Worst Job You Ever Had

[1967coronet]

1979 started on the night cleanup crew in a hog slaughter house , after 3 yrs I got to day shift and worked the gut line dropping guts on a 600 hog plus per day chain speed . 4 of us rotated to the next hog inline. Later I got back to night shift to the ham debone dept. not bad that job.
ended up just at 10 yrs there total.
worst nights on the cleanup crew was when a hog would fall free into the dehairing machine. we had to go inside it and cut the wrapped up hog out of it before we could clean it.
That was my worst job { the cleanup } of the dehairing machine.

I really like being a bodyman.

 

[Aarons Air]

Working at ring power(cat) the company itself freaking assume! But the stuff we had to fix!!!! Trash compactor from the dump full of dead rats and maggots! Oh and of course trash! But it gets better so before we get to work on it they pressure wash them but not very good enough to fill every hole full of water! Then they let it sit around in the 95+deg weather for a few days to ferment! Then you get to crawl under it to pull the belly pans off witch of course is full of wet trash rats maggots ect!
If we were lucky we got the equipment from the Medical waist dump witch is full of needles and other wonderful items!

I will say after working threw that I haven't ever really been sick so maybe it built up my system!
But that was a bad deal !

Then there was working at the local ford dealer made me want to throw up everyday walking in there looking at all the fords!

WOW! This must have been horrible ! I could not have endured. Did they make you drive the fords too ?

 

[Sahara]

I'm old and uneducated, so I've had some real winners from back in the days before workers safety considerations. I'll try to keep it brief but if you need a beer or a pee now would be the time. Here goes...
Late '70's early '80's I worked in a lead and zinc mine in the arctic. The ore was crushed into dust, mixed with water to make a paste, and dumped into train cars. Now winter here can get into the minus 40's without wind. If we put too much ore in a train car, or to put a plastic cover on the car we would crawl inside the car and shovel the piles down. The ore was hot, probably 120F and steaming. We would be out in -40, shoveling this stuff. The steam would cling to our cold clothes and freeze. When we went into the control room to do the paperwork the stuff would melt and make us wet. Then the bell would go, back out into the cold to shovel more. Perhaps 12 times a night. On the bright side we were paid a fortune. I was in my late teens and early '20's making as much as a good lawyer or professional.
In the late '80's I worked for an oil patch service company in Alberta. We got sent out to hand expose a buried fiber optic communications cable. If they accidentally cut it there would be a $250,000 expense. It was February, -25C. The cable was UNDER a running creek. We had to chip the ice off, then stand in a knee deep running creek in the dark at -25 and dig a trench with a shovel to find the cable. It was freakin' AWEFUL! And I was paid slightly more then minimum wage by a boss who treated us like toilet paper.
There's more, but you get the idea. Consequently I'm encouraging my daughter to get an education. She graduated last year after being honor role every year she was in school. Got every award. Currently she's pre med.

 

[Big Bad Dad]

A short stint in construction management at Jim Walter Homes. Most stressful job I ever had. I want things done right. JWH just wanted to keep everything and everybody under a controlling thumb, and dictate everything. Plus, they did NOT give a flying rip about the shitty houses being built by the underpaid and inexperienced sub contractors they used. All JWH cared about was the nice mortgage they would put on a customers property after they threw together a POS house. I saw so many customers get screwed over in the short time I worked there. Couldn't take it.....

 

[67440chrg]

Mine was when I was 18 and moved from a small town to OKC and got a job working construction. Several people had quit the company because of the conditions. Me and a few work release inmates were hired to shovel pigeon poop from the top of a 10 story building into a crane bucket to be loaded into dump trucks. There were leanto structures with air handlers under them. The building sat unused for years and the poop was several feet deep. It turned out I was kept on and got to be a plumbers apprentice for almost a year after but the first couple weeks really sucked. I saw my first hooker on that job. A real wake up of sorts in my life.

 

[Glenwood]

These great stories remind me of an old joke...

When the Lord made man, all the parts of the body argued over who would be boss.

The brain explained that since he controlled all the parts of the body, he should be boss.

The legs argued that since they took man wherever he wanted to go, they should be boss.

The stomach countered with the explanation that since he digested all the food, he should be boss.

The eyes said that without them man would be helpless, so they should be boss.

Then the asshole applied for the job. The other parts of the body laughed so hard at this that the asshole became mad and closed up.

After a few days…

The brain went foggy, the legs got wobbly, the stomach got ill, and the eyes got crossed and unable to see.

They all conceded and made the asshole boss.

This proved that you don’t have to be a brain to be boss…

Just an Asshole.

