What is the worst job you have ever had?
Discussion
Russian Troll Bot said:
My first every job was in Wilkinsons over the Christmas period - 5 festive songs. On repeat. Every. Single. Day.
My student job was at Kwik Save. I think there were more than 5 tracks but it was just canned muzak, all to avoid paying royalties. I was also told that to stop staff playing their own tapes, the playback deck was modified to run at half speed so only the "official" tapes would work.I did a few night shifts during holidays to earn beer money. There were would be a grand total of two of us in a store for around 12 hours, so lots of solo slogging. Pallets of tinned dry goods you could batter through. Pop was the worst - you had to skim round the top of the plastic packaging with a Stanley knife and if you nicked a bottle, you'd inevitably get a high pressure jet of cheap & nasty lemonade in your face.
A Monday twilight shift was better as it would only be a few hours, so there would be more staff in. Funniest thing I saw was a guy running down the top of the chest freezers and launching himself head first through a pallet stacked with kitchen towel and toilet roll.
Desperate for work after leaving the forces and needing somewhere to live, I registered with a local agency who contacted me about a night shift working in a factory. I was to make lids for plastic buckets.
Cycling through the rain on my way to my first shift I thought this is going to be the worst job I’ve ever had.
Until I got there and the manager said he had enough lid makers for the night and gave me a broom to brush up with.
For a week, I was the guy brushing up for the guys who made lids for plastic buckets.
Cycling through the rain on my way to my first shift I thought this is going to be the worst job I’ve ever had.
Until I got there and the manager said he had enough lid makers for the night and gave me a broom to brush up with.
For a week, I was the guy brushing up for the guys who made lids for plastic buckets.
Mid 2000's, between GCSE and A-levels, working in a production line for a big name bakery in Cardiff. Monday to Friday 8am to 4pm stood on a production line making cakes for supermarkets. To begin with, being young and fit they gave me the job of scooping (by hand) the chocolate cake filling in to the vat that the older ladies use to fill the cake. After I made a complete mess of it, covering myself in cake mix they moved me to the toppings department.
The Hulk film had just come out at the time and placing the icing sculpted Hulk on to cakes for weeks on end nearly drove me insane. I had dreams of the hulk chasing me.....
Considering it was a place where food was made, the toilets were some of the most disgusting I have ever seen. People would just curl one out on top of someone else's chocolate log. Flushing the toilet was something no one ever did.
By week three, I was made some sort of understudy for a female supervisor. I put it down to the fact I could spell my own name and spoke fluent English. That was until she asked me to follow her to the warehouse to collect some product, where she then pulled her trousers down and bent over some boxes. She wasn't at all my type. I left then following week.
After A- Levels I worked in ASDA. Which deserves it's own thread.
The Hulk film had just come out at the time and placing the icing sculpted Hulk on to cakes for weeks on end nearly drove me insane. I had dreams of the hulk chasing me.....
Considering it was a place where food was made, the toilets were some of the most disgusting I have ever seen. People would just curl one out on top of someone else's chocolate log. Flushing the toilet was something no one ever did.
By week three, I was made some sort of understudy for a female supervisor. I put it down to the fact I could spell my own name and spoke fluent English. That was until she asked me to follow her to the warehouse to collect some product, where she then pulled her trousers down and bent over some boxes. She wasn't at all my type. I left then following week.
After A- Levels I worked in ASDA. Which deserves it's own thread.
PurpleTurtle said:
Did you get any, ahem, 'fringe benefits'?
I've always worked for vaguely legit employers, but have always wondered what it must be like to work in what you might politely call 'the underworld'.
Presumably (know matter how they dress it up with respectability), the 'boss' here was living off 'immoral' earnings? Not that I personally think there is anything immoral about it, oldest profession and all that, but I'd imagine places like this are operating just within the boundaries of the law?
I didn't partake, although the madame did actually try once to pay me with a pair of plus sized ladies (she'd got them in specially for me) for an evening! However I have bills to pay so couldn't accept.I've always worked for vaguely legit employers, but have always wondered what it must be like to work in what you might politely call 'the underworld'.
Presumably (know matter how they dress it up with respectability), the 'boss' here was living off 'immoral' earnings? Not that I personally think there is anything immoral about it, oldest profession and all that, but I'd imagine places like this are operating just within the boundaries of the law?
Advertising was the issue - some MP got newspaper adverts banned and that hit them hard, hence the reliance on the internet. Before that it was a full page advert in the MEN and business was booming. Banks didn't like them - so it was a constant rotation of PDQ machines under different company names "FredBloggs Apartments" and so on.
I think I am quite fortunate to never have had a really bad job then
I did the washing up in the local pub two nights a week for a couple of years, £20 a night paid for all my driving lessons.
