Learn it! Speak it! Live it!
Bring Christmas to a child in need!
An 'urgency': Sensing threats to institutions of society, church leaders make declaration 
Click to Print
Include Comments
Something Light: Your worst job ever
I did not grow up sucking on a silver spoon. More like a rusty spoon. So along the way, I had jobs that built character…and put gas in the tank of my used 1978 Toyota Celica: In Alabama, I was a counter-girl at a now-defunct burger joint called Burger Chef. The claim to fame there was to be able to take orders for a whole busload of people without writing them down. (This came in handy years later when I had to juggle information as an air traffic controller.) (See? One never knows…)
I also waited tables at a little short-order restaurant the size of a trolley car, run by a Canadian chef. It was about like a Waffle House (only smaller and dingier), but the chef claimed to be a Cordon Bleu alum and ran the place with an iron spatula.
As a poor college student, I served cocktails to other, equally poor college students at a bar called “Drayton Place.” (har har) Due to our mutual poverty, I did not rack up a lot of tips, except on quarter beer night. But I did want to burn my clothes each evening since they smelled like the inside of an ashtray.
Speaking of smells: My worst teenage job by far was cleaning the public restrooms at a big county park/campground. But I bet some of you farm-country people can top that. What’s the worst job you ever had?
back to top61 Comments to “Something Light: Your worst job ever”
Working 3rd shift in a carpet mill. No heat in the winter, no a/c in the summer. When it rained the roof leaked like a sieve.
Report comment to moderator
My goodness, Anlir, believe it or not, you “stole” my story! I also worked in a similar factory (they made carpet backing, though, not carpet) one summer on the midnight to eight shift. It was so disorienting trying to sleep during the day and work at night. It was hot (I worked near a machine they literally called “the oven”), no a/c, but at least our roof did not leak.
Report comment to moderator
There is nothing light about me, working to support four teens, after twenty years of working in the home. There is so much abuse of employees in the workplace today. I try to remember that when I am receiving customer service. I try to think, “How would I feel, based on my last work experience, doing this person’s job right now…?”
Report comment to moderator
My worst “jobs” were a couple that I had to do for my parents when I was a kid & then a young adult.
When I was around pre-teen age, I had to pick up the rotten apples that fell from our apple tree in the yard, for a penny an apple. When my parents realized how many there were to pick up, my pay was halved to a penny for every 2 apples.
Then, when I was a young adult still at home, they had a coal-burning furnace for a while, but no coal chute. The coal would be dumped in an area of the driveway near the house. After Dad had shoveled up most of the coal, I had to pick up by hand all the little pieces I could get. Not fun.
For some reason, my older brother never had to do these kinds of things.
But I guess I’m pretty lucky to have had decent jobs. I had 1 or 2 that I hated, but not much because of the actual work.
Report comment to moderator
My worst ever was also one of the best, but for different reasons. It was at the local animal shelter. I loved working with the animals, and it was always a joy to see some finally get homes. The part that made it the worst was having to euthanize animals do to overcrowding. There were days when I came home from work depressed because all I had done most of the day, was euthanize perfectly good animals for no other reason than to create space for more. After
3 1/2 years of it, it became too much. It was the best, and worst job.
Report comment to moderator
For me it would be a toss-up between a year teaching in a private Christian school, and the job I got as a housekeeper in the local hospital, which I somehow thought would be easier than teaching.
I blame myself more than the school or the students for things having gone so badly. Though I don’t know how they thought any first-year teacher could handle a double class on Mondays. (Due to scheduling problems, they put two sections of seventh grade Spanish in my classroom at the same time, so instead of about 25 students I had 50.) It didn’t help any that I injured my leg the Saturday after school started (bicycle accident), and was out for the next week, then on crutches for the next two months. The older students (10th grade) were pretty good, but I simply could not get the other classes to listen to me. Older teachers gave me plenty of advice about how to maintain classroom discipline, but as hard as I tried I just couldn’t get the hang of it. (It probably didn’t help much either that I was only 22, though I know many young teachers do fine.) By the end of the year the kids just laughed openly at me, and I was not quite suicidal but really wished I could have a bad accident that would put me in the hospital until June.
