What was the worst job you've ever had?

[napi21]

I admit I stole that question from Lionel, but I thought it was interesting!

My worst job was phone soliciting for life insurance. I was trying to earn some money after my first baby was born without haveing to leave the house and find a sitter. Cold calling s THE WORST JOB IN THE WORLD!

What was YOUR worst job?

[TahitiNut]

1. Busboy.

Difficult, dirty work under abusive management. Installing tires in a tire store was better. Caddying for Country Club assholes was better. Operating a forklift on a receiving dock was better.

[doc03]

126. Busboy was the worse for me too, the

head cook was a bitch and the Manager was an asshole. I've worked on much dirtier harder jobs like a blast furnace, coke plant and lots of bad stuff in the Army. But the Manager Mr. F---ing Blevins at the Holiday Inn made the Busboy job the worst.

[Captain Angry]

2. Working in a bowling alley.

I had to run the grill, do the shoes, and then if a ball or pin got stuck I had to run to the back and try to fix the problem with 10 minutes of training.

Bowlers thought it was funny to try and hit my hands while I was working on the machine.

I quit that job after I almost went out and attacked a customer for throwing a 2nd ball down the lane when they saw me working on it.

[nightrider767]

3. I used to scrub pots in an Italian restaurant

What a great experience. I have a good job know, and when I look back, it's a rare day that I don't appreciate what I have.

[Hoof Hearted]

4. Merry Maids. That job sucked hard.

Picking up condoms off of rich little fuckers bedroom floors.
Tampons off the floors in NC State sorority houses.
Scrubbing 200 sq.ft. of stone tile on my hands and knees.
Pubic hair.
Cockroaches.
Rich bitches in gated communities who didn't work but apparently felt either too good or too burdened to scrub their own toilets.
Bursitis.
Humiliation.
Despair.

[Skittles]

8. people are such assholes

I'm different - when I stay in a hotel (I do two week TDYs for my job) I treat the room MUCH better than my own home because I don't want to burden the maid, yet I still tip them very well - in part to try to help make up for all the assholes they deal with - yes.

[durrrty libby]

15. I'm sorry but your post made me laugh so hard

One of my first jobs was managing an apartment complex

Cleaning and painting apartments reminded me of your despair. lol I felt your pain

[Hoof Hearted]

47. Don't be sorry! I get it.

How many times now in life do you find yourself saying - "oh don't worry abuot that when I was painting I would leave the job, piss, get some lunch and never have to worry 'bout washing my hands.

Maybe that's just me? :-)

[Hekate]

43. Gawd. When I freelanced housecleaning in college it was for middle class women...

... who would have been ashamed to leave such filth in their homes. It was hard work, but not demeaning.

Hekate

[Raine]

49. Same here

I did housecleaning about 10 years ago and I didn't mind it. I worked for middle to upper-class housewives and was treated pretty nice. The work was physically hard but nothing that filthy and I didn't find it demeaning. It seems like most of the places were relatively clean but needed dusting, vacuuming and the kitchen and bathrooms a general cleaning. I didn't find anything worse than what I would've found in my own home.

[Midlodemocrat]

110. I have someone clean my house, and that sounds like

our situation. I keep it clean between her visits, but she does the heavy cleaning and is paid pretty well for it.

Win - win for both of us.

[JerseygirlCT]

118. Yeah, that's me, lol Running around cleaning up before the

person arrives who helps us with cleaning.

I think she laughs at me, but she's also a friend. Why shouldn't I make my own bed?

She does such a cute job with the kids though, I leave that to her. I don't arrange the stuffed animals nearly as well, and my little one loves it!

[JanMichael]

84. One of the worst franchise companies in the US.

Sorry you worked for them.

Wasn't that the company in Nickle and Dimed?

[Hoof Hearted]

123. Most likely. You got paid "commission" and mileage, not by the hour so if you arrived

and the place was a pig sty and took longer than the time you were alloted you could easily end up working for about $2 an hour.

If there was construction on your route or traffic and you had to go several miles out of your way, too bad. You're only paid for the mileage they have charted. Same thing if you were given crappy directions and got lost. In either case, you lost not only your time, but the mileage too. If you were the team member just riding along in the car, you didn't make any money at all between jobs and it was common to have a half hour drive from one job to another.

Every morning we had a group meeting so we could sit together and listen to how we could go faster and hear stories about how much money we could make if we just tried a little harder.

[alfredo]

90. I owned a janitorial service. I refused to clean houses. Businesses were

much better.

[Book Lover]

5. Production at A Certain Computer Book Publisher

Who Shall Not Be Named. Let's just say that every person reading this knows a very famous brand that this publisher used to own. We used to push books through production, from text and art submission to ship-to-printer in 6-8 weeks.

[nadinbrzezinski]

31. food service... any kind

done it... more than once

[treestar]

6. Phone solicitng for a disease

Which sounds like it should be worthy. But it is miserable to do. Nobody wants those kinds of phone calls.

[Roon]

7. working at the phone bank for the firestone tire recall

I lasted until lunch.

[Occam Bandage]

9. Bag-smasher.

You haven't lived until you've unloaded fifteen hundred pounds of salmon off a 757 by yourself in 5 degree weather. Almost as good as doing it in 95.

