The worst job you ever had

[SFG75]

A colleague of mine asked me about this recently and it got me thinking pretty long and hard, glad to say that it's been awhile since such a bad memory has been on my mind.:lol: Between my freshman and sophomore years in college, I dropped all of my classes one semester and took a job at a cookbook publishing company. The pay was fairly decent and my job was to empty giant trash bins filled with wasted/error paper. The bins could weigh as much as 200 ibs. and it was my job to lift them up and over into a giant colletion baler that would bunch the paper together so that it could be recycled. Basic janitorial servic was also a part of the job. It was the most horrible job that I ever had. We were constantly busy and at the end of the day, my entire body ached. I lasted two weeks before I didn't show up due to just being sick of the whole thing. That, and the fact that I had a compressed disk in my back. I went back to college during the winter term and made honor roll for the first time. When I felt like leaving the library at night, my iner tormenter in my head would coment: "If you don't go back, you'll be at that job again.":lol: The rest is history.

So what about you?

 

[joderu95]

The worst was as a line worker at a bread factory where I lasted almost half of an entire shift before I walked out the door. You put on a hair net and some insulated gloves and the first time you touch the pans you burn the hell out of your hands. Then you sweat like some fat alcoholic in a steam bath trying to keep up with the break neck pace and even if you don't mind the pain and discomfort you get to look forward to low wages, erratic schedules, unjustified union dues and an utterly monotonous work regiment.

The next worst was picking up golf balls at a driving range on the graveyard shift. You pull up your knee high galoshes and Gore-Tex jacket (if you're lucky enough to own one) and push around a little two-wheeled device that resembles a fertilizer spreader. The ground is always saturated with rain water and golf balls and you constantly fall on your ass. Stayed a good two weeks on that one before I nearly ran off the interstate driving home around 6 a.m.

 

[sparkchaser]

Worst job for me was machine operator at West Penn Plastic in New Castle, PA. I was on midnight shift and the the job was horrid. The last resort was when they stuck me on the machine that made the red flappers for extension ladders. One of the duties was to cut off the excess sprue from the almost molten hot flapper when it came out of the mold. I spent an eight hour shift burning my fingertips every 90 seconds. When I left work that morning, I went straight to the Last Minit Mart in New Wilmington and got a job as night shift clerk.

 

[dude]

The next worst was picking up golf balls at a driving range on the graveyard shift. You pull up your knee high galoshes and Gore-Tex jacket (if you're lucky enough to own one) and push around a little two-wheeled device that resembles a fertilizer spreader. The ground is always saturated with rain water and golf balls and you constantly fall on your ass. Stayed a good two weeks on that one before I nearly ran off the interstate driving home around 6 a.m.

Almost stole my thunder there, haha. I worked at a golf driving range and naturally, the worst part was going out to pick up the balls. We had a little golf cart with an attachment in the front that scooped them up and dropped them into baskets. Most of the time, we had to do this while we were still open as we didn't have enough balls for an entire day's use without retrieving a lot of them over and over. It's a poorly hidden secret that a golfer's second-favorite activity on earth is to try to hit the golf cart with his golf ball. Drunk doofuses like to bet each other on who can hit it the most times. Balls would bounce off the roof and baskets and back at the tees, you would see them high-fiving and whatnot.

I swear, there could be ten people there just lazily practicing their swing, stretching, shooting the shit with the guy in the tee box next to them..... but when they see that golf cart come rolling around the corner, it's showtime. Everyone jumps into action and starts launching balls at you as fast as they can get them teed up. The cart is covered with a tight netting thing that has a zipper down the middle, but after a few hundred hits, it's not so tight anymore. One time, the net caught a ball, but not before it pulled the net to about an inch from my eye. I could read "Spalding" for a split second before the net sprang back.

 

[Janet H]

In high school I worked in an apple packing house. Cold, concrete floors, heavy boxes and wax covered apples. Freshly dunked apples rolled down a belt to be hand packed by me. They just kept coming down the belt... and coming, if I had to sneeze or tie my shoe, they would cascade off the end of the line and fall to the floor. The wax would cake on my hands. I got paid by the number of boxes packed with a deduction for drops and soils. The following year, I graduated to apple picker....

