What is the worst job you ever had

[jiacinto]

discuss

[Girlfriday]

1. It would have to be......

.....running the counter at a bowling alley. The absolute worst!

[populistmom]

2. Head teacher for an after school program

The kids were hard, but the parents were worse. I had an assistant and 30 kids from 1st to 5th grade. As you can imagine 5 year olds and 11 year old like different things so I'd try my best to adapt and do activities that pleased everyone as much as possible. I'd have a handful of parents constantly complaining their children are bored, the program sucked, I sucked, "my kid shouldn't have to listen to you", you name it. Once parent would consistantly pick up her child 1/2 hour late and I'd get no support from the people over me despite all kinds of written policies we were supposed to follow in this type of situation.
After that, I worked with infants and new moms. It fit me a lot better and I gradually decided I was going to go into nursing. Give me poopy diapers and spitup any day over brats from dysfunctional households.

[scarlet_owl]

3. Pharmacy technician

Hands down worst. And that's saying something, considering I used to work as a fish monger and at McDonald's. I hated being around pushy sick people all day. I also hated the personal questions people would ask me. Because I was wearing a white coat, it was automatically assumed I was a doctor. I don't know what to do about body lice or penile warts. Yeah, I'll take gutting fish all day to that bullshit. The fish didn't yell at me.

[jus_the_facts]

4. working for a freeper family who ran their own A/C installation'n'repair..

....business...their office was built onto the side of their mobile home....I was the receptionist and the retired *father* was always coming on to me...the son who and his wife were going on vacation and I commented on his behavior and stated that I didn't like it and that since they'd be out of town and he was going to be there....could they mention to him to refrain from said behavior....sooooo...they fired me the next day...stating that my 3 month *evlauation* period was up....which had been a month past already....I didn't *fit* in with their company.....HEH...wish I'd had a tape recorder with me the whole time I worked there and had sued the FUCK right out of 'em! :evilfrown:

[sistersofmercy]

5. Years ago I worked in a woman's clothing store...

Failed miserably b/c I couldn't tell someone a particular garment looked great when in fact it didn't.

[Rowdyboy]

6. Juggie for a geophysical crew...

Lasted about 4 days...It was January 1982. I had worked for the state employment service as an interviewer for 2 years and now Reagan threatened our funding. I expected to be laid off, so I took a job with a friends father who ran a crew that explored for oil. For a couple of days it was okay. Then temps dropped into the teens, it rained, and I was given the job of hauling and laying 80lb rolls of cable, then stomping spikes into the ground. I got the cables mixed up, didn't stomp them in hard enough, got yelled at, sneered at , wet, cold and eventually, couldn't catch a ride home.

I walked a few miles to a phone and called my friend who had gotten me the job and siad "come get me". That was my last day.

Thankfully, I did not get laid off, so my concern was unnecessary. But I learned I didn't want to be a "juggie"

[alfredo]

7. It's a tie between shovelling out chicken coops and

cutting tobacco. both are filthy back breaking jobs. the only good thing about the chicken poop is the job ends as soon as you empty the last wheelbarrow. tobacco cutting lasts all day in the hot August sun. You are paid piece work and it is dangerous. You got to cut then spear the plant, six plants to a stick, grab the spear, put in on another stick, and fill it up, then on to the next. I can tell you, no matter how fast you can work, the Mexicans will make you look like you are standing still. they work their asses off.

[sistersofmercy]

9. I had to do the chicken coup thing on my grandparents farm...

my brother and I would get into poo flinging fights. Worse was trying to get the eggs.

[WilliamPitt]

8. Diging shit, tampons, vomit, and used condoms out of an open septic tank

from a rowboat, using pool skimmers.

[Drifter]

33. I was just going to ask where WillPitt is ...

I remember your story about flinging "Larrys" out of the Cesspool.

Cheers
Drifter

[FDRrocks]

10. Dishwasher. Horrible.

I'd wash dishes get dirty, and get paid shit. At one place I had to clean up puke off the bar in such an event. The waitresses would ask me bus tables for them on busy nights, and then wouldn't share the profits. In 1/3 places a plate of fries would be taken out of my check. In the 1 place that didn't charge me, I would wash all the dishes, make all of the pizzas, make all of the salads, prep most of the food, for 5$ an hour under the table! This job also turned superbowl sunday from a day of joy into a day of mourning, for me.

