oats out of a wheat field?

packing stone fruit in nz. I can honestly now say that I appreciate hard graft.. 8)

Loads! In fact all of them 😉

Paperboy
Building site labourer (ace summer holiday job) (I was 14 – can you imagine what the HSE would say about that now!)
Scaffolders labourer (ditto)(the initiation rite involves them trying to kill you)
Supermarket trolley boy / shelf stacker / junior manager
Civil Servant (Ministry of War) Clerk / Senior Clerk / Manager / Middle Manager / Senior Manager

Thanks so much for replies, it has made interesting reading 🙂

loads
car washing
delivering milk at four in the morning six days a week then off to school
pipe fitting in the middle of winter
three minimum wage factory jobs which are ok at first but soon become mind numbingly boring
but now as for being thought of as lowly i get talked to like shite off some of my passengers(taxi driver)even tho i own the company and enploy 40 staff,not that they would know that and nor would i tell them.

Picking pickling onions in April in NZ.
Cleaning commercial grease traps.
Ski patroller.

Not in any order there but the one you'd expect to be best was worst.

Picking pickling onions in April in NZ.

this one? 😀

bin man, hard but ive never laughed so much in all my life. sat in a freezing warehouse all night on my own squeezing by hand the little pots of milk you get with your tea. checking for leakers. abot every 3 hrs one would burst in your face. i was nearly crying by the end of the shift. both jobs got me to hot countries for long periods.

But did any of you consider they were "lowly" jobs? Or "character building"?

And you got paid by the bucket irrespective of size of vegtable you were picking.

I would say that what you feel about a job is irrelevant if you are treated badly by either your boss and/or the public.

digging graves was a particular low point. I walked off that job, £4 an hour wasn't enough for seeing greasy water leaching into the pit we were digging from the grave up the hill

Trying to save up for uni:

Working from 4:00-8:30 7 days a week, 364 days a year for a £100 per week. 2 years hard graft putting up rounds and delivering papers at 18 years old isn't a very glamorous job…especially in the eyes of your peers 😳

Followed by:

6th form 09:00-15:00. Coursework and dinner to 18:00. Bar work from 19:00-22:00 five days per week.

Finishing with:

Working in a computer shop on Saturday from 09:00-18:00.

103 hours per week for £235.

This thread makes me feel pretty lucky really. Did a 4 year apprenticeship with GEC which had a few boring placements but nothing so awful that I can remember it clearly. I do remember my brother having some tough jobs, the worst of which was working in an abbatoir. I think he only lasted a few hours. He was a vegetarian at the time 😆

But did any of you consider they were "lowly" jobs?

it was a job I was able to get, and gave me money that I wanted 🙂 I never considered its status

Or "character building"?

I've always considered that to be a joke, suffering doesn't build character, though it invites resilience

suffering doesn't build character

Couldn't disagree more. OK, I could, but I might be shouting 😉

resilience is a positive character trait though isn't it?

I think Simon was suggesting that the resilience already a part of your character comes to the fore in tough times?

night shift at the local safeway, used to come back from uni at weekend to get a shift in. the fulltimers were **** mental and very funny.

Shelf stacker in a supermarket. Just dull
Greenkeepers minion on a golf course – good job – just bad hours – 6am – 3 pm IIRC – I had to leave home at 5 am
Care assistant – hardly high powered but an OK job.
Double glazing salesman – door to door – awful
Pot Collector in a bar – entertaining – huge bar of maybe 500 seats – all night just collecting glasses – the fun was seeing how many I could carry
Registered nurse – been doing it on and off for 35 yrs

Filling a box folding machine with unfolded boxes.

Watching the Irn Bru bottle line to check if anything was in the bottles after cleaning.

Emptying sour milk out of cartons, seems to be a recurring theme on here.

They all paid badly but better than nothing.

I've done the chicken shed cleaner as well, it really is an unpleasant job.
I've been employed as a rat catcher on a series of chicken farms, and while some people might consider that a lowly profession, it took great skill and patience. And I was good at it.

