What was your worst job you ever had? - Page 2

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - What was your worst job you ever had? (Page 2 of 3)

Posted: 6/17/2009 10:42:24 AM EDT

[#1]

Went to work for a general contractor when I first got married. Contractor worked on shit plants.

My very first day ob the job was at a lift station where we were replacing a 12" asbestos main with a 36" clay pipe main.

Well, in the foremans infinite wisdom, he thought it ok to leave the 12" line exposed over the weekend. Some dam kids chucked a bunch of rocks at it and broke the line. The contents of the line then proceeded to flow out of the broken pipe into the bottom of the trench containing the new pipe. Well, one end of the new pipe was open to the trench, and was filled with god knows how much raw sewage.

My job, when I showed up Monday morning was to get wrapped up in a Tyvek suit, rubber boots and gloves, a respirator and safety line and clean it up. I had to muck that shit out of 40' of 36" pipe by hand with a garden spade and a 5 gallon bucket, crawling through the length of pipe. Took all day to clean that pipe out.

Oh, it was in the middle of August, 110 degrees outside and the lift station serviced a retirement community.

It was the absolute worst job I have ever had.

ETA: Page two of the 'Shittiest' job thread goes to me!

Posted: 6/17/2009 10:43:28 AM EDT

[#2]

Picking potatoes, the old fashioned way, by hand, in Maine.
I remember picking in the snow, just to get that last field in..
We earned thirty cents a barrel, and got another five cents per if we stayed the whole harvest.
I think my best day was 35 barrels.
Mom said it cost more to feed me.
Dad said when he was a kid they earned a nickel per, and they had to make their own barrels.....

Posted: 6/17/2009 10:44:59 AM EDT

[#3]

Quoted:
Toys R Us........ Christmas Holiday

that must of been brutal.

my worst job was my second year working as a landscaper for the park district my sophomore year in college. I loved the job for the most part, got to be outside all day, worked shirtless, lots of eye candy, but for three weeks straight it was 90+ degrees, it was brutal.

Posted: 6/17/2009 10:57:11 AM EDT

[#4]

Worked at a machine shop in Iowa as a maintenance guy over a college summer. That place sucked, but I attribute the problems there more to the state\region. Fuck Sioux County, IA. Those people are more in line with the Amish than the rest of America.

Posted: 6/17/2009 10:57:43 AM EDT

[#5]

I worked for water and sewer in high school and some of college.

The worst was showing up a couple minutes late and having a crew waiting for me. I usually worked alone or with another guy but being low man on the pole when they were waiting it meant there was a shitty job for me to do that no one else wanted.

On time it was cleaning everything that they couldn't get into sewage treatment plant. It usually dumped out automatically into a dump truck and was taken away. But every once and a while you had to clean that area out and there were all sorts of nasty shit caked used tampons codoms whatever. You had to pick up anything that didn't make it into the truck and was lying around and then scrub the walls floor etc.

Another time was early January in NY. They had me spraying down newly made wells with a chlorine water mixture. Wind was blowing it back all over me and freezing while my partner was sitting in the truck. Good stuff.

I also grew up on a small dairy farm which my father didn't believe in automation. Lots of shit shoveling and bailing.

But the worst jobs have always been due to having jerks as bosses.

Posted: 6/17/2009 11:01:34 AM EDT

[#6]

Loading 110 lb alfalfa bales in 100 degree heat on to flatbeds and then the next day loading them on to a conveyer to the hay loft. It was OK if you were moving on the flatbed but when you were in the loft and the breeze ended it was a sultry bitch all day long.
Then we each got a 5-tined fork and cleaned out the barn with only a wheelbarrow and a grain scoop to move the piles around and out to the manure spreader. That was hooked to a Massey Ferguson tractor with no cab and if you got the wind wrong or it switched when the spreader got turning at high speed you learned real fast how to disengage the PTO. We also fixed fence, busted concrete feed bunks, poured cement, hauled 100 pound feed sacks around the shed and mixed feed in a 500 gallon batch mixer that growled like a grizzly sow in heat and threw out enough dust to cover everything in an inch deep layer of fine particles. You'd come out looking like a coal miner except instead of a dark black it was more of a light tan. Rocky Raccoon with a dust mask and eye protectors!
Worked 10 hour days and got the magnificent sum of $1.90 and hour. You could buy a cold bottle of beer for a quarter, a hamburger for fifty cents, and gas cost 29 cents a gallon so we felt like millionaires.