I thought cleaning hospital rooms would be a breeze in comparison. I had done housekeeping at a summer camp, and was happy enough sweeping and mopping and dusting and cleaning toilets and showers. But I hadn’t counted on the push to complete so many rooms in so little time. It sounded easy enough, to clean 12 to 14 rooms in a 6-hour shift, but somehow I was always running out of time before I got to the last room. By the end of the second week I was being threatened with losing my job for being too slow. The other women told me that the key was to cut corners but never let the supervisor catch me doing it. That really went against both my perfectionist nature and my association of hospitals with strict cleanliness. I spent my breaktimes reading Atlas Shrugged while the other women smoked and gossiped, and realized I just didn’t fit in there. Fortunately at the end of the summer a friend convinced me that I wasn’t totally incompetent at everything and to interview for a clerical job at his company, which I got and excelled at.
Report comment to moderator
The worst job I ever had was at our friendly local taconite mine. I didn’t even have to do the dirty work that my friends did – they hired college students in the summers to do labor-type jobs, such as hosing black muck off the floors. All day. I was in the accounting office. But, WOW was that boring! I generally got done everything they had for me by 10 am, and sat the rest of the day. Loooooooooooooooong days.
I worked at McDonalds for 4 years and could do everything at that store except management. I worked at JCPenney, Daytons and the food service dept at my college. I didn’t mind any of those jobs, because they were usually fast-paced. Especially fast food!
Report comment to moderator
I also cleaned toilets and swept floors, but only once a week for about a month. So, I don’t count that. The summer (1953) after I enrolled in USC (Columbia), a friend of my sister got me a aummer job with Parker Labs. For a couple of weeks, I calibrated tanker trucks at the ESSO (now EXXON) refinery in Charleston. Then, I was transferred to the site where they were building Charleston AFB. That job was hard, long, hot, dirty. I have done dirty jobs while on KP, but this was the worst.
We took asphalt samples, seperated the aggrigate with benzine (I used to use benzine to wash the asphalt off my hands and arms. Stupid thing. I haven’t had physical reprocussions, yet.) In addition to testing for temperature, (+300 degrees) and composition of the asphalt, we had to test stability. We took a sample and tamped it 75 times with a ten pound hammer; turned it over and tamped it again. (That’s 1500# in just a few minutes, and I’m not a strong man.) They couldn’t lay asphalt in the rain, so I often hoped for a rain shower to shut down the operation.
Nobody ever told me I was doing a good job, but when I left to go back to school, the owner told me to go to the SC Highway Dept testing lab and see Mr Heriot. I did than and got a job in the SCHD testing lab that lasted throughout my college career. It wasn’t as hard, air conditioned lab, and paid eighty centa an hour. (The minimum wage was .75.) It was a great part time job. I could have had a career there.
Report comment to moderator
That job at Charleston AFB was 12 hours, 6 days/wk. Lots of typos above. Ignore them.
Report comment to moderator
Bagging sugar beets for deer hunters!
Imagine a mountain of muddy, moldy, half-rotten lumps of material that must be stuffed in plastic bags. These are then tied off and loaded on a trailer. The bags weighed half as much as I did. I was about 12 or so.
It might be cold out, it might be stifling hot; it might be raining, it might be not. The beat bagging must go on!
I think we got $0.18 per bag, with a raise to $0.25 the next year part way through.
Report comment to moderator
The hay harvest and stacking hay on the wagon. The bales weighed more than I did and my Grandpawdaddy said not to worry about it since I was growing so fast that by the end of the summer I would out weigh them. He lied. Every year I swear the bales got bigger.
When you were little you would ride on the wagon stacking up the bales on it as the older boys threw them on the wagon. It was just horrible work for kids adn the worst work on teh farm. Now of course it is all automatic and the bales can weigh a thousand pounds or more.
My GrandPaw said his worst job was skinning hides at a Murell’s meat packing plant.
