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Worst Job I Ever Had

I was 15. A hairdresser neighbour asked me to stand outside a rival hairdressers and count the amount of costumers entering the salon.

After two hours of standing with a hand in my pocket fumbling with a mechanical clicker the police came and took me away. For suspicious behaviour.

Can you beat that? (Best/most humiliating stories will be used for the Radio show on Friday.)

(

rob, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:39, archived)

same happened to me

but i was having a wank

(

MONO!, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:41, archived)

did a hairdresser

ask you to do it too?

(oneofthemany, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:44, archived)

no the little leprechaun ask me to do it

(

MONO!, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:50, archived)

[Irish Voice] Sure enough boy you did good!

Now it's time to BURN them! BURN them GOOD!

(Hey Jonny, Park! Fluffeh Pleece, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 21:34, archived)

"glass collector"

the worst job I have ever had was as a supposed glass collector.. but really that title may aswell have just been "the boy that does all the work". as many of you may know, working with the general public can be bloody annoying, working with a drunk general public is pure hell. To give you an idea of the type of establishment it was, imagine the scene, in a small market town in the north of england.. was a single "club" for want of a better word. which attracted everyone from the local areas on a night out.. from the pre 18's growing as much stubble as possible, too the 50 year olds who should know better... so overall quite a lame place. now it cost £5 of your english pounds to get into this club... cheap you might say... and yes you would be right... the thing is... I didnt work there... I worked at a pub nearby that managed to get a late licence, this place charged a pound to get it, which was re-deemable with the purchase of a drink at the bar... so you can imagine the average customer... it was hell... drunken scum of the earth babbling incoherently.. old women beckoning me over too them only to fill me with horror by cackling "ooooooh are you sweaty love?"... luckly I was only doing it for a few weeks to get some cash together before heading off to uni... but when it came to my final week I began to realise that they thought I was staying for good (there was a guy who did the same job as me in the pub who had been there 12 years) So nearing my last few shifts... I went to speak with my boss and cunningly said "just to remind you that I will be leaving for uni in a week" to which she replied "Oh... err right then" on my last shift I was grinning from ear to ear doing my job with a sense of bliss in my heart that it was my final night... too which one of the employees (who didnt realise I was leaving) picked up on and began to give me a speech about how I had been accepted into the "family" hehe "you started off a bit shakey but you are doing really well now" etc etc... after the customary bottle of becks at the end of the night I left the pub without the majority of the staff realising it was my last night... I was a happy man

(Wires, Sat 15 Nov 2003, 1:34, archived)

A different meaning of Worst Job....

About the worst job I've ever had is tech support for a fairly major home PC retailer. I knew a fair bit about computers when I signed up, went through a weeks' training (amazingly basic, a portent of things to come) and then saddled up for my first day.
Most of the calls were minor technical issues ( 'my PC can't see my Bluetooth printer ) etc etc. However, occasionally we would get a call from some family guy who had just spent £1200 on a PC for the family and obviously had absolutely no idea how to use it ('How do I write a letter to my mum?') Company policy obviously dictated we couldn't spend hours and hours teaching technovirgins how to use their systems. I'd often feel quite sad that they'd wasted so much money.
Still, the job paid well...

(CerberaSpeedTwelve, Sun 16 Nov 2003, 18:01, archived)

i had a handjob.

from the notorious evil penis biting monster of gibralter

(

Sunshine Elephant, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:42, archived)

was it good?

(

MONO!, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:43, archived)

lo sunshine.

feeling fluffier?

(

*f o o f* is a craft-aholic, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:53, archived)

I was working for an electrical contractor

We were rewiring a church, and as the labourer, I had to run the wiring. I was crawling around on my hands and knees in the loft, which was full of years worth of bat shit.

(

HP hasn't been here in aaaaaages, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:43, archived)

as a plumber's mate

I had to crawl under floorboards which was very claustrophobic. Once I panicked and instead of fixing the elbow joint on someone's wastepipe under the sink, I just propped it up with a brick and legged it. Sorry, if I flooded your house.

edit - I also used to clean the toilets in a factory. But I don't want to go into that right now. In fact I wasn't too keen going into them then.

(

Fat Boab of dailyreckless.com fame, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:45, archived)

My brother (who was an electrician with the same company I worked for)

and his boss were working in a remote public toilet. This thing was pretty damn remote, and had no mains sewerage, so they used a chemical toilet, using the same blue stuff that your parents used for the caravan's porta-potty.

His boss (who is also an electrician, but thinks he's a plumber) connected the pump up and turned the power on, covering my brother from head to toe in blue stuff.

He came home looking like a smurf.

(

HP hasn't been here in aaaaaages, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:53, archived)

working in a plumbing team...

many a time I've had to go down 3/4 meter drains to unblock the rascals.When you do get it unblocked it fills up so quick with human shite you've got to race up the ladder like billy-o in waders,and on more than one occasion me foot has come out of the boot bit and panic gripped me with fear of drowning in excrement.

great feeling when you get out mind.

(Loft, Fri 14 Nov 2003, 16:34, archived)

Bat shit on your hands and knees is nothing

You should try preparing church bells for rehanging by removing bits of aforementioned bells and stuff by lying on your back in the years of bat shit (so it's in your hair and everything)

Worst of all I wasn't getting paid it was volunteer work for the church :S

Cat

(BlackCat, Sat 15 Nov 2003, 5:22, archived)

you own fucking fault

for being a beleiver then...

(

Azra3l Lubrication Persuasion and Brute Force ™, Sun 16 Nov 2003, 16:53, archived)

I was once employed in a plastics factory

loading and unloading a machine that cut shapes out of the plastic.

I found the job so mind-numbing, I'd deliberately do it wrong to break the machine every once ina while. The little cutting tool would snap off and some man would have to come and fix it, and I enjoyed chatting to him for 20 minutes while he fixed it, and then I'd have to get on again. I was told the cutting bits cost £200 each, but I considered breaking them three times a week in order to speak to other humans a price woth paying....

(

Mr Gear the gay-maker, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:43, archived)

how long until they realised that maybe you werent the man for the job

(

MONO!, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:44, archived)

It was a 3-week temp job.

hahah

(

Mr Gear the gay-maker, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:46, archived)

haha!

I used to work in a factory that made pizza. I work in the area where the crusts were made. Whenever I was feeling bored I would "accidentally" get a pan stuck in the press.

The best part was that I had also learned how to fix it, so I would get a pat on the back from the boss, and an extra 20 minute break.

(

cwethan, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 20:52, archived)

Argh,

I've had a few of those jobs; the worst was cutting big bits of waste copper into small bits of waste copper in a copper-sulphate making factory. The only person I could talk to was a nasty little paedophile, and then only during breaks 'cause it was so noisy. I took to accidentally jamming the giant guillotine to see if I could make it explode. It did, and I legged it. That job really sucked.

(clutch puppy, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 8:42, archived)

Wanking horses

actually thats less of a job, more of a hobby

what?! why are you looking at me like that? Baz aint around and i dunno if Sick Boy is either, so someone has to lower the tone

(

the_fabulous_dancing_yak You like game? You come see 5punk.co.uk. You like!, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:43, archived)

Wanking horses

for fun and profit. Coming to a book store near you soon.

(spudmonkey Now MrPineapple can sex me from behind. Don't ask!, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:51, archived)

name that quote

"It's important to have a job that makes a difference, boys. That's why I manually masturbate caged animals for artificial insemination"

(

manolith hooray for me, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 14:35, archived)

kevin smith

clerks...im a geek!!

(loulou, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 16:45, archived)

ding ding ding

we have a weiner

(

manolith hooray for me, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 16:53, archived)

worst job

I used to work at edinburgh zoo. my job was to circumcise the elephants.

The pay was crap, but the tips were enormous.

(albert o'balsam, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 22:25, archived)

hahaha

That's fricking hilarious punnage!

(DonkeyRhubarb, Mon 17 Nov 2003, 7:23, archived)

baz? sick boy?

staffs uni boys?

(Chunk Mcfunk, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:16, archived)

worst job I nearly had

was when I worked out in Dubai as a DJ.

The cess-pit in the hotel had a probelm and they wanted someone to go in there and unblock it, they were offering £1,000 but I just couldn't quite bring myself to do it

(

thebear is thebear, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:44, archived)

I would've done it.

see above.

(

Fat Boab of dailyreckless.com fame, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:47, archived)

a DJ's work

is never done...

(

packetslut, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:04, archived)

at hmv

i think they taught most of the managers to be schizophrenic. i lost count of the number of times one of them would decide the stockroom would work much better if someone, ie me, moved these several thousand cds from this end of the room over to that end. and then a day later decide that wasn't so good, and get me to move them all back again.

(

zerolicious, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:45, archived)

also at hmv

I spent a good while as a stockroom bod, eventually stockroom controller oooh get me! It sucked so much and in so many ways but I eventually left when in our Christmas meeting they told us that we had the choice of either leaving at normal time on Xmas Eve (8pm ish)and working boxing day or staying til 1am Christmas day putting out the sale. I got told off for being insubordinate for asking what the Xmas temps were for if we had to do such daft hours over Christmas. Resigned the following Monday and have never ever looked back...

(Bezmina, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 9:05, archived)

evil middle management

I worked there too and spent many a long, long night rearranging the DVD floor by taking all the stock out of the pockets, ane pocket at a time, and putting it 2 feet further down, also one pocket at a time. Did get free beer tho, but doesn't really make up for the wasted hours of my life. I think they train the area managers to wander in once a week and tell you to undo whatever they told you to do last time, just cos there's bugger all else for them to do.

(extra*fancy, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 15:32, archived)

retrieving lobsters

from Jane Mansfield's bum

(

Slim has found god. He was down the back of the sofa., Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:45, archived)

glad we got that one out the way early

(

rob, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:46, archived)

that's what she said!

(oneofthemany, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:49, archived)

arf!

(

manolith hooray for me, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 14:45, archived)

Never go

to see on a bogie!

(Doctor Evil, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 10:35, archived)

Did

you do that too?

(

Cromagnon Don't waste my motherfucking time!, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:47, archived)

ha!

(

jsut peopel, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:47, archived)

I think the lobsters got a nip out of it

(Goatse not a comedy account, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 22:11, archived)

Full-time jizz-mopper

in an adult cinema.

*dreams*

(

CarlosTheJackal, protector of innocence, taker of liberties, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:45, archived)

Suckatarium

A mate of my girlfriends was travelling in Austrailia for a year. Work for backpackers tends to dry up for a couple of months during the winter but his brother (who'd been there a few years previously) told him if he was really desperate there was a place in Perth called "The Suckatarium" that always needed staff. The place was much like your avearge sex shop (with one paticularly amusing video entitled "I'll make your brown eye red") with a few booths at the back. These booths only had space to stand in and had a hole cut in the back wall for you to stick your cock through. The place was notionally a gay place, but the shop employed anybody (I mean anybody) regardless if gender or anything else who were willing to do it. This guy's job was to go in every so often and clear up the last 5 or 6 blokes filthy yoghurt. Poor guy left 4 times but had to return each time cos he was so skint.

(Retford Tourist Board, Fri 14 Nov 2003, 13:38, archived)

I worked in McDonalds

for 5 weeks.

Do I have to say more?

(

icezebra *insert large monkey*, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:45, archived)

a detail that was particularly humiliating

would be nice

(

rob, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:47, archived)

He just said he worked in McDonald's for 5 weeks.

How much more humiliating do you want?

(

Cromagnon Don't waste my motherfucking time!, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:49, archived)

I can't go into it

*shiver*
oh the shame.

(

icezebra *insert large monkey*, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:51, archived)

I had a (very thick) friend who had a McJob and got into minus stars on his badge

when people purchase kiddie meals they have a boy one and a girl one and you need to give over the appropriate type, a lady with her little child asked for a kiddie meal to which my friend enquiring of the gender asked "wot is it?" and was docked a star he didn't have.

He didn't quit

(

Prof UnderCover evitable, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:09, archived)

I know someone who has worked at maccy d's for 10 yrs employee of year what a loser

(Life's So Much Better On Holiday, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 23:00, archived)

I once worked in a Little Chef.

that's got to be worse than MacDonalds

(Cousin It, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 13:10, archived)

when I was 16

I worked in a Little Chef. For £2.50 an hour I picked up mashed chips off the floor, got sworn at by inbreds with 28 kids and swept dead earwigs out of the chiller room. And on the hottest day of the year (August Bank Holiday) I found maggots breeding under the milkshake frother thing. I was told to wash them down the sink with boiling water.

Early riser anyone?

(extra*fancy, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 15:37, archived)

I had the fun 9pm-3am shift at a McD's on a major truck route.

The truckies were ok, but as you can imagine we also got a lot of drunken wankers - which meant brawls and people passing out. A favourite hobby of many customers was to take the pickles out of burgers and make mosaics on the windows with them, as well as just generally trashing the joint. Not fun to try and control or clean up after. We hid behind the counter hoping we wouldn't get threatened or worse.

The owners were too fucking cheap to have security guards or anything to protect us. Fortunately, we were 'adopted' by a local bikie gang. The leader had a regular corner table where he'd just sit, looking big, hairy and mean (actually, he was lovely) while we fed him free food. He often came to our rescue and saved us from the humiliation of having to clean up after shit, mosaic making customers by making them clean up after themselves. They never argued with him. That was very satisfying to watch.

(

HairyCanary as Ann B. Davis as Alice, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 23:14, archived)

! What a nice guy!

Wouldn't mind him at my teenage job. In a little Arbys with the worst hygeine possible for a chain resteraunt. The boss was a jerk, and we (for less than minimum wage, see farther down) scraped shit, ( yes, meant literally) mustard, unmentionable mess, and even dried blood off the floor, tables, seats, windows, even off the grill. A woman with like 2 snivveling brats came EVERY SINGLE FREAKING DAY and always ordered QUOTE" a hammyburger for wittle Susana and a big fries for Dracole" and when the staff refused to refer to it as a "hammyburger", or never went " Oh, what a gorgeous blonde princess that is! Oh, look at the handsome prince, Dracole!" she would swear like a sailor, colorfully and loudly. Finally after 2 years, the place was shut down because they were paying us 3 times less than minimum wage. I only stayed that long because they had me on contract. !!!

(number 27-hunter, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 22:22, archived)

Oh god, I hated working in McDonalds. (Worked for 6 months there!)

One particularly lovely moment was when I got the compactor, stuffed it with some bags. And the compactor basically squishes down the rubbish so it's much smaller and easier to dispose of. Well, this case the guard on it broke, popped a cup of coke. Causing coke and hamburger jizz to spray all over the room. Lovely Jubbily!

Getting slagged off by customers was another favourite.

The smell made the girlfriend REALLY horny*

Oh yes, and you actually see how they cook the burgers!

Couldn't wait to get out of there. Horray studentism! And working in Tescos. Look out for Stu the Deli boy! :)

*not really

(Spin Doctor, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:59, archived)

Say no more

thank you for your honesty, consider your sins purged.

(minikins, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 17:24, archived)

MAC DONALDS

I worked on McD for 4 weeks :)

At the end of my final day i started ordered fake meals from the kitchen; like "QP without meat and bread" and "BigMac flurry with ice" :)

I also asked customers if they would like pee ("kiss" in swedish which sound like "is" which is the swedish word for ice) in their coke. If they said something like "What did you say?" I articulated the right question just to make them feel dumb.

That was a pretty good time. :)

(TuffPirat, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 22:42, archived)

Old Macdonalds

Christ on a bike. I worked at the golden arches for 3 and a half years during holidays and weekends, about 10 years ago..

Yes I hated it.

I never got a star, as I refused to take a test to prove my knowledge of the temperature of boiling fat.

For a 3 week period I was 'in charge of the fries' I stank of fries, morning noon and night, and was greasy as all hell. I begged to do another job after 2 nights of nightmares being chased by giant yellow fries.

I was given childrens parties - a pretty good job, as you are away from the cooking (hot dangerous stuff). However there is nothing worse than 8yr old boys birthday parties. This one little shit kept coming up and stamping on my feet "You have to do exactly what I say!" and punching me.

A little later, when I was bringing a tray full of drinks, he ran over and punched me in the nuts.

'Unfortnately' this resulted in me dropping all the drinks on the little bastard - cola, milkshake, orange juice. I wasn't asked to do them after that.

There are many more stories I could give, but I am a little uncertain of libel laws, and no, I haven't eaten their food since my third day there.

(

Geej, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 9:59, archived)

I worked in Burger King for a year when I was 16

My friend and I used to turn up for our evening shifts pretty drunk. We once couldn't be bothered to mop the floor properly at the end of an evening, so we made up an extra strong solution of Flash and poured it over the floor. It had to be cleaned again the following morning (not by us I hasten to add).

My friend also accidently put mayonnaise in the shake machine, so customers were served strawberry and chocolate flavour mayonnaise. We only had one complaint though...

And I got a written warning for telling someone to go to MacDonalds if they wanted a banana milskshake.

It was like letting the fucking Chuckle Brothers loose in Burger King.

(

thorpe www.voodootrombonequartet.com, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 13:23, archived)

"in charge of the fries"

shirley, a better title would be-
lord of the fries

(

manolith hooray for me, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 14:49, archived)

'Lord of the Fries''

Good one centurion,

Although the still present scars up and down my arms and legs from splashed boiling fat don't make it quite so funny.

Oh and the joy of playing with fat.
It comes wrapped in plastic, but in a cardboard box. So you have a big lump of solid fat to play with... A total bastard to clear up.

Oh the smell, just thinking of it make me want to gag..

(

Geej, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 17:12, archived)

Scarred for life

I have a Macca's scar that looks like the 'greater than or equal to' sign.

(Firestarter, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 9:48, archived)

I couldn't even get into McDonald's.

First job interview and all that, I felt completely destroyed for weeks that I wasn't good enough to flip burgers. Then I remembered that I'm a lazy sod and didn't like working anyway.

(A Wooden Leg Named Smith, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 15:15, archived)

my brother isn't good enough to buy food from mc donalds

he's banned from all of them in our area for driving dangerously* around their car parks in his sporty car...

* i think they were jealous cos his donuts were better than theirs

(professor honky straight fonky, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 21:32, archived)

I've never met him

but just from your description there, I can tell without a shadow of a doubt that your brother is a fucking twat.

(

Lumpbucket tekcubpmuL, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 13:11, archived)

A Twat Indeed

We get the same sort of white-tracksuited, cap wearing dildos at our local drive though in Braintree. Spinning around the car park in their pathetic, poorly 'modified' Vauxhall Novas mouthing off the, undeserving, staff.

Fucking wankers.

You should kick your brother in the nuts.

(Speculum, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 13:48, archived)

Did you say "Braintree", Gurnox?

I'm from there... had a pretty crap job at a food additives place on the Springfield Industrial Estate. Job basically consisted of tipping big bags of stuff into a hopper that fed a conveyor belt, which then fed into another bag. Four girls picked "high quality" bits out of the stuff on the belt, I then had to re-package the stuff at the far end and load it onto a pallet. Ah, deep joy. Also, whenever we had a delivery of Guar Gum I had to help unload the container. Hot, dirty, hard work, and at the end of it you were covered from head to foot in Guar Gum dust, which was sticky yet at the same time slimy. And difficult to clean off. And did I mention slimy? And what the fuck IS Guar Gum, anyway?

(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 14:16, archived)

Hell on Earth

Yes, I am one of the residents of the thriving metropolis that is Braintree. That job sounds distressing.

Have had a few real stinkers. I suppose the worst was at a well known insurance company.

My day consisted of reading the same questions out over the phone hour after hour day in day out never knowing if you are being listened in on by some Hitleresque 'team' leader. To call the job monotonous would be an understatement.

The only good thing about it was the anonymnity of working with about 500 other people. I'd regularly turn up pissed out of my mind and, on one memorable occaision, after dropping 3 tabs of very strong acid. I was found, luckily by a like minded soul, on my knees deep in conversation with the coffee machine. Couldn't stop laughing at one man who was genuinely called Father Ted. Oh, and then someone called with the name 'Kok Chewa'. I was in tears of laughter, babbling incoherent gibberish at two people who wanted nothing more than an insurance quote. To this day I have no idea how I got away with it.

Used to steal other peoples logins and attach comments to customer files such as 'NO QUOTE - Customers' house is built entirely from Terrapins' and 'Customer is really a woman. Is angered if you don't call him 'Hilary'.

Hated my 99% of my colleagues to the extent that I kept a framed picture of Charles Manson on my desk to try and keep them away and spent quiet moments firing paper-clips at them with a rubber band. Had to stop when, on one occaision, I drew blood. At least it stopped the grumpy bitch talking to me.

Last day was fun though. Had drunk 7 pints before I'd even got in (PM shift) and proceeded to work my way through two bottles of wine and a 6 pack I'd hidden in my desk the day before. The first, and last, time I've ever had to be carried out of a job. Customers couldn't understand a word I was saying on the phone due to my slurred speach. Just as well as I was mainly swearing at them by that point. Well, when I wasn't just automatically cutting them off to see how fast I could make the number of calls holding go down....

(Speculum, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 14:40, archived)

You

sound like a complete tosspot to me, so probably the 99% of your colleagues you didn't like had a similar opinion- - - - - - -

(anotheradam, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 0:46, archived)

True

Yes, you're probably right. Tosspot and proud of it.

(Speculum, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 12:22, archived)

Problem is

if you give an ape a uniform, they're giong to pull rank!

(anotheradam, Fri 14 Nov 2003, 4:06, archived)

Anyway

Besides, they had never, from day one of me getting there, given me any illusions as to what they thought of me. Aside from those I did not want to spear with paperclips, who were a lovely bunch, they were the biggest bunch of back-biting, untrustworthy, two-faced, stupid people I have come across in my life. Can't believe the crap I used to take from them on a daily, enough to make life a living hell, basis. And these were just the staff. The managers were a whole different kettle of fish entirely.

Tosspot? Probably. Self defence and revenge? Certainly...

(Speculum, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 14:47, archived)

Also worked on the Broomfield Estate one summer

Testing suppressors. Basically this involved connecting two leads to two crocodile clips, checking the reading you got and making sure it was within limits. Again and again. And again. All day, every day... Although to be fair, sometimes you got to try your hand at a different job for a couple of hours - such as soldering (sitting over a hot pot of molten solder - mmm, nice fumes) or high voltage testing (50,000 volts, to be precise - never have I listened more carefully when the boss told me "and whatever you do, don't touch that wire!")... ho hum, things we do for money, eh?

(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 12:22, archived)

Monotony

Yes, the dull jobs are the worst aren't they? Followed closely by the jobs that turn you into a complete bastard.

Worked for a company that sold 'charity' advertising on behalf of some major charities. A hideous place that expected you to sing the company song and would generally try to brainwash you into 'being positive' before sticking you on the phone to rip money out of people. The worst thing about it was finding out that, from the hundreds of thousands (literally) of pounds this company generated, all the charities got was a crappy magasine produced for them chock full of adverts.

Lived in daily fear of walking out of work and having a TV camera shoved in my face and some Littlejohn type bloke asking me 'why I was doing it'.

After I'd left, a national paper ran an expose on the whole charity advertising scam naming one of my ex-colleagues. Couldn't have happened to a greedier, nastier, more stupid waste of flesh either.

Mind you, at least I didn't have voltage to worry about :-)

(Speculum, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 12:33, archived)

Sounds like...

A pretty average day in a traditional British Call Centre to me...

(Mr Joe Bangles, Mon 17 Nov 2003, 11:52, archived)

Call Center Hell

You've got it. Another good boredom reliever is the 'see how long you can keep people on hold while you get a coffee, go for a piss, sit staring into the middle distance e.t.c.' game.

Twenty-five minutes was my record. The customer didn't even get angry. Shame.

(Speculum, Mon 17 Nov 2003, 12:51, archived)

6 months hard labour

I did a 6 month stretch in McD when I was 18, after 3 months I was 'promoted' to being a 'night-closer', i.e. 11pm to 7am spent in a team of four cleaning up.

Our team leader was a really nice black guy called Pete who was used to night work being an ex-burglar. We used to piss about a lot, having power hose water fights etc. but always managed to get the work done by 7am when the manager turned up.

One night we spent from 12.00 to 5am playing cards in the staffroom then went mad trying to finish in time. We failed.

7am Roger the manager turns up, "Hey man, how come you're not finished?" he asked Pete.
"We just couldn't get it together" he answered.
"OK, that's cool"

I don't know, if I'd tried it, I'd have out on my ear!

(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 15:28, archived)

I never thought it would get any worse...

I worked at a McDonalds for an entire year. Needless to say, I am now a vegetarian. But that wasnt the worst job... I now work at a tiny pet store. I clean dog shit for under minimum wage. I have to take care of sick and dirty puppies AND sick and dirty customers. You dont really get much worse than that. Once, I had to give a chihuahua CPR. No joking. And have you ever had a puppy die in your lap? All the internal organs shut down, and this awful-smelling body fluid pours out of every orifice in its little body. Yes, worst job ever.... been there for 3 years! Im a sick little bugger, hmm?

(skinnydip485, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 18:16, archived)

worst job i ever had was working for a small medical pr agency in west london...

aside from that, probably packing shoe polish. 10 of us would sit by a conveyer belt for 2 hours at a time, putting 12 tins of kiwi at a time into boxes. they's play the radio - virgin unfortunately - just a little bit too quietly to be heard over the machinery. for £3 an hour.

or possibly cleaning pub toilets.

