Worse Job You Ever Had

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  • JuniorJunior 4,853 Posts
    Probably packing potpourri during a uni summer break.

    That does sound awful, I don't know what would be worse, A Fish Cannery or A Potpourri Factory. Both murder on the senses I'm sure.

    A couple months ago I spent a few hours reading about CTS DECON.

    Its kind of freaky and morbid, but knowing what in entails has me convinced that
    THAT is probably the Worst, but one of the BEST paying Jobs Ever. Not for the faint of Heart.
    If you don't know what it is you probably don't want to know what it is.

    It is a steady and growing industry, however it has a very quick and very high turn over ( no pun intended )

    Shit, I didn't even know this line of work existed but, thinking about it, it seems impossible for it not to. Like everything you deal with day in day out (apart from potpourri) you would probably slowly get detached from the actual sights you saw during the job but whether you could ever fully detach yourself from the knowledge of what you are cleaning and why would be another matter. The fact that the families could be there while you were doing it is pretty horrible. It's not really a job you'd want to offer stories about your day with too often either.

    It'd have to be extremely[/b] well paid I would think.

  • JustAliceJustAlice 1,308 Posts
    My first, uh, infatuation with this industry began with a 1996 movie called
    'Curdled' which I believe was produced by Tarantino. Its a great short flick and looks at it in a much more light hearted manner......sort of.
    Still, I think $500 a hour is not enough.

  • Young_PhonicsYoung_Phonics 8,039 Posts
    Japanese



    three insanely erratic female co-workers

    HOLLER!

  • yuichiyuichi Urban sprawl 11,331 Posts
    Japanese



    three insanely erratic female co-workers

    HOLLER!

    Trust me, too many females in the office =

    We're talking 30+ years of age too.

  • Young_PhonicsYoung_Phonics 8,039 Posts
    Japanese



    three insanely erratic female co-workers

    HOLLER!

    Trust me, too many females in the office =

    We're talking 30+ years of age too.


    HOLLER!

  • yuichiyuichi Urban sprawl 11,331 Posts
    Damn son, keep yo libido in check son!! lol Trust me, you'll find plenty more attractive women outside of the office (i.e. the club) than in!!! The office makes everyone a robot, either that or a slave or a complete bitch.

  • GropeGrope 2,970 Posts
    been working at a company that builds printers. had to wear goggles. the guy after me was a real turd. he looked at the machine without the goggles eventhough i told him that ink gets spit out all the time. well, he had to go to the doctor, cause he got a full load in his eye. that was a good day!

    i think i ruined more shirts than i could buy from my wage!

  • GropeGrope 2,970 Posts
    i also worked at a storage department once. had to carry and walk so much all day that my thighs got raw. i had to buy some baby powder.
    i also fell from my skateboard that time. going downhill at approximately 35 mph. i got me a pizza margeritha on my right hip and a superbrusiedburned elbow and forearm. never felt so much pain. salty sweat running over burns on my hip, thighs, elbow and forearm! OUWIE!

  • nzshadownzshadow 5,518 Posts
    Graveyard shift-sheet metal factory. Auckland, NZ
    crimping, cutting and spot welding giant sheets of metal to make light boxes, 12 hour shifts. boss was a wanker, classic rock radio torture. i swear i thought i was going insane. the customer fucked up the measurements so we got to do it all twice.

    Postman. Redfern, Sydney, Australia
    4am wakeups, sorting mail until 9/10 am, then side stepping the used needles on the ground when delivering. Dogs hate posties for real. so do junkies, dealers, stickup kids and thugs. Redfern is no joke.

    Doorman- club Sam-Bucas.(really) Auckland, NZ 93/4
    Before i knew how to fight. What the fuck was i thinking... i learned pretty quick. worst night: after some asshole DROVE HIS CAR THROUGH THE FRONT GLASS DOORS, i remember hearing one of the rugby boys we were throwing out yell "hit anything in a white shirt!" then i woke up. still have the scar on the back of my head from the ring he was wearing. fuck that place.

    plus a lifetime of unspectacular menial unskilled bullshit jobs.

  • YENYEN 23 Posts
    working at Waxwell Records @ this moment! Too many good records passing by... makes me a broke man!

  • Birdman9Birdman9 5,417 Posts
    Painting houses.[/b] It's fun for the first four hours, miserable after the ninth. I did it for minimum wage to boot.

