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The worst job I ever had was a summer job in southern Virginia scraping the paint off a gigantic iron fence so it could be repainted. It was covered in spiders, you had to grip each fence post with a metal brillo pad and just essentially jerk it off while spiders climbed all over your fingers, in 90+ degree heat.
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Jun 7, 2015 17:52
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Pron on VHS posted:The worst job I ever had was a summer job in southern Virginia scraping the paint off a gigantic iron fence so it could be repainted. It was covered in spiders, you had to grip each fence post with a metal brillo pad and just essentially jerk it off while spiders climbed all over your fingers, in 90+ degree heat. Welp. My submission doubles as worst/best job because it had two parts. I worked for a parks department in their summer program. We spent mornings watching kids and playing games with them. That was generally pretty fun. When it rained the kids went home and we sat around and played cards. On nights and weekends we were responsible for cleaning the parks and managing the reservations of pavillions. The worst part was picking up after people. What part of seeing a full trash can suggests you should cram more poo poo into it instead of walking 10 feet to the next one that isn't full? Now anytime I'm out somewhere, I'll hold my trash until I see a less empty can, knowing some poor sap has to pick up all the garbage laying around. Anyway, the worst moment was kind of manufactured by my own lack of foresight. I was working a big event at our biggest pavilion. We had this big drum trash cans we would set out. I grabbed an extra one and tucked it around the side of the building, thinking I'd pull it out later and save myself some time.. only I didn't put a trash bag in it. This particular event was a cookout for ~100 people with plenty of barbecued chickens. I came back to an unlined can full of half-eaten chicken carcasses. Finagling all that into bags was quite a disgusting feat.
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Jun 11, 2015 16:46
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I once saw a stand-up comedian tell a story of how he met someone who worked as a debt collector for a children's hospital.
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Jun 17, 2015 18:12
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I had the best summer jobs. One summer I did the machinist apprentice thing where I mostly swept up the machine shop and had crusty old guys show me how to make simple parts with a manual mill and lathe. I spent the next summer re-roofing historic ranch buildings in Gallatin National Forest with real wood shingles for the park service. It was only like four hours a day of real work and we got to gently caress around and take day trips into Yellowstone the rest of the time. It had its downsides, like the week the truck that was supposed to change the portajohns didn't come, and the only place to bathe was a 45 degree meltwater torrent. But it was one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen, the first place I touched a real live boob, and the place I've come closest to dying outside of some idiot fucker in Army BCT trying to clear a jam while pointing his gun at me. I think I got a little off topic there. Enlisted Army infantry is the worst job btw
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Jun 17, 2015 22:56
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Call Centers suck. They'll suck your soul dry. Especially when the company forgets to pay their shipping companies and are told, officially, to lie about poo poo. Collections suck, because you have to be a horrible rear end in a top hat sometimes; worse when your racist boss and his anger-issues having son are constantly screaming at everyone and want you to lie about poo poo to everyone including the board of directors and maybe possibly the FDIC. Family businesses will just piss you off. And it's worse because everytime you see whoever it was you worked for (and you have to see them, because you're family), it will just constantly remind you how they screwed you and will only make you pissed off. Even worse when everyone in your family thinks you need to listen to said person because they own their own business and has such sage advice. Yeah, his sage advice said I needed to stay "near family" and pursue a career at Wal-Mart and hopefully be a manager. gently caress that, I moved to Taiwan. Best job? Car prep/wash at a rental agency.
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Jun 22, 2015 10:40
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I'd have to say logging is the worst job. Working out in the woods all day, knee-deep in mud regardless of the season, surrounded by elderly rednecks. One of my coworkers is literally 80 years old and blind, and his job is operating a 23 ton vehicle. There's a reason it's the most lethal job in the country. Plus the pay is absolute poo poo.
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Jun 23, 2015 20:42
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I always try to be as nice as possible to people at call centers, because I'm sure their lives are awful. Same with people in IT, at my last job I would always apologize profusely when asking them for help with anything, because I'm sure for every time I came to them and had a basic idea what was going wrong, they'd get ten different people with no clue asking them to miracle away their problems. I've been lucky and haven't really had lovely jobs, I guess the shittiest (on paper) was the summer in college I spent helping renovate one of our dorms, but I got free room & board for a summer and lots of time to shoot the poo poo with my classmates or our reformed hippie boss.
