What's the worst job you ever had?

[MothBalls]

Just curious if anyone else ever had a wake up call like I did.

In my younger days right after high school I was a tire changer, for big rigs, tractors, earth movers. I drove a service truck rigged out for doing this. I got moved to fleet accounts. One of my accounts was a trash company, 300 trash trucks. Every day I had to stop by and fix flats or change bald tires. Crawling under trash trucks to jack them up and have trash juice spill on me was just friggin horrible.

Then I got the worst call of all. A chicken farm with 3 million birds. They used to take the chicken crap and put it in piles 4 meters high by 100 meters long to dry in the sun. Then a tractor would drive over it scraping off the crusty layer to process as fertilizer. Under the crust it was still wet and juicy.

The tractor was on the top of the pile, ran over a broken bottle and blew out a tire. The operator said he couldn't drive it down because it would flip over, the tire had to be changed there. When I got home, my girlfriend wouldn't let me in the house. I showered with a hose in the back yard. I stunk for three days after that.

The third day was the day I decided to go to college. I promised myself that I wasn't going to spend the rest of my life on a pile of chit.

[AVGWarhawk]

Nasty brother, no doubt!!!! Chicken crap does stink the high heavens. I can not say I had a bad job after reading your tire changing days :rotfl:

[UnderseaLcpl]

Worst job;

Body detail in Iraq. Had a few SVBIED (suicide vehicle-borne IED) victims and bombers to be sorted out. We were supposed to separate the bomber's parts from the victim's parts (yeah, right) As it was I I pushed my elbow into a pile of what I think were intestines while trying to grab an eyeball. Never did get the smell out of that uniform.

[KeptinCranky]

Well, nothing to compare to the above, but nevertheless unpleasant...

Picking tomatos in a greenhouse.... especially having to clear out the rotten ones, but that's not as bad as rotten cucumbers... yechhh


the trouble with tomatoes is they spray some sort of waxy stuff on them that gets on your hands in layers and is almighty difficult to remove, the plants also have tiny irritant hairs that give you rash.

I became a postman after that, go figure...:shifty:

[Platapus]

For me it is a tie

Story 1. There I was, no Sh*t,

Brand new troop fresh out of EOD school. Steely-eyed and ready to save the world.

Was on the primary recovery team for an F-16 that crashed. Primary recovery team is also responsible for "aircrew retrieval". We had a torso pretty mangled up and well infested with insects.

Team lead hands FNG (me) two pairs of latex gloves... uh oh

My mission was to ascertain whether this torso was just joe pilot or joe pilot wrapped around some piece of avionics.

So I am sitting on the ground, in the middle of an salt flat squeezing and feeling this maggoty insect infested body of an American. :down:

One of the things that was beaten into us in tech school was that if you are handling an aircrew body you better handle it with respect. After all, this was a person who just gave his life in the service of his country.

I did the best I could. It is amazing how difficult it can be to tell the difference between bones and avionics.

Pretty rough for an 18 year old.

Story two

About three years after story 1, I was on a tertiary recovery team for this F-16 that dumped into the shallows of the Great Salt Lake. Tertiary recovery teams are normally not expected to be involved in body recovery...

We were on our small floating derrick trying vainly to use our magnometers to find the aircraft. Mags don't work so well in salt water. We get a hit and our imager shows the M-61A1 internal gun, which we have to recover.

As the M-61 broke the surface we discovered that the pilot was intertwined in the barrels of the gun. We were not set up for aircrew recovery. We had no body bag we had no gloves, we had nutton.

The only thing we could do is reverently wrap the pilot in a tarp and place him as far downwind as we could. He had been down there for about three weeks and the brine shrimp had found him. For the next 8 hours of our duty, the pilot was out of the water in the hot sun. It was not pleasant.

Surprisingly these types of days were never mentioned in the advertisements.

Of course I could not feel all that bad. After all, I was the one still alive.

A reverent salute to all those military members who die in the performance of their duties in peacetime. No medals, no speeches. No one ever knows their names but the families and coworkers.