  • TheGoochTheGooch 541 Posts
    kosher deli, managed by a false jew. i knew this dude from the block. opened up a kosher deli and wore the yahmahca only when at work. cant front on the rotisserie chicken though.

  • asstroasstro 1,754 Posts
    I spent a summer as a ticket agent for TWA, that sucked. I know people are stressed when they fly, but 9 times out of 10 they cause their own problems. If you show up 30 minutes before your flight leaves I cannot guarantee your bag will make the plane, but it most likely will. But if you argue with me about it for 10 minutes instead of just keeping it moving, I can guarantee that it won't, feel me? That was one of the only satisfying forms of revenge, making sure some dipshit's bag didn't make it on a plane.

    Be nice to customer service people who control your belongings/food/money/time.

  • The-gafflerThe-gaffler 2,190 Posts
    I once worked at as a cook when I was 14 at this pizza place called "Crystal Pistol Pizza Palace" in this really really ghetto amusement park called "Frontier Town"


    HAHAHAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

    "Tell me the pin # or you die!"

    "Pin number? What's a pin numer? We don't have those things here in Fronier Town"


    i did wallpapering & interrior painting one summer when i was like 15-16. it was the hardest i had ever worked, and it beat the shit out of me. i got paid $12/hr under the table, working 10-12 hour days, at that age. you do the math, i was a very happy kid. paid cash for my first whip when i was 17. i liked it too cause it made me feel proud finishing a job, room by room. plus it got you away for the day cause we worked all over the DC area, and our boss drove.


    the only shitty job i've ever had was working at Subway for like a month. the only thing that made it worthwhile was my friend who would trade blunt hits for free subs. also, all the gatorade i could possibly drink.

    i specifically remember this one time when me & the hot girl were working a morning/lunch shift and i took an 8th of shrooms and was chillin out having fun and then she says "hey i kinda need your halp" and there was a line out the door. i was GONE at that moment. the only reason we had a rush was cause of some event that weekend, cause usually it was dead. this one lady who always came in thought she was confusing me with her order, so she gave me a $10 tip. other than that, this other girl wanted to give me an HJ on the job and i said no, then i quit like 2 days later and someone said "hey i heard something about this girl trying to give you sexual favors" so something tells me they were onto our lax work due to the in-the-cut location and had schitt tapped.

  • GrandfatherGrandfather 2,303 Posts
    I walked out on a lunch break and never went back...

    ha. I worked at a country club as a waiter getting paid 7/hour but NO tips.
    After an afternoon of fetching too much shit for cranky old ladies, I took my lunch break and never came back...


    i worked in telemarketing for about 2.5 years during college
    shitty shitty shitty job. worked under an alcoholic cocaine addicted manager who would spend his entire time standing up asking us why we haven't met our quota
    sitting next to coked out coworkers got to be a pain in the ass too.
    One time, this one dude I was sorta cool with, was really coked out and thought it would be funny to keep unplugging my headset during calls. after a little bit, i got up and pushed him, then he punched me, splitting my eyebrow a little bit, so i knocked him out in the back row of the room. my manager came over to help him up and told us both to comeback tomorrow. the guy gave me a lift home.

    I finally just stopped showing up one day and dedicated my life to school and playing basketball.

  • djkingottodjkingotto 1,704 Posts
    i worked for benson moving. my first day i was just supposed to ride along and it was only supposed to be a half day. i got in and they put me on a truck and moved some rich family from wallingford to madison park, right on lake washington. they literally had boxes of bricks in the basement. all the guys on the truck were experienced movers so they didn't sweat it, but that was the worst shit i ever had to do. i mean, moving sucks, but to have to move someone else? my half day was from 7am to 9pm. i fucked up my foot that day and never went back.

  • hogginthefogghogginthefogg 6,098 Posts
    Pushing shopping carts--uphill--in Austin for a few years in college. No shade + black asphalt = dried salt on my arms by the end of my shift.

    And as far as bad indoor jobs, I'd have to say that sweeping and mopping an entire Wal-Mart with just one other high-schooler also sucked.

  • RAJRAJ tenacious local 7,779 Posts
    Too many to name.

    Delivering Papers as a kid (5 AM wakeup calls / having to collect)

    South Hills Movers in PGH (moving heavy ass furniture in hot muggy weather ='s NO THANKS!)

