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.

I once had a job where my role was to phone people up and pretend to be completing a market research survey so that I could identify if it was worth a sales person phoning them back. I lasted 2 hours and when the agency phoned me after I walked out I explained that they weren't paying me enough to lie to decent people.

InMyPrime - you're so right about the skills gathering dust. I was so willing and they just chucked me in a corner to rot. I wish I had lodged a formal grievance. I'd come from a place where anyone who did, did it for spurious, self serving reasons because they were the problem, iyswim. So I didn't as I thought that it would always overshadow the good stuff I had done. I went to the level below CEO but no one gave a crap.

In the end it was determination and a slice of luck that did it. I met my current boss at a works night out and offloaded my problems to him. He saw my potential and basically adapted a role they had available to suit, then 2 months after I started, promoted me internally to where he always intended me to be. It took over 2 years from meeting him to walking through the door as his employee. It's an hour commute, but worth every second I spend on that motorway.

I really hope you manage to get out. Keep on top of things during your maternity - new guidance, anything like that, it was invaluable when it came to an interview 11 months in. You will think you can't do it because of baby brain but really it's all just a bit rusty. Don't give up hope and enjoy your maternity leave.

Working on a mobile library van, miles from anywhere with only the bullying old lech of a driver for company. He was vile. Years after I left I heard someone talk about 'grooming' and only then realised that this is what I had experienced. Tried more than once to make a complaint but no one seemed to think it could be done differently. The set-up made it almost impossible to make an official complaint. Can't tell you how much I hated those ' County Council will not tolerate bullying' posters in the library staffroom. Tolerate? Their working practices actively encouraged it. This was years ago. The old git is still working, but not with me! I left as I could stand it no longer.

This was worse even than the cold-calling telesales job I had a student, where the ways in which the owner could reclaim your pay were seemingly endless, and the school-girl job where I scrubbed burnt scrambled eggs off huge pans in a badly-run nursing home.

Now I've got a lovely job, though. :)

working in a chicken factory,when i left school,so gross,that i,ve been veggie for 20 years....

As a student I took a temp job in the office of a factory which manufactures flea spray. I had to stick address lables on postcards which were going to pet shops advertising a new flea spray....I had no idea how many pet shops there were in the UK....

The whole factory it stank of chemicals and I never figured out if it was the chemicals or the job but I spent 4 days in an automated haze of sticking labels on and chucking postcards in post bags as i was desprate for cash.

Just as I thought I was done and about to escape, they brought in a pile of address labels and more postcards and asked me to start on the european pet shops. Needless to say I feigned illness and legged it....

Second to that was working for a high street retailer over Christmas on the 'collection counter'. You couldn't leave at night until you'd passed a body pat down and bag check for stolen goods by the creepy warehouse manager and I had to wear an ill-fitting, highly flammable 100% acrylic uniform. Having to shuffle back and forwards to/from the conveyor belt all day on a cheap nylon carpet meant the static build up was legendary...

I once had a temp job in the kitchens of the National Film and TV School. I was so excited about it (it's where Nick Park of Wallace and Gromit fame trained). I spent the morning, four hours, making sandwiches, then had to serve lunch. I have seriously never met a more stuck up bunch of snotty, up-their-own-arses, selfish, rude and ungrateful students in my life. They didn't say thank you, didn't even acknowledge I was there, just asked for whatever they wanted then moved on. I hated the feeling of being looked down on so much that I never went back.

"Touching Up" plywood Cuckoo clocks. Brown paint the colour of shit; to match the general shitiness of the clocks.
12 hours standing in the grottiest warehouse you have ever seen; piece work. A supervisor that had to record every loo break; and liked to stand too close when "helping" you.

Ooh, I've got lots.

Paper round in my early teens: the round was actually OK, but the man who came in to help make up the delivery bags was a paedophile. He used to come and stand right behind me and whisper 'hello gorgeous' into my ear. After he did it two or three times I started telling him to fuck the fuck off - and he would actually ask 'Why do you hate me?'. I wish I'd known enough aged 13 to say 'Because you're a horrible filthy one-legged nonce and I should report you to the police, you nasty creep.'

Also the job in a 'locals' pub aged 17. The landlord was a purple-faced alcoholic, and the landlady was a hatchet-faced bitch with a giant monoboob who thought sexual harassment was 'part and parcel of the job' and only spoke to me if I came to work wearing a minidress.

But the absolute worst, in terms of pure misery, was the six weeks I spent working for a marketing consultancy whose main clients were the giant pharma companies who make aspartame and monosodium glutamate. My job was to paraphrase junk science studies into articles that purported either to show that there were no health risks associated with these chemicals, or else to invent spurious health benefits for random plant extracts.

The company was run by a husband and wife team who gave us minions contradictory orders all the time then shouted at us when we got things wrong; we had to clear our desks before we could leave (or more shouting) and they would routinely go through our work email accounts and read what we were writing.

By week 3 I had a permanent tension headache; in week 5 the other two minions resigned simultaneously; and in week 6 bitch boss from hell found an excuse to fire me so I couldn't tell their next victims employees anything about how vile they were. I got one week's notice payment and spent the next three months in a state of blank depression, working a grim temp job in the Kings Cross Station reconstruction office.

Shittiest job - clearing up at a dog kennels. Loved it thiough.

Shittist job - door to door, selling vouchers for a restaurant about 30 miles away.

Lowest paid job - Dog kennels, again. £1 per hour.

a colleague told us that as a student she worked at as a receptionist at a "massage" parlour which meant she could study when it was quiet and it paid quite well. However her luck ran out when a client wanted her to watch him and the masseur "at it" and she refused. Unfortunately the owner found out and gave her the sack.

