On this Labor Day...What's the worst job you ever had?

[senseandsensibility]

I once worked in a basement dishwashing room loading dishes. It was a giant dishwasher, the size of a house. After a few hours in a hundred plus temps with a hundred percent humidity, I was begging to go back to work at the mall.

What about you?

[YOY]

1. Knee deep in human shit.

...and condoms, used tampons, vomit, piss, Andy Dufresne (I kid), and anything else flushed down the can. Never found any money or bags of drugs. You really don't wanna look too hard. Working in my county's water purification plant...but I've been there.

Great job for a 18-year-old. You get to officially call anyone working for daddy at 18 a wussy.

Gin.

I win the worst job ever.

[Ikonoklast]

62. Wow! You worked at the Republican National Headquarters?

Oh, wait, I see it was at the water purification plant. Way more pleasant surroundings.

[YOY]

82. One would make you vomit...the other would make you vomit.

I can see the comparison. I do think the stink of the higher echelons of republicans lasts longer than any bodily fluid ever will.

[Edweird]

64. Yeah you win for sure. But I get second. I cleaned porta-potties on construction sites.

I only did it for a week. I needed the money, but not THAT bad.

[Art_from_Ark]

92. I think you're actually talking about a sewage treatment plant

A water purification plant treats tap water.

[YOY]

96. County had both of them.

Both smelled septic if memory served but only one had the shit tanks Only went brown trout fishing once or twice but it was enough.

[abumbyanyothername]

2. I used to run blood and paunch dryers

at a beef plant.

(Paunch is the incompletely digested plant materials in the cattles' stomachs and we would dry it out and press it into pellets and sell it to livestock operations who used it as feed.)

[Art_from_Ark]

93. Oh, yuck

Remind me never to eat American beef again.

[CurtEastPoint]

3. Easy. My FIRST paid job. I was a ... dishwasher and busboy at

IHOP. The best thing was back then the orange juice was fresh squeezed. But omigod how I grew to hate dirty dishes, hot water and pancakes (only temporarily, though!) I made ONE DOLLAR an hour! This was about 1965.

[abumbyanyothername]

10. I made one dollar an hour

at my first job in 1970.

But in fairness, I met my first wife there to whom I only paid about $125,000 in child support over the years.

[barbtries]

35. this is off topic

but did you ever consider that it was money not TO your ex, but FOR your child/ren?

[jmm]

51. +1

:thumbsup:

[Maureen54]

4. some days it's my present job

This is also the best job I've ever had. The bad always have to do with upper management and at time other co-workers.The good is the people we work for; it is a social service job and I believe in the program

[madrchsod]

5. making fiberglass snowmobile bodies

i was almost burned alive in the heating oven....add in the torn bags of asbestos,the stench,and my fellow workers. i lasted about three months

[Taitertots]

41. Fiberglass work can be some nasty stuff

I worked for two weeks making race cars parts out of fiberglass, kevlar, and carbon fiber.

Everyday my nose would bleed, and by the end green stuff came out. The chemicals we used were exothermic when mixed, to the point where if we didn't use them they would heat up, start on fire and release toxic gas. They said don't try to put the fire out if it started, just run and yell for everyone else to run.

I found out I got the job because the person I replaced had got the stuff we used on his arm and got chemical burns from elbow to hand. His arm looked sick.

[tularetom]

6. Buildling logging roads in the Shasta National Forest

Hundred degree temos, dusty as hell one week.

Below freezing and snow the next week.

Got bit by a rattlesnake too.

[ThomWV]

7. Scraping barnicles off the bottoms of boats in Miami one summer

You'd be amazed how many flies you can breath in by accident while doing that job.

[BlooInBloo]

8. A friend and I thought it would be sooooo easy to pick blueberries for a few hours...

to get the $ needed for going to play video games at the pizza place, one fine summer day.

We were wrong. Lord, how we were wrong. We quit after about 30 minutes or so.

:rofl:

[WeDidIt]

9. Cowboy

Fucking sucks.

[Elwood P Dowd]

11. US Army draftee

for 2 years.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

100. The worst part about that "job" is you can't tell the boss to shove it and quit.

Even worse for me, I joined the marine crotch for 4 long, completely useless, years.