Posted: 6/17/2009 11:09:34 AM EDT

[#7]

I did a couple tours of duty working at Wal-Mart when I was in college. The first time was definitely the worst job I ever had though. I got hired as a stockman, which at the time translated into an overglorified janitor. I got to do wonderful things like pick the gum out of the urinals, empty out the "silver boxes" in the ladie's rooms, and vacuum. Lots and lots of vaccuming. After a while, I discovered that the vacuum was the best job you could have. The vacuum cleaners were always worn out, so they made a god awful noise. So loud in fact that you couldn't hear the intercom when they called for you. It was also the least favorite task of the other stockmen, so you could trade them the vacuuming for just about everything else. Even then though you still had to put up with a ton of bullshit. A lot of the store managers were cool, but some were real cocksuckers too. I remember one in particular named Mark (number 105) that insisted we stay and work late after the final bus left for campus. When we told him we were going to miss our bus, he simply replied, "I don't care." It was a long, cold walk home that night.

Detasseling corn sucked ass as well. One summer I worked for a detasseling crew that got assigned these fields from HELL. All the corn was way over my head, and a lot of it had already fully tasseled out. That not only made it hard as hell to pull out the tassels, it also made it pretty fucking pointless. That was one long, hot, miserable summer. best of all, the fucker screwed all of us out of a bunch of hours. Not cool.

Posted: 6/17/2009 11:09:54 AM EDT

[#8]

Selling cars.

People hate car salesmen. They treat them like shit, but then expect a great deal. WTF! I politely introduce myself, you refuse to give me your name, but you want me to take $5,000 off the price of the car? FOAD.

Oh, when selling cars, you see how lousy Americans' math skills are. You want to put $0 down and pay $200 a month for 36 months for a $45k Tahoe? O rly?

Posted: 6/17/2009 11:13:22 AM EDT

[#9]

Quoted:
From my father, since I haven't had any bad jobs worth mentioning:

Shoveling the shit out of dairy cow stalls.

Cleaning out an old chicken coop that had not been use din about 10 years. The straw, crap, and unbroken rotting eggs from decades past were piled more than a foot deep inside.

Cleaning out a septic tank that was 15 years old with a bucket.

My uncle bought an old house several years ago, after an old woman had moved out to live with one of her children. He bought it for the price of the lot, minus a little, because they said he would need to have the house torn down.

He decided to just clean it up... remodel it, and rent it. It is actually a rather nice, although small, home now.

She had cats.... lots of cats. She had had lots of cats for years...

They would crap in a corner. And when it had been crapped in sufficiently, she would toss a piece of newspaper on top, and they would begin crapping again. If a cat ever died, she just tossed the cat onto the pile, put on a piece of newspaper, and the other cats proceeded to shit more.

It was more than 2 feet deep.... And he shoveled it out. It was full of feces, dead cats... He said it had been there for years... You could tell by the dates on the newspapers.

You win.

Posted: 6/17/2009 11:17:16 AM EDT

[#10]

Quoted:
Loading 110 lb alfalfa bales in 100 degree heat on to flatbeds and then the next day loading them on to a conveyer to the hay loft. It was OK if you were moving on the flatbed but when you were in the loft and the breeze ended it was a sultry bitch all day long.
...

I hated those sumbitch wire-bound alfalfa bales.

Posted: 6/17/2009 11:31:36 AM EDT

[#11]

Worked on my family's dairy farm from the age of 10 until I was 18. I didn't mind driving tractors in the fields, but I hated working with the cows, your boots were covered in shit all the time, and cows are really dumb beasts. And yeah, I hated stacking hay in the barns, I dreaded hay season.

I also worked for a few summers at a camp for mentally handicapped kids, most in their early teens. They were either 1) trying to run away into the woods, 2) slobbering on you, or 3) trying to masturbate. I also had to change their diapers and help feed them.

Posted: 6/17/2009 11:37:58 AM EDT

[#12]

Quoted:

I also worked for a few summers at a camp for mentally handicapped kids, most in their early teens. They were either 1) trying to run away into the woods, 2) slobbering on you, or 3) trying to masturbate. I also had to change their diapers and help feed them.

But now you're perfectly trained to be a web forum moderator!

Posted: 6/17/2009 11:46:21 AM EDT

[#13]

Quoted:

Quoted:

I also worked for a few summers at a camp for mentally handicapped kids, most in their early teens. They were either 1) trying to run away into the woods, 2) slobbering on you, or 3) trying to masturbate. I also had to change their diapers and help feed them.

But now you're perfectly trained to be a web forum moderator!