    Rebin at Amazon.com 1998 in Seattle (On my feet 9 hours / day... No sitting a loud. I lost a lot of weight that summer)

    Canvasing PGH neighborhoods for Sierra Club (I quit after a day!)

    Washing Windows in Colorado for two summers (dickhead boss related)

  • PATXPATX 2,820 Posts
    answering phones at a law firm called Slepkow, Slepkow & Bettancourt. Say that 10 times fast now.

    Other than that, cleaning up shit, piss and puke (drunk people related)

  • behemothbehemoth 2,189 Posts
    My first, uh, infatuation with this industry began with a 1996 movie called
    'Curdled' which I believe was produced by Tarantino. Its a great short flick and looks at it in a much more light hearted manner......sort of.
    Still, I think $500 a hour is not enough.

    i actually contemplated this. considering you can make a shitloadddd of money.

    then i read an article in Mass Appeal about the owner of the biggest cleanup company in the country and he even says its one of the grossest and grimiest jobs ever.

    says smelling a decomposed body stays with you forever.

  • rain103rain103 476 Posts
    my worst would be as a dishwasher at a seafood restaurant in high school. doing twice the dirty work as everyone else while making minimum and no tips. but i can't complain after reading some of the posts on here. some of you have had it baaaaad.

  • HarveyCanalHarveyCanal "a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
    Needed a summer job in Houston back when I was in college, and my dad hooked me up with a job in a machine shop in Galveston. I actually knew the boss down there as I had gone on hunting trips with him and his sons. My dad made me think that I would be getting paid like $11-$13 an hour. I get down there...it was almost a half an hour drive from my parents' house...and dude tells me I'm going to be paid a whopping $5 an hour. Then I spent the whole day alternating betweeen sweeping up endless metal shaving and using a 20 foot stick to pull cobwebs down from the warehouse ceiling. I got home that evening and told my dad I ain't going back tomorrow...not for $5 an hour. He didn't like that, but tough shit for him...what a wack gig that turned out to be.

    Worst job I ever had for more than a day was telemarketing for carpet cleaners...although that got turned into a joke really fast. Sometimes when I would get answering machines, I would come up with some reason to cuss the person out...then I would leave a friend's name and phone number. So some friend would eventually get an irate call from someone all pissed at them for the message they supposedly left. Oh, the fun we had with phones the days before caller id (or even *69). Anyway, I was out of the telemarketing game after probaly 3 weeks of it.

    I've also flipped burgers, bused tables, delivered pizzas, driven a dump truck, built fences, cut grass, walked dogs for a vet/kennel, watered plants at a nursery, did stock room and janitorial work at a Weiner's, provided daycare, shelved books, counted rec sports participants on an hourly basis, and graded papers...but as shitty as some of those duties got, I never minded any of it really. There's always some pride you can find in doing even the most simple of tasks.

  • mannybolonemannybolone Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
    Too many to name.

    Delivering Papers as a kid (5 AM wakeup calls / having to collect)

    I forgot doing this too. I took over this kid's shift for a few days, one or two times, and it involved waking up at 4 or 5am and the first thing I had to do was rubberband those MFers, load them into a bag, somehow manage a way to climb onto a bike despite having suddenly gained about 30 pounds, and then try to read addresses in pre-dawn light.

    I>And let's not talk about the Sunday edition[/i].

  • funky16cornersfunky16corners 7,175 Posts
    Every job I had in my teens was a testament to my utter lack of ambition... I should go around giving seminars to high school kids on how NOT to go about working while in school...

    1. Two seasons working as "muscle" for two old people that sold CB radios and accessories, car stereos and boom boxes (which had just come out) at an outdoor flea market. I unloaded/loaded their van, sold crap and made sure nobody stole (especially the "schvartzers"...ugh). For this I got $15 a day, which I promptly spent on records (some things never change).

    2. One summer picking corn with an interesting assemblage of dirtbags, hillbillies, and people right on the cusp of homelessness. I think I got like $2 an hour.

    3. One summer installing underground lawn sprinkler systems. Hard f*cking work in the sun all day long.


    4. Two years working food service at a theme park. First year was a non-stop party. Second year (after I got a "promotion") I worked making pizza at the busiest stand in the park, with a boss who was intent on turning her summer job into some kind of career. I once saw this troll yell at a senior citizen for putting too much cheese on a chicken parm sandwich.

