Worse Jobs You've Held?

[Skybird]

Kitchen of a beer garden in summer, during my university years. 300 guests, a cramped kitchen the size of a mobile fastfood stand, room temperature due to the heating stoves and a court verdict to not open windows (due to the neighbours complaining about the smells) always near or above 40°C, a choleric chief at the bar, stress without end, service time 1900 to 2400, coming home after midnight, drowning in my own sweat and stinking like hell from all the kitchen smell (you hardly get that smell out of your hair even when using truckloads of soap under the shower). I gave up after 6 weeks - and then had to fight for my payments. I admit this was the one job that totally and hopelessly overburdened me. A nightmare.

Vegetable market, again during my university years, in the night and early morning, over the winter months. They needed a muscular guy like Schwarzenegger. Instead they got me, figure of a slim (back then) fencer. Extremely exhausting job.

Best payed job was overseas, as scout and security for TV crew. More money in one week than with any of my other jobs in several months. But more risk involved, street crime, and two occasions when i had to see really nasty things, a massacre site in Algeria, and a Kurdish village that Turkish artillery had rolled over the day before. The best and the worst of my job experiences - this one had it both. But it gave me the money that I later needed to buy my current flat.

In my studied profession (psychology) I worked only unpaid always, and in contracts of limited time. Sooner or later that pissed me, and so I turned my back on it - plenty of compliments and requests to continue are flattering, yes - but it does not pay bills, and when I am of value for somebody and passed their testing time, then I want something valuable in return, not just cheap words.

All in all I had I think 13 different paid jobs since end of my schooltime, and 5 unpaid voluntary engagements in my life. Paper boy, truck loader, market worker, shop salesman, cashier, counselor, meditation teacher, martial arts trainer, cook, guard, factory worker, psychologist - I think I covered quite a wide spectrum. I am not obsessed with defining myself through work only, and so today live by modest family savings and relatively withdrawn, also due to health issues. Life is for once only, and I saw too many old people near their death who deeply regretted that they wasted so much of their time for fame and job, and spend so little time for what they really were interested in: hobbies, family, friends. Most people do not have the luxury to really love and be filled by feelings of achievement and self-realization regarding their professional jobs, most people are stuck in useless, boring treadmills killing their lifetime and wasting their spirits. If you do not really love what you do, I see it this way: work professionally as much as you must, but as little as you can afford. All in all I found in my life my balance between moderate living standards that I can afford and can still live with, and time invested in paid work.

Work as a fetish like it is today, and work-related diseases and burnout as a status symbol? Our society is sick, I say. We were not born to serve factories' needs. Again my advise: work as much as you must, check your demands on living standards and see if you can tweak them and still be happy, do not work more than necessary, as long as you do not really love your job. No man on Earth has any claims to make for you and has no demand that you should serve his interests, as long as you do not live at his costs and do not spend what is his.

And if you do not know what to do with your time if you must not work, and have no interests of yourself, then you have a big problem, me thinks, and you may want to talk with a counselor on that.

Time when you are happy and are absorbed by what interests you, is living time well spent. May be hobby, may be work on your farm, may even be your profession if you are lucky, may be whatever it is. Time when you count the seconds until your shift is over is a waste of life. Maybe needed to make your living, but nothing that gives meaning to your life. Cut it as short as you can afford, for you will not get back that time.

[fireftr18]

College years job in a grocery store. The people (customers, co-workers, management) were good, but the pay was awful, the hours bad and sometimes long, and constant working in a hurry with no real break.

After that, I started with the fire department and haven't worked a day since.

[Wolferz]

Picking bunch beans on a truck farm. All day on my knees in the hot sun. I was paid by the bushel. I'm glad it was only a summer job.
Stripping tobacco isn't much better. Did that for my grandfather one year.

[Herr-Berbunch]

Never had a bad job. If I had to pick one it would be working in the offices for a double glazing company* when I left education, but only because the pay was a pittance.

All my other jobs, and that one, have been great for me but as with Mark the downside is the hierarchy.