[sandnsea]

10. Phone soliciting for funeral plots

Actually that wasn't the worse. Being a hotel maid was the worse, but that makes a better subject line. :rofL: It was back in the early 80's when finding a job was next to impossible. I tried switchboard operator but the supervisor was a nightmare. So this came up, I could do it from home, so I did. Not bad, all in all. Cleaning hotel rooms is just ick nasty ick, I hate that job.

[Book Lover]

13. I, too, was a hotel maid

I got myself into the laundry room as soon as I could! At least there I could wear gloves and a mask and no guests were offended.

[Wcross]

94. How did that go?

Hello Mr. Smith, how are you feeling these days? Do you plan on dying any time soon?

[JerseygirlCT]

120. Hotel rooms have got to be the worst

Yuck.

Early 80s sucked badly for finding work. I got out of school and man! There were no jobs to be had. None. I finally "lucked" into a boring job, for which I had an hour plus commute on a stinky bus each way, that paid all of $9700 a year. Before taxes.

[Blue_In_AK]

11. My worst job was working in the warranty claims department

for Toyota USA. My job was to write letters to people telling them why we couldn't honor their warranty...i.e., your warranty expired the day before the engine blew up, therefore there's nothing we can do for you. It really sucked.

[Redstone]

12. Except for the one involving being shot at, I'd guess the cardboard-box factory.

Redstone

[nadinbrzezinski]

32. Funny thing I wish I could do that one again

I was a rescue worker, and even when getting shot at... I KNEW my mission was critical to somebody else's life and well being.

I miss that one.. even when the lead mosquitoes were flying by

[babylonsister]

14. I accepted a job in sales and was so not into it. No my cuppa tea.

And I wasn't so enthusiastic about it.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

16. Marine. Doing stupid things, for stupid people, for stupid and immoral reasons.

[HamstersFromHell]

17. Dye House worker in a thread mfg. plant.

Worked noon to 9pm and even at 8pm in the summer the temp. was 117 and 100% humidity from all the steam.

Drank 2 20 oz. Dews a shift plus about at least a gallon of water out of the water cooler but still lost 35 lbs. the first month I was there just from sweating.

[frogmarch]

18. alligator wrestling n/t

[rAVES]

19. Cold caller, yes you actually feel like a worthless prick while being payed like one too.

[Fovea]

20. a toss up between dishwashing and night liquour clerk

The latter resulted in more gun experiences, but the former was awful work.

[stevedeshazer]

21. I was a sheet metal apprentice

A KFC caught fire. Two weeks later, we were called in for repairs. I was the guy who had to open the cooler -- full of chicken parts. After two weeks without power.

That was over 30 years ago. Haven't been to a KFC since.

[ingac70]

23. Yuck!

:puke:

[ingac70]

22. Nurses aid in an alzheimers wing....

of a nursing home, and private sitting at a state run facility for the developmentally disabled. Got beat up more than once.
A retarded man beat me down really bad on one occasion. Little old ladies with alzheimers are vicious.

[Bobbieo]

25. Doing PR for a nursing home assn that was screwing Medicare left and right.

I quit the minute I found out what they were doing!

[ingac70]

28. Ugh...

That is why I hated state run nursing homes. Not only were they ripping off medicare and medicaid, but they were skimping on patient care. The only nursing home I ever somewhat enjoyed working in was strictly private pay. The level of care and attention was awesome, yet kinda made me sad that all old folks in nursing homes every where didn't get the same care.

CEO's for ompanies caught ripping off social programs should be publicly hanged in my opinion. Harsh, but after seeing folks suffer from substandard care, I can't help but feel that way.

[OzarkDem]

104. Agree

worked w/ Alzheimers and other elderly w/ dementia, during college, back before there were Depends.

Backbreaking work, as a 105 lb girl lifting people into baths, etc. I used to fall asleep as soon as I got home.

At the same time, it was very rewarding. I love elderly people and enjoyed connecting with them, making their lives a little better.

[Aristus]

24. I worked as a flunky for a guy who owned a sales training business.

He was a real head-case. So full of himself there wasn't room for anything else. He did the sales-training, which was for car salesmen. My job was to sell the training program to the dealerships. God, what a nightmare job. Not as bad as cleaning hotel rooms or washing dishes, but bad enough. My first day on the job, the boss told me about his "highly motivated staff". "They like to compete to see who can get to work first." And I fell for it, getting up at oh-dark-thirty on cold winter mornings to schlepp my ass to the office. And I was always first to show up. What an idiot I was. :eyes:

Anyway, I was a salesperson and my prospective clients were car salesmen. Not just any car salesmen, but the end-of-the-line, pot-lot, undertrained, profane, flop-sweat salesmen whom a sane rational person shouldn't even go NEAR. Trying to get them to pony up for a course that might do their sorry asses even a little good was a thankless task. My presence gave these losers someone even their lowly selves could shit on. They're not interested in a pitch for sales training; they're keeping an eye on the lot the whole time so they can snag customers the minute they walk on. A salesman who relies on lot-traffic for his living is going to starve, but they never make plans to improve their prospects.

And at the end of another rotten, soul-killing day, I had to trudge back to the office to report any sign-ups. There never were very many. I got fired for under-performance. It was the first time I had ever been fired, so it came as a bit of a shock. But it didn't take long for me to realize what a blessing it actually was. God, what an awful job.

[Sugar Smack]

62. Damn.

:hug: :loveya: I'm not a good salesperson either. To me, the business is gross, so I can't pull off the act covincingly.

[Aristus]

137. Thanks for the sympathy, Sugar Smack.

:loveya:

That's always nice.


