Where Is The Worst Place You Worked?

[FlyBoeingJets]

deleted

 

[FlyBoeingJets]

I still plan to go back to AA someday. And I will just be happy to finally be there when I do. Whether I make a zillion dollars or not, it still sounds like a great job.

Wanna know a really crappy job? Line IP in the T-37 for 5 years. After that, nothing seems too bad.

I hear you. T-37 IP was the best job I ever had. But it was all consuming and I wouldn't be married or know my children if I had done it any longer. Learned more in that tour than in any other job.

Get your military retirement then go back to AA and enjoy it.

 

[BobbyBiplane]

Flying for Naomi Nierenberg out of PrincetonAirport- 39N. She treated us CFI's like dogs. Had to even pick her car up from the gas station, drive her friends to Trenton, 1/2 hr away, watch as the 100 hour inspections were just compression checks, Be parking lot attendants for her parties. What’s even worse then that. Getting paid 200 bucks a week for working from 8am to sunset 6 days a week and could not go to lunch with other CFI's since she did not want us to socialize. No radio in our office area just books. In the back room, where we had our desks there was little heat and no AC. Additionally, they had a few cats and the little box was kept in the back next to our desks. So not only did I have the smell of cat crap near me all the time, pieces of litter where often found on our desks and one guy had urine in his flight bag. O I can't forget then when we would go upfront, she or her son would say: "go back to your room, you have no business being up front"

The worst part was how she would use us and try to turn us on each other for multitime, but it never worked. To get the whole idea of what we went through listen to this. One of our very close CFI friends that worked with us was killed in a car accident during the first few months I worked their. The morning of she called all of us and said we had to come to work and fly. Upon coming to work, distraught and all, she took us into her office and said that she never got along with the CFI that was killed and she was happy that he did not die in "one of her airplanes".



Sad way to break into the aviation world. So sad that people like her are around.



That was my worst job ever......It only gets better from here!



P.S. If you know her then you know what I mean!

You should have wandered down the road to Ronson. They at least respected (and paid) their instructors and charter pilots.

Bob

 

[Old School 737]

My closest brush with a truly BAD job would have to have been with Sunrise Airlines in 99 when they were a start-up. Not one person in OPS management (I kid you not) was able to gain FAA recognition for his job. The CP, DO, etc were all given tentative approval during the start-up phase of operations. The CP was a nice guy, heck he hired me, but he was unable to get the FAA to give him permanent approval. The same story goes for the DO, etc. The general manager only previous aviation experience seemed to be that he was an aviation consultant for some insurance company. etc., etc., etc. But they weren't bad people, just basically incompotent.

Was this the Sunrise that used to fly into Elko Nev.?

 

[DrProc]

Wanna know a really crappy job? Line IP in the T-37 for 5 years. After that, nothing seems too bad.

Someone's got a sense of entitlement. I suppose that you are mad at AA that they made you sit sideways in a 72. A person with your skills should go right into the left seat of a heavy, right? Go ask your civilian counterparts about paying their dues. Everyone's gotta do it.

 

[vance]

Don't bitch

Worst Job: Toss up, but I think working at the sewage treatment plant in college. Graveyard shift and all the fecal matter you could possibly inhale.

Best Job: Still swimmin' (so I'll have to get back with you on that one).

Bottom line, you can have life by the tail and still die in your sleep! Make the best of all situations.

Take care,

Vance

 

[CA1900]

Worst job: I'd say working for a certain husband-and-wife team, with their headquarters New Jersey, and a satellite operation in southeast Florida. The pair split their year, half up north, half down south. We preferred it when they were on the opposite end of the coast as us!

We were expected at the airport six days a week from 9-6, despite our flight schedule, even if we had flights scheduled well before or after those hours. Our one day off a week had to be different from any other instructor's, which was a pain because my roommate worked there, and we liked to go out and have some fun once in a while. Unacceptable at this outfit.

