What's the most menial job you've ever had?

[begin_within]

In high school I took Work Experience and started working for a beekeeper. But all I did for 2 months was nail together pieces of wood to make bee boxes. Rarely even saw the guy and learned absolutely nothing about beekeeping. At the end of the term on the questionnaire when they asked what part of me gained the most from the job, I wrote my left arm. For least, I wrote my right arm. So what was your stupidest or most menial job?

[AsahinaKimi]

1. dishwasher in a restaurant ..

I hated those white coffee cups with the red Lipstick all over them!!

[denbot]

2. That would be a toss up between comercial fisherman, and ditch digger.

Fishing was cooler..

[kayakjohnny]

3. Oh there's been a few.

Shoveled horse crap from the stalls and replaced with sawdust - Early 60's.

Loaded the clay pigeons onto the machines where trap and skeet guys shot at them. Also kept score. And 'pulled'. Early 70's

Assembled the 'food' onto the plates for airlines, back when it was considered good food. It really wasn't good at all. Mid 70's.

Bagged groceries, but only for a week. Early 70's.

Washed rental cars and picked customers up from the airport. Mid 70's

Bellman(boy) at exclusive resort full of celebs.
Mid 70's.

Did landscaping and maintenance late 70's.

Hardware store early 80's.

Drove a truck early 80's.

Landscaping again in early to mid 90's.

And now finally, self employed and loving life.

Whew!

[Rabrrrrrr]

4. A few years ago, my valet was sick with much of the house staff, and I dressed myself!

It was a most awful day - me, stuck doing such menial labor - but I got through it.

Daddy taught to me to persevere through any hardship.

In fact, that day taught me something about taking care of myself, and so now, during most meals I wipe my mouth myself with the napkin. Of course, not when we have company.

[Recovered Repug]

21. I tied my own shoes once.

It was an overrated experience.

[GoCubsGo]

5. Ice cream scooper...

My first job was at a Baskin-Robbins. (Just like our President, so I understand. We were probably doing it at the same time in different places, as I'm the same age.) I learned that John Q. Public is an asshole and an idiot.

I am sorry you didn't learn much with the beekeeper job. That would be a great skill to have.

[begin_within]

8. I also worked at a Baskin-Robbins for a while,

and the job was fun but the boss was horrible. He was an ex-New Yorker and extremely stingy. He paid some people $1 per hour (at the time the minimum wage was $2.25). He claimed he wasn't involved in interstate commerce so the minimum wage laws didn't apply to him. He was always trying to get us to make smaller scoops and maximize his profit any way possible. I saw him literally shed tears once because some poor girl forgot to charge the extra 10¢ per scoop for French Vanilla. (At the time one scoop of most flavors was 27¢, French Vanilla 37¢.) He literally shed tears as he was yelling at her about it. He was absolutely the worst boss I have ever had. The fun thing about the job was the people who came in the store. Paul Westphal was still playing on the Phoenix Suns at that time and came in every single morning for 2 scoops. He could afford the calories because he was giant and a professional athlete so I'm sure he burned them off before noon.

[rcrush]

30. I know this girl who works at Ben and Jerrys

She spends most of the day inhaling the gas from the whip cream spray cans.

[GoCubsGo]

42. We used to do that at Baskin-Robbins

It made closing up shop every night tolerable. ;-)


Boy, that was a long, long time ago...

[GoCubsGo]

43. They seem to attract owners like that...

My boss was a tight wad too. Not as bad as yours, but she didn't pay minimum wage, either. Her excuse was that we were part time, and the law didn't require part time workers under 18 to get minimum wage. And, I didn't even get any cool people coming in...

[janx]

6. A pizza-maker and dishwasher.

A Loooong time ago. It wasn't a stupid job, but it was one of my first jobs.

The beekeeper experience probably taught you something, whether you know it or not.

[NMDemDist2]

7. good grief, i haven't heard a bad job in there yet

housekeeper/custodial in a large public facility

i tell ya, it's a tossup which restrooms get nastier, but i'm going with mens.