Anyway, it was over ten years ago, so I've recovered. B-)

[McCamy Taylor]

26. Worst part of my job was dealing with scum HMO reps who would rather my patients died than

get the care they needed. No exaggeration. One HMO doctor called to find out why a cancer patient wasn't on hospice already since her treatment was only prolonging her life and wouldn't cure her disease. Maddest I have ever been. Another HMO denied payment after the fact for the neurosurgery to remove an enlarging, symptomatic brain tumor---claiming it was not medically necessary. 10% interest on ten thousand bucks isn't chicken feed, so I guess some claim rep got a bonus for that.

[dropkickpa]

27. Summer nightshift donut shop finisher/counterperson

11pm-7am. Sucked HARD. Boss was too cheap to pay for a $200 repair to the air conditioner, the kitchen would get to about 130 degrees and I reeked of grease. Drunks puking on the floor, pervs jacking off in the booths, yeah, it was fantastic. The only thing that made it bearable was my best friend worked as the baker and we spent all of our free time getting high in the storeroom.

[Breeze54]

29. Wiping up 'lungies' from a racist asshole in a nursing home.

What a fucking pig!! But he was senile, or so he had everyone believing... But the only thing that got me through my whole time of employment there was the time I did love there and the part of the job where I got to take people swimming that couldn't even walk and it was such fun to see the happiness on their faces when I took one of them in the pool and to see them enjoy that freedom of mobility they didn't get from sitting in wheel chairs everyday. I loved those days but that guy really pissed me off... a lot!! :grr:

[BoneDaddy]

30. Try working with adolescent

addicts.

[Breeze54]

33. Did that too...

:P and they were also liars, murderers and thieves.

Fun job!! :sarcasm:

:hi:

[BlueIris]

67. Yeah. The job satisfaction there is very, very low.

[XemaSab]

34. Walking ridgelines in 90 degree weather in LA county

spending all day bashing through manzanita bushes.

I would go back to the hotel at the end of the day literally covered in soot and deep scratches.

I fought the bushes and the bushes won. :(

[Le Taz Hot]

80. Sounds more like a typical camping

trip to me. ;)

[nealmhughes]

35. WalMart while an undergrad. Left that for meaningful employment: a wine merchant!

I never could figure why the people had to do that rah-rah cheer at 7 am as I was preparing to leave. I found it oddly reminescent of the forced school spirit I never had at pep rallies.
The only good part: a cool coworker who was one aisle over, her girlfriend and I are still good friends although she long left town.

Wine merchant was boss! I got to go to tastings, got a 15% discount, etc. Only bad thing was when the shopping center closed at 9 pm but we did not until 10 and there would be some shady characters lurking in idling cars outside the door. I locked it more than once and called the cops to cruise by.

[countryjake]

36. A hatchery, sticking chicks with hypos full of antibiotics...

and picking out the runts to toss into a garbage barrel. Those creatures who most see as cute fuzzy peepers, symbols of innocence at Easter time, hatch from their shells onto a conveyor belt that is the ultimate living hell.

[I work for workers]

37. I worked in a factory making conveyor belts, using conveyor belts.

My job was to hold up a piece of rubberized cloth as it spun between two giant spindles. I quit in one day, as the mind numbing boredom made me fear I'd share the fate of the man I replaced, who dosed off and had his arm crushed. I never really gave much credit to Marx's whole "alienation from labor" thing until I did that job.

Second worst job: Butler. I have a rich friend whose regular butler got sick the day of a dinner party, so I filled in at the last minute. I spent the day answer doors, getting drinks, and moving easily movable items. I got paid a lot for a little work, but it was fucking ridiculous.

[justgamma]

38. Skin tucker and chicken neck breaker upper and chicken tucker.

I worked at Swift's in the turkey room. We made the turkey roasts. I luckily worked at the end of the line. As the loaves were rolling by, someone would throw on the butter and the skin and I had to tuck it around the roasts.

The worst job was when I had to break the frozen chicken necks apart. There would be a huge tank of water and they would throw a whole hopper full of necks that were frozen together and you had to reach in the freezing water and break them apart.

You haven't lived until you've stuck a raw chicken into a can. The empty cans would come down the line, you'd grab a chicken and tuck the legs and wings in just right and shove with all your might to get that darn thing in the can.

[SmokingJacket]

91. I think maybe you win. nt

[JerseygirlCT]

121. Oh YUUCK!

Have you ever eaten chicken again?

[B Calm]

39. Driving a semi for Auto Zone

[JCMach1]

40. Night Stock @ Winn Dixie

Unloading Semis and stocking all FREAKING night long and you couldn't go home until it was finished.

I lasted a week.

[Fox Mulder]

97. I had one of those jobs.

Except we were allowed to go home at the end of our shift, even if we didn't finish putting out the freight.

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

41. Elephant circumsizer at the zoo

The job sucked -- but the tips were big!

[Breeze54]

42. roflmfao!!

:rofl:

[U4ikLefty]

46. OMG...that was funny!!!

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

44. Pulling lobsters out of Jayne Mansfield's bum

No wait, that was Derek & Clive's worst job.

Worst job ever: housekeeping. I actually enjoy housework so I had no idea that cleaning up a stranger's messes would make me nauseous. The last straw was having to hand-wash her nursing bras. I quit after one day.

Runner-up: phone sales for Time-Life Books. The worst part was talking with very lonely people who had no intention of buying anything but didn't want to let me off the phone. It was heartbreaking. I gave up after two weeks.

