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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

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

234 replies

moogster1a · 13/04/2011 07:33

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.

OP posts:
slug · 13/04/2011 15:50

Care homes can be awful. Having said that, the one I worked in was council run and actually quite civilised, if the main manager was in. On sunny days, if all was peaceful, I used to pack a few of the more compos mentis residents into wheelchairs and roll them across the road to the pub. We would sit under a tree with half a pint each (paid for from petty cash) enjoying the sunshine for an hour or so.

serin · 13/04/2011 15:54

I was in sixth form and got a job in an Italian restaurant, except the owner had wandering hands and what felt like a gun in his pocket every time he had to squeeze past me Sad

BeaMoaning · 13/04/2011 15:54

In the first nursing home I was in (the nice one) I liberated a 100 year old and took her to the pub for the afternoon, she was knocking whisky back and knocking on the table for more, the whole pub wanted to sit with us!
She had a brilliant time but I did get a little told off when I got back :).

nokissymum · 13/04/2011 16:05

working at a "bottling company" (doing quality checks) in london, for £2.20ph, 12 hrs a day with one 15 min break in the morning and 30min break for lunch, only there was no lunchConfusedthere was a van that was supposed to come everyday at 12pm, but it came whenever it liked, so if it didnt come, you had 30mins to chat with someone and then back to work.

Might i add there was no sitting down in this job either! bottle droppped from machine, you bent and picked it up, checked it put it in the "tested" pile, then again, and again, and again..!

breathing · 13/04/2011 16:10

cornsilkily no I didnt

UrsulaBuffay · 13/04/2011 16:11

Secondary school teacher.

BigHairyLeggedSpider · 13/04/2011 16:21

Selling advertising space. Boss was a wanker. And a transvestite. Don't care what anyone chooses to wear but he was the shittest trannie ever. Build like a docker (which he used to be) with a bad ginger wig and hairy hands. He was a horrible nasty bully and the gusset of his tights used to hang lower than his nasty skirt. Didn't come back after xmas. Wasn't worth the stress!

VinegarTits · 13/04/2011 16:34

working in a swanky bar on the docks in a big city, they made me wear this scrolling LED screen with the bar's name that was velcro'ed to my chest so all the drunken twats customers spend the evening staring at my chest, i was supposed to be doing bar work but spent all my time collecting glasses, i last all of..um..2 days

legalalien · 13/04/2011 16:47

nokissymum- sounds like my brewery job! forgot to mention the worst part - constantly banging my spine against the bottling line as I ducked under it...

vj32 · 13/04/2011 16:52

Working evenings at a local shop.
Area was known to be where gangs of teenagers met to fight.
Regular thefts of alcohol.
Fight between two teenage lads in the store resulted in police being called and I had to give a statement.
Shop owners (it was a chain) refused to install WORKING CCTV or employ a security guard.
I was 19. I left after a month as it was too scary.

theluckiest · 13/04/2011 17:03

Christ, there's some shitty jobs out there...Here's mine:

Saturday girl in a hairdresser for £1.50ph. One lady came in every week for a shampoo & set; she must've had over 100 moles all over her scalp and I can still remember gritting my teeth when washing her hair & trying not to scratch any of them. Another regular gave me a 10p tip every week. The smell of perm solution still makes me heave...

On paper this looks like a very crap job - spent a summer when I was a student working for Railtrack. 12 of us were employed to redirect passengers onto coaches while engineering work went on. Very quickly it dawned that we were really just strategically placed in our high-vis jackets to be shouted at by the general public. From 6am onwards til 10pm some nights. Had a good laugh though.

Absolute worst was selling pies at Celtic Park. Wearing a paper hat and being shouted at by very pissed Celtic fans. I am from England and the bitch manageress kept making blantant outrageously anti-English racist remarks to the other girls which got 100 times worse when she found out I was doing a degree.

Had many awful office temp jobs including one where I was given nothing to do but had to look like I was busy. Ended up reading a stationery catalogue and nearly gave myself a urine infection as I drank so much coffee and went to the loo several times an hour just for something to alleviate the tedium.

Adversecamber · 13/04/2011 17:05

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Emmanana · 13/04/2011 17:13

Getorfmoiland Did you make knickers in Cambridgeshire? DH is from there and the lady who lived next to him as a kid used to make undies for M & S...

Scruffyhound · 13/04/2011 17:20

Most boring job working for a cake factory when 16 (just left school) putting cherries on cakes sitting next to a woman who then grabbed handfulls to put onto cakes then eat them as well ewwwwwwww....... everyone was a laugh though!!! Also working in a bank that was even more boring than the cake factory!!

