What's the Worst Job You Ever Had?

Jim

Beyond the edge is the unknown. Here be Dragons
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Dirty job, boring job... dangerous job... whatever. Any job you hated and would never do again.
I'll go first... :wink2:

When I retired from the Air Force in '94, aviation jobs were hard to come by. There had been a force drawdown a few yrs earlier and there was a glut of aircraft mechanics... hell, any mechanics actually. So, I went to work for a company up in Boise Idaho that made computer chips.
The pay was $8.75 an hr.
The shifts were nice... 12hr shifts where you worked 4 days on, 3 days off, then 3 days on and 4 days off. 6pm to 6 am.
You worked in a "clean room." One they bragged about being cleaner than a hospital operating room. You wore a "bunny suit."... white coveralls, white shoe covers and a hair net. You entered through a room where you were blasted with air before you entered the clean room. A 30min lunch break and two 10min "potty" breaks. Other than that, you weren't allowed to leave the clean room.
The job.... I'd pull a silicon wafer off a rack and set it in a holder. Then I'd peer into an electron microscope, line up a mask... template thingy and abrade materiel off the wafer with a teenie tiny bead blaster type of affair. Once I was satisfied I'd removed the correct amount of materiel, I'd take the wafer and set it in another rack.... Reach into the first rack, grab another wafer and repeat the process.... ad nauseum.
At the end of the first week, my time off was consumed with thought of wafers. At the end of the second week I was having nightmares of giant wafers trying to kill me. At the end of the third week I went home, got good and drunk, called up HR and said I quit. The girl there said I needed to come in and fill out a 2 weeks notice. I told her that burning this bridge was not high up on my list of concerns... I wasn't coming back.

I woke some time later... hungover... and there was a message on my answering machine (remember those) asking if I could come up to Everett Wash. and interview for an aircraft mechanics job. I shaved, showered and hit the road. The next day I was hired at 8 bucks an hr. and I never looked back.
I've had jobs before that and since that were more dangerous, more physically or mentally taxing... more whatever. But never one more mind numbingly monotonous and mind killing as that one. I met people there that had worked there for 10 yrs and loved the place. I have no idea how they did it. :er:

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Novell Network Administrator for a small weekly newspaper.

The job itself was something like I've heard flying described: "Hours and hours of mind-numbing boredom, interspersed with moments of sheer terror."

Two things made the job unbearable:

1. The political/social outlook of ALL of the management and most of the staff was the complete opposite of mine. I had to consider every single word that came out of my mouth.

2. Seeing as I didn't produce copy or ad revenue, I was considered a lower form of life. Unless, of course, the network crashed and then I was King Shit on Turd Island for a few minutes or hours.

The straw that broke the camels back was the move into the new building. The staff went home at quitting time on Friday night and when they came back to work Monday morning the entire network - servers, work stations, routers, printers, scanners, internet connection and all - were up and running in the new building. I had one unskilled helper to do the lugging, otherwise it was just me. Everyone slid in behind their new desk and went to work as if nothing other than the scenery had changed. Which, from their perspective, was true.

Not. A. Fucking. Word. From anyone. And of course, I was salaried, so no OT or bonus.

A few weeks later, my first anniversary came up and I was eligible to take my week's paid vacation (wooooo...) I told the owner/publisher that I would be back after my vacation just long enough to collect my last check. He offered me a $2K a year raise. I literally laughed in his face.
 
Can't really come up with one that really fits "worst job" but the last one had the worst boss. That was not actually my immediate boss or even the next step up the boss chain but the guy three steps above me!

To put things in perspective I started working for a company exactly the day after I graduated from high school in 1968. This company changed hands three or five times while I worked there, each time a larger company bought the last one out. The SOB boss probably started with this same company a few years after me working at first as a office boy in a quarry the other side of the state. Not sure how he worked his way up the ladder, I could come up with some ideas but I'll leave that to others thoughts!

