What were your worst jobs?

[NJmaverick]

What was the worst job you ever had?

[Roon]

1. OMG!! I was a temp for the bridgestone/firestone recall

I had to train for the first half of the day on how to handle questions about the recall then I was to fly solo after lunch. No computer,not allowed to read,your phone would go as long as 15 minutes before it would ring,and it was VERY BORING!!!! I left at lunchtime and never went back.

[City of Mills]

2. Re-shrinkwrapping used porn tapes

I worked briefly for a video store backoffice and my sole duty was to re-shrinkwrap (and security tag) the used porn VHS tapes they would buy in bulk from other video stores going out of business...I did this for a month before I got laid off...insert joke here!

[NJmaverick]

11. Are you serious? This isn't a joke?

[City of Mills]

19. Absolutely

The day I got laid off from my job was one of the weirdest coincidence-filled days of my life, as well...they let me go in the afternoon, I wasn't really upset due to the nature of the job and it was part-time work anyway, but nights I made my 'real' money (for a young guy) delivering pizza, well on the very last run of the night I got rear-ended hard and my delivery vehicle got totalled (my trunk was crushed into my rear tires making it undriveable) so I lost both my jobs on the same day.

Also, the guy who hit me was exactly 50 years older than me TO THE DAY - as we found out while exchanging information, and the accident occured the day before both our birthdays - I turned 20 the next day, he turned 70. So, my life more or less fell apart on my last day as a teenager.

Fortunately, I have recovered just fine :)

[Jokerman]

70. Don't you just love the smell of hot shrink-wrap?

I spent one summer shrink wrapping NEW video tapes for a duplicating company. Mostly travel and exercise tapes.

I found that the smell of hot plastic was not a pleasant thing.

[hobbit709]

3. Working in a plant that made charcoal

3 baths later and the water still came out dark gray.

[NJmaverick]

7. How long ago was that?

[hobbit709]

22. 1968

[NJmaverick]

29. I bet now they have much better protection

[sasquatch]

37. Not if it is Anos del Diablo. they think workers are basicly helots

[charlie and algernon]

4. Corporate mail room

it was a temp job. They said to wear business casual, so stupidly I thought that meant I'd be in a lobby or somewhere, you know, that had lights, lol. It ended up in their basement, dimly lit, VERY loud. Hundreds of thousands of letters would come through these massive sorter machines and we had to walk around and make sure the bins didn't get too full. It was basically 3 hours of utter boredem followed by an hour of frantic running around followed by another 2 hours of boredom, rinse and repeat for 12 hours. Luckily it was only a 4 day temp job and when they asked if I wanted to work beyond the 4 days I politely refused, lol.

[gmoney]

55. Sounds like the Hudsucker Proxy...

[Bertha Venation]

5. Delivering phone books door to door. On foot.

I ruined my grandma's little wire two-wheeled drag-along shopping cart. The books were too heavy for it.

[NJmaverick]

33. I did that as a fund raiser for Cub Scouts

but I had the advantage of my father driving me and my brother. I couldn't have imagined hauling those things by hand.

[Strong Atheist]

6. Recommended,

dammit! x(

[charlie and algernon]

9. did you lose a bet or something?

or do just like recommending everything? :rofl:

[Strong Atheist]

12. :

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Strong%20Atheist/15

[Doc_Technical]

8. Keesler Air Force Base MS in 1971

I arrived there after completing basic training and was
awaiting starting technical school.
To keep us busy we had to do K.P. duty at the chow hall.
I was assigned "pots and pans" which meant I has to clean
dirty pots that were about two and a half feet in diameter
and about the same dimension in depth.
The pans were serving containers that were approx. two and
a half feet long by a foot wide by five inches deep.
There were other sundry items such as large ladles, spoons,
strainers, etc.
These items were cleaned in a sink that was about five foot square
that was filled with dish detergent and very hot water.
It was astounding how many mixing bowls, storage containers,
frying pans, etc. are used in a large chow hall.
I did this for two weeks working twelve hours plus a day,
six days a week.

[MajorChode]

42. Ah yes, I remember KP at Keesler.

Luckily I only had one day to wait after basic.