[1480]

A. My 1st express passenger train versus person on foot not paying attention job. Took 5 hours and a shovel to find and recover most of the remains.

B. Investigate the foul odor call. Dude croaks in an SRO during July and there is no air conditioning in the building. Well as the man who called 911 tells us "...its rotten" He was on the money: the carpeting the body was on needed to be cut around him, because he was fused to it, then he "popped" when lifted. Not good!

C. The inner city version of the "shootout at the O.K. Corral". Inside of a one bedroom apartment, a dope deal gone bad. 4 verus 2 and 5 DOA's. I will describe the scene as this: Sam Peckinpaw would have proud!

[Yahoshua]

Mine was nowhere NEAR as bad as everyone elses' thus far (thankfully?).

Was working a job as a residential construction worker at Mountain Home AFB in Idaho.....in the winter. Now the cold up there in Idaho isn't a nice "dry" cold like you'd get in the plains or in the mountains of colorado.

No, this cold HURTS and no amount of thick clothing (aside from woolen long johns) will help you keep warm enough to move around inside a dark, partially finished, and exposed-to-the-elements building. All the while having a foreman with a serious weed growing up his @$$ yelling at me and everyone else because we weren't working fast enough to satisfy his bean-counting mind (this job was going to take 5 years anyway and we were the 5th or 6th company on the job and most of our work was fixing somebody elses' mistakes).

We were shacked up in hotels (sardined basically) and since we only worked 5 days a week we all either had a limited amount of time to either find our own lodgings or go home on the weekends. So I commuted 200 miles home to Fort Hall every weekend and drove back up Sunday nights.


Miserable.

[SUBMAN1]

Worst job? Probably 2 tours in Alasks on fishing boats - 7 months total. One in winter, one in summer.

The weird part - I hated it, yet I loved it - explain that?

-S

[Yahoshua]

You liked the freedom but not the work that came with it?

[SUBMAN1]

You liked the freedom but not the work that came with it?No - the sea. Something weird that made me 'belong' there. Possibly getting killed at least once a week I think I could do without.

-S

[buddha95]

circumsizing street bums at the free clinic.
$5.00 an hour,,,,,,,,,plus "tips"

[Platapus]

[QUOTE=1480] Well as the man who called 911 tells us "...its rotten"/QUOTE]

One of the things we used to dread when I was riding on the inner city squad was the call of "unusual odor" coming from an apartment.

Every one knew this would not be a good call. It takes days to get the smell off your own body :(

[Platapus]

I recognize that this is a violation to the spirit of the thread as this is not a job I had but a job I saw someone else do.....

About a thousand years ago, I was watching a documentary on pig farms. This documentary focused on the raising and breeding of the pigs. Pretty interesting stuff.

The propagating of the pigs (proPIGating?) was all handled scientifically. Computers were used to track the individual matings, artificial insemination was used to control and protect the sows. All clean and high tech......except.

Except for the collection of the pig semen. This was done manually and I do mean manually.

The documentary interviewed this guy whose job it was to manually stimulate the boars and collect the semen. Yup his job was pounding pig puds or wanking weenier weenies.

He would be sitting down next to what appeared to be a ramp like the ones used to milk goats. He was talking about how he gets to "know" each boar and varies his technique according to the boar. I am not making this up!

And then the documentary showed him "working". OMG! if you have never been around pigs it is eye opening!

And during the demonstration the guy was not wearing any gloves!!! ewwwww.

I do have to mention that evidently this job does take some skill in order to quickly stimulate and ...... "finish" with the boar.

So when ever I think that my job sucks, I frequently think back to this guy.

No matter how bad it gets, at least I am not masturbating pigs to orgasm. :damn:

[Takeda Shingen]

I've got you all beat: SubSim General Topics Moderator.

In seriousness, I suppose the worst job I had was in high school working in the meat room of a local supermarket. I didn't cut the meat, as you had to be specially trained. Rather, I was in charge of removing and storing the excess fluids and inedible parts for removal. The entire facitlity was refrigerated, so there was no smell, but I would swear that on some days it looked like a Wes Craven flick was shot in that room. Still, does not compare with the chickens.

