To ask what is the worst job you ever had?

[Joey1471]

I would say the worst job I ever I ever had was selling door to door , 90% of them refused to even consider buying anything , plus it was raining too.

Safari park, scrubbing peacock poop off the decking and moving dirty nappies out of the eating area where parents thought it was a suitable place for a quick bum change and then left the shitty nappies stuffed down the side of the tables. Eurrrghhh

In a greengrocer's. It was a family run business and there were only 2 of us who worked there who weren't family members and we were both treated like crap. They made us work 4 full days and 2 half days a week each rather than give us a day off each, so we only had Sundays off. They did it just to be spiteful as all the other staff members had 2 days off a week. They spoke to us like shit as well. I managed 4 months there somehow.

Double counting marks on exam papers. So it wasn’t even the first count and there were rarely any mistakes. But we had to sit in exam conditions ourselves and not talk to anyone, not allowed to listen to personal music etc. Awful.

Ooh I have had a couple. I got booked to hand out free samples in a garage promoting their cafe. Was given a see through top to wear when I arrived so almost left on the spot but really needed the money. But then they never delivered the samples. When I asked what to do they gave me some leaflets instead. Stood there all day while old men copped a look at my (small) boobs hand G out leaflets that had previously just been sat on the counter. Needed the money but did not go back after one day.

I once also got offered two temp jobs in a day. One to work in a bank doing pricing using my maths degree and the other to manually forward emails from one address to another until they could write a program to do it automatically. Being an email forwarder paid more but I just couldn't face it.

Cold calling trying to sell kitchens. We were sat in a grimey little office and given a page torn out of the phone book. Then told to call all the numbers and try and sell them a new kitchen - book appointments for real kitchen salesman to go round. Sometimes confused old people would answer, which was horrible. I did it for 2 evenings then left.

I had a part time job by choice once. If I refused any extra shifts, they'd ring my partner asking if he could arrange some childcare so I could work

Hotel receptionist. Absolutely hated it! I was expected to eat my lunch in the back office and still man the reception desk, and didn’t get any breaks because I wasn’t a smoker. I was 21 and had just left uni and needed the money. It was so bad that even my Mum, who instilled a strong work ethic in me, suggested that I just stop turning up as she was so cross at how they were treating me. I did it for two months, and on the plus side it gave me a kick up the arse to apply last minute for PGCE courses rather than take a gap year working, which was definitely the right decision for me in the end.

When I was a student I did a lot of agency hospitality work. Mostly this involved wedding waitressing, match day bartending and the like.

On one memorable shift I was told I was needed at a local attraction, which was a member of staff short and needed some help front of house - clearing tables and the like. Fine, I needed the money.

When I got there I discovered that both the local attraction and I had been duped. They were having an Environmental Health inspection the next day and wanted the industrial kitchen deep cleaned. They had requested someone well versed in the art and science of deep cleans (and more importantly willing to do it) and had got me. No one was happy!

Just remembered another one. Did a summer season at a receptionist at a Haven Holiday Park. Highlights I had to deal with as a naive 17 year old included:

• the professional complainers who measured their caravan and claimed it was 3/4inch shorter than the one they booked. The only possible solution to this terrible travesty was for them to be upgraded to the top class accommodation that cost more than twice what they paid. They got it too (Park Managers decision not mine). And then complained about everything else from the food to the entertainment.

• reports of a naked camper running about the site at 7am. He had to be captured and clothed in a Haven Mate tracksuit, reunited with his caravan and told to sleep off his skinful from the night before. There was a queue of complaining families to deal with, all outraged by the infringement of public decency, which could be assuaged with tokens for free meals and tickets for the amusement arcade apparently.

• the many and probably libellous exploits of the Haven Mates which I won't recount but suffice to say that if you can imagine it, they did it and then some.

Can't say too much but it has to be the job I'm in right now. It's my first job out of uni, and I'm about 4 months away from going on maternity leave so I'm trapped.
My team are lovely, but the business is failing and I get customers on the phone who are just vile. Way too much pressure, too.

Content Marketing for the Marketing director of a small finance firm. She was the most dishonest and spiteful woman I have ever encountered.

A greetings card shop-I honestly became absolutely convinced that it was possible to die of boredom 😴

Secretary. Boring, monotonous work that didn't give me any sense of fulfilment.

I worked in a hospital laundry as a student when I was 17. It was hard physical work and can’t even describe how awful the body fluids and bits of body were ! The saving grace was the women who worked there were a right laugh!

Gutting Mackerel on a line in a fish factory. 3 of us started, one left at first break.