Edit: *the factory staff, most of the office staff, and the fitters were excellent. The managers left a lot to be desired (the company went bust about six months after I left), but the least trustworthy bunch of bitching, back-stabbing, barstewards was the double glazing salesman. I only liked one, who was a bit quiet, almost wet! Luckily I liked him as he's the husband of one of the doctors at my local surgery.

[WernherVonTrapp]

Maybe I'm different in this respect, but I never considered any job I've had to be "the worst". I always felt blessed to have a job and I've never had more than 2 weeks of unemployment between full-time jobs. My first job was at the age of 10 where I sorted the Sunday Papers for a couple of hours at a local Deli for the sum of $1.00.00. When I was 16, I worked part time (summer work) in a local lumber yard.
Right out of High School, I worked 6 days a week (full time) at a Church owned cemetary for about 2.5 years (guess how much the church pays?).

The most physically demanding job I had was when I worked for a Municipal Water utility company full time. There, I worked my way up the ladder from manually digging ditches and using a Jack-Hammer to being a senior plumber. I was then in charge of the workmen under me who did the digging I once did. During this full-time job with the municipal utility company, I also worked part-time both as a Tiler and Landscaper. I would work at the water company from 7:30 to 3:30pm, drive to my part-time landscaping job and continue working until about 9:30 to 10:00pm at night. On my days off (Sat. Sun., holidays, vacation days), I did my part-time work as an assistant to a Tiler from 8:00 to 4:00pm. One year, between full & part time work, I worked full time every day of the year w/o a single day off (except Xmas).
I always felt blessed/thankful to have a job when others didn't, no matter how hard my work was.
As a municipal water worker, I had been inside most of the homes/businesses in the three major cities of Paterson, Passaic and Clifton New Jersey. I got to see how some people lived, in homes where I could see sunlight through the cracks in their walls in the dead of winter, graffiti sprayed across kitchen walls and refrigerators, homes heated with a box-fan on the door of their kitchen oven, ottomans pushed together to form a bed. After seeing all that, I found it hard to complain about anything ever again.

Oh yeah, after all this, I also worked for over 25 years as a law enforcement officer. I saw enough during my tenure as a cop to realize, nobody should complain about their lives.

[AVGWarhawk]

Maintenance man at a community swimming pool. Maggot filled trash bags needing to be dump daily. Upwards of 100 bags a day. Cleaning the woman's room at the pool. Needless to say items used monthly were left on the floor among other things. The men's room just as bad. Cleaning out the rows of filters for three pools in total. Pulling the drowned critters out of the pool skimmers. I was paid $2.10/hour. The only saving grace was a lot of chicks in bikinis.

[Ducimus]

I worked at a home improvement warehouse called "Home Base" For about 6 to 8 months sometime after I got out of the service. Having construction experience, i was put "on the floor" in the Building materials and Lumber departments.

It's not that the work was hard, it was the management was so crappy. My list of grievances can be listed as such:

- The manager of the store that I worked at, seemed to have it in her head to run the place like a grocery store. My Peers had took to calling her "Bitchy the 8th dwarf".

- My immediate supervisor was a major A-Hole, and told me point blank that my job was to make him look good. But it's not like I hadn't dealt with his type before in the military, so I took that in stride. He was a washout of a private contractor who was trying to get ahead in this home base retail chain. His favorite thing to do was hang out and shoot the bull at the Contractor desk while i busted my ass.

- The Management always tried to do more with less people. One of the biggest complaints customers had was they couldn't find anyone to help them. Here's why:

In each department there was supposed to be two people on the floor. Especially on weekends. Considering how large the place was, even this is understaffed. My most "Fond" weekend memory was working Building materials and Lumber BY MYSELF. There's supposed to be 4 people on this saturday. Nope, just me. So i had to bounce around from
1 getting price checks because the girls at the registers had no idea what they were looking at.
2 cutting window glass for customers
3 cutting lumber for customers
4 answering any "how to" questions from customers.
5 haul whatever the contractor desk asks for to the front
6 "Face" the shelves AND the lumber (see bitchy the 8th dwarf)
7 check price stickers on the racks
8 sweep crap off the floor
9 spot for, or run the fork lift

ANd I had to do this ALL at once. Being pulled in 9 different directions at once, I quite literally froze in place for several seconds wondering if i was about to have a nervious breakdown. Before I had reached that point I had quickly found that i could get from one end of the store to the other by going down the VERY BACK row without getting intercepted by someone. It's not that I didn't want to help or teach people how to do stuff, I did, and I enjoyed it, I just had too much to do.