[SUBMAN1]

I've got you all beat: SubSim General Topics Moderator.

In seriousness, I suppose the worst job I had was in high school working in the meat room of a local supermarket. I didn't cut the meat, as you had to be specially trained. Rather, I was in charge of removing and storing the excess fluids and inedible parts for removal. The entire facitlity was refrigerated, so there was no smell, but I would swear that on some days it looked like a Wes Craven flick was shot in that room. Still, does not compare with the chickens.Chickens smell! yuck! Tasty though!

Worst is driving by a beef slaughterhouse. That is the worst smell on planet Earth! Enought to turn you off to beef for months on end!

-S

[Platapus]

I've got you all beat: SubSim General Topics Moderator.


You win Sir! Thinking of what you have to put up with, pounding pig puds does not sound all that bad :rotfl:

[XabbaRus]

Well mine pale in comparison... Worst was working for the local supermarkt doing stock control and not being able to find all the stuff as the cages in back were packed tight together and stuff chucked on.

Then being told I had to count stuff as being in, even though I couldn't be sure because if I left the counts undone it would look bad on the figures.....Go figure...#

I hated how everything had to be to so the figures matched.

[Ducimus]

My worst job.... i dunno

It's a tossup between:
drilling holes in reinforced reventment for 14 hours a day, 6 days a week for 4 weeks straight.


Or


Raking concrete in front of a power screed for 14 hours a day, 6 days a week, for 4 weeks straight.

One job made you F'ing insane, the other F'ing tired.

[PeriscopeDepth]

Wow, after reading this thread my "worst job" really is not bad at all. Guess I've been lucky so far.

I worked the grill at my university's sandwich shop.

PD

[Stealth Hunter]

Worked for my Uncle Mehrdad as a street cleaner... meaning I got to run around all day picking up trash and lugging it into a huge bin where I then had to transport it to a recycling depot (or to a trash crematory).

[sonar732]

I've got you all beat: SubSim General Topics Moderator.

After viewing some of the latest topics...you're doing a great job! I've never imagined it coming to a sticky.


In seriousness, I suppose the worst job I had was in high school working in the meat room of a local supermarket. I didn't cut the meat, as you had to be specially trained. Rather, I was in charge of removing and storing the excess fluids and inedible parts for removal.
...and then turn them into hot dogs...

:arrgh!::arrgh!::rotfl::rotfl:

[Ishmael]

I'm thankful one of my worst jobs was just chasing people. I worked Shore Patrol in the Philly yards in 77 alternating traffic ticket duty and AWOL and deserter retrieval. Had one guy they picked up in Binghamton, NY hitchiking who'd been gone since '68 and had 12 Gs in cash on him when they picked him up. We brought him back to the yards and had just signed him over to the jail team and gone to get coffee when he rabbitted from them and escaped, leaving the money behind.

My most Ridiculous job was as a pizza maker/Advertising Icon for Pizza Pirate pizza parlor in Benicia. They had a grand opening where the owner made the cardinal mistake in Benicia of serving nickel beers and quarter pitchers. He sold over 500 pizzas that day, which almost paid for the beer and the damage from the patrons. For this event, I got to dress in full pirate regalia of cockked hat, doublet and coat, knee breeches with buckled shoes and a stuffed parrot on my shoulder. And that NOT a Norwegian Blue. Then I got to stand in the middle of the main intersection of First St. and Military Highway passing out handbills in the hot California June sun. The one salve in it all was having my friends drive by and giving me drinks from their beers. After that episode, the cheap beer was RIGHT OUT! IN fact, to this day, if you go to Benicia and visit Pizza Pirate, you'll sit at cheezy picnic tables with cheezy old navigation chart copies verathaned into the wood. I did those too.