[BlueIris]

63. Woah.

Handwashing someone else's nursing bras? Disturbing.

[MilesColtrane]

45. Three way tie.

1) Busboy at a family seafood restaurant.
One of the waitresses was an ex-female wrestler who used to accuse us of stealing her tips.

2) Buffing metal candlestick bases at a machine shop.
This was piece work that barely payed enough each day to buy a twelve pack at the end of my shift.
Oh, and I got a bad case of carpal tunnel from the job.

3) Sandblasting the interior of an empty water tank.
I was on a thirty foot scaffolding with no safety line in full protective gear in the middle of August in Texas.
When they let us break for lunch I got in my truck and hauled ass, never looking back.

[Evoman]

48. Ooohhh...lots.

Most notable:

1)Working as a dish-washer at a busy restaurant, whose dishwasher had broken down. We had to do it all by hand. It also included having a sink full of bleach to sanitize. I don't know if you've ever stuck your hand in bleachy water for hours on end. Basically, your hands start peeling and start looking like zombie hands. Never again.

2)Private security guard at a penitentiary. Since I wasn't actually working as an inhouse jail guard, and instead was a guard for a third party security company, I got payed shit. They just hired me to watch some terrorist guy to make sure he didn't commit suicide. He would often pretend to get sick for sympathy, and once got mad he wasn't transferred to the mental hospital he was supposed to be transferred to so he peed out the jail cell.

3)Working as a dishwasher at a restaurant that had no respect for labour laws. They wouldn't give anybody breaks (except smokers got a 5 minute break!). I once worked 9 hours straight without a break. I quit right after that, then reported them to the Labour board. Ha. Fuckers.

[TZ]

72. Retail is bad (which I did) but the second worst I think you will appreciate

I sat in a darkroom allday looking at videotapes of Bower Bird mating behavior. I had to score how many times the male SCREECHED before mating. So I had to have the sound turned WAAAAY up...Kind of headache inducing

[SoCalDem]

50. Gluing feather & glitter to Hallmark Cards (Think Lucy & the candy episode)

The bosses would speed up the machines that spurted the glue on a stack of cards and we would have to quickly retrieve the card, put the "sparkly/feathery" stuff on the card, set it aside and grab the next one..

By break time we were often quite feathered & sparkly...(10 minutes did not allow for de-feathering before we took our breaks).. We envied the "foil people"... Our fellow workers would sometimes "cluck" when we arrived :(

But hey. it paid $1.75 an hour (and all the feathers & glitter we could eat )

[Faux pas]

51. Anything retail, people are such a-holes. n/t

[BB1]

52. Boobjob.

nobody thought of that?

[BlueIris]

66. Cute.

Not.

[Greyhound]

53. Euthanizing the excessive "pinkies" (baby lab rats) for the National Jewish Medical and Research

Center. They are very valuable but they are still rats and they produce far more than can be used. I was young and desperate for cash so I took the gig. I stuck it out for 6 weeks.

Not as bad as working in a slaughter house, but it was horrible.

[laylah]

54. Working in a modern day

sweatshop as a machine operator. The work itself wasn't bad but boy, howdy, the corporate, controlling, authoritative atmosphere left me in tears many a time. I finally got out this past Friday and will be able to use my education as it was intended. I start working in an alternative school, working with at-risk adolescents, on Tuesday! :bounce:

[Hekate]

57. Congratulations! Enjoy your new life! nt

[laylah]

59. Thank you! nt

[readmoreoften]

55. Working as a teaching assistant at NYU. Worse than when I worked at a mafia owned bakery as a kid.

[Hekate]

56. Not pineapple canning, tho the juice gave me acid burns. Not sales clerking, tho my feet broke down.

No, what took the prize was my grown-up job, a promotion where I desperately wanted to succeed and needed the money to support not just me but my two young kids, over twenty years ago.

My new boss turned out to be a screamer. Screaming, yelling, cursing, swearing. I hung on like grim death for 9 months, broke two molars, had nightmares, and finally left with as much dignity as I could muster.

Although it gave me some satisfaction when my spies told me that guy went through three other admin assistants after me in very short order (some only lasting a few weeks), it took me many, many years to stop feeling the pain of that particular failure.

That certainly wasn't the end of my worklife, but I never did learn how to be a corporate person and climb the corporate ladder.

Hekate

[BlueIris]

65. There's nothing worse than an abusive boss.

Except maybe the asshats who enable an abusive boss.

[Hekate]

124. You got that right. The institution protected guys like him. Admin assts are a dime a dozen...

...as are secretaries. Full professors in almost any role are gods. I was the Labor Relations secretary before I moved to that program, and having done intake on the grievances of many an infuriated admin assistant, I knew most of the pitfalls and avoided them. I knew which departments and petty tyrants to avoid. But if someone is new to the campus, as this guy was, you aren't forewarned if he's abusive. And really, in that system I didn't have a case -- or the energy -- to file a grievance.

I went from there to County Public Works, where I became the secretary for the head guy in a department full of down-to-earth hands-on civil engineers. In my interview I was told that their mission was "dumps, sewers, and roads" and I very quickly learned to admire what they did and how they did it. As I made the rounds in my first weeks there, person after person told me my new boss was "the most honest man you'll ever meet," "the nicest guy you'll ever work for," and a whole bunch of similar comments never applied to either the Labor Relations Manager or the chair/professor of the Statistics & Applied Probablility Program. It was sheer luck, and I was so grateful after that other world-class SOB.