Well in 2015 a few days before my retirement day my immediate boss put on a luncheon in my honor at the quarry. My choice of meal, local Bar-b-que place catered it. To my displeasure this SOB I guess decided to attend. For get what he was saying but in his BS speech said something and said something to the effect "Right Norm!" Thing is "Norm" is actually a mechanic who at one time worked with me but a few years before took a transfer to work at another quarry the other side of the city for this same company. Norm's shop is probably fifty feet from this bosses office at that same plant! Now I could understand if I worked for GM, IBM or some other company with hundreds or even thousands of employees at any one location or if he was a recent hire from out of state but this SOB had many conversations with me over the years and I was the only mechanic or even worker at this plant retiring that year! There were about 30 workers at the quarry when I retired.

My reaction to this was simple, I finished eating my meal got up and went back to the job I was doing that morning. I know a few of the guys I worked with got a kick out of my ignoring him like that. Now if it had been a simple slip of the tongue or anything like that I would have expected him to say something but he never did! He was one of those SOB's who could never admit he made a mistake!
 
I once crawled into an 20 meter Air condition Duct looking as the inside of a vacuum cleaner
The job was the best I have ever had .. but sometimes thing like this happened
Usually it was installation of New ducts on larger projects . But Sometimes it could involve alterations and
Adaption to an old installation
Usually there was a small room that held the fans .And then ducts going out and branching
This duct in this case was out of the fan room out onto a flat roof and covered with roofing material tar paper and so
So in the far end from the fan room there was a need for a new connection going downwards.
Not wanting to do a hole in the roof .. So the solution was to open in the fan room
An opening of about 2 x 1 that magnitude. perhaps larger.
Installation had been there + 10 years maybe 20 and over the years dust and insects and moths and whatnot can come in
Not sure about filtering ..But it did look like a vacuum cleaner inside.
I remember it had asbestos insulation and that caused the Union to inspect. These days there are certain firms that remove it looking as astronauts with their gear.
I crawled all the way to the far end .. One cannot use an angle grinder since it can catch fire
But making the first hole was done via a flat large screwdriver and a hammer blow and then use hand scissors.
Upon that hammer blow the dust swirled up But the connection was made and I crawled back out

In that same fan room I fell down from a plank scaffold ca 3 m down to a concrete floor ..
Landed back first on a 600 mm 90 degrees angle bend that collapsed and worked like a Crash bag in an Automobile
Lost my breath for a while hurt my hand that swoll a little .But did not need to go home even

Have worked behind pressmachines .. One summer was hard Rubber gaskets for Heat Exchangers.
Heat .. Smoke .. Boring and No money ..That was a bad job..
Mostly migrant lady Co workers from Balkan ..Dont remeber being able to speak with them
And it was a salary based om how many gaskets you made so no one was interested in talking
But it was an experience in them days they were called N ... word ... jobs by the boys . Cant say that today.
 
Oh boy. Here goes nothing
I graduated high school and needed to get a job as I decided not to go to college. My girlfriend at the time had a sister who was a manager at a local business. This business was the infamous....Chuck E Cheese's. Oh yes. I was hired to do maintenance and janitorial duties. $9/hr. If you've ever been in a Chuck E Cheese's you already know the chaos inside. Fixing games wasn't bad, it was the janitorial work that did me in. The whole place is just kids running around sneezing on anything in their path. Just wipe your ass little Billy? Good! Make sure you rub your hands all over the machines. The best was when kids got sick in those tube sky scrapers. So they could Close it down and my petite 5'8 250lb frame could shimmy through the tubes like sausage In a casing. On many occasions I also had to be Chuck E himself. Your field of view in that head is approximately 0. People handed me newborns with my big mouse hands holding on for dear life. Every child runs head first for hugs and they're all testicle height. I've had many crappy jobs but that one took the cake. Did it for about a year until I couldn't take anymore. Willie Nelson doesn't have enough weed to deal with that job
 