[Etienne]

Most of mine pale in comparison of the ones already posted, but they're still amusing (To me, at least, with hindsight)

Job 1 : I once had a job interview that went thusly. Verbatim (Well, translated). Unabridged:

-Can you speak English?
-Can you count to twenty? Like add, substract and ****?
-Do you mind cigarette smoke?
-Do you mind getting yelled at? Like, a lot?

Worst part is, I took that job. I'd borrowed bus fare to get to the interview; I was desperate.

Job 2: I had a job on a fast ferry (IE, high GM. Lots of sick people) where my unofficial job title was "Vomit Boy". Seriously, I had ten minutes of safety training and forty minutes of how to pick up vomit... I actually had seasickness down to a science by the end of that contract. Worst was when someone had let go in one of the urinal. It was months before I could have chick pea salad again, after that one. Did I mention the boat only had one bathroom for each gender? Time was of the essence.

Job 3: There was one time (Different boat) where the USCG (Or customs, I don't know) decided our dunnage was contaminated, and we couldn't land it in the states. Had to stack something like 75 tons of lumber on the starboard side of the deck while we unloaded in Galveston and New Orlean. Then shift it back to the port side while we went back to load in Galveston (Someone had realized we'd be going starboard side to at the loading berth... Great planning!) and cover the whole stack in plastic so the EVIIIIL bugs wouldn't get in the sorghum we were loading. We had cranes. We still spent like a week on the wood, non stop. It must have been 90 out, with humidity so thick it felt like drowning. Wearing long sleeved coveralls. And I was the only one who didn't speak my coworkers' native language.

Ever tried to cover a pile of wood 400-500ft long, 7 ft high, 12 ft wide, with rolls of plastic? In the Gulf of Mexico, in February? Awesome time. The captain actually went and did some of it himself because everybody else was fed up with the damned crap.

Then we got out of the special marpol zone, and had to go back out on deck to jettison the goddamn stuff. With waves coming over the deck. Took 8 guys about 10 hours to get all that stuff off the deck. You had to be careful not to get your ankles swept out from under you by a stray plank. And the mate wanted us to roll the plastic for re-using...

Did I mention that through this particular ordeal, I was getting paid 30$ a day, or about 2.75$ an hour? Although I did get a 75$ dunnage handling bonus...

The strange part is, I really enjoyed those jobs. Learned a lot.

[Iceman]

Amazing how you realize how truly blessed you are when you see what others have gone/go thru...Platapus...as my son says I am scared for life from that pig story...you deserve the wild night in Bangok sig for a while for that story....Dang!

Probably the worst job...no where nears comparison to you guys stories is working in a "Head" shop/Tobacco Shop...seeing the people coming in to buy glass pipes so they can smoke crack and crystal meth...pretty desperate,addicted people...I thank God I have never tried that stuff believe it or not because I have seen first hand the power of that addiction....unbelieveable....seen many people break down and cry how they were hooked and turn around and smoke up again...depressing...not to mention steal and or rob you in a second.

Did happen to smoke some good cigars and cubans ...glad I quit that smoking stuff a long time ago too...now it just smells bad to me.:|\\

[orwell]

Guess I've had it pretty good. Did a year as a caregiver for mostly endstage alzheimers and Dementia patients. Had one guy who was, like, 6' 5", rather heavy, and his bowels were like liquid horse****. Unbelievable, to me, amounts from a single person. And he was entirely immobile too, could sorta stutter to communicate, so until you noticed it, or was just a general bathroom time, he'd be laying in it. Poor guy, but because there wasn't enough of us to keep track, and it was quite potent, he would lay around a lot in bed. If his entire bed didn't get washed once that day, it was a miracle.

[Platapus]

... I got to dress in full pirate regalia of cockked hat, doublet and coat, knee breeches with buckled shoes and a stuffed parrot on my shoulder. And that NOT a Norwegian Blue. Then I got to stand in the middle of the main intersection of First St. and Military Highway passing out handbills in the hot California June sun.