Most upestting job training to be vet nurse. Saw lots of things that were not nice cleaning up cages where dogs had had the squits and it had dried on! Poor dobeman passed away not long after. The horrible vets x 2 that were women calling the nurses fu**ing stupid and being nasty to us. One of those "vets" not letting a injection numb the pain for a labrador before pulling out stitches and I was shouted at to pin it down as it was in pain. I was crying after. I left not long after it was awful. That vet was only interested in money not the animals. I wanted to look after them and make sure they were ok not be horrible to them. I expressed my concerns when I left to the manager I dont know if anything was done.

My most dirty job? but I love it and hope to go back after having baby is testing people poo/wee/sputum/sperm/vaginal swabs/swabs/food/drugs...... I have worked in that sector for 15 years doing microbiology I love it! No probs with someones turd or sputum or discharge. Grin Also working in a haematology section and seeing patients for finger pricking to test warfrin levels loved that too got to meet some lovley people.

eatyourveg · 13/04/2011 17:34

temping in a perfume factory working on a conveyor belt putting the lids on the bottles. Jacked it in after a day. Brain death!

Pixielovescake · 13/04/2011 17:45

Waitressing for an agency. They simply did not give a shit. 12 hour shifts without a break , sometimes til 4 in the morning , no food nothing. We were screamed at if we sat down to polish the cutlery. Apparently we had to stand as we werent being paid (min wage) to sit. Awful.
Pretty much everything they did was illegal from breaks on shift , people finishing one shift at 12 and having to start over at 9 to havin 16 year olds working at 1am.
Never ever again. This was last summer btw when i really needed the money. I still think of dobbing them in but i dont know who id report it to to be honest.

KatieWatie · 13/04/2011 17:51

Temping in an office for a toy distribution place. As a temp everybody talked to me like , but then they talked to each other like that a lot as well. It was in an old disused crumbling mill with approximately 2 electrical sockets that then had adaptor after extension lead after adaptor plugged into them to run all the computers, monitors, fax, photocopier etc, wires trailing everywhere.

None of the staff had contracts, and I didn't even have my own PC I just had to jump on other people's when they went to the loo and do what I could. I wish I'd dobbed them in to the H&S brigade.

I walked out one day after having a meltdown with someone who spoke to me like once too often. Awful place.

Pixielovescake · 13/04/2011 17:51

One of the mangners was a perve as well. Not to metion the poor girl that had her crotch grabbed by one of the other (male) staff member while i was in the next room. :( i wish id said something to one of the managers about it but she was so uspest and didnt want to mention it i didnt. I did however lay into the guy about it and he did grudgingly apologise. He was Vile.

chipmonkey · 13/04/2011 17:54

Got a job in a pub when I was around 18. Didn't ask about pay before I started. Worked 12 hours. At the end of the day the owner asked me whether I had had dinner. I had, the manager had given it to me and when the dinner had been deducted from my wages, I was paid...... a fiver! I didn't go back.

fruitcorner · 13/04/2011 18:19

injecting jelly into pork pies on the night shift in a factory.

thejaffacakesareonme · 13/04/2011 18:25

Summer job working on a heather farm (well, someone has to grow the heathers that are sold in B&Q). We had to take cuttings and stick them in peat. My fingers were cut and bleeding by the time I finished my stint there. I also remember we were paid the princely sum of £49.20 a week (£1.23 an hour). It was the kick up the arse I needed to work hard at school and get to uni.

Thistledew · 13/04/2011 18:58

My worst job was working in a call centre, giving legal advice to people arrested for non-imprisonable offences. As well as a full-time 9-5 job, I did 12 hour shifts on alternate Friday and Saturday nights, 7pm to 7am. At those times of the day and week, the offences that people were being arrested for were mainly drink-driving or public order offences, and invariably involved the consumption of alcohol. My people-handling and diplomacy skills improved no end through having to try to reason with a drunk people who were apoplectic at being arrested for driving, or swearing at a police officer, and who were quite sure that the numerous pints they had drunk equipped them with far more legal knowledge than my years of training had done.

It did pay well though.

fastedwina · 13/04/2011 19:00

weeding what looked like a mile long carrot field on my knees with a kitchen knife in the middle of a sand storm.

BubblesMyBubbles · 13/04/2011 19:01

Most disgusting job was Cleaning out tea/coffee vending machines
Never will I drink out of one unless I've cleaned it out myself, the people that cleaned it out before me and whilst I wasn't there clearly didn't have a conscience
And It's ruined my hands and took months for the tea and coffee stains to come out of my skin.

BumsOnSeats · 13/04/2011 19:14

Temping in an all-male engineering firm. Seriously, the only other woman was the cleaner. Luckily it was a short-term thing, just an admin job for 6 months in my gap year, but my goodness, it showed me just what sort of man I would not allow across my threshold (so to speak)...