[VOX]

22. Same here. First job was as a minium-wage dishwasher...

8:00 a.m. on Sunday mornings, elbow-deep in greasy water with bits macaroni floating around on the surface, and rinsing out those cold, grey cups of coffee with the lone cigarette butts floating in them. Did this Friday afternoon also, instead of cruising around with my high-school buds.

Got paid cash out of the register. Not to offset the torture. It was a sharp, cruel life-lesson, though.

[soleft]

42. I liked being a dishwasher

I worked as a dishwasher at a camp for handicapped children. At the end of every meal the kids would bring the dishes up and stack them up in huge piles, and it was always a race to see if I could get the dishes into the machine before a big stack would topple over.

[Padraig18]

26. Ditto, in spades!

Dishwashing in a Greek restaurant down on Halstead! The owner was a psycho who screamed at the top of his voice (even in ordinary conversation), constantly 'shorted me' on my wages and always scheduled me for split shifts.

As regards cutsomers,to this day I have to restrain myself from jackslapping people who either put cigarettes out on their plates or use their water glass or salad bowl as a garbage can! :P

[It was not a pretzel]

28. same here

only for 2 days though before I got fired :)

It was in a hotel, shifts from 6 till 6 or 12 to midnight. On the 3rd day I'd arranged to meet my girlfriend in the morning before work. She didn't turn up and I couldn't get old of her. I phoned in sick and went looking.

When I got back to my room (at the back of the hotel, no bathroom, 2 sharing) my roommate went apeshit in german. The only words I understood were "engländer" and "streik" (strike).

Then when I turned up for work the next day the cook launched himself at me and tried to beat the shit out of me, the rabid old plank.

It was the best thing I ever did getting fired from that hellhole.

I've had some shitty jobs since....cleaning rooms at hotels, factory work etc.

[TlalocW]

11. It would have to be...

My first full time computer programming job. I started off as a contractor, and my sense of humor got me in trouble the second week (someone asked me if I could do something, and I picked up my Magic 8 Ball from my desk to get the answer). I eventually got under a manager (who is now a good friend) who had the same sense of humor, but I still got in trouble when I told people, "No," in regards to can we do something this way, or will you do it the wrong way, etc. My friend/manager, Robert, could do the same thing, but no one ever got mad at him. Eventually my friend went back to being a programmer, and we were all put under this one jerk of a manager, Randy, who never bothered to check into things. I went to him asking for a raise and a promotion and showed him everything I had done to modernize the scripts my group wrote. Because of me instead of having to write a whole new set of scripts to connect to a hospital bulletin board that we already connected to in a previous line of business, we could just add in the information of the new line of business to the previous scripts, and it was ready to go in five minutes instead of weeks.

He seemed shocked at all I had done, and he came back with, "Well, this is great work, but you have a bit of a reputation here. I'll tell you what... We're in a hiring freeze so we can't promote anyone. Be on your best behavior until the hiring freeze is over, and if there are no more complaints about you then I'll promote you." Fine.

Well, the hiring freeze ends, and my friend/ex-manager and I go to see this guy about a business analyst who keeps screwing up and blaming us. We have a pile of print-outs a half inch thick documenting everything, and we're sick of being the scapegoats (mainly me because no one ever stood up to my friend because he knew the process of everything so well). We get done, and my friend leaves, but I stay. "Randy, have you had any complaints about me?" He says no, and I can see in his eyes that he's trying to figure out why I'm asking. "And the hiring freeze is over?" Yesss... "Those were your two requirements for promoting me and givng me a raise. How about it." Well, it's not that simple... You have this reputation... "Randy, based on what Robert and I just showed you, how much of that reputation do you think is valid? Do you go and follow up on any complaints that add to this "reputation?"" Well, no... "So basically, I'm never going to get ahead in this company because you won't do your job as a manager. I'll always have this reputation no matter how good I am. Robert has told you that I'm the go-to guy when we have some sort of problem to be taken care of through programming, and I always deliver, but it will never make a difference because of my reputation."

A week later, I had gotten a better job, paying more money and using newer programming languages and resigned. Randy was "disappointed that I had decided to do this." I kept my mouth shut because Robert advised me to not burn any bridges, and he went up to read him the riot act later that day about fucking up with me and how that he was going to have train at least two new people to be able to take the place of me, etc. and what a piece of shit he was because he didn't keep promises.