(

new_matt, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:46, archived)

i read that

as a 'small medical pregnancy'

(

ilovemy5dollarhorse All things considered, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:50, archived)

seconded

(KurutteiruRisu, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 18:39, archived)

thirded...

but thats because my reading skills are atrocious

long live the never-employed-16-year-old-ism!!

(chrismuzz, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 21:54, archived)

fourthed

sorry, i like joining bandwagons.

(Ukatoton, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 16:30, archived)

Fifthed

I also like joiningh in.

(number 27-hunter, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 22:28, archived)

damn

missed lucky 7 by one spot

(

AgentMuu hentai coordination, Mon 17 Nov 2003, 3:34, archived)

reminds me of a friend of mine

He was about 35 and I hadn't seen him all summer. I said, "what have you been up to Kev?"

"Oh I've been working in a factory," replied Kev, "Sellotaping boxes."

"Sounds sucky", I commiserated.

"The worst bit was when I noticed the floor was a bit mucky," Kev said quietly, "I got out the vacuum and had a go at it. My 19 year old boss stopped me and shouted, 'You don't have the authority to use the vacuum. Get back to the sellotape.'"

(

rob, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:51, archived)

excellent

i also worked in a factory that made and packaged neutralia (sp?) and john frieda hair and beauty products. £3.50 an hour, 8 hours a day packing £20 bottles of muck for rich women.

"Frizz-Ease: it costs a bomb, but makes your hair look nice*"

*knocked up in bradford by a bloke called mick. he was sacked by BNFL

(

new_matt, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:54, archived)

arf

i love factories like that

(wizbits_armpit, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:57, archived)

Bulb picking

Get up at 7, get driven in a cattle truck with other spotty teenagers to a field.
Crawl on your hands and knees in the blistering sun for 6 hours on hard, caked mud, trying to prise daffodil bulbs out of large lumps of earth.
A tractor drove behind you making sure you went fast enough. A lucky few were given gloves. Bloodied hands and knees were an added bonus.
Get paid a tenner for the pleasure.
Repeat until summer is over.

(

butchbint, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:46, archived)

I knew someone who

Had a job hanging live chickens onto hooks in an abattoir. Same bloke had another job sprinkling four leaves of lettuce onto pre-made salads on a production line. He wasn't sure which was the worse job.

(

butchbint, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:48, archived)

Ain't nobody here....

Fairly gruesome. I got a job in a turkey abbatoir - not hooking up the live birds, but pulling off stubbon feathers after they'd been dunked in a tank of boiling water. The most stubbon were between the turkeys' legs, and as I plucked at the swinging hot dead birds crotches at face level, liquid turkey shit would ooze out of their anuses.

When tea-break came, I went to the changing room, got changed and left without a word to anyone (including the 2 other lads I gave a lift to in the morning). Told the agency it made me feel sick and I've not eaten turkey since (11 years). Funnily enough, I still like chicken...

(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 17:00, archived)

Urgh you win

Mine was a mind numbingly dull job in the post room of a finance company. I was taking the staples and paperclips out of big piles of paper documents so that some other underpaid monkey could put them in the microfiche. The floor manager was from the Hitler school of man management and wouldn't allow any talking at all in the open plan office. She clicked her fingers at me on the morning of the second day and I walked out. I faxed her from my friend's house to the effect of "you may have noticed I'm not in the office, and I'm not coming back either". Awful and got paid about a fiver.

My dad also worked there and nearly killed me when he found out I'd walked out

(rachboc, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 17:45, archived)

I too worked in a foul factory (pun intended)

Night shift. Arrived at 1am.
Instructed to wear white coat, paper hat, wellies, marigolds.
led to a room at minus 6 degrees and stood under the cold air blower.
The floor awash with six inches of a mixture of chicken blood and barbacue sauce.
machines everywhere making so much noise that I couldn't hear myself retch.
Supervisor with a VERY strong middle-eastern accent, couldn't understand him in a quiet room , let alone in the factory.
I was instructed to move these chickens from there to here...no, go faster...faster...faster.

..cold, so cold
..loud, so loud
..tired, so tired
blood everywhere, running down my arms, filling my boots.

Break time. Dumped the boots, gloves, coat, hat.
in car.
home
bed
peace.

Never to return.

Total time working for John Rannock Foods...
Two hours.

It does not appear on my CV.

(

NobbyNobody 21 years a b3tan, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 19:02, archived)

Marigolds?

aren't they some kind of yellow/orange flower?
was it to take the smell of chicken away?

(RiotMoose, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 17:18, archived)

Yeah

but in this case they're rubber gloves

(Rev. Otana, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 13:44, archived)

When my Dad was a student...

He had a job sucking the lungs out of chicken carcasses. Not himself, obviously, he had a little vacuum gun thing. Apparently, after the chickens have been gutted, the lungs are more firmly attached to the ribcage than everything else, so they have to be removed separately. He never told me what happened if he left them in there...

(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 14:25, archived)

I used to pick potatoes

very similar to bulb picking I feel... except we had to do it in the cold... and they forced us to eat coal*

* that isn't true

(

Prof UnderCover evitable, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:53, archived)

I used to stand on a mechine attached to a tractor

going through a potato field and take all the stone the machine had pulled up and throw them into the middle so they didn't go into the trailer of the tractor besides us...

(

AzToTheRescue The arsehole formally known as Az The S slur, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 17:18, archived)

sounds much like my experiences of bean / pea picking

with added green creepy crawlies. Strawberry picking was even worse, I spent an hour cyling to the farm and two hours picking strawbs before I realised how little money I was making and went home without bothering to pick it up.

(

100% kitten better than ever, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:53, archived)

the problem

with bulbs was that they were all buried - you really had to dig into the solid earth with your hands to get them out.
"I used to dream of picking strawberries"

(

butchbint, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:56, archived)

yeah! Damn the man!

(

Prof UnderCover evitable, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:57, archived)

i picked strawberries for 2 months

come day go day, on my hands and knees crawling in mud and dry dirt. the worst wasnt actually the picking it was the intense pain on my knees and back and on my arse cos i ate as much as i picked.

(

Mosschops, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:06, archived)

hhaha

I misread that as bean flicking....
*hangs head*

(

wanky art student is liable to phwoar at any minute, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 20:26, archived)

i used to be a lumberjack in a mushroom farm

used to get 70p an hour

(

abaddon, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:25, archived)

what?

how big were the mushrooms??

(Mr M@ Probably not that difficult!, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 17:43, archived)

thankyou

your post was the first to make me laught this morning

(Bingo, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 9:05, archived)

anytime

(Mr M@ Probably not that difficult!, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 10:07, archived)

Pig farming

Get up at 6, wade through pig s**t and p**s all day, come home stinking of it. The worst parts however were (i) being charged by sows - bearing in mind they weigh more than a teenager and run considerably quicker (ii) pigs due the chop in a week or so are sprayed with red paint - they know this and do everything possible to remove it (iii) the pig screams when finally sent for the chop.

Depressing. Funnily enough I no longer eat pork.

(breadtroll, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 10:35, archived)

I have had some dreadful jobs

I spent two weeks at a games factory pulling counters off the plastic mould things when they came out of the machine, and two weeks in the dog food factory directing dried dog food into packets which made me smell beeeeyootiful, as well as a couple of months worht of evenings putting silly health supplements into boxes. I also spent two weeks on the PC world coverplan helpline when they appeared on watchdog and spent a memorable summer washing up in a stately home kitchen for something ridiculous like £1.50 an hour. I spent nearly three years working part-time at Ladbrokes watching smelly old men smoking roll-ups obsessively put all their pension / dole money / child allowance on small men making really large animals run as fast as they can. I'm sure I've got some amoosing stories from Ladbrokes, but my mind's gone blank, how useful.

(

100% kitten better than ever, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:47, archived)

Blimey you have had a colourful life.

All I've done is tedious office junior-temp jobs - photocopying, stuffing envelopes, answering the phones. I feel quite deprived now.

(

MizEmma, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:50, archived)

Well can anyone beat this???

Here's a list of all the jobs I've done/places I've worked in the last 25-odd years that I can remember. Most are in order but it gets confused as I've done so much temping:

Paper boy, asst. to window dresser, kitchen asst./waiter, McDonalds, barman in City luncheon club, grape picker (also involved interpreting between Catalan farmer and 3 Welsh lads), satsuma/orange/olive picker (France, Germany, Crete), drink seller (beach in Nice), drill warehouse, print warehouse, commissionaire, furniture mover, post-room for Readers' Digest & Olivetti, filing clerk in family planning clinic, driver's mate on laundry truck, butter stacker at Tesco, night clerk at 7-11, catering asst. at Kew Gardens, filing clerk at DHSS, admin. asst. at Kew Gardens, asst. to woodworker, burger flipper, Saturday yard boy at builders' merchant, self-employed cabinet-maker, asst. to product designer, line-feeder in razor factory, milk-bottling plant (fishing notes out of bottles), video library for Scandinavian satellite company, turkey abbatoir, barman, bar supervisor, odd-job man, gardener, and lastly 5 years in an insurance company.

In there somewhere are 1 year on a catering course, degree in art & design technology and a year's teacher training.

"There I throw my gauge!"

(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 14:14, archived)

Jeeez

What do you do now?

(

Toma_o, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:56, archived)

she's a mastic asphalt spreader

i don't know why i bother saying this, noone ever knows what it means

(

new_matt, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:59, archived)

Liquid or Automated?

(

Toma_o, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:01, archived)

Sounds

rude whatever it is!

(

butchbint, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:03, archived)

www.b3ta.com/board/163117

it was part of our "careers" lesson when i was at high school. for some reason this chap called neville sponge wanted to be one. i never understood why.

(

new_matt, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:08, archived)

Neville Sponge!!!!

Yes! Neville Sponge, wanted to be a brain surgeon but was convinced to be a mastic asphalt spreader!! Thank God someone else remembers it... Nostalgic sigh...
Oh, and the worst job I ever had was in a packing factory (certain theme emerging here) putting shampoo bottles into cardboard boxes. Not bad, except the corrugated cardboard was so sharp and the box so badly designed that every time you tucked the flaps in (ooooer) it took a neat little roll of skin of the back of your fingers.
By the end of the day my fingers looked like those novelty butter curls your mum used to impress dinner guests with in the 70's, except bloodier.
Quit that day, went home to cry.

(testmeuk, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 17:24, archived)

I remember that!

There was a YTS (or YOPS, whatever) leaflet doing the rounds that had my then assistant Venture* leader on it!
There was a photo of him accomapnied by a quote about why he chose to work in a dark room**...

*big Scouts- you got to wear (pale) brown shirts & march a lot...

**Not as exciting as it might appear

(

Duncan Disorderly, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 18:18, archived)

Bill Tarmey

aka Jack Duckworth out of Corrie, started out as a mastic asphalt spreader

(

smutch, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 19:07, archived)

Yes I remember that too

Christ I never thought I'd hear someone else remember that mastic asphalt spreading joke. It's pretty obsure. I recall that also Neville Sponge was drawn with extremely phallic-shaped ears (or did I just imagine that?).

My list of shit jobs is endless.
The first one was washing up in the kitchen of a local hotel at 16. Evening shifts ended at 2 in the morning, the washing liquid gave me severe eczema. I gave up when my arms starting bleeding badly.
Another one that sticks in my mind was working in a almond processing plant one summer. There was a particularly nasty boss there called Maurice. I never truly understood the power of hate until I met Maurice. His favourite pastime was bollocking the girls on the production line when they stopped momentarily to turn over the tapes in their walkmans. He started to pick on me when I got a broken finger from a motorbike accident, purposefully giving me jobs like lifting heavy sacks to exacerbate my pain. Most of these jobs were superfluous, it's just that wanted me to give in. He said so. His only motive for hurting people was pleasure. He was an evil man.

Anyway I studied hard, went on and got a degree and do better things while I like to think that he squandered the rest of his existence in that same shithole doing nothing useful with his life.

After I graduated I got a hotel bar job just to tide me over until the big offers would come rolling in.
I quit after one evening. The job wasn't bad but by chance I noticed a chef from that first hotel where I worked 7 years ago. This was symbolic.
For me, the circle was complete. I started in a hotel kitchen, I ended in a hotel kitchen. My life was a rags to rags story.

I was gutted. And I'm sure Maurice would have loved that.

(trollbite, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 23:13, archived)

i remember that too, but then I did go to the same school

(wilby, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 13:02, archived)

worst job EVER

rolling eggs down a chute to be cracked into a big vat of eggy goo at an omlette factory.

Not only did the place stick of chicken shit and rancid eggs, but i was working with this german guy who's english was pretty poor and had breath that could kill. Every time he spoke to me he would shout loudly just a couple of inches away from my face.

I refused to go back after just 1 day

(wizbits_armpit, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:47, archived)

Well

When I was 16 i had a summer job at a local farm. My job was to sort potatos into size order - the dullest, most mind-numbing job ever in the history of the world. So, when i had the a shipment of tatties came in from cyprus I was 'excited' to be selected to go to the new warehouse to sort these potatoes instead (anything was better than this!)
What i didn't know was that these potatos were a 'salvage' lot from a cargo which had capsized on the way to the UK. 90% were ruined - but 10% were usable. For the sake of one in every ten potatoes being just about edible, i spent three fucking weeks covered in mouldy, splurging, whitish/green scum. The smell was foul - really puke-inducing. After I and my colleague had finished this shitty, shitty task - the very night we finished, a storm caused the farm and farm buildings to flood.

The edible 10% were now ruined.

(I have never since been able to eat a baked potato with cheese)

(

ilovemy5dollarhorse All things considered, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:48, archived)

Cleaning out a basement...

...in preparation for a McDonalds. I was working for an agency and I had to empty out a basement full of rubble and building materials in a shopping centre in preparation for a McDonalds. Unfortunately, all the builders used it as a toilet and I had to shovel out 150 builders worth of shit as well. Builders are not the most house trained people. Nice. Now it is a McDonalds store room and part of the kitchen. Yum.

edit: I just remember my worstest job ever. I worked in an Abattoir for 6 weeks during the summer when I was 17. Chicken death, 10 ton vats of chicken giblet, bones and bloodied feathers. I am psychologically scarred.

(

Toma_o, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:49, archived)

I once worked in the Gyle in Edinburgh.... for a Bank

I was young and I needed the money, it was that or prostitution... after 3 days I jacked it in and went back on the dole.

Not a very interesting story, but it is the worst job I ever had...

(

Prof UnderCover evitable, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:49, archived)

urgh

the gyle is fucking soulless. i narrowly avoided getting a job there.

(

zerolicious, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:51, archived)

it is my dirtiest of Secrets

and I intend to rectify it by one day blowing the whole place up and freeing the drones who populate it... in a freeing them from the mortal coil sense.

(

Prof UnderCover evitable, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:55, archived)

an Edinburgh person who hasn't bought the boabster a drink?

Reveal yourself man. PS -are you going to see ballboy tonight?

(

Fat Boab of dailyreckless.com fame, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:52, archived)

Hello

:)

(in what sense am I to reveal myself to you?)

(

Prof UnderCover evitable, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:53, archived)

run!

don't you know when you're being groomed?

(

zerolicious, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:59, archived)

I am a mere supple 15 year old girl

I have no concept of what grooming is... does it involve some sort of brush.

I like makeup :)

(

Prof UnderCover evitable, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:02, archived)

you watch what you're doing with your besmirching me lad

or I'll come round and slap your head.

(

Fat Boab of dailyreckless.com fame, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:03, archived)

fat boab

is rubbish

(

zerolicious, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:09, archived)

I meant are you undercover

and have you ever been to a bash? I get confused easily at people's name changes.

(

Fat Boab of dailyreckless.com fame, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:02, archived)

no I aint never been to a bash

but I do intend to go to one one day... I also intend to start posting some pictures of somesort, but all I ever seem to do is post stuff no one finds funny...

(

Prof UnderCover evitable, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:12, archived)

just like Zero then

(

Fat Boab of dailyreckless.com fame, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:15, archived)

I'm waiting until I've got 1000 posts under my belt

and then... KABLAMO...!

(

Prof UnderCover evitable, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:20, archived)

don't worry

we're lovely.

and that's never stopped fat boab.

(

zerolicious, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:15, archived)

in the days when

sunday trading was illegal i had to go into little corner shops and buy things like tins of peas. walk out , walk in again and say to the little old lady behind counter "youre nicked granny" felt SO bad bout that.

(Captain Slasher, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:56, archived)

Crap job

I got a temp job "Updating the database for elderly care" for my local council. I spent a fortnight deleting dead people. Really cheery. Ah well - at least they were all gimmers.

(JSB, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:59, archived)

On the bright side...

you'd only have to do it once.

(Pseudonym, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 7:55, archived)

One a stag-do we were in a titty-bar (clichéd I know),

and I watched with interest as a little old chap came out inbetween "acts" and wiped down the poles with an old rag.
***insert gag about Polish people here***

I have trouble enough getting car insurance people to pick a category for my job description and was curious what he told people his job was.

(

Zak McFlimby Twibbling @McFlimby, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:00, archived)

things are more advanced these days

last one I went into they were using a girl to wipe the poles with.

(oneofthemany, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:06, archived)

dixons

that is all.

(I think I got off lightly, looking at the other replies...)

(

stup0t, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:00, archived)

Done that

HELL, isn't it?

(

ilovemy5dollarhorse All things considered, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:01, archived)

it shouldn't be

but it is.

(

stup0t, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:02, archived)

only working there

could one understand how shit it really is. And my 'manager' was two years younger than me, at 21 that hurt - the little bastard shitter.

(

ilovemy5dollarhorse All things considered, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:05, archived)

dixons

but selling 5 year coverplan is so much fun !!

plus the sweet machine in our canteen only needed a gentle shove to give free chocolate :)

(

Smashy only 35 years of work to go :), Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:48, archived)

Selling coverplan is..

..made far easier after having viewed the often underrated movie 'Chris Carter's Coverplan Challenge', starring some frizzy haired woman out of Byker Grove. Plus my boss was a racist Boycey lookalike cunt.

(Billy Idol, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 21:14, archived)

i did a lovely 3 year stint there for 3 years...

it was so satisfying standing around all day doing nothing on the sales floor... then selling two PCs one after the other WITH coverplan and having the best end of day sales and coverplan figures (beating all of the full time sales people)... but then i never really got any thanks for it... or extra money out of it... so it sucked really...

(professor honky straight fonky, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 21:28, archived)

our sweet machine

needs a right tipping / bashing before any chocolate is released.

(

Terry Oblong There's nobody here but us chickens on, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 13:57, archived)

Working at Sainsbury's to fund me through college

On my first day I timidly asked the Manager if I could be assigned Bakery or something like that (because as a veggie I was dreading working with slabs of dead animal). She asked me why and then with an evil glint in her eye, said "We can put you anywhere we like." So I spent two months working on the deli up to my elbows in deceased pig before I could take it no more and walked out. To this day I mutter "bastards" whenever I see one of their stores.

(

weevilstepmother, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:01, archived)

Re: Argh!

I think they breed the management like that. I worked in one of the only pharmacies in the sainsbury's group at the time, and got signed into my contract that I would only work on pharmacy. ahh, the evil looks I would get when they couldn't put me on checkouts.
Do what I do. pop into your old sainsbury's, and if you see the manager, then fill out a complaint form about them and send it to head office :)

(StarlitLemur, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 21:57, archived)

I had to walk around a shopping centre

dressed as a giant green bottle for an entire Saturday to promote recycling while all the pikey kids kicked me up the arse. However, I did get 6 hundred quid for it (I also made the costumes).

(

christhebarker, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:01, archived)

Got any snaps?

(

ilovemy5dollarhorse All things considered, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:02, archived)

Fantastic

I know someone who makes Footballs mascott costumes for the premiership!!

(I want to see the bottle costume!)

(

Toma_o, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:05, archived)

Erm, maybe at home

It was about nine years ago. I had to do four costumes: a bottle, a giant heap of rubbish, a litter bin and a filled bin bag. My girlfriend at the time wore the binbag one and as soon as the pikey kids realised there was a girl in there they started trying to grab her tits through the eyeholes. So she had a worse day than me in the end. The guy who was in the litterbin spent the whole day chatting up a girl dressed as a bunny rabbit who was working for someone else and kept trying to pinch her tail.

(

christhebarker, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:10, archived)

I had to do Bertie Bassett

My mum begged me for a week when I was about 14 or 15 to stand outside her newsagents with a bertie bassett suit on and a rattling tin for the local hospice. I had the head welded all day to save an eternity of embarrasement.

(fingermouse, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 13:14, archived)

I did Frankenstein's monster

and knocked over Ant (or was it Dec i can never remember) best part was it was on live TV.
So that night down the pub i was a mini celebrity and got loads of free booze.

(

Terry Oblong There's nobody here but us chickens on, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 14:01, archived)

Cha-ching!

I spent a happy few hours dressed as a slot machine in order to promote a particularly iniquitous (and utterly shit) gambling den in King's Lynn, Norfolk. On dole day. It was absolutely soul destroying watching grey faced proles emptying their wallets in the faint hope of winning twenty quid on a fruity.

Still, for £10 an hour, I could deal with it...

(I also worked in McDonald's for a year: no stars, got sacked when a customer told us there was a rat in the restaurant and I asked how they would like it cooked. Happy days.)

(Lapin, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 12:02, archived)

I used to suck algae for a living.

I had a job with the USDA Aquatic Weed Research Facility in California. I was a lab assistant. One of the many weird jobs there was cleaning the huge water tanks they used to grow aquatic weeds. The only way to clear out unwanted algae bloom was to insert a siphon into the tank and move it around to suck the algae out and leave the aquatic weeds remaining.

I could go on about the other job counting 'spikerush' leaves for weeks on end (imagine counting blades of grass by hand, but underwater)...

(mrfalafel, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:03, archived)

In the Aquarium at Bristol Zoo

they let a local diving club practise in their tanks, so long as they clean the algae off the insides of the glass while they do it.

Hilarious sight

(

weevilstepmother, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:08, archived)

I was a binman for one day...

During which time, I watched one of my colleagues get covered from head to toe in a fine spray of green baby-poo, as the crunching lorry (a technical term for the big lorry which crunches things) burst a bin bag full of nappies.

The final straw, came when a mother was trying to drag her squealing, potato-faced child to school, and to encourage him she pointed at me and shouted "If you don't go, you'll end up like that man over there." I went back to my rooms at Mansfield College, University of Oxford and cried.

(

Natt, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:05, archived)

seeing how the other half live were we oxbridge boy?

;)

(

new_matt, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:12, archived)

*sob*

Welcome to the Fellowship, man. I was standing, waiting for a bus when 2 barely teenage girls who were yelling at their mother for (presumably, heard the whole thing from the apartment window) not letting them wear skimpy/dirty clothing. The mother came up to the window and said clearly "you wear THAT and you look like her. A common streetwalker, a prostitute!" I couldn't stand it. I ran back to my dorm and CRIED!

(number 27-hunter, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 22:43, archived)

not

a job I did but at a cooker factory where I worked once they used to bring the warehousmen in on overtime at weekends to shoot the pigeons that used to nest in the roof

(

Tedmus, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:07, archived)

When I worked at Bristol University

and the pigeons were a problem on the balcony at the Student Union, they used to bring in a chap and his hawk to get rid of them. He actually worked for the Uni and went round all the tall buildings to scare off the pigeons.

(

weevilstepmother, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:10, archived)

I know of a pest controller....

...who has a mortal fear of rats!

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beefandcheese, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 17:38, archived)

Pigeons

Agh. I used to work at a place that made car care products. They also made patching plaster and lots of nasty carcinogenic stuff. Their way of catching pigeons and other vermin was to pour out a tin of resin and leave some food in the middle. Then a bloke would go back a few days later and hit everything trapped in the goo with a spade, scrape them up into a bin and reset the trap.

The place made loads of stuff which gave off nasty fumes. More than once when I worked there someone would be found unconcious or giggling over a vat of car body filler. The worst line to work on was the wall filler lines. Air full of powder all the time nose caked with black snot. Not nice.
The funniest line was the car shampoo. The floor would get really slippery after a few spillages and there was always a fat lad falling on his arse in a Laurel and Hardy stylee.

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Smallbrainfield, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 13:27, archived)

I know him...

...actually I know his wife. She works in the building opposite me at Langford

(wormwood, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 15:46, archived)

Cool

Tell his wife that I really appreciated his efforts in getting rid of the noisy smelly shitting creatures outside my window :)

*sniff* last time I went to Langford they put my kitty down :(

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weevilstepmother, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 18:11, archived)

You know the cherries on cherry bakewells?

I did that.

Working for Mr Kipling. He's a cunt. And not real.

Working on the cupcake machine was excellent though, it's amazing how many one person can eat in a day. I used to lose count at about 30. Had to go cycling for 2hrs after work.

(WouldSwapABearForATiger, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:08, archived)

In Eastleigh?

I worked there too. In the summer it is roasting hot and there are about a million wasps in there because of all the jam.

Funniest thing is when someone the the end of the production line f*cks up and there are about a million french fancies pilling up while some tw*t supervisor shouts at them.

(Stacker, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 16:25, archived)

I think I was 14

and I was setting myself up for life by deciding that a paper-round required getting up early so I'd got a job in a shop.

