What do you think is the worst job in the world? **TRIGGER WARNING**

[Soubriquet]

I’m watching SVU, and it occurred to me that I think the worst job in the world are one of two

1. The person who has to sit and watch videos, and look at photos of children being raped, abused and molested

2. linked to the first one, a person who has to go undercover and pretend to like doing that sort of stuff in order to bring down the perpetrators.

I could never do something like that. The images must haunt their very soul and require heavy counselling

I remember reading once that the TV series wasn't considered realistic because in real life detectives aren't normally allowed to stay in that job for more than a couple of years because it's so horrific.
Liv has been there for over 20 years now. I am curious whether that would actually be allowed in real life.
But yes.... horrible job 🙁

Makes sense really.

You are not wrong, a good friend of mine has to go through digital evidence of child abuse and categorise it. He is paid not much more than the living wage. It’s not all like that but he occasionally gets cases like that.

He says he isn’t bothered, but it’s like watching a different man when he gets a hard case. Absolutely awful, but stupidly crucial, that’s one job I hope the robots take over soon.

I know somebody who has that job within the police. She doesn't talk about it and I wouldn't ask. There are something like 6 monthly sessions with a psychologist. It's not a job you could do long term.

DH has been giving pro bono advice to a company who is developing software that can use AI to watch the videos children being abused which would cut down the amount of footage that officers would have to watch or eventually replace the humans altogether.
Premilinary testing looks good but there is no budget for it unfortunately. Traumatised humans are cheaper

My daughter is a detective working in the child sex abuse team and it's not true that you can't stay in the job for long. What is true however is that people don't tend to stay for years on end.

They are also paid an enhanced rate due to it being one of the few jobs in the police that nobody really wants to do!

She has seen and heard all sorts. Literally all sorts. She says she is doing it now before she has children as she doesn't know if she'd have the stomach for it if she had her own kids

And she does compartmentalise on the whole. There's also support available when required - but of course it's never going to make up for what you're seeing on a frequent basis!

And also it's not a day in, day out thing. The viewing of images that is.

That said, when she applied for the role after being a PC on shift and passing her Detective exam, I was aghast and tried to get her to go for CID but she wasn't having a bit of that

Oh well. Shes doing something worthwhile

@TheFormidableMrsC that's not quite right either. No regular sessions with a psychologist- at least not in Thames Valley!

However you can request sessions with a therapist you need them - and a good sergeant would be ahead of the game with that anyway

What an awful thing to have to do. Maybe there is consolation in knowing that you are helping to put a stop to it.

I think being some kind of police diver that has to trawl filthy canals for bodies would be the worst.

Actually I seem to remember after the Sewol ferry disaster, a number of the divers who went to the wreck to retrieve bodies suffered very badly with the impact.

For me personally any kind of wreck diver, I have phobias about ships and deep water.

I honestly don't know. As I said it's not something that is openly discussed. I just recall a convo we had a few years back when she'd had a particularly tough week because a child they were trying to identify looked like her daughter and I said I didn't know how she coped with it and she said she had had sessions with a psychologist. This is a Home Counties force.

@TheFormidableMrsC yes that sounds about right. They'll always arrange counselling if you feel you need it

The support can definitely be lacking on occasion though 😔

I had a relative that worked as a civilian police worker, she was moved to a unit that had paedophiles having to check in with them. She had to be as polite to them as any other person she dealt with. She ended up having to leave as just couldn’t stand dealing with them.

@DearOwl please thank your DD for what she does, I know a couple of police officers and I have no idea how they manage to do such a difficult job.

But to the people.that do this kind if very niche specialist jobs , they haven't just fallen i to it out of necessity.I'm not saying jobs like these don't come with their difficulties but given the choice between doing what they do and being in a factory production line I'm sure they would stick where they are.
In jobs that are unfathomable to a lot of people there are rewards that until the job is experienced many cannot understand, and these people are usually mentally equipped and supported to deal with things, even if things can be harrowing at times.

There was recently a series on the 7/7 bombings and there were people who had to go into the underground train (and possibly the tunnel) to collect and try to match pieces of body parts for identification. I had never given that a moments thought, it was harrowing listening to them talk about it (I'm not sure what their actual job description or title was)

I think content moderator for big social media companies is right up there too. I used to know some people who did this job and it was basically watching a random assortment of posts and videos all day (think a mixture of beheadings and extreme violence, racist memes, bestiality etc) whilst being treated like a call centre employee having your toilet breaks times to the minute and expected to reach a certain accuracy hit rate against extremely specific criteria.

Working in an abattoir must be pretty awful.

Having to experiment on animals or slaughtering them.

As previous posters have said lots of content moderation is horrific and badly paid. ChatGPT used workers but without support and I think similar may happen with other companies.

Slaughtering pigs is horrible as they are the ones that know what’s going on the most and get stressed. Also the electrodes make a bacon smell. Cows is awful for the amount of blood that pours from them. Slaughtermen have a high rate of mental illness.
In the olden days humans did not stand by a conveyor belts assisting and witnessing the deaths of so many animals. Barbaric.

Awful job, probably one of the worst in the world I think. Anything that involves getting in the mud with the worst of humanity should be paid astronomically for their work.

Pal of mine is a trauma counselor for children. She's had to scream out some of the things she's heard into the bottom of a bottle of wine with me a few times. She says the worst is tiny little kids talking in a completely matter of fact way about horrendous abuse. I don't know how she does it, she's a hardier soul than I could ever be.

@ViciousCurrentBun that's kind of you and I've texted and told her.

I still can't quite believe she does it tbh. She's only just turned 26. And the sheer scale of these men (and re the sexual abuse it's overwhelmingly men) doing this is staggering. I'd always scoffed a bit at the 'paedo on every corner' type thing but although they may not be on every corner, they're on a bloody lot of them

I agree with the jobs that have already been posted and would add -

Forensic cleaned the ones that come in and clean up the 'mess' left when someone has been shot for example.

Also -

Any kind of underground raw sewage job.

Forensic pathologist.

Just not for me. 😬

Sewage fat berg declogger.