What's the worst job you've ever done? I had to haul shi

[yurbud]

I had to haul shit out from under an outhouse in Alaska, and didn't get to take a shower or bath for another couple of days after.

[Archae]

1. Ick.

I worked in a lumber hard, back in '79.

Stacked small wooden blocks ALL DAMN DAY. :boring:

[Floogeldy]

2. How was the pay?

?

[yurbud]

3. So far, $30K for four months work and I might get more

It was the summer of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, so I get part of the lawsuit.

[Floogeldy]

9. What the heck?

It washes off. ;)

[Chan790]

4. Chemical Passivation

of metal screws. It involves washing metal parts in a 115% humidity super-saturated environment in 95+ degree heat in a solution so base that it will eat your skin off and leave unhealing oozing wounds that look like cigarette burns or smallpox scars.

Summer Job in college. Made $8000 a summer in about 2 months time each year.

[qnr]

18. Ugh, that would be a real pain (no pun intended) n/t

[DS1]

5. One time I had to drag two kegs worth of shit out to an outhouse

in Alaska and leave it there as part of some strange millionaire's prank

[Merrick]

6. I worked as a valet for 2 weeks

driving rich people's luxury cars across a busy three lane one-way blvd. to the parking lot across the street until frat boy boss man fired me because he "didn't like my attitude". That's okay, because then I got a better job hauling poor people's stuff around the hoods of LA for a moving company owned by a junkie (making more money).

I worked at Subway as well for a few months back in the day. that was no picnic either.

[qnr]

7. Pulling floaters out of the water. I won't say what condition they were

in, but some of them had been in the water for a while.

Edit: Floaters = dead people.

[yurbud]

8. did they come out in one piece?

[qnr]

13. varied, Sometimes the stokes litter just went through them :/ n/t

[Chan790]

10. Coast Guard or Water Rescue?

I considered (and still am considering) both.

[qnr]

15. Coast Guard. Most of it was great, that part sucked. n/t

[seemunkee]

11. Damn, I thought laying sod sucked.

[qnr]

16. Well, on the positive side, saving lives was much more common n/t

[SOteric]

12. It doesn't get me a lot of sympathy,

but I worked for some time at a job that required a great deal of travel.

I realise on the face of it, that sounds pretty glamourous to a great many people. But in the reality of it, it was impossible to hold down relationships and maintain any connection to friends and family. I'd be in Hong Kong for two or three months and then I'd be in Egypt for two or three months. I'd come back home after a time and the man I'd been dating was married and expecting a child, my best friend had moved to Portland and taken a different job, my mother had closed one restaurant and started another.

Continuity in life may only be an illusion, but I found it to be one I missed nonetheless. It made me feel intensely disconnected.

[yurbud]

21. CIA?

[SOteric]

32. I'd tell you,

but then I'd have to kill you.




No, seriously I worked for a luxury hotel chain. So yeah, not really one of the worst jobs in the world. Just not for me.

[hfojvt]

22. it would not be so bad for me

I have not had very many friends, and my family has been pretty far away. But I hate travel. I never flew in an airplane until I was 39. Still, the worst part of travel for me is the cost, and limited funds. If someone else is paying for it - let's roll.

[Greyhound]

45. It wears thin very quickly. At least the previous person got to stay

for months at a time. One old position had me in a new city every 2 to 3 weeks. Not enough time to even learn where the good restaurants are.

[hfojvt]

46. apparently going by bus too

I am not a big fan of restaurants. I try to bring my own food and/or use grocery stores even when I travel.
Have you been to Abilene, Ks?
If not, you may wonder what is there besides the Eisenhower library?
http://www.abilenekansas.org/page.aspx?page_id=16

[Greyhound]

57. No, was on a job in Wichita for 5 or 6 weeks in the late 90's

It was incredibly boring. I don't know how people can live in those places, there was absolutely nothing to do but get drunk and watch TV or dance to bad country music.

[DainBramaged]

14. Tire mounter/changer outside

Way back in the mid-Seventies little tiny tire store in a little tiny town, 2 lifts outside. Mounted tires in the cold and rain in November because the gas station in town I worked at burned down (I wasn't there at the time). It was horrible. And as a mechanic back then, to take a minimum wage 12 hours a day job was humiliating and exhausting. Prick owner kept the tips and split them (so he said) end of the day with me.

It lasted less than a week.

