Worst Job You Ever Had

Working for a car wash on weekends in HS. In the winter
I would stand for 8 hours at 10 above zero and operate
a power washer on the front bumper. My pants were frozen
solid. One time after standing for all that time, when I finally
sat down and drove home, I got such a bad charlyhorse in
my upper right leg when I stood up, I thought I would die.
Absolute worst pain I ever had, it lasted for 20min and I
couldn't move. But I went back the next weekend.

Also in HS, been promised a semi-decent part-time construction job. Turned out to be hauling trash, very part-time, took 2 hours, got paid for 1 (and at min wage). That was the beginning and the end of it.

Loading boxcars with freight in the middle of the summer in HS. Nearly killed me.

Too many and to ashamed to detail. Finally made it....

Working in a junkyard in Houston during the summer - outside for 8 hrs a day and lifting car doors 4 feet above your head. Not to mention dealing with the wasps and bees who made nests in those car doors. I did lose 20 lbs that summer though...
-B

Working at a large call center in a large bank/insurance company dedicated to military and their families. I was in the bank. Despite being the fastest call handle time and having the most loans on the team, and in the top 5 on the floor, they always were on me for something. Either it was not "cross-selling" to people with no need and no money or just not doing the 10-step "call flow" system when someone just wanted to get down to business.

Handling call after call is boring and repetitive but lots of work is that. What is bad is when you are forced to be a total robot about the thing. So many people hated it. I was driven to near clinical-depression, as were many people there. One guy missed work at least a day a week for over a month. He near exhausted his PTO. He usually missed mondays, the busiest day. Sayd, "AZD, I have to come in this monday, no way I will call off!" I said, "yeah, right. Enjoy 'TPIR.'" He swears he will come in. Monday comes and an empty chair in the next pod. I see him thursday (I was off T-W) and all I have to do is look at him. He just starts giggling about the whole thing.

I wasn't that bad at that point, but 6 months later I call off. My roommate asks why I didn't go to work.

"".......because I ..........didn't feel like it," came the reply.

The brainwashing was so huge. They would tell us how nice the office was. They would tell us we had free, covered parking (big there like in LV!), how we had a nice cafateria, on and on and on. When you were hired they spend THREE DAYS on just telling you all of this stuff. Three days! One guy told me the brainwashing there was the same level the Army used in basic training.

A year later I was doing a "survival job" delivering packages with no benefits and no guaranteed base, and I was happier!

Second worse job was working the clean up crew in a big
hotel the year I got ouf of HS. This was a 100 year old
hotel and was the biggest and best in my city. You really
can't understand how a hotel works until you work for
one.

They had three basements, where all the food is cooked and
laundry is done. No air in those days so it was always
90 down there. Its a small city of workers and passageways
and they gave us the most awful and dirtiest jobs they had.

The worst was a marine came back from Vietnam and
found out his girlfriend had dumped him, so he got a
room and blew his brains out in the bathtub with his
.45.. What a frigging mess, and who had to clean it up?
An 18 year old kid named me, who else.

I have worked a lot of lousy jobs, but the only job I ever woke up upset I had to go into work is when I worked at Starbucks!

Cookie factory. Cookies... cookies, EVERYwhere... *goes pouting in the corner, curled into a ball*

Quote: ewjones080

Cookie factory. Cookies... cookies, EVERYwhere... *goes pouting in the corner, curled into a ball*

Hey, I worked in a cookie factory for 2 years when I was
putting myself thru college, 3rd shift. The place smelled
like sugar, we made suger wafers for all the big companies.
Great job, did my assigned work, got done at 4am and hid
in the basement for 3 hours and took a nap. All the cookies
I wanted, but that didn't last long. That stuff stops being
food to you real fast.

What got to me was there were people who had worked
there for 40 years. It was a horribly boring job, mostly
line work, boxing cookies. I was on the sanitation crew,
clean the machines for the day shift. You'd have to be
brain dead to work there 40 years, thats just nuts.

I was once a telemarketer. Enough said.

