Job I have while in between uni semesters, working at a garden centre.
minimum wage stuff, but lots of hours and 2 minutes from my home .
used to be a bit of a chore (working outside, lifting heavy stuff like slabs and rockery or whatever)
somebody who worked in the plants area got sick (maybe pregnant? didn't really know but it seemed bad so not many people spoke about it because she was a nice lady)
so they needed somebody to help in plants because even before she left it was the most undermanned area
they pick me because i'm "smart and stuff" (what a confidence boost). Really the only thing was that you had to quickly memorise how to look after certain plants, what all the different names were and the kind of compost that was best for each one, yadda yadda yadda (there was a whole library of books in the plants' staff area for this which you could bring customers to at any time, so I don't know why they thought it would be difficult)
I loved it in plants. Slightly less hours because the plants' area "opens" and "closes" slightly later and earlier than the rest of the garden centre, but my overall pay still works out the same because they never bothered changing my hours (you didn't "sign" in/out if you were one of the min. wage workers, you just turned up and your area manager ticked you off a sheet. presumably if you were consistently late they'd talk to you about that, otherwise the tick would mean there were no problems and you did all the hours you signed on for)
Not to mention that all the people who worked in plants were super chill. There were 2 others my age; one was going to college and another was doing some kind of apprenticeship-something-course in their free time (something about managing estates).
In contrast the people who I'd worked with in the previous area were not amazing. The kids at my age were all people for whom this was a full time job - i.e. because they'd dropped out of secondary school. They were usually really nice too, but were prone to leaving/being fired for not taking the work seriously. The older ones in that area were people who used to be those kids, but had stayed in this manual labour/retail/minimum wage hellhole their entire life. They were not fun to be around, especially the manager.
ANYWAY, now that I've set the scene:
so I'm working in plants. Having a much better time in a job where I get to just avoid customers OR if I have to speak to them I get to have much more interesting conversations that usually go on for 10-20 minutes (or even longer). (the people who'd talk to you in plants' were often eccentric rich people who wanted to do landscaping or something, so you'd just walk them around while showing them all your favourite plants lol. All other customers generally knew what they wanted.)
Manager from previous area finds me one day. Tells me the men's toilet has been left in a state. Tells me to clean it. I have NEVER been told to do this before. It was NOT a part of my job. And he's there, grinning away (he hated all the part-time workers who were in further/higher education). I laughed - (when I tell this story in real life I say "I laughed in his face" but obviously I was a bit more docile than that... but I still laughed over his command so I feel good about it), and told him I was already doing something for the plants' manager.... so he would have to talk to her.
He immediately radios her. Now, to clarify, nobody liked this manager at all. And he (and everyone else from his area) had a habit of "stealing" workers from other areas to do jobs, even though the outdoor area had the most workers of all (mostly part-time). And my new plants' manager loved having me on plants, I picked up quickly what to do there and also she could bitch to me about what she thought about this guy.
So when he asked her over the radio to "borrow" me to clean the toilets, it was the most gratifying thing ever to hear her say "nope. we're stretched too thin at the moment. Maybe one of your lads can do it?" Took the grin right off his face, because he probably thought he'd win. He scowled and marched off. AFAIK the toilets weren't actually cleaned until the end of the day when the cleaners appeared.
I heard about the state of the toilets later. Your basic "shit on the floor and smeared on the walls" story. If he'd actually gotten me to do it, I'd have walked out instead. The only things that job had going for it was (a) proximity and hours whenever I wanted (b) a history of working there so I always got the job back every time I returned from uni, even for insignificant periods of time like a week or a weekend.