What's the worst job you've ever had?

[slamtheking]

worst job: probably pumping gas at the last gas station I worked at for a summer.  Boss' son was running me and the manager into the ground -- was working 96 hours a week for a month. 
Had a couple of others that had their crappy parts: working as a 3rd shift waiter at a HoJo's.  Worked with some really hot waitresses which was the best part but what sucked was dealing with the drunks that were p---ed they got a waiter instead of one of the hot waitresses.  really sucked when we counted tips at the end of the night and they were getting 4-5 times what I was in tips.
My last job I lost out on a $10,000 bonus because I had the nerve to document that the bosses mistress was screwing up a major project.  They pulled off a scheme with HR to have my bonus eliminated on the project.

Best job: working as an analyst 15 years ago in a health insurer.  Doing the same thing now at a different employer that's almost as good.
Also loved working at a pizza joint during my senior year in college.  had a great boss and got to meet a lot of people.  getting to take home the leftover pizza at the end of the night really cut the food bill that semester      learned how to pan fry pizza -- oh so good

[Celtics4ever]

My old man had a trash route for a while and I did that by hand during the summer and it sucked.

[celticdog]

Janitor for a retail outlet.

As soon as I finished cleaning someone would turn the place into a Pollock painting.

[nickagneta]

Paperboy at 13 and 14 years old. Had a route that built up over time and had 47 daily morning papers and 110 Sunday Boston Heralds to deliver. Daily papers had to be there by 7:00AM and Sunday papers by 9:00 AM come rain, shine, or blizzard. No parental help whatsoever and the I had to pay for the papers whether the people paid me or not.

If I cleared $20 for 15 hours of work(between folding, bagging, delivering and collecting), I was having a great week. Most weeks I was making about a about 50 cents an hour. In late 70's, poor as hell Everett, MA 5 cents, was the average tip for a paperboy for a week.

[Edgar]

I will start saying that I love appraising job, because the sights, the traveling and because u get used to see beautifull and also ugly properties, you learn of everything.
But once I had to appraise an abandoned theather that had become a pigeon cementary. I had to take 4 baths and throw up for a week and I still get nausea when i think about that nasty day.
I had to walk for a whole evening over dead and almost dead pigeons, and feathers and pigeons crap in the absolut darkness touching everything.


Best job. Aprraisals too, but I also direct a project or worldbank for a couple of years and it was an enviromental project by the sea. Man that was awesome.

I am still thinking on moving capecod and becoming a Yellow Fin Tuna Pro fisher...

[waiting for #18]

Worst job: trimming thorns off roses at a flower shop. I politely quit after two hours of it.

Best job: playing and touring in a rock band...1977-1982. Low pay because of high overhead, but loved being out there.

[D.o.s.]

One summer between semesters I sorted returnables from 4 PM to 2AM. It was the only gig I could get as I'd spent the last year playing music and travelling across the country.

So the job sucked (turns out listening to glass being shattered at a high volume for ten hours straight and smelling like stale beer afterwards is decidedly not awesome), and furthermore, since I worked weekends, all the parties are starting to peter out at two in the morning, never mind the half-hour plus it would take to go home/shower/cleanup and then make my way to the fun.

Additionally, sometimes I would work that shift into a 6AM to 4PM shift. 4 hours of sleep is not enough, and the dude doing the scheduling was a clueless twit.

That was completely and utterly awful.

[bdm860]

Paperboy at 13 and 14 years old. Had a route that built up over time and had 47 daily morning papers and 110 Sunday Boston Heralds to deliver. Daily papers had to be there by 7:00AM and Sunday papers by 9:00 AM come rain, shine, or blizzard. No parental help whatsoever and the I had to pay for the papers whether the people paid me or not.

If I cleared $20 for 15 hours of work(between folding, bagging, delivering and collecting), I was having a great week. Most weeks I was making about a about 50 cents an hour. In late 70's, poor as hell Everett, MA 5 cents, was the average tip for a paperboy for a week.

Wow, I was a paperboy about the same age you were (but in the mid 90’s), and I thought it was a great job.

I made about $25 a week I believe.  Worked half hour a day, 7 days a week.  Just put on some headphones and it was a piece of cake.  Perfect route too, started at my house which was at the end of the street, did a couple of blocks, and then the last house was probably less than a hundred yards away from where I started. Waking up at 5:30am-6am was tough, but I would just think about the money.

Got paid $50 every 2 weeks, and an occasional $5 or $10 tip (up to $20 and even $50 at Christmas).  There’s nothing that 13-14 year old me wanted that cost that much either.  New video game or CD’s every now and then.  I just remember going to the mall to hang out with my friends, and I always had a pocket full of cash and could get whatever I wanted, while they just window shopped and bought a soda from the food court.

One huge difference was I had my families help.  Me and my sister both had routes within our neighborhood.  So if I wanted to sleep over a friends house or was sick, either my sister would just do my route too, or one of my parents would do it.  Also my parents helped us do the Sunday papers, we’d load up the cars up with papers and the parents drove while we delivered, can’t imagine how hard that would be if I didn’t have my parents help.  Plus all my customers paid their bill by mail, I didn’t have to collect and got paid the same either way.  Stuffing and bagging papers never seemed to take that long, only had about 25 or so houses though so that helped too.

Lol what a difference in experiences.  Without my families help, and having to collect and get stiffed some times, ya I might think that was a nightmare too though.

[Donoghus]

Worked overnights (Midnight-8:30am) for the 2010 US Census doing bookkeeping shortly after moving to Chicago and looking for a full-time accounting job.