All in all, a mixed bag. I liked working with my friend Robert and a few other people, but the business side was so full of people who were only competent at switching the blame to other groups.

TlalocW

[sugarcookie]

12. Working for DQ

When I was a junior in high school my friends and I took summer jobs working at the local Dairy Queen. The owner/Manager was such a tightwad.

We could not let ice cream flow in to the middle of the cone.

If we were lucky enough to get the ice cream to stand up on the cone...then we had to weigh it.

If it weighed too much..then we had to swipe it off and start over. The swiped ice cream was recycled for "new" cones.

If customers left plastic utensils on the table we were to wash and reuse them. When he wasn't looking we would snap them in half so they couldn't be reused. :D

I have not eaten at a Dairy Queen since I quit that job.

edit: I always misspell ice cream :D

[newyawker99]

36. Congrats sugarcookie!! 300 posts

:toast:

[DrGonzoLives]

13. Digging irrigation trenches

Specifically, an irrigation line in solid clay for a football field...at my alma mater no less...AFTER I fucking graduated...

[NJCher]

14. Orange office

You'd think this would be a great job, right? Go around checking out competitive restaurants for a seafood chain, evaluating whether they'd be any competition. Big expense account. Dish out a little marketing advice here and there. Great salary. Company car.

Well, my office was at the back of the building, had no windows and it was wallpapered in orange. Yes, orange. I will never forget it as it is seared into my memory. On office days I would go in that office and literally put my head on my desk and weep. I didn't know it then but I have to, absolutely have to, be around plants and nature. At the very least, I have to be able to see see it from a window.

And I can't be around florescent light, either.


Cher

[NJCher]

15. p.s. about chicken manure

I dig it in for free in my gardens! And it doesn't bother me one bit but if I got paid to do it I would probably hate it.


Cher

[Gogi]

16. Working on the 1980 Federal Census.

Thank goodness this was just a temporary (but high paying!) job. Towards the end I would dream about being in the office working on those damned forms an hour before I woke up.
The government sent out these forms that had strict requirements for filling out so the computer could read them. So, we took a cardboard template and laid it over the filled out census forms looking for people who drew out of the lines. If the little circles were'nt filled out completely in number two pencil we had to fill the circles in. Stray marks had to be cleaned up and the form inspected for incomplete answers, etc. If anything was wrong we then rejected the form and sent it to the poor telephone people so they could get cussed out by the populace. They had the worst job of all.

[FloridaJudy]

17. Operating a blue-print machine

Please tell me that technology has done away with this job!

This was *way* back in the sixties, before anyone ever heard of CAD. It was my job to feed the raw drawings made by engineers and architects into the blue-print machine: this was a monster device the size of a church organ that emitted toxic ammonia fumes, and raised the temperature of the small room that contained it to over 120 degrees. It also had a distressing tendency to jam, which meant I had to crawl into the guts of the beast to clear it.

As a "Kelly Girl", I was expected to wear panti-hose, high-heels, a mini-skirt and a perpetual smile while doing this. By the time I got home, I'd be covered in heat rash, wheezing and have a black and blue butt from the Big Boss pinching me "affectionately".

Only cool thing about that job was the opportunity to work with engineers and architects. They always treated me with shy respect (particularly once I'd shown an aptitude for fixing the Infernal Device). They were kind, unlike their employer.

I've been hopelessly attracted to nerds ever since.

[kodi]

20. yeap, so did i , paper cuts on fingers stung like hell w/ ammonia

when the ammonia wafted over those cuts it would bring tears to my eyes as i feed the paper into the machine. god help when the paper got stuck and we had to open the end of the machine.

[kodi]

18. cleaned out pens on a goat farm , but i did meet my 1st girl friend there

a real beaut she was, an alpine named heidi....her kids call me daaaaaaddddddeeeeeee.

[lpbk2713]

19. Grocery Bag Boy

When I was in high school, way back when. The job itself wouldn't have been so bad but the manager was a real SOB. He had just gotten out of the Army where he was a Captain in the MP's. One of these rare assholes that really enjoys being a prick. It was my first real job of any kind and I didn't know any better than to take his bullshit. I'd like to meet up with him now just to push his weasel face in.

[MSchreader]

21. Customer service at UPS

At Christmas time! It still gives me nightmares.