A butcher's shop.

For £20 a week I worked for two hours everyday after school. For a bonus fiver I could work all Saturday.

My jobs were fun things like cleaning the U-bend of the sink after it had got clogged with rotting meat that had been washed down there over the previous year.

Another top job was washing blood from the walls of the walk-in freezer. With bleach. And no hand protection. At below zero degrees(obviously). Occasionally the butchers would lock me in there. Oh how we laughed as I began to lose feeling in my fingertips and my skin turned white.

But you try to make the best of things, for example I could pass the time by having staring competitions with pig's heads (just their heads, nothing else).

I can also claim to have touched pig's brains, which are apparently something like 98% genetically identical to human brains. Looking back on it, that was actually really rather odd...

Still, I've grown up completely un-warped by the experience. Oh yeah.

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Matazone has new icons, but is keeping this one, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:08, archived)

Another one

I did a temp job for a while that was typing in details of cancer patients.

Now, I know that those details are then taken onwards to help provide better care for future patients but still...

The forms I had to type in were about twenty pages long and would take about half an hour to input. I would find out during this time I would find out about the patient's family, what treatment s/he had undergone, if any kids were around, their age... A lot of personal information.

The last question was the one that even now makes me shudder.

'Tick the boxes that apply:
The patient survived 6 months after treatment
The patient survived 12 months after treatment
The patient survived 18 months after treatment
The patient survived 24 months after treatment'

I was pretty emotionally involved with these people by this point and to find out that most of them were dead within 6 month was crushing.

I bet that perky little story doesn't get on the show.

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Matazone has new icons, but is keeping this one, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:17, archived)

And another one

Temping really does put you in some terrible jobs sometimes.

This is the only temp job that I got out of before my contract finished.

I sent out to a nearby office and found out that my task was to phone up businesses and to try to offer them the services of the company that had hired me.

The company provided support for CEOs. Essentially their theory was that it's lonely at the top and there's no-one to tell you what to do and how to cope with it. Bloody hell... To summarise, they run support groups for CEOs and charge an absolute fortune for this.

Of course, such services would go under expenses of the companies in question, not the CEO themselves.

The real problem I had with it was that among the list of companies were several public service ones, many of which were claiming that they had no money to give to their workers or to spend on small details like safty standards.

I was doing this job just after a major rail crash and top of the list was Railtrack's new executive. There they were, telling the world they had no money to repair all the tracks as fast as they would like and this company was trying to get me to get this person as a client.

It was very morally bankrupt and so I stopped that after one day.

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Matazone has new icons, but is keeping this one, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:27, archived)

Last one

and another temp job.

The major clothing chain Pilot were changing over their till system. So you'd think that they'd work out someway to emigrate the data? Nooooo. That would be sensible.

Every item in their shop had a set of information to be input into a form, 12 of 19 fields were to be left empty. Every single item, in every single size had a different barcode. You'd think that they'd get a barcode scanner. Nooooo...

So I sat in a small room for three months, typing eight and a half hours solid every day(I needed the money so worked through my lunchbreaks) and I input about two-thirds of Pilot's new till system.

It didn't involve blood. So that was good.

It didn't involve cancer, again, this was progress.

It wasn't morally bankrupt, so I could sleep at night (albeit dreaming of inputting codes).

So what was so bad about this job? Surely it was just boring, not hellish? Noooo...

They piped Radio bloody One into every room of the building every single day and you couldn't turn it off.

That, ladies and gentlemen, was hell.

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Matazone has new icons, but is keeping this one, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:36, archived)

hahaha

all 4, very nice :P

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Naive Amoeba Bored Cig, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 17:08, archived)

I used to work in a supermarket

and about two days after I started, there was another guy doing his first shift. In the particular shift a kid who was about 5 pulled down his dacks and pissed all over a display, and a manky dog that was left in the entrance did the most rancid of shits bang in the middle of the doorway, and then proceeded to roll in it, thus spreading it all over the foyer. I was asked to clear up both of these, so I told the new guy that he was supposed to do it. He believed me and spent a good hour cleaning up shit and piss. Aren't I nice?? Where's that taxi to Hull, I ordered it a good 10 mins ago??

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Rusty Shackleford www.junt.co.uk / @joeyrobbo, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:22, archived)

that

is very bad because i remember having to clean up piss AND shit in a shop once.

(Jimmaw, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 22:06, archived)

I've had

my arm down the drain of a urinal in a manky rock club gents.

worst thing is a drunk bloke tried to piss on my whilst I was trying to unblock the cunt.

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Sack Sack - Norfolks laziest, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 3:20, archived)

When I worked at McD's

there were a load of pikeys on the car park next door, and one night a load came in. Two of them went shaggin in the bogs, and then spread shit all over the bog corridors. The cleaning bod saw all this shit and jizz and promptly went on his break, which involved buggering off for a 45 minute fag, despite not smoking.

Cue management trying in vain to get anyone else to clean it up. Conversation with me:

Boss: Will you...
Me: Not a chance
Boss: Don't argue with me.
Me: An argument would involve some level of debate. This isn't an argument, it's a flat refusal.
Boss: It's your job
Me: So is making sure all the dumb fuck customers have got the sense to leave a burning building before I get out myself, and at these wages, you can stick that idea up your arse too.

They ended up closing the store for a few hours after the original cleaner came back, called head office, and was told that they had to call out professionals for it.

(bblgoose, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 15:08, archived)

supermarket boredom

things you do when you're bored...
at 17 y.o i worked in our local supermarket part one of the pairs that stacked the aisles after hours.
My aisle mate got so bored one night when we were stacking the tubs of mixed peel that he pulled the lid off one tub (years before saftey seals this), sealed a nostril with a finger and emptied the other nostril into the mixed peel.
He was also the same bastard who figured out that the large jars of pickled beetroot, on the lowest shelf, made a very effective booby trap if the tops were popped and left to sit on the jar.
Housewife leans down, pikcs up big jar, swing big jar u to trolley, lid comes off, a pint and a half of bright purple liquid and beetroot hurtles acros the aisle.

Actually it was quite a fun job in many ways, simply the boredom got to us and made us inbentive.
Well melted Cadbury's creme egg fight anyone?

(Man in Japan, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 11:44, archived)

know the feeling...

I worked for a year in Sainsbury's (internet shopping depatment!), and we came up with many ways to alleviate the boredom...
Late at night, when our department had nothing to do, we would get sent over to raw meat, the only department with no manager...
The guy there had been on raw meat for 8 hours, stacking shelves, and was understandably bored, so we used to play games like "mince curling", where we had to slide packets of mince along the floor of the aisle onto one particular tile which had an advert for Mini Cheddars on it (challenging but hugely entertaining... made the time fly!)

Other favourites included switching shelf labels, spending hours putting the wrong products in entirely the wrong places, putting "free gifts" in the orders we were completing, and generally fucking up the well oiled Sainsbury's machine. Fun when your store manager thinks he's in charge of a crack team of ruthlessly efficient commandos, rather than the bored, lazy, spiteful students who actually work there.

(Hans-Hubert, Sun 16 Nov 2003, 15:05, archived)

A London council

who shall remain nameless in case I ever need a reference (rhymes with Cackney) employed me as a temp on a "debt recovery team". Basically, they'd discovered they were several million pounds in the red and needed to screw it out of whoever they could. My end of a typical conversation went something like this:

"Ah yes, Mrs Jones, what seems to be the problem? ... A letter from a debt collection agency? Yes, that's right. It's for an outstanding amount of £8.45 ... I said you owe us £8.45 - do you need to turn your hearing aid up? ... No, it's nothing to do with council tax, that's a different department ... Yes, I'm sure your rent is all paid ... Yes, I know you might not think you owe us anything. But this is quite an old debt ... Well, it's from about five and a half years ago ... No, we're legally entitled to chase anything up to seven years old ... What's it for? Well, according to our records, it's for a care plan ... No, I don't have any other details than that. Could it be something like meals on wheels? ... Ah, well it's not actually for you - it's for Mr Jones ... Ah, I'm terribly sorry to hear that. The late Mr Jones. Now, about this £8.45 that you owe us..."

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ALargeElk, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:23, archived)

I worked nights at an old people's home

and had to go round with a torch once an hour to check that none of them had died.
They never did. They all watched the Sopranos and it had quite an effect on their language.
Nothing beats hearing a 100 year-old screeching "Shut the fuck up".

(DrWann, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:33, archived)

you made me

nearly pee myself then

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Blobcat Less Jaffacakes this year, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 18:18, archived)

Hahah!

like father ted?

arse!
raahgr!
feck!
arfgfhg
I really shouldnt be here..
yabass'
fgeckyerrs!

(Bommer remembered to log in, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 21:52, archived)

ohhhh

I lived in that place you refer to, and they came after me, for council tax in a student house I lived in (who don't have to pay it), I managed to prove I was a student during that time, but could trace the other 3 people I lived with...so the fuckers made me pay the £800 off myself, dispite the fact that I proved I was a student, they 'lost' our origianl exception certificates and I couldn't find the other people...I fucking hate Cackney council.......urgh typing very HARD now.

(saucykipper, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 17:43, archived)

While working for Thames Water.....

... I ended up with a sewer repair team in Bromley-By_bow (One of the smelliest, dirtiest, crap ridden sewers in London).

I was told to check the condition of a flap-valve. I didn't know what to look for, so I just went through the motions.

(knuks Lurking for 12+ years, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:31, archived)

badum

tish

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atomboy, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 10:10, archived)

working in a veg factory in rural cambs...

on the parsnip line was the most threatening place. The place was staffed with mad gypsies who would use the top 'n' tailing knives to stab each other.

or, the 20 ft high potato peeling machine I had to hose down for an 8hr night shift, £3.50 ph..

or at the potato waffle factory, where it was my job not to stack the frozen waffles into two piles of 5, but to straighten these piles so they neatly dropped into the boxes. All done without gloves - my mate once cut himself on a sharp waffle and contaminated an entire pallet. He didn't tell them.

btw, there's lots more of this kind of thing at www.idler.co.uk/html/library/crapjob.htm if you have the time...

(Anger...Pain...Fear...Aggression...Watercolours?, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:31, archived)

I worked for Thorpe Park

for a season.

I did all sorts of jobs and was crap at nearly all of them. The jobs were probably OK, it was me that was rubbish.

First day there they stuck me on their latest ride, one of those white water rafting things, which had opened the day before. Thousands of screaming teenagers wanted to get on it and one gangly shy 17 year old wasn't enough to hold them back. After two hours my manager pulled my trampled body out of the crush and moved me onto the tea-cup ride for the rest of the day.

It was a good thing really, the next day a kid lost his ear when one of the boats capsized and the ride was shut down for two months.

They also used to put you in the carpark on busy days. We all hated that one. For some reason 4 out of 5 people think it is really funny to "pretend" to run over the person directing them to a parking space for the entertainment of their family.

Other jobs were great though - my favourite was seeing how many people you could get in a pedalo without it sinking. Record was 7 Japanese.

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chthonic, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:32, archived)

Bad Jobs? I've had a few.

I've worked for a Hotel as a maintenance bloke. Were one of my tasks was the fortnightly cleaning of a giant drain filter from directly under the kitchen. Very vomit enducing.
I worked at GUS when I was a student for two years. Packing catalogue orders. The job was so bad I used to get really depressed. It was well paid though and I ended on a high by doing an 91 hour week and buggering off on holiday knowing I'd be seeing a mint in the bank on my return.
I've done telesales for Olan Mills. Bouncing, bar work, roofing and valeting. The valeting was probably the worst and I only got £1.95 an hour. Last time I help a mates uncle. Bastard! I've now been graduated for 4 years and am thankfully in my choosen career.

The worst job I ever heard of was one my dad did when he was a student. He and a few other lads used to sit in the back of security trucks and if anyone tried to hijack the money inside they had to stop them. Of course, it was cash in hand so if they were to be shot or stabbed then they'd just be dragged to the side of the road and called a bystander. Shocking.

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Evil Bastardo, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:37, archived)

worst job? hehe

I had to work at the horse stable for a whole week. One day when I was going to clean up in a horse box and had to let them out, one stepped on my foot and almost broke it.

And several horses bit my hair so I had to go to the hairdresser and get a shorter haircut. :P

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Laini, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 16:01, archived)

French Finance Director (can't direct people though)

Man a few years ago I was PA to a French head of finance guy. Very slimey in front of everyone but behind closed doors, used to shout abuse at me and make me feel like I would be lucky to get a job at Tescoes the way I worked for him. So one day I thought F* you, I am better than this, I am off - so I called him whilst on a luxury holiday and totally disturbed his peace and said I was quitting and that day would be my last, then hung up on him and walked out. Before I left I threw away lots of important documents to make things complicated for him when he got back. He who laughs last etc etc. I have more stories of shitty jobs (literally) too, if anyone wants to hear more.

(minikins, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 16:04, archived)

oh yes!

The old "throwing away important documents" ruse... When I left the job I mention below, for the psycho-lady, I "lost" a few contracts from the filing system as I knew they were too cheap to replace me for a few months and that my spineless superior would be taking over from me.

Of course if anyone wishes to follow this up in a legal sense I should point out that the above is not true and I would never do such a thing.

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Dr Phil Kitten, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 19:51, archived)

I did a six-month

stint as a sort of intern in the marketing department of one of the 'big two' (for small values of 'big') Northern Irish newspapers when I was at uni. They didn't have office space for me so they stuck me in a cubby-hole out the back, where my only company was a crashingly dim metaller from west Belfast who had a crap tattoo of himself doing hot knives on his left arm with "WICKED HEAD" under it.

The crappy bits were (a) I hated the job; (b) my boss was a cunt; (c) I had to share a typewriter with the boss's secretary, which meant nipping up to her office every twenty minutes to physically carry it back to my den, then taking it back ten minutes later when she needed it; (d) at one point I had to drive around all six counties of NI measuring the distances between newsagents.

(Wong Fei-Hung - now with added flickr.com (see profile), Mon 10 Nov 2003, 16:07, archived)

My worst job was when I was a student, and I was a night-time shelf stacker for Poundstretchers

The job itself wouldn't have been too bad if the manageress hadn't taken a shine to me.

I spent most evenings trying to avoid her unsubtle advances, and attempts to get me on my own in the stock room. Of course all the other staff thought it was bloody hilarious and would go to great lengths to ensure she and I ended up alone in various rooms of the shop together.

The best job I ever had was when I was 16 and working in a video games store, for a boss that was starting a porn empire. My days involved playing video games and helping the boss decide which pictures from the latest hard core shoot would make it into the next publication.
Fantastic.

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jonas is not my name, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 16:11, archived)

Ooh, worst job in my real career

Was when I worked for Logica, and got sent to a client site to add some features to a system they had. I was the only one from Logica on site, and was stuck in a cupboard pretending to be an office for 3 months.

It wouldn't have been so bad except that I completed the work in the first week and wa then told by my manager to "make myself look busy" as Logica were charging the client for a full three months.

Being a contractor, I wasn't permitted access to the internet, and only had a 386 computer to use.

3 months. no net. and nothing to do but pretend to work when someone walked by. which was frequently as the room had no door and was next to a major corridor.

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jonas is not my name, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 16:17, archived)

I call spies !

My workmate ex-Logica knows you, says you were some sort of management bod and never left the office in 3 years.

(anat0010, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 9:32, archived)

your spies are mis-informed

I was only at Logica for a year before leaving for a company that didn't treat you like a moron, and had some idea of how to adapt to new technologies.

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jonas is not my name, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 10:00, archived)

many apologies

The quality of my information might be tainted by the fact that co-worker stayed at Logica until *they* decided they didnt want him.

(anat0010, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 10:11, archived)

My Dream job

Not exactly on-topic but I thought I'd share anyway.

Day 1 - Started as a low-level telemarketer for a web-promotion firm in Lancaster.
Day 2 - Asked if I'd like a promotion (well, Duh!). Asked if I had any moral objections to looking at pornographic images (well, Duh!)
Spent the next 8 months viewing and trying to contact porn sites to ask them if we could help them with their web-promotion.

People who say that you can view too much porn are losers. I never got bored. Not even once.

Ever.

(scruffy, Sun 16 Nov 2003, 7:48, archived)

Not, I repeat, NOT my job, but...

A similar discussion I recall in Alt-Tasteless. Ah, Googling produces this from ygrii...

I used to have a job giving enemas to dead turkeys.

Nothing too remarkable about it. The turkeys hung from metal racks. As the rack clanked by, I stuck a water probe up dead turkey asses. About every fourth or fifth insertion, I'd be rewarded with a splurt of foul green
turkey shit.

Further down the line were a couple of women who scooped out the dead turkey guts. They usually didn't wear gloves as they claimed their bare hands provided a better grip for tussling with intestines and gizzards. When break time arrived, they'd merely rinse off their hands. Then they'd sit in the break room gnawing their nails.

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Tepid_Halibut felt like a cold, empty shell of a human...until, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 16:14, archived)

Nothing, compared to some of the stuff on here...

...so I don't really know why I'm posting it. Will kill a few minutes, I suppose.

Anyway, I used to work in a supermarket putting meat on the shelves. I started work at 4:30am, spent an hour sitting in the cold room in a tatty, ripped coat, and then went out to put meat on the shelves. My boss decided everyone should have a nickname, and because I was thin he decided to call me "Jarvis" (after cocker, I hope, not the building contractors). Not even my forced sarcastic laugh could convince him he was being a twunt. Anyway, by nine in the morning I couldn't feel my hands, and so I didn't notice the multitude of cuts on my fingers, palms, backs of hands, and forearms, caused by the sharp edges of the plastic meat containers.

Two hours after finishing work, though, when the feeling had returned, I'd often have a good scream at the pain.

I could, however, mark down the cost of meat and hide it at the back while I clocked out, thus ensuring a cheap supply of sausages for the month that I put up with the job.

(Fat Bear is adjusting your breasts on, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 16:15, archived)

I worked for the Devil! 100% fact.

I worked in a restaurant called Pike Lake. It was run by an old man who was dying of liver failure, yet everynight would drink upwards of 10 beers before slapping a waitress on the ass and staggering home.

He would always make up names to call me, because he couldn't remember my name. I worked there for nearly 2 years. I cut myself on a regular basis cleaning and cutting food, I never got over time pay, and he violated countless labour rules.

The day before I quit, I took a golf cart, and did spins in his yard with it in plain view of his wife. With enough speed, you can make a cart get air in a richmans lawn.

I hate that place to the point I made an anti Pike Lake website here

Oh, and I currently work in a Wal-Mart one hour photo. Pah. I can't wait to graduate

(ratface, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 16:23, archived)

Pike Lake

Looks beautiful. Ever been to Shirehampton? I love the valleys on that course.

(

karatesausage, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 20:56, archived)

thats quality

like the website by the way, gave me a few ideas for my former employers!!

(Mr M@ Probably not that difficult!, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 8:01, archived)

I've had some nasty jobs..

The fist job I ever had was working staturday mornings in a lab at a vets, mainly cleaning out testubes that contained various specimins from horses. Was actually quite easy work, as long as I didn't pay too much attention to the contents of the testtubes. Once I had to go and take some rubish out, I couldn't find the bins, and ended up wandering into this strange room. It had a concrete floor with a drain in the midlle, and was completely bare except for a severed horses leg propped up in the corner with a pool of blood around it. Vets are interesting places...

Soon after that I had a job as a cleaner in a school, which on the whole this wasn't too bad. Except I had to clean the girls toilets every day. These toilets were obviously inhabited by some really skanky bitches. I could never work out what possible reason there could be for attempting to flush underwear down the toilets or for sticking used sanitry towels to the walls. The blokes toilets were always spotless strangely.

Think next up was my stint at reading tarot over the phone. This was actually quite easy, I got paid to sit on me arse for hours at a time, ocasionally having to answer the telephone and make up some spiel about the moon, or death cards etc. Problem was it was completely immoral. Nine out of ten times the people phoning were sad lonely desperate women, wondering when their blokes (who'd typically left them several years ago) were gonna come back to them. Problem was you couldn't say "get a life love, he aint ever comming back", because then they'd hang up and your supervisors would get angry with you. So you had to tell them what they wanted hear, "I've got the sun card, which means there's hope on the horizon, give it a couple of weeks and he'll be back" blah, blah. Don't think I lasted two weeks.

Spent one evening cold calling people and trying to sell them holidays. I really don't know who could possibly stick at tele-sales job, must take a certain thick skin to put up with the streams of abuse you'd get from people who's dinners or episodes of eastenders you'd interrupted.

Also did a stint in Mcdonalds for about four months. I actually quite liked this, they'd sometimes put me in charge of the quarter pounders, I was so proud... (I used to forget to put the bottoms of the buns on and they'd get angry at me though...)

(MysticTom, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 16:35, archived)

You've reminded me of a friend's old job, actually...

...he worked at an animal health trust place and had to analyse doggy bum-sausage samples for parasites and blood and pathogens and other things. Well, they got sent samples from all over the country. Not a huge problem when they're sent by next-day delivery, but when Rover goes in to the vet on a Friday and gives his stool sample, then obviously (what with no-one working over the weekend) it takes until Monday morning before the parcel is delivered. In the summer, opening the packages became somewhat unpleasant.

(Fat Bear is adjusting your breasts on, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 16:41, archived)

I used to have a job

packing chocolates, this varied from sticking
labels on snickers bars to arranging twilights in their boxes. It was a mindnumbingly boring job, 8-5, no talking, no smoking, no sitting down and a quarter of an hour dinner break. The 'supervisors' were 16 year old drop outs who thought they were shit hot and were the height of utter cuntishness. Everyone was fed up, especially with one assignment of sweets, mars celebrations, where we had to sort out each sort of miniature sweet into big boxes...shit I know. Now these mini sweets were ideal to pocket and eat in the loo and this theivery became a daily thing. Maltesers, bountys, mini mars and snickers, it was great until one day a group of us got searched by the spotty twats in charge. Emptying out our pockets revealed nearly a hundred empty sweet wrappers...we were sacked there and then and frogmarched in front of the other workers to apologise. Being sacked from the shittest job in the world was humiliating but knowing that the sanitary bins, cisterns and wall cavities in the toilets were full of empty wrappers put a satisfactory smug grin on my face for a few weeks afterwards.

(

Scary Mary The D'oh Fairy, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 16:42, archived)

Kibbutz Yiftah, Northern Israel

The site of my worst job EVER. I worked out the back of a large kitchen which fed about 500 people each meal time, I was basically the kitchen gimp and they would give me any hideous, degrading job which no other fucker would do.
(1)Mincing the garlic. They used a lot of garlic. I personally fed a BATHTUB of garlic, mixed with oil, through a mincing machine and into buckets which were taken and frozen for future use. I stank of garlic for days. I had to throw away the clothes I was wearing.
(2)Cleaning the kitchen drains. With my hands. We are talking 5/6 months worth of dirt, peelings, entrails, the lot. All of which had been exposed to a middle eastern summer. Again, stank for days, threw the clothes away.
(3)Chicken collecting. This was the worst by far. The Kibbutz had big sheds where they would grow chickens. I mean grow, as they would ship in about 10,000 chicks, split them between 5 sheds, keep them in the dark and pump them full of hormones until they were fucking monster sized. Eventually these bastards would have to be collected, so at 3am me and a few others went down to the sheds (they are easier to catch at night, docile little shits). Basically the deal was this: in the dark pick up, by the legs, 3 chickens in one hand, 2 in the other and put into cage. Repeat. For hours. Again, clothes stank, threw 'em away. The worst bit (and honestly it was awful) was sometimes when you grabbed them by the legs you would feel the legs snap between your fingers... Jesus, I can remember that really clearly..

(mr pete, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 17:08, archived)

Worst job

It was the summer before I went off to college to do my A Levels so that would make me 16 going on 17. An agency I'd contacted offered me a job doing basic data entry (nothing too strenuous, just some simple mindless tedium). There was a drwaback, the data entry was at the North West Regional Blood Centre and unfortunately part of the position involved retrieving documents from rooms where they were sending out the blood to various places (hospitals and vampires castles I guess).

I lasted 17 minutes, that includes the time the staff at the Blood Centre took to bring me around when I passed out. The agency in question never offered me a position again for some reason.

(

Zak Canard remembers this place, vaguely, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 16:46, archived)

I have had two bad jobs.

1. Spooning shit out of dead people to work out why they died was probably not my finest hour.

2. Working in an eel farm, which involved getting into a tank of 10,000 eels in my shorts and sorting them out by size. I also had to "clean the sump". This meant wading through tonnes of "solid matter" with a brush to aid drainage. This really really smelled.

(guinea, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 16:47, archived)

I'm sorry

You can't get away that lightly.
Sppooning the shit out of dead people? Please elucidate dear fellow.

(Surgeon_General, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 10:23, archived)

I was a microbiologist.

Sometimes in a hospital people die of infections they get in the hospital. These are dangerous and sometimes can be a sign of an outbreakk of an antibiotic resistant bug.

To find out what it is that's killed them you need to take samples and try to grow a bug to identify it.

The arse is one of those sample points.

We had a special spoon and everything.

(guinea, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 11:17, archived)

onions

When I was about 15 I had a job peeling 120Kg of onions every day just using a blunt knife, after a while though I did develop an natural restinance to the crying thing. In the afternoons I had to stack food tins inside giant walk-in freezer (-28C)

(

aubergene, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 16:47, archived)

Smells ...

