Dusterbd13 said:
Thw worst, though, was a child protective services agent.
You win.
Dusterbd13 said:
Thw worst, though, was a child protective services agent.
You win.
I forgot. In high school I spent one day with a paint scraper cleaning the outside of the big dumpsters so they can be painted. Rot's Disposal in Westmont, Illinois. I was a failure, it stunk all day, and it was a hot and humid summer day.
Around 3:00pm I was pulled off to pick up garbage in the parking lot. My sister worked here and was not happy as she suggested me for the summer work
My worse job was a walk in the park compared to you guys. My first job actually was working in a horse stable cleaning the stalls. I don't know if this is normal but they literally picked the E36 M3 out of the straw so that straw wasn't wasted. I got good at flicking E36 M3 into a shovel with the end tong of a rake. Life skill I never needed.
spitfirebill said:Dusterbd13 said:
Thw worst, though, was a child protective services agent.
You win.
The emotional toll would be draining. I could NEVER do that job.
Physically, the worst job was hauling drywall. This was a temp job in a 4 storey office building, where the first 3 floors were occupied, and the 4th hadn't been finished when the rest was. The contractor needed to get many lifts of drywall up to the 4th floor, but couldn't get a crane, so he rounded up a bunch of us to carry it up to the 4th floor. We would share $250 for the job (this was 1976). We took the first pair of sheets into the elevator, and discovered they wouldn't fit. These were the pre-finished panels where the seams would be covered with metal finishing strips, so were longer and wider than the standard 4x8 panels. We then started hauling them up the stairs, only to discover they wouldn't go lengthwise around the landings, so had to be rotated on every landing. By the end of the day, with 4 of us working like dogs, we were only 1/3 finished, and none of us could walk the next morning. We abandoned the job and never got paid.
Psychically, the worst job was being Chair of a university department. This position is an elected one, voted on by your peers, and they see it as representing their interests. The admin saw it as an admin position whose function was to impose admin positions on the unruly faculty. I had no authority over my colleagues in this position, but admin treated it like a command and control system. Plus, the overall way the institution used to cut admin costs was to download everything to the Chair, who has no secretarial or other admin ass't. help. This meant my days were spent doing clerk work, listening to complaints from my colleagues about issues over which I had no control or authority, and getting yelled at by thousands of VPs for not carrying out their whims. All this for an extra $386 a month, which nearly covered the increase in by booze bill. Bah! I'm glad to be retired.
Had a few "worst jobs"....... but the one that takes the cake.......
Got a job @ union VW shop in NJ.... In my first full week, I averaged better(flat rate) then their top mechanic, over the weekend... my tool box was broken into, and my $120 pair of Frye boots were placed in the shop drain.
Brain Surgeon.
Got a temp job after working in an office for 8 months that involved digging out a basement in a 19th century farmhouse. Equipped with a shovel and a bucket (they didn't want to disturb the foundation), we had to lower the entire dirt floor of the building by 3', and one area in particular by 6'.
I started in June with an older gentlemen who ended up leaving after a few weeks for back surgery. I didn't know it at the time, but he was an independent contractor. I should have noticed this.
After about 3 months of solo digging, the general contractor (who belittled me for lack of vigor) eventually found some high-school-aged wrestlers to assist, and being much younger and more fit than myself, they ran circles around me, as expected. I was 24 and trying to get away from labor jobs while pursuing a bachelors degree.
Anyway, I made a few thousand bucks that summer, but when the tax bill came due, I got a 1099 from from my employer. Yep, I was considered a independent contractor, ended up paying a tax bill over $1000. Tried digging up any receipts for gas, food, supplies whatever, with little luck.
Ended up making approximately $10/hr after it was all said and done. Not worth it.
turboeric wrote:
Physically, the worst job was hauling drywall.
Mentally, the worst job was being Chair of a university department.
Quite the change in terms of employment.
Toss up between my first real job at age 16 cleaning semi's and concrete hauling trailers or the 30 days i spent working a turkey processing plant. Not sure if the stench of turkeys or the muriatic acid hazard made for crappier days. The pay couldnt make up for it.
