What was your worst job?

I had a temp job at a Nordstroms warehouse. There was a long rack of clothes coming through that were covered in plastic. I sat in the same place pulling the plastic off as the gaudy clothes passed by. The static electricity was nuts and I got shocked every time I pulled the plastic off. Six bucks a hour and they searched us when we left work everyday.

Working the night shift at Kentucky Fried Chicken. Pay sucked and hours sucked and location sucked.. Clean up and shutdown were a part of the duties. We did not have big fancy equipment and had to hand wash the fry pots out and dispose of the oils every evening as part of the cleanup.

But it was not all bad. We had a schedule set upwith several other businesses and would trade buckets of chicken for Burgers on Monday, Pizza on Tuesday, Tacos on Wednesday, etc. so we ate well and, just because they bugged the crap out of us, we would throw the flies buzzing around our heads into the batter, fry them up and serve them with the crispies to those late night people with the munchies who irritated or insulted the cashiers or if we knew and did not like them.

And, we got to cut up chickens with a band saw.

EW!

I haven’t had a lot of jobs, so maybe I don’t have a lot to compare it too, but my first babysitting job was worse than any “real” job I’ve had.
Diapers. A cranky mother who forgot to pay me half the time. Creepy neighbors. And I’m just saying that I never agreed to clean up after her too, but I ended up being asked to do that half the time too.
To me.. “Can you babysit today?” Means watching the kid, not cleaning your house.
Plus, I was yelled at if she called me at the last minute and I already had plans. God forbid that a teenager should have a life outside of her house. Sigh. This was several years ago, but it still annoys me.

What a shame! I’m sorry you went through that. All my babysitting experiences were good, except the time I was asked to watch a kid a couple of hours for a friend of a friend. I never met her before. She brought her little boy to my house. I didn’t see her again for three days. I was really furious when I learned one of those days was his second birthday! She had left town to meet up with her boyfriend who was with a rodeo.
I screamed at her. I told her to just go the heck back to the rodeo, and I’d keep the kid. Wow, I was so mad. I know now I should have called the cops. Back then I was a teen who someone took advantage of. I didn’t understand the law could have fixed it for the poor boy.

A factory job where I tested the seals on plastic containers for pet food…over and over and over and over…..bleh. It was noisy and hot and my brain near went numb.

For a short time in high school, I was a clerk in a ladies’ ready-to-wear shop. I had to punch in and out on a time clock, lunch “hour” was 30 minutes, the pay was minimum wage, which in those days was $1.25/hr., and the manager was a putz (a poker pal of my dad, who had finagled me and my best friend the job). My job? I sold underwear, what was called “foundation garments” in those long-ago days.

I don’t think I have had a worst job. I’ve worked in some lousy conditions. Throwing hay bales in the mow in the heat of summer was pretty crappy. The hay gives off humidity as it cures. 130 degrees F and humid isn’t fun. But my father always met me when I came out with the ice water.

I was a server at Applebee’s during my senior year of high school. It was my worst job by far. Why?

…the work? Yes. Customer service and dealing with people and their food? No thanks.

…the people? Yes. Both the customers and my co-workers sniffing coke in the bathroom and constantly having sex with each other.

…the pay? Good lord yes. $2.19/hr in 2008? It should be a crime.

…the boss? Yes. What a narcissistic jerk.

…the rules? Yes. They made me take out my nose ring – it’s APPLEBEE’S, not a 5-star restaurant. If what’s-his-face behind the bar can have a sleeve tattoo, I can have a nose ring. Also, giving a portion of my pitiful tips to the bartender even if he didn’t prepare a single drink for me all night.

…the uniform? Yes. Well, I must admit I looked pretty good in it, but it was a pain nonetheless.

…something else? Oh, so many more things!

It’s not even on my resume. The only thing I got out of that job was that I’m a much better customer now that I’ve been on the other side of the table.

I worked for about a year in a retirement system for county and district employees. The boss was tyrannical, controlling, petty and mean-spirited; and that was on a good day.