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Jun 23, 2015 21:49
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Security guard in a call center. My job was to alternate between sitting at the front door checking ID badges (even though the only way they could get in was to swipe their badge to get the door open) and to wander around and make sure nobody had anything at their workstation besides a headset, a water bottle, and hard candy. If they had anything else (cell phone, MP3 player, paper, pencil, etc.) I was supposed to find somebody wearing a safety vest (supervisor) and let them know. I ended up getting fired because I refused to lock my cell phone in a locker during my shift.
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Jun 26, 2015 16:39
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Cat Army
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MightyJoe36 posted:Security guard in a call center. My job was to alternate between sitting at the front door checking ID badges (even though the only way they could get in was to swipe their badge to get the door open) and to wander around and make sure nobody had anything at their workstation besides a headset, a water bottle, and hard candy. If they had anything else (cell phone, MP3 player, paper, pencil, etc.) I was supposed to find somebody wearing a safety vest (supervisor) and let them know. Why only hard candy?
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Jun 27, 2015 01:31
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A lot of call centers go nuts if you chew gum because people may hear you chew it on the phone. Hard candy is easier to hide the use of. That job still sounds epically totalitarian. Supervisors. In. Safety. Vests. You've got to be kidding me. blackmet fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Jun 27, 2015 |
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Jun 27, 2015 14:46
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blackmet posted:A lot of call centers go nuts if you chew gum because people may hear you chew it on the phone. Hard candy is easier to hide the use of. That's not even the half of it. The Senior supervisors (I guess, the guys over the guys in the vests) had their desks up on a platform so they could oversee the whole cube farm. They also had giant flat screen TVs up on the walls that would flash things like "TEAMWORK" and "EMPATHY" and "Diane S. just received a performance award." Did I also mention that we had to bring out own food/drinks for our break time? They had a break room, but the only way you could buy stuff from the vending machines was by using one of their company-issued debit cards. I took that to mean that that's how these poor suckers got paid. Security cameras everywhere. I felt like a prison guard with no authority.
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Jun 27, 2015 16:53
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Someone in one of my classes shared what her job is. It's some kind of social work thing, working with sex trafficking. She has spent entire days doing interviews with a series of underage prostitutes and the johns who got caught with them. I bet a lot of those social work jobs are the most  ever.
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Jun 28, 2015 06:36
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canyoneer posted:Someone in one of my classes shared what her job is. It's some kind of social work thing, working with sex trafficking. She has spent entire days doing interviews with a series of underage prostitutes and the johns who got caught with them. I think sociologists realize that humans are just sick people all around and find it fascinating beyond moral dilemmas.
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Jun 29, 2015 02:23
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BossRighteous posted:I think sociologists realize that humans are just sick people all around and find it fascinating beyond moral dilemmas. A lot of social workers burn out and give up.
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Jun 29, 2015 03:41
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My fiance is a Social Worker handling substance abuse with Women and there are days when she just despairs. Not so much at the crap her clients go through but just at the lovely people who run these programs. I grab her pads and pens at vendor conferences because they make her buy her own stationary.
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Jun 29, 2015 13:02
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Underground coal mining. I was a "Bull Gang" boss that had to run a crew of guys that did all of the hard labor that would have human rights activists on fire if such work was imposed on an Alabama chain gang. I still am a coal miner, but no more belt and power moves or unit dead-heads.
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Jul 1, 2015 01:26
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Getting paid $10.50 an hour to wipe up a bunch of poop and dirty diapers of the elderly and disabled. Back breaking work. Nursing home CNAs are vastly under paid and over worked. 
Anonymous Pie fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Oct 18, 2015 |
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Aug 3, 2015 19:51
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Full time fast food with a Skeleton crew
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Aug 4, 2015 23:44
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I had a 3 week stint where I would listen to two consecutive people saying 'You hit me with a wet and oily rag!'. The distance from microphone, gender, and noise/environment of the recording would vary. I had to chose which one sounded closer. Each comparison took about 15 seconds. I did it for 7 hours each day. I was too dumb to just walk the gently caress out back then.
