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.

Another MacDonalds graduate - filet of fish section aged 16 . Free food was supposed to be a perk but am a veggie and there was no bean burger 21 yrs ago ...

Other crap job was in a lab stripping rats tails of collagen .... Used to love washing the big glass plates used for PCR though as I really like the smell of Jif ....

worst job- working in a research institute as a summer student. My job was to grind desiccated brown rats into powder using a waring blender to extract their fat content. Did I mention they were radioactively labelled rats? They came out the desiccator like large flat bombay duck pieces.

2nd worst- ironing sheets in a laundry in a run down part of Aberdeen. I was so bored I got to know the individual sheets by colour and pattern as they came back every 2 weeks. I used to have favourites I looked forward to seeing, specially the thin ones which ironed most quickly!

3rd worst working in a "petroleum club" for oil industry people, my first introduction to American eating habits, pile the plate a foot high with food and eat around half, as a local scottish schoolgirl in 1975 I was shocked and disgusted, got paid a pittance too.

I got the sack from the McDonalds in Margate when I was 16, for being too crap at the job of working at McDonalds.

I cried, and the 35-year-old manager who was sacking me said, 'don't cry! I got sacked from Dreamland [shitty seafront funfair] when I was 16, and look at me now!'

Nothing could have made me work harder at my A levels than that .

In fact. all the crappy jobs I did during study spurred me on, I have to say. I had a job in a sandwich making shop and when I burned my hand on the oven they used to pump this ice stuff onto my hand, which burned it again. DH had a job at a seafront arcade, too, and had to do 12 hour shifts 7 days a week with no break (his 'break' was hoovering), and nobody he knew was allowed in there in case he helped them to steal or cheat on the machines. Aside from the sheer monotony and the sound of the arcade machines, the whole place was a scam. If you won any money in the arcade, they rigged the machines so that by the time the manager came to give you your prize, they had stopped saying you had won anything - so you'd get nothing. If DH was sitting behind the change counter with nothing to do, the others would come over, reach into where all the change was, throw the whole tray in the air, and make him pick it all up. If any change got lost, it was docked from his wages. His uniform was docked from his wages. He got paid £2 an hour (in 2000). He lasted a week.

Have also done silver service. The job itself is quite hard as the food trays are heavy and hot. One of the other waitresses was an utter bitch and took a real dislike to me when she overheard that I had recently qualified as a teacher and was waiting to start my teaching job at the start of the next school term. She was an utter twat and used to make very loud comments about me all the time to no-one in particular. 'That girl is doing my head in.' etc. My mum was also waitressing occasionally and had told everyone

My first job was working as an office junior in a small office who supplied statioery, typewriters etc to other businesses. The office manager, who was nice enough, had a child to the owner of the business, who still lived with his wife, but went on holidays with the Mistress and thier son, and not in a platonic way. The wife was a cow, and understandably did not like Mistress, but used to ring up and speak to me like shit also. I was 16, and had not learned diplomacy, and lasted about three months.
I joined the Police at the end of the 70's. Very sexist, and if there was a suicide etc, the ambulance would not take them, as they could not be helped. We used to bag up the remains to be taken to the morgue. There were regular suspect packages (lots of bomb scares at the time nationally) but because the 'local' bomb disposal unit were about 2 1/2 hours away, they did not take kindly to find some old dear had just left a carrier bag of shopping. We had no training in what such a package might look like, apart from using common sense, and did it have wires hanging out of it, and was it ticking. It was actually easier to carefully open it, and to risk being blown up, than to have the hassle of the bomb squad for a non-bomb.
Many of my colleagues hated working with women, and would send us out to work Saturday nights in a rough northern ship-building town on our own, but sending the males out in pairs. i think they thought if you got a few thumpings you would leave quicker. They also used to play hilarious practical jokes.Getting into the ladies,lifting the loo seat and covering with cling-film before replacing the seat was a particular Jolly Wheeze. I qualified for Sergeant at 20, and Inspector at 23, which annoyed them intensely, particularly those who were too thick more practically orientated to pass the exams. I was badly indencently assaulted at a police party very early on in my career, but knew that to complain internally would have meant the end of my career before I had really started. I could go on forever, about the lies told to make out the women were 'crap', being expected to make the tea all the time, do the typing out of office hours, yada yada.
I have had crap jobs since, and therefore been grateful for them. There are many people I worked with who I would not spit on if they were on fire. And if were not a lady, I would say something other than Spit...

sloggies I am at your story about the police, though I don't know why as really it figures. My friend is a policewoman and even now there's sexism - she's going back to work full time asap after having her first baby not because she wants to but because they accuse mothers of being 'part timers'. Her shifts have already been changed from what she's been doing for the last 10 years to 9-5, even though she's happier/it's easier for her doing flexible shifts. She has no choice in the matter, and now she's doing 9-5 she gets more menial tasks and accused of being a 'part timer' anyway.

That's nothing, I see, compared to what you went through. That is scary. Are you still a policewoman?

god sloggies - its not like that now

i joined last september. we have a pretty equal balance on shift now, id say its a 50/50 split men to women.

i dont think that type of blatant sexism would be tolerated now. having said that, one sgt ive worked under seems to think that pink jobs and blue jobs still exist! but thats another story...!

its not like it was in your day though by the sound of it, no where near!

washing up in a fish n chip restaurant - gross, v greasy!