I also worked as a sort of yard-boy for a local animal/farm feeds place, carrying heavy bales of hay and straw and big bags of animal food around to customers cars as they weren't to carry it themselves. I had to sheepishly go to my boss and tell him that I had broken a customer's car headlight with the sack barrow, as I had 10 of the big bags of Iams dog food to put in a van for someone, he opened the back door and this huge great St Bernard leapt out and put his front legs on my shoulders - I'm 6'5" and this dog knocked me backwards onto the sack cart, which then hit the car behind. The boss was alright about it, as was the customer who said "Oh don't worry, I can get another light at the scrapyard for £10" so the boss gave him £20 for his trouble and everyone was happy. I was happy to learn that I was commended more for my honesty than having tried to hide the fact.
But that's been it really. it was hard work, but I enjoyed it. Plus you got the horsey type ladies coming in to get all the straw for their ponies, made it much more tolerable
I did the washing up in the local pub two nights a week for a couple of years, £20 a night paid for all my driving lessons.
I also worked as a sort of yard-boy for a local animal/farm feeds place, carrying heavy bales of hay and straw and big bags of animal food around to customers cars as they weren't to carry it themselves. I had to sheepishly go to my boss and tell him that I had broken a customer's car headlight with the sack barrow, as I had 10 of the big bags of Iams dog food to put in a van for someone, he opened the back door and this huge great St Bernard leapt out and put his front legs on my shoulders - I'm 6'5" and this dog knocked me backwards onto the sack cart, which then hit the car behind. The boss was alright about it, as was the customer who said "Oh don't worry, I can get another light at the scrapyard for £10" so the boss gave him £20 for his trouble and everyone was happy. I was happy to learn that I was commended more for my honesty than having tried to hide the fact.
But that's been it really. it was hard work, but I enjoyed it. Plus you got the horsey type ladies coming in to get all the straw for their ponies, made it much more tolerable
Production line on a turkey farm in December, shaving the last few vestiges of feathers off the turkeys. The turkeys arrived wet from the production line, gloves were not an option, so freezing hands were the order of the day. People's idea of a jolly jape was to drop a warm heart or gizzard down the back of your neck. Cleaning down at the end of the day was occasionally unpleasant - unblocking drains by hand, being in the room when they opened the "lung tank" a day or 2 overdue...
i've had a number of bad jobs.
sat in a sterile white plastic room with just a strip light above a yoghurt filling machine loading the cups into a hopper that merely disappeared into the floor was an exercise in sensory deprivation.
i also had a gig picking peas in a field, utterly backbreaking work
sat in a sterile white plastic room with just a strip light above a yoghurt filling machine loading the cups into a hopper that merely disappeared into the floor was an exercise in sensory deprivation.
i also had a gig picking peas in a field, utterly backbreaking work
My life has been fairly sheltered compared to some. Not really had a "bad" job. My first when I was young was in a restaurant that was part of a zoo. It was very seasonal so it was either dead, or rammed with a double A4 sheet of people waiting for a table. You got £1.50/hour when you started, taking drinks out or cleaning tables. Once you had been there a while it went up to £2.50 and you became a waiter. Not only did you get the pay raise but if you were half decent you could top up your earnings in tips quite nicely. We got free food and free soft drinks and the people who you worked with became life long friends. We would get paid in cash weekly and it was straight down the pub.
forming and spot-welding wheelbarrows from pre-cut sheet metal, then hooking them on a line overhead before they were dipped in an oil-based paint bath. I'd grown up on a farm so was not afraid of work but this was pretty grim. Most of the guys would be lifers, or promoted to welders.
leather welders gloves yes, unless you wore them out too soon, you had to " wait " before you were allowed a new pair. Hands cut to ribbons with the sheet metal, spattered in horrible smelling black paint ( likely bitumen), I did it for months before I decided to go back into education.
After that, call centre beckoned. For a Dutch-based American AV product. Equally grim, but the chance to work with some tasty European ladies.
I now get to work on my fathers farm as well as the other side of the coin in global banking IT support, so I get a degree of balance
You never appreciate a good or even half-decent job until you have worked a few toilets. As long as you learn something each time I see it as a rite of passage.
leather welders gloves yes, unless you wore them out too soon, you had to " wait " before you were allowed a new pair. Hands cut to ribbons with the sheet metal, spattered in horrible smelling black paint ( likely bitumen), I did it for months before I decided to go back into education.
After that, call centre beckoned. For a Dutch-based American AV product. Equally grim, but the chance to work with some tasty European ladies.
I now get to work on my fathers farm as well as the other side of the coin in global banking IT support, so I get a degree of balance
You never appreciate a good or even half-decent job until you have worked a few toilets. As long as you learn something each time I see it as a rite of passage.
As a student, working behind the bar in the Student Union and in the holidays in a Little Chef. Really teaches you how unpleasantly some people treat others, but you also learn how to get your own back in subtle ways.
I'd never upset minimum wage waiters or bar staff if I were you......
