What was the worst job you ever had?

[Swede]

Shipper/reciever was hard work,insulating houses was dirty,working on the railroad was hard and dirty.

[Kingofalldems]

1. Dishwasher

Permanent KP--6 days a week.

[Roon]

4. I like washing dishes

I don't know why, but I had a couple of dish washing jobs when I was a kid and I enjoyed it.

[Dave_Fl_50]

2. Unfortunately the one I have now. I went from a software company

witha really great environment in Cambridge Mass to the IT department of a backward company in Tampa. I knew I didn't fit when the boss complained because I was leaning back in my chair with my beet on my desk, then there were the lecture on the brilliance of George Bush.

[yurbud]

30. a software company where they think Bush is brilliant? How do they get past the first 0 to 1?

what kind of software do they make down there, Quicken for drug traffickers?

[Dave_Fl_50]

42. No in Cambridge it was a software co. Down here I'm in-house it

until they can offshore it :(

[yurbud]

44. oooh. So you track the cocaine as it comes in?

[Roon]

3. Answering the hotline for the firestone tire recall

I lasted until lunch on my first day.

[Chovexani]

5. Customer service for a major credit card company

'Nuff said. :cry:

[BarenakedLady]

6. Cashier

Toss up between a supermarket (pre scan days) and CVS.

[Haole Girl]

7. Cafeteria...

Oh wait, no... Hostess at Denny's. Yeah... that was the worst. ugh.

[Blue_In_AK]

8. I worked in the warranty claims department of Toyota

It was my job to write to people explaining why their car was out of warranty and why they'd have to suck it up and pay for their own repairs. I only lasted 60 days.

[MilesColtrane]

9. Busboy at a "family style" seafood restaurant...

Followed closely by my gig sandblasting the interior of an empty water tank on a fifty foot scaffold with no protective gear and no securing lanyard to prevent falls.

On the first day of that one I simply didn't come back after lunch.

[qb]

10. I win... stuffing live chickens into little cages in an egg-laying warehouse.

If any of them had cancer where you could see their bones where the flesh had rotted away, we had to ring their necks. I only did that for a week in 7th grade. The smell never came out of my clothes.

[av8rdave]

36. I did that too....taking them out when it was time to send them to Campbell's Soup was worse

After a year in their cages, they had no feathers...just spiny things that tore into your arms. No fun.

[qb]

39. Wow. Imagine if they were required to print pictures of those hens

on egg cartons & soup cans.

[av8rdave]

40. Believe me, it would hurt their business.

I still can't eat chicken soup!

[stuntcat]

56. I saw one of those places..

We were driving through the country late one night on the way to our dorms and for SOME reason we pulled over at a chicken plant and drove up to a truckload of battery-caged hens stacked together. I'm sorta glad I saw it firsthand, most people can avoid it their whole life, but I'll never forget that night now. And I forget everything, important things just wipe out of my head every day, but I can remember standing next to the trailer of chickens :cry:

[Fox Mulder]

11. Janitorial assistant at the local high school.

I was in ninth grade. It was my first (and worst) job.

[LeftyFingerPop]

12. I had to clean out a six foot section of sewer line clogged completely with tampons. n/t

[qb]

13. Ok... maybe you win :)

[Manifestor_of_Light]

14. Bloody helluva job!

[yurbud]

32. in other words, you had to douche an elephant?

[ptvet]

15. Operating a hickory plow

at the bottom of a ditch for the water dept. in Spokane. We always tried to leave the street in worse shape than it was before we dug it up....your welcome Spokane! }(

[Manifestor_of_Light]

24. I gots a stupid question: What's a hickory plow?

[ptvet]

41. Long standing tradition....

The new guy, (FNG in the Air Force) was more often than not, required to be at the bottom of the ditch, riding the hickory plow.

A shovel.....:thumbsup:

[yurbud]

45. I thought it meant a gigolo for old ladies--plowing the old hickories

[grace0418]

16. I wish it were easy to choose. Unfortunately, I haven't had very good luck with jobs.

But I guess I would say that the job where I worked for a *very* mentally ill man who owned an extremely high-end wallcovering company would be the worst. At least three days a week I would spend my commute crying.

[stuntcat]

54. it sounds like Hell

regular people shouldn't have to deal with psychos at all x(

[baldguy]

17. Tossup: telemarketer for Verizon

Or janitor at Bennigan’s in Boulder.

Having total strangers yell obscenities at me or cleaning dried human feces off the wall.

[OmahaBlueDog]

18. I was a telemarketer for a day

.. for an outfit called Miller Plante. They sell a product called "Septic Helper. "

I didn't even make it out of training. I just turned and walked away.

[pokerfan]

19. Barley harvest

Wheat, peas, lentils, even baling hay was a piece of cake but barley made my throat itch on the inside, if that makes any sense.