Martin

[KDLarsen]

23. The short job I just had...

.. at a local trash burn site. It basically going around the various ovens, where they burn the various trash that are collected around the county, and vacuuming thepipes going in and out clean, because they're just covered in dust/ash. At first it didn't sound too bad, but once you reach 7th floor, it gets very messy due to the noise, the smell & the heat (at 9th floor we were working in temperatures around 104 degrees F, wearing long sleeved shirst due to the hot pipes).

[Awsi Dooger]

24. Handicapper for a telemarketing sports service

In Las Vegas, fall '87. I still can't believe I gave up a cushy sportswriting job in LA for such garbage.

My friend hired me promising big bucks, 3x to 5x what I was making. He had left a big sports service and supposedly took all their best clients with him. He wanted me to pick the winners.

It was in a midsize room on Sahara Avenue, right next to a Marine recruitment office and connected to another telemarketing office peddling vitamins. Our sales crew, about 8, was quite the sight: one had a lower leg that was purple and at least twice normal size. His chosen therapy was nonstop alcohol. Another guy, the ace salesman, went to jail on drug charges after one week of the preseason. An elderly woman was the saddest case of all. She had a serious disease and would leave very early every day after her friend picked her up.

We had two names, Global Sports and Sports Equities. We would never give out both sides of a game, but if we lost with someone under one service name the boss would call them up the next week and pitch under the other service while badmouthing the first one. I would put up maybe 15 selections on the back chalkboard and it was completely random who the people would get. A salesman would simply wheel around in his chair and pick 3 or 5 at random and claim they were the gems of the week.

I insisted on being the handicapper and bookeeper only, no phone sales bullshit. The only aspect I enjoyed was giving picks to an attorney from Missouri who sent us a contract: 57% or better for the season equalled $1500, otherwise zilch. I gave him the prime picks and made it!

It was amazing what the customers clamored: ridiculous stories of Vegas fixes that we were somehow in on beforehand. The salesmen who went that route cleaned up, especially if the game somehow covered very late or in a strange fashion. The people were convinced it had been rigged and loved that they were finally the beneficiary. A call to Hawaii was almost a guaranteed sale. The guys there seemed to be total degenerates.

I finally quit early in February after the boss demonstrated how sleazy the business was. An elderly widower who called every day and loved to chat sports was talking to me when the boss got impatient and grabbed the phone. Finally the boss asked for my top selections and pitched the elderly guy on them at length, intentionally giving him the OPPOSITE side of my selection, hoping to bury the guy and get rid of him. I quit immediately and called the oldtimer when I got home, leveling with him and getting him to switch sides. I felt great when all 3 came through.

The boss repeatedly apologized and tried to sway me back for a month. Finally I agreed to supply one Saturday worth of basketball selections, and intentionally gave him opposite of my best picks. He pounded on my door with a sarcastic "thank you very much" early Sunday morning.

[Maine Mary]

25. Hmmm....

Twelve years of shoe factory work was not that fun but probably my worst job was working at an animal shelter in a very poor county. It wasn't the vomit or live worms in dog poop (among other things) that got me. I was having to have perfectely healthy cats, dogs and kittens put to sleep because we were overcrowded and couldn't find homes for them. It was so heartbreaking.

I still do voluteer work for them on Christmas and New Years day though to give the employees a break.

[LuLu550]

27. trying to sell encyclopedias

to poor Hispanics in LA during the 1970s...the sales pitch was so appalling it made me want to puke, basically, "buy these books or your kids will never amount to anything here in American."
I lasted one day and quit.

[bif]

29. JC Penneys

Hauling pallettes of appliances from the loading dock to various sections of the store. I was supposed to work in package pick-up. I quit after one day and told them to just keep the check.

[greatauntoftriplets]

30. Running a public relations agency for absentee owners.

They were in California and I was in Chicago. Aside from the fact I had to threaten the owners to get paid (by telling them I would not be able to afford the public transportation downtown without the money), I got screamed at when the mailman brought a mysterious return-receipt required envelope to the door one day. How ta hell was I to know it was the man's ex-wife filing suit for years of owed child support? I quit. Hope the ex took asshole and his trophy wife to the cleaners, the cheap ass.

[indigo32]

31. Selling light bulbs over the phone

for some charity (though I wasn't associated...I was working for a temp agency).
It was me in this room... failing to sell any lightbulbs and the manager waiting for me to make a sale (NOT making any calls himself).... and no other marketers. It was really wierd and uncomfortable.

