So, what's the worst job you've ever held?

Is this deja vu too? When's the last time we ran such a thread?

[Webwork]

1. Office cleaner (whilst in college) - It's amazing what utter slobs some people can be when they know someone else has to clean up after them. I mean, I expected to have to do some cleaning but puleeeeez, the used toilet paper goes in the toilet, that white ceramic thing on the wall is a pretty large target so stop missing it, a desktop is not a place to accumulate large volumes of food waste, . . Oy vey! The stuff I put up with. God bless the people who make their living doing it.

2. Chicken fryer man at a fried chicken fast food restaurant. 10 pressure cookers running all at once. Grease all over the place. Me, 16, with enough stuff going on to cause a #*$!le or two on my face. OMG - after 6 hours of being the chicken guy I had to scrape that crap - vaporized oil spewed into the air from the pressure cookers, powdered seasoning applied to 50 pound bags of chicken - off my face, hair, . . . but not before mopping the floors.

Two very memorable jobs.

Top that bornwithasilverspooninyourmouthguygal.

[Essex_boy]

Chopping lettuce in a factory near Thetford.

Mostly East europeans that didnt speak a word of English the brits that did work there were freakin' hate filled hill billys. Made me ashamed to be English.

Then you had the supervisors.

Only saving grace was that my brother was the personnel officer there handling their short term contracts (i.e easily sackable).

Sooooo oddly enough after the second week, when they all found out I had no further problems.

[matimer]

I used to work in a gray box it was 6 x 6 with a desk/computer ... it reminded me of a jail cell minus the window/toilet

They called it a "cubicle"

[abbeyvet]

Plucking turkeys three Christmases in a row. The pay was not bad for a student (and we got a free turkey), but it was exhausting, smelly work and turned your hands into raw red lumps of uselessness.

[BillyS]

I worked an entire summer shoveling gravel into a retaining wall that I was building - roughly two stories high and about 50 yards / meters long.

On the good days I carried 90 pound concrete sections of the retaining wall and hooked them together to form about three rows.

When that was completed, they had a 20-cubic-yard truck dump gravel (blue stone) near the back of the wall. I shoveled the stone into a wheelbarrow and dumped the stone into the wall I just built. I could shovel an entire truckload in a day (10 hours).

I was 17 at the time and asked to arm-wrestle a 30 year old everyone thought was unbeatable. He wasn’t ;)

[LisaWeber]

Police Radio Dispatcher/911 Calltaker for 5 years. Crappy hours and yelled at by everyone (public, coworkers, officers). Officers hiding and avoiding work whenever possible and getting pissy when they couldn't. The most hostile environment I've ever been in (and I was in the Army for 6 years). Zero support from anyone. Old and unergonomic computer setups. No training. ack.

[DXL]

Working 90 hours a week doing physical labor in a warehouse with no air conditioning or even a ventilation system when it was over 100 degrees outside (I can't even imagine how hot it was inside that metal warehouse). Couldn't wear gloves because of an aspect of the job, and I'd work until my hands bled.

It was also be best job I've ever had because it reminded me that I could always do that kind of work again if I had to, and it makes me appreciate every single day of being a designer.

[justdave]

I used to be the "plotter operator" at an engineering firm. I would print out huge blueprints, roll them up, and deliver them to the engineers. I worked as a dishwasher and server as well, but this was by far the worst job I ever had.

[4css]

worst job? Trying to do a template for a wedding/video site.

Not sure if they were just spoiled people or just people who would not be satisfied if their template was gold plated.

Other then that, every job I have ever had I totally enjoyed. Best one of all, raising my children. Only two out of 5 left, and I'm begining to feel the empty nest syndrome now, and they haven't even graudated yet.

Two married, one looking for a house, two soon to be out of the house. :( It will be a few years yet, but, I hate how fast they grow and leave. Its like blink, and they are gone.

[MamaDawg]

I've liked most jobs I've had and the people I've worked with, BUT I once worked as a systems administrator in a corporate environment that I'm convinced existed in a parallel universe - one with its own definition of reality that made it a living hell!

Sparing you the gory details, it was a cesspool for the most incompetent management buffoons I've ever seen in one place. You name it, we had it - pleasant-but-useless, raving alcoholics, the sexual harrassers, the verbally abusive, those incapable of making decisions on critical issues (we had no backups of some systems for MONTHS because a small tape library was garbage and they couldn't decide which of TWO other choices to buy! Had the budget, just wouldn't commit ...), those whose top achievment was collecting perks from vendors (one boasted of over 200 free T-shirts, or was it hats ...), and the security honcho who, er, "borrowed" computer equipment to furnish his home lab.