 

[BeepBeepRR]

Peep show floor cleaner.. Just kidding. I would say getting a face full of dead bugs every time you open a high pressure sodium light. I may have inhaled somewhere between 50,000 to 100,000 dead bugs over a 25 years of employment. I did have a job one time bending acrylic picture frames. Kinda like the ones you see on the table at a restaurant. This job lasted 2 days. I was a newbie to the crap and the only employee the dude had. He apparently didnt like the speed at which I was bending these damn frames. And told me several times. "A woman can do it faster" I took that **** for a little while longer. He has an order for 2000 of some specific crap for applebees. Anyhow long story short the next time that asshat said that too me. I told him to hire a F-in woman and he can stick the job up his ***. Left and never looked back.

 

[Bb70charger500]

WOW! This must have been horrible ! I could not have endured. Did they make you drive the fords too ?

Sadly yes I was to test drive everything I fixed . But.... I did get to unload and dealer prep/drive the ford gt when they came out! After that I figured that was the best I would ever get out of that job and told them to stop making junk and they wouldn't need so many mechanic s !

 

[biomedtechguy]

Any job that puts one’s nuts in jeopardy, is bad in my book...

2 responses:
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[Cranky]

Man....got some winners here lol. Makes some of my crappy jobs seem a lot better but the one that comes to mind was working at a steel mill coke oven. It was dirty and hot even in the winter. Most of the workers had triple thick soles on their work boots to help keep their feet from getting too hot. The dirty dark washroom was set up to hold at least 2" of water cooling off your shoes. At the end of the shift, everyone looked like they just come out of a coal mine but after all, we were working with crushed coal. This job was in my early days while still in the labor gang working grave yards but was in the LG for nearly 2 years. That was my choice because after a short while, my seniority got to be #1 and could bid on just about any job that was available and there was nearly always a good selection.

In my early teens got a job as a pump monkey at a station owned by someone my dad knew. Bad thing about that place was it only pumped gas and had no service bays. Was only there for 4 hours before locking up and leaving. Was there for about 2 hours when the owner said, you got this and left. What? Really? After another 2 hours I said screw this lol. Only other job that didn't last more than a day was working for a fire sprinkler company. We installed two pieces of large diameter pipe going up in a corner of the building. I swear the stuff was 30" in diameter and dirty rusty stuff. Would have quit that one sooner if I had had my car instead of riding with the crew to the job site!

 

[Z-Man]

I shoveled grain out of box cars with a board hooked to a cable. Had to do it at 90 degrees or 10 below. 8 cars a day. Still working for General Mills 43 years later. (Better Job)

 

[Auggie56]

Gee, I can't think of any job I had that even gets close to some of you guys ordeals. But I did work at a Ford dealer, I guess that was bad enough. I hated them cars ever since.

 

[Dibbons]

Do Ford owners "hate" Mopars as much as we "hate" Fords?

 

[YY1]

I worked at one of the last full serve gas stations in 1986.

I actually liked it.
It was kind of odd, that on the first day, they left a 17 year old kid at his second job with only 10 minutes of cash register training alone at night with the cash box after three other employees had been in the drawer all day and no one ran EOD.

I did get everything from free food to free weed to other "propositions", and got to see under the hood of a lot of different cars, even drive some interesting ones.

Got a few tips as well.

The worst was people who would come in and get $2 of gas and then ask you one at a time to check every last thing on the car for the next 20 min.

 

[Don selleck]

drywall

 

[hawkeye]

All of them.
Most tasks I have involve dirt, **** or cold or hot, heights or heavy lifting, but
I have noticed that life's usually only as miserable the people around you make it.
It is difficult to work with whiny or lazy people.

Farming is something you get "from the titty". I have worked in factories, offices, sales, grocery stores, restaurants, retail, gas stations and all of them left me feeling unfulfilled at the end of the day. It's hard to work for someone else when you feel you are the smartest man in the room. LOL When you are a farmer, some days you are a plumber, electrician, mechanic, carpenter, veterinarian all in a single day. And yes it can be a shitty job, but it is YOUR **** and that makes all the difference. Nothing I have found is quite as fulfilling as beating the rain to get the hay put up, finishing a mile of new fence, finally getting a piece of equipment to work right or saving a newborn calf that you though was a goner. And the list goes on and on. I have been involved in farming for around 55 years and plan on keeping on for another 25 or 30, after awhile it just becomes who you are.

 

[YY1]

I also worked at a TV picture tube plant. 3rd shift That one's in contention.

Repetitive as hell, and after only 2 days I had a repetitive motion issue in my wrist.

