http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6486689Oh my.
One is surprised at how many primitives have actually worked.
senseandsensibility (1000+ posts) Mon Sep-07-09 06:19 PM
Original message
On this Labor Day...What's the worst job you ever had?
I once worked in a basement dishwashing room loading dishes. It was a giant dishwasher, the size of a house. After a few hours in a hundred plus temps with a hundred percent humidity, I was begging to go back to work at the mall.
What about you?
It's an enormous bonfire, but very few PoPs at it.
YOY (1000+ posts) Mon Sep-07-09 06:22 PM
Response to Original message
1. Knee deep in human shit.
...and condoms, used tampons, vomit, piss, Andy Dufresne (I kid), and anything else flushed down the can. Never found any money or bags of drugs. You really don't wanna look too hard. Working in my county's water purification plant...but I've been there.
Great job for a 18-year-old. You get to officially call anyone working for daddy at 18 a wussy.
Gin.
I win the worst job ever.
Edweird (1000+ posts) Mon Sep-07-09 08:40 PM
Response to Reply #1
64. Yeah you win for sure. But I get second. I cleaned porta-potties on construction sites.
I only did it for a week. I needed the money, but not THAT bad.
abumbyanyothername (1000+ posts) Mon Sep-07-09 06:22 PM
Response to Original message
2. I used to run blood and paunch dryers at a beef plant.
(Paunch is the incompletely digested plant materials in the cattles' stomachs and we would dry it out and press it into pellets and sell it to livestock operations who used it as feed.)
CurtEastPoint (801 posts) Mon Sep-07-09 06:23 PM
Response to Original message
3. Easy. My FIRST paid job. I was a ... dishwasher and busboy at IHOP. The best thing was back then the orange juice was fresh squeezed. But omigod how I grew to hate dirty dishes, hot water and pancakes (only temporarily, though!) I made ONE DOLLAR an hour! This was about 1965.
madrchsod (1000+ posts) Mon Sep-07-09 06:24 PM
Response to Original message
5. making fiberglass snowmobile bodies
i was almost burned alive in the heating oven....add in the torn bags of asbestos,the stench,and my fellow workers. i lasted about three months
Taitertots (1000+ posts) Mon Sep-07-09 07:38 PM
Response to Reply #5
41. Fiberglass work can be some nasty stuff
I worked for two weeks making race cars parts out of fiberglass, kevlar, and carbon fiber.
Everyday my nose would bleed, and by the end green stuff came out. The chemicals we used were exothermic when mixed, to the point where if we didn't use them they would heat up, start on fire and release toxic gas. They said don't try to put the fire out if it started, just run and yell for everyone else to run.
I found out I got the job because the person I replaced had got the stuff we used on his arm and got chemical burns from elbow to hand. His arm looked sick.
The tularetom primitive, he with the prime river-front real-estate in California, gotten during the "lousy" George Bush economy:
tularetom (1000+ posts) Mon Sep-07-09 06:27 PM
Response to Original message
6. Buildling logging roads in the Shasta National Forest
Hundred degree temos, dusty as hell one week.
Below freezing and snow the next week.
Got bit by a rattlesnake too.
The mountain man primitive who, like all men, nightly pitches his tent one day's march closer to the mausoleum:
ThomWV (1000+ posts) Mon Sep-07-09 06:28 PM
Response to Original message
7. Scraping barnicles off the bottoms of boats in Miami one summer
You'd be amazed how many flies you can breath in by accident while doing that job.
Probably got in because of self-made gaps in his teeth.
BlooInBloo (1000+ posts) Mon Sep-07-09 06:29 PM
Response to Original message
8. A friend and I thought it would be sooooo easy to pick blueberries for a few hours...to get the $ needed for going to play video games at the pizza place, one fine summer day.
We were wrong. Lord, how we were wrong. We quit after about 30 minutes or so.
WeDidIt (1000+ posts) Mon Sep-07-09 06:30 PM
Response to Original message
9. Cowboy
****ing sucks.
Probably thought being a cowboy was an 8-5, five days a week job, in air conditioning and heating as appropriate, and time off for holidays.
Elwood P Dowd (1000+ posts) Mon Sep-07-09 06:31 PM
Response to Original message
11. US Army draftee for 2 years.
Probably thought being a soldier was an 8-5, five days a week job, in air conditioning and heating as appropriate, and time off for holidays.
givemebackmycountry (1000+ posts) Mon Sep-07-09 06:32 PM
Response to Original message
12. Two of them...
I worked for a heating oil and gas company in upstate New York delivering bottled gas and doing odd jobs.
The company would often buy used underground gas tanks (the size of a semi trailer) and before they re-sold them, I had to climb inside with a wire brush, a garden hose and a trouble light, and scrape the rust off the interior walls.
