What was the worst job you ever had?

Worked for a moving and storage company, the boss thought he 'owned' the employees, and many of the employees were kiss-asses and back stabbers. One day I came home from work and found my very pregnant [now EX] wife totally livid, she had called my work to pass a message to me to pick up our oldest from an after school activity on the way home. This boss had answered the phone, told her I was working and can't be disturbed, basically just rude and blowing her off. Now I was livid, and called the boss, demanding that he apologize to my wife. He refused...I told him to shove it, and so became instantly un-employed.

It was a fateful occurrence, a good thing. I went to work a few days later for a much better moving and storage company, the boss was great, and he liked me and started training me to drive the moving van. But I had also submitted an application as a mechanic with a local steel mill, and was then hired, great move much more $$. I was sorry to have to quit the good moving and storage job, but the boss was understanding, evn told me if things don't work out I could come back to work with them.
 

Looking back, never really had a job I disliked.

1st job in High School was cleaning up after Sail-Makers and was treated good.

2nd job was the military till I retired at the age of 42.
Lots of different things involved, but none really to level of dislike.

3rd job was for 15 years working for a Ethanol Plant as a Distillation Operator.
Times I didn't enjoy the shifts (2 weeks days, then 2 weeks nights) but never a dull moment.

4th and last job was as a Boiler/Chiller Tech for a major Hospital here in Nashville.
Only had to deal with machines and that was OK by me.

I admit, I'm a person who finds something good in things to keep me going...
 
I quit a job once a few minutes after I was hired. It was at a factory. While the HR person was in another room getting paperwork, I heard how supervisors were talking to the employees. Very rude and disrespectful. No way I would put up with that. I think I was before she came back.
 
fuzzybuddy said:
I worked one day in this plastics company. They made plastic kids' beach pails. I was in this room all by myself, there was a monster size plastic mold thing that spit out a pail about once a minute. My critical high tech job was to pick up the pail when it fell into a bin and put it in a big box. I could let four or five pails in the bins before I put them in the big box, but where was the fun in doing that. I was so bored, it felt like that one day lasted at least a month. Never went back.
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I worked in plastics before. Material handler, filling the machines with pellets all day. I didn't mind and pretty mellow.
 
I worked at a mink ranch thru my school years, that was some ugly work but being a farm kid I didn't know any different at the time. Pelting season we would go thru the sheds manually breaking their necks and tossing them in a wheelbarrow. Then on to the pelting and defleshing the hides, then sliding them on to stretching boards.

The job I hated most only lasted a few months, it was the summer after highschool. It was a tire retread factory, my job was grinding the tread off used truck tires, I coughed up nasty black rubber every day. I also got in trouble because I didn't understand how unions worked. I had the first shift guy and the union sturart approach me in the parking lot telling me I better stop getting so many tires done because I was screwing up their production quotas. I thought that was the stupidest thing I had ever heard, and told them so. I called off work one day and was fired instantly.
 
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A temp job that was supposed to last for 3 days, removing paper clips from files that were going to be microfiched.

Another temp and i were shown into a room that only had a small table and two folding, hard chairs, along with a big lot of boxes of full file folders.

We were to take the folders, remove the files and remove any staples or paper clips carefully as to not damage the pages and then return them to the folders in the same order. Any piece of paper smaller than 9x12 had to be carefully taped to a piece of 9x12.

Then the folders were returned to the same box and a large check mark put on the box in red ink.

We were told in no uncertain terms that we were NOT to read the files. Of course, I just HAD to, at least the first few, but after that there was no further temptation to do so as they were dryer than the "paper dust" that filled the room and made my nose run.

Now you might be saying, "That sounds like a nice, brainless job that wouldn't be hard to do " and you'd be correct, at least partially. It was brainless but it was also excruciatingly boring after a couple of hours and it was really hard on the fingers...papercuts and such. The hard folding chairs got harder and harder.

When asked if I was available to come back the next day, I faked my death (not really) and declined.

That ranked up there with my first job, at a sleazy loan company, but at least we had the excitement of getting robbed at that job....
 
Ahhh, good old plastics factory. Back when I was in high school, I took a night shift job at a plastics factory. My job was feeding brown pellets into the machine which produced a valve used in car wash wands. Didn't take long for boredom to set in, so, I started making different color valves.
Made pretty red ones, yellow ones, then some green ones and then clear and red swirly ones. All of a sudden, the manager comes storming into the room. What's going on he asked. Told him what I was doing to fight the boredom. He took me by the hand and led me to the factory floor where all production had stopped. :eek:

Seems the Puerto Rican girls assembling the wands were supposed to put the brown valve onto the green faucet. They didn't know what to do with all the different colored valves. Needless to say, I wasn't there long.
 