One of the happiest days of my life was the day I left :)!

[skibum]

Cleaning out crack/fraternity (they weren't that much different :) ) houses for a landlord near Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. Sometimes you'd find some great stuff, people would essentiually just vanish and leave everything they owned in the places, other times there would be needles laying around.

Same guy owned a carnival supply warehouse which made for some hot summers. He didn't believe that there was ever time on the clock when you shouldn't be doing something so if there literally wasn't anything to do, he'd have us carry a bunch of boxes of stuff down to the basement and then change his mind a few minutes later and bring them all back up to the main floor.

Was a dishwasher in a restaurant from time to time, busboy and most anything else from server to cocktail waiter, bartender, etc..

[graeme_p]

This is a tie between two jobs. The first was working for bank. A few quotes from my old (1996) personal website on the medical they made new employees take.

the form asked a number of questions related to smallpox

Unnecessary X-rays are harmful and their use in routine check-ups is banned in some countries

I was told that the bank had to ensure that employees were sufficiently fit for their duties. I have yet to find out for what duties are expected of bank staff for which a clean VD test is a necessity.

When the head of HR had appointments with anyone junior, he would keep them waiting (sometimes for hours) while he read the newspapers etc.

I was not overly impressed (to way the least) with the abilities of the rest of the management either.

The other job was selling business insurance. Very, very boring.

[Chris_D]

Was a dishwasher in a restaurant from time to time..

Yep - been there skibum - Steakhouse kitchen hand, two nights a week, working on the full time kitchen hands nights off. That really put you at the bottom of the heap.

That was a long time ago when I was at Uni. All the really really bad jobs got saved up for his nights off.... eventually, I got the hang of the game - and did them weekly so they weren't so gross - rather than waiting until his 'monthly' schedule....

But working for a large web dev company doing SEO on 'presentation' focussed corporate sites they 'designed' (you know 20 pages of DHTML nav code, no page went 'below the fold', words were jpegs etc.) was probably the worst for my self esteem.... :)

[texasville]

Working on a seismograph jug crew. West Texas, in the desert, in the summer. Walking, bending over every six feet and planting a jug in the ground. Five to ten miles, ten to twelve hours a day. Laying them down and picking them up. The jugs were attached to a line that were strung on a giant safety pin, slung around the neck. Weighed a ton when you first put it on and by the time you restrung it. 105 degrees in the shade. NO shade. I walked roads thru brush that had been carved out by a bulldozer. Avoiding snakes and scorpions. Our favorite diversion was trying to hit roadrunners with a rock. Developed a pretty good fastball that way.
I had lied about my age to get on. I was only 17. Between my junior and senior years of high school. Since we were on travel pay we worked 6 and sometimes 7 days a week.
We went over the border into Mexico one night and I got plastered in the boystown bars. Had to work the next day and got so sick I thought i was gonna die! I finally had to give up and crawl onto a pile of jugs in the back of a truck and pass out. The crew boss took pity on me and found a spot with a mesquite tree tall enough to get under so I wouldn't be in the blazing sun. I still remember awakening to the company boss looking in the back of the truck and yelling "Who killed this man?"...
They didn't fire me and I worked even harder after that to make up for it. Made enough that summer to buy a car for my senior year. Got sunburned so much that I now worry about skin cancer.

[stajer]

I did my share of the menial/dirty tasks (dishwasher, inventory for a bolt manufacturer), but my favorite story is after I had been able to work my way up the ladder a bit.

In high school I got a job as the "office boy" in an accountant firm. A pretty good job - good pay, indoors, air conditioning - way better than most of the jobs my friends had.

But, one of my duties was for those clients that were getting audited I had to make copies of their entire financials for the past seven years. That included copies of checks (front and back) and receipts. Do you know how long it takes to make copies of receipts?

Anyway, I am in hour 6 of day 10 of a particular client's copying and I am thinking to myself: "This sucks! Why don't they hire some poor schlub to do this?" And then I realized! They did hire some poor schlub - me! That was a big motivator to go to college that I had been waffling on at that point.

[digitalghost]

>>schlub

I love Yiddish. ;)

[Jane_Doe]

Being the very last programmer kept on a at a place that was going bankrupt during an economic downturn, so it was hard finding another job.

Every Friday they would lay off a couple more IT people and then expect the rest of us to just absorb the existing work load. Eventually it got to the point where I was literally the only full time programmer left and they tried to put me on call 24 x 7 for every application in the company.

