Tell Us About The Worst Job You've Ever Had

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#1

Hello Everyone,

I was talking with some friends about the worst jobs they’ve ever had and I found many of the responses to be simultaneously hilarious and sad. As an icebreaker activity, I figured that it would be nice to give everyone a space to complain about that ONE job. You know the one. It’s that job where all of your youthful idealism and enthusiasm went down the drain. My worst job wasn’t as bad as many others, but I still look back on it as my primary motivation for getting my life together. I absolutely never wanted to have a job like it for that little pay ever again. Some of you may look at this and go “ah, that’s nothing. Let me tell you about a real shit job.” You’re probably right and I definitely want to hear about it.My worst job was hands down the first one I ever had. At this age, I wasn’t mature enough to know that it’s okay to quit a bad job, so I stuck through entire thing.

So I’ll begin with mine:

Scientists mistakenly tell us that all children come out of women during birth. I’m about to let y’all in on a little secret. This is not necessarily the case for all children. When the rivers of Corrax run red and the influence of the old gods are at their strongest during the blood moons, fetuses can become infused with unstable, negative spiritual energies that turn them into hellspawn. It’s not a particularly uncommon phenomenon, but the reason you’ve never heard of it is because there is a secret union of bougie upper/upper-middle class parents that cover up the existence of this sentient species.

These hellspawn are usually kept hidden from society, only allowed to interact with their fellow humans during school hours and juvie. In the early-20th century, the government started a project whereby hellspawn would be put under the care of expendable, minimum wage laborers in their teens at facilities across the country. These facilities were named… “summer camps”. The especially worrisome elements were sent to maximum security facilities dubbed… “bible camps”. In order to keep up the appearance of normalcy, every cohort of hellspawn would be mixed in with normal human children.

Each laborer was equipped with the legal maximum number of kids they could oversee: eleven. Each 17-19 year old would, with no parenting/overseeing experience, have to oversee eleven children and try their best to ensure that they wouldn’t try to escape into the woods or get attacked by hellspawn. They would be forced to oversee these children 24/7 for 3 months during summer time. They got a break day once every two weeks. Did I say they were payed minimum wage? Forgive me, I was unclear. What I meant to say is that they were payed minimum wage for part-time work, while actually working practically 24/7 for 3 months.

Sleep deprivation, mental exhaustion, and physical exhaustion would eventually wear these people down until they made that ONE big mistake that their supervisor would forever remember. The supervisor would rebuke them and call them immature, but they wouldn’t care because they were so sleep deprived that they didn’t have the mental energy to have emotions by that point. However, you would still feel the eyes of the supervisor on you for the remainder of your tour because they had lost their trust in you for forgetting a bag at lunch even though you’ve done a stellar job until then.

The only thing keeping these laborers from totally losing their minds (some of them still lost their minds) were the strong bonds they would forge in this adversity and the large number of booze that would be consumed on their day off. Laborers were not allowed to have or use cellphones (you were given radios), so you also felt disconnected from the rest of the world.

Now is the time for me to talk about another humanoid type that is often kept hidden from society: the Karen. Karens are fully-evolved hellspawn that are incapable of comprehending their children’s imperfections because they cannot differentiate between their child’s mistakes and their own and if there is one thing we do know, it is that Karen can never be wrong (not trying to hate on people named Karen. I actually got this term from a police officer’s youtube channel. Apparently, it is common for them to call people who ‘want to speak to their supervisor’ as “Karens”).

In fact, it was the teenage laborer’s fault that their hellspawn tried to bash another hellspawn’s head in with a frozen lunchbox cooler thing. If he was any good at his job, he would’ve been able sense the 1 AM attack with the force and then use his supernatural powers to prevent any violence from occurring between the spawnlings.

It is important to understand that one can only survive an encounter with a Karen if they are properly trained. Experts agree that you should never be curt and make every attempt to apologize and take responsibility in order to calm down the Karen. You may only snap at one when you finally break down and decide that your paychecks are no longer worth it.

There is so much more I could talk about, but I think this is enough.