If the foreman didn't hear any scraping, he knew we were goofing off inside so he would take a sledge hammer and bang on the outside three or four times.
Ever been INSIDE a bell?
I was like 18 or 19.
I also had a job at a lead plant, and they would strap a giant vacuum on my back, and I had to climb up on equipment and suck up lead dust.
Lasted two months.
Thothmes (1000+ posts) Mon Sep-07-09 06:41 PM
Response to Original message
14. debeaking turkeys for a local turkey farmer.
Vickers (1000+ posts) Mon Sep-07-09 06:41 PM
Response to Original message
15. Convenience store clerk.
That, or croppin' 'backer in south Georgia in the middle of summer.
sarge43 (1000+ posts) Mon Sep-07-09 06:41 PM
Response to Original message
16. Worst: Keeping the semi-annual officer promotion list until the release date.
I was the only person on base who knew which captains were promoted to major, ie the make or break promotion. For about two weeks twice a year, I fully expected to kidnapped and tortured by insane non-rated types who were terrified they might have to go out and find a real job. At least once every duty day I get a phone call offering me bribes ranging from a bottle of booze to sexual encounters with family members and/or pets of my choice. I'd also have calls from an obvious member of the IG or OSI or my boss's boss checking to see if I would take a bribe.
Second worst job: Cleaning monkey cages.
Good times
Bozita (1000+ posts) Mon Sep-07-09 06:41 PM
Response to Original message
17. Galvanizing freeway guard rails
They weighed 95 lb. when I had to hang them on hooks 7 ft. above the floor.
They were 110 lb. when taking them down.
Fumes from the de-greasers and acid baths filled the air. Heat from the molten tank of zinc kept the indoor temperatures well above 100 degrees F.
Every worker there except my buddy and I were ex-cons. They worked cheap and didn't bitch. To this day, I believe the owner had worked something out with someone in the Corrections Dept.
I quit after 5 days.
niceypoo (1000+ posts) Mon Sep-07-09 10:24 PM
Response to Reply #17
76. Standing on the sidewalk in a refrigerator box with arm, leg, and face holes cut out of it...
waving at cars in front of an appliance store. 40 hours a week, all Summer long. People threw half full fountain drinks at me. Little kids flipped me off out the back window of their mom's car. Cars full of pretty girls drove by honking, pointing, and laughing at me. Cars full of jocks drove by calling me names, and threatening to kick my ass. Every sort of abuse and humiliation you can imagine, all day long, five days a week.
When it was 85 outside, it was 100 in the box. When it was 95 outside, it was 115 in the box.
I was 17, I really needed the money that summer, so I stuck it out.
eShirl (1000+ posts) Mon Sep-07-09 06:43 PM
Response to Original message
20. taking the filled natural casing from the end of a hot dog machine & twisting to form the individual hot dogs, then hanging the long strands of hot dogs on steel racks to be wheeled into the smoking/cooking chambers
the giant vats of raw meat they poured into the other end looked like catfood that the cat wasn't able to keep down
my boots, clothes and hair would still smell like hot dogs when I got home
but the perks! all the FREE mangled hot dogs and bologna we could eat for lunch (bleccchhh)
blogslut (1000+ posts) Mon Sep-07-09 06:47 PM
Response to Original message
21. Telemarketer
I was good at it yet I walked out in the middle of a call. I could have closed the deal with the lady on the other end of the phone (she was that easy a sell) but I didn't. Even after she told me money was tight because she was going through chemotherapy, I could have sold her that damned subscription to Sports Illustrated.
That's how good a salesman I was. That was the line for me and I decided not to cross it.
drmeow (1000+ posts) Mon Sep-07-09 07:40 PM
Response to Reply #21
43. My worst job was the same
telemarketer. Selling those entertainment books back in the early 80s. It was Jan and we were in a temporary building with no heat. Even though it was Santa Barbara, it was damn cold in there. I think I lasted 2 days. I'm not sure I even collected my paycheck.
corpseratemedia (633 posts) Mon Sep-07-09 06:48 PM
Response to Original message
22. can't match any of these! but for me secretary at a liquid polyuethane manufacturing company. Lasted two days.
hmmm, smells like seizure!
KittyWampus (1000+ posts) Mon Sep-07-09 06:50 PM
Response to Original message
24. Toss Up. Riveting plastic jewelry parts together by burning skinny plastic bits with a lighter and that was in the artist's basement with no ventilation.
Other job, mucking horse stalls. It nearly killed me.
struggle4progress (1000+ posts) Mon Sep-07-09 08:09 PM
Response to Reply #24
58. I think cleaning horse stalls is very pleasant work, compared to shoveling out chicken coops
And on and on it goes, until reels the mind. It's an enormous bonfire.