It gets better... On our "down time" inbetween flights, we were expected to wash and change the oil in the rental airplanes. For free. Yeah, I'll get right on that, making your puke-green '79 chickenhawk look "pretty." Uck.

I found out during my tenure there that the husband was an Eastern scab, and talked about the original pilots "whining because they can't pay for all three houses." That explains a lot about his management, or lack thereof.

When he moved into this airport, there were four small offices (all adjacent) left for rent. He only needed two, but rented all four (at $800 a month apiece, I believe, and each about half the size of a convenience store) specifically to keep out the competition. Shortly after he signed the lease, someone else moved out and the competition moved in anyway, leaving him paying twice as much for rent as he needed.

He turned one of the offices into "his" office. He promptly bought a little video camera system so he could watch (and listen to) us from his office. I'm not exactly sure what he was doing in his office while he was watching us... uke:

Maintenance and inspections were all outsourced to a shop 100 miles away that would do an "annual" on anything we brought them for $300. Riiiiiiiiight. He threatened to fire me one afternoon when I refused to use one of his 152s with rust caked up on the rudder cable nuts. He didn't want me using the other one I had picked, which was a leaseback. "If you want to have local maintenace look at it, then I'll take it over." Of course, he wouldn't do that.

I think I've ranted about this aspect on this board before -- his lack of preventative maintenance ended up costing him $65,000 in repair work on his charter Navajo, when four of the six cylinders on each engine was blowing less than 20/80. Ah, sweet karma.

The charter pilot said that when they took off and slowly started climbing on its previous flight, the Bahamian controller said, "Daaaaaammm, mon, how many people you got in dat ting?" :laugh: The pilot refused to fly it to the "maintenace" base until somebody local checked it, and that's when the compression problem was found. He didn't like using the place on the field for inspections because, in his words, "they're just looking for trouble."

And don't get me started on his wife. She was a private pilot, single-engine, and couldn't navigate between two airports without a LORAN. They were 30 miles apart, on the coast! She also liked to tell me how to do my job as an instructor, telling me I shouldn't use the 172's for primary training, because they're "too much airplane" for a student. Nevermind the guy who wanted to use it was 6'5", about 275 pounds, and was happy to pay the extra money! "Too much airplane," she says. "125 pounds overweight, no way," I say. Yeah, I'm sure a well-kept 152 would handle it fine, but given the above maintenance program, I wasn't going to find out.

And Dave, if you're reading this and still wondering why the sound stopped working on your little spy cam, it's because we broke a pencil lead off into the little microphone hole about two days after you installed it right over my desk. imp:

 

[Diesel]

Some of the instructors at 39N have been there forever.

The old fuel truck that would coast to a stop with the line guy using his foot out the door as a brake.

They are building a bunch of new hangers there though at the end of the old runway, now the new taxiway.

 

[radarlove]

Cleaning carpets. Man, if there is a worse job (sounds like there are), it's pretty unusual.

Cleaning carpets sucks. You have to move the furniture, clean, then put the furniture back. Except the "cleaning" part doesn't work, you can't, generally, "clean" carpets. You can make them wet, then suck the water partially out, but if the carpet is dirty, it is going to stay that way until it's replaced.

So imagine spending eight hours doing something that has almost zero effect. What a waste. Flying airplanes is better.

 

[Prop2Jet]

Kmart?

 

[Prop2Jet]

Hareds!

 

[Prop2Jet]

Cheers!

 

[Golden Falcon]

Stateswest airlines....

 

[gkrangers]

Never worked at 39N, never even been there, but I now hate the Neirenbergs.

 

[Bushhatesyou]

7p.m. -7a.m. Shift making underwear at a Fruit of the Loom factory.... I didn't even get a discount on my tidy whities!!!!!!

 

[Prop2Jet]

Thanks for making my underwear I love how they craddle my, well..... hahahaah!