Hekate

[Larry Ogg]

58. A couple of jobs come to mind

[Breeze54]

60. Maybe this one?!?

[deutsey]

61. Writing for a government contractor n/t

[Perry Logan]

64. Isn't the Lounge where we discuss things that don't matter?

In answer to your query, my worst gig was a clerical job at the University of Texas Microbiology Department. The air was filled with the smell of cooking caca (which they used as a growth medium).

[Hekate]

125. Ewwwww. This matters -- after all, it must be character building to have a few "worst jobs"

And we're all characters here at DU.

Hekate

[Snarkturian Clone]

68. It's a tie between

Teaching at a HORRIBLE school in Trenton, NJ and

being a door-to-door Kirby salesman.

[readmoreoften]

69. Trenton NJ? Which one? They are certainly horrible...Grew up there. :) /nt

[Snarkturian Clone]

70. PM sent NT

[SharkSquid]

71. Beat writer for the Independent Florida Alligator

I thought I was going to be covering groundbreaking stuff and blah blah blah, but no I was covering the ATO house and their efforts with disadvantaged kids.


BACKGROUND NOTE: If anyone does not know, the IFA has actually been on the leading edge of alot of stories. In the 70's the editors went to jail and were kicked off campus for publishing information about planned parenthood in the paper in defiance of FL law at the time regarding information about abortion. They took it to the FL Supreme Ct and won. They were also at the heart of trying to get Dale Earndhart's autopsy photos (not to publish) to get an independent analysis of NASCARS shitty seatbelt standards. JEB Bush wrote a law just for them. So I had good reason to be disappointed.

[ThomWV]

73. Barnicle scraper at a Miami boat yard one summer - hot, smelly, inhaled flys constantly

[Canuckistanian]

74. Replacing the roof of a brick factory - in August

When I was in construction with my father, I helped tear off the 75-year old tin roof right above the kilns in a brick factory in a heat wave in August.

[Bzzzz]

75. As A Nurses Aide...

and having to clean out impactions. yekkk

[Vinca]

76. My first job after high school.

I had escaped my unhappy Ohio home with 2 friends and set up shop in Daytona Beach. The first job was as a waitress at a lunch counter in a store a couple of blocks from the beach. (This was 1967 and I doubt the place is there anymore.) They had, on average, 2 customers a day and my largest tip over the summer was a quarter. It was horrible.

[alarimer]

77. Fast food

I worked at both McDonalds and Taco Bell. I always stank at the end of the shift. The customers were assholes and my co-workers and managers were completely stupid. I was in college and worked summers at McDonalds. My managers were small-town losers who couldn't get anything better. I guess there was nothing better in that stupid small town. But they lorded it over us mere workers. I was smarter than all of them put together and I let them know it. And don't get me started on the customers. Treated me like shit.

[marmar]

78. Mrs. Fields Cookies as a teenager....

I had one of those middle-aged-but-stuck-working-at-MrsFields-for-life Stalinist bosses....I quit after three days on the job.

[DemoTex]

79. "Tail-stretcher" in an architectural aluminum extrusion plant (Kawneer).

I worked with very long pieces of freshly extruded aluminum. Extremely hot. Extremely dirty. Extremely dangerous. That was about 40 years ago. I still shudder when I see Kawneer aluminum doors and windows in commercial buildings.

[JanMichael]

81. Chuck E, Cheese...Game room tech. 1991-1992

The noise, oh gawd, the awful noise! Loud canned music on a loop of 6 songs (Old Days by Chicago is STILL burned into my brain) and screaming kids whose parents abdicated responsibility for once the entered the building.

Oh and a little advice: Don't go into that piss and spit covered ball cage. Enough said.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

82. Lifeguarding at a naval recrecration center

The lifeguarding aspect of it was cool. I had other good lifeguarding jobs. It's just that this one happened to feature the boss from hell who once told me I was not smart enough to get a scholarship to law school. She also accused me of not disclosing prior jobs on my job application. Which sucked for her because I had faxed in my application and still had the original and was able to show her I disclosed the prior jobs. That shut her up pretty quickly. Oh yeah, and I did get a scholarship to law school, and ended up mailing her a copy of the letter awarding my scholarship just to rub it in her face.

As for the job itself, I once dishwashed at a veterans nursing home as part of a temp job assignment. But the people who worked there were pretty nice, so I didn't mind it too much.

I worked for Roy Rogers fast food restaurant as my first job. That also is up there with the worst. Ditto for a car wash job I held for two weeks.

[slackmaster]

83. In 1982 I wrote maintenance comics for a contractor for the US Army

The working conditions sucked, the pay was suckier.

The work itself was kind of depressing because we were directed to write the materials at a sixth grade reading level, even though the official published standard for Army training was eighth grade.

I got a free week-long trip to Ft. Bliss near El Paso, TX out of the deal, but otherwise it completely sucked.

[wordpix]

85. working for Weyerhauser, bent over planting & weeding seedlings 8 hr./day

while that company raped and pillaged the Pacific NW, sold ancient forests to the Japanese for pennies per board foot and the head honchos got rich, literally on my back. :puke:

[DainBramaged]

86. Tire changer at an outdoor tire store

all of the lifts, break down machines, and equipment was outside. Owner sat in a little office. Tires in a warehouse you couldn't stay in. Paid us $2.50 an hour and we had to eat while working. I was young and stupid and desperate for cash. Gave it about 3 weeks.


