Your worst job

squatting dog

squatting dog

Remember when... thirty seemed so old.
Location
Arkansas, and also Florida
For those of us who may have had more than one job... what was the worst one you had?
Mine was easy. Back in the early 70's, I got a job working in a granite quarry. There wasn't any real safety equipment, and my job was running a jack hammer about 300 feet from the bottom of a 540 foot hole while standing on a 2 foot ledge. Water was pumped in to keep down the dust and that made the ledge quite slippery. :eek: I slipped and nearly fell over the edge a bunch of times before I'd finally had enough and quit.

quarry.jpg
 
I have always loved all things stone, so while your quarry job may have been the worst job you experienced in your day, what I would give to be able to visit a quarry and watch everything being done. :)
 
16 naive yrs old, trying to be a sales clerk in a mixed goods store that was a primitive forerunner of today’s dollar stores. Cigar smoking boss that called me “Girlie”. Cheap merchandise that smelled funny. Couldn’t deal with the shoplifters. Lasted 2 days. Quit.
 
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working as a janitor for the public schools was one of my worst jobs. the work load every 8 hour shift was unrealistic... I had to clean 19 classrooms each with a rest room, other rooms, a long hallway and a gym every night in a 8 hour shift. quality work was expected with no mistakes, and if another janitor called out sick you had to do their area also... and remove snow from a large sidewalk area during winter months.
 
Back in the day (60's) you hit the pavement looking for a job. I walked into a dentist office with no experience at all, and asked the Dentist for a job. It so happened that his "girl" had moved on and he hired me at min. wage, to be trained by him. I did everything..the office..the chair side assisting..even all the cleaning of the office.
He was hell to work for and when I was filling out the W2's at the end of the year, he had 8 employees who were no longer there. His 8 "girls" had all moved on in less than a year!! To make a long story of his abuse shorter, it ended with his final temper tantrum. He was throwing instruments at me and I ran out of the office never to return. The older wiser me would have called to cops.
 
Well the current one is pushing the envelope... 44 hours since 7AM Monday... got 48 more to go....
But my worst had to be working for a plumber that was a very abusive asshole, nothing was ever done right..
I worked for him about 2 months, and he had a dozen others come and go in that time....

High turn over for a crew of 3
 
I was working for an accounting firm on the 46th floor of the Hancock Tower in Boston. This was back in the days when they were having major issues with large sheets of glass falling off the exterior of the building. The very first thing I was told was what to do if the wall of glass in my office started to crack...
 
My first job: 16 years old in a pineapple cannery. I made $1.65 an hour and made pineapple tidbits. The temp was about 85* F, humidity was 100%, the noise level was a hearing damaging constant roar, I had to stand for 8 monotonous hours picking rings of pineapple off of a conveyor belt, put them into the loading chute of a tube and piston device that chopped them into tidbits. The decibel level was so loud that conversation had to be at the shouting level. I had to wear heavy plastic gloves to protect my skin from the corrosive effects of the acidic pineapple juice, but the stuff got on my upper arms anyway so for that whole summer I had a circle of painful lesions just below my elbows. Dole Pineapple Inc. insisted that we had to eat lunch at their cafeteria and they subtracted the cost of our gloves and aprons out of our paychecks.
It was a real eye opener for me to see how some people earned a living there full time.
 
Your worst job


Easy one

Two come to mind;

Why is it that time stands still when on a crap detail?
It gets tricky, because, yes, you can transfer yer mind to a better place, but crap jobs are the ones that require just enough attention to detail that you lose concentration of transcendental mind travels….sometimes referred to as daydreaming, or head-in-ass syndrome.
And, yer boss is a half-witted mouth breathing troglodyte that just loves to make you look like wunna his relatives.

Had a step and fetch it job down south.
Seems folks from certain parts of the south insert a couple dozen marbles in their mouth before conversing.
‘Hey, bowa, git dat toemotah an fetchit ovuh heeah.’

‘Tomato?’

‘TOE-MOTAH!’ pointing to the forklift, and mumbling something about dumbass yankees.

The forklift was manufactured by a company called Tow Motor, of which was emblazoned in huge letters on the back.....OK, he got me.

And the gentleman kept calling me Oscar, so after a couple hours of that, I sauntered over during first break, gently picked his ass off the picnic bench, and with both fists, ran him about 10 feet, tenderly shoving him up against the wall.....lifting him off the floor.

Turns out, one can be quite clear, even when talking through clenched teeth, if one's faces are an inch or two from each other.


‘My name is not Oscar, and if you call me that one more time, I’m gonna shove my right steel toe so far up yer hind end you’ll be snacking on my heel….get it???!!’

‘But, son, ah thought that wus yer name on yer jacket there!’

‘Oh’

I’d borrowed a jacket…..from Oscar I s’pose.
So, I let him back down, straightened his shirt, put his cap back on, and dusted him off as he tucked everything back in.
But, hey, he didn’t ever give me any more ‘you a yankee’ crap.
So it all worked out, and I fetched the toemotah, wherever/whenever he wanted.

