What's the worse job you ever held?

Unloading box cars at a lumber yard.

It would be really interesting to hear why it was the worst job as well.

For me, it was being a lifeguard because it was the most boring job I’ve ever held. It required sitting in a stand constantly on the lookout for someone in peril. Another worst job had nothing to do with the job, but having to report to someone who was inept at management.

I don’t think I have had a really ‘crappy’ job. All have had their downsides but none have been totally ‘crappy’. I worked in a shoe shop once and while I didn’t much like being around smelly feet, I loved the people I worked with and it gave me some financial independence as a young person. Similarly I cleaned a chip shop for a while, not lovely work – but I did it with my best friend so it was fun.

The worst working experience I had was when I did a temporary job for an oil company for about a year. I worked in a beautiful building and had my own office for a while but some of the people were awful! Some of them would speak in French when I was the only other person there which was so isolating and very rude in my opinion. I never felt accepted or part of the team. They always made it clear I was the ‘casual’. Very unfriendly place and I was very glad when that job ended.

My colleagues and I were talking about coffee the other day and I figure things can always be worse. I could be the person who has to pick the coffee beans out of the Asian Palm Civet’s shit after it has passed them. There is always a worse job!

I worked in the candy department in a department store. This was back when the candy was in bins and you scooped it out to weigh it and bag it. The bad thing was that there was also a pet store within the department store that sold mice and gerbils. They would get out of their cages and get into the candy and leave their droppings. My manager wanted me to go ahead and sell the candy since most of it was chocolate and “no one would notice.” I told a customer who called the health department.

@Bellatrix For myself the worst things about working in shoe sales or women’s clothing was the unrealistic views of female shoppers. I worked in the men’s department and they were 99 percent easier to sell too than women. Women go in to a store with unrealistic ideas of what they want to purchase for their money, and unrealistic ideas about what their actual size is. That is why you can’t find clothing in real sizes any longer. A size 4 is about a 6 now and a 6 is an 8, and an 8 is a 10 or sometimes a 12. But when I was working there was no false sizes. As for shoes women can send you back 50 times to look for a shoe and leave them thrown all about the place and then decide they like the very first shoe. Many also like to simply browse shoes without any real intent of buying and don’t consider that they take up your time away from real shoppers. Of course now, most stores are open floor plans so its probably not as bad as today. Back then, the people working shoes got commission.

Chocolate ashtray manufacturer, I mean come on!!

Haymow duty when the barn started to get full of hay and someone had to go up and throw the bales to the side so we could get more hay in the barn. Hay cures for a while after it’s baled. It produces heat and humidity. On a hot day the mow gets up to 130 degrees F and about 110 percent humidity. A wagon holds around 250 50 pound bales of hay (my father and grandfather kept them smaller for me, because I was 10 to 12 at the time). That was rough.

Through most of high school, I worked Saturdays at a full-service gas station my dad ran on the side. I was there from 7 AM to 7 PM. “Full service” in those days meant that every car got all windows washed at a minimum, plus fluid levels and tire pressure checked if asked. Between pumping, we hand-washed cars inside and out (vacuuming, floor mats, trunk, damp wash dash, clean inside windows…), fixed flats, changed oil, etc.

For that, I got $20 and all the pop I could drink.

This is a tough one to answer for me. Working as a technician at a plastic recycling facilty, the augers above the wash tanks, which were very steamy and hot, would always malfunction during the hottest damn days. They would run like champs in the winter though, when it would had been nice to have been up there. Working as a technician at an egg processing facility was no picnic either, considering that you had to work in temperature extremes ranging from 120 to -45 degrees, and that you were usually soaked. orking at the Christmas tree farm as a teen was no picnic either.

I was a clerk at a Christian bookstore. A Christian bookstore…... probably a decent, God-fearing boss, right? One would think. One of the worst bosses I ever had. He flat out threatened to fire me if I went to an emergency doctor’s appointment. Dick.

I think I’m in it. Unlovable pay, rapidly cheapening benefits, terminally short-sighted Theory X senior management, deteriorating equipment, and more than a few customers who start by assuming that you’re trying to give them bad product and only get worse.

A previous job at a car wash is objectively worse, but I enjoyed the company and the camaraderie, and it was only on weekends anyway. The place was too small to afford benefits, and there were very few full-time positions anyway. The owner is a pretty magnanimous guy; if you were going through hard times, for instance, he’d make up more hours for you, somehow, and he was willing to employ the otherwise unemployable, provided that they did their work.
My own team was arranged like the cast to a blue-collar sitcom. There was me, the precocious kid; Darren (@jerv reminds me a lot of Darren, only with more sense and skills); Charlie, who was my dad’s age but comported himself like a 20-something; and Harudin the Bosnian immigrant. When it was slow, we’d get visited by Carlos from the other department, the jolliest guy to ever do time for battery.

A door knob factory in Sheffield when I was 14. Perhaps that’s why I ended up the way I did.

I have had so many, as I was always willing to work no matter what. But the one that sticks in my mind was while I was working in a Coffee Shoppe in a five star Hotel. Before our shift began we had to polish all the silverware which was vast, clean the mirrors and vacuum. Then drag huge cakes down from the kitchen on an upper floor. There, we were abused and shouted at by the Head Chef, who was a pink monster in a white hat.

Some girls in frustration stuck their fingers in the cakes, “just to teach life a lesson” after being screamed at! We also regularly ran out of plates, spoons and cups and so on, when the theater goers busted in. Which we ended up standing washing in a lousy tiny kitchenette. But worse of all, there was the Manager. I’ll call him Mr Rotten. He would insult us. He called us names, humiliated us, and even asked me why I was a pervert. I was in a relationship with a woman at the time.

To top it all the tips were lousy, and before leaving home, we vacuumed cleaned up and polished again. For the next shift.

In later years, I became very successful for quite an extended time, and one day whilst buying my regular supply of Dior Perfume, I saw the security guard at the door of the store. Mr Rotten!!! I whisked past him, asking him if he was still as Rotten as ever, and did he still insult people so?? He was quite taken aback, but it felt so good!!