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.

When I worked as a buyer for a stationery firm.I sat between the chain smoking,racist,sexiest,misogynist boss and his wife,who would have slanging matches over my head.I lasted 9 months,far longer than anyone else did,but eventually told him to stuff his job after he threw something at me.I told him exactly what I thought and stalked out,secure in the knowledge that it was payday and month end-he couldn't stop my wages and had to do all the month end stuff himself.

Actually,the other 2 crap job contenders were with stationery companies too,one where the office manager had 1 'O' level and was sleeping with the director and saw me as a threat so made my life hell.The other one I spent all day sticking cheques in a machine,and all the other staff refused to speak English so I couldn't even talk to anyone to relieve the tedium.

when i was just qualified as a hairdresser , got a job in a real old dears type salon owned by a really weird middle aged guy, think he thought he was hairdressing mafia haha ,i knew the job was only temping that was fine , he told me "we share our tips and split them when we have about £100 each" great i thought being a young naive 19 year old , a few weeks into the job he said "thanks wont be needing you anymore not enough work on , i will get your tips to you" .... im still waiting for them .. the creep !!!!

I hate my job because everyone who comes in to see me (by everyone, I mean at least 3 out of every 4) says they hate me. Depresses me and makes me want to retire but I'm only 29 and this is the only job I am qualified to do :(

Cleaning chicken ovens (the rotisserie ones) in supermarket. Yuk.

Closely followed by 12 hour shifts in a beach front arcade perspex box giving out change. Luckily had fairly hardcore amphetamine dependency at the time which made it interesting!

Working in a high street clothes shop. Place was as bitchy as they come. One long serving member of staff was crap at her job but thought she was fantastic, insisted on being called 'senior staff' even though she wasn't, and proceeded to talk about her brother's suicide whenever she wanted attention. I walked out after several months there and wrote a letter telling them all what I thought of them. Was strangely satisfying. Pay was between £5-6 per hour.

Hen I left school I got an apprenticeship in the benefits dept. Crap money but had to leave as I knew most of the applicants for benefits from school. I knew they wern't single mums struggling. They lives with partners and had cash in hand jobs. Put ne in a few tricky situations!

What do you do grumpy?!

Are you a dentist???

Ooh, you saw me on the other thread. Yes I am :(

I was going to say the time I worked in a biscuit factory during the university holidays. The manageress warned me in advance a lot of people couldn't stand it and to see how it went, I stuck it a week and then had to leave. But the people were really nice and it put me off biscuits for life!

But then I thought again about the time I worked for the Legal Aid Board. I'd only been qualified a year and was on about 28k. For that I had to check and review 15% of all decisions for errors, in all specialities of law, using an incredibly complex computer system that constantly crashed, meaning you had to start again from scratch. I also had to complete all the admin including extensive reporting on the statistics. It meant reading through all the paperwork with each case, and getting through about 30 of these a day. Once I had been there a month, they told I was also expected to clear the backlog of cases built up in the year the position had been empty, before I started. After 3 months, they increased the targets by 40%. I once found an error in a manager's work and emailed his secretary with the details so she could print it out for him to read, as he couldn't operate the computer system. My mistake, I was to print it out for the secretary to present to him. So the job required a qualified solicitor, expertise in all areas of civil law, no admin support and IT skills verging on the ability to programme (I did actually tweak a few bits of the Visual Basic source code behind the system to make it run more smoothly). All for a crappy 28k p.a.. I stuck it a year too.

LOL grunmpy! Your clients might not like you, but I bet your bank balance is healthy . You could retire early and become a vodka tester or something equally joyous .

Cold calling when I was a student. I think I lasted two shifts and I didn't get paid as you had to complete 15 hours to get paid. I had to phone farmers. I can remember it now:

'How many acres of land do you have? How many sheep? How many set-aside? How many tractors?' etc etc

Community dentistry isn't the money spinner the Daily Mail would have us believe unfotunately. I still want to retitre early though but my liver will be so shot by then the Vodka will remain a dream.....