Report comment to moderator
I moved from the city to a cattle farm at 10 years old, but I didn’t dislike the jobs. As a teenager, my job, as the oldest brother, was “working the back.” We’d get the cattle into the corral, and I had to drive them down the chute. I liked it — it was almost like a sporting event. And there’s a deep satisfaction in knowing how to make a 2000 pound animal go where you want it to go. I somehow managed 4 years of this without ever receiving a serious kick.
My most hated job was actually my mother’s New Jersey forest idea. She wanted the woods behind our house to look like the state parks in New Jersey — nothing on the ground but an even covering of pine needles. The fact that it wasn’t a pine forest didn’t seem to matter. So we would haul sticks out of the woods and rake the forest floor. It was insane.
Report comment to moderator
Llama:
Oh, yeah. Hay baling was pretty rough. What I hated worst was the heat. You had to wear long sleeves or the bales scratch your arms up bad, but we’re tossing around hundreds of 40 pound hay bales in the southern Virginia summer.
Report comment to moderator
being the companion of a fool (definition from Proverbs) was the worst job I ever had
Report comment to moderator
Wow, these make my worst sound not so bad.
First job, McDonald’s. We were expected to work fast, fast, fast, and I tended to get clumsy when I moved faster than a certain operating speed. We were yelled at regularly (it wasn’t at all uncommon to find an employee hiding somewhere and crying from being publicly yelled at). We weren’t allowed to go to the bathroom without permission, and usually were told no when we asked–I learned to go beforehand and simply “hold it” through the five or eight hours or so of my shift. (We were supposed to get breaks, but they were at the manager’s discretion and we might not get one.) We had to ask permission to get a drink of water, and again, were usually told no–and this was in Phoenix, mind you, with some of the work being around cooking food and other parts leaning out drive-thru windows into 115-degree heat–and even if we were allowed a drink, the cups were Dixie cups and we had about two seconds to drink it and get back to work.
At the end of the shift, we told our manager we were “off” and the manager took a few minutes deciding whether to let us clock out or keep us for another 45 minutes. When it came to 3:00 and you hadn’t gone potty for five or six hours, had had one three-ounce cup of water, and hadn’t eaten since breakfast, the idea of being forced to work up to another hour was often miserable. I had one day each week I had a Bible club in my neighborhood, and I simply had to get off work “on time” or within 10 or 15 minutes, and week after week I fought with managers who tried to make me stay an extra hour.
I called in sick once after eight months of working there without ever calling in sick, and was told I had to come in or I’d be suspended for a week without pay. (It was a Saturday, and calling in sick on a Saturday was treated as a grave fault.) I was in serious pain with cramps, but chose to go in so as not to lose a week’s pay and have a suspension on my record.
I was promoted to a sub-management job, but the employees were never told they had to obey me. So I’d tell people on the grill that I needed 10 hamburgers, and five minutes later would find they hadn’t put them down because I wasn’t a manager, and we were out of hamburgers to serve customers. Yet the manager had walked away because I was there and would take over if she left. Twice I even had a young, arrogant manager (she was 17, I was 20) directly contradict me when I told a new employee how to do something. (In one case, the employee had made a sundae far too big–it would be melted over the customer’s hand in seconds in the Arizona heat–and I told her to redo it, as per our training. The manager ran over from the other end of the store and said, “No, no, it’s OK.” It was a power trip on her part, pure and simple, but the ten-cent raise I got for the “promotion” wasn’t nearly enough for the aggravation of being given responsibility with no authority.)
We were the busiest McDonald’s in Arizona, and other McDonald’s all over the area had heard how cruel our manager was. (When we told someone else where we worked, they’d consistently say, “Oh, you work for —?” and express pity.)
But that job made me appreciate all my future jobs all the more. Most people in the workplace take for granted the right to get up and walk to the bathroom when they need to. Not me–I knew what it was like to be told, “No, you’re off in an hour, just hold it” and finally get to go two hours later when the manager finally decided you could clock out and go home.
