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.
Chat Forum
For those who may or may not sit on a high horse ...
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Posted 2 years ago #
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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.
Posted 2 years ago # -
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.
Posted 2 years ago # -
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
Posted 2 years ago # -
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
Posted 2 years ago # -
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
BarmanI 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.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Working as a stable hand to pay for my riding lessons while getting sneered at by the Pony Club set.
Posted 2 years ago # -
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.
Posted 2 years ago # -
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.
Posted 2 years ago # -
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.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Goat farm worker - mucking out goats mainly...
'Carpet tile display unit manufacturer' - temp work and 12 hour days to make those rung-latter cupboards you put the carpets on in carpet shops. We (the temps) worked out a far more efficient way of getting the job done and the regular employees hated us for it. Oops...
Posted 2 years ago # -
Multiple cleaning jobs, some in very strange and undesirable times/locations.
Plucking Turkeys that mysteriously came back to life whilst you were plucking them (blood and feathers and turkey shite everywhere).
Mind numbing and dangerous factory works with a bunch of racists.
To be honest the worst was 'selling' kitchens to people that you cold called out the phone book, only one person agreed to have someone round and i phoned them back after i'd finished work to tell them not to bother as i felt so bad (i only lasted 3 days and i really really needed money)
I had a job interview today for a place which i didn't really fancy that much but after reading all this if they offer it to me i'll definitly take it and consider myself very very lucky indeed! Thanks STW!
Posted 2 years ago # -
I worked once, and it was ghastly. doing nasty demeaning tasks until someone gave me a squiff of money. Mummy got upset and gave me my inheritance early. I never want to see the inside of that investment bank again.
Posted 2 years ago # -
I used to clean the undercarriages of commercial bin lorries (SITA) at night, in an inspection pit, with a jet wash.
It was a filthy job
I loved it
Leith docks at night with a view over the forth and a dawn ride home.
Posted 2 years ago # -
I once stuck little 1p sized-clear stickers on packaged soap bars. This involved taking pre-packaged packets of soap out of a box, sticking the sticker on where the flap of the packaging finished, putting packets back in the box. Why we were doing it I'll never know. Fortunately just a one day assignment.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Night cleaner in Debenhams.
Unpleasant stuff in abattoirs and meat-packing palaces.And an exciting science research role which involved me being covered in sewage frequently enough for me to go without a cough or a cold for 3 years, in spite of having to be stripped to my underpants and hosed down to clean me enough for the smell to dissipate.
:o)
Posted 2 years ago # -
Where to start? Most of the cr@ppy jobs I've had have been not too bad as there's several of you with the same very low expectations, so the conditions are 'normalised' to an extent.
As has been pointed out, the worst are those where you feel on a daily basis that your soul is being crushed by a moronic middle management monster, and there's no recourse to complain.
I've done the whole gamut of catering jobs, and kitchen porter is by far the worst, especially in an Aberdeen kitchen where the head chef behaves like a chav version of Gordon Ramsay, but without the calming influence of the cameras. There were BNP stickers everywhere, mainly depicting skinheads holding up nooses.....
But the worst ever was banquetting porter for a large hotel. I was taken on with the understanding that I would be paid £120 per week, regardless of the number of hours worked. I was told that most weeks would entail about 20 hours work, but that sometimes I'd be working 35 hours. Never once did I work less than 60, and it really was Work. The gaffer was a s0d of the first order and did literally no work. Ever.
When I finally handed in my notice (and worked it!) I had to turn up twice a week for the next few months and shout at the reception staff until eventually they 'found' my final month's wages in a tin, in a desk drawer. Yeah, right. Did get paid though - a minor miracle...
Posted 2 years ago # -
genesis - Member
Working as a stable hand to pay for my riding lessons while getting sneered at by the Pony Club set.
shouldn't that be saved for the thread about shit hobbies?picked pears in under the australian sun. that lasted a day after finding out that after filling two 2x2x1m bins full of pears i'd earnt 30 dollars and had to pay $50 a week for accom and food. accommodation consisted of a concrete block. no bed, just a damp concrete floor.
grape picking in SW Oz was good fun. start at 5am, work till 11 as after that it was too hot. stoned most of the time. used to have red backs running up your arm of leg.
hawking in Perth, australia. that lasted a day. i can't sell anything. i figure if someone wants something they'll buy it. they don't need some sweaty cockney coming round knocking on doors.
picking store orders for Aldi. pay was relatively good considering the job. £8.50 for driving a mini fork-lift thing about. management was a load of bastids. there were no set finishing times. once the job was done you could knock off. this meant they were always on your case to get the job done as quickly as possible. this meant you'd ragg yourself silly and get paid less for doing the same amount of work. quite the job and went cycling across europe.