I have a life plan tat involves working really hard now and retiring in 10 years. Sadly that plan involves working 15 out of the next 18 days whilst being told I am hated. Still, I'm having my hair cut on Saturday so that is something to look forward to.

I have been a cleaner too, what a nightmare! A telephone mail order company where I could't use the vacuum cleaner whils anyone was on the phone.......

Student - got a job in summer holidays in a rock making factory. On the one hand interesting how they make this bkloody stuff but my job was to wrap the tooth rotting stuff in it's packaging ensure that the right label was on it (aka bright stick of rock or southend stick of rock) - lovely uniforlm and lovely hat but no bloody mask to stop you inhaling this wierd sugar powder

Every friday afternoon production stopped and we had to BOIL the floor to get rid of the sticky mess (yup - by fridayyou coudn't walk as your shoes would actually stick to the floor).

Oh I forgot, one day as a cavity wall insulation door to door sales person!!

Kreecher, I was going to come on here and say C&A at Marble Arch, but see you beat me to it. Endured 7 weeks during the summer holidays when I was a student. It was the music that did for me in the end too. I cried every day, tears of utter boredom and frustration. The clothes were shocking too.

After working in an office environment for the last twenty years . you'd think it must have been a nice place to be ... but I left at Christmas last year and I have never been happier now in a couple of cleaning jobs .. no stress, no one back stabbing and trying to outdo you, and tbh the money for office work is not worth all the stress and crap you have to put up with anyway. I know I made the right decision and would NEVER go back to it ever..

In fact Cleaning is definately under rated, you go, do the job well, your left alone, you can go home and enjoy the rest of the sunshiny day.. its actually ok!

Grumpstiltskin .. what do you do?

grumpy - sorry to hear that. I have one dentist friend (private practice) - she has about 6 holidays a year and two very naice cars....She says she can live with the fact people dread seeing her

I found private practice far too stressful, add the fact that insurance was over £2k per annum and I decided to make the move. I used to have palpitations every day in practice, now it's just once a week or so.....

Putting the garlic butter in the baguettes at a garlic bread factory. It was mind numbing but great pay when you're 17. Also it really made me work harder in my a level year as I would shudder everytime I thought of it. If your ds or dd is slacking in school get them a few weeks on a factory line, they'll soon change their attitude!

r0se, I'm a dentist who works with special needs adults and people in pain who don't have a dentist.

Mine was a care home, my mum worked there and told me that a weekend position had come up for 8 hours on a saturday and 6 hours on a sunday, i thought great, i knew the women as met mum regularly from work during school holidays. I got the job and loved it at first, i was 16 and had just left school, i had to open my first bank account and i got £34 for the weekend i think, so was £2.40 per hour. I was there to just put laundry away in correct residents room, collect dirty laundry, shave the mens faces (it was funny cos they would have a laugh and a joke) help with setting tables for breakfast, dinner and tea, help residents to their seats/tables. I wasnt allowed to move the residents, just support them, as i was only 16 and you have to be 18 to do lifting and handling.
I then changed positions to kitchen assistant with the managers mother who was the weekend main kitchen assistant. On my second week Wendy(main kitchen women) told me how to wash the pots and how to stack the dishwasher, i had 15 mins to wash 34 residents plates/cups/cutlery before placing them into the dishwasher before starting to get the morning cups of tea/afternoon cups of tea ready.

My last weekend was when one of the elderly female patients wasn't well, she had to have mushed up food and a care assistant would feed her (used to be my job weeks before) but as this elderly lady wouldnt eat the care assistant through her dinner away - she had had no breakfast or mid day snack that either so she had gone hungry. They put her to bed at 4pm with nothing to eat.

I told my mum who mentioned it to Wendy who then complained to the manager (her daughter) that i had broken confidentiality, i was hauled into the office and basically sacked and told to come back when i was 18.

Bunch of stuck up cows.

sorry its long.