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I’ve been a blue collar guy most of my life, I’ve had a lot of hard , heavy , even dangerous jobs especially in my young working life. One night stands out as one of the worst 8 hours I’ve ever spent working. I was 19 years old and working as a heavy equipment welder for a Copper mining outfit in Arizona. I was assigned to repair cracks on the underside of the frame of a D9 Caterpillar bulldozer. But before I got that assignment, the mechanics had pulled the motor out and they had decided it would be a good idea to just drain the oil right there where the Cat was sitting. I have no idea how much oil that was , but it was enough to leave a 2” deep pond of old black diesel oil under that Cat. I spent a whole 8 hr graveyard shift laying on my back in that pond of oil , welding on that frame. And they had assigned a mechanic just to sit on the ground next to the Cat with a fire extinguisher in case I lit myself up. It was idiotic, I was a kid and just did what I was told, but an older me would’ve said hell no. I had to drive home that night in clothes that were soaked in oil, they had to be thrown away. My hair was all matted down with oil, and it stained my skin brown for days. Ah… the foolishness of youth.
 
Probably welder/ fabricator in the late 60s and early 70s. Dirty, filthy job with terrible pay. I've had a few dangerous jobs: Timberman/pipelayer come to mind. Sinking timber into a 2.5 mm wide trench to stop the trench collapsing, often below the water table, up to my calves in mud. I quite enjoyed it though. I heard a few stories of guys getting squashed/buried alive when the toms collapsed, but never experience nor saw that personally.

Thinking about it, 'the job that caused the most injuries and one in which I was mauled badly and chomped a number of times was a job I chose to do for 25 years: RAAF Police Dog Handler. 45 years on I still bare the scars on my chest, arms and hands. A number of handlers I knew were badly injured by dogs: One guy was bitten just below the knee, by the time they got him to medical the passenger well in the vehicle was full of blood. Another guy had a terrible scar on his face from an attack and a few guys were so badly traumatised they never worked in the mustering again. I suppose every time I carried out any attack work I was at risk, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, best working years of my life, and I'm still a dog addict!

But this is the best one, I was in the passenger seat in this little van when it hit the wing of a Sabre. The edge of the wing pierced the seat where I was sitting right where my neck would have been had I not ducked in time, I just got a few scratches on my back and head. When I looked up to seek if the driver was OK, his mouth was wide open, the edge of the wing was lodged in his mouth and the wing pushed his head back pinning him to the seat, it took a bit of effort to get him out of the vehicle. He was a blubbering wreck after being released. The force was so great it nearly chopped the roof off.

That was around the mid 80s when I was an instructor, the students all raced over and helped get the driver out. The picture is still pinned on the Amberley Motor Transport Section's notice board I believe. Closest I ever came to losing my head, literally!
 

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25 years as a Deaf Educator..Firsst at the katzenbach Schhol for the Deaf in NJ...the last 10 of those yrs were at Eastern NC School f/t Deaf... I loved that job..Teaching deaf vocational students jobe entry level skills...Some of those kids wound up with better paying jobs than me...
But then there was 10 yrs of working in Electronics Production with different employers...The last was I-Stat in NJ a Bio medical manufacturer of hematology and chemistry blood analyzers that could give a full analysis in 2 mins... TheProduction manager was really an engineer and had no business managaing people..he sucked at it...He was not well liked but he was feared..ruled by intimidation..I kept my head down ..I got to assemble and run the diagnostic testing on all the final assembled units...My day went fast..
The straw that broke the camels back...Sept 11th 2001..sstarted out like an other day...At 9 a.m. we had our a.m. break.. someone had the news on from the internet and we saw the terrorists attacks on the WTC..Pentagon and in PA ..All of us at work were shocked..some were very emotional..We all went passed our elotted break time and the production manager screamed at everyone to get the "f" back to work..He didnt care about anything except his production numbers at the end of the day..week..month year... I was quite upset and I was not in the mindset to go the "F" back to work..So I had had enuogh of this manager anyway so i told him what i thought of him and his job and where he could shove it...and I walked out of there never to return..That was only a 1 yr job.. I cant imagine how those poor workers put up with such a nasty boss just so they could make a paycheck...My electronics jobs were in between my teaching jobs..so after 10 yrs I went back to Deaf Education..I was happy to be back where i had my dignity....
 
