The worst job you ever had

Ginjafro

What is the worst job you ever had?

I'll kick off with a 3 month stint as a "screw packer". This involved transferring screws from a large container or lots of small boxes into other different sized boxes, brilliant.

big_p

loading 40 ft trailers with steel girders on a fork truck, unbelievably dangerous, especially when you work with a bunch of work-shy retards.

or it could have been when i used to make pizza sauce for chicago town pizza in leyland, now that was a sheet job.

APIII

12 hour shifts counting 10 dishcloths off the conveyor belt and putting them in boxes. For 3 months ffs. However, I like to think it was character building as opposed to soul destroying.

ddraver

Packing Pasties in the Ginsters Factory - a personal affront to me as a Cornishman. Worse though was working in the "spice room" of the same factory measuring out all the weights of the salt/spices and horrific preservatives that go into that sort of food! The powders just got into every corner of you mouth, nose, eyes and lungs and made me feel like someone that smokes 50 a day (I assume)

Every job cleaning toilets or washing pots was better than that, even making magazines and Argos Catalogues...

crispybug2

Oh come on....someone had to post this!!



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SentQjMIioY

crispybug2

But speaking for myself, working on the cockle boats off Southend for a summer represents the lowest point of my CV

tim_wand

Worked in the "Dice Lung" section of Pedigree Petfoods.

Basically 20 kilo 1 metre by 1 metre frozen slabs of Cows lungs and offal were brought in loaded into a banding machine and cut into strips and then put through a steam condensor onto a conveyor belt.

You then had to pick out the bits of trachea and bone from the diced meat cubes.

You worked in white overalls and looked like Freddy Kreuger by the time you finished.

Still after 26 years continious employment (In other jobs ) up to last week and only one meeting with the JSA I'd go back tomorrow for half wages.

davehmercer

For me it has to be working in the service department at a Land Rover Dealership.

Trying to explain to people why the car (that is supposed to be a 4x4) they had just spent in excess of £60,000 for needs new suspension after 4000 miles!

That wasn't a fun conversation, which I had to have on a regular basis!

mouth

I worked in a petrol station for a while on nights. Robbed at both gun and knife point. I was also gainfully employed as an ice hockey referee for a time. By jove that was interesting.

Worst job though was when working for a large pub chain. 90-95 hour weeks with 18 hour shifts was the norm for little more than minimum wage. I don't recall taking a day off in the 6 months I was there. Bus driving (my current bill payer) is far and away the best job I've ever had though.

I'm with Tim though. I'd do any of them again before relying on JSA.

ilm_zero7

clearing a drain filer at a water treatment works. It got clogged regularly with used Tampax, and used condoms - not nice!

Rudd

not me, but a friend of mine worked a summer on a pig farm. His sole role was 'pig insemination' ie he introduced the male to the female - literally! Sometimes the male got excited too early resulting in an unfortunate incident!

Redhog14

Worst job I had was in Wimpey (the now defunct burger chain) management style was treat everyone like shit and let them know thats what you think of them. Similar to other jobs except that the management grew better at masking their attitude. I now employ around 40 people and make sure that no one gets treated the way I experienced then.

Have done various management jobs inlcuding Duty Manager at a very exclusive and world famous hotel, but on occasion their sewage works would jam/overflow and if the maintenance guys were not on duty I had to go clear it. Interesting contrast to leave a 5star hotel in my nice suit, drive the hotel Range Rover to the sewage works, clear some shit/tampons/pads - even a fn dressing gown once! and then back to reception..."Welcome to the hotel Sir" whilst shaking their hand..

mudcow007

working for EDS - doing "data entry"

toilet breaks were timed

if you looked up from your desk, you would be asked why

obviously couldn't stand up an move around

i got sacked for supposedly hacking into their servers - they did me a favour really

Pross

When my first child was born I got part time work in a cinema to supplement my full time income working for a Council. The job itself wasn't too bad but had to deal with lots of gobby chavs and cleaning out the screens in the brief gap between showings was a pain especially when there were kids blockbusters on. Toilet cleaning duty wasn't nice either, I still can't work out if some people are just unable to aim properly or if they just p**s all over the place on purpose! It could be quite tiring at times working a full 9-5 in the office and then going to the cinema to work until it closed especially when Titanic came out and they had midnight screenings on Fridays which meant I didn't get home until 4am after starting the day job at 8am.

vitesse169

I suppose I'm quite lucky really - I've only had 3 jobs in my life; Soldier, MOD & Police. Did many & varied tasks within each one some really scary, some boring. It was only when I signed off from the Army (12 months notice) that I was shat on - some senior ranks saw us that were leaving as 'disloyal' or somesuch - and saw us as fair game to give the runaround.... Was a tad wearing - 1 guy got p'ed off with it and got into the officers mess 1 night and took a large dump on the great oak dinning table therein. Oh how everyone laughed at that....
All that said, there was very little that I could say in my work that ammounted to the bottom of a sewerage farm...