  • The_Hook_UpThe_Hook_Up 8,182 Posts
    washing cars at a used car lot in the summer. It was so hot that the suds would dry before I had a change to rinse. After getting tired of this you started to move slower naturally, so the cars ended up looking worse than before you "washed" them, thus having to redo damn near every car...sucked.

    Sacker at kroger just because the manager was such a prick. Asked me to do the worst shit. One day he called me and another dude out and told us to clean out the produce dumpster which still had rotting vegetables about 2 feet deep in it...he wanted us to get in as we were, with no gloves, coveralls, boots...just jump in and ruin our clothes and possibly get ecoli. I said "hell no" and went home.

  • HarveyCanalHarveyCanal "a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
    Too many to name.

    Delivering Papers as a kid (5 AM wakeup calls / having to collect)

    I forgot doing this too. I took over this kid's shift for a few days, one or two times, and it involved waking up at 4 or 5am and the first thing I had to do was rubberband those MFers, load them into a bag, somehow manage a way to climb onto a bike despite having suddenly gained about 30 pounds, and then try to read addresses in pre-dawn light.

    I>And let's not talk about the Sunday edition[/i].

    I forgot as well...I did the Orange County Register for about a year when I was 13...and really sucked at it.

    It was an afternoon edition so I only had to work mornings on the weekend. But yeah, that was a hefty paper to be carrying a full bag of them on a bike.

    But the worst was having to collect...knocking on people's door and trying to convince them to pay you the 3 bucks they actually owed YOU (not the paper). Some of those who would blow me off would start to get an egg delivered instead of a paper.

    Then some especially lazy days I wouldn't even deliver my route, but would just save a couple copies to bring to the adament customers who would actually bother to call in to complain.

    A couple times, my friend and I snuck his parent's hatchback Volvo from their garage at like at 4AM Sunday morning to knock both of our routes out in record time. I don't know how we never got busted pulling that shit.

    Yeah, me and delivering papers was a disaster and a half.

  • verb606verb606 2,518 Posts


    the only shitty job i've ever had was working at Subway for like a month. the only thing that made it worthwhile was my friend who would trade blunt hits for free subs. also, all the gatorade i could possibly drink.



    The summer before I left for school I slacked heavily on the job-seeking tip and the best I could get was Subway. I was the second-youngest person working, but evidently I was also the second-or-so most responsible/reliable, because after a week or two of teeth-cutting lunch rush shifts, I was put in charge of closing at like midnight with someone who had been working way longer than me.

    It was kinda crappy, but not really that bad as far as jobs go. I worked with some cool kids. There was no manager at night so we would make a batch of cookies and eat them throughout the night. We'd turn on WGCI and bump hip-hop in the store. This was 1994, so Biggie and Black Moon were actually on the radio. That was dope.

  • dollar_bindollar_bin I heartily endorse this product and/or event 2,326 Posts


    Canvasing PGH San Francisco neighborhoods for Sierra Club CALPIRG (I quit after a day!)[/b]


    I'm sure a lot of us who've tried canvassing quit after one day.

  • dollar_bindollar_bin I heartily endorse this product and/or event 2,326 Posts


    Canvasing PGH San Francisco neighborhoods for Sierra Club CALPIRG (I quit after a day!)[/b]


    I'm sure a lot of us who've tried canvassing quit after one day.

    Oh I wanted to add, I had a roommate who lasted 4 months canvassing in San Diego so I've seen the upsides:

    1) You literally have seniority by day two of employment, if you last 3 weeks you're running a crew and I'm pretty sure if you go 6 months they make you a vice president.

    2) Everyone gets laid. I guess if you spend all day asking strangers for money it's pretty easy to ask someone you know for sex. Plus you spend every waking minute with them.

  • LuckLoopLuckLoop 103 Posts
    My first, uh, infatuation with this industry began with a 1996 movie called
    'Curdled' which I believe was produced by Tarantino. Its a great short flick and looks at it in a much more light hearted manner......sort of.
    Still, I think $500 a hour is not enough.

    i actually contemplated this. considering you can make a shitloadddd of money.

    then i read an article in Mass Appeal about the owner of the biggest cleanup company in the country and he even says its one of the grossest and grimiest jobs ever.

    says smelling a decomposed body stays with you forever.

    so how much do they pay?
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