[givemebackmycountry]

12. Two of them...

I worked for a heating oil and gas company in upstate New York delivering bottled gas and doing odd jobs.
The company would often buy used underground gas tanks (the size of a semi trailer) and before they re-sold them, I had to climb inside with a wire brush, a garden hose and a trouble light, and scrape the rust off the interior walls.
If the foreman didn't hear any scraping, he knew we were goofing off inside so he would take a sledge hammer and bang on the outside three or four times.

Ever been INSIDE a bell?
I was like 18 or 19.

I also had a job at a lead plant, and they would strap a giant vacuum on my back, and I had to climb up on equipment and suck up lead dust.
Lasted two months.

[PassingFair]

13. Mine isn't smelly or physically demanding, but it is the worst job I've ever had.

Sales. In Michigan.

With a management "team" who is
unrealistic.

The cognitive dissonance is
KILLING ME.

The money is good, but they keep
pushing for MORE, MORE, MORE.

[Thothmes]

14. debeaking turkeys for a local turkey farmer.

[Vickers]

15. Convenience store clerk.

That, or croppin' 'backer in south Georgia in the middle of summer.

[sarge43]

16. Worst: Keeping the semi-annual officer promotion list until the release date.

I was the only person on base who knew which captains were promoted to major, ie the make or break promotion. For about two weeks twice a year, I fully expected to kidnapped and tortured by insane non-rated types who were terrified they might have to go out and find a real job. At least once every duty day I get a phone call offering me bribes ranging from a bottle of booze to sexual encounters with family members and/or pets of my choice. I'd also have calls from an obvious member of the IG or OSI or my boss's boss checking to see if I would take a bribe.

Second worst job: Cleaning monkey cages.

Good times

[Bozita]

17. Galvanizing freeway guard rails

They weighed 95 lb. when I had to hang them on hooks 7 ft. above the floor.

They were 110 lb. when taking them down.

Fumes from the de-greasers and acid baths filled the air. Heat from the molten tank of zinc kept the indoor temperatures well above 100 degrees F.

Every worker there except my buddy and I were ex-cons. They worked cheap and didn't bitch. To this day, I believe the owner had worked something out with someone in the Corrections Dept.

I quit after 5 days.

[niceypoo]

76. Standing on the sidewalk in a refrigerator box with arm, leg, and face holes cut out of it...

waving at cars in front of an appliance store. 40 hours a week, all Summer long. People threw half full fountain drinks at me. Little kids flipped me off out the back window of their mom's car. Cars full of pretty girls drove by honking, pointing, and laughing at me. Cars full of jocks drove by calling me names, and threatening to kick my ass. Every sort of abuse and humiliation you can imagine, all day long, five days a week.

When it was 85 outside, it was 100 in the box. When it was 95 outside, it was 115 in the box.

I was 17, I really needed the money that summer, so I stuck it out.

[democrat2thecore]

18. Working at a department store

I worked in Men's clothing for Dillard's many years ago. Several of us worked to join the old Department Store Union out of New York (we were in Texas) and we fought like HELL (1984) - eventually getting fired. LRB ruled in our favor, but we declined to accept our jobs back. I hated that job for the long hours, lousy working conditions, lack of breaks, 30 minute lunches, and a management team in Little Rock that was so rightwing is was sickening.

[Faygo Kid]

19. Vice president for tourism in paradise. Seriously.

My favorite place in the world, and I ended up working for a total psychotic. I had never worked for a psychotic, and I began my professional career in 1976. My bosses were uniformly good people; I never knew somebody like that existed. I had been lucky up until that time. I lasted 10 months, which I found out was longer than any of the previous four people in the position. She ended up fired after her mentor on the volunteer board retired and moved to Florida. They couldn't get her out of there fast enough, even though she had been there more than a decade. I hope to retire there next decade, and hope I never run into her again.

[eShirl]

20. taking the filled natural casing from the end of a hot dog machine & twisting to form the individual

hot dogs, then hanging the long strands of hot dogs on steel racks to be wheeled into the smoking/cooking chambers

the giant vats of raw meat they poured into the other end looked like catfood that the cat wasn't able to keep down

my boots, clothes and hair would still smell like hot dogs when I got home

but the perks! all the FREE mangled hot dogs and bologna we could eat for lunch (bleccchhh)

[blogslut]

21. Telemarketer

I was good at it yet I walked out in the middle of a call. I could have closed the deal with the lady on the other end of the phone (she was that easy a sell) but I didn't. Even after she told me money was tight because she was going through chemotherapy, I could have sold her that damned subscription to Sports Illustrated. That's how good a salesman I was. That was the line for me and I decided not to cross it.

