Having been a morgbot for half a century, I have had many jobs in the church. Some weren't too bad, some almost enjoyable, and some were simply a horrible fit for me. But, by far, the worst church job I ever had was as a scoutmaster in charge of 19 kids, three of which were destined to be lifetime felons. Of these 19 kids there were maybe 5 who were delightful to be around.

I eventually had to release myself from this job, the bishop's ears didn't work when I asked several times to be cut loose.

What would you consider to be the worst job you ever had within the morg?

FairMormon apologist. I have everyone beat. No battle. haha ;)

Elders Quorum Drop-out Wrote:
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> FairMormon apologist. I have everyone beat. No
> battle. haha ;)

Is that an actual calling? Or is that something one decides to get involved doing? Sorry for my lack of knowledge!

No, not a calling. But he asked "job", so I felt it was an appropriate response. It's even more sad because it wasn't a calling. It was a volunteering. haha

Elders Quorum Drop-out Wrote:
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> No, not a calling. But he asked "job", so I felt
> it was an appropriate response. It's even more sad
> because it wasn't a calling. It was a
> volunteering. haha


Touché! I didn't know there was such a thing as an apologist until I found this website. I'm learning all sorts of fun stuff! lol

How does one go about releasing themself from a calling? I didn't know that was an option...or maybe you'd really need to have a pair to do that?

I wasn't in long enough to have any 'jobs' other than primary pianist, which I kind of enjoyed. Actually, I guess I technically released myself because I told the chorister, 'so I can't do this anymore 'cause I'm moving'. And I gave a 1-week notice. Lol But I didn't release myself and stick around.

I released myself by going to the bishop's house one evening after scouts and handing his wife my scout manual and asking her to tell the bishop that scouts have been canceled for the rest of the year. Then I simply failed to show up anymore. That's about the time I stopped attending any meetings and the bishop never said a word to me.

I released myself from teaching a class in the exact same way. Same result, nobody said anything. I suspect it happens quite a bit.

Mormons think they can't stop doing something without the bishop telling them it's ok. When they get a backbone is when they'll take control of their own lives, not until.

That's not it...Mormons believe they will be punished in some way, if they release themselves from a calling w/o proper authorization. To be released w/o fear of the sky daddy punishing you, a would be calling-quitter would approach his/her bishop and say, "Bishop my circumstances have changed, I am finding it very difficult to do my calling, please reconsider." One then throws themselves at the mercy of the Bishop who may or may not release you. Doing anything else contrary to the full approval of the Bishop means it is not condoned of the Lord, and the member is subject to untold punishment in the form of removal of priesthood power, blessings, and spiritual influence. I released myself as a scoutmaster one time, w/in the same month my wife lost her 8-mo pregnancy. I was told it was b/c I had released myself from the calling.

Branch president. Lasted 3 weeks. They didn't like my style. I told of the powers that be. They imported missionaries to replace me.

Should be told off the powers that be.

My last home teaching assignment 35 years ago. The families were mostly inactive didn't really want us there and my companion was too fucking stupid to figure that out.

RB

I hated that sh!t. Nothing weird about a grown man taking a 16 year boy around to stranger's houses who could give two squirts of piss about the church. I don't understand why they even let us in the door.

I was married with a family by then and did it out of respect for my father. I never had much for my companion. Not nearly as much fun as when I was a junior HT in my teens when my companion was a Mopar salesmen and let me drive his demos.

RB

And then there was the Saturday the EQ was gonna frame a house for an older guy (with a nasty JW wife) who was basically coerced into getting dunked by a neighbor. I showed up at 8 AM with my tools. It was pretty apparent the guy in charge of the build didn't have a fucking clue about how to frame a house...so left by 10AM. Never went to another EQ meeting.

