Really hard jobs. Name one.

[Bertha Venation]

Piano tuner

[Major Nikon]

1. Cat herder

[TrogL]

19. My boss. He manages my team

The HR folks decided to implement a "team building exercise" and guinea-pig it on the IT department.

It was great. We bonded together as a team to totally trash the entire exercise. One HR lady was almost in tears. Another was muttering darkly about "herding cats".

Strangely enough, they never implemented the exercise with the rest of the employees. Wonder why?

[noamnety]

42. I was on a team with the same experience!

our army (civilian) group reduced a team building trainer to tears and the whole program was canceled after our escapades in there. Our joint refusal to share anything personal with each other in that setting, on demand, became the thing we bonded over.

[cyberswede]

2. Is that difficult?

My father in law has the tool thingie, and I was thinking of trying to tune our piano myself...should I skip it?

[hunter]

14. Yes.

http://piano.detwiler.us/#axzz1tvpluphQ

Things like this:

Why not use the Korg tuner to tune all the notes directly?

Even if you tune every note perfectly with a simple electronic tuner like a Korg, you will not get a very pleasing result. The different lengths and types of strings in a real piano tend to alter their resonant characteristics from the ideal. Tuners call this phenomenon "inharmonicity." The mathematically-calculated equal-temperament pitch actually sounds out of tune for many keys, getting worse the further you are from the middle, and more so on smaller pianos with shorter strings. In a piano that has been entirely tuned with a simple electronic tuner like the Korg, the top registers will sound flat, and the bottom registers sharp. In practice, only A4 (A above middle C) is tuned to a outside standard pitch, 440 Hz; all the other keys are tuned relative to A4. In fact, a purely aural (by ear) piano tuner may just tune the "A" with a tuning fork and tune the rest of the piano by ear.

[cyberswede]

30. Thanks

I didn't know that.

The "thingie" my FIL has is a wrench-like thing, not a tuning device. I figured I'd use a tuning fork one pitch and then do the rest by ear, like I do with the guitar.

Sound like I'd be better off checking the yellow pages for a professional.

[gkhouston]

53. Unless you have an extremely good ear, I'd pay to have it done. n/t

[4_TN_TITANS]

3. Furniture mover...

Hardest work I've ever done for the least pay. Took it between jobs in 2001. Every day was a chance to push your strength even farther than you swore you could go. A year and 1/2 of that was probably = to 10 years of mild exercise.

[rrneck]

13. +1

I can't count the number of times some asshole looked me straight in the eye and said, "That conference table house up the fire stairs."

[hunter]

15. I used to do that. Man, I was STRONG.

It used to pay pretty well too.

Sadly wages haven't kept up. I see people getting paid the same I was around 1980.

Mostly it's because the unions are gone or severely weakened, and people are much more desperate for work.

[fizzgig]

34. my husband's going back to moving furniture

he's sick of kitchen work, so he'll do that for the summer and then probably back to the kitchen for the winter. he's not thrilled about it, but it was his best option right now.

[Rambis]

4. Fact checker at Faux news

wait

[whistler162]

38. That would be a easy no show job

so it isn't a hard job!

[Initech]

77. I don't think that job exists.

[KamaAina]

84. What would s/he do if s/he found one?

[ohiosmith]

5. Porn actor.

[riderinthestorm]

6. I nominate Fermin, the guy who cleans 40 stalls daily at my place.

a backbreaking task (for which he is well paid) which he performs to perfection, a rare feat. When he's sick, we all put on our game face and work together to get them done but after the first 10 stalls or so, the body strain is incredible.

[Bertha Venation]

64. pardon the ignorant, but . . .

. . . you're talking about horse stalls, yes? Because the first stalls that came to mind are in bathrooms.

[riderinthestorm]

68. Heh, my bad for ASSuming everyone would know... yup, horse stalls. nt

[CaliforniaPeggy]

7. Nurse's aide in a convalescent hospital.

[dana_b]

48. oh lordy, Peggy

you are so right. Those people are angels and they need patience and backs of steel!

