This question was asked 3 times between April 29 and May 22, 2008 but not since, as far as I can tell, so perhaps it’s O.K., perhaps it’s time to ask it again. :-)

I’ve had a few pretty bad jobs, the worst one I’ve ever had, I had for so long, and was so complexly and peculiarly, uniquely bad that it would be difficult to describe.

But the first job I got, when I first moved to Austin, TX and just needed a job, any job, was at a bookstore on Guadalupe St. that sold text books and U.T. paraphernalia; everywhere you looked, it was a sea of big blocky text books and burnt orange. I like my co-workers, we had fun commiserating, but the job itself, and management, were pretty bad.

I don’t remember exactly what time the store opened, I think it was 9:00 a.m., but all the employees had to walk through the alley in back of the store, enter through the loading dock and clock in. At exactly 9:00 a.m., the floor manager would shut the loading dock doors, so if you were even a minute late, it wasn’t enough that it would show on your timecard, with the loading dock closed, if you were late, you had to go around to the front of the store, enter through the front doors and make the walk off shame across the store, where the floor manager was always standing, always with his arms crossed and his steely eyes staring right through you, to the back, where the time clock was. That business seemed kind of unnecessary