CHRISNOIR

While on summer break from University I worked as a receptionist at a local Probation Service. Now I can sometimes be a right screaming lefty but after two months of dealing with the dregs of society I was ready to shoot anyone who’d ever so much as received a parking ticket. Overdoses in toilets, needles in the waiting room, vomit on the steps, stolen property, sh*t-smeared walls, threats of violence – the list was bloody endless. How the full-time Probation Officers managed I will never know.

Honourable mentions – the builders office staffed exclusively by women with a single figure IQ who locked me in the yard ankle-deep in mud on my final day and the branch of Morrisons Supermarket where the manageress found it amusing every f*cking time it snowed to say ‘Not on the tills today, Chris. We really need someone on the trolleys outside...'

schlepcycling

Redhog14 wrote:

Worst job I had was in Wimpey (the now defunct burger chain) management style was treat everyone like shoot and let them know thats what you think of them. Similar to other jobs except that the management grew better at masking their attitude. I now employ around 40 people and make sure that no one gets treated the way I experienced then.

Have done various management jobs inlcuding Duty Manager at a very exclusive and world famous hotel, but on occasion their sewage works would jam/overflow and if the maintenance guys were not on duty I had to go clear it. Interesting contrast to leave a 5star hotel in my nice suit, drive the hotel Range Rover to the sewage works, clear some shoot/tampons/pads - even a fn dressing gown once! and then back to reception..."Welcome to the hotel Sir" whilst shaking their hand..

Wimpy isn't defunct http://www.wimpy.uk.com/

porlyworly

When I was 15 I got a weekend job in an old peoples home, turned up on the first day and the morning was pretty cool, just had to hoover up grannies rooms and chat to them etc. All good apart from one crazy guy who was adamant I'd stolen his slippers. Afternoon they tried to get me to clean the toilets Refused and got a bit sacked

Gazzaputt

Grave digger.

6 months whilst i was an apprentice gardener at a local authority.

Fellas who worked there were nuts. It was a great laugh with them but I never could get used to the grief you saw everyday. Also some grim jobs when you reopen a grave to make sure you didn't fall through the first grave dug. They were all at that time dug by hand as well was real hard work.

Also taking a 'Mum' flower display home didn't go down to well. Came through the door saying i got her some flowers. Mum hit the roof when she saw it!

mroli

£20 note sorter. You went to an industrial estate in Birmingham, went through 4 security doors to leave all your belongings behind and go sit in a room with cctv cameras trained on you. Armed with a pair of scissors, you cut open a large plastic pack and discarded it. In the pack was another plastic pack that you cut and discarded. Within that pack were smaller multi bundles of £20 wrapped in plastic and that hard binding tape. You cut that all off and discarded that. You then had smaller bundles wrapped in that binding tape. Cut and discard. You then sorted all the £20 so they were right side up and right side round and put them in trays ready for (I presume) cash dispensers. Ripped, torn or "untoward" notes were placed in a separate tray for "disposal". Your rubbish got put in bags and kept in a separate room for a week to make sure that no notes were thrown away by accident.

You'd sort about £1m a day and probably pile up about £5k to be icinerated. I was paid £2.63 an hour. This was as a temp - I believe the permanent staff got less than that.

Peddle Up!

crispybug2 wrote:

Oh come on....someone had to post this!!



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SentQjMIioY

Beat me to it. Comedy genius of the highest order. And if you don't agree you're just a f****** c***!

LeicesterLad

Mcdonalds. Pretty degrading.

Yossie

1. Wimpey Wessex water - helping build the local sewage plant: when it exploded on a regular occurrence Yossie was the man with the shovel. You got used to after a while though, Shyyyyte job, brilliant people, freakin' excellent pay. It was technical stuff. Get shovel. Shovel shyyyyt. Take shovel away. Go and read a copy of The Sun and drink yet another mug of tea. Cerebral.

2. Baggage loader at the airport. Sounds great and not too bad until you realise that it's 13 hour shifts in the blazing sun/freezing rain in the middle of the runway (so no shelter) loading people's suitcases into the hold of a freezing cold/ stupid hot aeroplane. Suitcases weren't too bad to be honest - tool bags that looked really small but weighed 500 tonnes were the worst. You'd pick them up and rip your arm off.

Bear in mind that it was up to you to get everything done in time otherwise the flight would be delayed led to mucho temper tantrums by all and sundry. No trolley dolleyage either as you were just a pleb who loaded bags and emptied the chemical toilet.