[denbot]

17. Ooo repressed memory surfaced..

My very first adult job was has a night porter for the Bright Angel Lodge on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. It was a cool job due to the location. It paid $1.17 an hour plus room and board, and all the joy of cleaning toilets that roughly thousands of people used..
Yikes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[LeftyMom]

9. I had to clean the bathrooms at a toy store.

I was a cashier, and cleaning up the toilets was one of our end of the night duties. Which wouldn't be that bad, but of course every half-potty trained kid in a 30 mile radius had pissed on our floor over the course of the day.

And then there was the night we found an unflushed duece which, judging by it's dimensions, was dropped by the Goatse guy. :scared:

[CatholicEdHead]

10. Walmart Remodel

Treated lower than low.

[hunter]

11. Attaching kitchenware to cardboard labels.

The kind of inexpensive kitchenware you see hanging in stores. Take a box of unlabled kitchenware fresh from some country like China, a box of labels, and a box of wire twisties, then go... insane. Well it wasn't that bad maybe because you could talk, and some of the people were fun to talk to even though they were nuts. Sometimes we'd take the labels off one store's returns and attach the label of another store.

Then I had this other job, the first job I ever quit, poking this incredibly noisy automated sorting machine with a broomstick. It was as big as two city busses parked end-to-end. If you weren't paying attention and you didn't unjam it in time it would barf all the product out onto the floor and you'd have to scoop the spilled product up and put it in a cart all the while watching that the machine wasn't getting jammed and barfing up product on the floor somewhere else. Sometimes you actually had to run to catch a jam.

I started on Monday and on Thursday I asked another employee when they were going to fix the machine. "Never," she said. "It's cheaper to hire people like you."

Most of the jobs in the place were like that and everyone was bitter and cynical and hated working there. At lunch and on breaks all anyone did was smoke silently staring into space or complain about life. Next Monday morning I called them up and said I wasn't coming back. Whoever I talked to was so pissed off and telling me what an irresponsible scumbag I was that I had to hang up on her.

[Odin2005]

12. School janitor assistant.

It was during the summer break before my Sophomore year. SUCKED!!!

[baldguy]

13. Gotta be janitor at Bennigan's

College hangout in Boulder. (They would pick a chain, donchaknow?) Not too bad during the week, but Saturday, Sunday & Monday morning half the time was spent cleaning the vomit & feces off the bathroom walls. And no, it wasn't limited to the men's room.

[wickerwoman]

14. That's a tough one.

The most degrading was probably pig farming. I actually worked on the sheep farm but since I always finished in six hours, a lot of time I had to help on the pig farm for the last two. That seriously, seriously sucked. Sheep and goats are actually pretty neat. Pigs smell horrible and bite your legs while you try to muck out their pens.

The most mind-numbing was assembling ski poles. You put the handle on one side, the spike on the other, the pole in the middle, press a button, the machine pushes them all together. Repeat, ad infinitum.

But the job I hated the most was refereeing youth soccer.

[flvegan]

15. I wouldn't call any job I've had stupid or menial. I got an honest wage

for honest work. I had two paper routes when I was 10. Biking (and walking when the snow was falling) 3 miles (half of it uphill) every single day for 5 years was pretty rough. But we were pretty poor and anything I could bring home to help out was great. I also think that helped build a really good work ethic that I still have today.

I've also done gigs as a dishwasher/pizza cook at a pub (16 and handling kegs...oh yeah), and helping shape the dirt track at monster truck shows, and as the maintenance guy at a private health insurance office.

[mitchum]

16. Pretended to work in a machine shop for 4 hours so that the visiting Korean investors...

would think that it was a busy shop and buy it. They did.
Then I returned to my (somebody else's) trust fund-financed life of hedonism and indolence.

[rcrush]

31. Gung Ho?

[justabob]

18. throwing the paper

I had two routes throwing the Dallas Morning News about 15 years ago. I didn't make enough money doing it to pay for the suspension damage to my car. That job didn't last very long.