More recently, I was on a particularly miserable cruise ship contract about three years ago...my bosses seemed to openly despise me for no apparent reason and my fellow musicians failed to support me in any way (I had been "promoted" to musical director after the old one had to leave, due to a rather suspiciously timed family emergency). But like all ships, I still had free food and living space, so I guess I can't complain too much.

Quote: OneAngryDwarf

I was once a telemarketer. Enough said.

More recently, I was on a particularly miserable cruise ship contract about three years ago...my bosses seemed to openly despise me for no apparent reason and my fellow musicians failed to support me in any way

Why was it like that, do you think. What was the reason
nobody liked you. Those are petty strange working conditions.
Were you the captains son or something?

Well, it wasn't that NOBODY liked me, my band was a good bunch of guys all around, but they were not very understanding regarding certain policies that had been put in place. I agreed that they were unfair and capricious rules, and I tried my best to explain as much to management while nicely asking the guys to just suck it up in the meantime. I wound up getting the worst of it from both sides.

It didn't help that musicians on a ship are almost always perceived as "lazy" because we are only scheduled to play around 5 hours a day, while most of the other crewmembers work 10-12 hours per day. Nevermind that they receive tips from guests and we don't, or that becoming a waiter or stateroom attendant takes a few weeks of training at most while we have to sacrifice and spend at least 10 YEARS studying our instruments before we can even think about getting such a gig...I was essentially punished just for being in the profession I was in.

I'd be lying if I claimed to be a completely innocent victim in this case...I lost my temper a few times and could've done a much better job of handling things. But I was 23 years old at the time and still trying to figure a lot of things out. It was painful at the time, but now I can look back on it as a learning experience...

Worst job: Being a secret administrator on this forum. Job pays nothing and I have to read every asinine post.

Quote: buzzpaff

Worst job: Being a secret administrator on this forum. Job pays nothing and I have to read every asinine post.

Ban yourself for 3 days for besmirching the secret mod program.

You're not being paid? I've been promised all I can eat at Heart
Attack Grill next time I'm in Vegas.

Worst job I ever had was the same profession I am in, but at a different organization. 12-14 hour days, 6 days a week. Get a day off? Get called at noon saying they need you anyhow. Sick? Sorry, we can't spare you, work or don't come back. Then, when you hit bonus levels for two or three months in a row, they get escalated; they were "too low, too easy". Finally I was told by the controller that "Mr Wallace doesn't believe his F&I people are worth that much, that's why the pay stays the same no matter what you generate."

I quit, and ever since then I've loved what I do because I don't get screwed with. Screw with me, I quit, simple as that. And I can quit because I'm damn good at what I do. I can pick up the phone and have another seat in 5 minutes.

Quote: EvenBob

Ban yourself for 3 days for besmirching the secret mod program.

You're not being paid? I've been promised all I can eat at Heart
Attack Grill next time I'm in Vegas.

SHHH I am already on double secret probation.

Quote: NicksGamingStuff

I have worked a lot of lousy jobs, but the only job I ever woke up upset I had to go into work is when I worked at Starbucks!

Haha that is awesome. I was going to say the exact same thing!!! It's the only job I have ever walked out of. I still hate that place

Wow, that's surprising. Every Starbucks employee I've ever encountered has been super-friendly. They can't all hide their misery that well...can they?

Regardless, fast-food jobs do indeed suck...worked a refreshment stand at an amusement park when I was 16 one summer and that was enough for me. Definitely another learning experience...

I'm sure there are many people that are happy to be a Starbucks employee. I wasn't mad at the company. It was mostly my boss, the low pay, the fact that my hands smelled like coffee no matter if I was working or not, and the 5% of dicks that I hated. I worked there at high school and decided making 7 bucks an hour wasnt worth waking at 5 am on weekends and dealing with my boss and the 5% to bring home 120 bucks a week

Edit... Before working at Starbucks a was a bag boy at a grocery store and it was great. If it paid 20 bucks an hour I would still be there haha

Quote: EvenBob

Hey, I worked in a cookie factory for 2 years when I was
putting myself thru college, 3rd shift. The place smelled
like sugar, we made suger wafers for all the big companies.
Great job, did my assigned work, got done at 4am and hid
in the basement for 3 hours and took a nap. All the cookies
I wanted, but that didn't last long. That stuff stops being
food to you real fast.