Report comment to moderator
As a teenager, my worst job was cleaning out a building that had accumulated years of upholstery fabric scraps. My job was to throw out anything that could no longer be used and reorganize what was left into some kind of order. The fabrics literally covered the entire floor and were three feet deep in some places. The atmosphere of the building filled with dust every time I picked up or moved something. I believe this is where my battle with allergies began.
Report comment to moderator
I’ve enjoyed my jobs, but after waitressing, I have lots of compassion for those who do that as a career instead of a college job.
One lady I worked with needed an operation of some sort that she couldn’t afford. She drank Pepto frequently in the kitchen, then headed back out to the dining room with a forced smile and a heavy tray.
This was her life. I tip well now.
Report comment to moderator
Every job I’ve ever had prepared me for life and for the wonderful job I now have. No regrets here, as it was all my the Lord’s design.
Report comment to moderator
Reg,
My heart breaks for you. I’m sorry that someone treated you so badly, and left you in the lurch. Your anger and bitterness are justified. I would probably be even more angry than you are.
On the other hand, I’m afraid for what it’s doing to you. I’m hearing Don Henley’s song run through my head:
Forgive him. It will be one of the hardest things you ever do, but it will be one of the best things you ever do.
Report comment to moderator
I’d have to say it was mucking out the chicken/rabbit/goat barn every spring after those long Alaskan winters…
Report comment to moderator
Teen age – and into college – job was great: referee in youth hockey.
Worst job: working in a pet supply store (while between ‘real’ jobs later in life).
Report comment to moderator
Make It Man,
Be careful. Bitterness is never justified, nor is long-term anger, biblically. And both destroy–I’ve had several people I’ve known intimately who destroyed not just themselves but other people with their bitterness and anger they refused to let go. There are reasons the Bible tells us not to let the sun go down on anger–the longer it smolders, the more we sin, and the more we hurt others. We don’t hurt the one we’re angry at; but we do hurt God, ourselves, and others we love.
Report comment to moderator
I picked over small dried flowers–pulling out deadheads–and made a small bouquet to go into a glass bulb with a resin base as a “souvenir” for someone somewhere. I cringe even thinking about it–and can’t imagine anyone buying those items.
This same question broke the ice beautifully at a dinner we attended a couple months ago. We all were laughing so hard by the end of the meal, it felt like we’d known each other for years.
Report comment to moderator
Lynn- Burger Chef was my favorite place to go when I was a little kid.
My worst jobs were all in the service industry. I enjoyed serving. I enjoyed my customers. I worked with a lot of people that didn’t have much hope. There was always lots of anger and yelling in the work place.
I worked at an animal hospital when I was 13. It was my job to clean out all the cages and stalls. That was a yucky job.
Report comment to moderator
Cheryl,
Evidently you picked apart the particulars of my post rather than the general meaning…. I’m in total agreement with you.
What I’m saying to Reg is that I acknowledge and accept her feelings about the matter, (that’s called listening by the way) and it’s ok and quite understandable to be mad about something that awful. If you read the rest of what I wrote (please feel free), you’ll recognize that I didn’t state that it was ok to remain angry or bitter though…
I suspect that a great deal of Reg’s difficulty in letting go of the anger and bitterness is the fact that few people listen anymore. If one is heard and understood by someone then it’s a lot more likely that one can move on…
Report comment to moderator
Need for college money brought two uglys into my young life. One only for a single Christmas break the other for several summers and breaks long enough to be allowed to work.
The Christmas break job was in a Colorado gravel pit, obviously in December and January. My job was to keep clay balls and other uncrushable junk out of the “crusher” that produced road base for highway construction. A Cat loader would dump several yards of dirt into a hopper connected to a 3′ wide x 50′ long conveyor leading up to the crusher. The hopper allowed anything and everything onto the belt, including clay balls the size of an old 20″ monitor. I had to anticipate them coming up the belt and knock them off the side so they didn’t gum up the crusher. When they did, everything stopped while we dug them out of the crusher with shovels and pry bars. We also had to move spillage away from the belt and from under the crusher with shovels. There was no moment when comfort on the job was possible between the cold, the wind, the snow and the dirt. We didn’t consider the dangers of the machinery because the money was pretty good compared to what our friends were getting for schlepping food.