[stuball111]

25. Good for you!

[Fire1]

30. You sir or madame are a decent human being. n/t

[drmeow]

43. My worst job was the same

telemarketer. Selling those entertainment books back in the early 80s. It was Jan and we were in a temporary building with no heat. Even though it was Santa Barbara, it was damn cold in there. I think I lasted 2 days. I'm not sure I even collected my paycheck.

[dccrossman]

70. Telemarketer here too

I lasted 3 hours.

Ugh.

[Dulcinea]

102. It amazes me that telemarketers sell anything.

I have Caller ID, & I love it! If I see a number I don't recognize, I don't even answer the phone. I refuse to be bothered by someone trying to sell me something I don't want or need.

I was a telemarketer, too, in the '80s for a couple of summers in college. I lasted through the summers, but that was as much as I could stand.

[Canuckistanian]

78. You, ma'am, are a MENSCH

And there are few Mensches left in this world.

[corpseratemedia]

22. can't match any of these! but for me

secretary at a liquid polyuethane manufacturing company. Lasted two days.:puke: :puke: :puke: :puke:

hmmm, smells like seizure!

[stuball111]

23. Every Non-Union job I ever had!

Those were all shitty jobs. Having to deal with assholes in supervision that used to threaten my job daily.Now, If anyone tries that now, I just tell em, go ahead, but you better have a good reason, and you can inform my job steward first.

[senseandsensibility]

27. Good point.

Are any of the jobs on this thread union? Hmmm...makes you think, doesn't it?

[stuball111]

32. Most of the stuff I read...

was mainly the reasons why unions were formed in the first place. Ever watch that TV reality show "Black Gold"? All rat-scabby non-union Texas good ol boys working the rigs! Makes me wanna laugh or puke the way they put that shit out there on TV and expect people to think it's cool! I worked the oil patch for years and saw a lot of that, no safety, people hassling each other for laughs, and no regard for another persons job or the well being of their families. If they didn't like you, you were screwed, and they made your life hell.For once I'd like to see a reality show about UNION people working, but that would be boring. Everyone would be working safe, building high quality products, at half the cost, on time, on budget, and working as a unit, as brothers and sisters, and little or no drama.

[KittyWampus]

24. Toss Up. Riveting plastic jewelry parts together by burning skinny plastic bits with a lighter

and that was in the artist's basement with no ventilation.

Other job, mucking horse stalls. It nearly killed me.

[struggle4progress]

58. I think cleaning horse stalls is very pleasant work, compared to shoveling out chicken coops

[ZombieHorde]

26. The ninja job I had seemed awesome at first,

but after sitting in the same cramped spot for seven hours, waiting for the evil merchant to come by, I started to feel differently.

Giant Robot would have been a much better job without the horrible coworkers. Coworkers can make or brake a job.

I quit my Dark Wizard job the moment I saw how many stairs my tower had. The robes and hat were nice, but not that nice.

My current job, pack of zombies wondering the wastes, is pretty chill. We spend most of the work day going through people's belongings and trying on their clothes. As long as we kill and eat one or two families per day we're golden.

[Speck Tater]

28. Pizza delivery driver in 1963. I backed the pizza truck into the boss's new Cadillac. nt

[barbtries]

38. can you laugh about it yet?

cause i just had to...

[Speck Tater]

47. It only took me a couple of weeks to be able to laugh about it. The boss was an a**hole. nt

[Morning Dew]

29. I worked in a foundry for one day.

Hotter than hell. I sat on a low stool and knocked off pieces of metal with a hammer.

I would have quit at lunch but I rode there with someone and it was 50 miles from home.

[bhcodem]

31. Token Democrat

I was the only democrat at a real estate/development company. Sure wish there was a way to prove my political views were the reason I was fired after 6 years of nothing but compliments from "outsiders" I talked to on the phone or in the ofice! Didn't miss the job, although I didn't mind the actual work and the pay was the best I ever received.

[barbtries]

33. when i was 17

i worked the graveyard shift in a plastics factory. it lasted 3 weeks. unbearable, loud, burning fingers, holes in my gloves, and in spite of all that, falling asleep on the job.