After that saturday, I gave them my notice. On that notice, they burned me, by remarking "said retail was too stressful" to make sure I could never get another job . Seeings how they are no longer in business, I had the last laugh.

[Stealhead]

I never really had a bad job.The worst "assignment" I ever had was in the Air Force "paint prep" you had to prep machinery for paint so removing all of the panels,doors,plexiglass then you had to cover up any exposed parts.The bad part was the sanding I had to wear one of those"bunny suits" and a respirator mask and gloves and we had to tape up every opening.Then you stood there and used an air sander all day.

It got very tiring those damn bunny suits and breathing though a mask all day gets very hot and uncomfortable.Then your hand and wrist gets numb from the sander.To top it all off they sand paper pads where really soft grit so you had to press really hard to get any effect and they only lasted about 30 seconds so you had to constantly change out paper.After an hour or two you get paint flakes all over the points where you tapped up like around your neck and that just made you feel ever more like you where in a blast furnace.When the day was done and take off the bunny suit there are these bands of paint flakes at the point where you taped off.The bright side was that you only got stuck doing this wonderful detail for 2 moths.

What was stupid to me is they had hired contractors to do the actual paint why they did not just contract the pros to also do the prep work is beyond me.Waste of taxpayer dollars to take a person away from their trained specialty to do something they are not trained to do.

I know guys that do the same job on ships only they also apply new paint as well as remove the old they have it much worse.I here that it gets so hot according to OSHA you can only be in the suits and up inside the hull for a certain amount of time.Of course the employers want the guys to do it longer than that.This guy said that once they made a worker stay too long and he a heat stroke.Not me you tell me to do something like that I would simply refuse to do it especially when it violates the law.

[fireftr18]

Originally Posted by WernherVonTrapp

Maybe I'm different in this respect, but I never considered any job I've had to be "the worst". I always felt blessed to have a job and I've never had more than 2 weeks of unemployment between full-time jobs. My first job was at the age of 10 where I sorted the Sunday Papers for a couple of hours at a local Deli for the sum of $1.00.00. When I was 16, I worked part time (summer work) in a local lumber yard.
Right out of High School, I worked 6 days a week (full time) at a Church owned cemetary for about 2.5 years (guess how much the church pays?).

The most physically demanding job I had was when I worked for a Municipal Water utility company full time. There, I worked my way up the ladder from manually digging ditches and using a Jack-Hammer to being a senior plumber. I was then in charge of the workmen under me who did the digging I once did. During this full-time job with the municipal utility company, I also worked part-time both as a Tiler and Landscaper. I would work at the water company from 7:30 to 3:30pm, drive to my part-time landscaping job and continue working until about 9:30 to 10:00pm at night. On my days off (Sat. Sun., holidays, vacation days), I did my part-time work as an assistant to a Tiler from 8:00 to 4:00pm. One year, between full & part time work, I worked full time every day of the year w/o a single day off (except Xmas).
I always felt blessed/thankful to have a job when others didn't, no matter how hard my work was.
As a municipal water worker, I had been inside most of the homes/businesses in the three major cities of Paterson, Passaic and Clifton New Jersey. I got to see how some people lived, in homes where I could see sunlight through the cracks in their walls in the dead of winter, graffiti sprayed across kitchen walls and refrigerators, homes heated with a box-fan on the door of their kitchen oven, ottomans pushed together to form a bed. After seeing all that, I found it hard to complain about anything ever again.

Oh yeah, after all this, I also worked for over 25 years as a law enforcement officer. I saw enough during my tenure as a cop to realize, nobody should complain about their lives.