The work itself largely comprised mind-numbing clerical work, but the mind begged to be numbed in that environment.

Far and away the worst part of the job was taking a phone call from a recently widowed man or woman to advise them that their dearly departed had not chosen the retirement benefit that extended to the surviving spouse. “I’m very sorry to tell you, sir, that Mrs. Smith elected all benefits cease at her death.” Yeah, that pretty much sucked.

@picante Not on topic but why the hell would someone do that to their spouse or whomever?

I have had quite a few jobs from flipping burger at a burger joint to one of my favs was working at the Limited Womens clothing store….THAT was a cool job working with all the pretty ladies but what is it with women who shop for clothes??? Super slobs just tossing clothes all over then damn store!? Anyway…I never had a job that sucked some were hard but I always learned something new.

The only “job” that was really crappy was when I had my waterproofing contracting company…was the repair job at a municipal waster water digester tank I had to do repairs on. Being on site at a WW treatment facility in July took a bit of getting used to. Yuck, yuck, yuck. The job only lasted 6 weeks but made some good coin on that job.

I worked in a cannery processing shrimp in Alaska. I would spend 8 hours standing in cold water over my ankles wearing boots.

@Adirondackwannabe—I was always shocked when I received these types of calls. I can only imagine that the spouses probably didn’t communicate around financial matters; or perhaps, the employee didn’t fully realize the ramifications of the election when it was made. Perhaps the person thought he/she would survive the other—who knows. It was “stunning” to me. And the person on the phone was most often female, elderly and now widowed. And she would cry. It was truly heart-breaking.

@picante That has to be one of the worst messages to give to someone. Yes Mrs Smith, I’m sorry you just lost your lifelong partner. Oh and you also lost all of their support too. God people, use your heads and plan.

I am tempted to cite when I was a cook at KFC (we got the chicken already in pieces), but I am going to go with being a cord-board operator for the phone company. Not that the job didn’t suck enough, but I was working split shifts, so I would come to work at 7am, work till 11am, then come back at 3pm and work till 7pm. That makes for a long, boring day.

Working in a crab factory at age 17, shelling crab legs from huge tubs filled with ice.
You placed the crab leg on an anvil and whacked the end off with a little hammer and then had to pound your hand on the edge of a tub to try and slide the leg meat out whole. Very painful on the side of your hand and you were docked for broken leg meat that could not be sold as whole crab legs.
My boss was a pervert too, this was waaay back in about 1975–6 and he would come up behind me and put his arm around my waist or hand on my hips and pretend to be watching me when it was obvious he was copping a feel. Gah!

I lasted 3 weeks….fuck that! haha

@Coloma Maybe he just liked the way you smelled after a day of crab whacking?

@Adirondackwannabe Oh he liked something, no doubt. haha

Kinda lends a whole new meaning to the term “Fishmonger.” lol

@Coloma, I think you should have turned around and just handed a few of those legs to him.. I hear that when you give a guy crabs he doesn’t want anything to do with you anymore. You were young though, you probably didn’t know that.
@filmfann,, GAWD! Those hours would leave you virtually no life!
There are some real crappy jobs here, but having to repeatedly break the hearts of grieving widow(er)s is just asking too much.

Oh, I forgot about my short stint as a dog bather at a grooming salon too.
I was given this massive, 200 lb. Newfoundland dog to shave before his bath. I sat of the floor shaving this monster dog for 2 hours, buried in black dog hair up to my waist. Jesus….it was horrible. haha

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAA! Wish I could have seen that! :-D
Did the dog appreciate your work?

^^^ Thank God he was a mellow dog, I think he felt better after his de-fleecing of about 30lbs. of dog wool. lol

I worked for a small town newspaper once. There was a very senior lady in the office who was just horrible. Plus it appeared everyone wanted to keep the place running the way it did in the 60’s. I was in charge of classified ads. My tools were Word and a hard copy of a dictionary. There was also an index card in the desk that had commonly misspelled words written on it. They got bent out of shape when I started using dictionary.com.