[Rambis]

10. Concrete puddler

You stand knee deep in it with wellies on and push the concrete to the gaps. Then you stick your hands in and pull up the reebar. 6 1/2 days a week- Most labour intensive job I ever had. I didn't go to the pub for 4 months because I didn't have the energy after 12-14 hours. Saturday was like a day off because we only worked 6am to noon.:crazy:

[NJmaverick]

13. Sounds like rough work

did it pay well? Did the concrete play havock on your skin?

[Rambis]

14. not union so no

and concrete burns like the devil!

[LeftyFingerPop]

15. Interstate road construction

Great pay....about $30 per hour, but the initial staging process, which took a few weeks, was terrible.

Had to work down in these wide medians, in the blazing sun, installing silt fences, etc.

There were a lot of snakes, and big, dead, stinky animals.

[NJmaverick]

30. I couldn't have dont that

no jobs involving snakes

I hate snakes

[SacredCow]

16. Retail sales/service in a bike store....

Graduated from college with no good job prospects, so since I was really into cycling at the time it seemed like a good fit.

Really and truly, I think everyone should be required to work at least one holiday season in retail. I always feel for the store sales people and cashiers during that time of year. Yeah- it's a holly, jolly time of year, but NOT when people are shopping. THEN it's the bitchiest time of the year.

[begin_within]

17. Only because my boss was a jerk,

a job I had as a teenager working in a Baskin-Robbins ice cream store in Phoenix. The job was actually kind of cool - met lots of people and there were regulars. Paul Westphal was playing on the Phoenix Suns during that time and he came in almost every morning for a 2-scoop cone. He was cool and very tall of course. What made the job horrible was my childish, penny-pinching boss, an ex-New Yorker about 55 who thought he was going to get rich from having this one store. He paid some of his employees only $1 per hour even though the minimum wage was $2.35 or something at that time. He claimed he was not in interstate commerce so the minimum wage law didn't apply to him. But the ice cream came from California, so it did cross a state line. I guess he liked me as a worker because he paid me $1.75 an hour, but still worked me to death. He was a slave driver and also skimpy towards the customers. He treated the customers politely, in sharp contrast to how he treated his employees. But he always wanted you to use as little as possible when making a shake or sundae or banana split. I saw him go into a rage and literally shed tears when one poor girl forgot to charge the extra 10 cents per scoop for French Vanilla or Chocolate Fudge. He cried over 10 cents. But those were the days when you could walk in and get a single-scoop cone there for 27 cents. I only lasted 2 months at that job, but because of him. Otherwise it was fun and I got to meet a lot of people.

[NJmaverick]

32. He's lucky the employees didn't report him to the parent company

I suspect they would have frowned on paying less than minimum.

[begin_within]

40. Yeah, they probably would have...

frowned. And that's all.

[Moondog]

18. I worked as an orderly in a maximum security

psychiatric ward one summer. I was a college student and wanted to take a course in abnormal psychology, but that was reserved for psych majors and I was a business major. So I took this job. I stuck with it for the summer, but was very glad to resign and return to college in the fall.

One of the things that I learned about myself was that people who have the care-giver gene, to coin a phrase, are very special people, and that I was not one of those people. As a result I have an inordinate amount of respect for people in the health care professions, and for all that they do.

[femmocrat]

20. Waitress. Awful job.

And as a result of that experience, I am a generous tipper!

[NJmaverick]

34. I always tip well

but my experience in the food industry involved being a bus boy and buggy lugger from time to time.

[EndersDame]

51. this current waitress says thanks you

[armyowalgreens]

78. .

oops wrong spot.

[bridgit]

21. Made donuts from round 2 - 6am for a little donut shop...

The trays were sometimes heavy and I don't care how careful you are hot oil splatters up on your hands and forearms

[dropkickpa]

25. Night shift donut finisher/sales clerk

I didn't cook the donuts, I did everything else in the store from 11pm-7am. I was 16 and it was totally illegal for me to be working that shift, especially during the school year. But, my best friend was the baker and me and him played dough baseball and got high as hell and gave away donuts to the cops all night long, so, as bad as that job was (oh yeah, the AC was broken all summer long, too), it could have actually been worse.