In reply to Dr. Hess :
I could see that. I have a friend who is a trauma surgeon. The helicopters come in often. All work and no sleep makes Dean a dull boy. I haven't seen him smile in years. He does have plenty of spare coin for the day he decides it's not worth it though. That saving lives E36 M3 is lucrative.
In reply to pheller :
my wife and I were just talking about her staunch German friend whose dad dug his dirt crawl into a basement. We scratch our head how he did it - the guys acre yard was phenomenal and his garage was spotless - seriously how did he dig out that basement?
In reply to pheller :
I have done a couple basements like that. One we dropped about 18" maybe a little more, one was like you 3-6' that seriously sucked. The deep one the dirt was hard enough we had mini jackhammer with a spoon kind of attachment to dig with. And it all had to go up a set of skinny stairs in a wheel barrow. We ended up putting screws through the plank to get traction, one guy pulling a rope attached to the front of the wheel barrow one guy pulling. I remember it vividly....
The other one we were able to get a conveyor belt out the window to a wheel barrow, that was much much much better.
In HS I worked for a company that built tennis courts. I basically hauled gravel from one spot to another all day long with a shovel and wheel barrow. Not a good time.
Right before I graduated college I worked as an assistant manager at a Firestone. That is my all time least favorite job. Everyone was always in a bad mood, both the customers and the employees. Firestone as a company to work for was not great either. They would have policies such as you had to recommend brakes to customers at 50% worn, etc. You had to meet sales quotes, period. Hated, hated, hated that job like no other. It was literally like being in a fight all day long.
But I did manage to save up money and started my own business (photography studio) 2 years later. Owned it for 5 years before I was offered a job by a friend producing TV shows and commercials. Stayed there 15 years until the crash of '08, which leads me to my current position. I have somewhat of a short job history.
Worst job was selling Dodges and Chryslers in 1996. I love cars and used to like people, 3 months of that job made me hate everything.
Nastiest part of a job was burning E36 M3ter detail during Desert Storm. Pull a cut down oil barrel out from under the latrine, pour a couple gallons of JP4 in and light. Stir the flaming mixture with a tent pole and try to stay out of the smoke. Good times.
Worst job is a tie, between the mall kiosk, and the time I left a job I liked for one at another retailer in the mall. Don't name names, but it sounds a lot like patriotic bird. It was in an affluent community. berkeleying rich ass little snobby E36 M3berkeleys and their parents all day. Corporate policy is a joke. I once caught a written for not meeting a sales goal. It was demanded I spend my own check to get us there. I walked out and took the summer off. Which lead directly to the most demanding job. Claims specialist for a very large healthcare concern based out of Minnetonka Minnesota. I was damn good. To the point I can confirm that they hired two people to replace me. But (especially considering it was mental health and substance abuse claims) when literally every drunk and crazy on the planet calls you 100 times a day and screams at you and calls you every horrid thing in the book because they screwed something up (and that was just the billers!) For 7 years...takes a toll. The lat straw was when I caught a complaint of racism! Over telling s biller she needed to get her stuff resubmitted. Her and her supervisor screamed at me for a solid 10min before i disconnected. Complainer means call is automatically logged. They had the whole thing on tape and still wanted to throw me under the bus instead of angering a minority. I quit on the spot. I stilldon't answer the phone, for anyone. Ended up out of work for a year and a half because I was so burned out. Took another year in therapy and a metric berkeley load of drugs To get my E36 M3 together enough to go to work again. Lead me to the best job ever though, so there is that.
racerdave600 said:In HS I worked for a company that built tennis courts. I basically hauled gravel from one spot to another all day long with a shovel and wheel barrow. Not a good time
I had a job like that in HS too. I had to dig oil soaked gravel out from under large elevated storage tanks so they could replace it with concrete. They hired a bunch of people to work with me but none lasted more than a few days. Took me all summer.
Always had summer jobs while I was teaching. The worst of those was also the most lucrative one. Working for a roofing company doing tar roofs. Hot, smelly, dirty, and exhausting.
I was the new guy on the 4 man crew so I was the one who took the buckets of hot tar off the hoist and carried and dumped it into the tubs so it could be applied. Was always spilling some on myself.
Pay was very good (3 times minimum wage at the time) but that led to the exhaustion part. We were to clock in at the shop at 7am and clock out at 5pm. So we got 2 hours overtime every day. Even paid for lunch time which I never got to eat.