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My 25 years with the RAAF wasn’t all beer and skittles, the first 20 were OK, but as I climbed the rank ladder came across quite a few psychopaths, all officers. The worst time was my final 4-5 years: In the mid 90s I had a female Squadron Leader as a boss, she was a doozie. The Officer commanding sacked her from her position as the Base Security officer over her treatment of us all and actually banned her from the base.

In her place he put little old me! This turned out quite good, for whenever the SQNLDR was permitted on base, I had to escort her and ensure she had no contact with any of the troops and was not permitted to enter the police section without my approval and without me escorting her. I was only a SGT at the time, but my pay level went up to Flight lieutenant level and I had under my umbrella Police Dog Section, Police Section, Investigations Cell and the Counter Intelligence Cell. I ran that for a while, I was then promoted to Flight Sergeant and posted to another unit as Deputy Base Security Officer.

At the new unit my new boss, a Flight Lieutenant, was OK, but he was posted out and I took over his position as Base Security Officer, once again picking up pay at Flight Lieutenant level. Under my umbrella this time I had Police Dog Section, Police Section, Investigations Cell, Counter Intelligence Cell, Ground Defence Section and Physical Training Section, I also picked up the role of Cyclone Officer.

The CO, a Group Captain, made my former boss seem quite normal by comparison. He took it upon himself to micro manage our section’s daily duties and even went as far as to try and kick one of my troops out of the mustering, I fought him, so the CO called in the Management Services team to investigate. They conducted their investigation and submitted their report in which they were extremely critical of him and his management practices. He then took three days off, saying he needed time to digest the report, when he returned to work, he refused point blank to even talk to me.

Medical section were chasing me for medical discharge at the time, but I had a sympathetic doc at the time who said he could stretch it out over a couple of years, but I’d had enough of the RAAF by this time and declined, so I pushed it forward and medically discharged a few months later.

By far the last five years in the RAAF was the worst job I ever had: Daily dealings with psychopathic officers COs, OCs, XOs was very taxing, I’m sure they were all fruit loops.

Power corrupts absolutely, absolute power corrupts absolutely. No truer words have ever been spoken when it comes to officers!
 
@toglhot - I hear ya, Brother!

I spent 22 years in the Navy. The first half was mostly fun. You probably know this, but the US Military rank structure for enlisted folks has nine paygrades, E1 through E9. I had a bit of an attitude problem (shocking, yes?) and spent 6 years as an E4 (PO3). I was making enough money to keep me in beer, cigarettes and hookers and saw no real advantage to getting promoted anyway so I didn't put any effort into the process.

Then I got married. Single one day, married with 3 kids, a house payment and a car payment the next. Promotion took on a whole new aura!

Got my shit together and made E5 off the next test and E6 as soon as I was eligible. Still having fun, being a bench tech in the shop and working shift work. Minimal contact with Upper Management and most of that was positive. Shortly after I made E6 I was sent to a year-long advanced school and while in school I got picked up for instructor duty. Again, mostly fun, but now I was gearing up for promotion to E7...Chief Petty Officer. I don't know about other services but in the Navy, the jump from E6 to E7 is a HUGE deal, requiring all sorts of things other than technical competence. You have to get involved in all sorts of rah-rah Go Navy bullshit on your own time, develop at least the facade of political and diplomatic skills and generally polish your ass-kissing skills.

By this time I had 12 years in. I faked it well enough to make Chief, but then I spent another 6 years as a CPO because I didn't play nice with others some (most...) of the time. My remaining 10 years as a Chief and (miracle of miracles, even Senior Chief) was a giant pain in the ass. Being in charge of people, I spent more time standing in front of the Skipper explaining my people's dumbass moves than I EVER did explaining my own as a junior enlisted...
 