[Lil Missy]

20. I think telemarketing was the worst. The bosses harass you about being more aggressive, and I ...

felt like I was harassing people. I hated it. But they would listen in to our phone calls and demand we get more pushy. I lasted about 4 weeks with that.

The last job I worked after I got so sick of customer service with whiny shit from rich spoiled brats at a major and high end hotel chain was collections. For dead people! I know that relatives are not responsible for debts of their brothers, sisters, spouses, etc., and I felt like a damned criminal.

My job was to bully people into paying their dead relatives bills anyway. That's just crap that I didn't feel comfortable with, and I quit that after about 4 to 6 weeks too.

I guess I just wouldn't make it as a very good repuke asshole.

[Lil Missy]

21. I think telemarketing was the worst. The bosses harass you about being more aggressive, and I ...

felt like I was harassing people. I hated it. But they would listen in to our phone calls and demand we get more pushy. I lasted about 4 weeks with that.

The last job I worked after I got so sick of customer service with whiny shit from rich spoiled brats at a major and high end hotel chain was collections. For dead people! I know that relatives are not responsible for debts of their brothers, sisters, spouses, etc., and I felt like a damned criminal.

My job was to bully people into paying their dead relatives bills anyway. That's just crap that I didn't feel comfortable with, and I quit that after about 4 to 6 weeks too.

I guess I just wouldn't make it as a very good repuke asshole.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

22. H.R. drone in advance of a massive layoff

They brought me in as a temp and had me sitting around for two weeks with little or nothing to do. I hated it, I was climbing the walls. Then I found out what I was really doing there. They were having massive layoffs, the kind where people got escorted out of the building by security guards and stuff. For two weeks they kept it from me and sprang it on me on the day it happened. I had to be familiar with the department and management in order to assist with the beheadings.

No offense to anyone who might be reading this and holding down a job in H.R., but I've gotta tell you...H.R. people are generally among the worst people walking the face of the Earth. They truly suck.

[Awsi Dooger]

23. Handicapper for a sports service in '87

More telemarketing crap, the business already well represented in this thread. My situation was somewhat different. I knew the boss and he wanted someone to pick the sporting events, namely football. I had a good rep in town after decent years in '85 and '86, as a newbie young kid hanging out in the major sportsbooks and spouting my opinions.

We had a small office on Sahara Avenue, next to an Army recruiting office. Our salesmen were the biggest bunch of misfits I'd ever seen. Dropouts who knew sports and wanted to stay involved in any capacity. Old ladies with infirmities who always had to leave early. One beefy guy whose leg had swelled to three times normal size. A former star salesman who was making a so-called comeback after drug addiction for more than a year.

Anyway, my job was to pick the games, maybe 10 college and 10 pro each week. The boss put them on a blackboard in the back of the room. When the salesmen were pitching a package of games and the client agreed, the salesman would wheel around and pick 3 games, virtually at random. By the end of the week we would see which games we were short on, and the boss' son would literally be at the chalkboard insisting the salesman put the new clients on those neglected games.

What a farce. We didn't give out both sides but it felt ridiculous when the results came in. Some salesmen had a knack for isolating games that would win, others handed out mostly losers. I was picking a very good 58% overall, above the 57% in my contract for a raise, but it was hardly dependable profit given the distribution.

Finally we had a great week. And the asshole boss caused me to quit within a couple of days. First he knowingly collected twice from a husband and wife, when each called the office when the husband was away on business. Then he grabbed the phone from a salesman and asked for my 3 best games. I gave them to him, and the boss shouted the other side as our best plays of the year. This was to a sweet little man who called regularly. He was no threat at all, just a small bettor who like to call and chat briefly every afternoon. In these days he'd love websites like this but at the time our office was his release. When the boss intentionally gave him losers -- and those games did lose big -- I walked out and never returned.

[Breeze54]

25. Wife & mother

:(

Mostly wife was the worst. :puke:

[KansDem]

26. Cleanup crew at a slaughterhouse.

Worked 11pm to 6am. When I applied for the job, the interviewer asked me if I could work without my glasses. She explained we would be using high-powered hot water hoses and I might have my glasses knocked off if ever I was hit in the head. I said, "No problem!" (I needed the job). Well, after 7 hours of grueling, smelly work I "retired" and told the lady that I really did need my glasses after all!

[stuntcat]

52. yucky 7 hours

I read just yesterday that slaughterhouses have the highest turnover rate of any jobs.

[momophile]

27. McDonalds

being sixteen yrs old and being yelled at by customers when their food being late had nothing to do with me.

jerks.

[yurbud]

28. digging shit out from under an outhouse with a garden trowel and a five gallon bucket

in Alaska.