What are y’alls worst jobs?

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#2

Seriously, you were an abused babysitter…and you’re still whining about it?

Fock, I was a Galley Slave, running 120 ft long pipes into a nuclear reactor cooling unit for 10 hours a day. We had to wear steel toed boots, and shove 1000 pipes a day into that radiator, I was f’in Conan at the wheel. My crew was full of backwoods hillbilly perverts just like in “Deliverance”. When you looked at these cretens, you heard banjo music.

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#3

Box factory laborer. When I was with Manpower Temps, one assignment I got was working at a container plant in Mansfield. Summer - No AC - 115 in the shade - loud as hell - air thick with cardboard fibers - stoop work either loading material onto machines or taking material off the machines - typically 60 LB bails, etc. Cranked the hell out of my lower back in the first 30 minutes or so. I quit the assignment after one shift.

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#4

I worked in a very understaffed IT call center at my university while I was a student. There were 1000 employees and 12000 students to serve, and there were 7 of us (call center was 24/7, so there were only 4 of us during the day). The IT department was outsourced to a 3rd party company, but we were still on campus, leasing an office from the university.

Management was absolutely terrible. I was training my new boss, who threatened to fire me daily for googling obscure problems users were having. He said it was “cheating” and “unprofessional”. Thankfully he got fired after about a year after having a screaming match with the CIO.

After I left, they got a new CIO, and there was a mass exodus. They even fired my brother for something he didn’t do, and now his boss is under investigation for fraud and embezzlement for the exact thing he accused my brother of doing. He got a raise after the investigation was opened.

It really put a bad taste in my mouth for working in customer support, so now I work in a NOC and haven’t had to touch a single ticket since I started working here.

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#5

Haha. And then you became a gladiator like Conan to complete your transformation into Russell Crowe, right?

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#6

Yeah, that sucks. I’ve heard a similar story from another guy who worked at a cannery. By the way, there are rattlesnakes and all sorts of woodland creatures in your ketchup.

#7

Oh wow. That’s terrible!

Funnily enough, this reminds me of how a lot of business culture got to where it is today. One of the great wars during the 2000’s that still sort of goes on to this day was between traditional managers, who felt that they could make all of the most important decisions with gut instinct, and silicon valley types, who felt that they could automate a significant amount of the strategic management and staffing process. The old guard lost because they kept making shit decisions like the ones you described (understaffing and making poor hiring decisions for management)

Universities, smaller enterprises, and the like still try and do things the old way but many large corporations have learned their lesson. Hopefully, treatment and support of employees will improve when intelligent systems become more widespread and trusted.

#8

Boomers, am I right? :rofl:

#9

I have had a few, However I would still do them again because somebody has to do it.

Trinity River Authority,
Yes the Poo plant. I worked there on & off for some time. Specifically in the last stop for the solids before they are trucked out for fertilizer. They had a lime tank that would have blow outs into a cooling tower. That lime would then cake on the tubes on the condenser of chiller. That was the only place Ive ever had to use a rod with drill motor & a brass brush to clean them. I would have to do this about once a month. The smell was really damn bad. They also had other equipment around the place, The chemicals in the air would cause leaks in the machines, even with the copper coated with anti corrisive coating. You could set a brand new penny on the ground & the following day it would look like a 30 year old penny. Kinda scary when you think about it.

Then there was the steel mill. That had/has to be the hottest damn place on earth. I worked on the drive coolers, this cooled the room that the drives were in that cut the billet steel just after solidus. The only thing separating me from the damn near molten steel was just a piece of corrugated tin. That same place I worked on the man coolers as well. They had these coolers that the guys would go to while wearing their reflective PPE to cool off while they wait to take samples, etc, This was right by were they poured the steel into the billets. Then there was getting on top of the pulpit control room, where they poured the steel. I dont even remember the temps I was encountering but I want to say 140 degrees was a “Cool Day”. That was an extremely dangerous place if you were not watching out. The slag trucks would take off, at times you would see them driving with the tires on fire, they do not stop for anything. You were told to stay out of their way. The dust was also nasty, it would make something you just put in look 20 years old in no time.