ZING!

Posted: 6/17/2009 12:14:16 PM EDT

[#14]

Missionary. Two years in a 3rd world, South American shit-hole.

It was even worse when I figured out that "The One True Church," wasn't. What a fucking waste.

Posted: 6/17/2009 12:24:46 PM EDT

[#15]

Quoted:

Selling cars.

People hate car salesmen. They treat them like shit, but then expect a great deal. WTF! I politely introduce myself, you refuse to give me your name, but you want me to take $5,000 off the price of the car? FOAD.

Oh, when selling cars, you see how lousy Americans' math skills are. You want to put $0 down and pay $200 a month for 36 months for a $45k Tahoe? O rly?

That made me lol. Don't forget that 1999 Chevy Malibu they owe $8,000 on.

Posted: 6/17/2009 12:40:22 PM EDT

[#16]

Worst job was working as a contractor for the US Government......

Posted: 6/17/2009 12:43:58 PM EDT

[#17]

During college I worked for my dad's plumbing company hand digging and repairing sewer lines. 10 hour days in Houston summer heat. Always a bonus when people flushed on you.

I'd forgive the 1st flush, second one and I chopped 1' of cable out of your phone or cable line....oops!

Posted: 6/17/2009 12:46:42 PM EDT

[#18]

My first and worst job was working with an after hours business janitor. I would meet the guy at his house, he paid me minimum wage ($5.15 an hour at the time) and wouldn't let me clock in for travel time. In other words, I would show up and we would drive for 10-15 minutes to a job, and I didn't get paid for that time, then if we left to go to another business, I would have to clock out again, until we reached the next place. I remember working for almost 9 hours on a saturday one time, and I only got paid for about 4.5 hours because of travel time and a lunch break. He did feed me lunch however, it was cold hot dogs with cold baked beans, he thought it was less manly to use a microwave. Dude was a total douchebag that would try to put me on a guilt trip about being a Christian whenever he thought I was fed up with him. I now know that the way he was paying me was illegal, but I had no idea at the time being only 17.

Posted: 6/17/2009 1:03:25 PM EDT

[#19]

I'd say my worst job was at a bakery/deli when I was 18. The place was run by a percocet addict that also ran a drug dealing ring in the basement. I stumbled across them dealing one day and they fired me. That was stupid. Needless to say, that business is no longer running. They got mighty scared of me when I told a lot of people what went on down there, they were even more scared that I knew a lot of LEO in the area.

Posted: 6/17/2009 1:34:16 PM EDT

[#20]

Quoted:

Mop boy at an adult book store on 42nd Street in Manhattan, early 80s.
j/k, but I think that would take the cake

Winner!

Posted: 6/17/2009 2:05:26 PM EDT

[#21]

I worked at an amusement park with a fish pond.

My job was to smash the fishes' heads after they were caught.

RF

Posted: 6/17/2009 2:08:05 PM EDT

[#22]

I am still at it.... Some may say it would be a nice place to work but....

Now back when I was a Special Forces Team member and a Space Door Gunner on the side, and volunteered down at the local mall as a ninja....

Posted: 6/17/2009 2:12:22 PM EDT

[#23]

Quoted:

Ask people who have seen me. I look totally not gay.

This.

Posted: 6/17/2009 2:12:24 PM EDT

[#24]

Worked for Tru Green Chem lawn making $10.00 an hour salary. Last 5 months of the year we worked six days a week and 12 hours a day no overtime or nothing was supposed to be paid commission never happened. Made a real good friend there but hated the management. They fucked you anyway they could.

Posted: 6/17/2009 2:13:02 PM EDT

[#25]

Quoted:

Quoted:
Selling cars.

People hate car salesmen. They treat them like shit, but then expect a great deal. WTF! I politely introduce myself, you refuse to give me your name, but you want me to take $5,000 off the price of the car? FOAD.

Oh, when selling cars, you see how lousy Americans' math skills are. You want to put $0 down and pay $200 a month for 36 months for a $45k Tahoe? O rly?

That made me lol. Don't forget that 1999 Chevy Malibu they owe $8,000 on.

"Can't you just roll that into my lease?"

"GTFO before I shove this credit app so far up your ass it hits your teeth."

Posted: 6/17/2009 2:18:25 PM EDT

[#26]

"Courtesy Clerk" at a FarmFresh Grocery Store.