Amen, brother! Likewise here. The job in the store really wasn't what I would call a bad job. Only a few years experience on the fire dept did I realize how petty the constant rushing around in the store was. And I can say the same thing as your experience as a municipal water worker and law enforcement officer. Wern and I have seen so much bad, and stupid, that most people find it difficult to believe it. Some movies have tried to copy reality, but the reality is, the movie wouldn't be able to qualify for an "R" rating. They can't even get close for TV.

[WernherVonTrapp]

Originally Posted by fireftr18

Amen, brother! Likewise here. The job in the store really wasn't what I would call a bad job. Only a few years experience on the fire dept did I realize how petty the constant rushing around in the store was. And I can say the same thing as your experience as a municipal water worker and law enforcement officer. Wern and I have seen so much bad, and stupid, that most people find it difficult to believe it. Some movies have tried to copy reality, but the reality is, the movie wouldn't be able to qualify for an "R" rating. They can't even get close for TV.

It's funny that, even working for the municipal water company, we worked closely with the fire departments from various cities. The worst part was having to drive around, shutting off the fire hydrants during the hot summer months. The crowds that were using them to cool off would hurl rocks, bottles or sticks at us. It got so bad sometimes that we would be running around with FD shutting hydrants down. Some of the FD guys got assaulted as well as our own.

Then there were the scary times, when FD would call us to shut down the service lines during "working incidents". I got to one scene, parts of the house were still burning, other areas smoldering, home partially collapsed and the FD commander on the scene was looking at me with a grin. I swallowed hard and asked; "Are you certain it's safe to go in there?"
He just nodded his head without the slightest change in facial expression. I had to put on hip-waders to access the basement, shut the valves and pull the meter. That was freaky.

[antikristuseke]

Probably my previous security job for then atural sciences buildign of the Tallinn University of Technology. Terrible hours, some 24h shifts with no rest time and the pay was attrocious, minimum wage with no overtime. The only benefit from there was gettign my qualification which was instrumental to gettign the job I have now.
I once did a 48h, no sleep, shift there because a coworker simply dissapeared for a coupel of weeks on a drinking binge. That job almost broke me in a year.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Work as a fetish like it is today, and work-related diseases and burnout as a status symbol? Our society is sick, I say. We were not born to serve factories' needs. Again my advise: work as much as you must, check your demands on living standards and see if you can tweak them and still be happy, do not work more than necessary, as long as you do not really love your job. No man on Earth has any claims to make for you and has no demand that you should serve his interests, as long as you do not live at his costs and do not spend what is his.

And if you do not know what to do with your time if you must not work, and have no interests of yourself, then you have a big problem, me thinks, and you may want to talk with a counselor on that.

Time when you are happy and are absorbed by what interests you, is living time well spent. May be hobby, may be work on your farm, may even be your profession if you are lucky, may be whatever it is. Time when you count the seconds until your shift is over is a waste of life. Maybe needed to make your living, but nothing that gives meaning to your life. Cut it as short as you can afford, for you will not get back that time.

We may not see eye to eye on a few things, Sky, but I can't disagree with you on this at all. After all, at the end of the day, you can't take it with you.

In regards to me and jobs, honestly, I've only been in three different paid jobs, and whilst none of them have been particularly earth-shattering they've also not been terrible, so I mustn't grumble.

[soopaman2]

My second most horrifying job I ever held was as a tele marketer, thought it would be an easy gig selling PBA stickers.

I got a talking to on the first day, when I didn't Rebut (or push my sleazy sticker.) to people who sounded obviously older then dirt, who stated nicely, "I am on a fixed income"

I was yelled at the first day, Despite me selling 1k$ worth of the stupid stickers the next day, I was fired for not giving rebuttals on all my calls. They expect constant pressure, and I felt like dirt pushing on the elderly, as most of the calls I did were.

I was expected to be heartless, and couldn't do it.

I quit and went and earned my CDL, that crap job showed me that I better go and learn something, other than pot smoking and bar hopping.