Posted 2 years ago # -
i did a job once that involved analysing the skid marks (or lack of) in special 'trial pants' in the human phase testing of some new margarine.
Posted 2 years ago # -
First job at 13 i did what was called a UP (a lookout) this involved telling a group of dodgy guys selling dodgy cloathes or purfumes in East London markets if the Police was coming so they would not get nicked.
Secound one was crap again and is what you see now.
We gave out black bin liners and was a registerd charity for people to put unwantwed items in.
Well the cloathes, shoes went to the charity but all the items of value
was sold to the secound hand shops. So my advice is NOT to give to them.Third job before I left school and wanted to be a car mechanic
But all I done was changed prop shafts on a very cold concrete
and had to do them in 15 mins and that lasted three weeks.Left school appentership city and guilds three years making high end furniture I then ran an internal training schemes withing the company
Then become product developer which intailed making one offs to full ranges and seeing these through the company and also making these from sawn timber through to making the cutters to produce the shapes on the furniture. Then wanting to set up on my own.Fourth job learning what and how to make bespoke kitchens etc.
Stayed for around three months never learnt anything.Fith Job Own business designing and making high end bespoke furniture
Next will be to open up a Hub for Downhill/Trail riders up in Wales which will include Log Cabins and camping facilites and good basic home warming food without trail centre robbery prices.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Pawnbroker - soul destroying as the only people you meet are utterly desparate people, pawning their jewellery to raise cash, mostly just so that they can feed their kids or buy them a Christmas present.
They feel humiliated to be reduced to these circumstances, so are often defensive and aggressive - not a good combination. Had a shotgun pointed at me during a robbery, punched by the partner of a customer - really not a great job. Awful money too.Currently a care assistant for the disabled. The personal care side
(bathing people, cleaning up if they have an 'accident') is actually the easiest bit!
People do treat you as if you're a bit thick though, almost as if you're not fit to do anything else - funny old world.Used to have a reasonably well paid job with a w@nky sounding title in the insurance industry - hated every single pretentious, soul destoying minute - working in a huuuuuge office with nearly a thousand other people, 90% of whom would stab you in the back for a better stapler.
Posted 2 years ago # -
I worked in a toilet in a nightclub. Back before you had people selling you deodorant and expecting tips for watching you pee, mind, so not as bad as it could have been. My entire job was to discourage drug deals and alcohol related deaths simply by standing about, and to never ever breathe through my nose. Occasional bit of mopping, occasional bit of fighting, all for pennies. No idea why I did it really, seemed a good idea at the time. I did get to meet Midge Ure though.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Maggot farm worker for half a day, in the hills between Tod and Bacup.
If there is a hell on Earth,this is it.
The billions of Flies/Maggots feasting on rotting fish and chicken guts does not make for a nice aroma.
I changed my clothes in the carpark outside, drove home and my Mum still wouldn't let me in the house.
She then ran a bath for me full of disinfectant whilst I stood outside in the snow in my undies.
Later in the pub when things warmed up a bit and my pores opened up people were saying,'what's that rotting smell'
Not my finest hour...............
Posted 2 years ago # -
I spent 6 months at a low point in my life working in the Limeyard of a local tannery in Canterbury, mastering the arts of such wonderful jobs as putting fresh cowhides (smelling of urine) into vats of water and lime, pulling the washed cowhides out of said vats, putting them into fleshing machines and cutting the nipples off.
The place stank, you got covered in lime burns, and worked with some very strange inbred folk who ate sandwiches with rat bites already taken out of them.
Posted 2 years ago # -
Not sure most of the responses here count as lowly - most are just manual unskilled labouring jobs but all ultimately productive.
I'd count lowly as the seedy jobs that prey on people's gullibility/lack of knowledge/age etc. For example working door to door selling unwanted/needed services to old dears who know no better or cowboy private wheel clamping nazis. Have we got any of those? That would be far more interesting!
Posted 2 years ago # -
Worked as a dresser for a theater company doing Aladdin in in shopping centers,
Had to remove clothes from 20yo dancers & help them change into the next costume.
VERY STRESSFUL Posted 2 years ago # -
grew up on a farm, so all sorts of farm work wet cold long hours 7 days a week 12+ hours a day at times.
Picked apples in Tasmania
All should try farming gives you an appreciation as to hard it is
Posted 2 years ago #
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