[Fire1]

34. Off to the greatest!!

Toss up between case worker in Findlay, Ohio and Secretary for Day Care Center. Day Care lasted all of ONE day!! The owner was a bitch and when I found out I'd be handling her money I was gone. Case work lasted two weeks. Good thing we were moving back to Michigan right about then cause I could never find the addresses of the homes I was supposed to visit! I spent one whole day driving up and down this loooooong dusty dirt road with corn fields on both sides. I finally said, "fuck this!"

[jasmeel]

36. taking pics of criminal records in dirty laundry room of Las Vegas

jail. I had to walk through the jail population to do it. I got paid by per pic taken.

[Rob H.]

37. My current job

I like the people I work with, but the two people to whom I report have to be two of the dumbest, most disorganized people on the face of the planet. (And yes, I'm looking for something else.)

[Fire1]

39. Hope you find something soon. Working for idiots is the

worst.

[Rob H.]

103. Thanks for the good wishes!

I'm hopeful that soon the two of them will be someone else's problem. :)

[Mrs. Overall]

40. Motel maid in a rural town where some asshole skinned and gutted a deer in the shower--

absolutely horrifying to walk in and see blood and gore everywhere.

Plus, people leave behind very strange and disgusting things in motel beds...

[corpseratemedia]

55. oh yeah, memories..not at bad as yours but I was also a maid at a historic honeymoon-type inn

needless to say, cleaning the jacuzzi bathtubs was sometimes an absolutely gross experience and I'm sure a health hazard

[Synicus Maximus]

42. it's a toss up.

One was working as a marker at a rifle range. It wasn't hard just real hot and when someone shot low and hit the top of the bunker we were in your ears would ring for a hour.
The other was working on a road crew for the Texas Highway Department one summer.

[Donnachaidh]

44. sardine packer at a fish factory

We did other fish (cleaning etc) but the smell took months to get out of my nose. And the stupid boys sending skinned eels down the line thought they were soooooo funny..

[proud patriot]

45. Cashier at Marshals "price check please"

:grr:

[Kip Humphrey]

46. Selling encyclopedias door-to-door.

[Fearless]

48. I'll second the OP.

[Hansel]

49. Working in elementary school cafeteria

Disgusting. Keep in mine that there were periods of time between jobs that I cleaned toilets and filthy greasy spoon kitchens. Those jobs were like strolling through a summer field of flowers in comparison.

It's amazing what the little tykes creative minds can do with food. Gross!

[Taitertots]

50. The job itself was fine, just one project we had sucked

I got into residential remodeling. We did a few fairly nice places. Then we got the house from hell.

It was a crack house in Inkster. The water had been turned off and the toilet, bath tub, and basement were filled with human feces. We had to rent a dumpster and clean all the floors with shovels because there was so much trash. There must be a bunch of crack heads with one shoe and no underwear considering how many shoes without a match and crusty underpants there were. McDonald's must be being kept in business by crack heads, bags from there were the only food related item I could find.

Everyday we left we had to repack all our gear, materials, and board up every window and door. When we had lunch someone had to wait at the house to make sure no one stole our tools. Within a year the house was broken into and turned back into a crack house.

[Gregorian]

52. I loved roofing houses by myself.

I carried buckets of hot tar up ladders, tore roofs off, put them back on, by my self.

But working the graveyard shift as an EKG technician, and being woken up in the middle of the night to run down to the emergency room was the worst thing I've ever had to do.

[pipi_k]

53. Worked in the office of a sweat shop

this place made children's clothing. A couple of famous makers labels...anyway, I worked in the office.

The place was depressing.

The office was on the first floor, the sewing people on the second floor, and more office people on the third floor of this really really old factory building. I normally like the old factory buildings...history and all that, but this place was the pits. So anyway we heard the sewing machines all day long buzz buzz buzz buzz. The people in the office hated their jobs and hated each other. Hardly anybody smiled. We had to fill out request forms in duplicate for office supplies...even a damned bottle of white-out. The place was surrounded by an iron fence. One day during lunch one of the doors off the office area was open and I sat on the steps enjoying the summer air. Next day and every day thereafter the door was closed. Maybe they thought I would steal a pencil and leap over the 8 foot iron fence or something.

My supervisor was great. About the only good thing there.