We had to put our hands up to go to the toilet, there was no talking on the line. Some of the fish were pregnant, so gutting threw up regular revolting surprises.

Two of us went back the second day. We stank of fish before we even got to work. You know when you turn your head a catch a whiff of yourself? These days it's Jo Malone, back then it was fish.

I think we started about 7.30-8am. At break I took out my lunch and my friend said 'What are you doing?'. I'm thinking, what does it look like 'Having my lunch!' She said 'you know it's only 10.30?'. It was so dreary and long and monotonous I thought it was 1pm. I went back and stuck it out till lunch, hung up my wellies and walked out.

I don't think we ever got paid. I didn't care. I got home, scrubbed my self in the shower and headed into town. I always remember that afternoon in town with my two pals as full of laughter, sunshine and freedom!

During the Christmas holidays from uni I was offered temp work on the switchboard at the benefits office. Never worked a switchboard in my life but 90 percent of the calls asked the same “where’s my giro?” question. The switchboard was manned by two other elderly ladies who would insist I read their People’s Friend magazine on my lunch break. After lunch one of them would always fall asleep at the switchboard and I’d have to pretend to have a coughing fit to wake her up.

It was both amusing and hideous in equal measure.

Am I the only one thinking of Derek and Clive?

Mine was working in the Toby Carvery, it’s a shit employer, long hours, no breaks, and your just expected to be a slave, cook, food prep, clean, wrap cutlery and also do pot wash.... as well as be a waitress and don’t forget to check the gravy every time you took plates in and if empty you had to refill.

I lasted 2 years, however did meet some faboulas people and 2 of them are now god parents one of my children.

Probably the stereotypically worst job I’ve had was packing live pheasants: smelly, hot, incredibly dirty and back breaking, bent right in two. Currently my job I do now is pretty damned high on the list: no matter what hours I do I’m not doing enough (up to 38 since Monday so far), I’m constantly letting down people I like, I’m managed by people I hate, and morale is so low that people regularly ring from one site to another in tears because they are so stressed. We have lost 5 people to long term stress in the last 2.5 years. I can hand in my notice in 16.5 weeks.

Some of these sound so awful I can’t imagine how you did them - the council noise one especially!

I have done door to door selling, been one of those people who calls you to ask if you want replacement windows, but neither of those jobs was as God Awful as working on a Post Office Counter.

People would be incredibly rude and abusive, and there was nothing you could do about it. I have never encountered such cunty behaviour anywhere else in sales or retail.

My first job, waiting to move abroad, my dad got me fixed up with his friend who had an Insurance company. I was paid £40pw in 1996 for a full weeks work. I wasn’t really given any work though. Just mostly ignored by the other older women and told to mess around on the computer so the days dragged. My long awaited lunch hour was mostly taken up locating the boss a pie from a particularly vile corner shop 2 miles walk away.

Thankfully I was offered another, much better job after three months.

Much later on my dad decided he’d had enough of running his letting agency so me, with a small baby and another young child and another part time job was the ideal candidate to take over the management of it. It came complete with a useless secretary who he hoped I would let go for him.
So here’s me trying to juggle my normal job, sleepless nights with baby, other child plus all other house related work getting emails and phone calls day and night from tenants and landlords complaining about all manner of things. I stuck it out for six months and nearly had a nervous breakdown trying to keep it going. It really wasn’t worth the extra money.

Done various factory work, like packing board games. Standing up and bending over doing that was back breaking, and even though I was only 19, I remember literally hobbling out at the end of the day bent over a bit. Lasted 4 weeks as I really needed the money, but suspect it would be against health and safety now.
And a professional well paid job. Was supposed to have 1 line manager, but it was a family run firm so in reality had 3 managers who all told me to do different things, and then shouted at me when they saw I had done something that another manager had told me to do that they didn't agree with. And NOTHING was ever their fault, always mine. Only job I have resigned from without another job to go to, but it really knocked my confidence and I was often tearful at home in the evenings.

Some big nightclub in central London in the 90s. I lasted three shifts. I started at 7.00pm and finished at about 2.00am.

I had to waitress food by walking backwards through a heaving dance floor...and the manager was racist.

I dotted icing eyes onto 14,000 marzipan robins...

Was also supposed to do a full season out in Greece for a well known sailing company but the girls who I were working with were so awful I left after 3 weeks. Utter bullies, really nasty people. Don't trust your kids with shitheads who are working seasons abroad, all they want to do is drink, drugs and shagging randoms!

The pay was £60 a week. This was in 2008. Go figure.