[MichiganVote]

98. I did that job. Wanna lose weight? This'll do it.

[guitar man]

8. Industrial sandblasting

Cleaning out oil storage tanks

Shoveling out semi trailers that carry livestock

They didn't seem quite so hard when I did them as a young man, but looking back and imagining trying to do those jobs now...yikes!

[HappyMe]

9. Neurosurgeon

[Arugula Latte]

10. collector of bull semen/artificial inseminator of cows

[hifiguy]

11. Commercial roofer, during summer months.

A friend of mine did that for a couple summers. He said that there was nothing like standing on a big, flat tar/stone roof on a humid 90-degree day dumping that nice hot tar onto the roof. Makes me woozy just thinking about it.

[HuckleB]

32. Yup. That one gets a +1.

[irisblue]

12. porta potty cleaner

[MiddleFingerMom]

26. Some of the absolute BEST scenes in the original "Woodstock" movie...

.
.
.
... are with the guy who was cleaning the Port-a-Potties there.
.
.
.
Older guy -- and I bet COOLER than most of the hippies there. Really laidback and non-judgmental,
as I recall (it's been quite a few years since I've seen it).
.
.
.

[alphafemale]

40. Have you ever stepped into a Porta Pottie that was FULL?

I stepped into one once where the contents were within an inch or so of the seat.

I found out my levitation skills were actually quite good that day.

[Bertha Venation]

65. hahahahaha Levitation skills

Hahahaha

[hunter]

16. Teaching public school in a lower income urban environment.

Some people can do it, I could not.

That was the hardest job I ever had.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

17. Hospital laundry--I did it as a temp during my early 1980s unemployment

Spend the day sorting sheets, gowns, towels, etc., soaked with every imaginable body fluid and "product"

[MiddleFingerMom]

18. Police officer

.
.
.
DESPITE the bad apples, I believe MOST of them ARE out there to protect and serve -- and
the stress and danger and CRAP they take does explain some of the attitudes and behaviors
that I do see from them.
.
.
.
I couldn't do it. I believe I'd be scared shitless half of the time.
.
.
.
It's hard enough to tune a six-string guitar. I agree with BV -- piano tuner. When I was growing
up, we had an upright piano (I had a HORRIBLE teacher who shouldn't have taught me past the
first year of SIX -- I learned nothing new after that first year. Her name made you think of an
airless musty room and she wore GALLONS of this awful perfume -- so we CALLED her that
synonym behind her back. It was TERRIBLE sitting right next to her for half-an-hour!!!)
.
Our piano tuner had no sight whatsoever... he had a companion who would lead him into our
house holding his arm and sit him at the piano. He did an AWESOME job -- and his disability may
have made him even more suitable for that work.
.
.
.
He was a Black man, so as a 7- or 8-year-old, I used to wonder if he were related to Ray Charles.
.
.
.

[byeya]

21. How about a combined cop/forest fire fighter/EMT/mountain rescue team member.

US National Park Ranger.

[MiddleFingerMom]

22. I think their work-related murder rates (Rangers as the victims) is much higher than the police.

[byeya]

27. The Dept of Justice Crime Statistics group studied injuries and deaths

in officers in the federal sector between 1995 and 2000 and published their results in late 2000.
Law enforcement park rangers suffered from injuries or death as a result of assault at a rate of
15.1 per annum per 1000 officers; next were the Customs agents at 5.1. FBI and DEA were down at
1.2 and 1.1.
Lack of meaningful backup; radio dead zones; lack of management support were all factors cited.

