I am an old fart...

[catnhatnh]

53 year old out of Connecticut who has supported several families.Done it by oystering,twisting wrenches,driving trucks...can't think of much I haven't done...beer-tending,bartending,short order, et al...always had one job-but most often, at least two...I guess my question is-why does it suck now,and tell me about your worst ever job start....

PS:cause it IS fun...at 14 yrs old, my uncles bought an oyster boat..I was sent to be their deckhand....first day-Mom sends me to sea with a liverwurst sandwich....which was OK..but the FIRST day,while my belly was maybe just a bit delicate...I had lunch and then after (or perhaps they had started and I missed it) my uncles (both of whom sported full red beards) began eating raw oysters...Which have a slightly blue cast...Which make a slurping noise, and Which most of all distress the stomach when the blue mucousal parts hang from red facial hair...A bad day,a bad introduction to working the sea..Yet later when it got really icky....

[spindrifter]

1. Did you ever try drinking down a

couple of raw eggs--not beaten--just right from the shell--for seasickness? Another old f*rt I know swears by it.

[ThomWV]

2. Just A Little Bit Older

I've got a couple of years on you, but not too many.

I had a lot of jobs, most shitty, some not so bad.

The worst was in 1971, right after I got out of the Army. I worked in North Miami at a marina. I scraped barnicles from the bottom of boats.

You now how many flys you breath in during a day of scraping slimy shelled slugs off the bottom of boats in 95 degree heat?

I did it for about 3 months before moving on.

[napi21]

3. You've worked very hard all your life, and did a good job.

Most people do.

I don't know about you declaring yourself an "old fart!" I'm 62, and I worked every day since I was 16! I admit, I didn't do the hard work you did, but I've done a lot of different things too.

My worst job was insurance telephone sales. Any words you might not have ever heard, you'll hear on the phone in that job! It makes you cringe when the phone rings at home! I NEVER answer it...to this day!

Second was working in a toy factory, painting & spraying glue on plastic horses, throwing flock on them, and electrifying them to make the flock stand up to look like hair. The fun part of that job was the friendships I made with the other workers.

[haydukelives]

4. I delivered newspapers

for many years in the morning(3:30 am until 7:00am)seven days a week.
Started to pay for my boat and then my truck.
never happier to quit a job in my life

[in_cog_ni_to]

5. My worst job was probably de-tasseling corn in the summer

when I was in high school. ALL the kids who wanted to make an easy buck for spending money worked for local farmers de-tasseling their corn. Being a redhead, I would be SCORCHED by the end of the day.:( If I don't get skin cancer, I'll be LUCKY. I would blister so bad I couldn't wear clothes. Those were the days when sunscreen didn't exist and I used baby oil to "tan" (puhleeze. a redhead? tan?) Anyway, it was sort of fun at first because all the friends would walk rows together and have a good time, but after a few weeks it got real old and PAINFUL.

[eridani]

11. Well, with a bit more melanin, it's a damned good job

Grubby and tedious, but short. And I got paid the same amount for it that I could have gotten for a whole summer working at most of the other jobs available to teenagers at the time. So I had the choice of spending the rest of the summer playing, or a getting second job to get even more money. Not a bad deal, all told.

[in_cog_ni_to]

14. Oh, I agree! The pay was GREAT for high schoolers.

That's why I did it for the first 3 years of High School. :) As "painful" as it was.;)

[catnhatnh]

6. Okay...

...I'll put a reply here..Many jobs suck...If you are fair skinned (as I am) you burn like an MF...Yet when forced to do it, nights are worse...C'mon-I had MAYY sucky Jobs-You??

[sleipnir]

7. My hardest job is deciding what flavor of Margarita to order!!

Oh yeah!!! Thanks for the millions of dollars mummy and daddy!!! Millions! I just sit around the beach everyday. Everyday in my mind after slaving away at my current job of earning little money....

[catnhatnh]

8. So this is weak sarcasm...

..or what? at least I see nothing pertinent...?

