Your worst job

[krynski]

I was in university and had just finished the school year and had no summer job lined up despite trying. I was living the most frugal life I ever lived, and was desperate for a job. A landscaping gig was available, I thought I'd give it a shot. Didn't end up hating the back-breaking work, but I hated my boss.

1) It was advertised at $2/hr above minimum wage. I interviewed with the guy, and he said he normally pays experienced people the advertised wage. I told him, hey, why don't you pay me minimum for the first 2-3 weeks, and then if you're happy with me working with you, bump me to normal wage. Consider it insurance if I don't work out. 3 weeks later " I didn't agree to that." That $2 sure as hell meant a lot more to me than him.

2) Always asked me what I do in my spare time and he always accused me of popping ecstacy and playing video games. He had a vendetta for young people even though I was working my @$$ off.

3) One time we were working on a customer's back yard. She happened to be a single mom. He's like ,"So what do you think of her?", and I said ,"She seems nice." "No, no, like, what do you think of her?", and again, I said ,"She's nice." "So you think I should sleep with her?". I literally had absolutely no interest in this guys miserable life, so I said ,"Okay."

Well, she ended up inviting us in for lunch, which was a huge improvement on my current lunch situation. We sit down at the table, the guy goes," So, (my name) thinks I should sleep with you." Her response, "Smart Boy!"

I ended up dogging it for a few more weeks before I found another job, collected my paycheck, and GTFO of there. I've worked much dirtier and stressful jobs, but a bad boss can make it much much worse.

[GreenLantern2814]

When I was 17, I dropped out of high school and sold Kirby vacuum cleaners door to door for six weeks between February and March of 2006.

I netted $0.50 a day and a recently-paroled HIV-positive coworker told me I had pretty lips.

I went back to school.

[Jiri Hrdina]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

What was especially weird is it was supposed to be a training class. And I've been through those Franklin Covey courses before, I thought this would be similar. You know, covering efficiency, communication, leadership, sales etc.

Instead, like i mentioned, it was all of this copyrighted in 1970s mind over matter Golden Eagle bull####.

Then when the personal experiences and opening up stuff came about, that's when we got into the bizarre depression and birth discussions. I almost jumped out of my seat to be like "WTF IS HAPPENING" but no one else in the room looked even slightly bothered by it.

I already knew my workplace was toxic but this really sealed the deal that there was a strong cult flavour to the company. It's only been a year but to this day, when I tell people about that training course, I find they often don't believe me because it's just too damn crazy. I really wish I video taped it on my phone because then I could at least show people.

Was this in Calgary?

[Enoch Root]

I loved being an orderly (in a hospital with 800 nurses), but one aspect of the job wasn't much fun: wrapping dead bodies. By far the worst, however, was doing that in L&D.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

I worked at the *shudder* bottle depot beside Heritage (the OG "We Sort For You") after school and on weekends for the better part of a year when I was 16.

A short list of items I was forced to interact with (with sopping wet light work gloves and no noseplugs):

• Bottles full of cigarettes
• Bottles half full of beer and cigarettes
• Bottles half full of beer and cigarettes covered in a thick slime of mold
• Dead mice
• Used condoms
• Spoiled food
• At least 1 dildo
• A spider's nest that burst open and sent hundreds of tiny scuttling arachnids across my station

That must have been one heck of a party!

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Originally Posted by Jiri Hrdina

Was this in Calgary?

Yup.

[cam_wmh]

Originally Posted by blender

Picking bananas in Queensland.
Bunches of bananas weighing up to 80kg.
Barefoot in calf-deep water, rats and snakes swimming around.
First day I had a spider with a body the size of my fist drop onto my shoulder and scurry away. I saw death in its eyes, but what can you do when you have a 150lb bunch of banana on your shoulder?
Oh, yeah; I was earning $64 a day.

No kidding. Queensland Downs? Or up the hill closer to the community association?

Originally Posted by pylon

Production tester for a drilling company.

90% of the day was spent sitting in an Atco trailer in the middle of nowhere listening to a bunch of drug addicts talking about drugs and how to cheat the company drug tests. The other 10% was spent connecting pipes and wearing a Scott pack taking gas samples. Oh, and you never knew if H2S was going to kill you at any given moment.

That killed my fantasy of working in the oil field making this crazy money I kept hearing about at a young age, and was probably a good thing.

holy #####!!! there's a poster I'm happy to see back!!