[bridgit]

26. Yeah, you're right, it could have been worse but I never thought to ask...

if it was legal; I guess it sorta was cause I was emancipated at 15 and it was part of the order that I find work and stay in school and that guy was one of the only first guys that would hire me. That does seem the ultimate upside now that you mention it - plenty of all night security standing round munching donuts in the wee hours ;)

[Blue Diadem]

60. I made donuts too, My shift varied from 3:30am-1:00pm to

5:00am-1:00pm. depending on the business day. I worked at a deli in a grocery store and gradually went from working evenings to that early am. donut fryer and lunch fryer. At our place, the donut fryer also filled and finished them too. Then after cleaning all that equipment up, I had to begin fixing/frying lunch in large quantity for the crowd that would begin coming in at 10:30-12:30. In between, I had to prep. food, sell from the deli, bake breads/cakes etc.

Yes, those hot oil splatters were awful. I remember them everytime I see the scars on my arms.

[bikebloke]

23. Chicken incubator on a kibbutz

We had to spray clean the trays after hatching. But first the shells had to be tossed in dumpster. Sometimes, they had live reject chooks. I tried to set a few free, but cats as big as lions would dash out from under the building and eat them.

Because of the very early start, they gave us breakfast. Eggs!

[Orsino]

24. Shoveling raw sewage.

That particular assignment only lasted a day or two, though.

I learned to my everlasting horror why tomato plants grow there.

[NJmaverick]

31. Why would anyone have you shoveling the sh*t?

[Orsino]

36. I'm no longer clear on the reasoning.

Some big bin at the treatment plant had gotten full, and needed emptying.

edit: so "raw" may not be the proper term for the sewage in question.

[Art_from_Ark]

57. You too, huh?

One of the intake pipes became clogged with sewage at my plant, and we had to open it up and unclog it. Peeeeeeeyewy! I thought I was going to spill my cookies just smelling that crap :puke:

And there were, indeed, tomato plants growing out of the sludge heap out behind the plant.

[Moondog]

41. Tomatoes.

Heh. Thanks for the laugh.

[Dulcinea]

27. Telemarketing.

I sold magazine & newspaper subscriptions. This was in the 1980s, before Caller ID.

It baffles me how those cold-calling companies sell anything. I never answer the phone unless I recognize the number so I'm not bothered by people trying to sell me things I neither want nor need.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

38. Seconded

I lasted 3 days before I couldn't take the guilt anymore.

[Arkansas Granny]

28. Vaccinating baby chicks at a chicken hatchery before they were taken out to the farms.

[dembotoz]

35. taking inventory mostly in food stores

late 60's
calling out totals to a guy running a big adding machine down the aisle from you.

no guestimating --hard physical counts.

doing the bins in frozen food where product was just dumped in.

greeting cards, all mixed together, all different prices,

Reaching back on a shelf and discovering broken jars and sollen burst cans.

[NightWatcher]

39. janitor in a hospital one summer in high school. I had to squeegee afterbirth off the floor

and clean the inside of the biomedical incinerator

[bigwillq]

43. Stocking shelves at Caldor's

I liked being a cashier, but I hated being on the floor and having to stock shelves or help people "find" an item.

[graywarrior]

44. The one I HAVEN'T HAD SINCE OCTOBER 2008 ! !

[grace0418]

45. It's a bit of a toss-up between every job I've ever had aside from my current one.

I love what I do now, but man did I ever pay my dues. Years of retail hell at various establishments (one worse than the next), 2 years as the right-hand gal for a wealthy genius who was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, manic depression and Parkinsons (and the meds for this made him even more mentally unstable), 3 years at an ad agency with the most unscrupulous real estate agents EVER as clients, and 8 years at the design equivalent of "Office Space" complete with multiple managers, no windows, musty cubicles, a building that hadn't been thoroughly cleaned since the 60's, bathrooms that overflowed, and a shriveled up CEO who thought he was god and expected everyone to treat him as such.

[bif]

46. Stock boy at JC Penny's

I didn't even last the whole day. My job was to take a whole load of merchandise from the loading dock and haul it through the store to the correct department. Over and over again. I quit before lunch.

[Parche]

47. digging in the dirt

and that wasnt a peter gabriel song....:rofl: :hi:

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

48. Boxing soap in a soap factory.

But that was only slightly worse than being a cocktail waitress. I didn't last long in either job.

[tabbycat31]

49. debt collector

[jmowreader]

50. Being a tour guide for Dick Cheney

I was sitting here thinking about all the really shitty jobs I've had and realized: the very worst thing I have ever done--even worse than printing for the psychopath who kept threatening to kill me, worse than trying to convince women getting made up with stage makeup is fun and far worse than being a target loader on a trap range--was escorting Dick Cheney on a tour of my unit's operations area. If you think he looks like a sour old bastard, try spending a day five feet from him.