As a stoodent I worked in a snack factory in a constant smog of grease carrying bags of flavouring about. I still smell of worcester sauce flavour crisps 15 years later.
I later (still as a stoodent) worked in an old folks home fitting colostomy bags and catheters and cleaning up human "motions" from all manner of surfaces (an electric wheelchair being the trickiest).
But the best/worst was working in a [insert politically correct term for mental asylum] and having to dissuade an octogenarian nymphomaniac from attempting to felate an equally spritely sociopath in the communal dining room. He gave me a hell of a punch for a man of his years ... and in retrospect he probably had a point.

(

Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 16:47, archived)

That one's hard to beat...

...however, I did a stint in the USMC. Being told when you can take a crap should not be anyone's idea of fun.

(jeligula, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 16:51, archived)

I think I may have worked in that very nursing home..

ah the joys of cleaning up what others cannot even look at

(minikins, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 17:20, archived)

I was working at Microsoft

in Redmond, WA, USA. Which was actually really great, but the company that set the job up had lied about my visa and I was working illegaly without knowing it.

Once I found out, I called the UK company that set it all up (and were paying me on behalf of MS) - and the boss said "Well, we've never been caught before". Angry, I quite there and then, and they cancelled my flight back to England.

I had to hit people up for money for a flight back home - that sucked.

(JaffaMused local in the So.Cal, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 16:50, archived)

But obviously still 'ere then?

(

Batshitmentalist is sane for once, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 6:54, archived)

I had a summer job,

as a litter picker on a landfill site...exactly.

(

AngryDave requiring lawyers, guns and money since, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 17:00, archived)

Busy job that !

litter-ally no spare time on that job (sorry for the pun).

(minikins, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 17:14, archived)

While

mine probably wasnt the worst job in the history of the world, I thought it was pretty shitty. I decided (along with my girlfriend at the time) to spend the summer in London working and having a laugh. I started off with high hopes and applied for a job in Sony Records (I wish) but eventually after a few weeks of desperatly trying, ended up sweeping the streets of London. The worst part was trying to sweep up outside the back alley of G.A.Y (man that sounds so wrong) and some dude tried to pick me up. I was a 17 yr old Irishman with little or no experience of the world so I was pretty freaked out. To say I ran away was an understatement! Next morning after work, I met my girlfriend for breakfast(who spent the night cleaning toilets in the post offices of London) and we decided to grab our bags and get the hell out of there as fast as we could. We caught the evening flight.

(Preacher, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 17:20, archived)

Wierd

I've done that too. The irony was not lost on me either.

(davidblunkettsdogblankets, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 17:19, archived)

Oh Poo - another shit job literally

Well when I was about 14 I worked at a nursing home in the laundry room. You can gather the sites I saw when the laundry arrived. They even had a desert spoon for scraping things off before washed - mmmmmmmm nice ! Then I graduated to the cooking room, so I got to see the beginning of the food process and not the end.........told you it was a shit job....gotta get on the ladder somehow though ;-)

(minikins, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 17:12, archived)

i was recently employed

for three days putting the handles onto five litre bottles of water, the shifts were 10/12 hours and the bottles were coming to you at a rate of about one per second thats a lot of bottles in a shift... after about 7 hours the bruising from where you hit the bottles with your palm made your hand and wrist go numb and you couldn't fee the handles anymore making it hard to pick them up. you got 2 tewnty minute breaks... not surprisingly i hated it.

(

lemony, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 17:22, archived)

I once...

...counted beans for Heinz

Most people ask me as a joke.. and are shocked when I say yes, I used to count beans.

(

beefandcheese, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 17:23, archived)

Shaving Widgets

I worked for Whitbread and had to shave widgets for their R & D department.

they let me smoke fat biftas so i did about one widget a week. the rest of the time I stared at this really fit nubian ladee...I still want to have sex with her now.

Sorry.

(chob, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 17:31, archived)

Ah yes, but of course

What the fuck is a widget?

(A Wooden Leg Named Smith, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 21:17, archived)

helpful me

It's a little plastic thingy full of compressed gas, that you find in cans of certain types of beer.

Open the can, the gas is realeased, and fizzes up the beer, just like at the pub.

Yum!

(Gypsum Fantastic, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 10:17, archived)

I was temping for a while

and got a position as a "data input clerk" for a data processing company.

They had sent out a few of hundred thousand 24 page questionnaires for NHS patients to complete, which were then scanned into a computer.

My job was to sit at the screen and verify anything the computer wasn`t sure of.

[wait thirty seconds]

[press '0']
[wait thirty seconds]

[press 'B']
[wait thirty seconds]

[press 'Y']
[wait thirty seconds]

[enter a telephone number manually]

The computer would crash every 20 minutes, and while it was being restarted, I had to open envelopes, and put the various letters into piles.

I stuck at that for 3 days.

(

Reckless_Rik, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 17:42, archived)

mate of mine

got a summer job sizing and packaging artificial bollocks

(littlebootshorse, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 17:46, archived)

Trainee Endoscope Operator

Saw an ad for Trainee Endoscope Operators in back of The Guardian a couple of years ago. A mate of mine had been out of work for a couple of years, so I sent him the clipping. Oddly he didn't seem to think a career of looking up other people's arses was his cup of tea.

(Mild Green Fairy, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 17:49, archived)

Mine

was working at a Chicken farm when I was 17 or so, I'm not sure which was worse:
1) cutting cooked and frozen chickens in half
or
2) listening to the shite conversations coming out of the mouths of the people who had worked there for 15 yrs or more and thought it was a good career!

(Mr M@ Probably not that difficult!, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 17:52, archived)

strensham service station - M5 Motorway

I had a summer job in the "second worst service station" in the uk, during the hot summer of 1989 - the hottest day in uk history fell on the same day, in the Cheltenham area - I was working behind the "hot plate" serving lorry drivers, who were pooring into the restaurant in their sweaty y fronts (nowt else), asking for bacon sarnies - they didn't seem to care that they were walking around in their pants, scaring the other customers or the fact that I was dripping sweat into their food.
Once, the floor manager had a big bust up with the chef. So, in an act of strange revenge, he mopped the floor with the soup, put it back in the pot, and served it to the customers. I don't recall anyone complaining. The best job was working on the huge dishwasher out the back - we'd collect all the little cartons of butter & milk that customers had left behind, warm them up on the dishwasher then squirt the contents on other staff by squeezing the cartons.

(Lemon Fresh Gusset, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 17:52, archived)

I once

worked for an insurance company, inputting data from the newspaper coupons people filled out and returned asking for insurance quotes in return for a free pen or similar gift. A number of them (about 70% I reckon) were 'joke' details, but they all went in the database regardless.

Including one from a Miss Denise Lovedildo-Fisting.

(suckonthisitsblocked, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 17:56, archived)

Wow

I am the gimp that sends all of the applications. Is it Sunlife or Axa you used to work for? I've had about 100 parkers and loads of alarm clocks, for amongst others, Mr Chutney Ferret, Mr Fuj Packah, Barney Rubble, Ima Dildo, and the not particularly funny "Joey Has Big Bollocks". I always used to imagine a load of pissed off workers not giving a shit about their employers and processing these regardless of the fact tha they were fake.

(

Rusty Shackleford www.junt.co.uk / @joeyrobbo, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 11:03, archived)

No you're wrong

"Joey has big bollocks" is funny - if only cos it's a statement and not a name.

(

Ijon Tichy, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 11:54, archived)

it's true

Joey has big bollocks IS funny. And he's probably still on Sun Alliance's mailing list to this day... I hated working for those bruncs*

*brunc = brunt with a 'c'

(suckonthisitsblocked, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 17:30, archived)

web designer

that is all

(Tarka_the_Frotter, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 17:56, archived)

opps, I lied, that's not all...

It was for a german couple and their estate agency in the italian riviera. Free car, free house... it was sweet for a while....

Then they refused to pay me. Then the alcoholic and abusive father threatened to throw me over their balcony because I had threatened not to come into work until I got paid.

I erased their site, packed up and fucked off in the middle of the night. Went to Rome. Spent all my money. Came home. Poor and sad.

(Tarka_the_Frotter, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 17:59, archived)

don't know if this counts as "bad"

but I once worked for a white haired rather round man who would sit in the "loft" of our boardwalk store all day and smoke pot. He'd then emerge in the afternoon to berate us for "stand around doing nothing" and not verbally assaulting the customers.
He also would sit on the front porch and make lewd comments about the girls walking by to anyone who was withing ear shot or elbow-nudging range.
Also kissed me rather sloppily on the cheek a couple of times when I'd made a big sale, and would tell me to "wear skirts" and my glasses more often. It was all pretty icky, and amounted to sexual harassment now that I think about it...

(KnitWit, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 17:59, archived)

definately bad. . .

but could always be worse. Yeah, lots of stuff seems like sexual harrassment in retrospect. At the time, my boss at the pizza-delivery place telling me that my job was history if I didn't tell him what I thought about in my--ahem--private moments--I was out of a job to be merely nose-breaking impetus. So I did, and damn, if it wasn't satisfying.

(mitzibel, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 23:42, archived)

I'm sure I'm being anti-feminist by saying this

but he was harmless, really (although the kisses upset me quite a bit at the time)
everyone just accepted it as one of his "quirks" although I'm sure if he'd even hinted at taking a step farther into old pervert territory we'd have had him before some board or council of some sort

(KnitWit, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 22:51, archived)

Wost Job - BK in York

1996: During a fortnight working at the main classy Burger King in York I -

- got locked in the meat freezer by the manager on the intro tour.

- threw a kid out of the ball pool on his birthday and got punched by his furious mum. (Cry baby little moth-focker)

- was asked to unblock a diarrhea-filled toilet using only a mechanical 'arm' pincer. The smell alone was indescribable, let alone the swirling effluence...

... about to vomit, I ran out of the gents and was accosted by a posh lady who told me EU regulations meant the toilets had to be re-opened immediately.

I then puked on her shoes.

Naturally my time at BK was up, but then BK had the cheek to say they'd "owe me" a fortnight's wages, leaving me without beer money for the weekend. Bastards.

(microsaulxp, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 18:06, archived)

Tanoy duty in a clothes and household store

Everyone with ther hartlepool accents couldnt say Minky dish jet.

Ill talk more about the shop assistant thing later...

(

Blobcat Less Jaffacakes this year, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 18:25, archived)

I once worked in Kwik Save

Thats it.

(

Nikfuf Eetr Northern Midlander, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 18:34, archived)

Most Mind Decaying Job EVER

A few years ago my mum promised me £5 a day to print out the contents of her email inbox at work each day. Easy I thought, she deletes most mail after she reads it. Boy, was I wrong. 567 emails.One of them had 6 attachments and one of these attachments had a 37 page attachment. Lost many brain cells that day...quit after 1 day, thought even school was better than that. Plus my wrist hurt like hell

(HipToBeSquare, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 18:52, archived)

Ah,

but did it hurt like hell as a result of the content of the attachments? ;)

(Snitter the Rat, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 19:12, archived)

I had a job in an onion factory

The tortures were many and varied, but the best was this:

A forklift truck would deliver pallets stacked with bastard heavy sacks of onions. My job was to haul the sacks off the top of the stack, open them carefully, and then tip the onions onto a conveyor belt, and pass the sack to my mate on the next conveyor. Meanwhile the onions were travelling around a system of belts around the shed, and, fuck me, if they weren't coming back down my mate's conveyor belt, where he would then put them back in the same cunting sack I'd just taken them out of.

I lasted one day.

(

Ravenous bug-blatter beast, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 18:39, archived)

hahahahahahahahahahahahahah

*breathes*
hahahahahahahahahahahaah
*breathes*
hahahahahahahahaahahahahah

that is all

(

fassit is old, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 19:04, archived)

I think you did well to last a

fuckin day! well done...

(Mr M@ Probably not that difficult!, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 8:34, archived)

THAT

is the funniest thing i have EVER read.
Thank you

(kevrobertson, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 20:29, archived)

Was something happening

to the onions while they were going round on the conveyors or was it just a YTS job creation scheme gone mad?

(scruffy, Sun 16 Nov 2003, 8:26, archived)

I was working on a stall at wembley when I was about 9....

... This was selling merchandise for the Hockey Finals. I was with my mum and dad. Suddenly my dad was called away to a meeting of some kind with all the officals, and mum went to get some lunch. So I was looking after the massive stall all to myself. I was fine with it, as there was only about 3/4 customers at a time. Suddenly it was the end of one of the periods and there was the massive rush. I could just about see over the counter, and what seemed like the entire packed arena went past me.

It was a good time, but bloody hard for a 9 year old.

(

G/PP 💩💩💩💩💩&#128, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 18:48, archived)

The Human Pooper Scooper

I have had two poo related jobs, both were provided to me through this odd jobs for kids agency.

At 12, I worked at a booth selling pooper scoopers.

At 13, I worked at a Canada Day Parade walking behind horses and picking up their poo in garbage bags.

Damn, kids are dumb.

(cindie-loo, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 19:00, archived)

anyone who has ever needed quick, no-skill summer work in leicester

has at some time worked for walkers crisps.
my personal experience involved putting 'tazos' into the bags - basically sitting on top of a machine in 45 degree heat, wearing ear defenders because of the mind-splitting noise, dropping tazos down a chute whenever a little red light came on. doing this for a 12 hour shift enduces catatonic states beyond anything i can describe. i cant believe it was cheaper to pay me £3.20 an hour that to buy one of those 'dippy drinking birds', like in the simpsons, to just keep prodding away.

i now make promotional videos for pharamceutical companies - which probably ranks only slightly below arms dealer in terms of morality issues.

(son of crazymum, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 19:01, archived)

I worked as a forklift driver in a dairy

Lifting the crates of empty bottles off incoming lorries, five crate-stacks at a time. That wouldn't have been quite so bad if it wasn't for the people working with me (who couldn't drive fork lift trucks) each telling me how I could do my job better their way.

Eventually, when I got told to unload a lorry at 6:30am in the morning, in the dark, in the pi$$ing rain, using a fork lift where someone had broken both headlamps, I just pushed over and entire group of stacks, twenty five full crates in all, each with something like twenty glass bottles in, straight off the van and all over the roadway, and then refused to pick any of the broken glass up.

(Snitter the Rat, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 19:09, archived)

Not a Porky Pie

I used to work in a 'meat product' factory.

One of my favourite jobs was puttng the jelly into the pork pies. The jelly starts of as a hot liquid which you have to inject into the pies individually with a jelly gun and then they are all shoved into a massive chiller for the jelly to set.

Several of us would stand in a line like robots injecting jelly into pies....for about 4 hours at a time. To entertain ourselves we used to shoot each other in the face with searing hot jelly...that kind of sums up how mind-numbingly boring it was.

After 6 months I was told I was sufficiently expert at being a 'jelly-man' tha I qualified for a skill bonus....I got an extra 2 pence an hour!!!!!! Talk about taking the fucking piss! Of course, I cannot look a pork pie in the face these days let alone eat one after such a traumatic experience.

(takashi paul, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 19:13, archived)

Working in a shit farm

1st Post!
Anyways, this summer I was labouring for an engineering company who were the contractors for basically all the sewage treatment works in the north east (Aberdeen to Inverness ish). We were installing a new water main at Nigg Bay Waste water and sludge treatment plant in Aberdeen, this involved being in the main treatment room for 8-9hrs a day for 2 weeks. This room stank of human shit and had various pipes with what looked to be mushed up pubic hair, toilet paper, tampons, etc... all emptying into skips, the mushed up stuff had mushrooms growing out of it (never been able to eat one since). Occasionaly the skips would fill up and they would be moved, in this process some stuff was spilt out onto the floor area I was working in. What fun! working amongst other peoples pubic hair and shit etc... When I got home at night all my clothes would go into the washing machine and I would jump in the shower. No matter what I did I couldn't get rid of the smell, my mates wouldn't sit next to me in the pub for about a week after I had finished working there and my girlfriend wouldn't see me!. The best bit was having to get a Hepititus B inoculation before I could work there. All to pay off student debts.

(Inazuma, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 19:31, archived)

Potato Packing near Dundee

Some of the kids at my school (Carnoustie) used to work for a local vegetable packing firm.
One memorable job was "pickin aff". You would stand for 4 hours shifts and pick off the rotten potatoes as they bounced along a series of rollers, it was hypnotic. Fingers squishing into stinking rotten white pussy potatoes in a freezing cavernous barn in the winter for £1:25 an hour was .....character building

Thing is we all did this for YEARS till college came along (some guys still work there)

(Dope on a Rope, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 21:04, archived)

rabbits

Used to do sommit similar on my mates farm in Shropsire - £2.75 an hour to "grade" potatoes. Since they were coming straight in from the fields we also had to remove rocks and rabbits as well as rotten potatoes ... and a "ploughed rabbit" is not the nicest (or easiest, unless you have a shovel) thing to pick off a conveyer..... mind you watching one of the thick-as-shite tractor drivers getting blown 30 feet across a room trying to "isolate" a 415V 3phase supply with a metal pole more than made up for it :)

(one-way to hell.. economy class you say?)

(

the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 11:00, archived)

Round-cornering

After graduating, I got a job for 6 months in my home town. The factory made cardboard photo frames - the sort you get school photos in. The worse job in the factory was trimming the square corners off the frames, about 12 at a time, in the round-cornerer. No fun when you've got 50,000 of the bastards to do. 12 hour night shifts - paid off the overdraft, though.

Mind you, we got to race round the factory on the trollies when we were bored.

(

randompunter, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 20:39, archived)

have had the experience of doing that. spent aprox 10 minutes on job, went to break shed. free drinks using staff card. played ping pong with friend. company later stopped producing frames 2 weeks later.True story

(Jimmaw, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 22:30, archived)

Ever wiped a dog's ass for money?

What about 50 of them every day? I did this at $6.15 an hour last year when i worked for a dog groomer. You think your job sucks, try pulling dingleberries off poodles from 9 to 5.

(MR KEARNS, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 21:17, archived)

Not really a bad job. In fact, completely off subject, but

When I work at a Zoo in the South West. I used to finger Llamas and muck around with the deer in exchange for food.

(

karatesausage, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 21:53, archived)

A couple of shit ones...

Did six months selling Kirby fucking cleaners. At one demonstration this hairy reprobate from shildon asked if you could use it to relieve yourself sexually. I appreciate that this one sounds like Snopes material, but it's true. I was there and I was scared.

I spent some time making Doner, the 'Elephants Legs' you see in kebabberies. Doner are made from lamb laps (about 30%), Mutton (about 30%), Sheep fat (about 20% - great waxy chunks of clotted lard, that smelt revolting) and the remainder consisted of something called Mechanically Recovered Chicken. This came in huge 20lb slabs resembling strawberry ice-cream. It starts off frozen (and you bung it through a mincer to allow it to mix with the lamb/mutton/fat mixture) but quickly turns into a pinkish gurp of pure disgust. It probably has a high chance of being infected by salmonella. But the worst was the wasps.

We did this over a summer - the guy I worked for was just starting the doner manufacture in addition to the pizza shop he ran (where I worked evenings). Since it was summer you needed to have a bit of air circulating (to rid yourself of the cloying smell of decaying meat, which you could smell on yourself for days afterwards). Hence the door was open.

There was one of those ribbon-curtain things outside the door, and to give them their due, they are pretty good at keeping flies out. Flies can go like buggery when the mood takes them, but when they see an obstacle they shit themselves and fly off at an angle. Wasps have more self-control. Let it be said. Kebab usually contains insect protein as a direct consequence.

Then did some temping at a Kitchen Factory up north while a strike was on. For a low, shite wage. The temping agency were told to stuff it pretty rapidly. I had my dole investigated for that one.

Worked with some feelthy steenking gyppoes for a weekend (I was on the dole, and offered some side-cash). I spent an afternoon busting a gut hauling tarmac in wheelbarrows and was given three quid at the end of it. I took the remainder of my wages in 4x4-tyre rubber.

(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_ =o.o=, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 22:36, archived)

Yup I must join you

on the Kirby cleaners! what a fuckin shite job i'm amazed you lasted 6mths, I think I lasted about 3 weeks if I remember correctly. were you skint at the end of it after spending nearly double what you earned on friggin petrol getting you around to all the gullible bastards houses!

£1500 for a fucking Hoover? I think I'll pass thanks!

(Mr M@ Probably not that difficult!, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 8:45, archived)

Kirby Cleaners? Pah!

You want to try working for the opposition- Filter Queen! Pretty much the same thing I'd wager, only a bit shitter due to the name making you sound like a travelling blow job merchant.

The only pay I received was from taking the shitty thing home and cleaning the house for my mum!

...Although I did garner a fun party trick from their demonstartion spiel- get a mate in a bin bag (head OUTside the bag!) then suck all the air out with the hoover- while the power is on it's impossible to move, and you can now adminster as many blowbacks/ tequila shots as you see fit...

(Me and your sisters- at it. DVDs/Videos 10 quid., Tue 11 Nov 2003, 15:04, archived)

One of the reasons I stayed six months

was that having a bit of electronics experience I got a room where I serviced and repaired the Kirbys.

Imagine the joy of cleaning clotted beer-puke from the fan housing of a pub kirby at 9am on a monday morning.

Still, made a few quid out of it so it was a touch better than just being stuck in sales all the bloody time.

(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_(_ =o.o=, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 23:10, archived)

Eeeeuuuuww

I always wondered what was in those things...

...I'm both disgusted and vaguely hungry..

Whats in those Chicken Donner things then?

(Uncle Meat, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 10:29, archived)

ugh. slut-sitting.

Sure, being "in charge" of a bevvy of buxom strippers sounds like a blast. But not so much once you realize that in addition to your own soul-killing stints at the pole, you have to try and schedule two dozen single-mother cokeheads around their various crises, enforce the heinous tip-out policy on hard-ass bitches who consider themselves dressed in only a g-string and heels but naked without their .38's, and patrol the toilets to bust up illegal transactions, the glamor starts to fade. And that's not even mentioning picking up the dressing room after everyone's left and tacking pasties and dirty thongs to the "Lost and Found" board. Just remembering it makes me crave penicillin. . .

(mitzibel, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 23:16, archived)

What is

a pastie?

(number 27-hunter, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 23:09, archived)

And more importantly....

How can I get that job?

(Me and your sisters- at it. DVDs/Videos 10 quid., Thu 13 Nov 2003, 12:46, archived)

Well, you start

by being eighteen and waking up one morning to realize that you are broke, hot, and shameless. Then you tell yourself that the Penthouse Forum-esque quality of that last sentence really doesn't matter, and apply at the titty bar by the airport on a dare.

(mitzibel, Fri 14 Nov 2003, 3:23, archived)

A Pastie

Is a tiny little bit of fluff or sparkle or tassle that strippers affix to their nipples with adhesive. Some areas have laws that say you can't serve alcohol AND expose nipples in the same dive, so three inches of star-shaped sequins can save your liquor license. Most of them were giving head in the john for the price of a movie ticket anyway, so I never quite understood why they were so concientious about the "button and bush" concealment policy. . . .

(mitzibel, Fri 14 Nov 2003, 3:19, archived)

3 For The Price of 1

Handing out leaflets outside Tower records. I lasted three mind numbing hours, binned the lot and went to the pub. Still got paid.

Selling dog food over the phone. I was crap and sold very little, till a farmer in Wales said he wanted to buy two tons. For that I was employee of the week. But only for a week, alas.

Very recently I had to taste several different types of toothpaste. After the first one, I can assure you they all taste very similar. And by the 7th or 8th I was definitely feeling a little queasy. And I couldn't drink orange juice for a week afterwards.

(hiccup *cough*, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 23:18, archived)

Thrown in at the deep end when...

...I was working in a private hospital as a porter when I was 19. I'd been doing the job for about 2 months during the day and now they wanted to train me up on the evening shift. They went on about how cushy it was and that it would be a breeze. Basically, I had to turn up at 5pm, do some heavylifting/moving of patients for about two hours, then sit on reception from about 8:30 till 10:30.

So there I was on reception, basically doing nothing other than reading the newspaper and having cute nurses bring me tea and biscuits. It was my dream job. I could get used to this, I thought. The money was OK, the work easy, and there was some sexy eye candy to gawp at.

So after sitting on reception, feeding my waistline for about an hour, disaster struck. A patient in the operating theatre had died during a major operation. Now just for those of you that have never worked in a hospital, there are certain things that are meant to happen when someone dies, things like informing the guy working on the reception so that he doesn't say something like "Yes, your husband will be out of the theatre now, he will be recovery room A. I am sure he will enjoy eating those grapes".

OK, so that wasn't the only blunder: I also had *very* minimal switchboard training. I could transfer calls to other phones in the building but I could not for the life of me remember how to get people back from being on hold. So other friends/family members called to speak to the ward sister (whose phone was perpetually engaged), I had to put them on hold - and I could never get them back. And so they called back - and yelled and yelled and yelled at me. Whoops.

So you can imagine how I felt.

However, I decided to stay there - it was character building to say the least, and nothing that bad (or even close) ever happened again. What an induction!