Being in charge of people, I spent more time standing in front of the Skipper explaining my people's dumbass moves than I EVER did explaining my own as a junior enlisted...

that last sentence reminded me of the time the then boss in the shop at the quarry mentioned he was thinking of "promoting" me to be "working group leader". My reply was basically "Thanks but No thanks!". He asked why and I told him I had no problem with taking the blame for mistakes I might make but I had no desire to have to spend my time explaining why six or eight others made mistakes while I was trying hard not to make my own.

He respected my answer and gave the job to one of the other mechanics in the shop. I never regretted that one bit. Plus at the time I think the raise I would have gotten for the promotion was at the most $10.00 a week. Probably would have spent that much a week on aspirin for the headaches!
 
It's not politically correct to blame subordinates for their mistakes I've been told, it's a sign of bad management I've also been told. I have to admit though, beside putting up with psychopathic officers and troops who tend to make their own rules rather that follow yours, it was good at the top. During my time I made a point of writing SOPs, Cyclone Orders and so on, where there were none, the only problem was getting the troops to follow them. Oddly enough, the ones who made their own rules as they went along were some of the best troops: Able to think for themselves and thInk out of the box. Twas annoying though.
 
Probably welder/ fabricator in the late 60s and early 70s. Dirty, filthy job with terrible pay. I've had a few dangerous jobs: Timberman/pipelayer come to mind. Sinking timber into a 2.5 mm wide trench to stop the trench collapsing, often below the water table, up to my calves in mud. I quite enjoyed it though. I heard a few stories of guys getting squashed/buried alive when the toms collapsed, but never experience nor saw that personally.

Thinking about it, 'the job that caused the most injuries and one in which I was mauled badly and chomped a number of times was a job I chose to do for 25 years: RAAF Police Dog Handler. 45 years on I still bare the scars on my chest, arms and hands. A number of handlers I knew were badly injured by dogs: One guy was bitten just below the knee, by the time they got him to medical the passenger well in the vehicle was full of blood. Another guy had a terrible scar on his face from an attack and a few guys were so badly traumatised they never worked in the mustering again. I suppose every time I carried out any attack work I was at risk, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, best working years of my life, and I'm still a dog addict!

But this is the best one, I was in the passenger seat in this little van when it hit the wing of a Sabre. The edge of the wing pierced the seat where I was sitting right where my neck would have been had I not ducked in time, I just got a few scratches on my back and head. When I looked up to seek if the driver was OK, his mouth was wide open, the edge of the wing was lodged in his mouth and the wing pushed his head back pinning him to the seat, it took a bit of effort to get him out of the vehicle. He was a blubbering wreck after being released. The force was so great it nearly chopped the roof off.

That was around the mid 80s when I was an instructor, the students all raced over and helped get the driver out. The picture is still pinned on the Amberley Motor Transport Section's notice board I believe. Closest I ever came to losing my head, literally!
How in the heck did that happen?
 
The worst job I had was bagging feed. The product would be mixed up in giant batches in a hopper underneath the mill floor. At certain intervals, various chemicals and additives would be thrown through a trap door and mixed into the batch by a large mixing paddle. Here's a hint, if your work place includes a fire hose that dispenses hot molasses, it is probably not a good place to work. At any rate, once the mix was complete it had to be doled out into bags, which is where I came in. My job was to pull up a woven plastic bag over a chute, which was held in place by pinch rollers, whereupon is was immediately filled by the product descending from the chute by force of gravity. Once full, you would let the air pedal go, the pinch rollers would retract, the bag would progress to the left on a conveyor, and you would pull the top of the bag through a sewing machine that sealed it. Then you'd pull the string through a razor and let it go off into the stacking room. Every once in awhile you'd lose your timing and the bag was not in the proper position, the weight of the feed would pull the bag off the chute and you'd either have a big pile of product on the floor to clean up, or you would choke yourself in a big cloud of dusty feed. That wasn't the worst part. The worst part was once you had bagged enough feed to back up the conveyor to the machine, you would have to go next door to the stacking room and put in on a pallet, 8 bags per level, about 8 levels high. Some of these bags were 150lbs apiece, and what made it worse was the fact that the warehouse was open to the Canadian winter air, and the heater in the stacking room was busted. I was sweating like an ox, and every time my shirt opened up it felt like I was being stabbed. Once the pallet was stacked, you then made yourself nauseous spinning round and round with the plastic wrap to keep it all in place on the pallet. One day I went out into the warehouse to look at the work I had done that day and I had bagged stacked and wrapped 30 tons of feed. I swear I worked so hard that week I didn't need to take a dump as every morsel of food I ate was turned directly into energy. After one week I said, eff this for a game of soldiers and told them I was leaving. The manager offered to raise my pay from $6hr to $8hr as long as I didn't tell anyone. Fact was, I was so poor at the time I actually had to consider it, but then I looked at my fingernails which had a mirrors shine from all the rubbing against the bags and said, no thanks. They hired some guy just out of prison for killing is wife to do the job after me. I guess he didn't have too many options.