What got to me was there were people who had worked
there for 40 years. It was a horribly boring job, mostly
line work, boxing cookies. I was on the sanitation crew,
clean the machines for the day shift. You'd have to be
brain dead to work there 40 years, thats just nuts.

There are some jobs that aren't bad. We made sandwhich cookies like Oreos. The line next to me, all the guy did would take flat boxes, open them, slide em onto the machine for packages to be loaded. Looked pretty laid back most of the time. (Plus he had probably been there 20 years)

For the smoothest running product I had, if it had been that the entire time, it would've been super easy. One shift that's all we ran, and I only had to get up once or twice for eight hours to fix something.

The worst product had crappy cellophane. The auto loader would load two boxes at once, but if it wasn't lined up PERFECT, the bottom layer would be slightly off, causing the rest to get more and more crooked and I would have to fix em. Packages would break, which would have to get dumped. I'd have to take dozens of boxes off, while folding lids, and loading new boxes. Just so much to do, that I would be running around the ENTIRE time we ran the product.

In 1976, I was in High School, working evenings at Gino's. It was a fast food hambuger place with over 300 locations on the east coast. They eventually got sold and turned into Roy Rogers. According to Wikipedia, that happened in 1982, but the original owners have recently gotten into the fast food business again, and are again using the Gino's name.

Anyway, Gino's also sold Kentucky Fried Chicken, before KFC got their own chain going. I was a chicken cook. All-in-all, it wasn't bad.

The horrible part was marinading the chicken. FYI: The Colonel's 11 secret spices are mostly (entirely?) in the marinade. The process was simple, Take two cases of chickens (which came in bags of two chickens each) and put the parts into a garbage barrell sized container, fill with water and the marinade mix, and attach an air pump to mix it for an hour. Afterwards, dump the chicken parts into a basin to drain, and take the parts for two chickens and put them back into bags. That was the part that disgusted me. Bagging the parts. Not only were the chicken parts somewhat slimey, but there was a disturbing psychological god-like procedure of re-assembling chichen parts into chickens.

Medical intern. Hands down. No contest. Imagine going to work at 6am on Monday KNOWING the next time you'll be able to sleep is Tuesday night. You may fall asleep in a chair for a few moments during the second day. I only had to endure this for one year, as anesthesiology residencies self limited to 24 hours before the governing bodies required all residencies to. Now interns (first year out of medical school) are limited to 16 hours of continuous work.

Worst job I had was a warehouse picker, when I was made to hand label 1,000 boxes and place 1,000 licences in each of those boxes, from a sealed envelope. But that was only a few times, and paid okay for a summer job.

I've not really had any truly shitty jobs, and any of my professional jobs I've had and didn't like, I've had the opportunity to quit and move somewhere else.

I did QC for 25 years, in all that time, the worst job was doing computer circuit-baord screening/legend inks. It turns out that was not a "me" problem, rather it was a "Co." problem... that Co. was rather politely asked to leave the State, after paying some hefty fines in another division. A case of bad mgmt. and jail-time for a few including Plat Super, and VP mfg.
By that time, I had already fired them as my employer, and found work in a much better setting.

Ever been fired? I was fired twice. Once from the hotel job
because I wouldn't go with the dress code. The other was at
a steel fabricating factory. They wanted me to sit behind a
stamping machine and catch sharp aprts as the were spewed
out. It was dangerous and noisy and I refused and they fired
me. Oh no...

for three years every summer I worked as a caddie a Sahalee Country club(home of the 1998 PGA championship). I started at the age of 13 and did it till I was 15....It doesn't seem like it would be a difficult job, since many(including myself) walk golf courses all the time....But kissing country club a$$ sucked and they were rude as well....it was somewhat difficult physically especially on hot summer days when it seemed like the golf bag was bigger than you LOL....the worsts part is we had to work from 7am till 3pm and our pay was $12 plus tips.....even though this was 20 years ago....it still was very poor pay....