But she was leaving a couple of months or so after I got there, and who was going to take her place but the nasty red-haired witch who supervised the computer room. She hated me and I hated her right back. I forget exactly what happened, but I think she had said something snotty to me in front of other people. I don't like that. Say what you want to me, but do NOT embarrass me in front of others. Anyway, I believe I told her off or something...

So each day at 5 PM the sewing ladies would line up at the front door to have their bags searched just in case any of them decided they wanted to steal a spool of thread or something.

I fucking hated the place. I don't think I was there more than three or four months before I quit.


Found myself a job in Human Services that turned out to be one of the best jobs I ever had.

[Moondog]

54. A summer job while I was in college.

I was unable to get into a course in abnormal psychology as an undergrad because I was not a psychology major. Hell, I wasn't even in the school of arts and sciences.

I lived, and went to school, in a major metropolitan area. So I took a job as an orderly in the local county hospital psychiatric facility - eight floors full of seriously ill people. I was in very good shape and was, I believe, what was popularly characterized at the time as "a bruiser", so they assigned me to the maximum security, and the experimental treatment (where they ran double blind experiments on seriously ill people, where some patients were given placebos, and some were not, but neither they nor the staff knew who was getting what) wards. In other words, I was a big and beefy guy in white who was there to physically subdue sick people when they "went off" so that the RNs could inject them with some seriously potent pharmaceuticals.

It was both a horror and an education. Among other things I learned, quickly, to discern on a gut level who I could turn my back on, and who I could not. This was a skill set that served me well for many years thereafter. Additionally, I developed a lifelong suspicion of physicians. Which was solidified later in life as the result of several romantic relationships I had with some female physicians. All were mistakes. And finally, I also formed a deep and abiding respect for RNs. What a wonderful, truly skilled, and yet seriously unappreciated group of really hard-working people they are.

Anyway at the end of the summer, I resigned, returned to school, and received my degree about nine months later. I started my graduate program the following fall.

[Cleita]

56. Long distance operator for MaBell. It was also the

best paying job for what I did, but the company treated us like shit. The union made sure we were well paid for being treated like shit though.

[IDemo]

87. Did that also, back in the Seventies-Eighties

I was a "cord board" (Long Distance) operator for three years, after being a directory assistance operator for two years. They used microfiche readers in a darkened room to prevent glare on the screens. Became a CWA Union member on my first coffee break!

[struggle4progress]

57. Close to a toss-up but plopping down "city titties" was really dreadful

I didn't like making big rubber pipe gaskets: you constantly smelled the solvent needed to join the rubber ends, you constantly backed away from the hot rubber smoke, and you had to think every minute, so you didn't tromp the foot pedal while your fingers were still between the hot steel jaws that were going to melt the rubber ends together

I would retch cleaning ranch cesspools and the chowhouse grease trap, and I spent most of one day knee-deep in a sewage flooded dormitory basement, trying to pour enough caustic soda in the vicinity of the floor drain to dissolve the hairplug or whatever it was -- and I hated slaughtering cows -- but those were rare bad days

Spudding gravel roofs under the hot Texas sun on 110 degree days wasn't much fun either, but the day started at 5 AM and by 2 PM, you were off for a shower and a cool beer

Life at the lead smelter really sucked, but I decided not to make my life any worse by sucking up, so they fired me promptly and everybody was soon happy again

But plopping down "city titties" was dreadful. These are the bumpy reflectors epoxied to the highway as lane markers. It was roadwork. There would be some orange cones out and an alleged 25 mph speed limit in the next lane, but the cars would zip past at 50. Grab a reflector, get the back of it covered with a big sticky gob of nasty grey glue -- then bend down and squish the reflector onto the roadway at the next marked spot, while your head was at bumper level to the cars zipping by a few feet away. The glue never came back off anything you got it on -- skin, hair, clothing -- so it was gloves and long sleeves to keep off the glue off, and it was hot, ugly highway noise and oil and gas fumes all day long. Nobody enjoyed it, and nobody was pleasant

[alarimer]

59. All of them.

I hate the very idea of work. It really cuts into my free time.

I only work grudgingly and only do enough to ensure that I not get fired. I feel like I am only doing time until I retire or die or win the lottery.

