What's The Worst Job You Ever Had?

[Blackbeard]

I'm going to rant about my horrible HVAC jobs later, but one of the worst I had was a newspaper delivery boy when I was about 13 years old.
I got a part time job to deliver "Newsday" a newspaper from NY/Long Island. they would drop off a stack of papers at your house and you would have to take them via bicycle to the delivery route. Here is the kicker, YOU would have to pay for the newspapers yourself and collect the fees from the people on the route once a week, which was next to impossible since most were not home, or they would give you an excuse to come back another time for payment.

This may have been the stupidest system ever devised, I think I was even laughed at by a classmate and his father at his apartment while trying to collect the fees. Imagine yourself as a young kid ringing doorbells and praying for an answer and a payment that would rarely come...then the newspaper office would hound you for the fees, I lasted about a month and threw in the towel after one sunday when they dropped off a pile of sunday papers(which are huge in comparison to a weekday paper) that was as tall as me and you had to get your parents to drive you to the route.

Not sure what was stupider, the payment system or me for ever taking that job

[Etherealicer]

Yeah, that system is bad. They put all the responsibility on a kid, probably without paying him adequately.

My worst job was in the cardboard factory. I had the honor of putting the roles of freshly produced wave-cardboard away. They were still warm and the fumes of the solvent came out. I was so high on the evening of my first day, that I drove my bike in a ditch and barely got home. Quite the job the next day.
I was lucky however, got a different job (distributing printing plates to the different machines) in the same factory and as far as summer holiday jobs go for teenagers this was paid very well.

[kirk13]

Working in a video shop

[Blackbeard]

Yeah, that system is bad. They put all the responsibility on a kid, probably without paying him adequately.

My worst job was in the cardboard factory. I had the honor of putting the roles of freshly produced wave-cardboard away. They were still warm and the fumes of the solvent came out. I was so high on the evening of my first day, that I drove my bike in a ditch and barely got home. Quite the job the next day.
I was lucky however, got a different job (distributing printing plates to the different machines) in the same factory and as far as summer holiday jobs go for teenagers this was paid very well.

horrible and hilarious 

[magentus]

Working in a semi-secure unit where people with extremely challenging behaviour lived. The company running the place kept it at a skeleton staff to maximise their profits. There were six residents all who had to have one to one support in the house and two to one outside the house, but we never the staff to cover them safely There was a house car for the use of the residents that the company used whenever they wanted to ferry managers around.

I (and other staff) had stuff thrown at us on a daily basis, I had my glasses broken twice, as a team leader if one of the nightstaff didn't turn up I had to cover if no one else would and I never had the heart to try and persuade someone to do what I wasn't willing to so I ended up doing a lot of very long shifts. There was also a couple of residents who used their bodily fluids to express their frustration so there was a lot of cleaning up to do as well. 

I left as soon as I could and they took all my final wage to pay for training I'd had. Terrible terrible company. Maybe I shouldn't have been so forthright about their dodgy practices.

[Blackbeard]

I've had do to HVAC service calls in a few of those houses Magentus, I know where your coming from but fortunately the visits were brief and many times the residents were out of the house, yeah man thats a bad one

[Smashie]

Fraud investigator for a loss adjusting company, so much corporate BS it was terrifying 

[Huntsman]

Toilet cleaner in a baked beans factory .... Really !! 

[glenfiddich1983]

Toilet cleaner in a baked beans factory .... Really !! 

No sh1t! 

[Smashie]

Toilet cleaner in a baked beans factory .... Really !! 

Sh1tty job 

[glenfiddich1983]

I guess my worst job was in a factory that produced parts for old style CRT monitors. My job was to get the parts from the production line and put them in a tray. All I did the whole day was moving my right hand to the production line, grab one or two parts, move my hand to the left and put the parts in the tray, and this over and over again.

The worst part was that the glass of which the parts were made, contained lead. After I worked there for about two weeks I learned that in the company everyone had to take blood tests every once in a while to measure the level of lead in your blood. Of it got too high, the employee in question had tot stay home for a couple of weeks (paid), until the level of lead was below the norm again.

