Not super grim, but I worked in a hot warehouse unpacking cheap clothing from China, repacking it and watching the owners turn around and sell it on Groupon for a huge profit. Sometimes their family members would stop by in brand new Mercedes, BMW and other high-end luxury cars.
The others and myself were all promised better jobs like product photographer, website designer, etc. I only lasted there one week.
In my case Ruby was my next step. I tried to learn Python later on but it always felt like a step back. Unfortunately Python is much more popular though for some reason so YMMV.