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Aug 6, 2015 05:18
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Uncle Jam posted:I had a 3 week stint where I would listen to two consecutive people saying 'You hit me with a wet and oily rag!'. The distance from microphone, gender, and noise/environment of the recording would vary. I had to chose which one sounded closer. Each comparison took about 15 seconds. Which voice did they eventually go with for gitmo?
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Aug 6, 2015 19:53
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Anything involving manual labor in humid heat. Spend all day carrying around heavy rear end poo poo in 100 degree heat with thick humidity and you'll be loving begging to sit in an air conditioned call center and have air horns shot into your headphones.
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Aug 8, 2015 02:09
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Uncle Jam posted:I had a 3 week stint where I would listen to two consecutive people saying 'You hit me with a wet and oily rag!'. The distance from microphone, gender, and noise/environment of the recording would vary. I had to chose which one sounded closer. Each comparison took about 15 seconds. What was the point of that?
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Aug 9, 2015 19:19
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Microphone and/or codec testing, would be my guess. The phrase is probably the audiologist equivalent of the quick brown fox.
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Aug 11, 2015 10:46
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I guess I've been blessed with okay jobs. I once knew a nurse who worked in a high security prison, dispensing methadone. She was only 5 foot tall and told about these 'roided up convicts would scream and threaten her, sometimes throwing her up against a wall, clamping an arm down across her throat. I couldn't think of anything to say to that.
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Aug 11, 2015 10:52
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I had a whole book about horrible jobs. My personal favourite was the guy who worked in a pea processing factory. His job was to watch a conveyor belt of peas and get rid of the black ones. He said something to the effect of 'eventually you developed a hole in your vision and when you left for the day everything looked red'. The worst job I personally had was at a major Australian electronics retailer. The job itself wasn't that bad or anything, but there was something particularly soul-destroying about processing peoples orders for Christmas on a two year payment plan and I felt like the shop was taking advantage of people.
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Aug 14, 2015 06:07
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Sorry but most of these "worst jobs" are dumb kids mad because they have to do a thing that isn't fun. Go loving work manual labor in hot and humid heat and you'll be loving begging to listen to the same clip or sort loving peas in an air conditioned room all day.
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Aug 16, 2015 03:18
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A GIANT PARSNIP posted:Sorry but most of these "worst jobs" are dumb kids mad because they have to do a thing that isn't fun.
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Aug 16, 2015 04:12
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A GIANT PARSNIP posted:Sorry but most of these "worst jobs" are dumb kids mad because they have to do a thing that isn't fun. I do this. It is oaky, but the winter is nice when it comes. Working for the census was way worse. So was retail.
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Aug 16, 2015 07:25
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working as a welder's helper for poo poo pay can be pretty bad, especially if you start out working pipeline jobs. Don't know what you're doing, so you're slowing down the welder who is being paid piece work, so he's pissed off at you. All kinds of toxic fumes, big doses of UV, and getting burned by hot slag. Also: Pipeline welders tend to be primadonnas. Still not as bad as working in a call centre cold calling people to ask if a certain political candidate can count on their vote. Annoyed person on the other end: "How dare you ask me who I'm voting for! We've got a secret ballot in this country." Me: "Honestly I would answer the same way. I just really need the money to eat" 
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Aug 16, 2015 08:01
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Secks Cauldron posted:Anywhere that's a family business.  I'd go one step further: any company where a group of people will be given preferential treatment over others regardless of their competence.
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Aug 16, 2015 11:15
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enraged_camel posted:
So, any company ever?
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Aug 17, 2015 13:16
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Hauling shopping carts for Costco wasn't a ton of fun, especially in summer heat or during thunderstorms. Although it definitely could have been worse, we were paid properly and management did provide water and sunscreen. I can't imagine doing it in real snow or desert heat, or for an indifferent employer. Plus if you have any sense they'll train you up to cashier.