[distantearlywarning]

17. Toss up between 2 jobs.

I once worked construction in the dead of winter at 7500 feet. Nailing, sawing, holding up sheetrock, and the worst, putting up insulation for 8 hours a day, and meanwhile it's about freakin' 25 degrees below zero. No amount of exercise and food can keep you warm that long in that weather, unless you maybe eat seal blubber or something. I was always dead tired when I got home - couldn't even take my paycheck and go party after work I was so exhausted all the time!

The other worst job I worked was temporary serving help at wedding receptions. Wedding reception catering sucks big donkey doo. The people who hire you are always control freaks and stressed out about everything so they micromanage everything you do. The guests are rude and treat you like something that they found on the bottom of their shoe. Wedding receptions are boring, stupid, and overly sentimental even when you know the people well. And the wedding I remember most was an Indian wedding - I had to transport the food in the back of my car, and it spilled on the way there so my car smelled like rancid curry for a year and a half. And the mother-of-the-bride refused to pay the servers unless we stayed after the reception and washed all the dishes for 250 guests (was supposed to be the job of the hall but somehow us peons got stuck with it - amazing how that happens so often to people who make $7 an hour and don't have the resources to sue or say no).

[hfojvt]

23. I work in 'the hall'

so I get to clean up after wedding receptions. Usually it has all been paid for, and everyone's drunk and happy that it's over. Sometimes the music is okay. It's probably not as bad as doing the food, and it pays better too.

[ashling]

19. Had to shovel sawdust out from under the saw deck

of a sawmill. There's always more sawdust!

When I worked at a vet clinic in high school I had to clean up after sick animals with diahreha.
Once had to crawl in a cage that was solid on top, sides and back, to clean and scrup the thing. All surfaces coated solidly with diahreha. the Lab had been in there overnight and ... phew!

[sendero]

20. Toss up....

... between rebuilding carburetors - working in a gasoline-drenched environment for 8 hours a day; or working in a rubber factory making tire patches.

Both were dirty nasty jobs that I wouldn't have ever done except I was a poor young man who had no idea there were options :)

[Fox Mulder]

24. I was a janitorial assistant one summer at my high school.

Man...did that job ever suck. I was their bitch. I had to do everything...clean every classroom in the school (there were hundreds of them), clean every desk, clean every bathroom, repaint some of the classrooms, clean-out every locker, etc.

I was glad when that summer was over.

[HEyHEY]

25. Advertising sales

FUCK

[yurbud]

26. I forgot I was a phone solicitor for a couple of weeks...that's worse than

shit.

I was on straight commission, but after a few weeks they fired my anyway cause I was tying up the phone and never made a sale.

[Ivan Sputnik]

27. Clean toilets

for a restaurant (I was also a bus boy). Pretty disgusting, but stress free. Maybe it wasn't the worst job.

[Omphaloskepsis]

28. Janitor at a movie theatre...

15 stalls... Hold on .. Hold on.. Yes.. Someone will shit all over the walls every night. I did make 25$ per hour. It was worth it.

[Xithras]

40. Hey, I had the same job at a fraction of the pay!

I don't know what was worse...people shitting on the walls or kids puking in the aisles after eating too much candy! Of course, I only got paid $7 an hour (in 1990), so it really was NOT worth it!

[Misunderestimator]

29. Had to empty old specimens from bottles filled with formaldehyde...

that had gone past their required storage time at a pathology lab. That job really sucked.

[yurbud]

33. pickled fetuses? that would suck.

[Misunderestimator]

35. Yes, well, not the phrase I would choose...

but there were those, as well as an amputated foot and sundry other unrecognizable things.

[yurbud]

48. How about "marinated Mini-Me's"?

[BigMcLargehuge]

30. Temp

every week was some new horror of repetitive labor.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

31. You win!

[HamstersFromHell]

34. Dye House operator...

...in a thread manufacturer.

Think steam, lots of steam, so humidity was always 100%.

Once checked the temp. in there and it was 119 degrees at 9pm. (Hotter during the daylight hours.)

Drank about 3 gallons of water a day to keep hydrated and still lost 38 lbs. the first two weeks I was there.

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

36. Picking peppers at the height of the Australian summer

12 hours days with 30 mins lunch & two 10 minute "smoko" breaks. Burned my ass off, crippled my back & practically dehydrated every day. Then when I finished that job, I did 2 weeks sorting out plum tomatoes into 4 different sizes & 4 different colours at a factory. Happy days!

[LaraMN]

37. Tele-fundraising. Everyone hates you. It's soul-killing. eom

[Greyhound]

38. Euthanize pinkies at a cancer research center

and wash the cages.