Why? Because the tar crew was on a bonus pay schedule. If the boss estimated a job would take 3 days and we got it done in 2, we got 3 days pay for the job. So the regular full time guys never took a lunch break or any kind of break at all.
So my routine for the summer was: get up, eat breakfast, go to work, come home and shower, eat dinner, and go to bed so I could make it back to work the next day.
Septic line work on the fly. Wasn't bad, except the residents kept taking dumps, even though we told them to stop. After the third time, we turned off the water at the b-box. They didn't like it, but I didnt care, I was covered their E36 M3.
Actually, "Woody" started one of these threads back in May of 2016. And I said then:
"For a short while back in the nineties (four months) I had a position as Product Manager for a company that made cold-header tooling (for example, punches for making Phillips Head and Torx screws, et al). Not too exciting, but I needed the job at the time. Before I started, the company had recently been sold for big bucks by the original founder, and the new owners were flip-artists based in another state. Problem was, the original owner had developed a weird business culture and all the remaining employees harbored that same culture. They resented the new owners. I had been brought in by the new owners. Consequently, I received no support from my so-called "colleagues." The company had meaningless cost accounting data, so they had no idea what the products actually cost to manufacture. (I suspect that the former owner took that with him when he went off into the sunset). As Product Manager, setting competitive product prices was critical to my success. That was impossible to do. I also discovered that the plant manager and engineering manager had the means of listening-in on my phone conversations, something left over from the weird founder. Fortunately, I was able to get another Product Manager position at a much better and much more professional company ... the one I eventually reached Marketing Manager level and ultimately retired from. Shortly after I left the old wierd company I found out that the new out-of-state owners were able to flip their new acquisition quickly. They ended up closing the facility and consolidating the production at another facility in another state. I was fortunate to bail out when I did."
Wow ... many worse than mine, but I think these are still worth a mention.
3rd worst - pig poop shoveler at my uncle's farm for a summer. Pig poop is especially rancid ... and I smile every time even now, 35+ years later, when I have bacon, or ham, or pork chops.
2nd worst - a summer at a Federal Mogul piston ring plant taking cast rings out if a 4' x 4' x 4' box and placing 50 on each peg of a 50 pegged board to roll into the machining area. This was in 1986, so portable music and headphones did not yet exist for me. And it was really hot in the plant.
The worst - cutting the end off of onions for Anchor Foods at their onion ring plant. I lasted one entire day, then got hailed on mercilessly while riding my dad's motorcycle 30 miles home. In a t-shirt. It sucked. I was bruised everywhere from shoulders to waist. It really sucked, in fact.
In reply to Gary :
Have a link for Woody's 5/16 thread?
While I can't top the terrible stuff listed mine would be working in the cash cage at a casino. Ten hours of watching people who barely had gas money ring up Herculean debt. The started the night happy and gradually racked up 40k plus using the absurd ~100% credit card cash advances. Then one night Iended up with my ~1mm drawer being ~$100 over. Short or long is the same still wrong and that earned me a discussion with the gaming commission guys... Last night there...
I don't know that I ever had a "worst" job. I had some spectacularly sucky parts of decent jobs.
I have spent a couple of weeks running a 90 pound jackhammer, in the middle of a South Carolina summer.
I have spent a lot of months manning a shovel, digging electrical duct banks. Basically fancy ditches we then had to put pipe in and pour full of concrete.
I have spent two days crawling around in the bottom of a 200' tall boiler changing thermocouples. They did get the temps down to 110* before I had to start. And I had a fan. Too bad the thermocouples were between the floor of the burn chamber and the exterior wall. The space was bout 20" high and full of soot. I would have made a coal miner look spotless.
I spent 8 months as a high voltage safety equipment tester. Basically blowing holes in things with 50K volts. That was fun for about a week. After a 8 months, I was desperate to do anything else. So I transferred to...
Electricians helper at a sewage treatment plant. That was a smelly job. We spent our lunch time feeding cockroaches that were big enough to carry off a large potato chip. At least it wasn't mind numbingly boring.
All of that was at my first job. I did a lot of really cool stuff as well and the pay was pretty good. That job also introduced me to low voltage control wiring and computer control. I stayed there for 10 years.
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