I was a glorified bag boy, cart collector and janitor. I'd bag your goods and take them to your car, and if you went to tip I wasn't allowed to take it, often times making many older patrons mad. Collecting carts on a 105 degree day on an asphalt parking lot was fun. Cleaning the bathroom after someone had explosive diarrhea and wiped shit on the stall walls and door was great too. Having to sweep up rotten produce in the back-Awesome!

Its surprising how dirty the places you get your food really are.

Posted: 6/17/2009 2:18:43 PM EDT

[#27]

Security guard (unarmed), working a shitty grocery store in downtown Phoenix, AZ. Outdoors. In the summer.

Mostly skated through for a few months. It was easier once I figured out to not care.

Posted: 6/17/2009 2:19:11 PM EDT

[#28]

I worked for a company that did Team and Individual pictures for kids sports for 1 month. I worked in the office manually inputting all the orders from 9-5, and then I went out and did pictures until sundown. I generally worked weekends too. I was working 60-70 hrs. a week but I wasn't getting overtime, they classed it was two DIFFERENT jobs and paid me at two different rates, neither of which broke $10/hr. On top of getting raped on money, I had no chance of ever getting benefits, and dealing with sports parents is well....let's just say there are a LOT of assholes in that particular group. The kids weren't so great themselves...

I quit without notice, the first time I'd ever done that. I then immediately went home and poured a lot of effort into my own photography company while vowing never to have anything to do with sports photography again. Now, I shoot weddings and portraits, I work for whoever I want to work for and when people are assholes or come off badly I end up "not available"...I'm not making tons of money or anything, but life is pretty good!

Posted: 6/17/2009 2:20:19 PM EDT

[#29]

Quoted:
Never taken a job I didn't know I'd like.

Shit your country has all our jobs.

Posted: 6/17/2009 2:21:19 PM EDT

[#30]

Quoted:
on a more serious note...

My first job as an A&P was working over haul on 727/737's.

I had to pull pit panels and insulation, clean corrosion, make repairs and apply corrosion inhibitor then put it all back together again.

talk about a dirty job... but not as bad as replacing the toilets/tanks/pumps/filters on the shitter systems

When I started my airline career I worked cabin overhaul on 727's.

Pulling out lavs, galleys and working to replace/repair all the associated structural areas. Piss is highly corrosive,

Suckiest job I ever had was unloading truckloads of watermelons and pumpkins. Parris Island was welcome break from that shit......

Posted: 6/17/2009 2:22:04 PM EDT

[#31]

1. unloading hay bales 700-1000 at a time in 110-120+ degree heat in the middle of a South Texas summer. Goddamned miserable.

2. working on a loading dock with an all black crew that would gladly have slit my throat and dumped me behind the building because I was white, and didn't make any pretense otherwise... I left after the first payday.

3. cleaning surgical tables for a meat-market neutering vet doing volunteer work for a big animal shelter.

4. pregnancy testing cattle... reach in, feel the uterus/cervix, make a diagnosis, repeat all day for days on end

Posted: 6/17/2009 2:22:37 PM EDT

[#32]

landscaping had to be the worst.

Posted: 6/17/2009 2:30:53 PM EDT

[#33]

Some guy's house was built on an old school mine on the edge of lake Champlain here, the foundation was poured right ontop of a bunch of rock, so the house eventually had crazy foundation problems. I spent the better part of a summer jack-hammering drainage grooves around the outside of every room in the basement, I broke two 90lbs jackhammer bits trying to get through this rock in order to drain this guys basement. I don't know what type of rock it was but it was harder than hell. When I finished trenching it all out, i had to lay in drain tile and gravel, then wheel down what seemed like a million wheelbarrow loads of concrete because there was no way to get a truck down there where the house was and my boss was too cheap to spring for a pumper. all of this in late november right on the lake so it was cold as fuck everyday..probably the most exhausting work i've ever done but i'd rather be exhausted than bored at a job i guess.

Posted: 6/17/2009 2:31:20 PM EDT

[#34]

Quoted:
A loader / unloader at UPS.

The level of suck was greatly enhanced by the fact I am from southern Louisiana, and I started this job in July.

Also the fact that my coworkers were wannabe gang-bangers and no smarter than the loading equipment.

I lasted two weeks.

I went from 8 years in the Army with my own troops to that lousy job. The only reason I took it was to kill time until the next semester started...

I'm with ya, only I worked for FedEx doing the same shit during the summer. Nothing like being in an un-airconditioned warehouse having hundreds of boxes pouring down a chute into a truck trying to get them stacked from back to front. Then a few boxes would jam up near the door and everything was pouring out the sides over the rails.