[Xithras]

41. Pinkies?

Please enlighten the uneducated :)

[Greyhound]

44. Sorry, baby lab rats. Unbelievably tough little guys. n/t

[anarch]

39. this one time I painted the entire interior of a house,

and I did a really, totally half-assed job of it. It looked like crap.

[Orsino]

42. I had to shovel it out of a sewage pool...

...but that only lasted a day or two, and I got waders and showers.

You know what was weird? All the tomato plants growing there.

[nashbridges]

43. Assistant to a sewer engineer

You haven't had a bad job until the collective waste of an entire office building has been flushed over your head.

[edbermac]

47. No bad jobs, just bad bosses...

Some real assholes; even after 20-odd years, I'd still like to commit bodily harm to a few of them...:grr:

[yurbud]

50. now that's true. I even liked waiting tables apart from the bosses

[Beware the Beast Man]

49. Telemarketer for a ministry I had never even heard of.

Don't ask, I needed the dough. It was also my shortest job at just under 10 minutes.

[Broken_Hero]

51. Alaska huh? like flying

rubber dog shit outta hong kong? Ha, just kidding. I'm from SE Alaska. The worst job i had by far was digging ditches. Oh man, what a taxing, phsyical job, digging and digging...biggest job i had to do was dig a 8 ft deep, 4ft wide, 65ft long ditch...oh man, it sucked, and by shovel and pick and wheelbarrow. It sucked, man, i hate digging ditches. Also, i gutted fish at cold storages and i hated that, but it was less physically demanding than digging ditches...bleh, but hauling shit, is bad....

[taught_me_patience]

52. Door to Door solicitations for US PIRG

Lasted one day. The quota was $80 and I had $20 after 5 hours. I gave my money and walked home. The constant rejection was bad for the soul.


Taught.

[EstimatedProphet]

67. I almost did that once

Looks like I chose correctly.

[davidinalameda]

68. I did that for another group

I hated it so much

I wanted to cry

I don't think that I lasted a day

[baldguy]

53. At least hauling shit is honest work.

I used to sell insurance.

[LibDemAlways]

54. That's bad. I've had crappy jobs, but

never that bad. The worst recent job I had was in a small insurance office trapped with freepers who listened to Rush and Hannity all day. That was horrible. Also, taught 25 years ago in a Catholic school and had 8th graders deposit dog shit on my desk and steal my car keys. I had boys' bathroom duty after lunch and that was stomach-turning. I've also worked in a travel agency with my desk directly across from the bathroom. I won't go into the details, but it was pretty bad as well.

[ornotna]

55. I had that same job.

But it was uphill....both directions. :P

[DanCa]

56. Black top - smell made me sick.

[Deja Q]

58. Phone sex

I just couldn't do it.

[barb162]

59. ohmygod, ohmygod....

[Kali]

60. eh, compares to early motherhood (dapers)

and doesn't even come close to raising teenagers.

Aside from the non-financial rewards of parenthood, I would say retail/waitressing - dealing with assholes all day - has to be pretty bad. Oh did I mention teenagers?


(disclaimer: just kidding around, my kids are pretty decent, really. :silly: )

[Arkansas Granny]

61. That would have to be when I vaccinated baby chicks before

they were taken to the boiler houses. My best rate was 2,300 per hour which makes me a chicken sticker, first class.

[bertha katzenengel]

62. delivering telephone books door to door

Ugh.

[Bzzzz]

63. Working as a nurses aide...

in a nursing home and digging out patients impactions when constipated. yuk!!!

[jrandom421]

64. Perhaps the worst job ever

Worked as an aide for one of the first pediatric hospices in the nation. Ambulances were making 5-7 trips a day to and from the hospital. The place had 35 beds, and in the 3 months that I could stand working there, they had a 400% patient turnover and a 150% staff turnover. One day, they moved 11 kids out, and I finally snapped. I quit, and spent the rest of the month in a drunken haze, trying to forget all the young faces that would never smile again. Still have occasional nightmares of my own kids and grandkids being moved in and out. Worst job ever.

[ThatsMyBarack]

65. College Cafeteria

I had to clean frozen roaches out of the salad bar!! x(

[khashka]

66. Trash picker on the North Slope

Mostly it's just boring as hell. Walking for miles and picking up small pieces of... well... I'm sure it was something else but I would have sworn it was Kleenex.

Then crawling under buildings mopping up oil or chemical spills after working a twelve hour day.

I still kinda wonder about the empty vodka bottle, sex toys and used condoms I had to clean up. I guess someone had fun. But on the tundra? Must have been cold and surely they should have cleaned up after themselves.

Khash.