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

[moogster1a]

following on from the slave labour post, what's the worst job / lowest pay you've ever had.
I once had a job which involved collecting pig brains straight from the abbatoir ( they often introduced me to the lucky pigs before they went throught "the system") i then had to dunk them in liquid nitrogen and drive them back to the lab.
I always used to wonder what would happen if I had a car accident and the police would find a dozen or so brains scattered over the road.
Anyway, I digress, shittiest jobs, please.

Air conditioning complaint department of a company, over a Christmas period. Imagine a serial killer's basement, water mysteriously dripping, two men who read The Sun and a phone that never rang. I tried some conversation: 'So what can go wrong with the air conditioning then?'

Man does a huge sniff. 'Too 'ot or too cold, love.' Back to his paper.

Hell.

Ive never had one . Only professional jobs.

sorting through the blankets from planes. Those that were dirty (usually with sick on) went into one pile. Those that looked clean went straight into individual bags with a little card which claimed that they had been cleaned courtesy of the airline. I only lasted a few days - it was disgusting. I don't use the blankets on planes.

didn't you work as a student breathing?

I have had some pretty shit jobs by anyones standard.

When I was 15 I used to lie to agencies and say I was 18 during half terms to get work. I have worked in a chicken factory (tying up the legs and wings behind it with a band).

I have done silver service waitressing, sometimes 12 hour shifts were you had to leave your bags on the mini bus and they wouldn't give you any food, and there was no where to buy it. So you had to serve all this amazing food whilst being starving. They would always say it wasn't going to happen again but it always did.

Bar work in a football stadium, you only have 15 mins during half time to serve the alcohol, not nearly enough time to serve everyone, then we had to put the shutters down whilst people tried to attack us.

But I have to say the worst job I had was working in an office as a temp, I couldn't stand it, no one talked to me(because I was a temp), the atmosphere was thick and stuffy(I can remember this vividly), and the time went so slowly it was torture. I literally cried everyday and I'm not a crier!!

In Australia I had several awful jobs while travelling. One in sydney, sorting broken (therefore used ) hearing aids to go to the correct depts. Fruit picking was also pure hell 6am to 2pm in a large field bending down every 10 seconds to pick a melon and put it on a large conveyor which followed us so we couldn't stop. By 10am it would be 40 degrees and there was no shade. We had two breaks of 15 mins each. Horrific. Good tan though

Worst paid job was my first in 1994 at £2.23 a hour - I was a pagegirl in a 5 star London hotel. Saw lots of amusing stuff though

Hmm - picking boysenberries at 4am for a pittance (paid by quantity picked, a real dilemma as to whether to wear gloves (slowing picking) or leave them off and have permanently purple and prickled hands). Or working on the bottling line in a brewery, analysing the reasons why recycled bottles had been rejected by the electronic bottle inspector (they were calibrating the machine). The highlight of the job was finding a snail in a bottle (I was a law student at the time).

boysenberries?

A soft purple berry.

No really shit jobs, but in my first job as a trainee admin person, my boss used to get me to do her (teenaged) son's homework for him. And pick up her drycleaning, and send birthday cards for her. I wasn't her PA - she was the office manager. Also she was having it off with the boss so one had to be really careful about approaching that end of the office.

Au Pairing in France at the end of my year abroad when I was a student. Was in sole charge of THE most horrible 10 year old spoilt brat 6 days a week while her parents worked in the city. Plus the ageing grandparents with ridiculously fussy notions about food. Was exepcted to teach English to Brat, run the house and make sure the olds were looked after.

Plus cope with the letchy Father when he showed up without his wife.

As a waitress in a 5* hotel. Everyone was having affairs, shagging and going at it the whole time. On occasion I swear there were more staff using rooms for their fuckfests than customers. I opened a store cupboard once and found the banquet manager in there with one of his boys. It was worse than hotel babaylon!

Holding and stroking a cows head to keep them calm while the AI man does the business.