[LASlibinSC]

56. OMG!

Exact same piano tuner! Used a fork for one note, tuned the rest by ear. These big guys did all the moving of the piano. Never knew he and Ray were tight. Damn! Hardest job? Gotta go with Psychiatric nurse

[applegrove]

20. Hard rock miner in the 1800s.

[MiddleFingerMom]

23. In college, I got a summer job one year digging ditches for a little excavation company.

.
.
.
GREAT hands-on boss (who LOVED me as when I first moved into the area, he and his wife were
having serious marital problems and she came over and blatantly hit on me. I sent her home to
her husband -- who eventually, as they worked their way through successful counseling, found
out about that).
.
He was a BIG man... a hunter who didn't need a rifle or a bow -- he could have crushed me with
his bare hands.
.
She, on the other hand... was SMOKIN' HOT!!!!!
.
.
Digging ditches for a sewage system in a new subdivision was hard, HOT work. My first day on
the job, by lunchtime, I literally could not keep from dropping the shovel when I tried to hold it
(the boss turned me on to Gatorade... the water I had been drinking was not replacing my
electrolytes nor potassium and my forearms were cramping like iron rods).
.
.
.
However, not too long after I got out of the Army, I took a temp job picking tobacco in Tennessee.
Tons harder than digging ditches -- that pushed me to my then fairly impressive limits.
.
.
.
Sorry... that's TWO jobs, not one.
.
.
.

[trof]

24. County real estate tax appraiser.

I did that for over a year.
Periodically, every county has to update appraisals and do first appraisals on new construction for tax purposes.
NOBODY wants to see or talk to you.

For some, you're a mild annoyance.
For others you're a goddam communist who wants to suck their blood.
And worse...raise their taxes.


When I was 'escorted' off the property of a farmer in the Alabama boonies at gunpoint I turned in my badge, 100' measuring tape, and clipboard.
So...they made me a supervisor and guaranteed I'd never have to set foot on private property ever again.


We called the new appraisers "Cannon Fodder".

[Lars39]

28. My husband used to do that for the state of TN.

That's when he was introduced to the term SWAG.

[trof]

37. I know the term.

[davsand]

29. Some days are better than others.

Here in Illinois I don't argue if they tell me to get off the property. I just say ok and leave.

The reason for that is if I have to stand on the center line of the road and "value" ANY piece of property, it will IMMEDIATELY have a base value of $1,000,000. It might be a run down "pile o crap in the woods", but it is still gonna be worth a million for tax purposes.

If the property owner objects to that value they can PROVE that it is over valued. At that point they are gonna have to either submit an independent fee appraisal (meaning they are gonna pay somebody to come out and measure it) or else they're gonna have to allow somebody from the county on that property to get an accurate measure.

Either way it will get taxed.





Right now I've got a guy that has threatened to sue me because his local assessor promised to look the other way for a few years--meaning his new house was not being taxed. I put him on the tax rolls and now he's threatening to sue me for (I just love this one...) "breech of promise."




Laura

[trof]

36. I did exactly the same thing.

"If you won't let me on the property I'll have to 'estimate' everything."

[begin_within]

25. Paramedic or Emergency Medical Technician

[BlueIris]

80. Yeah, that is seriously ugly work.

I've never done it, but the stories I've heard...one of my Internet friends was an EMT in PA and wound up on anti-depressants after a few months because of the stress.

[HuckleB]

31. Grocery bagger, ditch digger, construction site lackey (brick/block carrier), landscape company ...

... employee ...

I could go on and on, and I haven't even mentioned "dishwasher." What is wrong the prior responses? Is DU this out of touch?

[nadine_mn]

54. I was a dishwasher in a little local diner...hardest job ever

Plus we had to peel and grate cooked potatoes to make hash browns for each shift. I was 15 and lugging that huge pot of potatoes from the basement was hell. In the winter, I reeked of lutefisk, rest of the year just fried food. Ugh

[snooper2]

101. Set three 16X80s in a day and you'll go back to washing dishes in a heartbeat LOL

[Bertha Venation]

66. Not out of touch, HuckleB...

...there are just a lot of really hard jobs out there.

[HuckleB]

73. There are, but I don't think this thread shows much perspective.

Hard jobs plus crap pay equals the hardest jobs by far.

If not, why hasn't anyone listed ER nurses and docs?