I think you would have a case for having your human rights violated :arrgh!:

[Platapus]

I fully recognize that generalizations are usually pretty inaccurate. But I feel on firm ground if I make the following generalization:

Any job that requires contact with the public is predestined for suckyness. :down:

[VipertheSniper]

I fully recognize that generalizations are usually pretty inaccurate. But I feel on firm ground if I make the following generalization:

Any job that requires contact with the public is predestined for suckyness. :down:

I fully agree.

[VipertheSniper]

dp.

[Etienne]

Any job that requires contact with the public is predestined for suckyness. :down:

Wild night in Bangkok, eh? :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

[OneToughHerring]

Unfortunately the work that's nice usually pays less so it's never perfect. Or seldom is especially when young and no great diplomas to wield.

Worst in terms of environment was probably paper mill. Can be surprisingly dangerous environment. My then neighbour's brother got killed there doing pretty much what I did when I was there. Also unpleasant in terms of smells, noise, and all the other senses.

Although if military service counts as "work" then that comes close in terms of being the worst. Slugging in some wintry forest in extremely cold weather for a 'salary' that equals the price of pack of cigarettes/day. Hooray.

edit. Some unpleasant experiences some have had, changing the tire to a tractor on a mountain of chicken****. Kinda funny although it shouldn't be. :)

[Blacklight]

Simple answer to the topics' question : A Toys R' Us durring Christmas season. :o

[les green01]

putting outside sewers in new houses and old house that has sepit tanks and if it goes over your mud boot tops or your boots has a hole or they got the stub to far under for me to hooked up a 4 inch pipe in up sticking my head in waste to hook it up and the military i did get to see a part of the world but go figure the natives was restless that time,my buddy did work at a hog farm he had to guide them in,i told him if they couldnt hit the hole they didnt need any

[Etienne]

Simple answer to the topics' question : A Toys R' Us durring Christmas season. :o

How's that PTSD coming along?

[Reece]

Gee some of you guys had some disgusting jobs!:yep:
I had a number of bad experiences as an electrician for the housing trust, one of the worst: I was called out at around 1.30am to a set of flats, one of the tennants had reported "No Power", the torches we ere issued had useless rechargable batteries and all I got was a dull yellow glow!:dead: Anyway I knocked on the door and after a greeting was led to the breaker box, gee it really stinks bad in hear I thought, noted the main breaker had tripped, so I turned them all off, went to the main fuse box outside & replaced the HRC fuse, went back inside, thinking to myself "why the heck are my shoes sticking to the floor, I wiped my feet before entering", so one by one I switched the breakers back on, all went well, except now I could see!:eek: Dog crap everywhere, floor benches, sink etc, you could hardly see a place that was clean, these flats were only several months old, the owner, a woman of around 35, had never taken the dogs out or cleaned up in that time!:doh: It is the only time I have had to wipe my feet leaving a house!:damn: Another experience was an upgrade and found a slaughtered sheep in the bath tub!:roll::dead: I could tell you much more, human faeces running down the wall, (the mind boggles) fat on the walls 1/2 inch thick!:damn:
I think I will leave it there!:yep:

[BettingUrlife]

My worst job and still is, is teaching English in Japan, it's thoroughly horrible. Teaching English to a nation of people who want to learn something because they view it as "cool", but don't won't to put in the hard work of actually learning is a soul destroying experience at times. Plus the companies we work for just pander up to the clients who will complain long and loud if they think they are being short-changed for any reason.

Pay is minimal, no bonus (like regular Japanese get), no health insurance (like regular Japanese people get) and no pension plan at all (like regular Japanese people get). Plus pay gets cut year after year. Need two or three jobs to make ends meet.

But I guess it has allowed me the time to indulge myself with computer games and meet a lot of nice chicks ... hehe.

In the end it's my own fault though for sticking out so long here.

[XabbaRus]

Who did you teach English with? I know people who went on several programmes and they enjoyed it.

One of my mates used to get Japanese housewives bringing him boxes of cookies.

Teaching English in Russia is tough too. They want to cos they need to but they seemed to think it was all about rules.

[Tchocky]

Funny, a friend of mine is teaching Japanes people English over webcam from Dublin. Seems to enjoy it.