Yeah, you gotta pay yer dues, but you gotta stand yer ground too…..it’s a fine line

But....

My first real job was the worst;

My very first ‘job’ was hoeing roses for an ol’ guy at the end of the mountain road up from our place.
He was a prize winning grower, lots of entries and ribbons and medals and plaques from all over and of course Portland, the City of Roses.

As a teacher, the crotchety ol’ fart was not the gracious diplomat he was when accepting an award.

‘Quit pickin’ at it like a goddamn woman, goddammit.’
‘Gimme that hook.’
He’d jerk the ‘hook’ outta my hand and commence to beat the holy crapoutta those roses.
Apparently the ones that survived became resilient and hardy…..and beautiful.

The hook was not much more than a smallish three prong pitchfork bent 90°.

‘You don’t stop till it’s rainin’ like a cow peein’ on a flat rock.’

That was the work schedule.

And off he’d go in his dilapidated ’49 ford sedan.
The engine sounded like it would blow apart any minute, pistons rattling around, tappets tapping a beat, zero oil.
Only drove it a few hundred yards, just to harass us.

One of the old hands said, ‘just hoe like mad until you get over the hill, then you can take a little break’.
The old gent seemed to know what he was talkin’ about, he’d been there a long time.
Back permanently stuck at 45°.
Kinda bugged me….cause when it was rainin’ like a cow peein’ on a flat rock, we’d all beat feet over to the walnut tree….here he’d trudge…and there he’d stand…..bent.
His hands were stuck in a hoe holding position.
Not big on talkin’.

‘How long you been doin’ this?’

‘Some time now.’

‘Huh.’


It was $.60 an hour…10 hours a day.

I’d been there just a few days, and hoein’ like mad.
The hill just a half hour of back breaking hacks away.
Once over the hill, outta view from the ol’ guy’s shack, I straightened up and leaned on my hook.
Just stared into the sun.
Rolled a smoke.
A smoke never tasted so good.
I was just getting’ into a mind filled tryst with Sophia Loren when I heard, ‘That’s enough of that, git offa my property.’

I turned around and there he was, leanin’ on them crutches.
How in hell had he snuck up on me?
Had he crutched his way up the hill, knowing full well what I was doin’?
At first I was startled, and maybe a bit scared.
Then I got mad, and with the knowledge that several fields of hay bales were just waiting for me, I headed right for him.
His expression changed from sneering disgust to alarm.
‘Don’t worry ol’ man. I’m not gonna beatcha.
You’ve done enough of that yerself.
Here’s yer hook.’

So, yeah, I got fired from my first real job.
 
We had a medical school associated with our university and you could pick up a few bucks in your spare time signing up to be fake patients for the medical students.

Unfortunately, you weren't told what kind of patient you were going to be until you were there.

My first time, they were learning how to do breast exams. If I'm going to have young men with cold hands fondling my breasts, I at least expected a nice meal and a bottle of Mateus and some sweet-talking first.

That was NOT my favorite job.
 
Working at a plastics company. There was this huge injection mold machine, which made plastic buckets, used in cleaning. A big piston would push into the machine, and when It came back, out would pop a bucket. My job was to put them in a large cardboard box. The machine was slow. I could let the buckets accumulate to about 5-6 before I had to put them in the box. Talk about B-O-R-R-I-N-G. Because the machine was so slow, I really only did about 15 minutes of actual work. It was tough just standing there, most of the time, waiting for a bucket to drop down.
 
Putting advertising inserts into newspapers. It had to be done from 7PM-3AM in the basement of the newspaper office. We had to exit upstairs through the newspaper office at quitting time, which was completely dark by then, I had to feel my way to the door. It gave me the creeps and angered me that they couldn't let one light on for us. No there was no exit light either. Cheapa** newspaper.

There was a lot of competition among the people who worked there too, some had been at it for 15 years. I stayed less than two weeks. My decision to quit was when the newspaper bigwigs stopped our work to tell us that yes we may have heard the minimum wage had been raised a few cents, but that we shouldn't expect it to benefit us. They then told us to return to work and walked out. Blah advertising inserts were never my favorite part of the paper anyway.
 
Perhaps my Worst job was working as a car salesman, for about 4 months, after I left the USAF, and was looking for a permanent job. That was Certainly an "education", and gave me a whole new perspective on car buying. I was amazed at the number of ways new car buyers are "tricked" into often paying substantially more than necessary.
 
Surveying an old brick Victorian sewer.

  • 100 feet below ground
  • Pear shaped with just an 8in channel at the bottom to walk in
  • 18in deep in silt
  • Waist deep in "water"
  • Not tall enough to stand up in - about 6in shorter than I am
  • Full protective gear inc emergency air tanks
  • Gas alarms going off every 2 or 3 hours with full emergency evacuation
  • Dead dogs and other things floating past - sometimes just bumbing into your legs under the "water"

The money was good :)
 
Probably working in an aluminum foundry one summer. Not ideal for a sensitive soul like me. But the granite quarry job sounds worse.
 
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