[sleipnir]

10. Well, we can't all be kings of sarcasm each night....

Yeah, I wish that was my life. But you know, no not really. If that's all I ever had to do in my life, the current me would be very sad. As much as I've fought my life for what I do at low-level jobs and often jobs were I easily work for less than minimum wage (thanks to the great term "apprenticeship" and "internship") I've earned each damn penny. Perhaps someday I'll be able to find the break and move further up the ladder, but who knows, it's all a crap shoot.

[brystheguy]

9. I've done a few winners

I detassled corn as a teen. I actually enjoyed the routine of that to a certain extent. Putting on the garbage bag so the dew doesn't soak you and then taking it off when the sun dried it out.

I worked for a moving company for a summer. I was the most normal person there and got to drive the van a lot because I was one of the few without a DUI so I could get insured!

My worst job was working at a pork-processing plant in Waterloo, IA. All I did all day was turn around a piece of meat on a conveyor belt as it went by. The orientation tour of the plant was "interesting." I'll never forget when I looked up and saw pig heads rolling and clunking down a set of slides much like the marble in the old game Mousetrap. That job sure inspired me to stop jacking around in college.

[sandnsea]

12. Hotel maid

Blech. I don't think it was the work, I think it was the monotony. Trash, sheets, vacuum, bathroom, dust, make bed, x 25 x 365. Just shoot me now. Horrible, awful, terrible job. And minimum wage and no tips. I can't think of another that came close to being as bad.

[NMMNG]

13. I worked for minimum wage full time in a laundry one summer vacation

It was in the upper 80's or 90's most of the time, and the heat of the washers, dryers and steam presses only added to it. Of course due to all of the heat-producing equipment the place was not air conditioned so we all were dripping sweat. I spent 8 hours on my feet in a tiny workspace opening bundles of shirts, checking the pockets for any belongings/debri, sewing on missing buttons, then wrapping them up and passing them on to the woman who affixed name labels to them. It was monotonous, mind-numbing work and my feet were always killing my by the end of the day.

[Indy_Dem_Defender]

15. I've had the worst smelling job of all-time

I use to work in aviation, and being the new guy I had to basically hook the hose up to the back of the plane clean shit out of it.

That doesn't even count as the worst job, I answered in a newspaper when I was around 14-15, couldn't drive so I had a ride drop me off, The job was selling newspaper subscriptions, I thought it would be telemarketing it turned out to be door to door. So they would take you in a van and drop you off at a neighborhood, I was alright with that until they drop me and another guy off in the middle of these ghetto apartments to sell, so here we are 7:30 at night pitch dark trying to sell newspaper subscriptions hoping to not get robbed, I sold none my trainer sold 1, you only got 3 dollars per sale. They come back and pick us up around 9:30, and drop by a gas station to get gas, one of the kids inside the van leans on this arm rest, the thing falls off, out pops a baggy with a bunch of coke in it, everyone else is like stick that stuff back in there quick and try putting that arm rest on, he gets it back on before the superviser driving the van comes back in. Earlier before I was drop off for my run the two supervisers in the van where talking about 8-balls and crap like that so I knew who's coke that was. They drove around like idiots for like a half hour and When we get back to the building it's like 10:30 my ride wasn't there, I said to pick me up at 9:30 that's when they told us we'd get off, So finally get ahold of someone from a pay phone to pick me up from home. After that the next day I call the place up say hey this job isn't for me, I'm being nice about it not rude and the Idiot says back at me hey fine then says "you know what your going to be doing the rest of your life, your going be kicking a can on the side of the road because you don't want to work a hard job like this" my reply to this is, listen wigger (idiots thought he was black) if you say one more thing to me I'm going to call the cops on you for all that coke in that van you have!!!

After I hung up the phone, I thought are these idiots going to try to start something with me, me being 14-15 at the time them being in their early 20's I worried about it for about a week and that's it. I found out later that they where subcontracted out from the newspaper company and later their contract was canceled, probably because of being druggies. Even later on I was over at a friends house and MTV was on with some special about gangs in the heartland, they had some story about some white guys Wiggers" who thought they where a gangstas in Iowa, two of those guys shown where those two idiots I worked with.