The little prick died a few years after I quit. I did do damage to his shit when he wasn't there one night the cheap fuck. He even kept the tips.

[AngryAmish]

87. moderator, DU

You people are animals.

[Bozita]

114. uhoh, ... I think I spotted a DUzy!

[Rob H.]

88. Ad layout artist at a newspaper

It was at a Gannett paper working long hours for low pay and I've ranted about it a few times before. My first supervisor there was a fucking moron, as was her boss, who once saw me sitting with my back to my monitor talking to a temp I hadn't seen in awhile and had to go ask someone my name (!) before he came back and chastised me. In fairness, he pulled me aside to do it, but the real irony is I never saw the guy doing anything other than walking around shoving his big beak into other people's business and there he was, telling me to get back to work.

I have so many stories about the pants-around-their-ankles-falling-face-forward-into-cream-pies management stupidity that went on there that it would take the better part of a day to write them all down. Management treated us all of us like shit and my time there (it was a very long four years) was enough to make me vow never to work for another newspaper.

[LWolf]

89. Housewife.

Longer hours than the spouse, no days off, no pay, and no independence or personal power. Isolated from the world and controlled by the one with the paycheck and the car.

[0007]

92. A shill in a Greek Restaurant.

I was given a bowl of soup and a fork and was told to look happy.

[alfredo]

93. Cutting tobacco in 90% heat.

[alfredo]

95. A job my friend did: She did clean up after violent crimes and accidents.

Cleaning up blood and brains in some roach and fly infested apartment is not where it's at.

[Fox Mulder]

96. The job I have now.

I'm an apprentice in a printing press and it sucks. I work overnights. Six days a week. Some of those days are 12 hours long. Now management want us to work Sundays. I only had four days of vacation this year. I put up with a lot of assholes and bullshit. I come home every day a little more depressed, smelling like a mixture of oil and ink.

I hope to quit soon.

[Bozita]

98. galvanizing freeway guard rails

Hot, humid, acid fumes, and non-stop heavy lifting. Each guard rail needed to be hung from hooks hanging above head level. Weight was 85 lb before coating, 105 lb coated.

A friend recruited me for the job. His family had a financial interest in the company. Other than my pal and me, every employee was an ex-con. Those guys worked at a sweatshop pace and did so without complaints.

On my second day, work was halted for five hours while a plumber placed a water meter online. Seems the factory was stealing water from the plant next door. Everybody sat in the parking lot while the plumber did his thing. Without pay! On that day, I was there for 14 hours ... for 8 hours pay.

I never went back after that night. Oh yeah, the pay was minimum wage.

Those two days turned me into a pro-union activist.

[backscatter712]

105. Got a couple...

I flipped burgers for an A&W in high school. The manager was a real bitch - constantly cracking the whip, threatening to fire us ten times a day, yelling at us for wasting fifty cents of food. Just a hot, nasty, dirty, shitty job with a bitch of a boss.

I also worked at a call center on a couple of occasions when better work wasn't available. Nasty, corporate authoritarian atmosphere, the computer systems you used constantly Big-Brothered you, if you were even a few minutes late, it was recorded by the computer, and if you were late ten times, you're fired. Just nasty, unforgiving, crack-the-whip do-it-exactly-our-way-or-your-fired atmosphere. People got fired for petty shit like neglecting to say a customer's name twice on each phone call or skipping a few steps on the scripts in calls where it's obvious what the customer's problem is. As for their sick policy, it doesn't matter if you were sick or playing hooky - they didn't even accept doctors' excuse notes - it was an "occurrence", and if you got too many of them, you're fired. As you can guess, everyone just showed up to work sick - it's not uncommon there to see people trying to take calls with laryngitis. I personally got mono working there - that was the most sick I've ever felt in my life. On top of that, the customers were all assholes - the job can be described as talking to angry people for a living. Some of my coworkers quit after getting ulcers and migraines from all the stress.

I had one coworker show up for work with an honest-to-god case of meningitis - the supervisors had to beg her to go to the hospital and promise she wouldn't get an occurrence. The poor girl was standing right next to me, looking like death warmed over while having this conversation with the supervisors.

[NeedleCast]

99. Filling Vending Machines

I had to get up at 3:00 AM because several places on the route had to be done before the workers showed up for the day. Hauling heavy bags of change everywhere. Drop one and you're straight fucked. Nothing beats crawling around under a heavy truck picking up hundreds of dimes and nickles. Those of us that filled the machine got something like a nickle for every 50 cents sold or something like that. I only worked there long enough to realize it sucked, collect a check for two weeks of work and bail. The worse would be driving for 15 minutes from one site to another for some machine that might sell five dollars worth of product in a week. The best routes were downtown and high density office areas/schools and it could take years to work your way into those routes.

[AlCzervik]

100. Bill collector, i hated that job so much.

[EFerrari]

101. I worked for KFC for 3 days when I was 16. The grease all over

the kitchen made me nauseous and I was outta there. That, and that time where they trained us on how to take a shower. :wow:

[otohara]

102. Filing Charge Reciepts

and payment receipts at a Woolworth type store back in the early 70's.

[11 Bravo]

103. Combat infantryman. (Also in some ways the best job I ever had.)

[RiverStone]

106. cleaning out industrial grease vats

As a teenager, I had a job that included emptying grease vats for large restaurant chains. The hot smelly stuff was so disgusting, that often when I emptied it, then pushed the sludge through the receiving bay or basement or backroom --- all folks would scatter as someone yelled out "grease coming through".