Posted: 6/17/2009 2:41:32 PM EDT

[#35]

1)Building concrete container walls... Stacking 130-200# concrete tinker toys while being 200 feet in the air. I lasted 1 day. I was so wrecked the next day that I could not sit up.

2) Followed closely by doing post burn-in testing/rework for a well known "alternative OS" PC manufacturer. (I worked there for two years... unfortunately)

3) Squeeze-gating, vaccinating, dehorning and castrating truck loads of cattle. (Imagine spending 12 hour days covered in blood and cow shit with a constant danger of getting stomped or squashed)

––-
My top three.

Posted: 6/17/2009 2:48:22 PM EDT

[#36]

Roughneck........... Started by shoveling that grey shit into a pit under a swinging well head.

Spent most the time high as hell of fumes and the remainder trying not to loose my head with swinging pipe next to me..... lasted 18 months after college.

Posted: 6/17/2009 2:54:33 PM EDT

[#37]

Stuffing envelopes with 8tracks, and cassettes for Sessions Records.

Posted: 6/17/2009 2:56:07 PM EDT

[#38]

Going to peoples houses and picking up new subscription checks for the Arizona Republic. Fuck I hated that job!

Posted: 6/17/2009 3:18:00 PM EDT

[#39]

I'm shocked no one mentioned selling cell phones.

Posted: 6/17/2009 3:24:20 PM EDT

[#40]

Quoted:

Roughneck........... Started by shoveling that grey shit into a pit under a swinging well head.

Spent most the time high as hell of fumes and the remainder trying not to loose my head with swinging pipe next to me..... lasted 18 months after college.

I roughnecked in TX and Ok for 3 years and loved that job, but I had a great crew too.

I noticed a lot of people hate landscaping but I liked that a lot too and did it for several years.

My worst job though was pouring concrete basement foundations. I didn't really mind the work, though it was a lot of heavy lifting, I just had a prick for a foreman. I lasted 2 days on that job and told him him to shove it.

Posted: 6/17/2009 3:27:47 PM EDT

[#41]

Made deer ears for a taxidermist.
I was 13 y. o .
I made 15 cents an ear.
No A/C and the glue was stinky.

Posted: 6/17/2009 3:29:48 PM EDT

[#42]

Quoted:
Corrections Officer.

Doing time in twelve hour shifts.

This. END OF THREAD

I did 16 hour shifts though

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Posted: 6/17/2009 3:30:50 PM EDT

[#43]

Barns crew at state fairgrounds.

Posted: 6/17/2009 3:33:42 PM EDT

[#44]

talent evaluations. I looked over people's resumes and was given a quota of how many to keep and how many to fire.

interviewing dozens of people knowing that you're laying them off no matter what kills you.

highest paying job I ever had.

Still have nightmares.

Posted: 6/17/2009 3:36:22 PM EDT

[#45]

Quoted:

I swept the docks at a large port in So.Texas in 95degrees 95% humidity 10 hours a day......it motivated me though. I realized that I needed to stay in school.

My worst job was in summer during high school doing QC for an education company. 8 hours a day of comparing lists of numbers and letters. Honestly, I don't remember one minute of being on that job, except I vowed to never work for somebody else unless my life was in danger.

Posted: 6/17/2009 3:38:40 PM EDT

[#46]

I was Chuck-E-Cheese part time in high school.

Posted: 6/17/2009 3:39:37 PM EDT

[#47]

Let's just say that any job where a major benefit is that you get the rabies shots for free is not a job you want. Trust me.

Posted: 6/17/2009 3:41:28 PM EDT

[#48]

U.S. ARMY 13B20, 4 years + 1 year stoploss, 1LT shot one of my soldiers. Now Im IRR and they wont leave me alown. WHEN WILL THIS SHIT STOP?!?!?!

Posted: 6/17/2009 3:43:09 PM EDT

[#49]

Quoted:

Quoted:
Mop boy at an adult book store on 42nd Street in Manhattan, early 80s.

j/k, but I think that would take the cake

Winner!

I actually know a younger fellow who worked his way through UT at Mr. Peepers in Austin. He said that it actually affected his sex drive, which was really terrifying for a 19 year old male.

Posted: 6/17/2009 3:47:48 PM EDT

[#50]

Quoted:
Loader at a lumber yard in Austin Texas.
I wasn't out of the Army six months yet and the yard boss was an overbearing 19 year old kid who thought he personally owned the joint.
I made it two days and just never went back.

Stripling Blake?

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - What was your worst job you ever had? (Page 2 of 3)

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