(freshtonic, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 23:25, archived)

Worst Job I ever had

when I was in high school I had a job as a piss tester at a horse-racing track. You had to attach a plastic cup to a stick and hold it under the horse so you could catch the urine right after they finished the race. The horses were trained not to pee without a signal (trainers trying to avoid drug testing) so I would have to whistle or sing to them to get them to pee. If they didn't pee within 15 minutes we then had to draw a blood sample. I spent two years of my life whistling to horses holding a little plastic cup.

(Wooga, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 23:47, archived)

I once did a days work

Flipping floppy disks over to read only, the thing was the "supervisor" made out he was really tough because he could do it really fast...
and to top it all off all there was to listen to on the radio was 2-Ten FM.

(BitterRob, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 23:51, archived)

I once did this really shit job...

...where I had to go down to London for a day and play some songs on the radio.

I didn't get paid or anything and the people who arranged it were a complete bunch of cunts.

Never again.

(

Mystery_Bob, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 23:53, archived)

;)

(

Mystery_Bob, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 23:54, archived)

It sounds terrible

I did something similar - reading out stupid stuff I found on the internet - and didn't even get my own microphone.

:)

(

chthonic, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 10:13, archived)

Sainsbury's, home of the flies.

To date the worst job I've had was temping at Sainsbury's. In hour 7 of the 8 hour day we were told to restock the petcare aisle.

With my back hurting from working 5 hours in the chiller (cold, stinky, do not work there) I went to stack tins of Sainsbury's dog food. When I removed them from the pack I discovered that one of the tins had leaked, attracting a large assortment of flies that had died when they were all shrink-wrapped with the dog food.

The next day I phoned the temp agency and lied about my back. I said I was in agony on the sofa with lots of pills when I was really just playing Counter Strike.

(ElectricMonk is falling awake on, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 0:02, archived)

Back in highschool

Our city (London...the Canadian one) changed their logo. The old one had bears on it, and I'm pretty sure our city is bear free. Well, my job was to hang out where they parked all the garbage trucks and remove all the old decals and replace them with the new ones. It doesn't sound too bad, but the smell of glue and garbage eventually gets to you. I made $6.85 Canadian/hour. I also spent my lunch hours reading porn leftbehind by the garbage men, and let me tell you they have the best taste in erotica.

(Dauber, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 0:09, archived)

Are you kidding?

I used to work in one of the chillers at my local Sainsbury's. I was hired to sort the daily deliveries, which basically meant hiding in there all day.

Twas great, nice and cool - very few people to piss me off and, best of all, no customers!

Unfortunately they brought in some "top managers" (my arse they were) to reorganise the department and they decided that I wasn't needed in there and would be better use out on the shop floor. Unfortunately they were right about my not being needed in the fridge, but ho hum.

(

Ijon Tichy, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 14:08, archived)

sheep with stomach portals

are my daughter's job. They have these sheep with screw in panels to their stomachs. She has to do things like, feed the sheep, wait for about an hour then open the portal, take a sample of the stomach contents and see how digested it is.

(gamera, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 0:32, archived)

good lord

that is like a something from a collision between an episode of star trek and a class 5 hangover

(

Pee-Bob, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 10:02, archived)

Sounds like

shes working at Huntington Life Sciences...
Where do they get those cool posters?

(Surgeon_General, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 11:25, archived)

Lying Bastard Estate Agents

I once got a job in an estate agents, as their "technical supervisor". The only way to understand how this place functioned is to imagine a locked cage full of wild rabid monkeys, everyone of them fought, lied stabbed each other in the back stole cleints, guzumped the nicest people you could hope to meet just to get their commission up by 100 pounds, (there making over 500 quid a sale anyway)fuck! they were pulling in 6 house sales a week plus wages, so there was no need for it, they advertised places to rent that didnt exist or they didnt have the rental agreements to, told buyers there houses were sold when they weren't ignored the tenents of the places they were managing, ran almost illegal comunal housing schemes for asylum seekers like 20 to a 2 bedroom semi kind of thing no wate rno heating. All the time the competitions trying to ponce their customers, the pikeys were trying to steal everything all the time, and to top it off I am the only person left in the shop, everyone else was hiding from the hell they had created. So I had do deal with all the abusive customers, akward questions violent landlords, one time one of them smashed a monitor and took out the front door with the remains. fuck. Irate phone calls ("i rang 10 times before why dont you ring back?" sorry sir all our agents are busy at the present "thats what you said last time you fuck") the guy who owned it was more interested in his fish than the running of the place and to top it all of if anything went wrong with any of the equipment it was my fault i.e. if one of them decided to kick the computer and it broke that was my fault, if they removed the flash card from the digicam then used it for 2 days without noticing. that was my fault. EVERYTHING WAS MY FAULT!!! sorry the stress is flooding back.... It was a pure tide of human misery, destitution, prostitution, imorality, illegality, constantly seeing a perpetual stream of honest likable, decent human beings being treated like dirt you wouldnt want on your carpet is the worst thing you can imagine. Iwould rather dig out latrines than go back there.

So i decided that after 3 months (it paid well (but not well enough)) enough was enough. copyed the database of clients that i had developed for them, wrote a query that randomly deleted 50% of there contacts then a macro that ran and deleted that query and itself, took a copy home, because i had met some really nice people from working there and wanted to keep in contact. Then I left them to sink in there own quagmire.

The End

Yes there are speelling mistakes I dont care right now.

(Nicky Nacky Noo... Scratch and Sniff Please, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 1:47, archived)

Huzzah!

Good for you Just Skojar! I think I'd have deleted the whole stinking database and left the soulless ammoral vermin to the wolves.

(Surgeon_General, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 11:29, archived)

Nice one

Everybody learn from this experience, nobody needs to use an estate agent.
Anywhere.
Ever.
Its a complete waste of time and money.

Advertise it yourself, then when the local agents agents phone you up and offer their "services" you can invite them round. And smash them in the teeth with a big lump of wood. And kill them. Then bury them in garden. No - one will miss them.

(FunnyOnion took his trowsis off, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 11:38, archived)

Sold privately....

Sell privately. Get a mortgage and a solicitor yourself. Then advertise privately....

tried to sell a flat through an estate agent, they sent tonnes of Pikeys around who were expecting the local coincil to give them all free windows and such, then wait for months for the bastards to sort out new buyers just after the others cancelled.

In the end "insisted" that they took the place off the market and take down their "Sold" sign, (which they never did, even to the point where they put up a second and third sign after hacking down the old ones....) Their maintainance "Company" kept coming round even after we'd not dealt with the agents for 6 months....

Sold to some friends, saved them and ourselves a few grand in the process...

Never use an estate agent. Bunch of money grabbing fuckwits that they are. There's simply no need....

(Mr Joe Bangles, Mon 17 Nov 2003, 12:44, archived)

I worked at a recycling depot once.

When they pick up the stuff people put out on the curb for recycling, they eventually dump it onto a conveyor belt and it is sorted by hand by about 20 hapless fucks. I learned only one thing doing this: People will try and recycle anything vaguely plastic. Vibrators, dildos, syringes, used condoms, shitty nappies. All rummaged through by me in an attempt to find glass or plastic bottles. And this stuff would often sit on the factory floor for months and months before we got to it, so it had plenty of time to "mature" in the heat (summer being the busiest time).

Surprising/depressing fact: I lasted 1.5 years doing this. On the upside, I did learn to repress my gag reflex, so it was of course ...well worth it.

(Funt, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 2:57, archived)

i did that job

for a day. Except I wasn't even on the conveyor belt. i was one of the plebs ripping open the bags and tipping the stuff onto the conveyor.

Items found....
3 books
A working carriage clock
Winnie the Pooh

And the best bit? The guy who drove the JCB that intermittantly shoved all the waste towards you pulling reverse wheelies in the car park. They were fucking cool.

(

fishsticks, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 18:58, archived)

my worst job

was working in a club doing the standard minimum wage, shit hours barmonkey and cleaning up stuff.

Now for those of you who know the place will appreciate that there's a stairway down from the main hall to the basement bar which is really dark and pretty quiet. As a result of this couples hide in there and do things that couples probably ought not be doing in a public place. There's also a fire escape at the bottom which is used as a staff cutthrough.

Now imagine the scene: a couple getting frisky leaning against the fire escape and sooner or later she starts to give him a handjob. At this point a poor, underpaid barmonkey is walking through the corridor behind the door. He grabs the handle, opens the door and there's a thud.

Looking down what do I see? a bloke lying face-up across my feet with his old chap out and his girlfriend fallen on his legs.

THAT was a pretty bizarre night...

(

Sack Sack - Norfolks laziest, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 3:06, archived)

a bit of variety

most boring:
checking pools coupons, locked in a guadrded room for hours, paid by the coupon checked!!!
most fun:
i was a bouncer in a gay night club, most fun was fights in the ladies toilets

(bigdogs, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 4:27, archived)

Media ghouls

Currently working for a TV news station as a casual employee. This means working those shifts the boss has been unable to convince his fulltimers to do... ie, overnights (11pm-7am) and public holidays.

Job description - while alone in the newsroom overnight, you will:
- Ring fire, police, and ambulance services to find out whether the latest casualties are severe enough to be newsworthy (car crashes need 3 or more people killed, and house fires must be fatal.
- Field calls from "tipsters" ringing to tell you about a car running a red light.
- Spend Christmas Day (a public holiday, as previously explained) listening to police radio: little Johnny has phoned the cops because Daddy had too much to drink and is bashing Mummy in the kitchen...
- Struggle to stay awake.

And we wonder why journalists are less popular than used car salesman?

(Pseudonym, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 7:44, archived)

When I was a student, I worked as a kitchen porter in a posh hotel. One morning the breakfast chef (who was a 6-foot radgie) threw a frying pan at me so I threw it back...broke his nose and he never bothered me again, although I didn't work there for much longer :)

(sparrie2k, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 7:46, archived)

When I was young in the summer holidays

I used to go and help dig and sort out the potatoes in my neighbours farm. Being Ireland, no machinery of any kind was involved and it was back-breaking stuff. It was actually quite fun, but looking back I have to wonder why I did it, as I was not paid in cash, but in huge bags of spuds, and the odd lettuce.
My parents thought it was great though...

(

Wifey, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 8:17, archived)

not icky - in fact, not that bad, but my worst job was...

manual mail sorting... doesn't sound that horrible, but we are talking serious mind numbing - what was worse though was you actually had to think - you couldn't just veg out. You had to know all the postcodes and place names (in Australia) - ask the person next to you as a first backup - refer to the book as a last resort.
Supervisors were a bunch of drunken, filthy old fossils. Workmates were a bunch of the wierdest misfits you've ever come across.
S'pose it was a bit of a parf really... I lasted 6 months.

(

woowoowoo, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 9:16, archived)

untying knots in a knicker elastic factory.

true. sadly no-one in the knickers at the time.

(

monstrinho do biscoito teeeshurts = www.nogunarmy.com, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 9:17, archived)

Being about 16 at the time,

in my naievity I once turned up for a job advertised in the paper as "Fudge Packing". I didn't stay long...

(Me and your sisters- at it. DVDs/Videos 10 quid., Tue 11 Nov 2003, 9:37, archived)

Fudgie

lol

(Ukatoton, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 21:01, archived)

I used to mend fruit machines and space invaders video games

in an aumsement arcade in Coventry Street London. Because I used to help set percentages on the machines I used to get regularly threatened by the rent boys who spent all night polishing the candelabras with clients and then feeding the money they made into the machines during the day.

Back then (twenty+ years ago) the arcade used to take 20 million a year, which they collected in buckets filled with ten pence coins. There used to be hundreds of these buckets every morning that you had to weave through whilst contemplating the pittance you got paid.

The security guards had sharpened spoons in their pockets to stab people. I quit the day one of the guards bit a rent boy's nose off for looking at him "all funny like".

At least I got to spend hours playing pinball to "test" them for intermittant faults.

(plankton, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 9:38, archived)

...

When I was 18, I got a job as a porter at the local hospital (Southampton General), as a way of preparing myself for going to medical school.
I worked there for 9 months, doing an average over the last 6 months of about 60 hours a week, for about £3.60/hour.
I didn't mind having to carry stool samples around, or even driving bags of soiled linen and medical waste down to the skips, with the comensurate risk of something wetter tahn it should be leaking out, or being scratched by a needle from a badly closed sharps bin.
I didn't even mind the constant cold I had or the nights spent ferrying dead bodies down to the morgue with an incredibly slow-walking ghoulish old guy, who looked like he'd be next to go, singing negro spirituals as we wheeld the cart down.
I quite enjoyed rushing bags containing miscellaneous body parts from the operating theatre down to the labs, trying to guess which part it was, as though the surgeon was Rolf Harris.
The part I didn't like was that they didn't have any decent coffee-making facilities. Seriously, though, the bit which got me was the time I had to carry a dead baby in a carry cot, so that nobody would be shocked, from the morgue up to children's x-ray at a time when the hospital was full of visitors, wait for the x-ray, then carry it back down, taking a slightly long route to avoid bumping in to people.
That was probably the worst job I ever had.

(

atomboy, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 9:39, archived)

actually

that was possibly not as bad as the summer of 1999. Then I was doing my MSc, and for my dissertation, I had to spend the summer in a dark room stabbing my fingers, squeezing out drops of blood, centrifuging it and then running experiments with highly carcinogenic chromium hexachlorate on the blood, while my fingers scabbed over. For about 19 hours a day.
I couldn't quit, 'cos then I wouldn't get my masters and my year of absolute poverty would be utterly wasted. Not technically a job, since I didn't get paid, but just about the worst task I've ever performed.

(

atomboy, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 10:23, archived)

not my job, my fathers

Once when I was maybe 12 or so I was talking about rabbits with my dad and I asked him if they made any noise. He told me that once he had a temp job slaughtering rabbits for a guy that raised them. They method they used was to hold them in one hand then with the other hit them in the back of the head with a club. When done correctly, instant death. If the blow isn't quite right, though, the rabbit emits horrible cries. He said it was the worst sound he ever heard.

Pretty unfluffy, eh?

(

Pee-Bob, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 9:56, archived)

I worked one summer in a data processing company

They transferred paper records onto microfiche for companies and councils to reduce storage costs/space.
Each individual piece of information had to be photographed separately by the machine operators, but given their lofty position within the company they couldn't possibly separate the documents themselves. That's where I came in! For the princely sum of £2.50 an hour I removed staples and receipts from travel expenses, made sure the bus passes were all in the correct order, sellotaped torn documents back together and if I was really lucky folded bent corners and creases out of bits of paper.
All the documents were stored in a warren-like version of the Raiders Of The Lost Ark warehouse which did provide the opportunity for post-it note based wargames - my best memory of that place was nearly taking a friend's eye out with a rubber band launched post-it folded over (I was an expert) and sellotaped (again - mad skillz) in the middle with a removed-staple clusterbomb warhead (we had a few spare).
He cried - ha. I got him the job as he was incapable of landing something that shitty himself so it was his fault really.

(

Jay, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 10:15, archived)

Worst job I had...

was working for this complete prick who owned a rinky dink 9 hole golf course in Cambridgeshire. This guy was an utter bastard- he kept his dogs in a tiny pen knee deep in their own shit, had an illegal water mains hook up and used to delight in calling me anything other than my real name. Me and my mate had our revenge for the pittance he used to pay us though- so stoned we could barely speak we ate as many of his ice creams as we could face, stole his golf balls, then resold them to his customers, knackered his shonky water hook up and somehow cut off the power to the club house! As well as throwing all of his clubhouse ashtrays into the river, hacking the Christ out of his carefully tended greens and deliberately carving up his driving range in the Heath Robinson built "tractor" that he used for picking up the balls.

Looking back on it, it's hard to see who got the worst from the deal- still it set me up nicely for my chosen career of industrial saboteur.

(Me and your sisters- at it. DVDs/Videos 10 quid., Tue 11 Nov 2003, 11:01, archived)

Ive

never had a job, i'm 18 and i couldn't be happier *laughs the laugh of someone who'se soul isn't crushed by endless toil and servitude*
/relurk

(not_a_monkey, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 10:35, archived)

Scariest job I ever had was

at a bookies in Maryhill, Glasgow (think Rab C. Nesbitt with a touch of sectarian violence thrown in for fun).

The job itself was okay, being hid behind reinforced glass and paid reasonably to process the bets and pay out money. The problem was the pissed-up scary clientele you would have to handle when doing the evening shifts, who would frequently demand money for bets that they had lost. Obviously they were just venting rage at the fact they'd just lost their weeks' benefit on a stupid tip and would have to face the wife when they got home, but would let loose all kinds of threats in order to blame someone other than themselves.

Basically it's the only job I've ever had where you dreaded clocking off. It's fine handling them when you're divided by a big screen, but all too often a pissed up group of punters would wait outside for you to leave, looking to inflict a nasty kicking. The place had actually had a couple of extra rear exits installed, so that we could check the windows to see where they were waiting, then, as the bus home pulled up across the street, pile out of a different exit and run like buggery hoping you'll be away on the bus before you get battered.

Fortunately I managed to always escape them, being pretty quick on my feet, but many of my co-workers were not so lucky. Head office was as understanding as possible, and if you did get beaten up they would transfer you to a nicer area, but it seemed you had to work your way up from the depths of hell. I kept the job up for a while, because otherwise it wasn't too bad, but had to can it due to the stress after one too many late-night brown trouser moments, being charged at by chiv-wielding weegie nutters.

(meepmeep is, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 10:54, archived)

Ooooh I could crush a grape....

I once worked as an emergency operator, connecting calls from highly distressed members of the public, through to the relevant emergency services, then listening in to the calls to see who was giving who a larraping outside which pub etc. One evening I had a call from some woman, shakily asking for an ambulance, she said that her brother was upstairs, with his bird, and had apparently just "snapped" his old chap whilst on the job. The screams of pain clearly audible from upstairs in the house, were enough to make me feel queasy for the next hour or so!

(Me and your sisters- at it. DVDs/Videos 10 quid., Tue 11 Nov 2003, 11:32, archived)

999

While i was working as an emergency operator i recieved a call from a distressed women who told me that her husband whilst mowing the lawn had cut 2 of his toes off (nasty!!). After i had connected her to the ambulance women i stayed on the line to see what advice she would give. she told the distressed women to find the toes and put them on ice as they might be able to re-attatch them. after about two minutes the women returned even more distressed than before and told they ambulance women that the pet alsation had eaten them!! laugh i nearly cried.

(Charlie big bananas, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 16:14, archived)

And..

By that last paragraph you mean whaaaaat??? *confused!*

(number 27-hunter, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 23:18, archived)

Whats.......

the confusion??

(Charlie big bananas, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 9:25, archived)

Worse Job I ever had

Was actually work experience at school. Unpicking staples from documents so they could go through the photcopier. Didn't even get to play with the photocopier. Even worse was the fact that I had to do it for two weeks.

(Hugh Jass, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 11:27, archived)

you couldn't beat it with a bucket!

I once had a job emptying buckets in a flower exporters in the netherlands from a never ending line of trollies full of bucket Ha ha small buckets, big buckets, tiny little buckets he he hee it didn't make me crazy I just dont talk to buckets anymore. Actually it almost did drive me nuts bit stressfull especially sseeing as the two little morroccan bastards that were assigned to help me were the laziest bastards i've ever met(as you can tell I'm still a little bitter) I even found one of them sleeping behind a makeshift wall made of empty boxes. Of course the saving grace was this was the netherlands and I could spliff up on all my brakes come to think about it maybe it wasn't that bad after all.

(We Love You Jimi!, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 11:55, archived)

12 hour night shifts in a condom factory

I very nearly developed a mental health problem (i am not joking) doing 12 hour night shifts in a condom factory, sitting at a testing machine for 1.5 hour stints, surrounded by inbreds from the cambridge fens.
However when i left ( i had an argument with an inbred) i wrote 'have a good shag on me!' in the little booklet when i was packing the boxes.

(maximcondor, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 13:22, archived)

hahaha No way!

I think I bought that packet!!!

I had a posh wank.

(

.spanky is singing "PEANUTS!", Tue 11 Nov 2003, 15:26, archived)

Work experience...

...I worked in a small computer shop hoping for some hands on experience of repairing systems.

First task - Polishing... This is the first time the place has had a polish since it was opened... I finished up only to be told 'it should take you longer than that, use a bit more polish'... So I do... Then he says 'too much polish! It's only meant to smell nice not help you clean up'

Other tasks? Vacuum cleaning, cleaning customers PC, going to fetch bin liners, wrestling with the bloody front shutters.

Rip off!

(

beefandcheese, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 17:13, archived)

Ok, not a job I had – but my dad had a very cool job during university.

He was doing a course in aeronautical engineering so wanted to work around planes if possible.

At the height the planes fly it is very cold outside, and sometimes birds that were freezing cold would fly into the windows and nearly break them.

So they had to test that the windows on new planes were strong enough, my dad used to have to go to the shops, buy the biggest frozen chickens and turkeys he could find. He then loaded them into a special cannon and fired at a few hundred miles an hour at these stationary airplanes.

Fortunately he didn’t have the job of cleaning the planes afterwards.

(

rosey, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 12:09, archived)

2 bad jobs

I was always interested in working in the medical field so got sent to the hospital disinfection unit for my work experience at 16, the nicest part? Working in what they called the 'kitchen' which is where dirty instrument trays come back down from theatre and you wash off all the debris prior to them going into the cleaning machines. You have to count all the instruments to ensure they haven't left any in the patient, and wash all the blood, faeces, and general vile stuff off them. Once I cleaned a piece off appendix off! That was lovely :)

My friend was signed on at a temping agency and sent to work in the incinerator at the local hospital. He managed half a day. Can you imagine what goes down there in those 'yellow bags'.

(selwyn29, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 12:16, archived)

Hmmm

His bosses must have been taking the piss then, cos birds flying high tend to be the same temperature as birds anywhere else .... kind of warm and alive. Frozen birds would be a little dead, and find it tricky to maintain the altitude necessary to crash into aeroplane windows ;)

(

the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 15:30, archived)

I heard

astronauts drop them from space, for a laugh.

(

CowJam, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 16:16, archived)

we got told...

...they do that test the strength of the windscreen on take-off.

They use frozen birds as a sort of overkill type just-in-case thing.

This was at Liverpool Uni when I was on a day visit

(

beefandcheese, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 17:17, archived)

Frozen Birds - Yeah.

He's winding you up. Frozen birds don't flap. There is a requirements that aircraft engines can cope with being hit by a bird (I know!) and probably something similar for the aircraft.

Nice photos at
community.webshots.com/album/7715991EBaTmHolTI/1

In the industry, there's an urban legend about British Rail borrowing the UK engine company's bird gun to test their new train design, and some jerk using a frozen bird (with hilarious consequences.) Sound slike your dad's quoting a variant of this story.

Maybe I'll post about my job as a Roustabout...

(

Tepid_Halibut felt like a cold, empty shell of a human...until, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 16:14, archived)

Maybe they defrosted the turkey first.

Would have made for a more realistic simulation. Would also be more humane than collecting live birds and hurling them at the plane...?

Maybe? I don't know...

(

monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 16:28, archived)

I get images

of them using parrots

and the parrots letting out a last squawk

and now I'm laughing... Hull for me

(

beefandcheese, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 17:18, archived)

Nah

My mate, an aero engineer, has told me a similar story, they test their planes by chucking birds at them. Probably defrost them. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't, cos a safety margin is an engineers best friend.

He's told me some scary stories about planes.

(jonnies, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 20:26, archived)

Alas this is true

As an aircraft deisgn engineer you get to see some terrifying things, but I have actually seen a military aircraft (no names but seeing as I work in Britain you can probably work it out) tested with a frozen chicken and the resultant mess. This was in 1997 during the certification tests, suffice to say the authorities were not shown the results instead a new aircraft was obtained and a non-frozen chicken used..

(

Dr. trouser, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 8:37, archived)

We use (very heavily) anesthetised ducks.

(true)

(gronda_gronda I'm old, please speak slowly., Wed 12 Nov 2003, 15:06, archived)

Aside to the Planes / Frozen chickens thing.

Could be Urban myth, go here and make up your own mind.
www.snopes.com/science/cannon.htm

(Useful Urban myths cross checker)

(

A Lurker jacked up on B3ta on, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 0:28, archived)

My worst job ever...

... has no gore or amusing stories, but, one summer term during secondary school - my dad MADE me get a job, and took the liberty of getting me one - working the night shift making industrial air conditioning units 10 million fucking miles away from my house in some dodgy industrial estate where tramps and the occasional rude boy (you know the type - the "init" in their outrageous golf GTA) used to hang out.

My first night was on my birthday, so no going out smoking pot with my mates on the common, no, no, no, I had to cycle on my shitty bike, being verbally abused by rude boys passing me by in their outrageous cars to this hole in the middle of no where, I turned up at about 9pm with three other kiddies, and started away, riveting galvanized panels together – and these bastard panels were very fucking sharp – freshly cut – just begging for some cunt to rip open their hand – low and behold, during my time there, I think about 2 kiddies were rushed off to hospital with half their hand hanging off – nasty shit.

I quit about 2 weeks later when I earned about 700 quid – I subsequently went to my dealer and blew the lot on pot… was worth it.

(

JamboM, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 12:19, archived)

Recycling will save the earth

Used to have a job sorting broken glass on a conveyer belt, so that the 'good' recyclable glass didn't get mixed up with the 'bad' glass from beer glasses and crockery and such. What a bunch of shit that was.This was after the glass had been broken, so no joy to be had smashing bottles either.