[Initech]

33. Newt Gingrich's PR writer

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/387033/may-19-2011/john-lithgow-performs-gingrich-press-release

[HopeHoops]

35. Rush Limbaugh's hooker

[whistler162]

39. Obviously parenting....

[Scurrilous]

41. Assistant crack whore.

Old SNL joke...

[femmocrat]

43. Kindergarten teacher. School bus driver. School custodian. School cafeteria worker.

Most jobs associated with schools are back-breaking, stressful, and hard on one's health.

[BlueIris]

88. Yes, anything affiliated with the educational field is murder.

They really just suck the life out of staff in those jobs.

[snooper2]

102. It's almost as bad as running a smelter

[TrogL]

89. Junior high school teacher

I burned out in three years and had my nervous breakdown. Apparently that's about average.

My favourite grade to teach is Grade 4 (let's ignore for the moment that's the class the South Park kids are in). They're old enough to actually be able to do something but they haven't hit puberty yet. Also, Grade 4 humour is surreal. They understand the mechanics of how to tell a joke or funny story, but it usually runs off the rails into absurdity.

[MichiganVote]

99. School Social Work-killer

[George Cauldron]

44. Newt Gingrich's wife

Every day must be like a year's worth at a coal mine.

[SOteric]

45. Training the small creature that sits on Donald Trump's head.

[blue neen]

46. HA!

You really did make me laugh out loud!

[chrisa]

47. Customer service at a call center

[madinmaryland]

49. Elementary School Janitor.

Fricking disgusting.

[Rochester]

50. The guy at the animal shelter whose job it is to put down perfectly healthy animals

because time ran out on them before they got adopted.

[femmocrat]

91. Yes, that would be the worse job on the planet.

There is no way that job could ever become "routine". It would be so heart-breaking and infuriating at the same time.

[RFKHumphreyObama]

51. President of the United States

Sure, you get a lot of the perks and privileges but -if you're serious about it and want to get things done and you're not there for your own personal glory and legacy like Dubya is -I can imagine it could be one of the hardest things in the world. Look what President Clinton and President Obama have had to go throw

[Odin2005]

52. Parenting.

[gkhouston]

55. Migrant farm worker. n/t

[Kaleva]

57. Crawling on your stomach in human waste & mud to get to a broken sewer pipe and repair it.

The first time wasn't bad as I could crawl on my hands and knees thru the stuff. The second time was terrible as the crawl space was so tight, I had to turn my head sideways to keep my face out of the shit. In another job, the homeowner held me by my boots as I hung upside down in the opening of his septic tank so I could reach and clear out the plugged exit pipe. I had pumped out most of the sewage out but there was still enough left for me to swim in had he let go.

And the stuff I had to remove from toilets. A kid's shoe, toys, gravel, a fish, a tape measure, and the ever popular tampons,

[DiverDave]

58. Power washing ANYTHING

I worked laying in mud-puddles with an 8" wand cleaning truck transmissions before dis-assembly.
I had walking pneumonia all winter.
Hardist job physically was delivering to dunkin donuts.
Not only did I have to drive the truck, I had to unload and PUT away the freight.
The dude standing there pointing where everything went.
I was sooo tired after every shift.

[Enrique]

59. debate prep for Sarah Palin

[Scuba]

60. Interesting how different people define "hard"...

Physically demanding

Gross

Stressful

Emotionally demanding

etc.

[Kaleva]

62. It's because our experiences are different.

Not everyone has had a job that demanded hard physical labor for instance.

[Scuba]

63. While others don't understand stress...

... and of course, there's nothing to constrain their definition, sarcasm, wit, etc.

[panader0]

61. I've been a bricklayer for forty years

It's harder than it used to be.

[cliffordu]

67. I was an alcohol and drug counselor for adolescent street kids - runaways and throwaways.

and kids in long term inpatient A&D treatment.

It was run by the St.Vincent DePaul. If a kid had ANY resources they were sent to other facilities. We got kids who had nothing.

I'd say about 90% of them were sexual abuse survivors, and more than a few had been selling or scoring drugs for their parents before running away.