The worst day on any job was a toss up between being covered in yellowjacket wasps for a couple of hours, or having a few gallons of warm ATF mixed with pigeon crap running down my arm, body leg and into my boot. Those are stories for another time.
 
Spent about two yrs down in Fla servicing forklifts on weekends. Company van full of oil, filters, points, tires.... you name it.
One customer was a poultry farm. Lord know what they needed a forklift for.... but there you are.
Little known fact.... chicken shit can work it's way into the most unlikely places. Air filters full of the stuff... Replaced an alternator once that was full of it. How the fuck does that happen?!?
 
Spent about two yrs down in Fla servicing forklifts on weekends. Company van full of oil, filters, points, tires.... you name it.
One customer was a poultry farm. Lord know what they needed a forklift for.... but there you are.
Little known fact.... chicken shit can work it's way into the most unlikely places. Air filters full of the stuff... Replaced an alternator once that was full of it. How the fuck does that happen?!?

There is a huge egg ranch outside of town, tens of thousands ( maybe hundreds of thousands ) of chickens in these big metal buildings. Man you smell that place a mile before you get to it. And when you get real close there is so much ammonia in the air it just about burns your lungs. There ain’t enough money in the world to work at a place like that!
 
There is a huge egg ranch outside of town, tens of thousands ( maybe hundreds of thousands ) of chickens in these big metal buildings. Man you smell that place a mile before you get to it. And when you get real close there is so much ammonia in the air it just about burns your lungs. There ain’t enough money in the world to work at a place like that!
Yep, that's the kind of shit I'm talkin' about.... you smelled the place ten minutes before you got there....
 
When I was working as a welder/ fabricator we had a job bracketing wall fans in an indoor piggery, if you think your farts smell, Trust me they don't. At one point we had to switch the fans off, that was nice! And the noise that erupted five minutes before the food chutes opened was ear splitting, I'm sure all the little piggies had alarm clocks, every day at exactly the same time all hell broke loose.
Lunch time came and all the piggery workers sat at the table, not wishing to be rude, we joined them. Big mistake, we'd already lost of our appetite, but when someone upended a little piglet in a rack on the table and cut his gonads out, that was it for us.
 
How in the heck did that happen?
Sun was going down, in court he said the sun got in his eyes so he didn't see the wing. Some funny lines attached to the court appearance. When I saw the wing, just before it came through the windscreen I yelled out 'wing, wing'. The defence grabbed at that and trying to attach some blame to me asked why I didn't yell out 'stop, stop'. My reply 'we weren't going to hit a stop, we were going to hit a wing'.
At one point the fact there were no witches hats or other barriers placed around the sabre came up. The defence seized on that aspect saying barriers should have been placed around the sabre, saying they were placed around other aircraft parked in other out of the way areas. I was in the witness box at this point and the prosecution asked 'why do you think witches hats and barriers are placed around those aircraft', my reply ' I don't know, maybe to stop people crashing into them'. That sort of ended the prosecution, they finding the defendant innocent, much to their disgust!
I think Ken got off that charge, can't really remember...
 
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