The second and better job was a 6 PM to 3 AM swing shift in a Safeway (grocery chain) warehouse loading pallets with the orders for the various stores. It was hot, dirty, smelly and dangerous—imagine the mess when a forklift snags and rips down racks holding 15-20 pallets (stacked 4 high starting 10 ft. off the floor) full of cooking oil or fruit drink/juice in glass bottles (plastic not used then). We drove mules—low level pallet carriers—up and down aisles picking one or several boxes from under the racks and loading them onto pallets to fill the order. Not too difficult until you consider the boxes were all different sizes and shapes and could weigh up to 50 pounds each as did the dog food bags that went on the top of the pallet to hold this 6-7 ft. tower together at the end of the order. We’d tie it up with twine and gingerly drive it to the loading dock where others would put them in semi trailers. And we had a not so easy “piece-per-hour” rate we had to move or we didn’t keep the job.
In light of those who eat food, I won’t discuss the things we’d find in the pallets we picked from or the creatures—a fearless rat the size of a house cat living on the lard in the detergent soap—that we’d work around. There was the smell in the canned dog food aisle where crushed cans had been marginally cleaned up for years and the sticky/greasy floors in the pop and cooking oil sections and the flour everywhere in that section.
And for insult, the battery pack on your mule would leak acid and eat holes in your jeans. A not so big deal then as it was a good way to break in a new pair. But, the Teamsters kept the money good enough to afford their dues, buy more jeans, and still make enough to get through school.
Report comment to moderator
This probably sounds crazy but I’ve only had 3 jobs, and I’m not sure what was the worst.
I mowed lawns throughout high school and when home from college in the summer. Averaged about 50 per week, with the help of another person. Memphis is hot and humid in the summer, so that’s not fun. But being outside and only having to put in about 30 hours a week was nice. Plus it paid for college.
While at college (Mississippi State University) I was a “houseboy” for one of the sororities on campus. I didn’t get paid cash, but instead got meals free. A total of 10 meals a week I think. It sounded like a great idea, serving meals to 192 southern ladies, but it got old quickly. Most were really nice (and nice to look at), but it was the few high-maintenance ones that made it hard. I shouldn’t complain though, because I met my wife there
And then there’s my current job, which I’ve done ever since college. It definitely beats the others.
Report comment to moderator
I worked the restaurant industry through university and grew to love it, and worked as the night closer in two restaurants. I preferred the nights since I was in charge since management left after the supper rush. Cheryl — there’s a word for your experience and its called exploitation.
I’ve worked several hay harvests but I don’t have the same bad memories as some of you except when stuck in the barn piling the hay as the elevator dumped the bales in.
I worked in a sweatshop which normally qualifies as a bad experience but I usually hid and caught a nap before my night job at the restaurant.
Finally, I teach grade seven and like Pauline there are days I would rather have the plague than come in. The best asset is the ability to laugh at oneself and move on.
So worst job?? Perhaps the mink fur farm especially during mating season. The smell was atrocious but then again we always managed to find them to relax. When our German boss went to Germany with his girlfriend and his wife left after learning about the affair, the employees were in charge and minimal work was done.
My favourite job was new home construction — not that I was any good at it but there was something about leaving each day and seeing the progress you made — instant gratification.
Report comment to moderator
…not that I was any good at it but there was something about leaving each day and seeing the progress you made
That is great. I could use a little of that in my current job. I like what I do, but I often leave at the end of the day and don’t feel like things are better than the day before. Putting out fires takes up a lot of my time.
Report comment to moderator
Cheryl RE#15,
I’m sorry, I’d rather shovel manure than have to put up with that kind of “management”. It is illegal to treat employees the way you were treated. I believe there are successful lawsuits over that sort of stuff.
Report comment to moderator
No cotton picking stories here?