The day I learned about this was the day I quit the job.

No job is worth risking your health!

Especially not if the job itself was so uninspiring as this one. I got a new and far better job the day after that, and I worked there for about six years.
Then I found my current job, which i'm doing for about ten years now. Time flies... 

[ducttapetech]

After our dairy operation folded on us in '98, I worked around doing odd jobs, custom work and work on a few surrounding farms as a farm hand.
This one dairy farmer I worked for was one of the worst jobs I had worked. It wasn't the work that was the problem. I am used to that. Milking, planting, mucking out the sheds and barns, things of that nature. The problem was this guy was a 100 % Grade A USDA approved dick. Always berating you and when payday hit, which was rare because he would "forget", he was constantly short changing our paychecks.
One day after the morning milking, we started chopping corn and this guy's for some reason, as usual, decided it that I was going the run the carts back and forth. No problem there, but I was going to use an old 1650 Oliver to do so and gave me the most ratted and rusted out cart also. The guy had way better tractors and equipment,  but loved to give you the ran down stuff. Now the the Oliver was a nice tractor, but it did not have any business trying to pull a cart this size or pulling a cart in this bad of shape for that matter.
Anyways, the first trip on my way back from the field to the silo, the running gear on the cart busted clear in half. No surprise there. And of course was called an idiot and was told I had no idea what I was doing or how to run the equipment. And the kicker, something he would do sometimes, is if something broke, and you was running it at the time, he would take out of your pay. And today, it was my turn to pay and told me I wouldn't get paid this coming Friday. Alright. I'll play.
So that evening, when it was time to milk, I got everything ready and milked the herd, but I "forgot" to swing to pipe over to the bulk tank and let the all the milk go right down the drain. All 80 head worth. Hehe. Then told him to shove a pitchfork up a certain part of his anatomy and quit. Best part was, I was not the only one who quit that day.

[ducttapetech]

Toilet cleaner in a baked beans factory .... Really !! 

Sh1tty job 

[magentus]

No wonder you're Khornes favourite Nate 

[ducttapetech]

No wonder you're Khornes favourite Nate 

[LoopCutter]

When 14 took a job picking tomatoes in a old green house, it was July and August, plants were staked and tied to the rafters with a very narrow pathway to walk. 
Temps in the 90s F, humidity 99%, with heavy dew every morning.  Start at 6 AM and picked until section was complete. Took about 7 hours every day but Sunday.  Then Monday spent about 10!hours.
When done, hands and arms stained green, clothes smelled with tomato and till this day I will almost get sick smelling tomato plants.  All for 25 cents an hour. 


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[Zed]

The job I've done for the last 17yrs, I'm a HCA  (Health care assistant ) I was a senior dementia lead for over 10yrs, sadly for a industry that I once loved it is now run by a bunch of money obbsessed companies that don't give a smurf about the residents or there staff, I've seen so many good carers leave this type of work and now work in shops ,we get too much stress for to little pay,and although we look after people's lives and are with people right to the end of there life,we get treated like we are 5 , after 17yrs of this and working night's ive pretty much had enough, my kids are a bit older so hopefully after Xmas I'll start looking for another job ,a normal one 

[Alan K.]