Also, when I took payments I was expected to calculate the totals and the percentages by hand and write it all down in an old, 60’s style, long green ledger. They got upset when I set up Excel to do it all automatically.

I was to send out letters to various companies and people who had advertised with us in the past, inviting them to advertise again. They got upset when I created a master letter and just tweaked it to personalize it for whomever I was EMAILING it to. I was supposed to fax it to them.

At one point the horrible lady said, so I could hear, “She doesn’t know her place. She’ll find out real quick.” The whole thing was so awful I would just come home and cry.

@Jonesn4burgers that is absolutely crazy! She just left her child with a stranger for several days? >:(

Cold calling to sell tickets to see Bozo The Clown for some fundraiser.

I had a searing hangover.

I lasted one day.

@Dutchess_III, but of course, you see now that they were forward thinking, and knew the internet was going to end the newspaper business. They HAD to hold on to antiquated ways as long as possible.
@AshLeigh, not only that, when she paid me, it was like ten bucks. She kissed his cheek and said,“So now you’re two, huh?” When I blew up at her, she told me to mind my own business, told me I was just a kid, and what did I know? I could so strangle her if I met her now.
@SecondHandStoke UGH! cold calling….. for money. I did it one day too. When people told me off I said, “I know. I’m sorry.”, then hung up.

Dude. That’s jacked.

They have an online edition @Jonesn4burgers. I see now that they were like a lot of older people, including my ex-boss, mistrustful of new technology.

That poor kid @Jonesn4burgers. I wonder what ever became of him?

Mine pale in comparison, and this is why I know:

One time we were talking about crappy jobs where I worked. We worked through some people who had mildly crappy jobs. One guy finally speaks up and said that he once working a a meat possessing plant and he quit after a short while when he was given the job of squeezing the poop out of the hog intestines. We quizzed him for quite a while, and he stuck to the story.

Game, and match.

My best job included my worst moments, and involved a time when poop stew went in my mouth.

@Dutchess_III, I’ve wondered sometimes. I don’t even remember their names. I think she was leaving town with him when she picked him up. I was a teen, and in shock over her indifference. Things did not occur to me at the time. He might be a rodeo god now.

Working at a fast food restaurant and telemarketing. No bueno.

@ibstubro Never heard of chitlins?

@ibstubro, wouldn’t that just be, kinda, like practice?

Are Chitlins baby chits?

Yeah think of it that way C. :)

I never pictured a person squeezing the poop out by hand, @Adirondackwannabe.

Actually, I think that conversation came up at work in the Deviled Ham factory. There had been a glitch in the can-wrapping machine. Every so often a can would catch and that would pop open the top slightly. They ran pallets before it was discovered – perhaps as much as a day. It was summer, probably about 100° f in the warehouse and our job was to re-palletize the pallets, setting off any cases covered in maggots.

Oh,and there was the job phone soliciting for the mortuary, selling pre-arranged funerals. It was bad enough when we were calling the people who had received a mailer, but when those lists ran out we just cold-called the retirement homes.

Nothing like starting in on your spiel and having the person on the other end burst out crying because their ‘dearly’ had only been ‘departed’ a few days.

Mmmm…deviled ham with maggots. Ugh!
Nothing and I mean NOTHING is more disgusting than maggots! shiver, cringe, gag!

Deviled Ham
Maggots

How big was the difference? Lower salt content!

Dancing for men in private rooms. I handed them a small towel when they were done masturbating.

Do I win?

@turtlesandbox I am going to have to have personal experience with this before I can award you the number 1 spot.

call me.

annd….we have the wieners! ^^^
VIP dancer and customer envy.
Kinda lends a whole new meaning to “throwing in the towel.”

Hey!

Weiners are people and have feelings too you know!

and get your own towel!