Then again, any job that you can do naked from the waist down without anyone knowing can't be bad.

[BettingUrlife]

I started a company in the early 90s named NOVA, a very notorious bunch that went broke last year and their president was arrested recently. Most of these companies offer teachers really dodgy contracts as a great many teachers can't speak Japanese and have no idea what the local work rules are, so the abuse many teachers have to put with is incredible.

In many companies you get paid 1500 yen a lesson (not hour, so no work no pay) which is really minimal here. It goes to show why it's such a short-time proposition, most people only stay for 1 or 2 years. The list goes on and on, I could talk for hours about it, but I'd rather play SH4!!!! Later guys!

[XabbaRus]

I've heard of NOVA....I'm guessing you sold the company to those guys?

[seafarer]

One summer in college, I worked as the quality control lab tech in the local sewage treatment plant. We used anaerobic digestion for final treatment, and then sold the sludge for spraying on agricultural land as a soil conditioner (was too N-poor to qualify as a true fertilizer). Ontario has pretty strict controls on such waste dispursement, so each digested batch has to be tested for organic and inorganic solids, N-content, heavy metals, etc, etc, before it could be released for spraying.

I took a lot of sh*t that summer - literally :rotfl: in 1 litre buckets no less

At least I didn't have to suit up and go into a 3 million gallon digester when it failed and help hose out the pile of concreted, accumulated poop in the bottom (budget cuts, so downtime/cleanout maintenance had been postponed, and sh*t, if left long enough, just cures, not dries, to the consistency of sandstone).

[Mush Martin]

the year before last I was doing confined spaces safety support for a
Diver that had to swim twenty feet up a three foot sewer and put a
hundred pound blind over a pipe to cut off the flow for reconstruction.

while we were three storeys down and just as his head went under
(eeeewwwwwwwww you guys dont want to know whats in there)

a giant heavy and sudden summer squal blew in off lake ontario
and dumped a ton of water on us in ten minutes. it looked like
monsoon season when I eventually got outside.

Bottom line the human waste and syringe infested waters rose up
during the dive and backed up the safety station two and a half
storeys rising up with the sewage level.

air quality showed nominal on my monitor :rotfl:

[nikimcbee]

I worked in a cafeteria during college, dishroom is the worst!

[Cohaagen]

I spent a number of months as an assistant/labourer/general gopher working at the Roslin Institute (of Dolly the Sheep fame) on a project developing new feed for chicken farms. Different formulas would be fed to selected groups and the effects on shell thickness, yolk colour and consistency, yield, etc. would be noted down accordingly.

Apart from the constant stench and presence of chicken crap, which has already been mentioned, the worst part came at the end of the project when I was told that the chickens had to be slaughtered and I had been "selected" as an executioner. The site foreman demonstrated the correct procedure on a bit of half-empty sacking - you grab the bird 'round the neck, quickly lift it in the air, then very rapidly jerk it back down in a sort of circular motion. Two of us went through 150 odd chickens in about half an hour. Horrible, horrible job.

Also did a long stint as a processing assistant at a police HQ photographic department on the east coast. This was actually a great job, with a few notable exceptions: first, I spent some time dealing with the photos from the notorious Jodi Jones case, a 14-yr old girl who was murdered by her teenage boyfriend. Worst part was her injuries were considerably more extensive than the press had been led to believe at that point (throat torn out, hundreds of knife wounds and worse). I came quite near cracking up since I'd actually often seen her hanging around with other "Goffs" on a street where I'd worked previously.

I also got called out with the photographics techs to an incident out on the shore where a dismembered body had been found washed up in a suitcase. A couple of grinning CID guys led me over to take a peek at a pile of thoroughly rotten green-and-purple body parts stuffed into the case. They'd been immersed in saltwater for several months and had "leaked" unimaginable substances into the case. There were other unpleasantries - photos of ODs that had gone undiscovered for weeks, child porn cases, various stabbings (including one a few hundred yards from my flat) - but these are the two that stand out.