[drmeow]

83. I just started a new job

last week (after 2 months unemployment - I'm one of the lucky ones) and you have just echoed my sentiments of the past week - all I keep thinking is, "Man, I've been enjoying the free time!"

[alarimer]

88. It was (sorta) tongue in cheek.

But I do think work is overrated. It's something I do to put a roof over my head. I realized that my employers do not and will not appreciate all the things I can actually do. They will not use me to my full potential. I spent the last 7 years getting my masters but they have not (and probably will not) promoted me. Therefore I am not going out of my way to help them, beyond what needs to be done. No above and beyond here.

[windoe]

60. Night shift in a small town in FL

doing my job of xraying emergencies, special procedures and OR, along with all the paperwork left from 2nd shift, and all the desk work not done by the day supervisor who was in bed with the director. The doctors were all psychotic and abusive or they were hitting on me. I can't believe I lasted 8 months there, but it was near the beach.
Yes, if they were union I would have had a clear job description at least. This was a clear example of a private hospital with absolutely no oversight. It was a bad cartoon.

[KoKo]

61. Scooping "M&M's" into bags as a teenager back in the late 60's

for 50Cents an hour. And I loved it..because it was a "holiday job" ...my first job as a teen...and it was during Easter...

The people were nice...I couldn't count the scale and so folks got mostly "more M&M's than Less."
But it counted towards my SS Payment that I will get when I have to take it in a few years...

[Usrename]

63. I was a dishwasher for years as a kid, with and without machines.

But the worst was a toss up between roofing in central Florida in August (hot mopped tar and rocks), and working at a cannery making frozen brussel sprouts. Gagg me with a tiny cabbage.

[DatManFromNawlins]

65. Getting less than minimum wage to clean toilets and the grounds...

... of a country club I could never afford to be a member of.... I was like 12 or 13...


... of course, since they were fine with screwing me, I swam laps for the first hour of work (I had to be there before the morning swim classes) and cleaned everything up really quickly in the second hour.

[jmowreader]

66. Target loader at a trap range

You've heard of a clay pigeon, right? It's this little clay disc that gets thrown into the air so people can shoot at it. The target loader sits in a box made of quarter-inch-thick steel plate, and puts the clay pigeons on the throwing arm of the clay pigeon machine. You have to be very careful to kinda palm the pigeons so, if the shooter yells "pull" before you get your hands off the pigeon, your hands don't go downrange along with the pigeons. We made a dollar per round of trap, and you could easily load four rounds an hour if there were lots of shooters. I made decent money for a 14-year-old kid--and they fed you and everything. The working conditions were seriously not that bad.

What WAS bad, though, was people were shooting shotguns over your box. And, every once in a while, one of the shooters would get really pissed and shoot AT the box. There was no possibility of injury because lead shot won't penetrate that steel, but it's really fucking loud when someone does it.

"What was your first job?"
'Letting people shoot at me.'

[nadinbrzezinski]

67. Working in a kitchen coop

trust me, them are nasty... and fowled moothed

Oh the roosters... they can be shall we say annoying

And the smell...

Oh boy, the smell.

[druidity33]

68. roofing

hot tar on a 100 degree day did me in. Suffered heat exhaustion and hallucination. Would've been great but the vomiting interfered. I lasted 10 days at that job. 20 bucks an hour in 1990 wasn't too bad though, for "unskilled" labor. Of course, i could've died...

:shrug:

[G_j]

69. in the days when nobody wore masks or respirators

Various posts have described toxic working conditions: fumes, etc. dust. Masks and respirators used to be very rare on the job.
I know I've breathed in a lot scary stuff in my day at various jobs.

In the good old days, before government infringed on our freedom with safety standards.
:sarcasm:

[Still Sensible]

71. Landscaping, in Phoenix, in the summer...

and I have hated yardwork ever since.

[otohara]

72. Picking Buds Off of Carnations

rows and rows and rows of carnations.

I made up a word game to make the time pass faster - everyone loved it, except the mean boss lady. I quit after day 2.

[IDemo]

73. Door-to-door insurance sales in rural Idaho

Straight commission. :puke:

[Canuckistanian]

74. Replacing a 70-year old tin roof

Above a working brick factory.

In August.

Working for my father.

'Nuff said.

[Javaman]

75. As a dishwasher...

but I worked an 8 hour day, had minimum wage and got over time after 8.

It was a miserable job, BUT I had the things above because of unions.