[Rhiannon12866]

58. Holy crap! You win!!!

When I read the subject line, I expected a joke... Poor you! You have my deepest sympathies... :hug:

[many a good man]

52. Cleaning restrooms in a turnpike rest stop

I was the "utility man" and there was a very strict rotation of jobs I had to do. After cleaning the men's room I had to go mix a new batch of donuts at the HoJo. It paid way above minimum wage and I lasted four months.

[midnight armadillo]

54. ...and did you wash your hands before baking?

...hmmmmm?

[Lorax]

53. Telemarketing for a cemetary IN a cemetary.

I once had a job doing telemarketing for a cemetary. I had to work by myself in one of those construction trailers set up way in the back of the cemetary. AT NIGHT! OMG, That was the creepiest job ever. Imagine calling random people trying to sell them grave plots and you are calling from the cemetary at night. I was so scared. I lasted a week at that job.

I also sold cars. For three whole days, LOL! I felt like I was selling my soul to the Devil and I just had to leave.

[NJmaverick]

62. How did people react to your calls?

[AllenVanAllen]

56. A co-generation power plant

on the Houston Ship Channel. It paid pretty well but it suuuuuuucked!

The plant burned this nasty shit for fuel.



It's called petroleum coke and it gets into everything...

[NJmaverick]

59. I never heard of that type of fuel

and I even had a boiler license (high pressure black). That does look pretty nasty though

[AllenVanAllen]

75. It's basically cooked waste oil

turned solid. They figured out they could burn it at high enough temps and use it like coal. The fly-ash that's left when it's burned is some terrible stuff too.
It was a small power plant at 125 megawatts. I'm glad that life is long behind me! :)

[yellowcanine]

61. Steam cleaned the inside of a rendering truck once.

A rendering truck, for those who do not know, is a truck which is used to haul animal parts to the rendering plant, where the parts are "rendered" into various products.

[backtoblue]

63. truck wash attendant.

[NJmaverick]

65. What is a truck wash attendant?

[backtoblue]

71. I dried big rigs at a truck wash

They prefered you wear a bikini, but needless to say, at 16 I didn't work there very long. Lots and lots of vulgarity.

[Bragi]

64. Making tart pastry shells at a bakery

I used a manual machine that came out of a Dicken's novel. I had to place a piece of dough in the centre of a small aluminum tart shell, and then slip the shell under this manual stamping machine which stamped out a formed tart shell. I then had to grab the stamped tart shell and put in a new one, all the time manually turning the machine.

I eventually learned that the kid I replaced at the bakery had "accidentally" turned his hand into a nicely-formed tart shell, and was undergoing extensive rehab treatment.

I did the job after school for more than a year. I came close to mashing my hand several times, but fortunately never did.

[NJmaverick]

66. Did you enjoy tarts before the job?

and if you did, did you still enjoy them afterwards?

[Bragi]

67. I do enjoy them

I enjoy even more that my hand isn't shaped like a tart shell.

- B

[Manifestor_of_Light]

72. I used to be a tart, myself.

:D

Now I'm an old reformed(monogamous) tart. :D

[KansDem]

68. Let's see...

Summer of 1972--I worked for a used-furniture warehouse. I and another worker would go out in a pickup truck (with a rack overhead to carry more items) and pick up used furniture and appliances. We would meet a finance officer in front of the house or apartment and he/she would tell us what to take. Apparently, people would take out loans and use their furniture/appliances as collateral. We never got into any shouting matches but the finance folks and their "clients" would. One problem: the water in the men's room at the warehouse didn't work so we couldn't really clean up much. We would pull stoves out that were caked with grease, so we essentially went the entire day reeking of stale grease.

Temp job that summer--I worked at a cardboard box factory. My job was to pull boxes off a conveyor belt and stack them on a pallet. I had to keep track of how many were on the pallet and then call a forklift over when we had a certain number. The only problem: the boxes came off so slowly that I'd lose track then I would have to quickly count the ones already on the pallet. Sometime I'd have to recount several times. It was extremely boring. The operator always wreaked of B.O and baby powder, and would constantly badger me to "keep an accurate count."