Typist/ complaints secretary for a house builder in the eighties. Lowest of the low, paisley peanuts, shouted at all day, had to smile sweetly at the patronising lecherous old boss for whom i had to make tea and serve on a tray. Never got out of the office, no variety, had to wear a skirt to work.

Swore I'd never treat others like that ... Am now a CEO and I never have ... Am always nice to and appreciative of the junior people just starting out .

Applying make up on corpses in the local undertakers.

Paid peanuts (I'd be a rich woman if I could make Paisley peanuts!!)

Some shit hole called Sempres in the arse end of Nottingham in the late 90's during the summer vac as a student. Since there did not appear to be anything in my hometown and the nearest job centre was a bus ride away. This was the only job going.
Had to get up at 6am since it needed 2 buses and the work was making carpet samples. Everybody there who did the crappy jobs were women, any attempt at trying to initiate conversation was seen as attention seeking (it's not as If the work was mentally demanding...), and there seemed to be actual hostility to anyone who wanted more in life than a shit husband, shit job and the soaps on telly. It was like the lobsters in a pot - they wanted to drag the lobster back who's trying to escape.
I was also the only non-smoker and one incident that summed up my entire time there was having a lift back in a taxi where everybody else smoked and I had to hang my head out of the window - like they couldn't survive 15mins without a fag.
I stuck it for 3'weeks as I needed the money and as a poke in the eye for my parents who thought it was 1970 and that if you didn't just walk into a job you weren't trying.
Still the job did show me that my then-BF was a complete was of time but I was too stubborn to admit it (he was on holiday in Malta and charmingly said he couldn't give a fuck - you see it was his perogative to moan all the time not mine). We did split up 3 months later.
On my last day I skipped out of the factory much to their derision but I really couldnt give a shit about them.
But this isn't over. I went back to Uni and found I had one he'll of an itchy scalp. On investigation it was fleas! So well done, not just a shit job but parasites too!

Selling Kirby hoovers door to door. The sales pitch basically consisted of telling people they lived in filth by hoovering their mattress. If you were lucky, the monster hoover didn't undo all the stitching.

Traffic warden initially sprang to mind, but that was one of the better ones. The worst was the four hours I spent working in C+A in Marble Arch.

kreecherlivesupstairs why was C+A so bad? Or have you blanked the memories.

Cleaner in a Tanatorio (big funeral parlour/crematorium) in Barcelona. Paid peanuts, and had to start in the early hours of the morning (dark). Place was huge but only half used because apparantly there was a sort of funeral 'mafia' according to the night security man (creepy) . Had to use one of those big doogle thingies on a polished marble floor about 500m2 then clean in the viewing lounges, there were 4 of them in constant occupation with windows looking onto open casket of dead person in a huge refridgerator. Then the office, round the back, sweep round the coffins...

Can't remember the pay, but it wasn't enough!

Without doubt the worst job was in a bank. The customers were all lovely, but the assholes you had to answer to wern't. Left it after about 2 years as my mental health was about to break. Close second was in a private company where my co-worker was very pally with the boss. Co-worker used to be too fond of the booze and used to just drop all and go on a binge for a week and walk back into the job with open arms. Then spend the next week paranoid, depressed and doing his best to hang everyone for any little mistakes they had made so he could look a bit better. The final straw came when he cleaned his arse after a particularly bad drinking session and dropped the toilet roll on the floor, and muggins had to pick it up. Handed in my notice the following Friday.

worked for subway for four years of hell. Because you work in fast food the customers all talk to you like shit. Worst shift ever was the day I had to pick up a used tampon off the floor. Boak.

temp job for a second hand car sales emporium - they have several branches but I worked in the head office and my "job" was to data input feedback forms from all the different branches through the week; then print and fax the full report back to each branch. Woohoo. It was only 3 hours a week but it was enough to make me want to slit my wrists each Wednesday - I was SO glad when I got a better temp job.