Weeeee have, taken a rather dark turn now. Anybody want to liven things up with; being accused of stealing office supplies or something?
@turtlesandbox, you are definately in the top five, top three if they all act like that
BACK! BACK YOU BREYING HOUNDS!

Lets see. I worked at a fast food joint in St. Louis called Zantigo’s serving Mexican food.

One of the shift managers was an ex-football player with anger issues. He was generally good to the employees, but let a customer get smart with one of us, and he’d walk right up and say, “HEY BUDDY! You want me to come over this come over this fargin counter and wipe the floor with your fargin arss!!?” Or, “You wanna get SMART about us not having FRIES you fargin icehole! I’ll come out that back door, yank you our of the fargin car and beat your fargin face bloody!” I changed the curse words.

I was young, so it was actually pretty funny at the time. His boss, the store manager, was a Mormon. Talk about us getting culture shock!

@turtlesandbox You could be the person that has to clean the rooms after a day of hard action.

@ibstubro Wow! That would sure leave a person conflicted by the end of a day! On the other hand, way to have a guy’s back!

I’d have to say my worst job that comes to mind was when I was training to become an Adjuster for Auto and Home claims. I had been working for maybe a week and had all kinds of phone calls. One was on Hail damage to someone’s auto and home. The worst call was from a women who had hit a little boy in her car as he ran across the street. His ball had bounced across the road as she was driving home. He survived but broke his legs. I can’t remember much about that call accept the women was crying on the phone and said she was having nightmare’s about the accident. I didn’t last much longer on the job. It was too emotional for me to leave work at work. The job became very stressful.

@SnoopyGirl, wow. That’s harsh. Here, have a marg a marur margae
have a screwdriver and relax. :-)

Writing my dissertation. I was obsessing to the point where I couldn’t sleep or eat. My professor/ mentor and I were giving a series of lectures around the globe at the same time I was writing what was published as a textbook.

I had to see a psychiatrist for about 8 months in order to reacclimate back into the mundane world. Now (years later) I’m thinking it might have been my best job… I am so confused.

@herculies, I feel you! My first attempt at writing was a simple fiction project. I didn’t have NEAR the pressure you experienced. I did some research, put an ad in the local newspaper querying for persons qualified to interview for my research. That was pretty low pressure. I was interviewing war vets for a firsthand take on certain experiences. I got ONE reply. He spoke with me to tell me that if anybody was willing to talk, they would probably lie, because anyone who saw real action won’t want to talk. He had been injured. LOL, when I asked him where, meaning geography, he said in the butt. He said most guys got shot there, because when they get their heads down, the butt would sometimes still be sticking up.
When I got busy writing, I was DRIVEN. I wrote all day. I fell asleep writing. Sometimes I woke up to find scrawl where I continued to try to write after I fell asleep. I had myself in a place where my mind was playing tricks on me, trying to make fiction realistic. I had dreams which were frightening, motorcycle gangs bursting through the walls and such. When I no longer was fooled by those dreams, they morphed. I would wake up from the dream, drive to my friend’s house to tell her how freaked out I was. Her face would suddenly melt. Then I woud wake up for real, bathed in sweat. It got worse, waking three and four times before it was real. I had to shelve the project, and wait years before any new real attempt.
I’m glad your project came out well. Pacing the work is very important. It sounds like you got some good help. I’m glad. I just kind of dealt with things on my own.

@Jonesn4burgers Wow! Did you finish your book?

Nope. I scrapped it. I have lots of other projects in the works now. One fantstic idea which I am not, never will be qualified to write.
I have the first two books of a pocket paperback trilogy written, HAND written. I need to get them out there, but I was brain damaged in an accident over a decade ago. I can’t process information well from print. I don’t know how to e publish. I need a friend/someone who can walk me through it so I can get published.
My impairment has made me afraid of computers. Fluther gives me a place to go where my computer is a conversation hub rather than insructions. It has helped me a lot with feeling more comfortable with my laptop.

I wish you well, with all my heart. Find an agent is the only advice I can give.

THANKS! :-)