 

[MQAAord]

The 6pm - 6am overnight shift at Janlin Plastics in Mt. Horeb, WI. I was a machine operater on an injection molding plastics machine. I made plastic things. Like clock face-plates for Honda, and those little red plastic triangles on the fronts of Mitshubishis, I made those. I made little plastic cherries for some kiddie board game. But the worst thing ever was the domino machine. The machine was timed too fast and it was damn near impossible to keep up with the parts. You had to take the two sides of the domino, put a sheet of paper between them, then take a brick (yes a BRICK) wrapped in fabric and manually bang the two pieces together. Imagine 12 hour shifts of banging plastic pieces together with a brick.

Eagle and American (I worked at both) were a cake-walk in comparison.

 

[Big Slick]

I hear you. T-37 IP was the best job I ever had. But it was all consuming and I wouldn't be married or know my children if I had done it any longer. Learned more in that tour than in any other job.

The first 1000 hours I got in the T-37 were the best ever. I became a much better pilot and I really felt like I was helping my students. Doing loops, spins and formation was a blast too.

When I got to just under 2000 hours in the T-37, I was burned out beyond belief. My students mostly just got on my nerves. Not to mention I had to go to a chiropractor once a week because of a pulled muscle in my back. As you know, the T-37 seat is as hard as a rock, it sits at a 90 degree angle and you spend all day pulling 4-5 Gs. Obviously, it was designed before human factors engineering.

I won't even mention the 100+ degree weather with no A/C and a rubber mask over your face.

But overall, I was a good experience. Sort of like the Peace Corps - "The toughest job you'll ever love."

For the record, I have nothing but the utmost respect for what civilian pilots go through. They have a tough road, no doubt about it. While I did experience crappy working conditions, at least I always had a decent paycheck. A crappy job combined with poverty and no guarantee of moving up is a tough course.

 

[PHX767]

I guess one of my least favorite jobs was working at a "Recycling Center" while in high school. It was actually a steel container like you see going down the road on trucks. We recycled newspapers and cans. The cans were the worst - if the people bringing them did not squish them, we had to by stomping them. The worst were bags of old beer cans that squirted everywhere. Stale beer smell, old newspapers, hot steel container.....

Then there was the furniture factory where I operated a stapling machine on box mattresses. Those coil springs in your box matress? Yep, I probably stapled them in your Beautyrest. Not real fun.

Then after I joined the Air Force and went to Torrejon, Spain as a highly qualified aircraft mechanic - my job was cleaning up oil and stains off the ramp. The method - drop some speedy dry (kitty litter) and grind the stain off by scuffing with your boots. Then sweep up. Repeat 52,000 times.

 

[Corona]

My closest brush with a truly BAD job would have to have been with Sunrise Airlines in 99 when they were a start-up. Not one person in OPS management (I kid you not) was able to gain FAA recognition for his job. The CP, DO, etc were all given tentative approval during the start-up phase of operations. The CP was a nice guy, heck he hired me, but he was unable to get the FAA to give him permanent approval. The same story goes for the DO, etc. The general manager only previous aviation experience seemed to be that he was an aviation consultant for some insurance company. etc., etc., etc. But they weren't bad people, just basically incompotent.

Was this the Sunrise that used to fly into Elko Nev.?

Heh, heh; yes it was.

I flew for 'em till they went under in 2000. They definitely had management issues, but it was actually turning into a pretty decent place to work by the time they died. I had a good time there; lots of fun people to fly with + got some TP time in the logbook.
But: Whoever had the grand idea that Jetstreams would be fine taking off Pt. 121 from airfields where the Density Altitude frequently reached 9,000' needed to have their head examined. (Correction: Anyone who thinks a Jetstream is "fine" for anything needs to have his head examined... for starving brain-suckers...)
A friend and I stayed on till the bitter end; rode 'em down right into the briny deeps.

Worst job?

Non-aviation: Working for a control-freak on government survey contract. Work was fine, but the dude nearly drove me to psychosis with his micromanaging and general antagonism.

Aviation: Well; I've liked all the WORK I've done so far, CFI and up, but the worst JOB was on-call 24/7/365 Pt. 135 charter. Yeah, I like having no life.

C