The Worst Job You Ever Held?

[Commissar D, the Evil]

What's the worst job you ever held? I'm talking the most boring, mind numbing, repetitive job you've ever had the misfortune to hold? Or, perhaps the most unnecessarily dangerous job you've had? I've got a few candidates from my youth:

1. Pumping Gas--boring and stupid, working with boring and stupid people. And, oh yeah, always loved the folks who had been driving for hours, pull into the station and ask you to check the water level in their car's radiator!!

2. Steel Mills--Only place I ever nearly killed myself out of sheer youthful stupidity.
Also worked in a pipe mill, which gets my repetitive work award.. Every pipe would ultimately roll down a ramp and land in front of a weld tester (a machine that would run over the entire 50 feet length of the pipe at the weld-line to find microscopic cracks in the weld). Collars on each end of the pipe would turn it so that the weld-line was up, then the tester would run over the weld line.
The only weakness in this system was that the collars would break down every now and then. The solution: untrained labor! I or one of the other new guys would stand next to the tester. A pipe would roll down and land in the non-working collars. With a big pipe-wrench, I would turn the pipe rightside up so the tester could test. The pipe would then be ejected and the next pipe would roll down and land in the collars. Try repeating this motion for 565 pipes in a shift. Step forward, attach pipe wrench to pipe, turn pipe and step back. Then step forward again, attach pipe wrench to pipe, turn pipe and step back, and so on.....

So, what's the worse job you've ever worked?
Cheers, Commissar D

[ReconPAL]

Commissioner, everything I have ever done pales in face of the idiocy of most of the "jobs" the Army gave me to do in the Big War. I and another guy were detailed to guard a barn full of unmilked cows in Alsace on one of those large coop farms where equipment, stock and so forth was pooled. We couldn't get the milkers going for lack of electricity and we bothwere City Kids and had never met a cow before. Our job was made more complicated because the reason we were there was to get a cow ready so its carcase could be picked up for some general's kitchen. I never hunted after the War I don't care whether the deer eat the Princeton residents shrubs.
But the worst job was in a detail given the task of policing up the bodies of dead German soldiers killed in the fighting in Northwind in the Saar and to carry them out to the road. Just another lousy job designed to keep infantry busy. I still anger at that ! ( check a new post on a better subject above) Paul

[Einsamer_Wolf]

HI David and Friends--


It is a bit of an embarrassment to admit this, but I will confess to having had a part time job at Toys R Us during sophomore year at junior college. It could have been an okay job, except that I was soon relegated to cashier, as opposed to ticket writing (maintaining stock of vide games and other high end items, writing the tickets customers use to purchase them). Since I started this job in early September, cashier was especialyl un desirable. Not only are you doing the same menial task over and over hundreds of times a day, you are doing so, at least from late OCtober on, in the Christmas rush. Stuck-up, bitchy housewives from the affluent eastside of the greater Seattle area were not exactly likeable. And their husbands were even worse.
In hindsight, I should have looked for a different job. But I stuck it out a whole year. Actually, the bit about remaining on cashier became a controversy. And in May I told them i was quitting in light of the fact that they still have me on lead register. Thankfully, they put me on floor duties, whihc is composed of stockign shelves, stragihtening shelves after unruly children and other customers make a mess of them, and helping customers locate an item, as well as ansering questions they have an item. THe pay was still pretty bad (6.00 in 95-96). But working on the floor was kind of fun. It was not the same task over and over. But a lot of times was more goal oriented. That will have been eight years ago this autumn. I am beginning to feel old....


Warm Regards

EW

[D.W.]

Well, while my experience pales in comparison to ReconPal and, to a lesser extent, the Commissar, I once was making the best money of my life working in the most mundane and repetitive of jobs. This was only about 5 years ago, I worked from 3:30PM to 11:30PM, and I stood in one spot all night, where cranes would deliver a metal container to my work station, I would pull the required amount of parts out of each container and place them in a box behind me. When the box was full I would close it and ship it off down another line. The worst part was instead of 8 hours a day of this I was working like 12 hours a day, and there were times when I worked 16 hours a day as well. Many times thr cranes broke down and I just stood and waited, thinking about a lot of things. I was in my mid 20's and knew with the money I was making I should be happy but instead was miserable, wondering what the future held in store for me, knowing I would never make it at this job long. It was then that I discovered the old saying to be true:

Money can't buy happiness!

Thankfully that job is behind me and I am moving up, looking forward to something different in the future from my present position as well (hopefully)

Regards,
D.W.

[Henrik Krog]

I cant say I have been overly troubled by bad jobs. I tend to find those that allow me to pretty much manage myself, so I can do my own thing, so I cant really blame anyone but myself. Thus, if Im unhappy, I only have myself to blame, and quit.

My worst job has to have been one time after my 3rd semester studying history at the university. My economy was pretty messed up, so I took an extra job working weekend nights as night manager at a hotel.

The job was basically to keep track of who came and went, rent out rooms, clean the entire ground level, re-stock the kitchen and make breakfast for anywhere between 4 and 60-some people.

Not a bad job as such, it was just mind-numbingly boring to be totally on your own save for the few times that people came in to rent a room, especially because you could see loads of other people my age walking by in the street on their way to party at the clubs. And then, some hours later, see them on their way home.

Plus, the weekends were the only time I really had time to be with my girlfriend, and working nights didnt really make me the most fun person to be around during the day.

I only got to be there maybe a month or 6 weeks. There was a weekend I had tried desperately to get off, but there was no way out of it. My boss knew that I wanted to get off really bad, so when I got sick friday night, he didnt really believe me and demanded I come in anyway. I refused, and he told me I shouldnt bother turning up later, then.

Didnt really matter much, as I had already found another job that didnt mess up my weekends, and was during the day, also.

Henrik

[Tom Houlihan]

I am currently in the best and worst of my career fields. I'll avoid the hackneyed stories of my time in the Corps, especially since I didn't see any combat. Since retirement, I've been in law enforcement. When I worked a patrol car, I was always amazed at the people I'd run into. You can see folks at their best, and worst. At least once a day, I'd run into one knucklehead who I would dearly want to throttle. In those days, I usually didn't have to spend too much time there. Get the info for the report, and get out. Now, I'm working in a jail. I work with up to 64 knuckleheads at a time! Trust me, there's a reason they don't allow officers to carry firearms inside, and it ain't all security!!!!! This is a helluva sociology practical application, though! Just like when I was on active duty, "nobody said ya gotta like it, ya just gotta love it!!"