The fastest machine in the shop was the cutter. Also the first machine on the line The senior worker ran that. he loaded it with a steel roll from a forklift, and proceeded to die cut half a raw frame in the shape of a boomerang. After about 20 min the roll was done and there was a pallet of boomerangs.

The third machine was the bender press. I got put on this the first day. it was the second fastest machine on the line if you ran it right. A stack of welded boomerangs (a rectangle blank) was set on the input rack. I would take a square, orient it, and place it in the press. Then I'dd put both feet on pedals and both hands on buttons, and press both buttons. A weight about the size of a car would then drop, and bend a 90* angle all the way around the frame. Not terrible but I had nightmares of that weight dropping on my "guitar player's fingers". There was a considerable amount of time waiting for blanks from the second machine.

The second machine on the line was the MIG welder. It was the slowest machine and regularly went out of alignment, causing a stoppage. I got put on this my second week. I had to take two boomerangs from the pallet (if the senior worker was feeling nice, he would stack them neatly, or put a stack of about 30 min worth on the input rack, but usually not), separate the sharp, oily sheet metal, put one in the other hand while rotating it 90* (the source of the motion injury), align it on the welder jig, clamp it with a foot pedal, then start the dual welders with another foot pedal.

About every 45 min, one of the welder heads would start missing the joint and had to be realigned with an allen head adjustment. The new hire they put on the bender press was an ***, and kept giving me **** about not having blanks. I bitched to the foreman about being in between the two fastest machines and instead of telling the guy to cool it, they put me on the heavy duty box stapler. It looked like an engine hoist with a 2 foot air operated staple gun on the end. The box crew showed me how to launch 2" staples across the shop like a machine gun emplacement.

That lasted 2 days and then we got the notice that 3rd was being laid off despite us always meeting our quotas and covering for 2nd when they didn't meet theirs.

 

[747mopar]

GE!!! I can't stand that company... won't even buy an appliance if it has that name on it!

I worked at a GE chemical plant for 5 months (Just long enough to be hired in from temp service) and when my previous job called me back from layoff I ran like hell.
I worked almost the whole 5 months with no respirator, they said once I got hired in I'd be fitted with a respirator so I'm thinking must be expensive? They hire me full time, had me put on a regular mask like you'd buy for painting then they adjusted the straps until I could no longer smell the junk they were holding up to my face... That's it! I had to breath that crap for 5 months for what?? A $20 mask? Then there was the snobby attitudes, stupid hours where if the lazy dead beat on the next shift called off you got punished by having to work an extra 4 hours on the drop of a dime. Lazy doesn't even begin to explain it, 3rd shift was terrible, they doubled all of their breaks, sat in the office all night with the boss and did very little. Just wasn't a good fit at all.

My brother had a great job at a GE winding facility where they made bars for generators. After having their best year where they consistently whooped GEs other winding facility in NY they shut the doors. So you have a smaller workforce outperforming your big operation, making better quality bars and doing it cheaper so you shut down the good one? The senior guys when given the chance to transfer started their own company and my brother was the 2nd guy they hired.

Numbers are all GE sees, they could care less about a single employee and for that I'll never buy anything they ever sell.

 

[YY1]

I think the winner was the box factory. Me and my friend went there from a temp agency. Day one, they put him on the bander and me on the cutter.

I had to catch newly cut cardboard boxes and make sure they were lined up for the final cutting machine. then take them off that machine and hand deliver them to the bander.

They came off the line super fast, and the first one cut me, not enough to bleed though, just a giant cardboard version of a paper cut.

It was about 1.5 steps from the line to the final cutter, so you couldn't just pivot, but had to take that step and a half then turn around and go back... about 120 times an hour! VERY hard on the hips and pelvis.

About 15 min later I got cut again, this time a little blood. Out of bandaids. OK, use tape. Meanwhile my friend who was only 5'4" could barely get the bands over the stack of boxes once they were in position.

About 45 min later I got cut again, and this time it was a gusher. There was blood everywhere. ruined at least three stacks of boxes. the foreman came running over and instead of helping me get the bleeding stopped, chewed me out for ruining the boxes.

After he left, me and my friend looked at each other and said "F this, let's go get a beer", and walked out. Never even picked up our 2 hour checks.

 

[roadrunnerh]

At 19 yrs old, I worked at a convenience store for $3.50/hr up until some inner city scumbag stuck a gun in my face and robbed the joint. Best part - afterwards, I was shaken up and I asked to leave for the day (it was 1:30 pm) and the manager told me to fill the coolers with soda. I refused and said I was leaving, he said "I can't guarantee you'll have a job." I quit on the spot.
The funny thing later, I was asked to be present at a line-up to try and ID the criminal.