(John Rooter, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 12:29, archived)

Not the worst job but...

...I worked at Pizza Hut for 4 years and 51 weeks (not 5 years, there's a definite distinction), and halfway through a shift I told them I was going to the toilet, which was around the side of the shop, and I never went back. Just kept on walking. They thought I'd been kidnapped; highly likely, a 22 year old Pizza Hut kitchenhand kidnapped...

(coweringinthecorner, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 12:31, archived)

I did that once

at a busy london venue.

'I am just going to get ice'
I went over the road and read comics...

They asked me back the next day. I said yes.

(doktored, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 14:04, archived)

everyone should do that at least once

I got on the train to go to work at a crap coffee bar once when I was 19, but instead of getting off at my stop, I went all the way to London and sat on Primrose Hill for the day. And they still gave me my wages PLUS holiday pay :)

(extra*fancy, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 16:02, archived)

When Scotland played Brazil in the world cup

I was working in Safeways, and I was the only male person in the store (except the weirdos on the checkouts) since everyone else had phoned in sick. And naturally there were no customers in. So after a little while chatting to the girls on the bakery and deli, I pissed off to the pub to watch the game and have a pint. When I came back nobody had noticed me missing. We still lost the game, though.

(pottedstu, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 0:28, archived)

Bean factory: halcyon days...

As a student, I once whiled away a summer working in a green bean processsing factory in Norfolk. I was responsible for ensuring that items which were not beans did not get packaged and distributed. As the beans were hoovered off fields around East Anglia, an awful lot of 'not-beans' came past me in the course of a day, many of them animals of the great outdoors.

One night shift, after 8 hours without a break on a bean inspection line, I was beginning to halluncinate vaguely, and had long ago become sickened by the prospect of picking eviserated toads and bleeding, legless rodents out of the flow of beans. So I let a mouse go past me, into the machines which trim the beans into an acceptable shape for the Jolly Green Giant. These machines work by having rotating drums covered in abrasive, spiky metal bits which effectively sand the beans down to the right shape.

End result: a disgusting spray of blood and a skinned mouse emerging from the machines, and a wave of vom emerging from me. I cleaned up the sick, and never mentioned it to anyone else at the factory. The mouse was processed and packaged along with the beans, and most likely ended up frozen in a Tesco's somewhere. I worked for the rest of the summer, went back to university, and never ate green beans again.

(Lapin, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 12:41, archived)

I must ask:

I may have gotten that bag. I was very young (17, at a corner store called Mertin's or something), I bought a bag of green beans as a cold compress for my boyfriend, whom had busted his leg on the sidewalk exiting the car. As the bag thawed, a MASSIVE wave of putrid stench wafted out of the bag. My boyfried barfed on the apholstery, and I was screaming and threw it out the window of our old former sports car. we may have had that bag. The world will never know.

(number 27-hunter, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 23:26, archived)

If my factory

was anything to go by, I'm sure it wasn't an isolated incident.

I would have been 19 when that happened, so the year would be (puts maths head on, strains, calculates...) 2000. Sound right?

(Lapin, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 17:52, archived)

Easter Holidays, about eight years ago

I was working at a small, family-run zoo. Easter Sunday, just after lunch, it was my turn to dress up as the giant chicken to hand out crappy chocolate eggs to brats. It had been in use for the previous two weeks, by several different people, and had yet to be washed. It was also a particularly warm spring. After two minutes in the soggy reek of other peoples' sweat, peering out of steamed-up plastic eye-holes I was gagging. Two hours later, hardly able to breathe and oozing stinking juices from every pore, I had enough, and after a ten minute struggle with my soaking acrylic "wings" managed to take the head off and have a fag break. The next kid to come and get his egg was terrified to see a six-foot chicken with a bloke's head sticking out the top and started screaming uncontrollably, so I was sufficiently reprimanded, and had to stay in the rest of the afternoon.

I lost 4lbs.

(

TV's Nosemonkey, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 13:03, archived)

Marks and Spencer

Working in "Standards Team" in a welsh M&S store. My job was to stand in the menswear department for eight hours a day tidying up shirts and trousers.

It was so mind-numbingly dull that my brain quickly shut down entirely, so that whenever someone actually spoke to me it took me a good thirty seconds to work out what they said.

After a few weeks I discovered that because of this, all my collegues and my immediate boss had concluded that I spent my days stoned out of my brains. Not true, but nearly got me fired.

(Not very much gravitas at all, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 13:11, archived)

oh the memories

so many, all done in holidays when a student, all of these were done for a least a few weeks each. All for £3 an hour or less.

1) shoving lambs through a bandsaw at an abatoir - I'm now vegetarian,
2) dustman - in very hot summer, the stench and backbreaking work was unbelievable - this was in the days before wheelie bins.
3) Polystyrene factory - spending 8hrs a day feeding polystyrene into a big blender to be recycled, so noisy that even with ear-protectors I would be deaf for the rest of the day.
4) council - park maintenance - using big petrol strimmer - or dog shit blender as it was affectionately called.
5) Gin factory, 8 hrs a day gluing little rubber seals on bottles of export gin - very stimulating compared to some poor temp who's job was to watch cardboard boxes come down a conveyor belt and pick them up if they fell over - he was there 8hrs a day for 10 days and NOT ONE SINGLE BOX FELL OVER!
6) In between these crappy temp jobs I worked at McD's for 5 years.
7) now a PhD with cushy research job, thank F*ck!

(negative armadillo There never was much hope..just a fool's hope., Tue 11 Nov 2003, 13:18, archived)

Horrid

I help mi dad sometimes at his part time job and 2 times we had to go on the roof. Well, the second time, they had barbed wire on the roof! Dad said if the gate was unlocked i can come. It was. Well, when we got up there he had forgotten his correct tools. We went down and got them. When we were back up and he was working, I had to hold the flash light. I kept thinking that I was hearing the police becuase the lady down stairs called the police if she heard the slightest noise. It was freaky but fun....and FREEEEEZING!

(

Killerkitti Like my coffee black, just like my metal, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 13:21, archived)

Your dad is a catburglar?

Different, I suppose...

(

monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 16:43, archived)

no, he works part time at a tanning store,we was changing the air filter

(

Killerkitti Like my coffee black, just like my metal, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 13:24, archived)

...

I had a temp job during the summer a few years ago where they sent me out with the council and I had to collect dog shit from the shit bins in the parks.

I say 'had to', no one was forcing me I suppose...

The only pleasure was telling dog walkers who had no intention of putting their dog's shite in the bin that they could get fined £500 then standing back and watching them squirm as they tryied to clear it up without a bag.

(mister nice guy, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 13:28, archived)

bleah

it was my first job. since this wasn't that long ago.. [dont ask how i went that long without being employed anywhere else..] i thought i could do a watered-down version of some kind of ..get rich quick thing by learning permanent cosmetics. if you've never heard of that, its basically make-up tattooed on your face..like..eyeliner..lipliner..etc.
anyway, i finally found a place where i could set up a station to do it.. a place thats sanitary and all that crap.. then my teacher [the woman who taught me the cosmetic crap] called them and told them i wasn't prepared. wts stfu >_<
a month later, i found another place to do it, and it seemed perfect. it was boothrent though, i had to pay the chick $50 every week, not so bad considering that i could easily get away with charging $1200 for doing someone's eyebrows. but she didn't advertise for me. so basically..i lost $200 before i finally realized that she wasn't going to help me out, and i quit.
i dropped the field before i lost anymore money, and i'm currently working retail..at.. ho topic.
not really embarrassing, but it sure is the worst job experience i've ever had. heh..heh.. heh..

([virtue and fault], Tue 11 Nov 2003, 13:45, archived)

is the hot topic in the quacker bridge mall....? I go there always

(

Killerkitti Like my coffee black, just like my metal, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 13:27, archived)

widdicombes oral only man whore

real job:

worked for a drainage company finding and fixing broken drains. One time I was cleaning out under a pipe with my hand and someone flushed the loo, depositing warm shit all over my hand, then I had to cut the pipe with an angle grinder which sprayed shit residue all over me and my mate.

The fun we had.

Still better than my current job in IT.

(BadgerPirate, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 13:53, archived)

oooooooooh bad jobs.

Errr. I think the worse one had to be processed cheese tasting. three hours a day 7 days a week of unidentified eating cheese slices.

I was the only person with a clean plate every day... Hold on maybe it wasn't that bad?

(doktored, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 13:57, archived)

Crap Jobs in Wiltshire

During the Summer holidays after my A levels, my dad found me a job working for a cloth recycling factory, not too bad I hear you say - but the cloth was sourced from recycling bins,Town dumps and the clothes that were too rank for charity shops to sell! I had to shovel this polyester piss stained rankness onto a conveyor belt for the sorting monkeys to lob into bins, which were then baled up for export to Africa! Run by Bastards who told you that £3.20 an hour was the best they could pay,and that you should be proud to work 8 till 6 and then they'd turn up at 10.30am in Mercs and Porsches. There was another being the part of the night time clean up crew for a frozen pizza factory, who'd have thought that rotten cheese smelt like cow shit, still I got to play with Power washers...

(Rockster77, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 14:42, archived)

Not as bad as your lot but

1) Burger King (3 days) - worked with a spotty freak who "shook hands with the unemployed" in the toilets on his break.
2) Window Place - Making double glazing. Injuries galore. 5am to 11am, then off to..
3) ..The Co-op. Wasnt actually bad apart from the deaf fork lift driver. Oh and the mouldy food in the warehouse. And the maggots in the long life milk. I did break about 400 bottles of wine when I used the pump truck as a scooter. That was fun.

Actually, mine aren't bad at all.

(

Fronkle99, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 14:19, archived)

Racist Drunk Boss

I worked for a drunk, racist, homophobic landlord/restaurateur in Somerset in 1991 it paid well 3.00 per hour as a kitchen slave. This guy was a bastard when he was drunk (90% of the time). His wife was a fucking angel and god knows why she stayed. Tony (his real name) would have screaming tantrums at you in front of customers spend most of his time getting drunk and being very aggressive. But best of all he used to abuse customers, he would randomly decide that someone was a gypo/crusty/homo/lezzer/sponger/student (his language not mine) and abuse them whilst they ate in his pub until they either left or he threw them out. Final straw arriving at work one day found him drunk with an un-treated broken ankle, wife had left, all other staff had left. In his foul drunken mood he did his usual of deciding that a couple of women in the bar were 'lezzers' and set about insulting them and me trouble is they were friends of my parents and lovely people, so I turned up the deep fat fryers (3 of them) to full whack and left the unmanned kitchen by the back door.

Bastard hope he died of cirrhosis. What a prime cunt, worst quote “South Africa was a lovely place till the nig nogs got hold of it”

(bblac didnt get the new job booo rotten bastards, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 14:36, archived)

Another job (as I sit pretending to do my existing one)

I temped for one week in a electronics factory in Bedford, putting coloured wires into connectors - I got 'let go' for acting human (talking,laughing, telling jokes,talking about music) the joke was I was the best damn 'putting-wire-into-slots-really-quickly' monkey they had, its just that the fat ginge dwarf woman loathed my humanity and my desire to educate my fellow workers about being treated like slot-monkeys.

(Rockster77, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 15:10, archived)

I worked in a pepper mill factory!

The plastic lids of all the company's pepper mills had cracked in transit.
I had to take a pepper mill, unscrew the cracked lid, put on a new crack-resistant lid and screw it back together, all day for 2 weeks!

(Idid, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 14:46, archived)

Cakes

I worked at a cake factory in Shrewsbury and was paid so badly that I purposefully didn't ever wash my hands when I handled the cakes. I once went for a week without washing my digits at all. Pooeeee
Most of the cakes were sent to Wales though

(

Really?, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 15:54, archived)

Jobs

Worked at the abbatoir in Shrewsbury, fucking nightmare

(Sid, Fri 14 Nov 2003, 15:19, archived)

Nothing really to add

Just wanted to say that this thread makes me incredibly depressed

(

wayward., Tue 11 Nov 2003, 15:23, archived)

depressed

Dont get depressed, moaning is the only way you can tell your still alive !!!! yay for pointless moaning I love it

(bblac didnt get the new job booo rotten bastards, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 15:31, archived)

worst job ever

Moving Chickens

(confectionery girl, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 15:44, archived)

unless

you're moving them to an island populated solely by nymphomaniac thai midgets with no gag reflex and flat heads that wee cold creamy pints of bitter.

(meepmeep is, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 17:22, archived)

Willie Wonka is a W*nker

Seriously, the worst job I ever had (and I've done a hell of a lot) was in a chocolate factory. Honest!

I won't name it, but if I say they produce a certain citrus fruit made up of segments...

Anyway, I did 7 weeks on the night shift, 11pm to 6am. As it was 'only' 7 hours, total breaks were two 10 minute breaks at about 1.30am and 4am, during which most of us managed to smoke two fags.

The job was packing chocs into the trays for a fairly up-market product in a Gold box. As there were 3 layers, the production line was pretty long. Each worker sat on a high stool right up against the production line, and filled each tray to pass in front of you with two chocs. I was given 'bags and barrels'.

Now, the shock came when the belt started, and the trays started coming past in a continuous stream at what was roughly a fast walking pace, i.e. about 2 trays per second. The chocs were on big metal trays about 4 foot square on racks above the line, so you had to reach up, grab two chocs and place them in the correct spaces, the right way round...twice a second...for seven hours...with two ten-minute breaks.

You cannot imagine the ache in your back at the end of a shift, when I got home I lay on the kitchen floor for about 15 minutes to recover. By late afternoon when I got up again for work my hands felt like two bunches of sausages.

Not only that, by the line superviser (a humourless 25 year old bitch) would shout at us if we didn't manage to get our 'work' as they called the chocs in the right holes each time. The shout of "Get your work in" when you've no idea what it means sounds like "Get working" which is a real wind-up when you're stuffing chocks like there's no tomorrow.

I worked out that on an average shift, taking into account occasional hold ups in the line and breaks, that I'd pack over 50,000 chocolates.

To sum up, I came up with the following riddle:
'What's the difference between going for a crap and packing chocolates? Answer: you have to wash your hands after packing chocolates."

I suppose the bright side is that after eating all the chocs I nicked over 7 weeks that Xmas, I've almost given up eating chocolate altogether.

(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 16:02, archived)

Yes, but how many fancy dress purveyors went in?

Or is that costumiers?

Either way- sorry- won't happen again.

Edit: Balls- that should have come after the challenge question.

(Me and your sisters- at it. DVDs/Videos 10 quid., Tue 11 Nov 2003, 16:06, archived)

life model hell

I was a life model from the age of 16 to about 22, I had many awful incidents..........one time the tutor got me to stand as if playing tennis, complete with invisable racket..............one guy did a photography shoot which ended up being very dodgy....I was 18yo, and crouched over a mirror!!....the day I gave up I had sat in a pose for 4 hours, hadn't realised my leg was numb, so when I stood up I fell face first into about 5 pensioners, who were flapping and pawing at my naked bod.........broke my ankel in the fall and never model again....oh hum.

(saucykipper, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 17:21, archived)

Worst job i ever had

was for this really wacked out middle-aged couple in new york city. They had established a stray animal rescue and adoption service. It was a very nice thing that they were doing but they didn't really have the resources to pull it off. They would just go around the city setting up traps and capturing dogs and cats and then bring them back to their apartment. The apartment was pretty big, but when they accumulated 200 cats and 10 full sized dogs, it didn't seem very big at all. There were cats on every surface in every room of the house except the living room (where the dogs lived) and the place stunk like something worse than death. The dogs were pretty close to being feral and seriously out of control. They would jump all over anyone who walked in the front door. This was an especially emotional occurence when the woman of the house would come home. She was about five feet tall and 85 lbs. and jesus how she would scream and moan when the dogs jumped on her. "Get owff me gawddeammit!!Ahhh! I can't take this anymore!!!," in the thickest new york accent with the whiniest tone. I still sometimes hear it in my sleep. My job was to feed all of the cats and dogs and scoop all 20 litter boxes. It would take me 4 or 5 hours. It was definitly the shittiest job I've ever had.

(meowmeowkittymeow, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 17:25, archived)

Biggest idiot I never worked with

I had a temp job in a factory, Rymans stationery I think it was, real no-brain floor sweeping stuff.
First day, Monday, another temp was supposed to start but he did not turn up.
Next day, Tuesday, he turns up.
" Where were you yesterday?" says boss man.
" Well I turned up but I could not find the way in" says turnip head. "So I went home and phoned the agency and they told me where the door is so I came in today because I was too tired yesterday after coming in and going home again"
Boss man told him to fuck off.

(FunnyOnion took his trowsis off, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 17:31, archived)

Making sandpaper belts..

In a sandpaper factory for a pittance. No one talked to me cos they caught me reading a book of Keats poems which was obviously far too highbrow. Lasted 3 weeks before developing mild RSI.

(mcnelson, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 17:54, archived)

I worked at a sandpaper factory once,

The building was about 100 foot wide and half a mile long with a giant long sandpaper-cooking oven right down the length of it, they made yellow, green, blue, red and black sandfuckingpaper on different days. When the day was over I could pick huge luminous colour-of-the-day bogies out of my buge. I also had no fingerprints but I resisted the urge to be a burgalar. I lasted 3 months with the scumbags that worked there.

(funkyballs, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 22:53, archived)

Snap,

but with Proust.

(Lapin, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 15:26, archived)

Worst job I ever had

was working in a nappy factory. Not your regular, garden variety pampers, but old person nappies! As if it wasn't bad enough having to unclog extra absorbent material from machine jams, it was seriously unnerving passing the "quality assurance" room that for some reason was always locked and the window blacked out.

(

Damocles wants no part of your debauchery, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 18:07, archived)

I worked a job once.

And never again.

(prof_peabody, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 18:25, archived)

paper round

i once had a paper round not so long ago and there was one very nice man who used to get up early to give me five pounds a week at one house i delivered too. after a couple of months of this i decided to tell my boss (dik-hed) and he rang him up and asked him wot he was doin. the man was actually givin me the money to pay his paper bill. how i larfed and larfed. i was the richest lad in the village for a short time! i was sacked after i asked the bloke what he fort he was doin not gettin off his A** and payin his own F****** bill...needless to say he complained! oh the memories

(adster, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 20:13, archived)

Nuts

One was pulling a giant neverending Elvis sleeve out of a slot on the factory ceiling. I did the same thing for ten hour stretches, three days in a row. They said I was "very good at it" and offered me the job full-time, 55 hours a week for the equivalent of 3 quid an hour. I said no. The worst thing was that I'd nodded to the forklift driver early in the morning on the first day, and every time he drove past (about once every four minutes) in the next three days I'd feel obliged to nod to him again.

The same temping agency got me a job at the Whitworth's factory up the road. At about twelve o'clock, after about five hours of sweeping, I felt a strange tightness in my throat and inspected the pile of sweepings I'd collected. it was full of nuts. I had to go to the manager of a nut factory and explain that I was deadly allergic to nuts.

Oh yeah, and I worked on a chicken farm. Sorting, washing and grading eggs in a freezing cold shed for days on end. To this day I can guess the class of an egg by looking at it. Only they don't use the same measurements any more. My skill is useless. At least I got to shoot rats with an air rifle.

(

PygmyShrew, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 19:58, archived)

my jobs have not been so much bad as soul destroying

especially working for Jessops (mutter mutter, grr). As the only girl who had ever worked there no bugger believed that i knew anything about photography. This may not seem so bad except that i had a degree in the damn subject.
Customers would ask to speak to a man who could help them with techinical issues (like picking the right type of film) or just fail to make eye contact with me and try to attract the attention of the blokes in the shop

i have a Masters degree in photography now, i'm 27 and i have to open post and answer phones and not admit to knowing how to use a computer

last week a colleuge was admiring the stationary cupboard and praising the girl that had arranged it all
"I'd have never have thought to tear the tops of the boxes" said she
"thats coz i done art, see" came the very welshy reply

no offence to welshys

(

Citizen Cavy Admires your passion for conformity, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 20:00, archived)

I used to work in a supermarket, the usual thing.

But I had one terrible job which I was the only person "trusted" to do. Every few days I had to count and dispose of all the out of date milk that couldn't be sold.

We couldn't put it in with the normal rubbish in the skip for some reason. It had to be poured down the sink. By now the milk wasn't liquid; it was lumpy cottage cheese in a syrup of almost-clear yellowish fluid. And it stank.

Oh the hours I spent trying to force that stinky white cheese down a plug hole, jabbing it down with the same knife we used to slice turnips. I felt like retching constantly. Then after a few months of this, some kind manager said that the clotted milk was blocking up the drains and we could bin it after all. Ahh, happiness.

(pottedstu, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 20:46, archived)

Oooh!

I had to do that too at the Co-op! Erk, so nasty.

(Ocarina and the horse comes., Fri 14 Nov 2003, 19:59, archived)

fun with lime

was working at a water treatment plant outside katherine in the northern territory. they'd just tried to switch to using lime to control the ph (the shit they put in water to make the mud settle out also makes it acidic) and had screwed it up. the bottom of the main settling tank ended up with a metre thick cake of netralized lime on it.

so they drained the talk and told me to climb in and clean it out with a high pressure hose. and left. i figured if i was gonna get coated from head to foot with white gack i may as well have clean clothes afterwards and stripped off - the treatment plant is 5km out of town and nobody ever shows up unexpectedly or anything, so i figured no big deal.

climbed in and started hosing away. a couple of hours pass. all of a sudden i hear the clanging of footsteps up the stairs on the outside of the tank. lots of footsteps.

now what i didn't know is the new airforce base in the process of being commissioned about 20km out of town was going to be getting its water from us. and that a bunch of airforce brass were in town to inspect the commissioning process. and some bright spark had decided to take them on a tour of the water treatment plant to show them where their bloody water was going to come from.

over the lip of the catwalk appears 15 or so uniformed airforce people plus their bloody wives plus my boss, my boss' boss and his boss. i'm there in full view, nothing to hide behind, caked in gunk and trying to protect what's left of my decency with a high pressure water hose.

ok, so that wasn't my worst job, but for the combination of bordem and sheer embarrasment (i was spotty and 19) it's been hard to beat.

(spasm Caitifty, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 21:07, archived)

It's not particularly bad, but

I had some temp work once, repackaging bottles of neutrogena clean shampoo. It was the way nobody spoke English apart from the old shrew shouting at me to go faster all day. The boxes were heavy as hell and I'd taken 5 pills and danced a lot the night before. I almost fainted. Then we had lunch break and I realised I hadn't brought any food money.
The second half of the day was a lot worse. I halucinated shampoo bottles all the way back in the minivan.
I was paid 4 pounds an hour, minus 2 pounds for the use of the minivan.

(

Zuowan, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 21:10, archived)

I Used To Be...

A Rent Boy For Thora Heard...

*this may or may not be true*
..........

I work in a morgage processing center... I FOLD PAPER for a living!!! YAY!!!
no really that's it... 3 1/2 a levals.. and i fold paper for a bank... BANK IT BANK IT HARD!

(

nowimboard shouted "Bring On The Trumpets!" at, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 21:29, archived)

my first and only job...

was working for a weekend at a windmill and science centre in nottingham (you wouldnt think they would go together).

After a few midiocre jobs, delivering some post, making tea etc... my boss suggested i give the windmill a once over with the vacume back pack (the back-pack-vac and he called it with a little smile).

Im not sure how many people have tried to hoover a windmill but its fucking hard. Every surface is covered in an inch of flour or cobwebs. It was a hot day and the windmill has tiny windows and the back-pac-vac, as well as being heavy, get really hot after a few minutes. After the first day i was covered in flour, aching and sweaty.

To make it worse is that they still havnt paid me as they have "lost" my pay sheet somewhere.

(Ash_Pow is now available in extra medium, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 21:34, archived)

Yer, I know all about that...

in the summer of this year (before Uni, I might add) I got a temping job at a nice Co-op dairy in Chesterfield. Nothing too hard, a few van deliveries in the morning, picking in the afternoon, for £4.75 an hour.

I worked this one particular week (the second week out of three that i was there) and it was August bank holiday that Monday. Triple pay, whoopee!! Time and a half for Saturday!! Ended up earning nearly 300 quid for that 48 hour week.

I'm still waiting for the money, so Protemp, it's not too late, you can still pay me my money, you basts!

Boycott Protemp.

Edit: The reason they gave for not paying me was that the guy who does payroll had gone on holiday. For 10 weeks? Yeah, right.

(The Wigmeister, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 23:00, archived)

I used to fit industrial ventilators

and one day two of us were contracted to fit some vents at a turkey farm in norfolk, it was a disgusting place but we did the job and when we were leaving we had to get down from the roof via a vertical iron ladder which lead down into one of the unloading bays, this is where the wagons full of turkeys get unloaded and the turkeys are wedged in upside-down by their feet into a conveyor rack thing, anyway, I was decending alone, just near the last few rungs I looked inbetween my feet and it was clear so I jumped the last 4 foot. Imagine my surprise when I landed arse-first on a flat-topped steel bollard which I hadn't seen behind me, I lay on the floor for ages in a ball of nauseating agony, rubbing my face in the blood, feathers and shit vomiting my pain. I don't know if it's related, but I didn't eat turkey ever again.