[qb]

32. Cramming chickens into cages so they could lay eggs on a conveyor belt

I had this job for 2 weeks when I was 14. Some of the chickens had a flesh-eating disease so bad their bones were exposed. We had to ring their necks. All of the clothes I wore had to be thrown out, the smell was so bad.

I buy free range eggs now.

[NashVegas]

34. House Cleaning / Chambermaid at a Resort

The normal motel rooms weren't so bad, but the cottages were horrible. Dried cerial stuck to the floors and whatever else their kids could thrown down. Or up.

[Padraig18]

35. Done that, too!

I worked for a general-cleaning and fire-/smoke-/water-damage restoration service, and I can't believe what PIG STYES some people call 'home'. :puke:

[zizzer]

37. counting over ripe and rotten tomatoes so they could be thrown at...

ME!

Yup, I was one of those guys at the Renisance FEstival who spits insults at people so they can pay for three rotten tomatos to throw at me. Oh, that sucked!

Zizzer

[Aristus]

38. Have you ever seen "Office Space"?

Well, imagine that with a greedy small business, instead of a greedy multinational. I worked as an assistant for a schlub who sold sales training seminars to car salesmen. Talk about the ass-end of the sales profession!
He wasn't some uneducated loser who printed up some business cards and started to do his thing; he had a college education and everything. But he insisted on playing all kinds of mind games as a way to show off his knowledge of the arcane and useless. My job was to go around to car dealerships and sell the program. Thankless job. The program itself bit the big one, the 'clients' were faintly desparate, clip-on tie losers, and my boss was slightly unbalanced.
I also had to draw up those "friendly neighborhood car salesman" newsletters you've probably seen. Take the bullet-points from the steel-pusher and cobble them into a readable form. Not too bad, but as an educated man myself, I insisted upon proper proofreading. The boss hatcheted me for 'wasting company time'.
I was fired after three months. It was the first time I had ever been fired, and it hurt. Looking back, I know for sure he did me a real favor. That job just sucked, and I'd hate to be rabbiting my life away there still.

edit: proper proofreading :-)

[DK666]

39. Installing fireplaces

of all places custom homes in las vegas in august 1983. We had 500 to install in SECOND floor homes in rough in stage. No lifts hand carry pre-way fireplaces with blowers. Worst part was it was my Uncles company and you know what that means.

[HEyHEY]

40. Hot dog vendor

snooooooreeeee

[CO Liberal]

41. Paper Delivery (1972)

Throwing copies of the New York Times out the window of a moving Ford Econoline van between 3 and 6 in the morning. I lasted about two weeks.

[ohiosmith]

43. My worse job

I was a teenager in Goshen, Indiana during the winter of 1965. I worked for a guy who owned the feather concession at the Butterball turkey processing plant.

His crew was responsible for removing resaleable feathers from the turkeys prior to sending them to their ultimate doom. The feathers were sold to bedding manufacturers. There were six of us. Two guys to unload the metal cages containing the turkeys from semi-trailers, two to hang them by their feet from the conveyor chain and two to pull out the "tuft" feathers from under the turkey's tail feathers. I was one of the feather pluckers.

We were stationed on an unheated, open loading dock in subfreezing weather. The pluckers could not wear gloves as it was impossible to grip and pull the feathers with them on.

The birds were totally freaked out by the time they got to us. They traveled God knows how far on a flatbed semi. Then upon stopping they get jerked out of their cage, hung upside down on a moving chain and some guy yanks their ass feathers out. The turkeys would crap, piss, and puke all over us.

As bad as my job was there was a guy who had it worse. He was an old boozer named Lonnie. Lonnie sat in the "blood room". Lonnie's job was to slit the birds' throats after we finished with them. Lonnie didn't wear gloves either.

That was foul (no pun), but the worst part of Lonnie's job was keeping the blood room drain clear. Every half hour or so Lonnie would wade (he did wear Wellingtons) to the center of the room were the blood would get about 18" deep, roll up his jacket sleeve and fish around with his hand to find the drain and clear the clot.

[Lars39]

44. Painting curbs yellow during the hottest summer on record for the area.

105 in the shade; must have been 125 on the pavement in the sun, easy.
They were tarring a roof nearby. I was sick to my stomach most of the time. blech.