[femmocrat]

19. Movie concession stand. Mind-numbing.

I could hear the same movie playing over and over and over......

[greendog]

20. Shoveling gravel for some old coot's septic drain field.

I was taking day labor jobs through Boulder County's Casual Labor program.

In the morning you'd report to a beat up trailer on a vacant lot a couple blocks east of downtown and take a number. As the jobs came in they'd poke their head out the door and call out the numbers.

An old guy wearing a cowboy hat drove up in a Chevy Suburban and needed a few guys to help him out for a couple days. It paid 5 bucks an hour.

Made enough to pay a month's rent on my cheap place and had grocery and beer money for the rest of the week. :)

[Lucian]

22. Janitorial assistant at my local high school.

It was also my first job. It only lasted the summer.

[Taitertots]

23. Prototype vehicle test driver

Sounds a lot funner than it was.

8 hours a day on the road driving the exact same path. Unable to talk to anyone for almost all shift. Unable to do ANYTHING but drive for almost all shift.

[UrbScotty]

24. Dishes.

[Kutjara]

25. Rat masturbator.

For a university research project. My title was "lab assistant," but the job amounted to wanking rodents and collecting the result.

[Inchworm]

26. classic

glad I stopped by!

:rofl:

[Kutjara]

28. Yeah. On the bright side,...

...when you start your working life giving handjobs to rats, there's nowhere to go but up.

[Inchworm]

29. So true

:rofl::rofl:

Thanks for the smile.. hec.. for the outburst of laughter ;)

:hi:

[begin_within]

27. The only thing that can compete with that was

a friend I used to work with told me the job she had previously was working in a funeral home, washing the dead bodies.

[phasma ex machina]

32. Busboy. nt

[enigmatic]

33. cleaning viewing booths in an Adult Bookstore in New Orleans in the late 1980's

That was not fun.

[Kutjara]

37. That's it. You win.

No contest.

[rivercat]

34. cleaning bathrooms

at a discount grocery warehouse store.

[XemaSab]

35. So far, working for the census

We're taking apart old applicant folders, and making new folders.

The idea is that the old folders look messy.

The kicker is that after we reconstitute the folders, they are easily far more ratty than the old folders ever were.

[bluesbassman]

36. Supply line elevator cleaner at a tomato cannery.

Tomato trucks pull up to a sluice where the tomatoes get floated into. Sluice carried them to an elevator where they are lifted to another sluice system that carries them to various stations of the cannery. I had to keep it clean with a high pressure hose. You have no idea what ends up there. :scared: Let's just leave it at I didn't eat catsup for a loooong time after that gig.

[Brother Buzz]

38. Union pearl diver in a hospital kitchen

I was attending college and worked weekends. Same thing every day. I got paid for eight hours, but after a grand study of science, mechanics, and the menu, I was able do the job smartly in four hours. Let the water do the work was my secret, that, and the steam jet that brought my water to a rolling boil. I'd go out and have a meal while the water did my work.

Chefs knew how I operated and were happy they had everything they needed when they needed it - clean and sanitized. I was able to eat three meals during during the shift plus a bag lunch to go, a significant perk for a starving college student.

Definitely the most menial job I ever had, but I actually enjoyed it for the challenge of trying to do it faster and more efficient. Discovering the oatmeal pot cleaned in a snap with cold water was a revelation.

[rcrush]

39. One time I was the overnight janitor at a Target and Jennifer Connelly was there

We had some kind of weird adventure in the target in the middle of the night.

[laundry_queen]

40. Housekeeping at a hotel.

Make beds. Vacuum. Clean Bathroom. Times 40.

Paid well at the time though, compared to other jobs I had had.

[rucky]

41. Caregiver at a group home.

This one was particularly challenging, between the woman with PICA, the guy we'd have to sit on the toilet every two hours (or else), and scrubbing butts in the wheelchair shower. And the chronic mastrubator.