(funkyballs, Tue 11 Nov 2003, 23:18, archived)

they made me rake leaves in the rain

yes it's true. i was 14 yrs old and my mum booted me from the house and told me not to
come back until i had a job. the only job i could find was at the indian ridge campsite.
they put a rake and a trash bag in my hand.
i thought the trash bag was for the leaves,
but they said it was for me to wear so that
i didn't get rained on!

(Dogfish Head I wasn't born so much as I fell out, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 0:37, archived)

I once had to program the computers

In a bunker at the end of a live tank firing range. The dangerous end of the range, that is!

I couldn't decide if it was the coolest job ever, or the dumbest to even show up for.

(CMU, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 1:08, archived)

Cool as fuck mate- no doubt

(Me and your sisters- at it. DVDs/Videos 10 quid., Thu 13 Nov 2003, 10:25, archived)

Backstops....

I've worked on the backstops of a Military rifle range. Hours hauling these things up and down by bloody hand, trying to spot the new hole amongst the miriad of others and all the while to the crack of supersonic bullets, and the occasional "Brrrrrrrrrrr-Thwump" of the subsonic black powder bullets buzzing over like a bee on speed.....

(Mr Joe Bangles, Mon 17 Nov 2003, 14:23, archived)

Must be the worst...

This is a job which my dad's pal had back in the late sixties. Whenever I think I've got a shit job, I always call it to mind and it makes me feel a lot better. He was a student back then, and to earn extra money during the summer hols, when everybody else was shagging and drinking beer, he was working at a smelly sewage treatment plant. In the blazing, muggy heat. Standing over one of the fresh-shit-tanks. All day. His job was to stare into the soup and look for used dunkies, which clog up the machines if people who are having a million times more fun than him flush them down the can after a bit of rumping. Once spotted, he had to use a hook on a stick to hook them out, and dispose of them in a bin. All summer. The pay was shit too. Now *that's* a crappy job!

(Whizzer, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 1:42, archived)

I used to

remove the grease from McDonalds. Actually, that's my job now. Can't say I enjoy it. Can't wait til I'm in college. :-)

mmmmmmmm, carbons....

(rizzen, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 3:32, archived)

I worked in a mental hospital (no, really)

as a painter (summer student worker for the maintenance dept.)
It wasn't actually that bad, just some very strange residents and outpatients that would come up and talk to you all the time. There was this one old fellow in a wheelchair who would corner me any chance he got and start mumbling very excitedly (and at great length) about god knows what, since I could barely make out a word he was saying. But I got enough to know it involved Nazis, the Masons, the Canadian government, Bulgaria, and of course the book of Revelations.

(

Lacerta, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 8:00, archived)

I still work in a mental hospital

and that doesn't sound bad at all....the difficulty arises when you start thinking..."fucking hell, good point"

(tree76, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 15:01, archived)

Getting injured on the job

My worst job was not so bad at the best of times. I did landscaping with a property management company. I could spend time outdoors, get some exercise, and I didn't have to put up with any fussy managers.

Unfortunately, I found myself working one day with an ancient guy named Alphonse. He was really too old to be handling a chainsaw, but by his judgment, I was too young (16). So I tried to keep busy, very carefully pulling away fallen branches that he had cut from the top of a ladder next to a tree. I kept an eye on him, and I didn't get near him while he was cutting...

But as you can imagine, things eventually went horribly wrong. He fired up the saw while I was not far enough away. I took my eyes off of him, because sawdust was starting to fall towards me. I felt something bump me on the head and go *PLONK* on the ground next to me.

I figured it was a branch that had fallen on my head, so I looked up at him and said, "Watch it with the branches will you?" He was pointing a shaky finger at me, and gurgling some incomprehensible warning. I looked down, and saw that the skin on the top of my right arm had been torn away in a 2.5x8-inch strip. Inside, I could see muscle, bone, sinew, and subcutaneous fat. There was the chainsaw on the ground. He had cut a branch which hit him on the head, causing him to drop the saw, the engine part of which hit me on the head, then pivoted and attacked my now upreached arm as I reacted.

I looked back at him and yelled, "GET HELP!" From the top of the ladder, he stood there, perhaps in shock, and yelled back, "Yeah, go get help." Thanks.

I dashed into the nearest house, scared the crap out of the lady that lived there, who wrapped a dishtowel around my arm and sped me to the nearest hospital. In the end, I received over 50 stitches in my arm, and 8 in my scalp.

I got quite a bit of compensation out of it, and I have no loss of function in the arm, just a really mean-looking scar. I don't go anywhere near chainsaws now.

Not so much a story about a bad job as a story about a bad day, I guess. Still...

(fennel66, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 9:53, archived)

More chainsaws

Not appropriate at all to this thread but a nice story...

...I worked for a while at Kew Gardens, and while there I was invited to a massive leaving do for one of the 'tree gang'. This guy had been a tree surgeon at Kew for about 40 years, they gave him a lovely send off with wine, beer, buffet and a decent present too. A great evening.

The next week a letter arrives from his solicitor: he was sueing them for 'white hand' contracted from all his chainsaw work!

Nice one!

(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 13:48, archived)

the mayonnaise factory...

Every once in a while I had to collect a sample from the high pressure vegetable oil pipeline. So I turn up with my 4 litre container, place it under the sample pipe, turn the big lever through 45' and wait a few seconds for the container to fill.

I then forgot which way to turn the big lever to stop the flow.

It was a 50/50 chance.

I chose the wrong option.

Cue vegetable oil at under high pressue shooting out from 4" diameter pipeline, hitting the floor and rebounding up into my eyes and covering me from head to toe in oil. I grabbed the pipe, hung on while doing some sort of soft-shoe shuffle on the floor and fumbled with slippery fingers to try and stop the flow. Then dripping and slipping I had to try and clear up the mess I'd created.

(anat0010, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 10:09, archived)

When I was a pleb student....

I got a job in the laundry dept of a Southampton hospital.

Thought it would be okay as the laundry had already been washed and all we had to do was dry it and press it and stuff.

Not only was it utterly mind-numbingly boring, but every now and again something would get through still covered in blood. And some kind of weird yellow stuff. Put you off your lunch, let me tell you.

At least I only had to do it for a few weeks. I felt sorry for the miserable old fuckers who had been doing it for twenty years. Ha ha ha.

(meat katie rocked the other nite and also on, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 10:17, archived)

The yellow stuff

Probably iodine (an anti-septic), I'm guessing.

(OB1, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 2:42, archived)

I once worked in SAGA

the priveleges company for the over 50's. My job involved ringing up people to remind them to renew their credit cards, as SAGA had recently changed it's broker.

The script they gave me did not account for situations like this:
"Hello, I'm calling from SAGA. This is a curtesy call, can I speak to Mrs Jessie Smith please"
"What is it regarding?"
"It's about Mrs Smith's SAGA card. Can I speak to her please?"
"Are you selling anything?"
"No, this is a curtesy call. Is she available?"
"No, my wife has been dead for four years."
"Ummm..."

(

andythetwig, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 12:37, archived)

You want me to move what?!

Every summer the local agency snapped up every available student to pack out the local factories. Jumping on board I was sent to huge book warehouse that was inexplicable manned by just 4 people; a smug boss, a forklift driver and two old women who seemed to do nothing more than discuss 'women's problems' and drink tea. My task was thus: the forklift guy would bring in a pallet stacked high with boxes of books from another warehouse and drop them off by the door, i then used my tiny pallet truck to drag them all the way across the huge warehouse. Bearing in mind that im not a particularly big guy, my pallet truck was broken and I couldnt see any discernable reason why the forklift guy couldnt put them there in the first place (although it apparently "wasnt part of his job"), I wasnt filled with joy. So as the queue of pallets increased it became apprent that neither man nor beast was capable of moving them by hand - although the smug boss proceeded to demonstrate how "it was in the action" you used. All his action managed to do was to tip the pallet and cause about 20 boxes worth of books to cascasde across the floor. Sensing my next task was to clear up the mess I made a hasty bid for freedom and went home.

A few hours later the agency rang up threatning me for breaking my contract, but after telling them that I had been injured in the accident (a small porky) I was considering making a claim...I never heard from them again...

(sparkeh, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 12:44, archived)

That reminds me...

...of the time I spent in a drill warehouse in north London, just down the road from Wormwood Scrubs. There were two temps (me and a Falklands veteran helicopter engineer) plus a grizzled old black guy called Leroy (true!). I nearly killed myself one day lifting a *really* heavy box of drill bits onto a shelf a foot above my head. My arms were shaking and I was that close to dropping it on my head as it bumped on the shelf.

When things were quiet, we used to use the pallet truck as a huge fuck-off scooter and see how quickly we could race round the warehouse - brilliant fun, but not as good as real diesel forklifts on a rainy day at the builders' merchants.

Those things get up quite a speed in second gear, and with bald tyres you can have a lot of fun cornering at speed on wet concrete. With the really low centre of gravity there's not a big risk of turning it over, though the shared spliff in the yard-boys' hut did add a little hilarity and danger to the situation.

(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 14:55, archived)

I had a

paper-round delivering one of the free rags (eg the ones no-one ever reads). Unfortunately this was up one of the steepest roads in our town. Got something like £1.50 for delivering 150 papers up a 1 in 4 road. I think they use sherpas these days.

(wilby, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 13:09, archived)

I had a job as

A kitchen porter in a local hotel, which was great until the chef changed. the new one found it really funny to take a huge tray of lasagne out of the oven (with oven gloves on, obviously), dole it out onto plates and then go "catch" and throw the still-burning-hot tray to me, who was wearing NO oven gloves. The funny, funny cunt.

Also, he was so bad at cooking my sink was (genuinely) equipped with a sponge, a scourer and a chisel.

P

(

Mockingbird Practitioner of SCIENCE, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 13:57, archived)

that wasn't...

the Queensbury Hotel in Bath was it? their chefs are particularly cunty! or is that the general rule for all hotels?

(

darth munki is flipping livid, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 14:25, archived)

nope

Weston manor hotel, Weston-on-the-green, oxfordshire.

I think it's a hotel-chef thing.

P.

(

Mockingbird Practitioner of SCIENCE, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 14:36, archived)

Nursing fun

Not actually my experience but good none the less. When you train to be a nurse you have placements in various areas, including the dreaded (no offense oldies) "Care of the Older Adult" wards. One of my best mates on the course, a bloke, was sent in to get up one of the little old dears one morning, let's call her Maisie.
So he walks in the room to help this tiny, shrivelled looking octogenarian up and his eyes don't quite register straight away that something is wrong. Very wrong.
It hits him. Maisie is wanking. He can see everything..and she's, how shall we say, close to release.
Stunned he blurts out "Maisie what ARE you doing"
She looks him straight in the eye, winks, and replies "Thinking of you darling"

(tree76, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 14:52, archived)

But how did the story end....?

That's a come on if ever I heard one! Did he drop his overalls and finish her off? I want details!

(Me and your sisters- at it. DVDs/Videos 10 quid., Wed 12 Nov 2003, 16:22, archived)

Er no.....

She's a demented 80 year old in a psychiatric hospital..he's a 25yr old student nurse..I know we're all far more liberal about sexual matters these days however I'm pleased to say there still are some limits. He left her to enjoy her morning "me time" and somebody else got her up later. Sorry the ends dull but believe me, I speak from experience, most nurses will have had someone wank at them at some point, even those of us who aren't on Holby City.

(tree76, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 11:39, archived)

Nursing - The Woe Of

I was a student nurse for a while. God knows why I decided to become one, but there you go (They booted me off the course in the end, so at least the story has a happy ending).

I think my most disturbing moment was working in a psychiatric hospital and having to talk a 14 year old girl down from tearing her skin off with her own nails.

Oh, and having a fire door ripped off of its' hinges and thrown at me in same hospital by someone I'd been having a perfectly normal, relaxed chat with 5 minutes earlier.

None of this compares with the placements in OAP homes though.... [shudder]

(Speculum, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 15:19, archived)

I've had a few crap jobs....

Worked in a polystyrene factory bundling flower pot holders, worked in a glass fibre plant wearing a hazmat suit loading bales of the stuff onto lorries (I got fired for breaking my fingers doing this) ..... the most disgusting had to be working on army barraks in the stores. On returns day at the end of the month squaddies could return faulty stuff from their quarters. We once had to dispose of a mattress that had a very detailed biro drawing of Pamela Anderson on it and strategically cut holes!!!! I don't know how he got the return cleared by his C.O. ???? *yuck* .... anyway for my sins I now work in tech support ;¬P

(garfi3ld, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 14:35, archived)

just posted on the wrong thread, but...

nasty jobs

I once worked for a high pressure steam cleaner company and was seconded to go and demonstrate said cleaner at the then BR Manchester.

Notwithstanding meeting Sir Bob Reid ( Then CEO of BR and he of the missing right hand) and proffering the wrong arm to handshake with I was then led off to demonstrate my miraculous cleaning machine on the underside of a train followed by a large entourage of BR bigwigs and cleaning staff.

I descended into the pit and proceeded to start up the machine. After about 30 seconds of firing water at the undercarriage of the engine I realised that the mess that they had selected me to clean off their train was very definitely not of the industrial variety-I was showered with clumps of hair, skin and dried gore,much to the general hilarity of the assembled watchers........

Yep-----suicide victim. Such comedians.

(mockup, Wed 12 Nov, 14:13)

(

amygdala, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 14:40, archived)

Un-Health Food

One of my first ever school holiday jobs was at a health food import business.

Got nuts to salt or pick-n-mix to make up? Use that cement mixer in the corner. That carob out of date? So's this mixed fruit. Mix it all together, bung a new one-year-from-now use by on it and flog it off cheap. That sort of place.

They'd get spices in 200 litre cardboard drums, and package them up in little plastic bags, the sort you buy in your supermarket. You used two machines to achieve this - one had a hopper that you filled with the stuff, and attached an empty bag to the other end. The machine was set up to shake noisily until just enough stuff had vibrated it's way into the bag, then stop. Then you shoved the bag through a heat sealer and into a box. The whole process required constant supervision shifting the bags around, and checking the shaking machine didn't shake itself out of calibration and add too much into the bags.

I spent an entire day transfering a drum of MSG into small packets, standing in a cloud of MSG dust. The resulting headache didn't go away for a day.

No giblets or shit, but not very pleasant anyway. They fired me the day before my 16th birthday. Obviously any increase in my $120pw wages would cripple them. I've made it a personal crusade ever since to never eat another health food.

(

Udderbelly A tale of four titties, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 14:40, archived)

In fact

....yesterday in the tech support job I had someone call to ask if I could fix the blocked toilet in the gents on their floor.... I didn't know if I should have asked them to reach around the back and check the cabling or alter the packet size before sending the dump!

(garfi3ld, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 14:43, archived)

Making a good job bad

This is a new take on the whole bad job subject. I had a good job, (for a 16 year old,) i worked part time in a certain Edinburgh DIY superstore. Not bad wages, and i didnt have to do any work because i was just to cute to order about. I happened to be extremely destructive. I used to climb atop the pallots stacked high with bags of cement, cut little square holes in them, climb down and give the rack a good kick, a stream of cement angel dust would then pore out for a good few hours, great fun. I also used to open vanish tins then lay them upside down in the warehouse, and eat everyones pack lunches. I eventually got sacked for refunding some stuff from the shop floor with the receipt from purchases my mom had bought previously. Dont know wether to be proud of my ingenuity or ashamed of my apparent criminal intent.

(loverat, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 15:31, archived)

nice lurking action....

a member for 354 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 53 seconds
has posted 1 messages

(

Azra3l Lubrication Persuasion and Brute Force ™, Sun 16 Nov 2003, 18:11, archived)

My worst job (and shortest)...

...was ages ago one summer packing wonder bras into little boxes while sweating in the heat of what was essentailly a big tin shed. The work was piss easy but the manager of the production line was a proper little hitler. Every ten mins he was on at me to hurry up, every time he came back to moan he was more agressive and agitated which began to scare me. After about two hours and him literally screaming at me I decided this wasn't the job for me. I waited until he went off to scream at someone else and buggered off, leaving the conveyor belt to churn bras out all over the floor.

(Muz, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 16:25, archived)

my 2nd worst

job was working in an aquarium cleaning out the many fishtanks they had, this itself I didn't mind too much the thing that pissed me off was the fact the assistant manager just sat in the office for 8hrs a day playing solitare.

Well at least he did for the first 2 weeks until I 'F' disked the 4 LAN'd PC's he had in there.
They never found out and blamed a virus.

And I'm glad I did it!

(Mr M@ Probably not that difficult!, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 15:49, archived)

should'ove

just deleted the master boot sector then they would have had to fdisk it themselves...

(garfi3ld, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 15:58, archived)

Didn't know much about computers

back then otherwise I would have

(Mr M@ Probably not that difficult!, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 18:50, archived)

Worst Job I ever had

When I was 17 I worked display in an old department store. As summer was almost there and they were about to turn on the Air Conditioner (essential in Oklahoma), I was asked to assist in cleaning out the water cooling tower. I said sure, having no idea what I was getting into. Needless to say this had been home to hundreds of pigeons since last summer, and it was covered in bird dung. I HATE the smell of birds now...can't stand to go to an aviary. Just smells NASTY! I had to pitch my clothes and shower repeatedly to get the smell out!

(Hefavitzen, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 16:16, archived)

Hello, this is the publisher for the police

The worst job I ever had was trying to cold sell advertising space in Police Diaries. I'd have to ring up hundreds of Brickies, Sparks, Chippies, Plumbers, 2nd Hand Car Dealers etc.

We'd try and sell them as "the little notebook that your average bobby would carry with them" and "You know the one which they'd use to take down any notes while interviewing people."

My manager had it down mind you, he'd ring up and put on a gruff, officious voice, "Hello sir, this is James E James, the publishers for the police" He'd make it sound like you were going to be in trouble if you didn't sign up and that you'd be owed a favour if you did!

We used to be encouraged to deliberately target plumbers as they were (not my words) “A bit thicker than most and can be confused more easily!”

I quit before I was pushed after three weeks. If you didn’t sell enough in your first month you were out the door.

(Danster, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 16:29, archived)

ooh

i worked for the same company - without a doubt the biggest bunch of cretins i've ever encountered. my manager was a psychotic ex-army cook with one kidney, unusually hairy forearms and a habit of saying 'does that make sense?' at the end of every sentence. she was a deeply unpleasant person. i lasted half a day before 'nipping out to buy a sandwich' and instead going to the pub. i found lying through my teeth to confused elderly shopkeepers in order to put money in these people's pockets the moral equivalent of selling crack to 8 year olds.

feel the girth of my very first post...

(demolition_pumpkin_squeeze, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 9:39, archived)

My Last Job...

...was for a show production company doing all of Microsoft's product launches...this was terrible for two reasons:

1 - Im a designy person and therefore a Mac lover to the core, not only did I have to do work for 'The Enemy' but I also had to bite my tongue about how crap PC's are etc.

2 - The company I worked for didn't believe in a 'normal working day', or weekends, or employees going home, oh and you were paid a salary...no overtime...no bonuses...nothing. At one of the shows I worked for 78 hours straight, I would have had to work longer but one of the bosses saw me stumbling around and took me home, I apparently looked like I was about to die.

Quite happy im not there now, from what I hear it's got worse :)

(

The Reverend Lord Lizard, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 16:30, archived)

Try this for size

I'm an Environmental Engineer. As part of a project I once had to row a dinghy out into a lagoon full of pig shit on a farm and sample it. Several jars full of shit and piss later, I returned disgruntled to my office and dumped aforementioned reeking samples on my boss's desk.

Much hilarity ensued from the lads. And much disciplinary action fromt he hierarchy.

(davidblunkettsdogblankets, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 16:38, archived)

When I was a student...

...I worked at a corner shop. The managers advice for me in case of an armed robbery was to "throw all the small change in the till at them, they'll be too busy picking up the change to stab/shoot you".

Twisted logic indeed. Strangely enough, I quit shortly after this.

(myrtle_t_tyrtle, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 16:55, archived)

Carrying a fucking heavy basket around streets for 6 hours..

... well being an unemployed bum.. i rang up an advert in the paper

"Sales people wanted, No experience needed, school leavers welcome, imediate start!!! £125pw+commision!!!"

Soundeds good to a 17year old (well i was then) ... rang up... got the job in 5 mins and they came and picked me up the day after without even telling me what would happen.

Got in the mini bus and was told that we would drive to a location and go around and sell shitty over priced kitchen stuff at peoples doors... great fun. then things got even worse as the mini bus got over crowded with lazy pikey losers doing the same as me... when i say overcrowded i really mean it!... they could hardly shut the doors! it was a 15 seater... there must have been 40 people in it!

anyway, spent the next 6 hours somewhere in rochester knocking on peoples doors saying "would you be interested in buying some high quality kitchen goods from my wonderful basket of goodies"... I managed to sell £50 woth of stuff tho... the 'pros' (the bums that had been doing it for years) managed to make upwards of £150... of which you got half back on commision. so i made £25 that day... I quit there and then when dropped off back at home at 1am...

(Bushboy, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 17:27, archived)

I did something like that once.

Advert in paper, no experience needed, got the job in 5 minutes sort of thing...the one thing I said I wouldn't do was cold selling and they promised it wasn't that. So next day I gets in a minibus with the others and a team leader (to show us how it was done), get dumped on an industrial estate in the middle of nowhere, to go around trudging around in the mud in my nice frock to cold sell discount coupon books to businesses (like, buy a book of coupons for $50 that is supposed to get you $200 worth of stuff).

I was so pissed off, I'm not sure I even lasted an hour. I threw a bit of a diva fit, saying they'd lied to me and wasted my time. I trudged off to a mechanic's (that we'd just tried to flog coupon books to) to ask directions to the nearest train station. Kindly folk took pity on me and gave me a lift.

(

HairyCanary as Ann B. Davis as Alice, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 7:38, archived)

I worked for Sonia Land (Literary Agent and psycho hosebeast)

Anyone who has met her will understand, and many who have only heard of her. I discovered later she has quite a reputation in the industry.

Any story of the many I could tell here will fail to truly convey the rolling-eyed fist-chewing madness of the woman. Okay, perhaps one - I had to lobby my superior for 2 weeks to get a pencil sharpener, because she was so scared of spending money and thus attracting Ms Land's attention.

(

Dr Phil Kitten, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 19:12, archived)

when I was 17

and needed extra cash I got a job on the recommendation of a friend selling cockroach control to people who lived nmear the docks in Durban. Its a little known fact, but cockroaches do fly, and for the (mainly Indian) people living near the docks, close to their jobs, and cheap, cockroaches had become household pets in practice - we were dropped off by a van and given areas to canvas (I only did this for one fear inducing night by the way) I knocked on a few doors that told me to go away and then one house let me in to sell this revolutionary cockroach deterrent - I sat on the faded and dillapited settee and started telling the man of the house about the product. While I was doing this I was looking around; the carpet shredded may as well have been eaten by the cockroaches there were so many in the house - it didnt help that the wife was in the kitchen preparing food that was obviously just a day in day out stew that new foodstuffs were added to and there was no hygiene, everywhere I looked there were congregations of cockroaches having foraging meetings, the kitchen scuttled and squirmed as much as I was sitting on the sofa, but the guy was so earnestly looking at me with such desperation that I said that the things didnt actually work and that if he didnt want cockroach problems that he shouldnt live where he was as cockroaches flew, and no matter what happened, he would always have them. Resignedly he thanked me and offered me dinner...

much more distressing and memorable than I can eloquently describe, and not that funny really.

(

Alfie, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 19:36, archived)

worst job

I worked for a week doing a stocktake at a publishing firm. I had to count photo negatives for 7 hours a day for 5 days

(coz, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 20:15, archived)

Worst Job And Best

Once worked at a air show making bacon sarnies early doors. Involved melting butter in huge tubs with hot water and mixing by hand.

Best job being at the same show, and drinking as many beers as the "sun managed to open"

(spaceman, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 20:26, archived)

well...