The upside of these jobs was that the experience provided excellant incentive for hard study and good grades in college.

 

[Sleepy]

I can not say I had really bad jobs. They all were pretty decent. But from all of those I'd say the worst thing that can happen to you is befriending your boss and get to a personal, live sharing level. It worked for my very first job for about three years until I decided I need a change. What came then was a nightmare.

 

[Bob Magness]

Some would think that the years I spent working at an animal hospital cleaning up dog crap and bathing and dipping dogs all day would be my worst. But I actually enjoyed that job due to the people I worked with and I looked at it as “paying my dues”. I was planning on becoming a veterinarian at that time.

No, the worst job I ever had was trying to sell Cutco knives. I would go to people’s homes and try to convince them to buy these overpriced knives. I should have known something was up when I went to the job interview, saw 15 applicants…and every applicant got the job. If I were a true salesman I probably could have made some money. As it was, I was utterly miserable for the 6 weeks I attempted the job.

The next runner up to that would probably be the 6 months I worked at Wal-Mart.

 

[Katherine]

I can not say I had really bad jobs. They all were pretty decent. But from all of those I'd say the worst thing that can happen to you is befriending your boss and get to a personal, live sharing level. It worked for my very first job for about three years until I decided I need a change. What came then was a nightmare.

I totally agree with you. I work as a Cleaner in a school. It's just a simple job but I enjoy it. It's a long story but I used to be friends with my boss, not anymore though. Now she's very friendly with someone else who is able to get away with just about everything, and she's also the biggest gossip and trouble maker there. I agree never befriend your boss!

 

[silverseason]

The upside of these jobs was that the experience provided excellant incentive for hard study and good grades in college.

This reminds me of my daughter who had a summer job packing groceries at the checkout line in the local A&P. This was the summer between high school graduation and starting college.

At the end of the summer I asked her what she had learned while working at the A&P. The answer: "I learned that I do not want to work at the A&P."

 

[donatello]

When I was in college, I worked in a bindery. Binding newspapers. Those things are heavy and I was working until they closed well after midnight.

Then I had English class in the morning.
It did not last long.

Other than that, I had a job washing dishes that sucked pretty bad. It was my first job when I was sixteen years old.

 

[donatello]

I have to admit, that once, I think I actually saw the lady with the worst job in the world.

The Worst Job in the World

I was in Moscow back in January of 1994. I had to go through the subway and needed to use the bathroom.

So I went into the bathroom and realized that in the subway system, they used very thin pipes, and toilet paper must not be flushed, but rather tossed into a little filthy bin behind the toilet.

Well, someone must empty those bins.
I saw that lady. She did not look happy.
She wore a stained smock, and stained, yellow rubber gloves that went up to her elbows. The Russians, you see, were not very meticulous about tossing their used paper exactly into the bin. This poor lady had to handle every one of those bins as well as collect the 'misses'.

She had to wake up in the morning every day, prepare for work, go way underneath the city and spend her whole day underground - not seeing the daylight even once - and collect used toilet paper from behind filthy smelly toilets.

After seeing that, I don't think I will ever complain about washing dishes again.

That was truly one of the worst jobs in the world.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

That's why, whenever I see someone doing a really crappy job, I point it out to my kids and say, "See, that's what happens if you don't get good grades and go to college!" I think they have got the message.
We were driving on our annual ski trip to the Alps and zipping along through Austria and we saw some farmers digging in a ditch.
I pointed it out and said, "See, they didn't go to college. They didn't get good grades. They are holding shovels, and we are carrying ski poles!"
I saw a construction worker way up on a roof with a rope around his waist, precariously teetering while adjusting chimney flashing and told my kids... "See that...."

...etc.

 

[joderu95]

If you ever run across any more of those workers tell them, from me, that they have to find a different job. I'll sleep better once I know that Russia has had to adopt healthier waste disposal practices because nobody will take that disgusting job.

 

[saliotthomas]

I some places they don't have the rubber gloves...