I've been a kitchen porter, laundry assistant, general domestic and waiting/dining assistant all in various care homes. Been a chambermaid for hotel run by a large company and at the moment I am an office cleaner.
Chambermaid probably the worst; closely followed by the dining assistant's job (far too much work for one person) Best, least stressful jobs would be current job or laundry assistant.
I wouldn't consider any of these jobs 'lowly' but neither would I use the term character building (some of them were soul destroying at times). It's just a job; sometimes I enjoy it. Interestingly, I've not really met many other students in the same line of work.

Most of my job's I've been embaressed by what i've done, yes some of them have paid well, but none of them are job's your family or kids like to shout about, pub work, shop work, call centres, although none of the call centres have been selling owt.
My current job is a lowly call centre job, but if anyone asks I work for a department of a large bank, in reality there the company I work for's client and my team only work for this one client. But as soon as you say you work for a bank people don't want to know anymore, say you work in a call centre and they either say they hate call centre's or look at you like your scum.
Remember kids to much booze when at school and not taking univeristy seriously does have knock on effects.

Bouncy Castle attendant was my most "lowly" job and the worst paid £2.15 an hour at the time, but by far one of the most fun.
I've cleaned toilets (volunteer), I've dug trenches and installed fences. I've done Duke of Ed expedition training with kids, I've done electronics consultancy work, worked in an engineering firm designing transfer line machines, I've worked as a waiter, worked self-employed as an odd-job man. I'm now a research engineer in renewable energy technology. I'd say I had a fair old variety of experience from "lowly" to "high horse", but my most fond memories and fun times are of bouncy castle attending and my current job which I'm really enjoying even if it's stressful at times. All paid bills, I never considered any of them "beneath" me, my parents brought me up to earn a living and do well at whatever I chose to do, anything but sitting round on my bum.

selling eggs door to door for pocket money in my pre teens,
a paper round that got me violently assaulted with a cheese and onion pasty, job in a sports centre that got a knife (fork, spoon, hammer) pulled on me,
Halfords (the best job i have had, no really),
just started working for house of fraiser and it is killing me inside, i cant describe the Boredom, would rather shovel shit than sell rich people pans. please god save me! if any one has a job in Bristol that wont make me want to eat my face please give me a shout!

I applied to be a hod carrier for Lego but was told i was to tall . :lol:So then i got a job cleaning the shit out of cuckoo clocks !But what i really wanted to be was a pheasant plucker . 8)

I guess some jobs are lowly inasmuhc as you don't need a grat (in some cases any) education to do them and for peopl who have a good education and skills it would be seen as a waste of their talents and potential. But fair play to those who do them.

Worst job I ever had (and I had a few bad / dull / mind numbing ones) was packing a foam crusher. Foam cutoffs (from sofa cushions) were discarded and compacted in a metal framed compacter. Hmmm. Static electricity and a metal compacter are not a good combination which results in a shock (varying from mild to **** did a bomb just go off on my arm!) every time you empty the compacter. I lasted 3 days there before finding another temp job. Pervious guy lasted until tea break on his first day.

couldn't they just provide a method of grounding the static?

nonk – Member

oats out of a wheat field?

I should think he means wild oats but basically anything that shouldn't be there.

I used to do that with all the other village kids. Old fertilizer bag, stone in either top corner tied with bailer twine, slung over the shoulder then up and down and up and down the fields all day.

Crop would then be assessed for quality prior to being harvested.

The bailer twine used to dig in and if you had any scratches/cuts on your hands the fertilizer would find them!!

is that what go's on?
i did ask out of wonder rather than being sarcastic.
sound like a laugh except for the hand pain.

