[Closed] The worst job you ever had or still have.....

boriselbrus - Member

12 hours a day shovelling pig shit out of a barn. £10 a day (25 years ago). That was a whole summer holiday.

3 months of sitting at a bench by myself, no radio or anyone to talk to, tying fig of 8 knots in bits of string. £3/hour, 12 hour days.

But of course I used to live in t'shoebox in t'middle of t'road and I'd have to get up half an hour before I went to bed and pay mill owner for t'privellege of going t'work. And I were grateful.

Done that. Not so bad as I like the pig. Lovely animal. By the time they got to know me they were on their way to slaughter house. Rather sad at times to think about it. How many pigs did you look after? Mine was nearly 500 ( 12kg to 85/90kg size). Job started at 8am (started cycling at 6.30am) and finished at 6pm. Yes, first week I could taste shite at the back of my throat.

It is still a better job without stress ...

Giving change in an underground amusement arcade in 12 hour shifts with very few breaks. Not in the same league as some of the above, but it was dull, repetitive and seeing people with a gambling problem spending all day shuffling between machines was soul destroying as we were just reinforcing their habit. It also reinforced just how filthy money ( notes and coin) is.

My worst was hop picking. I worked in the shed. My job was to stand on a gantry looking down at the three machines, watching to see if a bit of vine got tangled on a roller. If it did (happened about every 10-15 mins or so) I had to poke it with a stick with a hook on the end. If that didn't work I pressed a button. There was a fan under the rollers so I was having hop pollen blown over me all the time so I reeked, and was actually sticky with it. 4-12pm. I almost walked out at the first break, then after the first day, then at the first weekend... then the first whole week.. then.. I realised I'd been there two months and I couldn't actually remember anything at all, so I actually felt the same as I did on that first day. Completely lost time - very bizarre. The bag I used to bring sandwiches in still stank of hops a decade later when it finally wore out.

The best agency job I had though was working in a vanilla and mint warehouse. The total opposite of the hop job 🙂

Topping and tailing swedes in a cold draughty warehouse in the evenings in winter..
Selling Kirby vacuum cleaners door to door.. Who in their right mind is gonna give you upwards of a grand for a hoover!?
Tarmacking with Irish gypsies wasn't as bad as it sounds, £15 per day and living cheek by jowl in a tiny caravan with your stinky mates was pretty gross though, as was the fear of a dodgy family pulling onto wherever we were parked up (we did a moonlit flit one night after sawn-off shotguns were brandished) the family we were working for were good fun though and they really cared quite deeply for us (despite the shit wage)
Labouring for a dry liner was pretty shit, mixing up muck by hand gave me blisters on my baby soft hands within the first hour on my first day..

It will surprise chewkw to know that I've spent most of my working life as a builders labourer 😉

Being a househusband has probably been the most challenging though.. untold sleep deprivation, isolation, the mundane act of housework, screaming children.. all thankless too by and large

It's all slowly paying off as the kids reach school age though and they are starting to be a good laugh

My other half reminded me to post this (VNSFW)

Worst IT job was probably doing sub graduate level adjustments to a stupid pointless app that could have been replaced in the time it took to download something better, created by an enthusiastic team of 6 hard working well meaning folk. They wrote (and maintained) their own webserver dedicated to this app. Stupid bastards. 6 months and nothing happened at all.

Made it hard applying for my next contract. "What did you do in your last job? Well.. **** all, really."

I worked at Heathrow airport for 6 months through security airside in a new cafe /restaurant. It was awful unrealistic targets and full of happy people going on holidays .I hated it i resigned when it settled down and staff were trained .Only plus side was it was T3 and most flights were long haul to asia so lots of lovely little brown women to look at . 😆 They looked at me like i was something they trod in whilst i ogled them through the hatch . 😥
I used to take Picnic hampers down to the girls on Check in when i was bored they loved the free scones and it once saved me paying 30kilo excess baggage on a kite surf trip .
Still it was the worst job i ever had - no i always try chat to the staff in airport cafes as i have walked a mile in their shoes .

Worked for Barclays for the worst 3 1/2 years of my life. The other staff were fine as people but the pressure to sell stuff of dubious morality was huge. Think PPI, credit cards, loans etc to people who couldn't afford it or claim for it. Yes, I was part of what caused the global recession 😥

The only time I've quit a job without having anything to go to.

Drop forge in Walsall as a summer job when I was at uni.
My job was to rake the scrap from around the 6 drop hammers into skips and then tell the bloke with the fork lift when they were full so he could change them. Also had to push the stock into the furnace mouth to make sure the hammer operator always had enough ready to be forged into gate hinges.
12 hour shift, so loud and hot that you couldn't hold a conversation apart from in the hourly 10 min smoke break.
There were guys who'd been there for 10 plus years, I just couldn't beleive anyone having to do that sort of thing for that long, I lasted less than a week...