My wife doesn’t blog, but she tells that as a young girl, she had to come home from school and go pick cotton in season. I never picked cotton, but the way I hear it:
There is no comfortable way to pick cotton. It’s too low to pick standing up, too high to get on your knees. (Look at pictures of cotton picking.)
The sharp bowls makes your fingers bleed. The bags get too heavy. (Fortunately, she had a brother do the heavy lifting.)
And the weather is always too hot or too cold.
My worst single event on a job was helping the flight engineer refuel a C-54 at Goose Bay, Labrador. It was something below zero, we were standing on the wing of this airplane and the wind was blowing. I had two pairs of gloves on and my hand was still freezing. (Nose too, and when my nose gets cold, I’m 25% frozen.)
Make it man, I agree with you about REG. It’s a shame, but she needs to get over it. Easy for me to say. But Still….
But concerning Cheryl, #15. I don’t know when this happened, but my wife worked for an insurance company in 1958. When she got pregnant, she couldn’t wear maternity clothes and had to leave after three months. She kept wearing larger sizes and worked until she was five months. The men could smoke in the office, but women had to go to the rest room to smoke. (It didn’t affect her.)
Of course, all of that is illegal now.
Report comment to moderator
I loved working on the farm, even cleaning out the muck from the milking shed. I loved hay-baling, but always thought it might be beter done in the middle of winter when it wasn’t so disgustingly hot. I wish I could’ve stuck to those jobs through University, but alas, no farms in the middle of the city.
So I worked at McDonalds. I absolutely hated it. I have scars from burning myself on the steamers and keeping working because we were always rushed and the managers would get really angry if you slowed things down.
Now I have the coolest job in the world, being a Mum!
Report comment to moderator
No bad jobs yet (not enough experience.
) but I had a bad day at the concessions stand where I work. I was in a 5′ by 5′ tin box with a my coworker and her boyfriend (who did not work there) and they were all kissing on each other and making me feel like a fifth wheel. Finally I just stood up and annouced that I was sweeping up and leaving. Not surprisingly, they had no objections.
Report comment to moderator
Making big rocks into little rocks for San Juan County about 31 years ago when I was 21-22.
Report comment to moderator
Boy, this is fun.
I wish I could comment on lots of your comments. Can’t, but I will say:
Make It Man and Contented Joy: I knew somebody from a farm would take the Poop Prize!
Rond: Thank you for that. I’ll never eat again.
Chas: My grandma grew up on a farm in Box’s Cove, Alabama, and used to tell stories about picking and chopping cotton. For those of you unfamiliar with “chopping cotton,” that’s where you take a hoe and chop the weeds in among the rows.
True story: One day, when my grandma was a teenager, she and two of her sisters were chopping cotton near the house. Their mother, Bettye Bynum, (my great-grandma) was out doing something in the garden when the postman came by.
“Hey, your girls sure are doin’ a fine job choppin’ that cotton,” the postman said to Bettye.
“Yup,” she joked. “They’re the best little hoers in town.”
(I’m not making that up!)
Report comment to moderator
Oh yeah — WorthyGirl, I was waiting for someone to remember Burger Chef!
Report comment to moderator
I worked in a large department store with poor management and no air conditioning except in the manager’s offices.
My worst job was when I house sat for a neighbor. One day I went over to feed the fish and there was a terrible stench. It turned out that the brand new freezer that the neighbors had bought and filled with meat just before they left on vacation had broken down. I went and got my mom and she saw the blood running out the bottom of the door. I did manage to get it cleaned up without actually losing my lunch. Nothing I would ever want to do again.
Bad jobs are good for one thing–they give incentive to continue your education so that you have more choices and opportunities.
Report comment to moderator
I remember Burger Chef!
Report comment to moderator
A friend of mine had a daughter working for one of the local restaurants. The daughter called in sick and was told to get her own replacement or come in. The mother got on the phone and told the manager in no uncertain terms that with a fever over 100, her daughter was not going to do any calling. Furthermore, she didn’t get paid to do that; the manager did. I’m not sure how long the daughter continued to work there, but I hope the manager learned something.