It was a part time for me when I was 16, but just as little as 50 year before, kids half my age were doing that same type of miserable job, at twice the hours 7 days a week.

So, looking back, my job, my first job as a dishwasher, really wasn't all that bad.

[SalmonChantedEvening]

77. Third shift at a 7-11 in 1978

I hated the hours, the pay, and that after being awake all night, I had the AM coffee rush.

I lasted 8 weeks. The walk-in sales I do now are the first retail I've done since then.

[Tutankhamun]

79. When I worked at a PR agency...

It was my first job out of college. The girl who hired me was absolutely psychotic when she realized I wouldn't date her. SHe was very obsessed and extremely angry and vicious. I used to catch her hiding my files, telling the boss I had done horrible things I'd never done, trying desperately to destroy me in any way possible.

Then she got her friend hired there, and her friend was like a carbon copy. She put her hand on my crotch one night after work and asked me to "teach her what I know...any time...any time". This wouldn't have been a problem, but she was super ugly. Like Halloween ugly. Both of them were hideous to look at and horrible human beings as well.

The first girl's father was a lobbyist for Focus on the Family. Like father like daughter.

The two basically tag teamed me with their resentment.

Meanwhile, the boss lady wanted me to date one of our clients. She kept trying to set me up on dates with one of our clients. When she finally realized it wasn't going to happen she came into my office and yelled at me for not bein commited to the company, blah blah blah. She fired me soon after.

You may wonder why I didn't quit. I desperately needed money to have surgery and jobs in my (former) field were scarce.

You may wonder why I didn't sue for harassment or something. I had absolutely no proof.

I take satisfaction in knowing that horrible PR agency has lost nearly all of its clients, has become a revolving door of firings and qittings, has a horrendous reputation and is barely afloat.

[quaker bill]

80. A day at Disneyworld

When in college a long time ago, I would pick up temporary work during the holidays at Disneyworld. The worst of it I can recall was a day spent in an ill fitting colonial costume emptying 4 trashcans at a fast food joint. That was all there was to the job, keeping 4 trash cans empty and clean. You could not do it. As fast as I could move, the first one was full to overflowing by the time I had gotten back to it. Then to top it all the vacuum trash subway broke down and the stuff started piling up 5, then 10, then 15 foot deep.

The only thing I have that remotely competes was sampling hazardous materials at a superfund site, outside, in a space suit, with a sledgehammer, in August, in South Florida. But that was better because I had a gas mask and it served some good purpose.

[roguevalley]

81. I clipped together gigantic wooden produce boxes -5000 a day-

coming at me on a conveyor belt at ninety miles an hour for 96 cents a day in 96+ degree heat in a box factory so out of date people were getting electrocuted just turning on the machines. I remember thinning pears in orchards for about the same or a little more and watching the heat waves rising, the peacocks running around hunting snakes and my skin burning off in the 100 degree weather. That job ended when I mentioned we needed a union. Got the whole crew fired. :-D

[Blackhatjack]

84. Summertime job unloading Refrigerated Rail Car ....

Showed up for work in t-shirt and shorts to work inside a food warehouse during heat of summer, and assigned to unload frozen goods by hand from refrigerated rail cars for an institutional food supplier. Almost froze to death and hands stayed numb the entire time WITH GLOVES. (Worked the week I originally committed to finish, and then out of there.)

Almost as much fun as driving an incendiary heat producing tractor during 100 plus degree weather in a tobacco field from dawn to dusk. (IIRC I made $1.35/hr as a 13 yr old --good times! good times!)

Both jobs helped me eliminate these careers from my choice of a future profession.

[OnyxCollie]

85. Unloading trailers on a tow motor.

Going back and forth, from one end of the terminal to the other.

The trailer I had to unload had everything dumped over. I had to pick up bags of chicken batter powder that had broken open. It was 100 degrees and I was covered with yellow powder, dirt, sweat, oil, etc. The people were really scary and dangerous. I walked out after putting in a 17.5 hour shift (and they wanted me to stay longer.)

[treestar]

86. My current job, lawyer

Most thankless job ever.

[Poiuyt]

89. Looking for a job - what could be worse?

Extremely frustrating (and the pay is bad)

[Dulcinea]

101. Agreed.

Being unemployed sucks. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother applying for things I have no interest in or qualifications for...but I gotta keep trying.

