Whats the worst job you've ever had ?

[Guest]

All jobs I have done on various customer services at Croatian Telecom operators.That was the helldesk.

Debt collecting on Park Hill flats! You must be one tough cookie.

 

Actually i did debt collecting also. It was challenging and fun

Edited April 14, 2016 by Guest

[gomgeg]

17 yrs old, selling cleaning products over the phone to golf clubs!!! - Lasted until dinner time and never went back..

 

It was me and four big sweaty blokes in a tiny office that smelled of feet and BO...

 

GROSS

Didn't they ask you to have a shower Chelle?

Only joking, couldn't resist it.

[glenys]

I worked in a plastic welding company for only a few months in the late 1980s. I had been employed as a printer, only to find out that the printer had decided to stay, so I was moved into the "welding" room, assembling ring binders on a machine that gave me a large static electric shock every time I put a piece of vinyl sheet in the bloody machine.....around 50 times a minute :-/

 

I complained so was moved to the box assembly line, where I cut my fingers to ribbons on the packing tape cutter instead :-(

 

After realising that it was abnormal to be using my well earned coffee breaks just to sit crying on the toilet, I walked out!

[Chelle-82]

Didn't they ask you to have a shower Chelle?

Only joking, couldn't resist it.

 

I didn't think it was company policy!

[old tup]

Lather boy at Jessops Hospital!.

[Bob Arctor]

I've had so many rubbish jobs as a youngster that it can only be presented as a list (sort of in order from worst):

 

Lettuce-harvest (Crawl on knees in the mud behind tractor with sharp knife and a foreman shouting that you have to keep up)

 

Chicken-picking (Go into huge shed full of chickens to fill boxes with 10 each, paid per box - if you don't put ten in at the same time they escape, start again)

 

Dog-food factory (Spending all night stacking pallets with 20Kg bags coming of conveyor at 4 a minute)

 

Shrimp factory (Cleaning-team night shift, go through all the heavy machinery with power washer emitting 60 degree water and producing steam filled with shrimp-bodyparts)

 

Cheese factory (turning over 15kg cheeses - target of 1000 a day, many of which can only be reached by ladder)

 

Frozen food distribution (Order picking in -40C - I liked the job itself but got screwed heavily on pay so 3-4 months of 70-80 hour weeks got paid at minimum wage for 38 hours)

 

Pig-farm (cleaning out stables, quite liked this despite the stench, pigs are amazing animals)

 

Newspaper round (every Saturday morning, 5AM start, every day after school in rain, snow etc. did this for years and years, later often still drunk on Saturday morning)

 

Doorman (student-job, quite liked this except for the physical threats, knifes and once a gun, it came with certain perks though )

 

Potato-planting (I actually loved this job - at back of rickety old tractor, tipping 12Kg boxes of potatoes into planting machine, I liked it because of my colleague, it was me and him against the endless stretches of fields, and because working out on the land in spring is actually awesome; with this job you could see things, with lettuce cutting, no chance)

 

Tulip-bulb-heading (get paid per box of cleaned bulbs, kills your fingers, BUT this is a job all the local teenagers did, camping 2 hours away from home in the middle of nowhere with all your mates is awesome, when you do it for a month and earn decent money so you can get drunk/high every night it gets even better.)

 

 

I am probably forgetting several others... growing up in the countryside you have to take what you can get.

 

That's a pretty grim list. My most pointless job was breaking down EU size pallets of French yoghurts and re-stacking them on UK size pallets. This was done in a freezing cold warehouse which was at the top of a big, long hill that I had to cycle up at about 4 a.m. and was sweating cobs by the time I got there, then straight into the cold storage.

 

The worst though was stacking the old-style small hay bales in barns. Hay bales are heavy and as the stack got higher we'd use an elevator, basically a cross between a ladder and a conveyor belt, to get them up there. Some git would get the job of putting them on at the bottom which was easy, but if they went too fast it was a nightmare getting them off and stacked at the top before the next one came up, and as you got near the roof you'd bang your head on the beams all the time. Horrible. I almost smashed someone's head in with a massive spanner once for loading too fast and not listening when we shouted at him to slow down.

[tzijlstra]

That's a pretty grim list. My most pointless job was breaking down EU size pallets of French yoghurts and re-stacking them on UK size pallets. This was done in a freezing cold warehouse which was at the top of a big, long hill that I had to cycle up at about 4 a.m. and was sweating cobs by the time I got there, then straight into the cold storage.

 

The worst though was stacking the old-style small hay bales in barns. Hay bales are heavy and as the stack got higher we'd use an elevator, basically a cross between a ladder and a conveyor belt, to get them up there. Some git would get the job of putting them on at the bottom which was easy, but if they went too fast it was a nightmare getting them off and stacked at the top before the next one came up, and as you got near the roof you'd bang your head on the beams all the time. Horrible. I almost smashed someone's head in with a massive spanner once for loading too fast and not listening when we shouted at him to slow down.

 

I've spent a few weekends stacking hay, agreed, pretty harsh work and should have made the list but I only did it half a dozen days altogether, I remember all the cuts in your hands at the end of it in particular. But, for all the rubbish jobs you go through, it makes you appreciate what you have when it gets better

[Bob Arctor]

I've spent a few weekends stacking hay, agreed, pretty harsh work and should have made the list but I only did it half a dozen days altogether, I remember all the cuts in your hands at the end of it in particular. But, for all the rubbish jobs you go through, it makes you appreciate what you have when it gets better

 

I did it every summer for 8 years, hay then later in the year straw, which was much lighter and stacks more easily. Your hands toughen up after a week of it. It does make you appreciate your later jobs more though, you're right. My current job can be stressful at times but it still beats crawling on your belly to make a one bale-wide tunnel under a barn full of several tonnes of hay so that you can get a blower into it to stop it self-combusting. I don't know why I agreed to do that!

[GLASGOWOODS]

I did it every summer for 8 years, hay then later in the year straw, which was much lighter and stacks more easily. Your hands toughen up after a week of it. It does make you appreciate your later jobs more though, you're right. My current job can be stressful at times but it still beats crawling on your belly to make a one bale-wide tunnel under a barn full of several tonnes of hay so that you can get a blower into it to stop it self-combusting. I don't know why I agreed to do that!

 

I loved this work when i were younger. Apart from itching like mad.

[tzijlstra]

I loved this work when i were younger. Apart from itching like mad.

 

I loved a girl like mad when doing this work when younger... If I recall well that was the precise reason I did it

 

Seriously though, it is pretty hard work and certainly demanding physically, but it is also rewarding as there is such a direct connection between the land, the weather and the product. Still, these days I'd rather sit in a chair looking at the screen.

 

Although I have to admit, if I had the choice of a reasonable living up in the Highlands on a small farm or doing what I do now...

 

If only you could actually make a reasonable living up there