Wow, hard to choose the worst, so I will mention two. Both were clothing related; the first was when I was in my twenties. All day I had to stand at an ironing board ironing women's blouses. It lasted about a week, then there was a layoff.

The second one was so boring that I thought I would go nuts! I was in college and had to work over summer to pay tuition, so I accepted a temp job. Our duties were to apply price tags to newly manufactured clothing, which would then be loaded onto a truck. For variety, we would switch to a different floor, lol.

All the other workers were foreign, some from India and others from Mexico. I had no one to talk to until one other student came to work there and we would commiserate as we had lunch.
 
I worked as a production supervisor in a medical device manufacturing company in the Chicago area, making contact lenses.

Production employees worked 12-hour shifts, beginning Saturday night at 9 PM. Rinse and repeat Sunday night and Monday night, along with alternate Tuesdays. My job went longer - first one in, last one out.

The ugly part came in when I had those who were deliberately sabotaging product. I knew who it was, but I couldn't prove it. All sorts of crap -- absenteeism was horrific, but after I went through the defined program with occurrences, written warnings, etc., and then went to HR for their termination, that problem toned down a bit. I had 27 people to keep track of and there was no rest. Constant problems and issues.

I put up with that job for about 18 months.
 
I just thought of another bad job. In college, I was always looking for ways to bring in some cash...typing papers, writing some papers, etc.

A friend said she was making some good money being a paid "patient" at the medical school, so I signed up.

Trotted over for my first gig and darned if they weren't doing breast exams. Pretty embarrassing. I got $20 for 2 hours work, which was darned good pay for the time but man! did those students have cold hands. I never went back.
 
Nathan said:
Worked for a moving and storage company, the boss thought he 'owned' the employees, and many of the employees were kiss-asses and back stabbers. One day I came home from work and found my very pregnant [now EX] wife totally livid, she had called my work to pass a message to me to pick up our oldest from an after school activity on the way home. This boss had answered the phone, told her I was working and can't be disturbed, basically just rude and blowing her off. Now I was livid, and called the boss, demanding that he apologize to my wife. He refused...I told him to shove it, and so became instantly un-employed.

It was a fateful occurrence, a good thing. I went to work a few days later for a much better moving and storage company, the boss was great, and he liked me and started training me to drive the moving van. But I had also submitted an application as a mechanic with a local steel mill, and was then hired, great move much more $$. I was sorry to have to quit the good moving and storage job, but the boss was understanding, evn told me if things don't work out I could come back to work with them.
Click to expand...
Love it when things are meant to be. Glad it worked out.
 
C50 said:
I worked at a mink ranch thru my school years, that was some ugly work but being a farm kid I didn't know any different at the time. Pelting season we would go thru the sheds manually breaking their necks and tossing them in a wheelbarrow. Then on to the pelting and defleshing the hides, then sliding them on to stretching boards.

The job I hated most only lasted a few months, it was the summer after highschool. It was a tire retread factory, my job was grinding the tread off used truck tires, I coughed up nasty black rubber every day. I also got in trouble because I didn't understand how unions worked. I had the first shift guy and the union sturart approach me in the parking lot telling me I better stop getting so many tires done because I was screwing up their production quotas. I thought that was the stupidest thing I had ever heard, and told them so. I called off work one day and was fired instantly.
Click to expand...
Probably for the best.
 
I started with a bus tour company taking reservations and they had this crazy idea to create a position selling advertising on their buses. I had to call on various companies to try to convince them to pay to place ads inside our buses. I failed miserably. I was laid off.

I guess the company realized it was a bad idea because they later hired me back to be a sales rep calling on hotels and travel agencies. My job was to build relationships I and I succeeded so I was picked up by a cruise line and spent a successful 35 years in that industry.
 
jujube said:
I just thought of another bad job. In college, I was always looking for ways to bring in some cash...typing papers, writing some papers, etc.

A friend said she was making some good money being a paid "patient" at the medical school, so I signed up.

Trotted over for my first gig and darned if they weren't doing breast exams. Pretty embarrassing. I got $20 for 2 hours work, which was darned good pay for the time but man! did those students have cold hands. I never went back.
Click to expand...
I have a friend who did a job like this. He had to study symptoms and prepare for the next "performance" because medical students were going to try and diagnose his pretend ailment.
He is also a professional artist and would do makeup on other actors to create wounds.
 
Well that's easy, as growing up & cleaning out Chicken / Hog Houses. didn't make any difference, any of them.
Sure you think that is all automated today. but the smell - Smell, not so much work today but the smell = Smell!
 

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