Also as people above have said, when you're biggest achievement in 40 years of work is to have been made assistant manager of a Little Chef it's no surprise you've become a sour old trout.
Worst job by far though was on a battery egg farm, clearing out the sheds once the chickens had finished laying. From carrying hundreds of worn-out, emaciated, bald birds out into a truck to be sent for 'processing' into dog food, to being the one to drive the tractor-digger under the hen house clearing away 3' of chicken s
t in the height of summer. Horrible job.
I'd never upset minimum wage waiters or bar staff if I were you......
Also as people above have said, when you're biggest achievement in 40 years of work is to have been made assistant manager of a Little Chef it's no surprise you've become a sour old trout.
Worst job by far though was on a battery egg farm, clearing out the sheds once the chickens had finished laying. From carrying hundreds of worn-out, emaciated, bald birds out into a truck to be sent for 'processing' into dog food, to being the one to drive the tractor-digger under the hen house clearing away 3' of chicken s
t in the height of summer. Horrible job.Promised Land said:
3 weeks trying to sell Kirby's, that involved door to door to get names/numbers, then you went out at night and did two demo's, 1992 in a recession and flogging a cleaner for £1250.
I shifted 3 then walked, by then I'd realised why there was a revolving door of staff in the office.
Done this as well. I was 18 with an RS Turbo to feed with fuel. I had just been sacked from my HGV Apprentice job, so had to do something.I shifted 3 then walked, by then I'd realised why there was a revolving door of staff in the office.
If anything it gave me a taste for selling & gave me incredible confidence at 18. Think i sold 4 or 5, all on the never never.
Interesting to see the Door to Door sales job mentioned so much.
I do wonder though how many millionaires started off doing that.
My best friend did it for a year - ste money but he got in well with the regulars and discovered his knack for sales patter.
Set him up nicely for his next job and then took the two to open his own agency and now is 2-5 years from being able to step away for all but a few days a month.
I do wonder though how many millionaires started off doing that.
My best friend did it for a year - s
te money but he got in well with the regulars and discovered his knack for sales patter. Set him up nicely for his next job and then took the two to open his own agency and now is 2-5 years from being able to step away for all but a few days a month.
Rude-boy said:
Interesting to see the Door to Door sales job mentioned so much.
I do wonder though how many millionaires started off doing that.
My best friend did it for a year - ste money but he got in well with the regulars and discovered his knack for sales patter.
Set him up nicely for his next job and then took the two to open his own agency and now is 2-5 years from being able to step away for all but a few days a month.
yeah, i forgot that one...I do wonder though how many millionaires started off doing that.
My best friend did it for a year - s
te money but he got in well with the regulars and discovered his knack for sales patter. Set him up nicely for his next job and then took the two to open his own agency and now is 2-5 years from being able to step away for all but a few days a month.
i did some door to door after applying for a 'marketing job'
was selling voucher booklets giving discounts at local businesses for £20 round council estates.... it was hard work!!!!
Promised Land said:
3 weeks trying to sell Kirby's, that involved door to door to get names/numbers, then you went out at night and did two demo's, 1992 in a recession and flogging a cleaner for £1250.
I shifted 3 then walked, by then I'd realised why there was a revolving door of staff in the office.
I went to a job interview for a "Candidate would be preferable to have electrical knowledge, sale and installation" . I thought it would be a washing machine or some such thing.I shifted 3 then walked, by then I'd realised why there was a revolving door of staff in the office.
Walked in and saw rows and rows of empty chairs slowly being filled with other people that had seen the same job. Saw the Kirby paperwork on the wall and realised what it was all about.
Asked where the toilet was, walked down the stairs and went home.
RRLover said:
Promised Land said:
3 weeks trying to sell Kirby's, that involved door to door to get names/numbers, then you went out at night and did two demo's, 1992 in a recession and flogging a cleaner for £1250.
I shifted 3 then walked, by then I'd realised why there was a revolving door of staff in the office.
Done this as well. I was 18 with an RS Turbo to feed with fuel. I had just been sacked from my HGV Apprentice job, so had to do something.I shifted 3 then walked, by then I'd realised why there was a revolving door of staff in the office.
If anything it gave me a taste for selling & gave me incredible confidence at 18. Think i sold 4 or 5, all on the never never.
Did some driving when I was much younger when I was between proper jobs. I actually used to quite enjoy driving a 7.5 tonner and seeing some of the countryside, and if your "mate" was OK at least it was reasonably sociable. However one day the agency changed what I was doing, and I spent a few days at a post office depot. Some postie had got hit and mildly injured by a reversing HGV so they decided that they needed a minibus to drive any posties arriving for work on foot, the 150 yards between the gate and the building door, on H&S grounds. So I had to sit in a van, hazards on constantly, and wait for hours on end for "the call" to take someone one way or the other. For about 10 hours. And about four trips, or 600 yards in total. Utter tedium...walked out after 2 days.
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