The schedule was awful.  Trying to sleep during the day when everyone else is working & working at night when everyone else was sleeping.  Destroys your body both mentally & physically.  You wake up at 10pm to get ready for work and do you eat breakfast or dinner?  Get home at 9am.  Dinner or breakfast?  The schedule also played a big role in a girl breaking up with me.

Also worked at a convenience store in Chestnut Hill for a semester when I was in college.  That blew bigtime.

[manl_lui]

I worked at a call center for 2 months and tomorrow will be my last day...of all the jobs I've done, I've never hated my job so much. I mean it's less stress than help desk, but I prefer the stress level of that because it is more hands on. I'll be starting as a system engineer next week and cannot WAIT to get away from being in a call center. I just hate being glued to my desk 8 hrs/day

[PaulPierce34G]

Worst job:  Working as a cellular lab technologist.  I dealt with a lot of pap smears and that wasn't the issue.  The issue was that the environment I was in was literally like a prison.  Nobody could talk, you couldn't listen to headphones while screening with your microscope.  It was bad.  I'll never forget one day I had diagnosed a case and I did find cancer in the patient.  I missed finding endocervical cells....which, honestly, is not a big deal, ie, not a matter of life and death.  It is just something that should be called if you see them, but if not, it isn't a huge, huge matter.  At any rate, the head clinician basically made me feel stupid for not finding them and it basically destroyed my confidence with my ability to diagnose.  I was actually pretty good I was told after I had left the field, but once you lose your confidence, it's hard to get back.  At any rate, I stuck around for a few months (mind you, I went to college and grad school for all of this stuff) and eventually I left the field all together.  It was destroying who I was as a whole person, making me anxious, irritable, stressed out.  I had truly come to hate my life.  I believe that you've got to enjoy what you do in life, because if you do not, you will your anger out on other facets of your life, other people in your life.  You will just dread most days and not give your best effort. 

Best job?  The job I have now.  I basically left everything behind in the world of science/lab medicine and I work for my city, plain and simply, as a laborer.  When it snows, I plow, when grass needs to be cut, I cut it, when an office in the city hall needs to be painted, I paint it, etc.  I definitely took a pay cut, but it was worth not hating myself, my life, etc.  On the plus side, the benefits are a hell of a lot better than any job I've ever come across.  People tell me all of the time that I left a lot on the table...maybe I did...but as I said, I just want to be happy in life.  Nobody can ever take away all of my prior academic achievements and accolades, but it's not the end of the world just because I choose not to use them.

Word to the wise:  If you are not happy with your job or you are looking for a job and you truly don't have a lot of financial restraints and all of that stuff....If you can ever land a job working at the local, state or federal level, no matter what it is, take it.  Benefits are very good.  That's just my 2 cents. 

[LatterDayCelticsfan]

I was a polling clerk in Kenya`s 2013 general election. The polling station in question had no electricity, or water (at least legally the water was supposed to e switched off). We had to show up the day before at 2:00pm or get replaced at a whim, by the Presiding Officer. Got kept waiting till midnight for voting material to show up, and wouldn`t you know it the laptop with all the biometric software was broken...literally.  Slept on the cold hard concrete till  4:00am, to be woken by a long line of excitable kenyans wanting to excercise their democratic rights. So we set up and facilitate the voting (manually) with all the party agents, observers keeping an eye on you to make sure you don`t so much as put one foot wrong. Then we were up till midnight counting the votes, only to discover the server, for the fancy mobile app that was supposed to receive the results was down. So we got to do that manually too! Then the resuls get challenged in court by some snarky human rights lawyer.

[Kiorrik]

Strawberry picking, on your knees in the dirt from 5 in the morning 'till 6 in the PM.

Packing boxes at a conveyer belt for 8 hours a day, hands full of bloody scratches by the end of the day.

Yet, my worst one was a psychological nightmare; working as a UI designer for a company where the boss knew everything better than you did. You can have all the education and experience you want: it was his way, or the highway.

Even if he's dead wrong.

Luckily, it only lasted a year ... that's when they started to have to cut jobs because they weren't making money.

Doh.

It felt really messed up when you've got a great team of colleagues, yet they're all unhappy because the boss doesn't let them do their jobs.

Seriously, I'd rather shovel manure than do that again. There's something very demotivating about being told to do "the wrong thing" every single day, and having every thought being shot down. Especially in a creative position.

[BballTim]

Strawberry picking, on your knees in the dirt from 5 in the morning 'till 6 in the PM.

Packing boxes at a conveyer belt for 8 hours a day, hands full of bloody scratches by the end of the day.

Yet, my worst one was a psychological nightmare; working as a UI designer for a company where the boss knew everything better than you did. You can have all the education and experience you want: it was his way, or the highway.

Even if he's dead wrong.

Luckily, it only lasted a year ... that's when they started to have to cut jobs because they weren't making money.

Doh.

It felt really messed up when you've got a great team of colleagues, yet they're all unhappy because the boss doesn't let them do their jobs.

Seriously, I'd rather shovel manure than do that again. There's something very demotivating about being told to do "the wrong thing" every single day, and having every thought being shot down. Especially in a creative position.

  I agree, when I think about bad jobs I've had the ones that stick out aren't the bad work but the bad bosses. When I was younger I worked in a restaurant where the head cook had fairly significant mental issues. He'd get mad about some perceived slight or issue with your work and slam things around  and be *very* hostile to you for days when you had no idea what the issue was. It was good preparation for life, I suppose, as I've viewed any boss who tries to lay down the law as lightweights since then.

[letsgoblue86]

Concessions at a water park as a teen. Never again.