At 17 I went to work for a friend of the family. He produced veg for supermarkets in those big plastic boxes. I had to wash them. 15000 of them a day. 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. Made a LOT of money for a 17 year old but it really made me understand what a shit job was.

A furniture making company loading a cnc lathe.
Massive stacks of timber, load one into lathe, press button, sand, repeat.
Hours... Headphones and dust mask on all day, very loud, could only hear machinery and the occasional snippet of Heart FM or whatever shitty soul crushing local radio station factory workers seem to thrive on.
Helped me make the decision to change things and study more...

Close second, night shift over summer while at uni sorting and packing newspapers and magazines at a warehouse in high Wycombe, which were then distributed to newsagents. The only interest was the odd flick through the jazz mags...

Putting the handles onto big 5l water bottles involved slamming the handle down onto the top of neck of the bottles as they came past on a conveyor belt. They came past at 40-60 per minute depending on how many people were manning the line and if you missed more than a certain number a minute an alarm went off and the whole line shut down. By about half an hour in your hands were covered in little cuts from sharp plastic on the rings, after an hour your palm was bruised in a perfect circle where it hit the lip of the bottle, after 6 hours your hands wouldn't open properly and after 13 hours with a half hour break your entire upper body screamed at you.

I managed three 13 hour night shifts and then walked out an hour early and told them to stick it. I was somewhat undermined in my flounce by the fact that I was 16 and had to wait an hour for my dad to come and pick me up.

It took weeks for my hands to work properly again.

plastic bottle stacker lasted about a week. It was clean not to noisy pretty much stress free but so so so tediously boring.

Not so much a "job" as some things I'd have to do when I'd visit my relatives' farms in the midlands of Ireland every Summer...I used to go for nearly the whole school holidays.

1. Picking ****ing stones.
A load of us following a slow moving tractor and trailer throwing all the big stones into the back of it - AFAIR, this was after ploughing and harrowing. As a kid, I couldn't understand how there'd be a load of new stones every year in the same field if we'd picked them the year before. 😆

2. Turning ****ing turf.
Imagine rocking up to a field with endless rows of turf like this...every single piece had to be turned over after it had dried out for a while. The fields I remember weren't nice and dry like this one...they were wet, muddy, cold. It was bloody horrible. 😡
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How could the turf dry if the fields were wet and muddy?

2. Turning **** turf.
Imagine rocking up to a field with endless rows of turf like this...every single piece had to be turned over after it had dried out for a while. The fields I remember weren't nice and dry like this one...they were wet, muddy, cold. It was bloody horrible.

You can't have done it more than more than a few times I'm guessing? You're lucky it was wet, otherwise the midges would have probably eaten you alive. Footing turf is a bit sore on the back, other than that it's fine, bloody midges on the other hand make it hell.

So, you lot are trying to tell me I should stop loafing around in my dressing gown and write my thesis then?

Good call.

How could the turf dry if the fields were wet and muddy?

It air dried on each side...and then see the little stacks the fellow is making? That's called footing, but you'd need the turf to be a bit dry-ish other wise the footed turf would fall down. Tbh, I don't really remember footing it...maybe that was done later in the summer.

You can't have done it more than more than a few times I'm guessing? You're lucky it was wet, otherwise the midges would have probably eaten you alive.

🙂

True, I only remember doing it a few times...thankfully. I assume whereas we managed a few yards as kids, the grown-ups were probably flying up and down the bog at it, but obviously, I remember it as miles and miles and miles and miles of turf. 😆

Last role.

employed to be Operations Manager of a firm run by two idiots. One was just a bully, knew he was a bully, thrived on the fact that he knew some of the staff were physically scared of him, and really couldn't give a shit. the company 'employed' his wife to do about 1/2 hour of actually work a day, and she spent the rest of the time internet shopping, when I restricted her internet access for breaching policy...well, you can imagine, I'm sure.

The other idiot was potentially worse, thinking back I think he had some sort of megalomaniac messiah complex. He loved being the bloke "on the white horse" He even said that to me, that he saw himself "charging to the rescue" Trouble was HE would set up the other idiot to fall into these ridiculous made up traumas and situations so that he could "sort it out" he did it over an over again. He was one of the blokes who sees things in black and white only, I was either with him or against him, an when he realised that I was neither, I became useless in his action plan to wrest the company away from his bullying co-owner. Staff turnover was as you can imagine, very high. I found out not long after I joined in August that I was 10th recruitment that year (place had about 15-18 workers) I was 9th to have handed in resignation. Lasted about 10 weeks of stress and shite.

Proper pair of mental cases that were destroying the lives of their workers, with their struggle over the company.

deadlydarcy
True, I only remember doing it a few times...thankfully

It's a task that's generally done in good weather if possible, and whilst we do have shit weather in Ireland, there's usually one or two good days in late spring to get it done. But as I said, those bog midges are like piranhas so a bit of rain is a god send.

As boyhood chores go I didn't really mind it. Potato picking, drystone walling, processing firewood and fishing were all much harder.