Anyway, imagine melted fat sitting in containers for months...can you say --- GROSS!!!

This was in Georgia by the way - so the smell was only compounded by the GA heat and humidity.
:puke:

[zagging]

107. It must be a matter of perspective

Oh, the horrors of cleaning up grease, or moving something heavy, or scrubbing tiolets, or god forbid...dialing the phone! If you've never worked on a hog farm, you've never had a crappy job. You can smell pig shit for a hundred miles, and if you ever have the misfortune of standing amid 600 of them in a stables, the pig shit smell will cling to you for no less than two days and you'll have to discard your shoes. And if you ever have the misfortune of having to work around them them, the pig shit smell will take four days to leave you. And if you are ever in such a sorry position that you have to work directly with them or pump 50,000 gallon sewage tank with a 5000 gallon pumper on a windy day, you will smell like pig shit for no less than a week. It permeates your skin and no amount of soap, scrubbing or cologne will cover it. You will walk around for a week smelling as if you had eaten raw sewage with an ammonia chaser, then shit your diapers. Your mother will make you strip off your clothes and take a swim in the pond before entering the house where you'll take an hour long bath just to come out smelling like pig shit soap. Try herding fifty, 30 pound pigs into the end of a pen, and as each one tries to squeeze past you, grab it by the back ankles, lean against a post, swing it up and pinch it between your thighs so the boss can hack off its nuts with a carpet knife and spray the purple stuff into the gaping wound where there was once the font of pighood. God forbid his blade is off a little bit and the swiny intestines burst forth in herniated mirth and you have to chase the piggy sonofabitch around the shitty pen while it's dragging its intestines through the shit and piss. Throw in a couple loose stitches, spray on more purple stuff, and grab the next one. When the piglets in the nursery are two weeks old, try busting off their budding tusks with side cutters. Blood and teeth shards will cover your hands while they squeal bloody murder. Try scrubbing wounds on a boar which had gotten infected after a tussle with another boar. For weeks you'll pull gobs of maggots from its leg from under the hide with long sturdy q-tip looking gadgets, follow by a dose of peroxide. Ever try to fork silage in the middle of winter? It's the most god-awfile-sour-methane-mold-fungusy stench ever created by a malevolent god for the benefit of hooved animals. 1976. Buck an hour. Now, that's a crappy job.

Don't get me started on cleaning the head for three months, for 250 sailors, in heavy seas, where the shit and piss are sloshing pendulum-like across the floor and the toilets are happily bubbling salty sewage...

[backscatter712]

108. Heh, I get my fill of that just from watching Dirty Jobs.

Seeing Mike Rowe cleaning out septic tanks or getting bit dozens of times by angry snakes makes me glad I went into software engineering.

[zagging]

112. I'm a computer programmer

But I also have the sweet, sweet memories of farm life. I once help my boss yank a dead calf out of its mother with a come-along strung to a tree limb. We dragged that poor cow about four feet before that calf popped out with a sproing-oing-oing. Circle of life, and all that.

[midnight armadillo]

133. you win.

game,set,match.

[bikebloke]

109. Chicken Incubator

The kibbutz I worked on was involved with a co-op that ran a chicken incubator. We'd set off in the dark of morn before dawn even thought of cracking. Then, given a high pressure hose, we'd have to clean the trays of after-hatching goop. The shells were dumped into a dumpster. Sometimes, live chooks were rejected for some reason, and they had to go in the dumpster, too. I'd set them free outside instead to give them a chance, but cats as big as lions would pounce out from under the building and eat them (damn). A couple Swiss blokes brought a couple back to the kibbutz to raise as pets, but they died anyway. When breakfast finally rolled around, what did they give us - eggs.

Though working in a corrupt bank bureaucracy, pulling the slack for non-working relatives and cronies who basically collected free paychecks was probably worse than the incubator.

[mudesi]

111. Computer Programmer

The epitome of tedium...

I don't know how you people do it. I like it as a hobby now, but doing it for 8 hours a day?

[blues90]

113. I don't know where to begin

I started out in 1966 and year before that wanting to be in a blues /rock band and liked that . But every single job since then sucked .

I liked driving a van in 1970 delivering parts to job sites because I was on my own all day witha radio playing .

I worked in factories with no windows either packing tractor parts to be shipped over seas and I worked in one warehouse which was so horrid that by the first break I thought it had to be time to go home and I did , left and never returned .

The most resent was driving my car for a messenger service from 10 pm to 6 am after having a 12 year long job as a manager at a large car dealership , that messenger job was the worst of all , the absolute worst , sitting and waiting for the next call which could be 2 hours of more trying to kill time is the worst plus being looked at being 58 as a complete loser where people did not even acknowledge your existence .

I should have stuck with the bands and just sucked it up when music changed but I hated doing the new crap or pay to play or sell tickets to play .

I wasted 33 year working for auto dealerships when I hated cars but for some odd reason I was good at it , it was more the problem solving making people happy that got me through , customer service even though some people were assholes I was able to gain their trust and I have no idea why .

Now I am nothing and a no body for what that's worth and have no interest in these new servive jobs and I am no high tech person .