One of my daughter’s worked cleaning in a hotel for a short while. When she arrived for her second day of work, the rest of the staff literally clapped for her. She couldn’t get over that some people never returned and gave no notice. She did find a better job in a short time.
My husband peeled pulp logs as a kid. This is taking the bark off a tree by hand. He always talks about how blazing hot it was and how bad the mosquitos were. He used the money to buy his own school clothes. The pay was very small, but he was grateful for it.
Report comment to moderator
This is taking the bark off a tree by hand. He always talks about how blazing hot it was and how bad the mosquitos were. He used the money to buy his own school clothes. The pay was very small, but he was grateful for it.
I wish my own kids were growing up then.
Report comment to moderator
Make It Man,
I actually did read your whole post and after I posted, figured maybe I shouldn’t have. It was just your “bitterness…justified” that struck me. (In my mind, one might as well say, “Your adultery is justified”–it goes beyond “hearing” to excusing, though I know you well enough to know you didn’t mean it like that.) I have known so many bitter women who’ve destroyed families, hurt churches, and trained younger women in bitterness and anger toward men. And some of them I’ve listened to by the hour, week after week. A woman who wants to cling to bitterness simply wants to–it’s like a drug. But eventually she will destroy others around her.
Report comment to moderator
Worked one summer for Farman’s Pickles; I was on the overnight shift. My job was to sit in a chair down the belt from where the empty jars loaded and put fingertip fulls (both hands) of dried onion chips into each jar as it passed by me on the conveyor belt.
It. Was. Very. Boring.
Report comment to moderator
Cheryl,
I could have written the initial post much better. Hazard of the medium I suppose. I guess it’s better that it is clarified.
Report comment to moderator
I have another “worst job” story.
When I first got out of high school, I’d had a few classes in Auto Mechanics, a tool box full of tools, and a desire to make a little money for the summer. So I answered a couple of ads, and had a guy tell me to show up with the tool box and be dressed for work.
He brought me over to a truck sitting in the shop with the hood up and the air cleaner off. He says- “This truck runs really bad on start up – what’s wrong with it?”
I hadn’t a clue.
He bluntly says “The choke is stuck. If you don’t even know that much, then get some experience, and come back in a few years.”
End of job.
Report comment to moderator
Lynn: You wouldn’t have wanted your children to live like my husband did. He grew up inspite of his background. His mother had a lot to do with that too. She never realized her worth in this life.
I am glad that each of my children had some hardship in their lives, however. It creates empathy. Like most moms, I would have prevented all that hurt if I could have. Good thing somethings are out of our hands and in God’s.
Report comment to moderator
It’s always been the job I had just prior to the job I have now.
With the exception of shoe salesman in a very low volume store.
Report comment to moderator
Not the worse job I ever had, but the weirdest job I ever did was to play a Nazi in a short spot we shot on a WWII martyr. I’m standing in a guard tower, wearing a WWII German uniform, late at night, in the pouring rain, thinking “what a weird way to make a living”.
Report comment to moderator
BTW can I nominate The Real AJ post #5 for the prize.
Report comment to moderator
The second time I met my future husbands family at their farm, I had to help castrate the bulls…They still don’t understand why it was not an ideal job for me!
Report comment to moderator
The second time I met my future husbands family at their farm, I had to help castrate the bulls…
Oy. That might top the Poop Prize. (See #35)
Report comment to moderator
Momoffour: Well, at least it was the second time! LOL!
Report comment to moderator
After I graduated from high school in 1978, I worked for an insurance company typing policies. I had stacks of handwritten policies, and I would have to take blank policies and line them up perfectly in the typewriter so that I could type the numbers in the right boxes. This required rolling them in, and then manually rolling them until they were lined up.
When I made a mistake with a number, I’d have to remove it from the typewriter and manually erase each of the four carbon copies.