Whereabouts did you do all that then jimjam?

tattie picking, mind you £5/day wasn't bad (at the time).
Back breaking work, frozen (October, often frosted / frozen ground) but good camaraderie (if you didn't get chucked in the Spey at lunch break, which I did 🙁 )

Oddest job in some ways was traffic encase, stand at junction, count cars, lorries, cycles etc. Just boring, expect having to fend off folk asking what I was doing. My colleague watched Wimbledon instead, an ace was a lorry, shot against serve was a motorcycle, etc. eventually our boss clocked ion to what he was doing ("unusual traffic patterns yesterday Iain"..)

deadlydarcy

Whereabouts did you do all that then jimjam?

Donegal where I grew up. Back breaking child labour remembered with fondness 🙂 .

Ah right, my uncles' and aunts' farms were in Offaly. I was "evacuated" up there from the burbs every summer...for a kid from the town, it was awesome being in the countryside, though my cousins did get lots of mileage from my urban naivety. 😉

Working for a high street chemists, no, no that one, the other one.

It was in my last year of college, doing a couple of shifts per week in the evenings. It was boring, and the manager was an arse.

I ended up either quitting or being fired, not sure what it is. My birthday that year (18th) was on a Wednesday, which was a day that I usually worked. So, a few weeks ahead of it I asked for the day off and said I could work another day if necessary instead of taking it as holiday. Manager said "okay, what about the Friday of that week?". Knowing that I would be out getting hammered (legally!) I said no and put in a leave request. It was signed off by the manager.

We get to the Thursday after my birthday...
-Store manager: "You know that you're working tomorrow don't you?"
-Me:"No I'm not, I took yesterday as leave"
-SM:"But you said you'd work another day, I asked you to work friday and you said yes".
-Me:"No, I said no. And you approved my leave."
-SM:"Well, you still said you'd come in tomorrow so if you don't then don't bother coming back at all"
-Me:(Turning to include the area manager who happened to be there)"But the leave request was signed off. Were you going to take my leave off me but also make me come in to work?"
AM stays silent...
-SM:"Like I said, if you don't come in tomorrow then don't bother coming back at all"
Me:"But I've taken it as leave and I've got stuff planned, I can't come in tomorrow so there's no point threatening me"
SM:"I've already said, if you don't come in tomorrow then don't come back at all"
Me: Directly to the area manager "Is this right"
AM:"..."
Me:"fine. I won't be here tomorrow."
SM:"Well you'd better be because if you don't then you shouldn't come back at all"

I finished my shift, went out on Friday and never went back. I turned up on time every day, worked hard for £3.something an hour, never gave them any trouble and yet he still acted like that so he could pretend to be king of his little retail kingdom. I got my last weeks pay and never heard off them. I didn't really care as I was off to uni a few weeks later but it was the principle of the thing!

My eternal problem with workplaces is that I am too trusting. But I've never done an actual shite job, like some up there ^^, just ended up in some shitty situations with the usual psychopaths and bully's. The stress of being the only breadwinner etc was the worst, not having the security of being able to just walk away.

I always hate the "martyrs" you know the ones who think the only way to success is through begin first in and last out - pissing competitions rather than applying your intelligence.

Smudger666 - Member
Pheasant plucker. Just like me dad. I didn't stick it long tho.

Pheasent plucker. Tongue twister

Milk man when i was 12-13 ish. Our neighbour who was the milkman had a stroke and his wife was struggling to cope with the round. My parents volunteered my assistance.

To makes things worse, she didn't like being in the house on her own so I had to stay in her house in the spare room on a night and for 8 weeks worked from 3:30 until 6 and got no money. This was in winter. I realised being a milkman was not the life for me.

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Not quite what you had in mind, eh sandwhicheater?

I lasted three and a half days in a call centre in Reading cold calling people to make appointments for salesmen to go and sell servers. I had absolutely no idea what I was helping to sell and no aptitude for it either. By the lunchtime in the Thursday i walkinged I to the managers office and told him I couldn't stand it. He said he knew I'd be the first out and thanked me for telling him and not just walking out. He paid me the whole week and I started another temp job the following Monday. Pretty easy compared to some of the above.

LOL @ gofasterstripes. It's funny but I've watched that episode loads of times and it's one of the best. After jogging my memory from my above post, the milkman chap who had the stroke was very very close to the character and Irish. Mick the milkman.

Maybe if I'd not gone around with his wife driving the float I would of had a very different experience.

Worst conditions were down the mine-80 degrees temperature and 80% humidity,Dusty and in wellies due to 10"sludge at times.Wore wellies ,shorts,belt,battery and cap lamp for a few years.
Worst place was a chocolate factory(not Cadburys)within a year of the pit shutting.Women and young kids,psycho manager and works engineer at war,in fact a complete culture shock.
Best and easiest job was in a car factory on weekend dayshift as maintenance.