[keroro gunsou]

115. hoo boy, do i have some doozies...

let's see.... mcdonalds... coworkers were ok, gm was nice older guy, really cool, but listened to his managers too much, shift managers hyper-senstive femenist bitches (and by that i mean any male talking to them or any other lady working there was automagically harassing them). quit after 6 months.

steak escape: owner was the best, would help if we needed it, came in if we needed him, always listened, only fault was had a lousy judge of people's character. he hired some putz that told me in passing he wanted to fire most of the staff and hire some "minimum-wage mexicans" since as he thought they were all illegal and wouldn't object to how badly they'd get treated. guy was a straight up racist asshole, who less than a week after he started as gm he fired all the non-whites. i quit after working there for 4 years because of this prick for two months. needless to say my exit interview/meeting with the owner was most amusing...

my first web design job takes the prize for suckitude. first the guy ran the business out of his own home, which was a fixer-upper former hot tub store. the floor was brick and cracking all over the place, making it impossible to sit comfortably on any chair in the office space i worked in, in fact it helped to break a chair my boss made me supply as he didn't want me to break any of his chairs (which were card table chairs and i'm not a petite little flower). i had to bring my own laptop to work on, along with my own scanner. i had to supply my own library of books to look up information in (html, css, xml, etc). i was in school at the time and my boss hinted strongly that i needed to work more, meaning i had to drop classes and be his bitch. i had to bring my own toliet paper from home, but that's not the worst insult... i was given the title/position of lead designer, but i didn't design jack shit. my boss would sell websites to clients, buy premade flash sites, and have me strip out the dummy info and plug in the customer's content. since i was in school, i had planned to use the job as my required internship, but the idiot never filled out my paperwork, my reviews, or anything so i got screwed out of that. but the final insult was the fact over 3 months i work close to 400 hours (6 days a week, average of 9 hours a day) i got paid 100 bucks, this after being promised 150 bucks for every website completed (everytime i came close to finishing a site, he'd give me something else to do). well he's getting sued for back wages.

[Beelzebud]

116. Working at a chicken farm shoveling shit.

[JerseygirlCT]

117. Telemarketing (funding, actually) in HS

I only lasted a few weeks. It was awful! In retrospect, one of those shady outfits that does fundraising for fire and polic departments, and keeps most of the money, too.

Ironically enough, I later on became a fundraiser, and so oversaw a whole department of telemarketers/funders... but they were very good, I must say.

Still, I always told them I could never do what they do.

I'm not a phone fan, anyway. I usually growl when it rings.

I've worked for mean people, I've had menial, boring jobs... but I've always found a way to keep things manageable and/or interesting.

But I hated that calling! It was hellish!

[Blue-Jay]

119. Assistant Crack Whore.

I couldn't stick with it long enough to get promoted to Executive Crack Whore.

[bluedog]

122. soilsorting laundry for hospital laundry

yuk...had to separate whites.......blankets.... op sheets.....bloody stinky and parts of bodies would pop up.......Only did it because there were no other jobs open in my town.another was.... sanding .yes sanding windows... for airplanes and reframing them.....

[tammywammy]

127. I've only had 4 jobs

Customer Service at a large Theme Park. That sucked getting yelled at by customers, but my coworkers were awesome. I was the supervisor of the dept when I was 18 and I left because I moved for college.

Starbucks, 3 years there. The customers aren't so bad. I had a horrible manager at the end. He was a complete jerk that was fired a month after I left.

I managed an independent coffee shop. That would be the worse job, only because it was going under. I could have helped it but the owner is too nice of a guy and was constantly undermining what I told my employees to do. He hired me to whip it into shape, but then wouldn't let me. I was there a year when I quit.

I now work at a car dealership as general office assistant, but I'm moving into the accounting dept. I've been there 3-1/2 years already. I like it. And my boss is awesome.

[blm]

128. Actually - that was a hilarious comedy bit from Derek and Clive, characters

created by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.

I knew a lady from Amsterdam.....

;))))

[Dawggie]

129. Scaffolding...

At an Amoco plant refurbishment. Try setting up a 10x10x250' scaffold with 12'x2" oak planks for a floor every 30' And those planks were hand carried while wearing a Nomex jumpsuit in 98 degrees with 95% humidity in the South. We were working 12 hours a day 7 days a week. I'm lucky I'm still alive.

[nonconformist]

130. Wal-Mart... 1994/95

It sucked so incredibly hard.

[Elwood P Dowd]

131. US Army draftee.

Started out as an E-1 making $115.00 a month. Discharged 2 years later as an E-5 making $300.00 a month.

[ithinkmyliverhurts]

132. I was once the self-appointed appointed grammar police of DU

Then I killed myself out of despair.

Than i waz reencarernated as chimpy'z speach rigther.

God, I miss DU.

[MindPilot]

134. busting hardened concrete from inside cement truck drums

I was fourteen and that was long before there was any concept of safety gear. My ears are still ringing.

[Thothmes]

135. Part time job de-beaking turkeys

[Prefer]

136. Dish Washer,

Taking inventory at the school library against the card catalog.

[loser_user]

138. Grocery store and parking lot attendent

Even though I consider the worst three years of my life with horrid customers and some idiotic co-workers the manager there was best boss I have ever had. He was always nice, reminded people to take their breaks, and never said no to a schedule change or time-off request.

Another horrid job I had was a parking lot attendent. I picked up as a second job one summer and thought it sounded like easy money but dear god I had no idea people could get up in arms about parking. My first day on the job some 80-year old hag came and complained to me someone had parked in HER spot and wanted the car towed. WTF!