UKC

I'm just recovering from a prolonged bout of hysterical laughter brought on by my teenage son reading me snippets from the Idler Book of Crap Jobs. Does anyone have any personal experience of truly awful, but character building occupations?

In reply to TM2: recently left a job in Belgium, phone interview, was told I was on £200 a week, teaching 12 - 18 year olds. so drove to the place, wpent 6 days, earning £12 a day teachng young kids, 7 and below. Spent one day "teaching" 18 3 year old kids. all french speaking and I had no experience of teaching any kids younger than 17.

ran off after 6 days, literally as they wouldnt acceot my resignation.

In reply to TM2:
I used to make hamburgers in a butchery for £3 an hour(Let's call it Highland Crown, because that's its name). Started at 5am and worked until 6pm 6 days a week. I got a measely 15mins a day off. And I stank of raw meat (not cool with the ladies).

That really sucked.

Things are better though as I now work in insurance...

nice

In reply to Iain Ridgway:

That's got to be better than being a (quote) 'Pig Wanker' (unquote)!

In reply to TM2: GirlFriends parents own a stud farm in Aus, they have a guy who comes round to "milk" the bulls, and artificially inseminate (AI) the cows.

In reply to Iain Ridgway:

My very first job was being a "bag girl" (i.e. packing groceries into bags for lazy customers) in an "adventure supermarket" called Charlie's Farm Not only did I have to wear a ridiculous uniform with a big patch shaped like a horse saying "Ask me, I won't bite you" on my arse, but I also had to cope with a huge pedophile tree right at the entrance who kept saying "Hello chiiiiiiiiiildren. Hellooooo friiiiiiiiiends..." every five minutes and a giant frog and his giant turtle friend sitting in a hot air balloon singing an annoying farewell tune which was repeated every 4 minutes. There were more talking and singing animals all over the shop, but the above were worst.

Now I'm a part time callcenter agent for a large mailorder company, and apart from the odd pervert who likes wnaking off while ordering a miniskirt, it's an okay job. Certainly nothing I would like to do forever, though.

In reply to violentViolet:

reminds me of my daughter's 1st paper round job - moaning away about these lazy people she was having to deliver for...!

In reply to Ian:

and a lot grittier than being a 'Christian Book Stacker' I'll bet...

In reply to violentViolet:

Germany's weird.

In reply to violentViolet:

This is different from being a "bag lady", right?

In reply to psd:

Actually it was a British company who wanted to try that concept on the German market.

In reply to violentViolet:

I think the fact that they tried it on the - Hasslehoff adoring - German market says it all...

In reply to psd:


Again, I've only ever heard that the Germans are a nation of Hasselhoff- devotees in Britain or on British websites. But there are worse prejudices, so I don't mind.

In reply to TM2: I used to be a stone picker. This involved walking behind a tractor and trailer on a massive reclaimed opencast site throwing any stone larger than your palm into the trailer. Ahhh, shitty days...

In reply to michael donohue:

Maybe you could write a song about it! But it sounds as if it should have been included in the book at any rate

In reply to TM2: We even had to go to the lunch shack if a storm brewed as someone got zapped by lightning a week before I started.

In reply to TM2:
Tortilla transfer operative. Involved standing at the end of a conveyor belt throwing plastic packs of tortillas into a big plastic tub on wheels. Why they couldn't have just used a shorter tub that would have fitted under the end of the conveyor I have no idea. To make matters worse, the permanent staff all spoke a language I never even managed to identify never mind understand, and I spent most of the few days I worked there being bollocked in very bad English for my failure to understand what I'd just been told to do.
Never realised Daventry had its own dialect.

In reply to TM2: i was a drilling technition for a year removing core samples for quaries, 10 hours a day in all weathers watching a big bit of metal go up and down hmm now thats fun!

In reply to TM2:

Worked in a sandwich factory for several summers.

Started at 6am in the morning in a chilled warehouse - which was bloody cold - and then spent the next hours putting various fillings in over 20,000 sandwiches.

What was worse was that I regularly received a bollocking from 16 year olds because I was talking and having a joke with some other students.

Good experience though.

In reply to TM2: My first job was working in a factory processing and bagging peas. I had the prestigious responsibility of picking bird sh1t of the peas as they passed down the conveyour belt. I stuck the job for 2 weeks and then went off sick with a weird disease!

In reply to TM2:

Used to collect eggs in a chicken farm when I was 12 or 13ish... got paid peanuts but had great egg fights though!!!

