I love this thread, I get sad when there are no stories for a while. I've been sitting on an FU story from my college days, waiting for a lull in the thread and some boredom at work. If you're short on time, just read the * paragraph.
I had a string of shitty jobs over about 5 yrs in hs/college to pay for school. These included overnight freight/stocking at Home Depot, valet at fancy resort, "waiter" at old folks' home dining room, waiter/bartender at Buffalo Wild Wings, delivery driver for a shady advertising company, assembling heavy duty truck/train locks, appliance delivery/receiving warehouse. Time in each varied from a few days to >1 yr. Typically, I would work during the summer (usually two jobs), and then just quit when it was convenient for me or I couldn't swing the loaded schedule anymore with 15/18 hours of school. Often, I would drive to job 2 (change clothes in the car) after a full day of job 1. I was fired twice from a second job...because the first was going well and Idgaf about the second anymore, and just started sucking at it enough to be fired. I guess that's a mini FU in itself.
Funny side story #1: I was once pulled over; I was speeding to get to the below job on time after school. I was in the middle of changing clothes and I didn't have pants on when the officer got to my window. He was confused but believed my true story, as we were right next to the factory where I worked. Then he looked at my license and asked..."is today your bday?" It was literally my bday, and he let me off with a warning. Thanks cop, wherever you are.
The last of these jobs was at a huge factory that manufactured aluminum parts for clients. Parts were anywhere from huge 100-foot long truck accessories (the railing with holes for tie-down straps) to parts the size of a Rubik's cube. The factory was the size of a several football fields and it was dirty, smelly, and f****** hot. My dept was the CNC lathe machine section, google if necessary. Basically, machines the size of a car/truck would use computer formulas to drill and cut metal pieces. So, you had to know some basic geometry and computer language to know what you're doing, so it was the highest paid and most...white dept of the factory. Sorry, but Idk a more PC way to say that. Even though it was the most skilled, it was still dirty with grime and oil to lube drills, and dangerous. I knew a few guys who didn't have ten fingers from decades of this type of work. One had two half-fingers. I refer to this employer as the Nine Finger Factory, or 9FF. As you can assume, many guys were terrible with money. Several went to the check cashing place every payday for money and paid for literally everything with cash...ya know, can't trust banks or online accounts for my money.
Funny side story #2: I made it out with all ten fingers, but did have one scare. I was trying to loosen a drill bit from its holder. My hand slipped and I cut my wrist on the drill bit. You could see the bone on the side of my wrist, where there's just bone, no muscle. It actually didn't bleed a lot and I was fine. I still have an inch-long scar, but I'm pretty hairy so it's hard to see.
Funny side story #3: Alcoholic boss came in to work wasted once, stumbling and fell asleep. Fired.
*I took the job at 9FF in the beginning of my last summer of school, maybe mid-May. I was on the second shift, 2:30-11:00. Work was monotonous, dirty, and hot, all to be expected. After setting up your machine and getting help to fine tune the measurements, work was as follows... Put part in. Tighten clamps. Press go. Machine drills holes. Loosen clamps. Take old part out. One cycle lasted anywhere from 30 seconds to 5 minutes. I also took two summer classes so I could graduate on time the next May, classes were from about 8:00-12:00. Other than the job inherently sucking but otherwise paying ok, they would change the schedule constantly, and you had no input on your hours. Lot of work this month? The sched is now 6-6. They would tell us this on Friday, for the next Monday. Also on Fridays they would tell us whether we had to work Saturday. Impossible to make any weekend plans for this reason. I would constantly fall asleep in class in the mornings. The profs I had that summer must have known (small classes) but gave me good grades anyway. I was seriously afraid of falling asleep driving home after work. I constantly felt s***-faced drunk, kinda like a zombie. I held on to the job going into the school year knowing I wouldn't keep at it much longer with their BS. I went to grandboss one day telling him I wasn't going to do a variable schedule anymore. He acted like it was a big deal but said ok in the end, I guess we were busy at the time. Around then I did the math of how much I needed to pay off the next and final year of school and decided that after I had that much, I wouldn't work a sched that wasn't convenient for me and school. One (middle of the week?) day found out we were going back to the 6-6 sched. So, I told grandboss I wouldn't come in the next Monday at 6, said I could work the normal hours. He said no, I'm not special, etc. I said ok, Friday is my last day. He said ok but also looked pretty smug, maybe he thought I was bluffing. Guys I worked with didn't care much either for the same reason. Friday I had pizza delivered to work to throw myself a party, knowing it would be the last shitty manual labor job I ever had. That weekend, I went with the gf to her fam's lakehouse and celebrated with lake days and drinking.
Funny side story #4: The low point during this job was when I was talking to a friend and started to nod off and fall asleep mid-conversation when she was talking.
The job sucked but helped me to appreciate $ and be grateful for my education and white-collar job. I didn't take any loans during my last 2 years of school due to the above work and learning my lessons of fed student loans the previous 2 years. I don't have much sympathy for those with huge 6-figure school loan debt because I assume there's no way they were working as much as possible to help pay for school. I keep a few small parts from the factory around my apt and desk at work to remind myself that I have it pretty good. For anyone wondering, I did have enough to pay for school and haven't done a day of a manual labor job since. I drive past 9FF multiple times a week and smile.