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Aug 23, 2015 16:24
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Making bricks is pretty terrible. Hot, stuffy atmosphere and back breaking labor. A great one my fathers good friend had as a young man was cleaning the outside of a train. Doesn't sound so bad but the train would come in completely covered in black soot every day, he would clean it, and the next day it would be back exactly how it was before being cleaned, repeat until soul is crushed.
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Aug 23, 2015 17:10
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Being a field tech for a land surveyor is pretty awful. You're out in all weathers, in all locations (usually construction). Its cold in the winter, and you're out in it. Plus the ground freezes and gets covered in poo poo, and half of the job is looking for stuff in the ground, either bars or cut crosses in the sidewalk. So in winter you've got to chip the frozen ground with a bar for hours on end looking for survey monuments. Its muddy in the spring. Its hot, humid, and unbelievably dusty in the summer. Autumn's actually not horrible. The work is pretty monotonous: look through a total station at stuff over and over and over, as you try to get marks on the exact right spot to the millimeter, or take thousands of measurements (which, at least, you don't have to write down). Plus like most of the time you're the first people on the site, so its just a field. No washroom, no trailer, nowhere to heat up your lunch. When you are working on a building its at the top, away from the windows. Worst day I ever had was on the 43rd floor of a building right next to lake ontario, in the middle of february. It was about -20 on the ground, -40 upstairs, plus incessant, gale-force wind. No windows. We'd put up sheets of plywood in hallways to avoid the instrument getting knocked over. You'd ride a hoist to the floor (sometimes, sometimes they don't have them and you're carrying a 10 pound survey instrument on your shoulder up and down 40 flights of stairs), a hoist is just a metal box on the outside of the building. Its built to the same tolerances as an elevator, and is really really safe, but its still a bit unsettling, get out, and spend the next 8 hours there, because it would take you like 25 minutes to get back to someplace to eat. Sometimes there'd be a floor with a few windows and you can crouch in between them to eat your lunch cold. Its really weird, because your body takes all the blood to your stomach to digest the food and the rest of you gets unbelievably cold. Oh yeah also you need to wear really thin gloves because you're making fine adjustments all day and typing data in to the instrument. You get these ridiculous cracks in your fingers because they're always going warm-cold-warm-cold as you put on and take off your gloves. Sometimes you get to go through forests in summer and its like 95 degrees and humid and you're practically in loving Cambodia but you're just off the 401 and yonge. Plus you get to set bars, which is like, a challenge. You get to swing a 10 pound sledge to wack a 4' iron bar into the ground, which is pretty fun, but each one is about 12 pounds and has to be carried to where you're setting it. I once had to do a golf course, we were barring, and the closest place to park compared to where we were working was about a kilometre away. So you'd put 15 bars on a sled, strap it across your chest, and just loving walk. Sometimes you get snowshoes. That's actually kinda fun, but gets old fast. Yeah so being an articling lawyer isn't so loving bad by the way. olylifter fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Aug 24, 2015 |
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Aug 24, 2015 03:31
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P.D.B. Fishsticks posted:So, any company ever? Not really. It may apply to individuals, but entire groups rarely benefit from blanket favoritism.
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Aug 24, 2015 09:17
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enraged_camel posted:Not really. It may apply to individuals, but entire groups rarely benefit from blanket favoritism. Yeah they do, what are you even taking about. Although living in this world where companies make logical decisions does sound nice.
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Aug 24, 2015 15:56
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B33rChiller posted:Still not as bad as working in a call centre cold calling people to ask if a certain political candidate can count on their vote.
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Aug 25, 2015 00:38
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A GIANT PARSNIP posted:Sorry but most of these "worst jobs" are dumb kids mad because they have to do a thing that isn't fun. Did it, it was better than listening to the audio clips. At least with humid manual labor you get to eat gigantic lunches without worrying about weight gain.
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Aug 25, 2015 01:31
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Worst job: Worked in a restaurant doing 16 hour shifts and on day 6 the boss told me it wasn't working out and I couldn't be paid since I hadn't done a full week.
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Sep 10, 2015 17:38
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Hmm, yes, that doesn't sound flagrantly illegal at all.
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Sep 10, 2015 19:03
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