My current job

Customers constantly moaning to me about shit service/shit drink/shit food

Having to break up fights on a fairly regular basis

Being threatened (I've had more death threats then I care to remember)

Cleaning up piss, shit, vomit from customers who can't control themselves

oh, and if the customers are not bad enough, having to deal with an arsehole of an area manager who constantly belittles and has a go at us for not hitting targets

It really is fucking awesome working as a pub manager for Wetherspoons

Fivegomad urgh,yes,I've watched my poor uncle do that.The smell was the worst thing ever and no matter how much he scrubbed his hands,it lingered.He didn't eat much for the rest of the day,because as soon as he put his fork near his mouth,he got a whiff of rotten lamb from his hands.

When we were kids 7 or 8 years old,we had to help with potato picking.It was awful,up to your eyes in mud in a cold wet field,and as the tractor went along unearthing potatoes,it also chopped up mice,frogs,toads and slugs,so we had to avoid picking up random animal body parts too.There was no getting out of doing it,when my cousin broke her leg,we had to cover her plaster with a plastic bag and drag her along on a sledge,so that she could pick alongside of us.And people wonder why I didn't become a farmer.......

If ever my dc moan about having to help about the house,I will tell them that they are lucky not to be picking spuds.

Two jobs.

One when I was 11/12 (late 70's and I lived in a tourist resort so everyone tried to get work).I was chamber maiding in a small hotel with a letcherous owner. Never forgot the day I was in the store cupboard collecting a new box of those little complimentary soaps and he came in and stayed in there, closing the door. My only option to get out was to squeeze past him and a reall squeeze it was. Yuk. He knew exactly what he was doing. Horrible mealy man.

The other was when I was 15/16. Silver service waiting, including flambe of steak at the table and lobsters cooked to order having been chosen from the tank! Actually, the job itself was OK with the potential for excellent tips and gave me some enduring memories from some mjor epic fail moments (like flambeing a steak with the 'rare' flag still in it and flambeing in butter and singing my hair when the flames grew so high. I was too young really to do the evening shift (where this sort of work went on) but I had, back then, an excellent memory and was very quick at mental maths, so they did let me do nights if other staff let her down.

However, owners wife was an absolute dragon. I swore from that job on, I would find one where I could work for myself and, if I ever had any employees (which I do), I would never, ever treat them like that. So, this job was in some ways a really good one for me, even though she had me (and others) in tears plenty of times!

Packing cod liver oil capsules. The stench from the burst capsules stayed with me for days.

oh my God "Chickenshavenoeyebrows" ! you must be that person trying to sell us a kirby hoover all those yrs ago, vacummed our matress and pillows too, DH refused to sleep on bed after that, we had to change everything, we didnt buy the hoover though, ignorance is bliss

I was a waitress at Wimpy when I was 14. The pay was £1.50 an hour.

The cap they made me wear was soaked with grease from the head of the last owner. The grease had soaked half way down the peak and it stank.

3 weeks in a frozen meat packing factory - now been veggie for over 25 years

Spenquin abd Legalalien. Donague and Stevenson gosh! it brought back memories when I was an articled clerk in about 1947- 65 years ago - can't believe it.

:) I also found a weta in a bottle but it didn't have quite the same cachet.

For the record, cellophane from cigarette packets and straws are the hardest for the machine to spot.

Customer service for Guinness doesn't sound too taxing.

Cleaning out ashtrays....mmmmm. Surprisingly I don't smoke.

Also worked in a cafe when I was a shy 13/14 yr old.
A regular customer creep used to make sure that he had page 3 open of his smut rag newspaper each and everytime I served him and would eye me up. I would dread him coming in and told the Cook why. She being a motherly and no nonsense type mature lady told me not to worry. Next time he came in SHE served him, I don't know what she said to him but it stopped after that

I looooved her - totally misunderstood by most as a bitch but I totally respected and admired her - before and definitely after that incident!

A friend had a job wanking turkey cocks so they could use the spunk to artificially inseminate turkeys!!! She eats goose at Christmas!

love your nickname thatwouldbeaneucumenicalmatter

Mirage

Definitely some of my waitressing jobs.

The first one was at a hotel one Summer break, where they regularly used to run out of everything (coffee cups, teaspoons, you name it...)

I ended up going back there the next Summer (didn't have much choice of jobs) but unexpectedly got asked to go on the bar instead. I was just 18, fairly innocent, didn't even know what most of the drinks were - my "training" was one evening working with another girl, then the next night I had the bar on my own... very embarrassing to get asked for drinks and have noooo idea how to make them.

Worse, I would end up doing 12-13 hour shifts with no breaks as I wasn't allowed to leave the bar unattended and the managers never came by - had to sneak off and put the shutters down every time I needed to pee, and in theory wasn't allowed to eat or drink behind the bar either so I had to hide round the corner sipping iced water to stop my stomach rumbling.

Also they still had the running-out-of-everything habit, one memorable evening my bar had NO coke, NO ice (the ice machine stopped working if anyone took out the last layer of ice), NO change as the managers forgot to go to the bank - and eventually NO beer whatsoever, as I wasn't allowed the cellar key to change the barrels, and could never find a manager to change them when they were empty (never mind I wasn't supposed to leave the bar to go looking for them....). Can you imagine the stick I got from the customers?

There was also the silver service job, in particular one wedding where most of the men seemed to be raging alkies and pretty much stormed the bar, shouting at us for not giving out beers fast enough, but then we got horrible abuse if they even thought we were offering drinks to any of the women (some religious thing I think, though I never worked out quite what religion - they obviously thought it bad for women to drink but OK for men to be drunk, leering horrors)... then one of the men cornered me and my mate out the back and was offering me "twenty pound, two men, you go, yes?". Nice....