[stevedeshazer]

90. Remodeling a KFC 3 weeks after it caught fire. Opening the walk-in freezer after 3 weeks of no power

25 years, I've not visited a KFC since.

[barbtries]

108. makes me queasy

just to think about that.

[TK421]

91. The job you mentioned was my very first one I worked at during high school

I was basically a pot-washer and floor scrubber with a dish machine at my back blowing extremely hot steam with NO ventilation whatsoever.....that was in a nursing home kitchen, I did other things as well....too many to get into here, though.

The shittiest job I ever held had to be at a Sports Authority in Ft.Myers Florida ( shithole ). I got fired from that job, for accepting a travelers check with no signature ( to the tune of $300.00 ) They told me I was warned about this beforehand...I denied it ( no they did NOT ). They asked me to sign a paper resigning...I told the manager to blow me and walked out....got a job at Dillards Department store from a walk-in application ( interviewed and accepted the same frigging day ) when they heard about my prior retail experience. I got off track, sorry....at Sports Authority I had to answer to fifteen year olds who they put in charge...I wasn't about to do that shit, and they were stupid. NO, I don't need to elaborate on that point, they were fucking stupid! There was this young girl ( she could have been my fucking daughter ) who stomped around yelling at people who weren't working to her expectations and this shit was tolerated by management. The new manager ( who was a bigger dick than the last manager, who looked like Hitler with blonde hair ) seemed to have a problem with me since day one when he stepped up on the corporate weasel ladder. I gave an attitude....hey, I'm back in P.A....back home, so fuck those pricks!!!!! I WON!!!!

[MilesColtrane]

94. Tossup

Bus boy at a giant "family style" seafood restaurant. (definitely the nastiest)

or

Sandblasting the interior of a 40ft water storage tank, on a scaffold, untethered, in the middle of August in Texas. (definitely the most dangerous)

[XemaSab]

95. It's a toss-up

between bushwhacking through chaparral on the Angeles National Forest and doing wetland delineations in Merced.

The chaparral sucked so bad... it was 90 degrees out with no shade, brutally steep, and I used to go back to the hotel feeling like I'd been raped by the bushes. I was covered in scratches and ticks and soot and usually bleeding in several places.

The wetland delineation was the project right after the Angeles project, and it would have been a lot better except my co-worker and I hated each other. It was a three month project in the same field... 6 hours a day of walking towards the mesa, walking towards the gravel pit, walking towards the mountains, and walking towards the horizon. Dead silent except for that asshole yelling at me. It was flat ground, but it was brutally hot with no shade and NO breaks ever. One of the worst parts was that my feet and ankles started itching, and they itched 24/7 for MONTHS. I really should have quit that job.

[alterfurz]

97. picking strawberries back in the early 60s...

...on your knees in heat and humidity from dawn to dusk, for $0.08/qt.
From the way my wife describes corn detasseling, that might even be worse.

[redqueen]

98. Hard to say...

either the thermal engineering device manufacturer, or the software consulting firm.

At the factory there were of course the fumes and there was lots of noise, and it was just hard work period.

At the consulting firm, it was all right at times, and was horrible at other times. At first I had to report to a barely-competent, embezzling office manager. Then after she was caught, I had to report to the owner's mistress. She was kinda hard to work with, to put it mildly.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

99. Mixing cement for a bricklayer.

But, at least, that was useful work, and I could quit...which I did.

Being a marine. Not useful at all, and I couldn't quit.

[TheKentuckian]

104. Admissions Representative for a college

Sounds cool or even maybe fun and rewarding but the ever changing goal posts and nearly satanic management made me wish to dig some ditches or see what was available at the slaughter house.

[gauguin57]

105. I've never had a horrible job. Just horrible bosses.

I had one job that was kind of boring and repetitive, but I had such a great boss, and enjoyed my co-workers so much, that I actually looked forward to that pile of mindless paperwork.

[AllieB]

106. My present job. I am actively looking for a new position.

I work really long hours and made more money in 2000 than I do now.

[Joe Fields]

107. Oh, Jesus, I've had so many jobs, I don't know where to start....

[guitar man]

109. shoveling pig shit out of livestock trailers

not the kind that go behind pickups either, the 50 foot double decker semi trialers :(

[trayfoot]

110. Fast Food - similar to McDonalds