1) I spent 7 years at a major theme park in Southern California. (Hint:The northern-most of the SoCal parks.) Eventually got promoted to a team lead and realized how horrible it was: Little difference in pay, horribly rude guests, apathetic front-line employees, and management just as immature as the team leads. (Including me.) There we fun bits, to be sure, but some of my encounters were beyond the bounds of "bizarre."

2) I had a two-week temp assignment riding the buses for Capital Metro Austin watching field tests of new fare boxes for the buses. (To steal from "Absolutely Fabulous": I can't ride public transport. I don't have anything to wear!) Cap Metro ended up not going with the fare boxes tested, and I ended up having to file a deposition in the requisite lawsuit that followed.

'Brian

Quote: EvenBob

Ever been fired? I was fired twice. Once from the hotel job
because I wouldn't go with the dress code. The other was at
a steel fabricating factory. They wanted me to sit behind a
stamping machine and catch sharp aprts as the were spewed
out. It was dangerous and noisy and I refused and they fired
me. Oh no...

Yes, and it was the happiest day of that job, other than when I was allowed to fire a really bad employee I had wanted to get rid of from the week I was promoted.

What set me on the course of no return was when they wanted us to count inventory already on the trucks to pad profit. Very borderline ethically, and little effect. I did it one month then not again. My asst manager slipped and said we didn't do it so my boss asked if I got the memo. I didn't lie, said I got the memo. He then said, "and you still didn't do it?" I just said, "correct." You could see him drawing a logic tree in his head and his assistants and my assistant all had their jaws drop at having the balls to just say that. I tell you, it was near like in "Office Space." I got written up for it, but it was worth it. The garbage they were having us do I just could no longer live with myself.

And I know I am part of legend as I know word had to leak about it all.

I had a summer job during college working on the road crew for the township I came from.

One of the sewage treatment plants was very old school: the effluent was chopped up by machines and the liquid sludge was poured onto beds of sand under green houses to bake and dry in the hot, humid summer weather.

One week the regular employees were out, so we took their place; with pitch forks in hand we shoveled sh*t onto a conveyor which dumped it into dump trucks for removal.

The stench ... indescribable.

The billions of tiny little flies: nightmarish.

At the end of the week I had to throw out my clothes and work boots.

On a related (fecal) note: For a bit I did janitor work at the local township swimming facility, including cleaning restrooms.

One morning I walked into the men's room, mop in hand, and stared dumbfounded.

Sometime during the night, a large number of different people had taken turns defecating into a toilet, so that by the time the last guy was done, a pyramid of poo rose up over the toilet seat.

I told my boss to call the sewer dept.

Quote: SOOPOO

Medical intern. Hands down. No contest. Imagine going to work at 6am on Monday KNOWING the next time you'll be able to sleep is Tuesday night. You may fall asleep in a chair for a few moments during the second day. I only had to endure this for one year, as anesthesiology residencies self limited to 24 hours before the governing bodies required all residencies to. Now interns (first year out of medical school) are limited to 16 hours of continuous work.

Doesn't sound like the kind of person I want watching over me in the middle of the night if I'm even slightly less than fair condition. Is this done cause there just isn't enough doctors?

Quote: ewjones080

Doesn't sound like the kind of person I want watching over me in the middle of the night if I'm even slightly less than fair condition. Is this done cause there just isn't enough doctors?

It was a 'right of passage'. Google 'Libby Zion' to find out why the practice stopped.

Quote: ewjones080

Doesn't sound like the kind of person I want watching over me in the middle of the night if I'm even slightly less than fair condition. Is this done cause there just isn't enough doctors?

I always heard it was done to "toughen them up." If they are going to be a surgeon they might have to operate for 10-12 hours, or more. In an emergency like a natual disaster doctors have to keep working and working, days at a time with little or no rest. One doctor who was in a real M*A*S*H unit said he went to the OR the minute he arrived, and operated there 48 hours or more before he saw his bunk for the first time.

Even in a busy ER if you have a car accident, a drug OD, and someone with a heart attack you can't just stop for lunch or a nap. You don't go home just because your shift is over.

It is a hard job, lots of stress. Gotta see who will fall by the wayside fast.

When I was in High School I worked part time at a hospital, writing COBOL and RPG. Miserable.