[Essex_boy]

24 x 7 for every application in the company- Pah and I bet you refused! No loyalty.

[Jane_Doe]

24 x 7 for every application in the company- Pah and I bet you refused! No loyalty.

I offered to work week days 8 to 5 until I found a new job and they could take it or leave it. They were pretty mad about that but they didn't fire me. They just ended up using contract programmers to replace some of the people they'd laid off.

[Crush]

Building sites, fruit picking, chicken injecting, frame factory, furniture factory, selling hot dogs to drunks, English teaching. You name it I have done it when it comes to bad jobs. I travelled the world for 10 years, thank god for the internet, now I can finally make money sitting down.

[vivalasvegas]

I worked in this bar for a few days. I would have to argue with drunk people over how many beers they actually had.

[DXL]

I already posted my worst job, but as far as the bar thing since someone mentioned it, I used to bartend but was also a bar bouncer. Dealing with drunks as a bartender was never a problem, having to physically remove violent drunk people from bars as a bouncer was never a fun job. You never knew if someone had a gun or knife on them. Most of the time, I could talk people out without getting physical, though. It felt good knowing I kept the place relatively safe, though.

[Sarah Atkinson]

I use to work for a company that tested water. A large portion of their test was for raw sewer water. and waste water from factories (full of some sort of stinky die used in metal working) then there was also the stuff from meat prossessing plants and chicken plants(chicken poop) We had to keep the test samples for a month then dump them out.

imagine opening a bottle of raw sewage that had been siting on a shelf in the sun for a month. then repeate that aboult 300 times. I was also pregnant at the time and had developed a quizy stomach and sensitive nose.

[Essex_boy]

I wouldnt have done that, lord knows what you could have caught!

[Automan Empire]

Working the service counter of an auto-repair chain store as a fresh-faced, earnest young man fresh out of school and expecting to join the workforce serving a public eager to utilize our hard-earned skills and technical prowess, and respectful of our skills and time etc.

Instead I was rather shocked to find that people who had been alive and driving longer than my FATHER had been alive, acted like it was the first time ever in the history of mechanized ground transportation that someone had to wait their turn for a repair, and pay for it, too. That, and people who work their way to the front of a long line of people dropping off their widgets for repair, then act as if they are the only person in the shop, and WHY aren't we all dropping everything to serve him instantly as he has to go to work, unlike every other adult citizen in the land or something.

People still act this way, but I am the owner of the widget shop and am not in the position of having to accept their abuse and ridiculous expectations, but it has never stopped galling me that they try childish manipulations to get to the head of the line.

I chose a career working with machines, because PEOPLE drive me so crazy, but there is no escape.
-Automan

[percentages]

Full-time gardener. Gardening is incredibly hard work, day-in, day-out, in the Florida sun!

My boss is a slave driver, I'd leave if I wasn't married to her.

I got this job out of luck, I didn't need to work at my SEO job anymore and thought this would be fun ;)

The only thing I've learnt is that there is no such thing as a "good job" ;)

[DamonHD]

Hi percentages,

Just to buck the trend of this thread: there *are* good jobs, and 2 out of the 4 that I currently do are about the best ones that I've ever had.

Back to bad jobs: well, not all bad, but having to wash dishes in a pub with greasy food, no hot water or detergent... Having to scoop the congealed fat off the top of the sink so that I could get the dishes out again without them getting a free "waxing", and dodging the very sharp kitchen knives that the chef would chuck into the murky water without telling me.

Still, I didn't hate even that job!

Rgds

Damon

[JudgeJeffries]

Working in a hot as hell sterilised milk plant for the school holidays when I was 15. Lost a stone, gained a load of muscle and only ever wore shorts and nothing else for 10 hour shifts (and I'm talking cool UK Summers here.)

[charliemunger]

On a farm, killing rats with a pitch fork for £20 a day when I was 14.

The best job I ever...no wait a second

[limbo]

All my jobs have been pretty cool - Even enjoyed being a postie... But me'dads first job takes some beating:

He worked in Liverpools busiest Abbatioire in the 50's picking up bloodclots with a spike and wheelbarrow. The contents therein, were to be used in Black Pudding. Grim.

[clayscottbrown]

I never had a job that I didn't like. Most difficult however was working for ONE INCORPORATED, Dorr Legg, not because he was difficult, but that I had to sit in the bowels of The Mansions Library for hours on end doing nothing. To say it was dark down there is to say nothing at all. I do remember that When Dorr would occasionally recieve a call from me, from one Mansion to the other, the first thing he would say into the phone was his telephone number. I guess he didn't like wrong numbers.