The worst job you've ever had?

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I worked as a electrician and had to slide out to telfer 400v devices with friead contactors due to a high concentration of acid in the air since it was on a hot-zinking plant. Generaly the contactors survived about 6 months. Anyway, I had to climb out and pull back some of these telfer engines, with a swindle you simply can't imagine, and with a 900 degree hot zinc bath under you.

I have also with a license to work up to 1000v handled 10kV 5000A fused devices. I'm still alive. The pneumatic switching of that heater switches still makes my one hand world of handling serious currents and Trinitron tubes an act of plain survival.

It was a 10000v 5000 ampere heater. So it was required with pressured swith to blow out the arch otherwise building when switching on and off the heater. It's like a supersonic version of a wall breaker.

Edit: It was a 10 meter drop from the telfer into a nice warm zinc melting.
Edit: When switching and error spotting the acid baths heating, we simply removed the heat reflectors, set the thermostats on max and waited for them to glow in orange and then blow up. I've switched live heating elements with 400 volts and a fuse of 250A a current that can chew up a Pozi 3 screwdriver before breakfast.
Edit: I know of a couple of people having a worse situation when working, they actually had to change the fire sealing on a not completely cold boiler, so they had about 100 celsius and the fire resistant cement to fixate the bricks took about 10 seconds to harden and you had to throw the whole bucket.
Edit: Actually we've dropped a whole car into zinc. It was for a showdown. As you can expect all hinges got stuck so it didn't have working doors whatsoever.

I was a waitress for one evening. That was the most terrifying job I ever had.

Followup to previous post: Continued adventures working ay a Landfill.

One day I got to drive the small bulldozer. It was simple, I'd push garbage towards the hole after people drove away. It was residential garbage, so it was easy, no huge piles. I was actually having (some) fun, driving the bulldozed back and forth. Then a pick-up truck dumped a pile og bagged trash. I waited and then started pushing the bags. Suddenly the MOST AWFUL STENCH filled the cab of the bulldozer. I looked down, and saw the remains of some animal (goat, maybe) that had been in one of the bags. I almost lost my lunch ! !!
When I told the other guys, they laughed, and said it happened all the time. Then they told graphic stories about dead animals ! !! Eeeeuuugghhhhhhh ! !!

I hate to say this, but I live in Salt Lake City... Just be glad it was a goat and not a human.

Baby-sitting job.


-SpaceCase

crafts warehouse - really weird and loopy close-knit clique of hillbillies, no disrespect to anyone along those lines being I can overlook that but they couldn't overlook me. One day someone just decided to hassle me, I stood up for myself (just verbally, didn't get out of line or anything) and by the end of the day after that guy was sitting on the wall giving me an ear-to-ear sh** eating grin the boss called me into the office and said "Your fired - punch out and leave immediately", I was the guy who showed up a couple minutes early, usually was real punctual with lunch breaks - the secretary though habitually parked right in front of the no parking signs and half the guys there were smoking bud in their trucks on break and came back shady as heck, lol, so I totally see just how terrible of an employee I was.

Olive Garden serving - this was back when I first started there, the servers were pretty vicious and of a breed I haven't seen since. If I had a question to ask someone I could pretty much say absolutely anything and get a "yeah, sure" as a response. Needless to say I wasn't doing that for much longer than a month. I could probably do it again if I tried but seriously, they've got the hosts, the managers, the cooks, the customers, the bartenders - everyone leans on em and a tip can be blown to pieces or a customer can have a tirade over so many things which you have absolutely no control and at that point it really comes down to how assertive and tephlon you are with em.

Selling perfume, did'nt like the smell or having to dupe people into buying stuff they did'nt need.

Working for an investment company don't like kissing arse, everyone's the same I loathe hierachy.

Here is another cleaning old wet insulation from dirt crawl spaces that are less than 18 inches high near the beach after flooding. I wear a full tyvek suit and a full face respirator still it's nasty. usually find a few dead rodents as an added bonus

My worst job was clearing out food lockers from planes, the ones the hostesses push up the isles. the bad ones were off interational flights...they would often sit for up to 48 hours, somtimes for hours in hot air craft hangers quietly fermenting. absolutly disgusting.

problem: I'm really sensitive with smells... the smell of the hanger was just foul. Disturbingly, the kitchen were they made the food was near by, so the smell of cooking food intermingled with the rancid stench from the lockers.

I came home after the first day with terribly sore ribs and stomach: I'd wrenched my innards dry retching from the smell all day. eeeewwwww.....

EB

Probably my first job, delivering pitas. My boss was a complete psycho, and I had no idea how to stand up for myself/to him, so I got walked all over and yelled at day in/day out, until I stopped doing it because I crashed my car . A close tie for second was being a beer store cashier in a really rough neighborhood, and then washing dishes (since it was so gross) in a really busy restaurant.

Working at a Social Security Office as an assessor for unemployment benefits. I lasted for 3 weeks and then quit. There was little training and I got so nervous after about a week that I forgot what I learned and then they wanted me to answer phones with stroppy people demanding their benefits.

Whenever I asked how to do something, I was fobbed off. It was very busy and there was a lot of time pressure but I just wanted enough training so I could do my wok properly.

worst job: working the drive through at a fast food place. I had very little training and on my first day I got put on drive through. I didn't even know the keyboard yet or what thenumbers meant (I'll take a number 2 with a coke...). So it was very stressfull. And I have poor hand-eye coordination so I was also slow at stuff like filling order- things like the fries in the cartons, drinks, making ice cream cones, etc. And then people at the drive through can't see you running around like crazy and they want their food yesterday... Cleaning bathrooms and the restaurant part was definitely easier than the dealing with people part of the job. I had little training and we were understaffed. I only lasted 3 weeks.

Second worst job: I worked as a telemarketer two summers in college. Its a lot of pressure to sell all the time and people rarely want to buy and the pay was low. But the angry or mean people- I got used to them right away- I am able to not let that bother me.

You couldn't pay me enough to be a telemarketer!

Nightfill at Woolworths supermarket...after working 3 nights I would have prefered to commit suicide rather than go back. Those 3 nights alone led to a breakdown in which I quit my day job which was probably the best job Ive ever had.... I just wasnt in a state to work. Woolworths killed me.

Doing apartment turn-over at "punk rock hotel"....dead cat in the freezer,body fluids and bugs everywhere and smell of decay.Fast food also sucks,grease in the air gets in pores and hair,smell is suffocating.

My job now,wouldnt be bad except for the client that never shuts up and gets angry all the time and the lazy and incompetent staff and management,but that has recently improved.

The one job I can never imagine doing is dealing with dead animals(in food industry) or doing animal testing...That takes a special breed of human.

I'd hate a job where I had to help pick up dead bodies. Saw a show about it on the TV and it looked really gross. Still, somebody has to do it and it is important. It's a sad indictment on our society that people can die in their house or unit and not be found for days or weeks or longer.

I also wouldn't like to do animal experiments where the animal was injured or killed. I would get too attached to the rats, mice, bunnies, or whatever else they were testing.

Call centre work would also be absolute torture.