And for me? in my jr high & high school years, my folks would send me in the summer, to work on the farm with one of my uncle's in SE Sasky.

My aunt & uncle were great. Many of my tasks were, great for understanding farming, and instilling a hard working behaviour. Rock picking, baling/collecting bales, feeding the horses, all sorts of tasks.

But man, the worst was cutting hay, on an old cab-less versatile swather. My aunt would get us (cousin & I) second hand pearl-snap button up "dress" shirts, and I learned why, when swathing.

Sure, I'm driving a piece of equipment but when you cut that hay, you disturbed ####ing ALL the bugs; black flies, horse flies, wasps, mosquitoes, .. and then the dust, the hay chaff, and the heat. Just brutal.

So long sleeve shirts were essential, and those snaps made it easy to tear them off superman style, when you showered at the end of the day.

[Jiri Hrdina]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

Yup.

Ahhh I have theories on which company is based on your description.

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by psycnet

i worked at the *shudder* bottle depot beside heritage (the og "we sort for you") after school and on weekends for the better part of a year when i was 16.

A short list of items i was forced to interact with (with sopping wet light work gloves and no noseplugs):

• bottles full of cigarettes
• bottles half full of beer and cigarettes
• bottles half full of beer and cigarettes covered in a thick slime of mold
• dead mice
• used condoms
• spoiled food
• at least 1 dildo
• a spider's nest that burst open and sent hundreds of tiny scuttling arachnids across my station

vrri?

[Red Potato Standing By]

Worst job I have had is working in a bee farm for the summer, I got stung usually 15-20 times a day at least. They wanted me to come back the next year and I politely declined. Don’t think there was a part of the body that I didn’t get stung on.

[Samonadreau]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

I worked at the *shudder* bottle depot beside Heritage (the OG "We Sort For You") after school and on weekends for the better part of a year when I was 16.

A short list of items I was forced to interact with (with sopping wet light work gloves and no noseplugs):

• Bottles full of cigarettes
• Bottles half full of beer and cigarettes
• Bottles half full of beer and cigarettes covered in a thick slime of mold
• Dead mice
• Used condoms
• Spoiled food
• At least 1 dildo
• A spider's nest that burst open and sent hundreds of tiny scuttling arachnids across my station

I tip the sorters good every time i go . Can also say I have never mixed in a used condom or dildo... wtf.

[Sylvanfan]

It wasn't a bad job but it was a hard job. I did some labor for a home builder in Kamloops one summer when I was in College. They had a house at Sun Peaks that was going to be a Vacation style rental house. So it was pretty sizable and was going to have 3 levels and was on a steep hill side that had foundation walls that were like 26 feet high at the longest point. We had to do 10 feet of engineered fill within those walls. Had to go down a ladder to get into the pit and fill it up in 6 inch lifts. Dump trucks would come and dump another 10 yards of Gravel in the hole, load it in wheel barrows to spread it around and as the foreman is spraying with a hose a couple of us are on the tampers trying to compact it down. That was about two hours per lift, and the engineer would do tests and back at it again or go and try to hammer down any soft spots. All in like 35° heat. By the end of the first week I could barely drive home because trying to straighten out my arms hurt so bad. I still have the dream of being in that pit and the only way out is 6 inches at a time until you're high enough you can climb out.

They had a Deck they wanted too, and the pumper truck couldn't reach the sonotubes...We had to build this sketchy path to hand bomb the concrete down in a wheel barrow, than bucket by bucket climb a ladder to the top of the sonotubes to dump it in. There were three of us doing it...each one of use tipped the wheel barrow on our third run losing half the concrete.

There was myself and another guy who was a Carpentry apprentice who were crazy enough to stick it out for the two months. At least the Foreman was a pretty good guy and he was a really hard worker, so was the Carpentry guy. There were some easier projects to work on, but not liking the one foreman who was running most of those who would stand there and complain all day, I'd usually pick that site when given a choice. It was by far the harder work, but usually had a couple decent guys to work with.

[Roughneck]

I'll contrast two jobs. One that should have been bad but wasn't, and one that couldn't have been bad but was.