As I am time served, I funded Uni by working part time as a plasterer. I broke my ankle in May of my last year and had to spend the whole summer in a call centre, doing the nectar card sign up.The way we were treated by team leaders, management and the agency was criminal(in a legal designed to reduce you to a uncomplaining jello way.) Sort of place that promotes by length of service not ability, so Clientlogic in Dundee you can kiss my pink furry ass.Still ignore some of the people I worked for in there, who see me out and try and patronize me the way they did back then,despite the fact I have been teaching for years.If I had acted in the way call centre workers are spoken by management while in the building trade, I would have had a sore face. Hats off to all who put up with the chuggers who form lower management in these places. Example I am speaking to my supervisor, come back to my desk and someone has taken my jumper off my chair and nicked the chair.I go and ask for it back,he refuses telling me that he shouldn't be expected to give it back as he was a "floor walker" and I didn't matter. This was a guy in his late 30's who was meant to be an example.Despite being 8 years ago it still makes me shake with anger just typing it now.

I was roped into potato picking by some friends at school. It was agony on the back and I just wasn't fast enough – trying to keep up with experienced pickers. All for a couple of quid.

But I think people (like duckman's example) make a job far worse than dealing with dirt, physicality etc. eg. Worst job I had was on a helpdesk. I can imagine dealing with complaints day after day being something that would tip me over the edge.

When I was teenager I worked on my friends small holding cleaning out the chickhen batteries. Worst job I've done. You almost have to burn your clothes afterwards.

MidLifeCyclist – Member

nonk – Member

oats out of a wheat field?

I should think he means wild oats but basically anything that shouldn't be there.

I used to do that with all the other village kids. Old fertilizer bag, stone in either top corner tied with bailer twine, slung over the shoulder then up and down and up and down the fields all day.

Crop would then be assessed for quality prior to being harvested.

The bailer twine used to dig in and if you had any scratches/cuts on your hands the fertilizer would find them!!

Pretty much spot on MLC, not hard work, but boring.

Worst farming job for me was "dagging" & no you are going to have to look that one up 😉

i reckon i would be in the top easy.

1 – Used to deliver beer for a family run drinks firm, ball breaking work dropping kegs down cellars and being the 'bitch' as i was only 17. made me what i am though and gave me a thick skin.

2 – Hardest job ive ever done is working for P&O Cold storage in NZ, loading 20ft & 40ft containers with frozen NZ lamb. worked with a bunch of total mentalists and lasted 3 months, i was a total broken man at the end of it, had the body of a cage fighter though LOL

3 – Also did 2 months 'fruit thinning' in NZ, basically before the 'ripe season' we had to climb each tree and split the bunches so they would grow

Too many to count really, mostly the result of growing up in Lincolnshire. Among the highlights:

Making pre-packed salads
Picking bits of wood out of batches of frozen peas
Making pork pies
Binman
Working at a chicken farm
Bagging up potatoes
Packing houseplants into boxes
Picking fruit
Stuffing envelopes
Barman

I don't think any of these jobs were demeaning or unplesant in and of themselves. The smell on the chicken farm job was a bit hard to handle, and being a binman was extremely depressing, it really brought home to me the amount of rubbish people produce. It was more that you were well aware that you were only there to earn money, the pay would have been very hard to live on independently, and most of he time you didn't feel like you were doing anything useful or valuable.

Working as a stable hand to pay for my riding lessons while getting sneered at by the Pony Club set.

Essential but horrid is taking a weeks worth of school milk cartons in 2 enormous plastic boxes to be recycled, hundreds of cartons and in the summer the nauseating smell must be my worse job. Masks and gloves essential.

I have worked in Burger King,
worked in a complaints call center,
heaved grain about in the docks,

but its not the job its usually your collegaues/boss who make you feel low/cr@p/useless.

I think most bosses of lesser paid jobs are pretty good at making you feel important. It never felt like a lowly job when I was working in any of the jobs.

Backroom staff in a 'restaurant'.

I've never worked with more sexist, eliteist, skum than those in the catering insustry. If you weren't 17 with perky tits you didnt get to work out front in a clean uniform with the customers, we just got to work in the horrible smelly back room shoveling waste food about the place and cleaning dishes. Anyone fancy a 3 hour stock check in the fridge when your uniforms already sodden?

Came to a head when I told them I wasn't going to work a bank holliday, at the crap wage they were paying it wasn't worth the 8 hours of hell even at double pay.

I'm sure there are nice restaurants that treat their staff nicely, National Trust ones IME aren't.