And then we had gang members - I had one wonderful therapy group with a skinhead and a Crip. Both sentenced by the court for treatment instead of jail.

Actually - that group made BOTH of them think about race more than anything I can think of.

Good times.

Out of the hundreds of kids I had in my range at one point or another, I remember three or four who actually made it.

A mother of one sought me out after several years to tell me that her son - one of the hardest children I had ever met, got sober, married, was working construction and attending community college.

I wept like a child.

[Kaleva]

69. I've always heard that the success rate for such programs is extremely low.

But thanks to you, there are 3-4 who did make it.

[cliffordu]

71. Thanks -

In the vast majority of cases the best we could hope for was to completely ruin alcohol and drugs as an answer forever.

Breaking their denial.

I broke denial in lots of people, knowing that down the road many would seek further help.

And that, folks, is the name of the game.

Once denial goes, the rest - recovery - can follow.

[bigwillq]

70. Parent (nt)

[krispos42]

72. Donald Trump's critter-wrangler

Or whatever his job title is. You know, the guy that feeds, trains, grooms, catches, and places atop Trump's head the critter that's there in all the photos.

[MichiganVote]

100. Shoot just bein' married to him is bad enuf'

[jmowreader]

74. Military survivor assistance officer. Hardest job in the world.

These are the soldiers (they go out in pairs--one officer, one sergeant) who knock on a family's door and tell them their soldier was killed, and then help them through the whole process of final arrangements. This job is hard enough on the people who do it, the regulation describing how to perform this duty tells you not to get drunk before you go out there for the initial contact with the next of kin--obviously people HAVE done that.

[pa28]

75. Missile launch officer.

Turn the key and you are responsible for the death of millions.

The other side of the argument is "I was just following orders".

[Marrah_G]

76. The world is full of hard jobs

Sometimes people pay you well to do those jobs and other times you endure the work and abuse for minimum wage.

[laundry_queen]

78. Don't know the 'name' of it

It's what my dad does. He lines tanks and pipes with rubber so they don't corrode. He has crawled into 16 inch pipes before, although not so much since he's nearing retirement. He says it's really, really hot (because the rubber is heated, you need coverall so the chemicals don't eat your clothes) and it's not easy to drink your water in those tiny pipes. He's only gotten really stuck once, and he said the key is to just relax and eventually you'll be able to move. Definitely not a job for the claustrophobic, or the out of shape.

[BlueIris]

79. Senior care provider.

Any provider. That shit is murder. Especially if the senior or seniors in question are 65+.

[HopeHoops]

81. Stay-at-home parent

[mikeytherat]

82. Fast food service one block from a major sports and entertainment arena.

"I know you're closing tonight, but you've got to stay so we can start cooking again at 4:00. We need to make 1500 Egg McMuffins."

mikey_the_rat

[KamaAina]

83. Servicemember in Afghanistan.

And unlike most of these, they xcan't even fall back on "Well, it's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it."

[Brickbat]

85. Locomotive engineer and freight train conductor. I had no idea until Mr. Brickbat started on the

railroad.

[begin_within]

86. Motherhood

[NCTraveler]

87. Zombie killer. nt.

[geardaddy]

90. Therapist for any republican.

[ThoughtCriminal]

92. Destroyer OF Worlds!

Oh sure, it impresses, but after all the introductions there's always that awkward silence.

[Broken_Hero]

93. Hmm,

Wolverine's proctologist......

[Taverner]

94. Diamond Cutter. Neurosurgeon. Public Bathroom Janitor.

[AsahinaKimi]

95. Medical Examiner at a crime scene

Watched the movie BONE COLLECTOR last night... eeesh!

[raccoon]

96. Being second in command to an insecure person. nt

[Cronkite]

97. Wild Honey collector in the Sundarbans mangrove forrest.....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/13556336

80 are killed every year by tigers, there are crocs in the river, venomous snakes and "honey pirates" that will kill the honey collectors.....