In reply to TM2:

Shelf stacking in Asda, graveyard shift. Didn't mind the job but the shift consisted of myself and an extended family (load of brothers and cousins etc) from Sri Lanka. No objection to the shelf stacking really. Also, nice lads UNTIL they found out I was merely a dilettante and not seeking a career in shelf-stacking, at which point they utterly blanked me, only speaking to each other in Tamil and (this was before 24-hour opening) having oppressively loud bhangra music played over the PA. I'd been put onto that shift cos the store manager wanted someone to find some fault with these lads and report it so he could get rid of a few of them. Despite my comments above, they were certainly faultless on a professional basis. Awkward situation that I walked out of after my first 4 hour shift. I should have left ten minutes into it. Didn't even chase up my pay, I disappeared to Greece instead.

In reply to TM2:

I worked walking around housing estates delivering junk mail to people once, that was fun, or not.

In reply to TM2:

My first job as a 13 year old, apple picking for a farmer who was a mean old bugger. Did 10 hours a day for 7 days being too young and naive to agree the wages with him in advance, and the end got a 10/- note from him (50p). I tried protesting, but he said he had "made deductions for ones I had bruised" - that was the first mention of it.

In reply to TM2:

I have had lots of really bad jobs.

refuse technician in a wharehouse - basically walking round a wharehouse with a broom sweeping up all day. (i was promoteed to the box crushing machine after a couple of weeks though so not all bad!)

Egg picker in a battery farm - this was about 15 yrs ago before they were made illegal.

Pot washer in a power station canteen - Possibly the most bleak and depressing place in the world

Machine operator in a bike part factory - The most reppetitive job ever in the loudest place ive ever been in.

part time waiter and cleaner for the night shift in a large toyota factory near derby - just bad bad deppressing job

In reply to TM2:
I know someone who tried mushroom picking for a while under the naive misconception that she would be skipping through sunny fields with a basket on one arm stooping to pick mushrooms once in a while....when she found out she was working in a stinking warehouse, bending over beds and beds of festering mushrooms all day in the dark, she quit after 20mins at work!!!

In reply to TM2:

I got a job in spain a few years back, in an onion warehouse. as you approached it, piles of wrotten cebollas oozed rivers of black, sickly sweet stinking onion juice out of the main gate. rabid dogs on chains then greeted you with attemps at tearing you to shreds.
The work itself involved standing infront of a machine hooked up to a conveyer belt, with a pedal under your foot and an orange sac in your hands. press pedal, and hold bag while it fills with 25kg of spanish onions.
Then i'd lift and stack this bag.
I'd fill 7 bags a minute, thats 175kg per minute, every minute for a 10 hr shift.

175kg x 60mins = 10,500kg per hour.

10,500 x 10 hrs = 100,500kg per day. muchas cebollas.

This was exploitation with a capital 'work yourself into the ground alongside 17stone romanian heavyweights, one of which is gay and likes to touch your ass while you work, and the boss has sadistic tendancies and a penchant for manhandling his workforce.'

on the upside, the wage was crap.


a mate of mine had a job up north in a chicken warehouse, snapping their necks as they passed by strapped to a conveyer belt.

I'm now unemployed and thoroughly disheartened by the thought of the 40 or so years of work ahead of me.

at least its friday...

In reply to TM2:

There was an ad in a local rag last week for a "volunteer toenail cutter for the elderly"

In reply to WillH:

Ouch! Very high risk job, you could be sued for personal injury if you get it wrong.

In reply to TM2:

I think at the moment, second year chemistry student with exams and work thats late in couuld be the all time worse job!

It really can't get any worse, no pay and you simply can't escape it!

In reply to TM2:

one of my friends had a summer job shovelling shit.

my twin had a summer job in a cardboard box factory. apparently that was quite bad. One of his friends spent some time as a chicken wanker.

In reply to TM2:

Used to be a geotechnical engineer for a bunch of landfill sites. One day we found bags of human remains, teeth in one, bits of bone in another. Apparently a load of medical waste had been thrown in with the rest of the garbage. I spent a week wearing a chemical suit and breather unit in the middle of summer in a stinking shit hole.

I complained to the boss and asked to moved to a more interesting site

He moved me to a sewerage works.

I didn't stay in that job for much longer.

In reply to 2pints: You are taking the piss yeah?

Come on where is the pressure, you arent married, no kids, no dependants, it's an absolute doss, I know people go on about it, but I have been there, well still there, just submitting my final thesis to get my doctorate, I havnt been paid in over 6 months, yet that's our choice. we don't have a boss, repsonsibilities. I think you should look at the grand scheme of things, things can get a lot worse.

In reply to CJD: I had a friend who worked in a cardboard box factory too, only they thought it was the bees knees, especially when they got to treat themselves to a few free boxes...

Hmmmmmmmmmmm

In reply to TM2:

Assistant cashier at Payless DIY.

My four or five months experience of underage sexual harrassment and race hate in a rural home improvement store.

James

In reply to 2pints: if you think you can take the worst job title for writing about how you make speed you must be joking.

You have a shock in store for you me'laddie.

In reply to CJD:

A chicken wanker?