We only got to bathe once a week. I think it was that day, but I'm not 100% sure.

[yurbud]

29. that's what other people would think is the worst job. The real worst was working for a Hollywood

producer.

boot camp, waiting tables, and substitute teaching in high school were all less painful.

[Orsino]

31. Shoveling sewage.

Or maybe pulling green chain.

[dropkickpa]

33. Night shift donut finisher/counterperson

16 years old, 11pm-7am, by myself from 3am-6am, in a store where the owner was to damn cheap to get the AC fixed so it was about 100 degrees in the store, about 125 in the back. Luckily, my best friend was the baker, so we'd sit in the storeroom with the backdoor open getting high all night, coming out to serve the night-owls and cops. I didn't eat a donut for over 10 years after working there.

[VenusRising]

34. Cleaning hotel rooms at the Holiday Inn.

Can I just say that people are so disgusting? :puke:

[av8rdave]

35. Shoveling chicken $#!& on a massive poultry factory in Ohio

Good news was, I was getting $1.25/hour.

[NightWatcher]

37. I was an "environmental engineer" (janitor) at the hospital one summer in highschool

My fav was cleaning the incinerator where they burned biological waste. Yummy

I also had a gallon of afterbirth fluid spilled all over me. I took about three showers a day when I worked there

[gbate]

38. Either this one or the one I had working at the seafood store.

Just try getting that smell out of your clothes.

[Inchworm]

43. Picking rocks out of dirt

near a recently dug lake so grass could grow.

It was daily work/daily pay work when i was hitchiking and very very boring. I'd find a rock then sling it in the lake. I did it for like 3 days until I moved on. The job wasnt near 1/2 done yet :D

:hi:

[Arkansas Granny]

46. Vaccinating baby chickens for Marek's Disease.

[ceile]

47. Trying to sign up people for TX-PIRG

TX in July, walking through neighborhoods I didn't know, getting bitched at for ringing doorbells (in daytime hours) and getting paid commission + $4.25 an hour. Truly sucked!

[Mutley]

48. Waiting tables.

I know many people enjoy/make good money from waiting tables, but I was terrible at it. It didn't help that the manager was an asshole, either.

[CreekDog]

49. I made a street map atlas of an entire county

do you have any idea how many streets there are in a whole county?

do you have any idea how hard it is to label all of them? how hard it is to fit all those street names in between all the streets? and when it's really too tight, you have to label them with numbers and list them off to the side. arrrggggh.

anyway, there's a part of my life i won't be getting back. :banghead:

[intaglio]

50. Toss up

One; Filling a machine with sausage meat or cheese and onion mix. The first was made from bits of the animal they couldn't use elsewhere and the second stripped the skin off your hands - it also went through rubber gloves.

Two; Cleaning in a factory that made cinder blocks - supposedly a 2 hour job for 5 people. I was the only one at the end and the cowboys running the company tried to stiff me the wages!

[stuntcat]

51. I tried to be a waitress

I have LOTS of respect now for anyone who can wait tables, I failed pretty bad, like in every way. It was at Chi-Chi's that I tried, after just 2 or 3 days they made me a hostess.

As far as pure unpleasantness there was a temp job I had in Atlanta for a while where one of the women in the office seriously had it in for me :p and now I don't remember her name or the name of the company.

[graywarrior]

53. Call room jobs.

I just quit it.

[Aristus]

55. Working as a sales-rep for a sales training company. Selling training in car sales.

Ugh. What an awful, thankless job. The boss was an egotistical jerk who liked to play mind games with his employees. (He had a degree in Industrial Psychology, and liked to show off his psych knowledge.) He told me after he hired me that his employees were so motivated that they competed to be the first to work every morning. Well, I fell for it and started getting up at o-dark-thirty every day to be the first to the office. Naturally, I was always the first one there for at least a half an hour. I got wise pretty quickly, but it didn't matter, because I was fired after less than three months.

My job was to sell the sales training course to car dealerships. Awful work, trying to sell to car salesmen. Getting fired would have seemed like a blessing, except for the fact that it was the first time I had ever been fired from anything. It beat me down pretty bad.

[jmowreader]

58. So YOU'RE the one who got waterboarded by your boss!

Welcome to DU.

[WeRQ4U]

57. I delivered Tacos.

I used an igloo cooler and two bottles filled with boiling hot water to keep them warm. How do you spell S.O.G.G.Y.?

[southerncrone]

59. Cleaning off tables at a Picadilly Cafeteria.

[seemunkee]

60. pizza delivery on UofMD campus

I lasted 2 nights and lost money on the deal since I got a parking ticket

[triguy46]

61. Selling home medical equipment. What a frickin' scam....

It was not the hardest job I've had, but the one I truly loathed.