Since everybody (including me ) is bragging about all the cool jobs we had, what is the worst job you have ever had ?
I was a line cook at a local bar. Free booze was cool, working for a total tweaker/cokehead/alcoholic was Bs, so was working until 4 am because the owners “friends” were just getting into town and needed food. more BS was that I often missed am classes because I would get off work at 2,3, or even 4 in the am and th owner would insist I drink my fill before heading out. Like I said, free beers is cool, the rest of the job was terrible, I was depressed as hell and my training was basically non-existent during that time period. Worst time of my life.
Washing dishes at a busy Italian restaurant (Old Spaghetti Factory). I did it to get a job as a busboy when I was 16, and only worked on the weekends. I never got the busboy job but I got my first ever promotion - to pots and pans, which was hugely easier than dishes, and it got me a .10 cent and hour raise. It was the hardest, dirtiest, stinkiest job I ever did. I got one 15 min break per night and the other guys would be far behind by the time we’d get back from that break, we were so busy. On my first day I was really careful touching food on plates. By the time I left I would put my bare hand on someone’s food/plate to clean it out. Needless to say, I was wiped every night. I lasted about 4-5 months. I could not look at spaghetti for at least a year afterwards - just the smell of red sauce would make me gag.
that job convinced me to go to college and not ever go to jail. Back then Mexicans weren’t in the kitchens, it was mostly white trash guys with families. I did not want to be one, and sure enough that job scared me straight. I’m forcing all my kids to get that job when they turn 16.
Last tax season I dressed up like Uncle Sam and waved at traffic for a tax office. 4 hours a day for $6 an hour.
That was my worst job too! It was the first job I ever had. I made $1.00 per hour washing dishes by hand for an Italian restaurant that had just opened a block from my house. I worked 8 hours a night and within 2 weeks my hands were so chapped I had to quit. I still remember how heavy the trash can was from all the spaghetti and other pasta it was filled with from people who couldn’t possibly finish the monstrous portions. It took me and a busboy to lift it to dump it in the dumpster. Opening night it looked like there were a bunch of mafia people, and I know the owner’s brother was packing.
Carl’s Jr. You know the place where you go empty your trash and your tray into after you are done eating. Yeah. I had take that crap out to the back. Oh yeah cleaning underneath the soda dispensers wasn’t too fun either. Or the bathrooms (especially the womens bathroom, not that it was dirty or anything, but my friend and I had to take out the you know what sack and put it in the trash) On the flip side, my manager was totally awesome and during the 4th of July when nobobdy was in the restaurant, everyone who was working went on the roof and watched the local fireworks show that was fun.
I worked at a dry cleaner and my sole job was to pin a little tag on every single peice of clothing that came in to the place. It was never ending so there was no reason to even hustle and “just get it over with” and no sense of acomplishment what so ever. And WORSE - there was a clock about 2 feet in front of me all day that I was not allowed to cover so I just stared at it and man did it seem to be slooooooow.
I used to work at a boiled egg factory at which I had at least two candidates for the worst job ever:
Job 1). Turn up at 06.00, strip to underwear under overalls and begin to frantically unload full articulated lorries of boxed eggs as fast as possible by hand - backbreaking. 06.40 stand in line with 8 other guys in front of an enormous mechanised egg loader which picked up the eggs and put them in boiling water. Keeping the machine fed involved running for a box, ripping it open and putting a tray under the suction cups which descended every 4-5 seconds. It picked up 64 eggs at a time (1 tray), there were 2 trays per ‘layer’ in each box, 12 layers per box. Repeat for 12 hours in 90+ temps. and get shouted at if at the end of that time, covered in sweat, exploded egg juice you hadn’t loaded 250 boxes. The guy to my right was on parole and the one on my left looked like the guy the goonies find in the cave and told me every morning what roadkill he’d found for dinner on his way home the previous night. After 8 weeks of this I got promoted:
Job 2). The Egg loader was built into the dividing wall between the “loading area” and the “clean area”. My promotion was to work the same shift on the other side of the wall where the newly boiled eggs streamed in a river of brine into a giant refrigerator where I stood, in a line of eight people, with no music or distractions and tried and generally failed to remove the bits of eggshell that the automatic desheller had missed. Within an hour even through the latex gloves your hands were solid claws and touching anything was agonising. Breaks were 2x15 minutes and 1x30 minutes almost all of which was taken fighting your way into 3 lab coats, hairnets, 2 pairs of gloves, overtrousers and wellington boots.