One night I worked in a slaughter house. I "interviewed" for a position on the cleaning crew and was asked if I could work without my glasses. I was told I'd be working with high-powered hot-water hoses (for washing down the slaughter-house floor) and if I were hit in the head, my glasses might fly off and get broken. I said I could do it. Come the shift, I spent seven hours slipping and sliding all over the place due to the fat and grease on the floor. Around me were cows' heads on hooks moving along slowly to be processed. And I spent the whole time with scouring pads and cleanser scrubbing the cutting tables. The whole scene was surreal! I quit the next day, claiming I really couldn't work without my glasses.

I have a few more experiences, but these stand out in memory...

[proteus_lives]

69. Janitor.

Painting and cleaning rooms at 6am. :puke:

[LiberalEsto]

73. Sales clerk at a Kresges

Kresges was a chain somewhat like Woolworths, or Kmart, but smaller and crummier. I had a summer job working at the Kresges in Pompton Lakes, NJ, the summer before I went to college. All the other clerks were old-timers, and many of them resented me because I wasn't going to be stuck working there for the rest of my life. They complained about everything I did, even the pettiest little things. When I signed my coffee break vouchers with a little smiley face over the letter "i" in my name, the manager chewed me out for "doodling". They complained that my skirts were too short (they were all I had), so one day I wore a longish dress of my mom's to work. In retaliation, they took me out of the toy department and stuck me in the snack bar by the store entrance, so everyone could see my dumpy outfit. Once they put me in the pet department, where my main task was scooping dozens of dead goldfish out of the fish tank every day.

After a month there, I was driving to work when another driver skidded into me head-on and just missed killing me. My first thought, as I sat bleeding with broken glass all over me, was "Thank God I don't have to go to work."

[Xithras]

74. Night janitor in a movieplex.

Mopping three inches of dried and congealed soda off the low spot in the floors, cleaning up the puke stains in the bathroom from the kiddies who ate too much popcorn, wiping the candy and other crap (sometimes literally) from the theater chairs, and hauling myself 25 feet up a rickety old wooden ladder to change burned out lightbulbs every night. All for a whopping $4.25 an hour.

[Rhiannon12866]

76. Cinderella at an amusement park...

Standing out in the hot sun in a long dress and I couldn't even take a bathroom break without being stopped countless times, somebody wanting to take a pic of me with their kids... x( But it must have been worse on the poor horses. :-(

[quakerboy]

77. Muck outs for those with difficulties

So, Yall ever watched the animal rescue shows, where they pull 50 cats out of some house? My company got to clean up afterward on those and worse. I will elaborate on worse.

One job, only 2 dogs kept in a garage, so that part wasn't so bad, just your basic shovel work. But the lady had been collecting(hoarder). She had a fridge full of food in the early 90's. The refrigerator died. So she got a new one, pushed the other one back into the dining room, and put the new one in front of it. The second one died in the late 90's, and was in turn shoved back into the already overstuffed dining area, and a new fridge was placed in front of it. Years later, I got to remove all of them. Full of food items that had stopped being refrigerated a long time ago.

Ideally you want to dump something like that whole, but it was an old house, and they did not fit through doorways without removing the doors of the fridges. We took all three out, along with several crock pots full of something inky black that used to be food, 2 stoves with various forms of food and dead rodents, numerous dead rodents in various stages of decomposition. And a whole lot of other things of similar vintage.

I don't think much can compare to that. I had done a lot of horrible things involving various fluids and byproducts before that job. That was the worst. That job turned my stomach worse than liquefied human, or bathtubs full of human excrement. Which are stories in and of themselves. All I can say is some people get really crazy as they age, and in this culture, no one really watches out for them until it gets BAD.

[armyowalgreens]

79. I ran my own lawncare business when I was 14.

I actually had a fairly strong customer base in my neighborhood. However, I had to carry all my equipment by hand because I was too young to drive. That means I had to drag the lawnmower and all the other equipment as far as a mile.

I remember riding my bicycle by a house one evening when some landscapers were giving this lady a quote for 200 dollars to do her front and backyard. I walked up to the discussion and told her I'd do it for 60 the next day. I got the job. And the landscapers looked like they wanted to murder me.

Unfortunately, it was 115 the next day. And I was 4'10'' trying to trim fully grown trees with an extended saw. I damn near killed myself making those 60 bucks.

Another time, I had to de-weed an entire backyard and dig up multiple dead trees.

And yet, the worst was when I ate shit riding my bicycle while carrying a full bag of grass and a bunch of tools.

I was too small to be doing that kind of work.