Cleaning the grandstand at the Stampede. Garbage, too many staff for the managers to properly supervise, low pay. But there was a clear start and finish and clear expectations. Quantity mattered more than quality. When you're a 15 year old the few hundred bucks you got was a massive windfall you've never experienced before. Plus my friend worked concessions and would always hook me up. We would have gotten caught and fired but since it's only 11 days, Stampede ended before they got wise to us. Plus shift end would line up really well with the start of the good shows at the Coke Stage so I got to see a lot of bands I wouldn't have otherwise seen. So on paper it seemed like a crappy job, but turned out to be great for a 15 year old.



Go Karts and Mini Golf in the Columbia Valley? Work a shift, then head over to a bonfire at somebody's place on the lake? How could this be bad? Owners just hated the people they were making money off of. Only thing they hated more were the staff they'd have to hire because 'they didn't need jobs, our parents just wanted us out of their hair' and assumed we'd quit the second anything got tough. Then you realize why the locals hate all the people with second homes when they're your customers all the time. #### those people (I learned to hate myself and my family). Entitled, whiny, look down on people who work at a go-kart track. End of the ####ing world if they lost a golf ball into the water and had to walk the 30 steps to get a new one. Always the one guy who would try to get the free game at the end because he knows the 18th hole is rigged and thinks any of the teenagers making minimum wage give a ####. Plus the go-karts and track sucked so it wasn't even fun to rip around during down hours. So that's the one I hated.

[Dion]

Originally Posted by Red Potato Standing By

Worst job I have had is working in a bee farm for the summer, I got stung usually 15-20 times a day at least. They wanted me to come back the next year and I politely declined. Don’t think there was a part of the body that I didn’t get stung on.

Oh the Beemanity!

https://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...readid=2243176

[skudr248]

Cribbing... I worked a day and a half. That job is just rough man, I was 18 when I did it and #### that, I pursued my business degree harder than ever before after that one experience.

[Mean Mr. Mustard]

As a nurse I have been punched, kicked, hit, spit on, threatened with needles, guns, explosives, blood, have had literally every fluid imaginable on me from infected pericardial fluid to your standard run of the mill urine. I have had to do emergency plumbing on a toilet that someone tried to flush their belongings down. Been exposed to every disease imaginable and had a bunch of patients bring in thousands of their bug friends usually lice or bed bugs, but sometimes cockroaches or an ant colony.

Still a great job though.

[Deegee]

Saputo Foods in Edmonton. As a high school drop out who had only made minimum wage before, the prospect of earning $24 an hour was very attractive. I actually don't think they were going to hire me until I did a few follow up calls.

When I got there I was building milk orders which was extremely tough work. We had two people to a line. When you get hired you are not in the union. You are in the labour pool. You still pay union dues, but you have none of the perks, which I later found amounted to being bloody lazy.

On day #6 in a row of a 10 hour shifts, where my body ached incredibly, I remember the guy I was working with just laughing as I worked hard and I asked him what was so funny and told him to get helping me. His response was "you have to work hard, I'm already in the union". Screw that place. I walked.

It was the best thing I could have done as it lead me to my current career, which I have been in for 13 years now.

[PaperBagger'14]

Originally Posted by Deegee

Saputo Foods in Edmonton. As a high school drop out who had only made minimum wage before, the prospect of earning $24 an hour was very attractive. I actually don't think they were going to hire me until I did a few follow up calls.

When I got there I was building milk orders which was extremely tough work. We had two people to a line. When you get hired you are not in the union. You are in the labour pool. You still pay union dues, but you have none of the perks, which I later found amounted to being bloody lazy.

On day #6 in a row of a 10 hour shifts, where my body ached incredibly, I remember the guy I was working with just laughing as I worked hard and I asked him what was so funny and told him to get helping me. His response was "you have to work hard, I'm already in the union". Screw that place. I walked.

It was the best thing I could have done as it lead me to my current career, which I have been in for 13 years now.

Its like saying bloody Mary into a mirror 3 times, except instead of a ghoulish figure appearing its a union apologist.

[8 Ball]

Originally Posted by skudr248

Cribbing... I worked a day and a half. That job is just rough man, I was 18 when I did it and #### that, I pursued my business degree harder than ever before after that one experience.

This. I did it for a summer when I was young. Just a brutal, back breaking job. The hours were ridiculous.

[Hockey_Ninja]

The Dairy Queen on Bow Trail. They didn't train me well at all and they pretty much left me out to dry and fail. Got fired after two weeks and suffered some self-confidence issues because of it. I kept on asking myself if it was actually my fault and if I didn't work hard enough. Thankfully I got over that anxiety and did well at my next job.