The manager then decided that we had to keep a log of how many mistakes we made during our eight-hour shift. I’m not sure what they were going to do with this information, but it was around this time that I decided I’d earned enough money that I could quit, buy a cheap car, and get a better job. I lasted there for six weeks, and every minute felt I worked felt like ten. I got two ten minute breaks (those ten minutes felt like one) and a half hour for lunch during the day. It was excruciating.
Report comment to moderator
At age 15: Cleaning up after my neighbor’s Saint Bernard. Enough said.
Report comment to moderator
Okay, so I am reading thru this thinking I have never had a bad job. I guess I was thinking paying jobs. Then I read about castrating cows and remembered I had to help my brother-in-law castrate 40# pigs when my father-in-law was recovering from surgery (they had been overdue, but my b-i-l needed help, so he waited until Thanksgiving when the rest of the family was around). I think my ears rang for several days afterwards.
Report comment to moderator
I worked for a school system a few years ago. I liked the job, but what made it terrible was my boss. She always went out of her way to demean me and let others know that she controlled my destiny. One day she even went so far as to say “Only important people have secretaries.” (That’s what she considered me)
Report comment to moderator
I baled hay for three summers also, but I didn’t find that job all that horrible. Yes it was hot (especially when we put the hay in the barn), dusty (thankfully I did not have any allergy problems), and difficult, but I liked being outside, and the pay was good for a 14-year-old. And I got to drive a tractor now and then.
And, for llama (#11), I started with long sleeves as well, but fairly quickly learned the technique that kept the bales off my forearms, and wore short sleeves most of the time.
Report comment to moderator
The reason many jobs are bad usually centers around how you are treated by your boss or co-workers. At least that has been my experience.
I could put up with a lot if my boss thought well of me.
In the last 25-30 years I’ve had around 15 different jobs. Most of them have been rather miserable, but the bright spots have been because of a good boss. Some have had to do with the pay and benefits situation (or lack thereof), but most of the miserable situations had to do with how the employer, the co-workers, or the boss treated me.
Report comment to moderator
I worked for J.C. Penney in the late 50’s printing signs that advertised sales and specials on tables of goods. The job itself was not so bad. It was putting up with the sexual harrassment (they didn’t call it that then, or do anything about it) and stale liquor-scented breath of my male coworker.
Report comment to moderator
Someone else said this already, but my most favorite job was being a mom.
Report comment to moderator
The two worst jobs that I have ever had……
Number one would be loading trap machines at a gun club. You sat in these little bunker type sheds(after making sure that no rattle snakes had slithered in during the night), hauled the clay birds down, tired to make some type of chair, then loaded as fast as you could(slow hands got smacked by the machine..OUCH!). All for two bucks an hour. It was a long summer! But I learned the value of hard work.
Number two would be cleaning out stalls at a horse farm. They had been dirtied and left for a very long time, the roof leaked and all that water just didn’t make things any better! But on the day that I cleaned them out, no rain, just lots of nice bright sunshine that really helped with the smell! LOL
Report comment to moderator
I also picked cotton by hand as a boy. Yes the bolls are sharp and the bag between your legs got heavy, but that wasn’t my worst job.
I also cut the stalks with an open tractor on cold winter nights with my hands and ears turning numb. The cotton dust would burn my eyes and some cut stalks hit me on the back and the back of my head. But that wasn’t my worst job either.
I also was a janitor for a church that had a school. But that wasn’t my worst job either since I felt that it a ministry and did get to fix things, which was fun to do.
My worst job was probably back on the farm as a kid burning weeds. Picture 115 deg Arizona heat (shade temperature – but I was not in the shade) holding a 6 foot wand with a propane torch that shot two 3 foot flames. We wore long sleeves and a straw hat to shield ourselves from the heat. Now days, I’m back on the farm but we don’t do much burning weeds anymore. Weeds are usually bladed with a tractor or sprayed with round-up.
Report comment to moderator
back to topJoin The Conversation
You need to be a registered user of WORLDonTheWeb.com to "join the conversation."
If you are not a member yet, what are you waiting for? Register / Login Now!