3. Plastic bottle maker in a factory in Crewe. 12 hour shifts making B & Q plastic creosote bottles. Noisy, smelly, dirty, rubbish pay, Crewe. Say no more.

ddraver

PorlyWorly wrote:

When I was 15 I got a weekend job in an old peoples home, turned up on the first day and the morning was pretty cool, just had to hoover up grannies rooms and chat to them etc. All good apart from one crazy guy who was adamant I'd stolen his slippers. Afternoon they tried to get me to clean the toilets Refused and got a bit sacked

Oh yeah,i did that too, thinking I wanted to go the Med School. The Nurse in charge had just given up and was shocking. I was told to bath, dress, lift up, carry move ad worst of all...wipe...the insane old dears (it was that sort of home). Certainly put me off ever being a nurse but the worst part of it was the total illegality of what I was doing (quiet!!). You should have some significant training/qualifications to do all of that!!

kev77

I went from being a site based electrician rising through the ranks to eventually become a Key Account Manager with a national FM company, absolutley fantastic untill in 2011 they were bought by another FM company. Who then brought in there own staff who were and still are absolute clueless would not listen to reasoning in any way shape or form. My line manager who is now the GM at the same company is a total cock and ass licked his way to the top. My office in manchester was moved to tamworth and i was expected to travel this everyday. Even though i was manchester contracted. Work life balance fooked!

He comes from a town near me where both towns hate each other, then had the balls to try and performance manage me without even bother to tell me. Even though i was responsible for 24 direct staff and a 5m P&L. I left pretty quick and tried to put in a grievance about his behaviour towards myself and other staff ( it fell on deaf ears )

I have been left now for over 12 months and have no pressure or long hours on me what so ever.

I hope we will meet one day so i can give him a piece of my mind!

Amateur company amateur person.

pottssteve

1. Direct mail envelope stuffer - sending people cheap offers at an awful chain of hotels. Very, very dull.
2. Had a stint at Matalan - 10 hours of picking up clothes and hanging them on racks. One of my colleagues spent an entire shift just folding jeans.
3. Trolley collector at Morrison's. Outside in all weathers, dodging blind drivers in the car park. The shop is built at the top of a slope so every trip was uphill. One day I found a pigeon that had been run over so I asked the shift manager what to do with it. He said kill it, so I twisted it's neck and yanked so hard it's head came off. When I told him he said he'd been joking, but he left me a lone after that.....Grim.
4. Glass collector at Smokies nightclub in Ashton Under Lyme. I did 2 nights, coughing on the dry ice and stepping over people having sex on the couches. Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up was number one at the time - the DJ played it 18 times in one night. It was like Sodom and Gomorrah.

Chrissz

My worst ever job - whilst at Uni I took a temp job at a well-known Zoo Park here in the SE (the southernmost one!).

Initially I was working building monkey cages out of telegraph poles and also built the new rhino house. Asked about earning more dosh and got put in the abbatoir - chopping up dead (and rotting) horse/cow/sheep carcasses with a chain saw, axe and blade.

It used to take me a couple of hours every night in the bath to get rid of the smell - I made the mistake of cycling into work once, threw my kit away when I got home it was all so rank!

ddraver

pottssteve wrote:

4. Glass collector at Smokies nightclub in Ashton Under Lyme. I did 2 nights, coughing on the dry ice and stepping over people having sex on the couches. Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up was number one at the time - the DJ played it 18 times in one night. It was like Sodom and Gomorrah.

Wow, that sounds awful! I never minded working in Clubs, but I always tried to make them Metal Clubs (which I like), Goths, despite what they want you to think, are always decent folk, and the mini-goths are Fiiiiiiiit!

crispybug2

pottssteve wrote:

4. Glass collector at Smokies nightclub in Ashton Under Lyme. I did 2 nights, coughing on the dry ice and stepping over people having sex on the couches. Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up was number one at the time - the DJ played it 18 times in one night. It was like Sodom and Gomorrah.

Similar one for me, worked at The Penthouse in Southend, five evenings a week for two years. The DJ would play I Found Lovin' by The Fatback Band (A song much beloved of the white sock wearing 80's soul-boy) at least six times a night with all the attendant call and response associated with that song. I literally cannot bear to be in a room when that song is playing!

pottssteve

ddraver wrote:

pottssteve wrote:

4. Glass collector at Smokies nightclub in Ashton Under Lyme. I did 2 nights, coughing on the dry ice and stepping over people having sex on the couches. Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up was number one at the time - the DJ played it 18 times in one night. It was like Sodom and Gomorrah.

Wow, that sounds awful! I never minded working in Clubs, but I always tried to make them Metal Clubs (which I like), Goths, despite what they want you to think, are always decent folk, and the mini-goths are Fiiiiiiiit!

Nobody was fit in Ashton in 1987.........I'm just glad they had someone else to clean the toilets.

Cubic

Mine was working for 118118 for six months a few years ago. You'd go into this huge office with row after row of computers, find a free one, plug in your headset and from then everything would be monitored. How long you were in the toilet, your average time to find a number, whether you used the correct opening sentence when answering the calls etc. You weren't allowed to talk to your colleagues, you'd never even sit next to the same people twice, so you couldn't get to know anyone.
Saying 'welcome to 118118, how may I help you?' about 400 times per day really started to grate after a while. That, combined with the abuse you'd frequently get for taking more than 20 seconds to get a number or asking how you spell Auchterarder for example, made it my worst!