I was a used car salesman for 3 weeks in 1988. This was at a legit dealership, but the used cars were separate from the new stuff.  The other salesmen were the stereotypical chain smoking, leather jacket wearing, sharks who grabbed anyone who approached the lot before I ever had a chance.  The pay was a draw against commission meaning if you sold a car you got a commission and if you didn't sell you were guaranteed a minimal paycheck but if your commissions were above a certain amount they would take back the draw.  If you went more than a couple of weeks without selling they'd fire you. I was not aggressive, nor was it in my nature to lie to people, so this was not the best job for me.  I didn't sell my first 2 weeks and I got a warning from the boss.  In the third week a couple of guys showed up in a taxi, with luggage, and the rest of the salesmen all figured "they're tourists, they're not not going to buy anything, and basically shoved me out the door to deal with the "tourists."  Turned out the guys were from Norway and belonged to a car collectors club and they wanted to buy an old custom van. We had such a beast on the lot, a mid 1970's Dodge with a mural painted on the side, full shag carpeting, velour captain's chairs in front and a couch in the back. I think it even had a CB radio.  They bought the van at full price without even driving it, no negotiating, and even better, they were going to export it to Norway so the dealership didn't have to worry about it ever coming back with any problems.  It was an easy sale with a $600 commission, which was a lot in 1988.  Unfortunately, they arranged to take delivery on my day off so the salesman who delivered it got half of my commission.  That's when I quit.  It was just too cutthroat for me.

[Gerhard Gerber]

This may have been the stupidest system ever devised, I think I was even laughed at by a classmate and his father at his apartment while trying to collect the fees. Imagine yourself as a young kid ringing doorbells and praying for an answer and a payment that would rarely come...then the newspaper office would hound you for the fees, I lasted about a month and threw in the towel after one sunday when they dropped off a pile of sunday papers(which are huge in comparison to a weekday paper) that was as tall as me and you had to get your parents to drive you to the route.

That experience would be my start as an arsonist 
 

With my retrenchments and employers closing down, my working life hasn't been great.

What stands out as the worst was a managerial job looking after 8 technicians that were part of an outsourcing contract.  My predecessor was now working for the client, my employer was loosing contracts left & right and bleeding income, and the inside knowledge the client had was now being used as a stick to beat us with, and at the same time refuse any increases in the contract fees.

To put this in perspective, we we doing the IT support but we were the smallest contract, even the company washing cars was invoicing more.

Same games were played with the staff, largely useless bunch that were so entitled because they were constantly told they were special.  I was constantly told "we have no problem with you or your work, just your company" 
Them keeping cost down meant they were "doing their job"   My employer was so desperate to stay in the market they kept the contract despite making a loss after paying salaries and staff accommodation .

Did I mention the technicians were useless?
Due to the remote location getting staff was tough, due to 5 year old contract pricing there was no money to convince good people, towards the end I literally was stuck with a crack addict on the team  He went off the tracks the first time I took leave....

Never before and never since had I been in such embarrassing situations having to take responsibility for  others, and this was the 2nd time only that I quit without having another job.

[kkokkolis]

My worst job is the same as my best, since I only ever worked as a physician. You have to talk with people all day, that's the worst part. The best part is that many of them are completely insane.

[MadPlumbarian]

Hmm, this is a tuffy cause I had so many.
I’d have to say one of two, either pulling a sewage pump out then having to disassemble it in like 90deg weather, or a 2hr drive down to have to "go into" a 8' x 8' x 8' sewage cubical to clean a pipe out which only took 2min but the smell was so harch, kinda like sticking your head into a cat litter box, I had to think they whole trip down what I was going to use for my feet cause I didn’t have special boots, so when I got there I asked the one person for 5 trash bags, 2 for each leg and then one that I could step in and wrap everything up, then have to drive another 2hrs back! Got home, dropped all clothing and then jumped in the shower for like idk how long after both jobs!
JR

[ironraven]

My current job.

Which I can't say much about without violating my NDA. Lets just say that when I was hired a year ago, part of why they wanted me was for feedback from someone who'd been doing this kind of job for a while for a much larger company. (I had single customers that were worth more than my entire division pulls in at my current job.) They wanted me to point out their problems to them.

