Comments on: Something Light: Your worst job ever

By: Fuzzyface

Fuzzyface — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 04:20:58 +0000

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.

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By: Marcy

Marcy — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:38:54 +0000

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

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By: janie

janie — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:00:00 +0000

Someone else said this already, but my most favorite job was being a mom.

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By: janie

janie — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 13:51:08 +0000

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.

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By: Make it Man

Make it Man — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 13:19:48 +0000

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.

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By: Lance

Lance — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 13:11:59 +0000

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.

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By: jceja

jceja — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 10:48:43 +0000

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)

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By: Peter L

Peter L — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:46:18 +0000

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.

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By: JaneDoe

JaneDoe — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:24:33 +0000

At age 15: Cleaning up after my neighbor’s Saint Bernard. Enough said.

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By: Ree

Ree — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 00:21:15 +0000

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.

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