Anything I have achieved since doing jobs like this I owe to the fear of having to do them again!
I bragged earlier but I did work at a Soybean Oil Refinery where it was my technical job to do everything no one else would. whether that was to wear ice helmets in places it was over 140 to keep cool or get into FINAL product tanks to scape the 1.5 feet of thicker than tar phosphoric acid out of the bottom at 130 degrees. Needless to say I dont eat partially hydrogentated oil (source of trans fat, READ your labels)
I worked as a farm laborer every school vacation (including x-mas and spring breaks) after 7th grade and until I left for college. Aside from the the whole work ethic and building character thing, all the picking, planting, loading and irrigation jobs mostly sucked. But, the absolute worst one was picking wine grapes in late August in the Bakersfield area. You had to wake up at 3:30 to be at the fields ready to start picking at first light so as to beat as much of the heat as you could. By 9:30 am it was 100+ degrees and humid b/c of the irrigation. It was piece work so you busted your ass all day and if you passed out that was break time - seriously. To pick the grapes you had to crawl on your back under the very leafy grape vines, slice each bunch of grapes at the stem, fill a vat full, and crawl out and carry that to a dumpster behind a tractor then go back and start over. You inhaled all kinds of nasty insects and btw, Black Widows really don’t kill you. The day ended at about 3:30. For a day’s work I would net btwn $20-25.
The job I quit in March. I refused to falsify personnel records or commit fraud on government contracts, and my boss was holding it against me.
I worked at a dry cleaner and my sole job was to pin a little tag on every single peice of clothing that came in to the place. It was never ending so there was no reason to even hustle and “just get it over with” and no sense of acomplishment what so ever. And WORSE - there was a clock about 2 feet in front of me all day that I was not allowed to cover so I just stared at it and man did it seem to be slooooooow.
Now this is funny because I worked at a dry cleaner after my worst job and it was great! I worked the evening shift one summer, from something like 3pm to 8pm. Just me after 4pm, had a radio, usually had some books or magazines and my friends would come hang out. Met a lot of cool people too.
My worst job was my first. I got hired at Foot Locker to do stock with the promise of being on the floor within a month. I got on the floor once, outsold everyone in the whole hour they gave me and never got to be on the floor again. Six hours or more in the back room, no windows, putting shoe boxes in the proper space on the stock shelves…even if it meant moving 200 boxes to open a space for one box. That sucked.
Worked in a factory each summer during college. It was a small factory with 8 other people, including the owner/manager. Nobody in the place had a high school diploma and a couple of them never even went to high school. OSHA would have loved this place. We cut pipe without any safety guards and had our hands in the solution to keep the saws from overheating all day. I actually had to go out and buy water proof gloves after my hands started turning green and peeling.
Only reason I worked there was it was 40 hours a week which meant decent money. But I would come home smelling like a burnt metal. Like many have said, it provided the ambition to NEVER have to work in a similar place for a living.
Cutco cutlery sales.
Embarassed just admitting it.
Picking dandelions. I got 5 cents per dandelion ROOT. no root no nickle. I was 12.
Oh man…there is one of those offices in our town. They have a dude dressed as uncle sam and a chick dressed as the statue of liberty.
Let’s see . . . I worked at KFC and detasseled corn in high school. But neither of those compared to my job as an engineer. Something about living the mundane cubicle life in combo with working for a flaming asshole of a boss that never even graduated college just didn’t sit well with me.
Once I was a monster for a hayride at a campground. (Really) I hid in the trees and scared kids…actually thats not so bad. I wonder if they would take me back?
I was also a towel boy for Rosie O’Donnell and Hilary Clinton…Thanks for bringing that back.
I was a Humane Officer at the Wisconsin Humane Society in Milwaukee in the 1970s. My territory was the inner city. That was a tough position for a person with compassion for animals. You can’t imagine the horror stories I can tell. It brought reality to my eyes on the horrible life of far too many pets. It could almost turn someone into a PETA supporter.
What I know about dog fighting, I would support anyone found guilty of dog fighting be put in a pit covered in liver with 20 hungry Pit Bulls. The ironic thing is the Pit Bulls would probably not hurt a human.