Hostile environment, hyper territorial and bullying coworkers. Check
Interdepartmental rivalries that take precedence over the mission. Check.
Personal conflicts taking precedence of the mission within a department. Check.
Failure of lower to middle management to resolve those conflicts. Check
Willful insubordination by senior agents, publicly and repeatedly occurring without penalty. Check
Continuously changing middle management and objectives. Check.
Institutionalized refusal to document internal policeis. Check
Failure to train new personnel appropriately. Check.
Failure to document and log changes in product. Check.
Failure to generate SOPs at every level. Check
Non standard and undocumented communication of issues between senior management and the the customers encouraged. Check (see the failure to document changes- it's a doozie of a combo)
Over selling of product. Check.
Insufficient funding and staffing of development. Check.
Implementation that I can only generously describe as "artistinal and hand crafted". Check
Heroic intervention rather than systemic management. Check.
Signing a contract we can not possibly keep, resulting if penalty fees worth more than this customer pays us yearly. Check.
Single point of knowledge for key components and systems. Oh so very checked.
Upper management in denial about the state of the product to a point that I suspect may be clinically delusional. CHECK!


My last gig is where I came to the conclusion that there is only two kinds of software- crap and overdue. But this job... Wow. Today I realized I didn't care if I died or if one of my coworkers did, because either way it meant I didn't have to put up with him any more. So... loss of objectivity and motivation on my part? Check.
Do I think my boss was promoted to a level where his incompetency will result in him being made the fallguy one of these days? Check.
Did I get mad enough to tell him that to his face? Not that diplomatically.
Did he just take it and never show any backbone? Not a sliver of spine was to be seen.

Do I expect to get fired? Any day now.

[Syncop8r]

20170522_141842 by Poncho 65, on Flickr

That pic reminds me of a job I once did as a student. A plumbing supplier's copper (and maybe brass?) pipes had gotten wet so my job was to wipe them all down with kerosene or something similar. After a day doing that and inhaling all those fumes, by the evening I was constantly farting kerosene.
Good thing I'm not a smoker.

Actually the worst of those student jobs I did was advertised as an hour's sweeping a carpark. Which sounds OK until you realise the carpark (for a local business) doubles as a favourite area for prostitutes to work their trade and what you are sweeping up is all the used condoms stuck to the paving. Plus a sanitary pad or two. 

[zoidberg]

(Image removed from quote.)

That pic reminds me of a job I once did as a student. A plumbing supplier's copper (and maybe brass?) pipes had gotten wet so my job was to wipe them all down with kerosene or something similar. After a day doing that and inhaling all those fumes, by the evening I was constantly farting kerosene.
Good thing I'm not a smoker.

Actually the worst of those student jobs I did was advertised as an hour's sweeping a carpark. Which sounds OK until you realise the carpark (for a local business) doubles as a favourite area for prostitutes to work their trade and what you are sweeping up is all the used condoms stuck to the paving. Plus a sanitary pad or two. 

Lol, Briscoes?

[Syncop8r]

Lol, Briscoes?

It was a carpet store on Cashel or Lichfield St I think, not far from Manchester St.

[Blackbeard]

20170522_141842 by Poncho 65, on Flickr

That pic reminds me of a job I once did as a student. A plumbing supplier's copper (and maybe brass?) pipes had gotten wet so my job was to wipe them all down with kerosene or something similar. After a day doing that and inhaling all those fumes, by the evening I was constantly farting kerosene.
Good thing I'm not a smoker.

Actually the worst of those student jobs I did was advertised as an hour's sweeping a carpark. Which sounds OK until you realise the carpark (for a local business) doubles as a favourite area for prostitutes to work their trade and what you are sweeping up is all the used condoms stuck to the paving. Plus a sanitary pad or two. 

wasn't that s Seinfeld episode?

[Syncop8r]

Which story? Both of those happened to me.

[Blackbeard]

Which story? Both of those happened to me.

looked it up,
season 7 episode 18







cant seem to upload the other clips,  you should file a lawsuit, they stole your life story

[LoopCutter]

“Car Park” - term I now use when communicating with a product vender I deal with. He does not like the name parking garage, parking ramp, or parking lot.  Any time I use the common US name he stops and corrects me, “car park”.

You have same trash in your parks that are found on this side of the pond.


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[Syncop8r]

He does not like the name parking garage, parking ramp, or parking lot.

We don't use those terms here (perhaps parking lot occasionally) but I have heard them on American TV.