RB

I hated home teaching and my home teaching family hated being home taught. So I'd call once a month and say, "What's up". And that was it. lol

I fought my mom tooth and nail on that nonsense, but we came to a compromise. I would go, but what's his nuts had to drop me off afterwards at the dance club, where Sunday night was designated for teens. I would get out of the car, tight roll the pants, and go chase some skirt.

Dead-dunking total strangers at the temple. It was wet and smelled vaguely of bleach. Names on index cards meant less than nothing.

My biggest regret was that "Franz Kafka" wasn't one of the names., Had I been able to dunk Kafka at least that would have tied everything together, like the Dude's rug.

Temple dunk tanks are like water hazards at a golf course. We proxy dunkers are the poorly hit golf balls, quivering in the muck. Don't even bother looking for us; just take the drop and the one-stroke penalty.

It does my heart good to know that I lied about fornicsting and drinking to get my access to that farce of a ceremony.

A visiting teacher.

Hated it!

Sunbeam teacher rocked until my shelf broke and then I "was done."

-Dennis

Hoppas att du åtminstone kunde fira vintersolståndet.

I worked with a dear old gentleman who had worked as a journalist. He couldn't get around well, so I did the legwork. My "day" job included combing through State and municipal archives sometimes (in English and Spanish) and I was accustomed to that. I found some interesting stuff.

I would give my raw research notes and a rough draft to old Nick, and he would smooth it into a great ward newsletter. The bishop didn't appreciate some of the more sensational (though well-documented!) material we dug up, so our project was quietly shut down.

Though he was a lifelong Mormon, old Nick had a great sense of humor, and we enjoyed working together. I heard he has passed on a number of years ago.

Actually, most of our readers enjoyed our material. It was the bishop who had a blue nose.

Visiting teacher!

I hated my calling in Young Women's. It felt like a full time job...constant meetings, preparing lessons, planning mid-week activities, planning for camp and trek, etc. It was a calling that never ended.

Plus, I just wasn't any good at it. Maybe I'm as cold as ice, but I just didn't care that much about the girls' petty problems. I didn't care whether or not they did their goals. I hated planning spiritual activities and lessons all the time where everyone (except me) ended up crying at the end. I didn't fit with the kumbaya-ness that is the LDS YW's program.

It was the longest three years of my life.

Nursery "leader." While the relief society ladies enjoyed their monthly lunch & gossip fest, I got stuck in the nursery with a bazillion toddlers because, and these were the exact words, "No one else will do it." I felt so honored to clean up vomit, wipe runny noses, break up screaming fights, clean up graham cracker crumbs, and have mothers call and bite my head off because their little darling is scarred with teeth marks where another little darling got a bit aggressive. It was such a great way to utilize my thorough knowledge of scriptures and my masters degree. 30 kids under 3 + one woman = disaster + exmo!

Nursery work is absolutely the worst.

Hard to understand how women who are busy with their own kids could get talked into taking on someone else's screaming brats.

They even tried to get me to do that once.By the 3rd Sunday I stopped that.

mainly because my children were in there, so I made it as great as possible. It was fun. You also get a lot of kudos from all the mothers who hate the idea of having that job and think you are a saint for doing it.

Yes, the thing I hated most was visiting teaching. Yes, going to a bunch of women who didn't want us to be there. And, I had the added problem of living where I had to drive to 4-5 different towns to visit my "list." And I usually had to pick up the partner because she usually couldn't drive or didn't have a car. That's another town to go to. And when I had a kindergartener, we could never get the whole list done in one day because I had to be back for the half/day school child. So that meant we had to go two or three days in the month.

Oh, how I hated that. And you knew the women didn't really want you there. If they were inactive, of COURSE they didn't want you there---unless they had mental problems, and then they did. If they were active, they were as busy as you were, and it was a total waste of time.

I never felt like I made a bit of difference in a good way from visiting teaching. And it's not because of my attitude, so don't say that! I was always trying to do it right.

It's only after I got out of the mess that I realized what a crazy, freaky thing the whole business was.

