sour taste in my mouth because up until that point I thought he was a going to be a good manager.

[Zombi]

Marking 300 exam papers that have already been marked by 3 other people.

It's boring and tedious, but hey, it's £10 per hour with no deadline.

[Bright_Star]

Mowing grass in October when it's 40 degrees outside & it's windy & you're wearing a coat. Figure that one out.

[HawaiianShirts]

3rd Most Pointless Job for HawaiianShirts:
Create a PowerPoint presentation on manager's behalf for him to submit to District regarding our 4th Quarter revenue reports. Doesn't sound so pointless, right? Actually sounds fairly prestigious, right. I did it because the manager said he didn't know anything about PowerPoint and would give me gift certificates to a local restaurant in addition to my wage if I did it. He had all the numbers printed up for me, and District had sent him a PowerPoint TEMPLATE in which to enter them.
Click.
Type Numbers.
Click.
Type Numbers.
Click.
Type Numbers.
Save.
Done.

2nd Most Pointless Job for HawaiianShirts:
Deliver papers to a professor on the opposite end of the university campus from the office in which I worked. Professor was not in, and the envelope was too big to stuff under the door. I returned to my supervisor to report this and was told, "Well, they're really important papers, and the professor needs them ASAP. Just wait by his door." So I returned to the professor's office and waited there... for two hours... until he finally showed up. I got paid to sit on the floor in the hallway, guarding a manila envelope, for two hours. I must have read that department's bulletin board 50 times.

THE Most Pointless Job for HawaiianShirts:
Snake Hunter. No joke.
One day in the pizza shop (where I worked during high school), someone discovered a water snake (dark green, about two feet long, skinny, not poisonous, actually very timid, might have made a good pet) in the office, which is where we kept stacks of pre-folded pizza boxes. I think it was a backfired joke the boss's son tried to pull. But one of the kitchen girls found the snake and panicked, so, since deliveries were few and far between that night, the MOD put me on snake duty. I was supposed to search every shelf and corner to make sure we "didn't have an infestation of the nasty things." She even had me check in the coolers--not just the walk-in cooler, but even the big chest freezers... for snakes.
Didn't find any.

[Ringtail Z28]

My current job is the most pointless job I ever had. Eight tedious, uninteresting, unchallenging, boring hours to do a mere fifteen minutes worth of work. Too bad it's also the highest paying job I've ever had.

[JLRodgers]

Most pointless job was something given for me to do once "dust the plywood on the steel (that merchandise was on" -- the same day we were replacing it, and yes, they meant dust it before it was replaced not dust the new (I asked, then ignored, then dusted the new instead as I figured the idiot boss told me the wrong thing).

[Kogarashi]

Hawaiian Shirts reminded me of this one.

One other pointless job I had was counting heads in various rooms on campus. A list of rooms in three separate buildings, with a line to write the headcount on. I was supposed to walk through these three buildings once an hour for three hours, so the University could keep track of how much the various rooms on campus were being used.

Most interesting part of the job: peering into a lecture hall twice during the course of a single class (1.5 hour lecture) and having the teacher look at me exasperatedly when all I was doing was standing there counting students in the room.

Best part of the job: finishing the count each hour before the hour was actually over, and thus being able to sit for a bit and play games on my phone.

[Zombi]

One other pointless job I had was counting heads in various rooms on campus. A list of rooms in three separate buildings, with a line to write the headcount on. I was supposed to walk through these three buildings once an hour for three hours, so the University could keep track of how much the various rooms on campus were being used.

LOL, I did the same thing at the start of the year. Only for the ESOL department, though, not the whole college (thank goodness!), which is about 7 rooms.

[pyxee]

1) Mop my entire store at 1pm in the afternoon. Yeah the lunch rush is gone, but there are still far too many people about to get it clean.
2) Cigarette counts. I despise these with a passion. These are too easy to fudge when not done properly. My store has them counted before the end of the shift, while still selling cigs in the middle of the count. We also count every single pack of cigs in the store (yes all 3000 something of them.) It is impossible to get an accurate count while still selling them during the count, and is nothing more than a huge waist of time.
3) Pricing every single can, bottle, bar of candy in the entire fracking store. This is nothing more than a huge waist of employee hours, not to mention an inventory nightmare. It is beyond my why they don't just set up keys for candy, king candy. and a sub menu for Pepsi, Coke and RC. We only use half of the stupid old arse register anyways it isn't like they don't have the space.
4) Having to keep standing at the register to catch every single customer as soon as they get within 10 foot of the register, even when the floor is disgusting, the soda fountain empty of cups, and no TP in the restroom.
5) Every person working in the store has to greet every single customer immediately upon entering the store, regardless of what you are doing at the time. It really boils my blood to have to stop mid transaction with a paying customer, to greet some douch who comes in just to use the restroom.
6)No matter where I am in the store, I must be aware of what happed at the register at ALL times. ESP is a required part of my job apparently. If the cashier at the register get more than two people in line I MUST go help her, never mind that by the time I get there and log into the register, the customers will be done, I will still get talked to.


On the opposite end of the spectrum is all the things we aren't allowed to do (sometimes even know), that is utterly pointless. The are all things the MANAGER has told me is policy. Some of this is supposedly written down in some phantom policy book that I have never seen.
1) Talk about the daily news with customers.....Why?........So we don't get sued because we told them before they could read about it, or hear it in the news. This is also why we can't have music.....they don't want sued.
2) Throw trash away while you have a customer. Yeah even if they hand you something, you must set it on the counter until you no longer have any customers before you are allowed to throw away the trash....no matter how much gets piled. ........Because customers come first.
3) We are not allowed to know the average number of customers that come into the store......Why?.......I was informed they don't give that out, but that I could be sure they are very busy.....and in no uncertain terms they WERE busier than ANYPLACE else that I may have worked. (Never mind the assistant who told me this had no clue where else I have worked.)
4) See #4 above.

Sorry for the ranty thread jack, I needed to get that off my chest. I have been meaning to make a thread about this cluster F@#k of a gas station, but I have no idea where to put it, or if anyone would be interested in reading about it.

[RayvenQ]

Peel and slice a 8KG bag of carrots, all of them, on my own, then I had to go over every slice again because the head chef wasn't happy with how I'd cut them.

My hands, knife and clothes were orange by the time I'd finished.

The thing was though, there was NO way we needed all of them and by the time we had half gone we'd closed.

[boringscreenname]

One night one of our water levels that we monitor was off. So in an attempt to change the water levels,our boss had everyone go to the bathrooms, turn on all the faucets and flush the toilets for half an hour straight.

[AdminAssistant]

Three words: Rearrange Supply Room

organizing used binders, folder, dividers so they can be re-used. Even though the professors will ALWAYS demand the new stuff.

Sharpening pencils to put in the faculty eval packs. Especially since that's supposed to be Dumb Twit's job.

[Ironclad Alibi]

In my first job, I spend an afternoon trying to get a can of "taint" from the supply shop.