Ive also worked at dairy re-pasteurization plant, ohh man that milk in the middle of the summer would smell rancid. They took the expired milk products were re-pasteurized it for cattle feed. That’s what I was told anyway.

Also a landfill, where they were burning the methane for power production. Kinda stunk but not as bad as the poo plant.

Some of the other dangers I’ve ran into at work.

Ive have had my pinky finger smashed while re-tubing a machine with a 15 lb slide hammer, come to think of it it might be heavier. The guy I was working with swears he had visions of my pinky falling off right after the hit. Here is a picture of the slide hammer.

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I have had a strap break that was holding a 2 ton chain fall. That would have killed me, it came inches from my head while I was standing on a barrel of a machine 8-9 ft up.

I have been shocked by 277, I had to actually jump off my ladder, luckily I was only a few steps on a 6 ft ladder. I could not let go as the 277 had my upper body muscles clenched. That left a nice little exit wound.

Those are all some of the dangers of what I do. I do accept that the job I do is inherently dangerous.

I have stories of others who have some stupid stuff, one of which a guy drove a 15/16” nut on his finger with an impact. The customer told him that there was only one way to get that back off…well that was the impact as well. It amazes me that guy is still alive & hasn’t killed someone else after all the other stupid stuff he has done.

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#10

Bene the Poo?

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#11

Kirby Vacuum Cleaner Salesman.
1 week.

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#12

That sucks. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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#13

Now, I’ll agree that the jobs mentioned here are pretty bad but I think mine topped them all.

My worst job is the only job I have had that I was afraid of losing. I started the job the week after Thanksgiving. I was only a week into my 90 day probation period when my Wife’s brother died and I missed 3 day work for the funeral. The office manager came to me and told me the company gives 3 days of bereavement leave. I said “I get that ?” and she said yes. Christmas is coming and I have been on a probation period before, not paid for the new guy right? Well not only did I get the Holiday pay they had a company wide bonus of a weeks pay and I got that too.

A couple of weeks into the new year, still in my probationary period, my boss told me I wasn’t getting paid enough and gave me a 15% pay raise.

Did I mention that the job was less than 5 miles from my house? I have never had a job in Dallas that was less than 20 miles from my house. Usually on the other side of Downtown Dallas.

That was my worst job in my entire life - and yes I did lose that job when they had to layoff most of the company.

There are other things that make a job bad other that working conditions and personalities.

Russell Ward

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#14

Not one of my jobs come close to these. But I spent several months working for a medical X-ray service company. The company went to doctors offices and serviced the X-ray film developers. Drop off new chemistry, and pick up the empty jugs most of the time. But I was the guy in the garage washing all the 5 gallon jugs, mixing up 300 to 500 gallon batches of chemicals, and filling the 5 gallon jugs. Every so often I would show up and be told to take one of the vans, and make the 450 mile round trip to Portland to pick up another load of the 55 gallon drums of chemicals to mix up the developer and fixer. It ended after I should have made a bigger deal of a skin injury inside one of the finger joints that just wouldn’t heal with all the jug washing. But in the attempts to help it heal, things got behind and we parted ways.

#15

Not as bad as others, but my worst was a bar back at BBQ restaurant. Between constant hot water from dish cleaning, moving scalding hot briskets from heat drawers to cutting area, and boiling potatoes 30 gallons at a time all in a poorly ventilated room, I had no fingerprints and accidentally ripped parts of my ghost-white hands (dishwashing) off if I wasn’t careful. The worst part for me - being kinda scrawny - was having to lift 4-6 32 gallon trashcans of BBQ trimmings, food slop and whatever else overhead into the dumpster at the end of the night.

On the upside, it’s still one of my favorite BBQ joints - Swinging Door in the Houston area.

FWIW - the next job was painting AC units on the roof for the summer and that was a piece of cake!

#16

Worst job…getting shot at while in the jungles of Vietnam. They killed the guy that stood right next to me. I lived to tell the tale.

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