<mind boggles at vision>

In reply to nz Cragrat:

I'm not quite sure how it worked. I don't know if he dressed up as a particularly attractive female chicken to get them in the mood, or what.

In reply to TM2: Whilst working as a nurse i had to change an elderly lady, the easiest way of performing a manouver was to get her to lean against the bed whilst standing.

mid change she decided to do a number 2, and with me not thinking or wanting to get it on the floor decided to acually catch it, a split second later i realised what i was doing.

it was warm.

In reply to Chris Georg:

Pmsl ....and more

In reply to Chris Georg:
Can't get that out of my mind

ROFPMSL

In reply to TM2:

had a job cleaning out the under ground filter beds for the water board. Had to go in first and clear enough space (underground) for the workers to get in and start digging.

the worse bits was clearing the mess left on the filters to the sewage farm, all kinds of things from used johhneys ,etc etc basically anything that goes down the loo and ...use your imagination whatever you think of will be right ugh. funniest thing was a finger how the hell do you flush a finger down the loo.!!!!

In reply to TM2:

I have stared into Dante's inferno - it looked like this:


At the side of a road in Kenya there is the bed of a tipper truck, held off the ground by stacks of concrete blocks. In the back of the tipper bed is a quantity of tarmac. Beneath the tipper is a fire, which is melting the tarmac. In the tipper there are four men, wearing shorts and wellington boots, turning the tarmac with rakes. Periodically, a man jumps out, lies on his back with his legs in the air and hot water pours out of his wellies. He then stands back up, refills his boots with cold water and climbs back in. Other men come and take tarmac away in wheelbarrows to build a road, and put raw materials into the tipper. Someone else stokes the fire.


One of the labourers in the tipper saw us staring dumbstruck and pithily observed 'Very bad work this, sir. Very hot work'. Lifetime memory that one.

Minefields are bad. Burning oilfields are bad too. Put the two together, add temperatures of 50 degrees in the shade, and cover the whole lot in heavy crude oil, and then I found myself wondering 'How did I get here?'

Nice money at the time, but older and wiser now.

In reply to TM2: The most dangerous job was working on a caravan park in North Wales, the managers were incompetent, so they'd ask you to build a car park, so I'd drive in and dig out a huge section of a field with a JCB, we'd then ask when is the concrete and stuff arriving? They always forget, so Id spend the next few days returfing the area.

The worst was when I had to dig out the site electricity sub station with a JCB, to save the work having to be done by an electrician (higher wages), I was shitting it digging around these armour plated, must have been about 6 inches thick, power lines.

But I did get to drive around in a tractor with a flashing light, what more does a guy need.

In reply to Iain Ridgway:

We had to empty a toilet in a mountain hut that wasn't designed to be emptied. Basically a building (small) had been built found a 44 gallon drum and given a seat. The only way to remove contents was for two people to squeeze into the small space and with shovels in opposition pincer a pile oof pooh an dremove to the waiting drum outside for helicopter evac - later followed by us.

In reply to Iain Ridgway:

wow, a digger, they are still cool. even now im 32.

In reply to Chris Georg:

In another scenario, those fast reactions of yours could save lives!

In reply to nniff:

I shall never moan about the feeble air conditioning in our office again....

In reply to anonymous1:
funniest thing was a finger how the hell do you flush a finger down the loo.!!!!


With the other hand?

In reply to TM2: Back in my college days, needed some quick cash for a trip to the Lakes
Got a 5 day job to work in a ROCKWOOL warehouse, you know, the stuff made of fibregalss used to keep your house nice and cosy.....
Absolutely awful stuff, this was the middle of summer, and we had to wear anything we could think of to keep the dust particles off our skin...the warehouse had vents but were NOT allowed to use them due to the evil nature of the dust affecting the locals...
Every night had to bath and use sandpaper, scouring brush, wirewool etc to get the stuff out of my skin and stop itching.....Good money though for 5 days work

In reply to TM2:

I saw an interesting job advertised recently "Public Convenience Inspector". Sadly it would involve a communte to Wales which is a bit to far, otherwise I'd have been sorely tempted to apply!!!

In reply to JamesP:

Sorry for the slight hijack, but this reminds me of a joke.

At the Japanese Sewage Workers Convention, 2 chaps get talking.

"Where you work ?" asks the first.
"Nagasaki Sewage Works" replies the second.

"So do I" says the first, "Where abouts ?"
"Number 3 pipe" says the second.

"What a coincidence, I also work number 3 pipe, Nagasaki Sewage works. How long you work there ?"

"5 years"

The first bloke says "I also work 5 years, number 3 pipe, Nagasaki Sewage Works. How come I never see you before ?"

"Dunno", says the other chap, "Must be just Nips that pass in the shite".

In reply to TM2: I spent my summers when I was doing my degree measuring vegetables... mainly peas, though sometimes it was cabbages...

In reply to TM2:

Postman. I belive its no3 from the top position.