As I've said before here, my visiting teacher was 100% and always came with a precious gospel message. You would have thought she was my best friend. But when she found out I quit the church, I never heard from her again.

diaper changer for tommy boy ?

Holy shit!!

You're kidding, right?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/17/2016 05:51PM by liesarenotuseful.

Thank you

Years ago, when we still had homemaking meeting once a month, I was RS counselor in charge of that. It was really hard to come up with interesting, diverse, fun meetings every month and stay within the budget.

Quarterback

Passing the sacreligiousness

OUTERviews and enterVIEWS

Being the only deacon in a 'branch' of Pennsylvania rednecks who couldn't handle being Lutheran or Baptist.

I was called as priesthood music director, by a very embarrassed counsellor who acknowledged that in any other ward I'd probably be in the Bishopric (the UK ward had a big US staffed military base, and a nearly total US staff in the ward).

Why was it a bad job? Well, while I could wave my arm in time to music, my singing was, well, put it this way: In the school play they asked me to mime to the songs.

Inspired? Pah!

Mildenhall, Lakenheath, Woodbridge? Forgot the other ones, of course Lakenheath and Woodbridge aren't there anymore

Memwith Hill base and Harrogate ward, in North Yorkshire.

The last one I had was the worst, financial secretary. I couldn't have cared less about money in, money out.

Nursery, and a 3-year old class. I traded those jobs for a teens S.S. class, and liked that much better. (You can reason with teens.)

Blazer leader:

I would suggest things we could do for merit badges, etc...and there was one kid who would always say: "My dad doesn't think that's a good idea." Then I would suggest doing something else and the same kid would inform me that they all did it last week with his dad and that he signed off on the badge. Did I mention he was the Scout Master for the older boys?

I was an organist in a ward that had the worst organ on the planet. Most of the stops didn't work. With the few stops that worked, C played c# or other similar miscues. The piano wasn't too bad. It was a cheap Kawai baby grand but it was was tuned yearly and was far better than the organ. The bishop didn't want the piano but wanted the God-forsaken organ instead. I was 13, and it got me out of passing the sacrament, which was the only positive. One Sunday, at my dad's suggestion, which is surprising because he's pretty follow-the-chain-of-command TBM, I just walked up to the piano and started playing. When the bishop asked me to move to the organ, I told him I would as soon as he would get a decent organ. I wasn't released because the only other people in the ward who could play were my siblings, and the bishop probably figured they'd commit civil disobedience as well.

Compassionate service leader.

The worst? They tried to make me the music director for primary. (I'm not sure what you'd call that position, tbh) I had never been in primary. I've never directed music. What the hell were they thinking? I lasted one Sunday.

Nursery, when I was a brand-new first-time mom with a very colicky nursing baby and a husband who was busy teaching EQ and who would not take the baby on Sundays he wasn't teaching. The "calling" stressed me out so badly that I spent the entire week dreading those hours in nursery hell. I was also really, really bad at it, having been raised as an only child with no extended family.

I hated it so much that I bailed after a few weeks and stayed home with the screaming child for many Sundays after that.

Not exactly a 'job' but a stake camp in 1977 during the week of the Queen's Silver Jubilee.

Due to one person's incompetence, the hired tents were ramshackle affairs; to say they had seen better days would be to do them a kindness. They leaked at the bottoms, so when it rained, a small river ran right through the tent and down the other side ( we were camped on a hillside site. And it rained. And rained. And rained. It rained almost solid for the entire sodding week!

First morning a friend and I went down to the stream at the bottom of the camp area to brush our teeth. We had just finished when a foraging party cam running back to thew camp, arms waving wildly and yelling "nobody go near the river - there's a dead sheep in it upstream!". My friend and I just looked at each other. Whether we did catch something or whether it was the power of suggestion, we were both ill the next day.

And then ther was the food. The cook did his best, but a cock-up on the catering front meant that we were oversupplied with Spam, and very little else. It was spam for breakfast. Spam sandwiches for packed lunches. Spam for tea. When we got back, one of the leaders came into the kitchen are at the chapel, plonked a catering-size tin of the stuff down and said "I never want to see another tin of Spam as long as I live!"

Not a good experience.

The nursery! Oh God! No just no.

Oh my goodness how I HATED being in the RS presidency. I was always homemaking leader, which I was not averse to, but there was ALWAYS criticism no matter what you did. Today I would not worry about the critics, but then I was serving the LORD and it had to be perfect.

I didn't mind teaching, until one day I realised I couldn't teach anymore because I couldn't teach something I didn't beleive. That was it!!! No more!!! I liked conducting the music, and liked choir work, and although it maxed me out with my nerves, I was sometimes asked to do a solo, which was okay.

To this day I miss the friendships of the ladies of the church (although there was always an undercurrent of criticism). Even though you can still go along to some of the ladies events as an ex member it is not the same. But I am SO glad to be out of an organisation where I HAD to do what I was CALLED to do no matter what I thought. I taught Primary and Sunday School while ducking to the loo with morning sickness and having to teach seated with a pillow to my back because of pain in the later stage of several pregnancies. It was torture, but the LORD must be served right?

Ward mission leader. By far. As someone who, although was married in the temple, never believed in the truth claims of the lds
church it was excrutiating. Almost gave me ulcers. Final straw was a "splits" assignment where I had the "opportunity" to go door to door with a freshly scrubbed 18 yr old missionary. We knock on the first door. Guy answers. Peeks his head out just enough to talk to us and says "what do you want? It was my turn so I answer "hi, we are just out knocking on doors and trying to meet new people". As he is shutting the door in our face he says "well, you met me. Slam. I looked at the missionary and said "f**k this. Let's go". I was released the next Sunday.

The worst job in the church...


Junior Companion

thats a toss up between building cleaning coordinator and primary teacher. Both involved cleaning up other peoples messes and mistakes and trying to get people to do things that they really don't want to do.

Librarian. I was a mom with a baby that was too young for nursery, didn't know anyone in the ward and lived 25 minutes away and my husband wasn't a member. So they put me in the library and told me that I couldn't go to the classes " in case someone needed to borrow something during class". So, I got to be a stay at home mom all week long with no one to talk to( no friends, no neighbors) and then come to church to sit in the library with my baby and not get to really interact with anyone in the ward. It sucked, but then when my child was old enough for nursery, I got that calling. Thing is, my ( by then 2 kids) were the only ones in nursery. So they put me in a room the size of a closet for two hrs every Sunday with my two kids and the bishop would occasionally come by and ask how I was doing. I would ask to be allowed to go to class and they always told me they were working on it. But I felt like I " had" to be there and do what they said so I could be an example to my nevermo husband and then he would join the church and we would be the perfect Mormon family.... I hate the church! I put up with so much crap like this. All.the.time. Sunday's are a lot less stressful now

Full-time missionary

Member.
'Cause all the other "bad jobs" come from that one. :)

The worst was as a branch president during my mission. They just assumed you knew everything about the administrative system and procedures, I didn't have a computer, I was transferred into this branch and was just supposed to lead these folks, and that was just the start of it.

This wasn't a newly planted branch, but one on the decline. Lot's of members on the rolls, few in the seats.

I just felt guilty about not doing it well, but I didn't even know the right questions to ask.

Do missions still insert 19-20 year old elders as branch presidents? Egad...I always thought that was a complete joke and a total insult to the native membership. Here's a hint TSCC. If none of the native membership is worthy or otherwise not qualified to lead the branch, perhaps that is a compelling sign that there should be no branch to begin with!

full time cult sales person for two years

Wife to a TBM, RM. He liked his mom better than he liked me. Come to think of it, his mom liked him better than she liked his dad. Good thing they will be in the CK without me!