I worked in a place called Magazine City in Seattle in the late eighties. It's ok to use the name, they closed down years ago.
The owner was actually retarded. the manager was an alcoholic with liver problems and elephantitis. he was ok other than that though. but noone sane or even vaguely normal ever wanted to work there. so when I came in and asked for a job, the manager instantly gave me double shifts for days on end and basically made me the new assistant manager without paying me any more. he then fucked off to drink and I watched the entire store for 16 hours on end, day after day. the front part of the store was about 400 square meters of magazines. the back section was porn. the alcoholic manager would keep hiring people to help me do my double shifts, but they were inevitably stupid or also alcoholics or preferably both. two of my favorite co-workers were a 70 year old drunk who couldn't figure out how to use the cash register, and a human robot that apparently had some post-war trauma to deal with. I left the old drunk at the register once to go to mcdonalds (16 hours is a long time to go without food) and when I came back there were customers lined up around the block and others just leaving the store with armfuls of "free" merchandise. he was just standing there at the cash register, frozen and mumbling, staring at the keys. the robot was even more fun. you'd think he'd be good at math, but no... he was too literal. for instance, I'd tell him to go turn around the back half of the magazine stacks on the racks (the spines are thicker, so if they're all upright they eventually fall down, so you have to turn the back half upside down for a nice neat stack) and he'd ask "how much exactly should be reversed" and I'd say "like, half". then he'd ask how many there are and I'd say about 50, so he'd count 25 out. I told him to just estimate about half and that nearly killed him, like, does not compute error error, or something. sheesh. so I figured, let him count! only when someone had actually bought one magazine and there were only 49 left, he'd stand there trying to figure out what half of 49 is. for hours. just stand there. broken. stuck in a little counting loop. the most fun though was when a helicopter would fly overhead or a siren would go off, then he'd drop all the mags he was counting on the floor and clutch his hands to his ears and start moaning and screaming in panic and his robot eyes would dart around and then sink deeper into his head. he looked like a very sad retarded version of that guy from sparks.
anyway, then once in a while the actually clinically retarded boss's probably but not medically proven retarded wife would come "sit in" to fill in for the lack of help available. that meant I had to work with her most of the time. she was huge and fat and smelled terribly of ass. when she sat on the stool behind the register, you couldn't use it for the rest of the day because it smelled so bad. you could barely get near enough to it to ring things in at the register. all the customers would glare at you with that "take a fucking bath, ass-smell man" look. although she'd rarely ever sit on it for very long, because her idea of working was stinking up that chair for 20 minutes, praising elvis non-stop to no one in particular, filling her gigantic purse with candy and chocolate and then fucking off. she'd blame all her theft on the workers, but the alcoholic manager was able to convince the retarded boss that it was the fat smelly elvis-worshipping wife, so he didn't care. which meant we could steal whatever the fuck we liked. which we did. smokes, candy, mags, and lots of porn.
oh, and one of our regular porn customers turned out to be the Queen Anne Axe Murderer. just another guy (coincidentally he was also retarded) with spittle on his glasses and a thing for porn who ended up sort of accidently killing a few people in their homes on queen anne hill.
oh yeah, and the crazy woman who would snatch chocolate off the rack in front of the register and eat it in front of you with a wild grin on her face, and then if you asked if she was going to pay for that she'd start screaming "YOU RAPED ME!" and pointing at you until the police came or you threw her out yourself.
another weird thing about that store was, they had a back section with all sorts of weird illegal books on how to make bombs and credit scams and change your identity and all those anarchist cookbook sort of things.
what a strange store.
those were strange times.

I think actually the worst place I ever worked was 7-11, but it's a far less interesting story.

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zog why change it now?, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 22:15, archived)

Bad jobs, I've had a few...

First ever job was at a petrol station, working for a crazy iranian woman. Got sexually harassed by a 70 year old bloke who seemed to be employed to do nothing more than sit around and drink tea all day, threatened by a load of pikeys with knives, then sacked for stealing from the till. Which I didn't do, but by God, I wish I had. There was a CCTV camera above the desk, but it was never on...

...then I spent 2 years of Saturdays working for Bhs, the bastards. Treat you like shit, then expect you to sell account cards...

...and so on to Kodak processing. This was a great laugh on the right nights, as some of the managers didn't give a shit, and we'd hide ice lollies in the quality control fridges with all the nasty chemicals. As I was working on Minilabs, I got all of the chewed up films and enlargements. You should SEE some of the stuff I had to develop*. Best one was of a blow job. I've seen so many photos of lads lying in pools of vomit with their chaps out, it's unreal...

...and so to this summer just gone. Oxford Uni medical student, keen, available for employment fo 3 months, what's the best I can get? Marks and sodding Spencer's STAFF KITCHENS, re-heating M&S out of date food for menopausal ladies. Oh, no, hang on, I couldn't even touch a cooker, cause I didn't have a hygiene certificate. I spent the summer washing up, in 38+ degree heat, with no air-conditioning. Best bit was walking out on my last day and having my manager begging me to 'come back for Christmas'. No fnarfing way.

*if it wasn't kiddie porn, or penile penetration, we HAD to process it. Apparently Betty (lovely old gal who I worked with) once drew the line at a full facial cum shot, but was overruled by her boss. "No, love" she said, "Just get on and do the 18x24" enlargement, and send it on to the framers"

(DuckieMonster, Wed 12 Nov 2003, 22:42, archived)

Blooming factories

As a student job (out of semester) I worked in a Daventry based factory electrocoating car body panels. Vauxhall started sending us these Vectra car doors and demanded (on top of the normal automated cleaning that the electrocoating system did) an extra cleaning process that the factory management skilfully implemented by stationing me with an air line and spray can full of evil solvents that I doused the doors with as they entered the line. I did this for 14 hours straight (badly needed the money) sitting down on a roll of packing cardboard the whole time. Only when I stood up at the end of my shift did I realise that the chemicals had soaked through my boots and that I could no longer feel or use my feet. I hobbled off to my car, removed my boots (with much screaming) and discovered my burned feet. With one hand, I managed to remove in one piece a perfect layer of peeling skin - including the intact epidermis in the shape of four of my toes. As if that wasn't traumatic enough, I had to drive ten miles home barefoot screaming resoundingly every time one of the many roundabouts forced me to use the clutch.
And despite all the extra cleaning of the bare metal part, any Vauxhall owner will still testify that the poxy things rust like buggery.

(fixit, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 0:54, archived)

worst jobs

Wasn't actually the worst job I've done - but I was reminded by the feet, we built the set for Sir Peter Hall's Hamlet, lots of dangly red ropes hung on those fixings that demarcate 'VIP' areas. They were all dyed red and I had to fix hundreds of them onto the metal bits.
Of course my hands were dyed bright red, but imagine my surprise upon taking my boots off to see the soles of my feet were red!

I worried a bit about the implications for my brain/kidneys/liver

(driverchris, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 12:11, archived)

I feel very sorry for you

Not because of the job, but having to spend any length of time in the shithole that is Dav is more than most humans can tolerate. Oh the Wimpy home horror! The entire absence of any culture or interest whatsoever!

(tree76, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 12:19, archived)

people don't seem to know you'll see what they photograph

a former housemate of my husband's(pre-marriage,obviously)used to process film and would occasionally make copies of the best to bring home.legal?not likely.funny?side-splittingly so.we always had a laugh at the antics people would record for posterity.
my worst crap job was working in a secondhand shop that sold children's clothing and toys. since it was a small shop,you'd work a whole day alone,which was dull,but as we bought secondhand things to sell,scary-looking,bug-eyed druggies would come in every day with loads of suscicious and often filthy goods. did i mention anyone working was alone?? i kept a knife under the counter and always had the phone in my hand in case i had to ring the police. luckily,a local officer's wife shopped there often and he'd leave his patrol car in front of the shop whenever he could. other than filthy,suspect goods and wondering if the stinking,twitching addict was about to rob the place,it wasn't that bad. no-one ever came in until after 11,so i'd have a nap or read all morning. i once knew a girl who worked for the U.S department of agriculture and she got her ex-finace a job testing mosquito repellent.he'd spray his arm,then insert it into a box full of mosquitos for a minute,remove it,record the number of bites,repeat with other arm. we speculated on whether or not she'd helped him get the job out of spite.

(louveciennes , Volvospotter, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 1:04, archived)

That's interesting

because boots refuse to develop my arse aparrently...

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Sack Sack - Norfolks laziest, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 4:27, archived)

shit job

literally. summer job lifting bags of horse shite into people's cars at a garden centre. needless to say, as this was a disc(o)unt garden centre, half the bags would split as the heat would make the horse shite expand. usually over my uniform. which to make matters worse, was bright pink and green.

(el pedro, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 8:26, archived)

Rob will read this entire thread and go......

......."my worst job ever was reading through a thread on b3ta about worst jobs ever" :)

I've never had a shitty job, I enjoyed all of 'em.
Worked for a double glazing firm doing cold calling - spent all day in the pub (did this for 3 years and STILL made money out of it!).

Worked as a topless dancer - money, free beer, cute guys.

Now I do geek stuff :/

Funniest one was way back when I was 19 and did Page 3 (yes, the page 3) and moved to Brighton about six weeks later. Found a job on Palace Pier, first day went down there and there was my picture on the wall in the security guard office. Laughed my ass off!

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Batshitmentalist is sane for once, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 10:52, archived)

porn cinema cleaner

i was living in France and hard up for cash, went in reply to an ad for "general help required" to find it was sweeping up in the porno cinema after 'showings' - dirty kleenex all over the shop. did one evening as a trial, then....... was told I wasn't enthusiastic enough and shouldn't come back the next day! didn't get paid a thing. though watched an evening of rough porn, in the company of about 30 frantically busy frenchmen.

(mrbeans is felching, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 13:35, archived)

Jobs suck.

Some of my most unmemorable positions:

1. Recycled newspaper collector - Duration: 1 Day.

When I was about 15 or 16, I was registered with a recruitment agency over summer to see what crap they'd come up for me to do. So, one morning at about 8am, I got a call from them.

'Hello!' said the Dale Winton look-a-like on the other end, who I'd met a couple of days before, 'how about this job, you uh... sit in a van and drive around all day, uh... nothing too heavy'.
So I thought 'yeah, I can do that!'. Later that day, me kitted out in pretty regular stuff, was waiting around by the window for this van to turn up. Van turned up with 2 burly blokes in the cab and a big wire mesh box thing on the back. Uh oh.

To cut a long story short, my day consisted of running around what seemed like the entire county of Warwickshire, picking up bags of recycled newspapers (or whatever the hell they felt like putting in there really) from outside people's houses, and emptying into a van, no gloves administered. Not only that, but we had a twattish driver going at 40mph and expecting us to catch up with the bags, while screaming 'I'VE GOTTA GET MY CAR IN FOR 5 FOR FUCKS SAKE, HURRY UP!!' from the cab, as we died in the baking heat.

After the day ended, I walked back 3 miles into my town, got fed and watered by the great chaps at my old job, then walked another 2 miles home.

They phoned me up next day, I told em where to go.

2. Trolley Collector - Duration: 3 Weeks.

This was my first proper job after the usual paper round everyone started on. How bad could pushing trolleys around all day be for a few hours? £3 an hour you say? Let's go!

Next time you think about throwing your trolley down the other end of the car park after doing your shopping, think again. The amount of times I've experienced people doing this and wanted to retrieve the trolley only to hurl it full pelt at their side door is quite worrying.

Rain or shine, storm or blizzard, the trolley boy goes out to take trolleys from 1 place where they are perfectly fine, to another place where they are equally fine. The trolley boy must also get ALL the trolleys in at night before he can go home, with an old guy who thinks he's Prince fucking Albert shouting words of 'encouragement' over the expanse of the car park.

The only good thing I can say that came out of that job was I booked a week's paid holiday when I started, and quit just after it. Have it Sainsburys!

3. Megabowl Wimpey Assistant - Duration: 2 months

So yeah it might not be as bad as McDicks, but seriously, don't bother working in one of these.

For £4.30 an hour, I got the unrivalled pleasure of cooking, cleaning, washing, serving cuntstomers, cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning. Seriously, in that place if you took 5 minutes to sit down, some imaginary 6th sense alarm bell would go off in the boss' head and he'd come rushing out to make sure you were polishing the cooker knobs for the 21st time that day, or that you had chopped enough vegetables to feed a small African nation.

If you were working the early shift, you'd have to prepare huge corporate meals for people coming in that night for the poor sod on the night shift to cook later, and if that was you, you cried. Sometimes you wouldn't get out until 1 or 2 AM if you were still cleaning up from the fuckers that didn't leave until 11 and decided it would be fun to trash the kitchen you'd cleaned a bit earlier.

I think the worst experience I had there however, was being greeted by an unscheduled party of school kids, who took up every lane in the alley, and of course ALL wanted food.

Try serving, keeping track of, cooking and taking out food for 28 lanes of people by yourself, with people moaning in your ear about not getting their food quick enough. I almost quit that night.

So that's a few of my greatest memories of the wonderful world of employment. Thank the sweet Lord Jesus for being a student!

(Sureshot, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 18:50, archived)

Don't read any further if you drink cows milk (no really I'm not kidding)

A couple of years ago I used to work for the Milk Marketing Board. Part of our job was to put samples of milk though a sensitive testing machine. Basically we tested the milk for fat, protein and ….er…..something else I can’t remember, and ‘signs of active infection’ i.e. pus. Oh many is the happy hour we spent unclogging the sampling computers ‘cos a pus clot had bunged it up. But the best (or really the worst) bit is all the rest of the milk from these poorly cows had already been sold onto the dairy processors. Yum yum yum. Nice and chewy milk.

So next time you get floaters in your tea don’t say I didn’t warn you!!!!!!!!!!

PS And the clever bosses made sure that the samples were dyed blue, to put us off just in case we felt like having a quick swig if we felt thirsty

(Beryl the Peril, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 18:57, archived)

I've been a local paper boy for almost 2 years

And walking 3 miles every Wednesday for £10 a week isn't actually that bad. But this time last year, I figured I'd get a morning one to buy my new computer (I was getting it for Christmas, but I was paying £400 towards it) I started it the morning after an Alice Cooper concert and that was probably one of the better days. I was always freezing, always tired and pretty soon always ill. EVERY day for 2-3 months I did this, with a break only when I was hung over and throwing up everywhere on New Years Day, and it almost killed me, I was ill with something very like Glandular Fever (though I got checked and it wasn't) from mid November to March, even three months after I quit sometime in January. If I'd been there another week it would've killed me.

Not really any good, but I'm only little and wanted to put something. I'm about to turn 16 and looking for a new job though, wish me luck...

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Whillow, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 20:07, archived)

Man that's nothing!

On Sunday mornings I used to jog along one side of the road while my friend did the other on her bike with the Sunday morning paper route. It was her route, I didn't get paid I just did it to hang with her. We would put our Bras on under our nighties and jackets n pants on over top. Then dive back into bed 2 hours later before the rest of the house was up and talk or sleep till the afternoon.

My worst job HAS to be when I worked in daycare! The noise 60 kids make can really exhaust any sane person. I was told I had to do "work experience" in a Kindy or daycare center for a Nanny certificate I was doing (I didn't even want to be a nanny! I was encouraged to do that if I wanted to get into teachers training.) sooo I did this course. Got puked on shat on and the staff there were bone Idle and used the students to do the hard work!!! and after all that I didn't even get into Teachers training (Good luck for me because I went on to better things i.e. my masters.)

Unfortunately I ended up HATING kids for years (mostly the result of stupid parents not really the kiddies)
It all ended up good, I have easy library assistant job with Rapitanui as my supervisor, so you can tell that it’s pretty relaxed here and much B3TA is done on work time....
=0)

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Weevilgrl, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 22:25, archived)

Oh, and my work experiance

I spent a week (was ment to be two, but I they could only take me for one so I spent most of the first week helping out with stuff at school) sorting envelopes. On the first day, I helped print off over 8,000 addresses onto them, then we spent the rest of the week putting the right letters and catologues in them. The company and people were really nice, and I did manage to spend large amounts of time in the stock room looking at computer stuff, but sorting envelopes for a week nearly drove me insane. Mind you, I got to build 2 computers on the last day, and I got offered back in the sumer (which I couldn't do) so they must've thought I did a good job of it.

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Whillow, Fri 14 Nov 2003, 9:33, archived)

Collecting supermarket trolleys...

...for a supermarket too tight to buy enough supermarket trollies for all its customers.

I got to know every single wino-encrusted hole Reading town centre had to offer.

Edit: Oh yes. Golf Sale sign holder.

Edit edit: Delivering leaflets for a friend's motor spares shop (friend = total git). Ten quid for 1,200 of the things. I buried half of them in some woods on the A4 in Sonning.

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Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Thu 13 Nov 2003, 22:25, archived)

Old People

My mother had a job wringing out old people diapers and helping them to the toilet. Once she went into an old lady's room, and found her covered in shit. The lady grabbed a fistful of her own fecal matter and flung it at my mom, who then spent the rest of the day cleaning the senile lady's walls.

(haykoe, Fri 14 Nov 2003, 5:55, archived)

grampy's crackers

sympathise with your mother.
I worked in a nursing home and was just about to finish my shift when I was summoned by a buzzer to one of the resident's room.
He and everything in the room were covered in poo. Whilst trying to 'sort it out', the guy got shuffling across the room with his zimmer frame making matters worse.
when I suggested that he stay where he was, he cocked his head and asked me matter-of-factly
"would you like to go to a barn dance?"
Kind offer, but I declined.

(ell, Fri 14 Nov 2003, 13:33, archived)

Bad job...

...not mine though made me feel bad. I was going out with a girl many moons ago during my first year at university. She was a bit of a horsey type (in the riding sense rather than resembling Princess Anne). One of her duties during summer was rubbing vaseline into the stallion's knobs to prevent chapped-cock (a horsey complaint she told me). She didn't seem to dislike the job as such but it made me feel somewhat inferior.

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sick_boy, Fri 14 Nov 2003, 9:57, archived)

Another one!

My Work experience was in the 'Rehab' ward for the local mental hospital (My own dumbass fault for not submitting the application until the end and getting the shite jobs) , and it was terrible and depressing! I'd seen One Flew over the Cuckoos nest as preperation, and mentioned this to the Head Nurse guy, so he took us on a trip to see the electro-therapy dept, and we got to see some poor old woman get 2000 volts between her lobes, and flop about on the bed like a beached fish! The rest of the week was spent loading up pots with plastic slime, and putting kiddies chalk into boxes - so I was not so much helping the paitients with their rehab, but more being rehabbed myself! Plus the nutters (politically incorrect i know, but WTF we're all bumgay right?) were fighting over the heat sealer for the slime, and one guy kept trying sell me his car (I was 15)..and some of them had very bizarre ways of communicating using grunts, squeals and drooling but still managed to put bets on at the bookies (They got paid for their work @ 1.50 per hour ..hey maybe they post here too!)...so their rehab was going great! My friend Steven also gave one of the patients a sip of his coke, and fucked up his medication, so he got put into restraints for the afternoon! My how we laughed once we got over the guilt...

(Rockster77, Fri 14 Nov 2003, 13:05, archived)

I was once...

A barman....
doesnt sound too bad does it?

I was hard up and desperate for cash, and I wandered into a bar and asked for a job. I was barely 18 and had never been into the bar before. I made it perfectly clear that I had no bar experiance whatsoever. My previous pub outings involved sitting as far away from the bar as possible and getting the oldest looking member to buy the drinks (this was before I hit 18), so i didnt really know what went on behind the bar.

Next day, the manager i spoke to the day before offers me the job, starting in 20 minutes.

Little did I know that it was a famously rough pub, I walk in at 1pm, and the manager says "Theres the till, drinks are all here, barrells are downstairs, I'll be back for closing!" and promptly exits leaving me on my own for the whole day.

I worked for 11 hours a day, 6 days a week (It would have been seven except I demanded one day off to actually do something), for 6 weeks. Then after 2 pay cuts (I was on less than minimum to start with) and being £20 short changed on my last weeks wages, I walked.

Saw many fights, and cleaned up plenty of borken glass. The regulars were actually really nice and looked after me (showing me the ropes), but I would only see the manager 2 times a day, at opening, and at close. I was the only other barman.

The best part was the Sat Night doorman, who after leaving the pub at 11 went on to do the doors at some club, he would always get me and a couple of mates in to the club through the side door for free :D

Sad thing is that the manager sold the pub a year ago, and drinks in the same pub that a friend of mine works in, so I see him quite regularly now, he still remembered my name after 4 years of me walking out after 6 weeks.

(Fubear, Fri 14 Nov 2003, 14:12, archived)

A little while back...

I worked at the Co-op. I couldnt work out why I was the only teenage female employee there, until I got the uniform... think school dinner lady crossed with granny.

My job was to push carts across one part of the store to the other, full of milk and about twice as heavy as me. Its a miracle I never crushed (many) small children.

The worst part was getting the milk from the freezer... SO cold. And the guys I worked with thought itd be soooo funny to close the door behind me when I was in there one day and switch the light off.
Bastards.
I was in there two hours before my manager realised that he hadnt been able to peer down my top with the security cameras for a while and went looking for me.

(Ocarina and the horse comes., Fri 14 Nov 2003, 19:00, archived)

Me mate had a job

in a chicken slaughter house. He had to deliver the "coup de grace" to all the chickens that had survived the initial electric shock treatment, by ringing the little blighters necks. He also worked on a line there where he had to shape chicken kievs, by grabbing and squeezing them so they went err... kiev shaped.

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Farmfoodsman, Fri 14 Nov 2003, 14:25, archived)

My first job after leaving school

was at the local Morrisons supermarket. I got a job pushing trollies around the car park for £2.01 per hour (what was the point of the 1p?). It was soon winter and my fingers were so cold that you get that effect where your little finger gets paralysed and won't bend properly. But I couldn't wear gloves because that would mean constantly taking them off and on again to take the pound coins (which we were expected to provide ourselves) out of the trolley, until we discovered you can get the trollies out with a small screwdriver (the next summer). I used to plead and constantly write letters asking for a transfer inside to a less monotonous, lonely, gruelling job but the sad fact was, I actually got good at pushing trollies, so they noticed that (without EVER saying thanks) and deliberately kept me out there, seeing as nobody could shift those trollies quite as fast as me.

There were only four 'trolley pushers' there. One was called Les, who was a nice bloke but had problems with diabetes and so was off sick a lot. He was supposed to be on my Saturday shift with me but when he was on sick I'd end up covering the whole car park by myself, pushing about 15 trollies at a time (you're only supposed to do 8), dodging cars and stupid customers. So I was doing the work of two men, and even if it was really bad and I went in to ask for someone to send out more staff to help, nobody ever came out, they were always 'too busy' or just didn't want to go out in the cold. Losers. In the end I stopped asking, I was capable of doing the whole job alone- I even did a Christmas Eve all by myself. I must have been a right mug. The only bonuses were the occasional abandoned trolley with the pound coin still in, the 24 pack of John Smiths someone once left in a trolley, and thirty quid someone once left sticking out of the cash machine. Apart from that it was hell, having to dodge fireworks and snowballs being thrown at me by local cracker ass kids and being told to fish trollies out of the nearby beck by the bastard excuse for a manager. I applied for load of other part-time jobs with no luck, I was stuck in car park purgatory.

I eventually got transferred (after 2 years) to the petrol station, which was a vast improvement, though still boring. By this time I'd flunked out of college twice and couldn't find a 'real' job, so I joined the Army.... and hated it so much that I was out in 3 months and, you guessed it, back at Morrisons (but this time working with the Fruit and Veg, which doesn't involve freezing your bollocks off but does involve evil 4am starts). I did eventually get into Uni, deliberately chosing a spot where there wasn't a Morrisons for 70 miles, and was so happy to leave Morrisons forever!!!

Or so I thought.... After failing to get any other job to fund me through my studies, I ended up skint and having to apply to the local Safeway, which happily took me on. I thought Safeway (at least this one) to be much better my old Morrisons- the manager is a nice bloke, not the scumbag who used to be in charge at my old place (and who got transferred to another store two months after I left- he makes my life a misery for six years and then when I go, so does he!) And then it all goes full circle and Morrisons are going to take Safeway over AND IT'S ALL GOING TO GO HORRIBLY WRONG AGAIN!!! As soon as the takeover is complete, I'm going to quit, and see if I can survive on my student loan...

(abertownie, Fri 14 Nov 2003, 19:33, archived)

i couldn't choose the worst between

Paste machine operator in a fish factory - unbelievable stench which I could still smell weeks after I packed it in
Window cleaner - mainly on tenements and factories, with no safety equipment. Pretty scary.
Oil-rig worker - totally relentless for 12 hours a day, 14 days on the trot.
Saw-mill labourer - noisy, back-breaking and dangerous. My mate and I were the only ones there with a full set of fingers. But then we were students and needed fingers, though I'm still not sure what for.

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magoo, Fri 14 Nov 2003, 20:45, archived)

Definitely the worst job ever seen

I worked with a mate of mine, landscaping the garden, for his Dad, during a summer holiday, and he 'won' a job at a local shoe factory. Over the Bank Holiday weekend, the water tank had fallen from the roof, 60 feet into the basement and water had been pouring in. Today was Wednesday, so it had nearly five days of pissing everywhere. I was selected by my mates Dad, between the two of us, to clear the basement!

The basement was a place where they stored useless shite, but they were obviously readying a large insurance claim, so they wanted the maximum damage assessment. Unfortunately the basement was still under 4 feet of water. They got me some waders and I started the worst two days of my life. Obviously there was no power, so no lights or heating and everything had begun rotting several days earlier. (It was a heatwave at the time).

Also the only entrance to the basement was a set of old wooden stairs and then it was a 100m to the far end through a narrow corridor. You had to feel your way along the walls, which would have been easy if not for the rat shit and various other detritus.

After two days of 8am til 6pm, breathing in rotting cardboard and paper, emptying the entire basement of several tonnes of crap, I got my bonus. £25 instead of £20 for the two days.

Never, ever again. Not even for a million quid!! I still can't look my mate's Dad in the eye, cheeky bastard.

(jimbobaggins, Fri 14 Nov 2003, 21:25, archived)

Similar

I once worked for 6 weeks over the summer in a parsnip factory. The whole place was refigerated with mini parsnip log-flumes full of bleach. When the parsnips came along I had to chop the top and bottoms off with a surgical quality machete. One girl lost a finger and it ended up being packaged at the end of the line.

Also got my arm caught in a potato grading machine that was being towed on the back of a tractor. Great days....

(doowaz, Fri 14 Nov 2003, 21:43, archived)

Not related really, but ...

I also worked for a few days at the McDonalds distributor Golden West. We had to build cages all night for people to load with boxes of food to be supplied to the restaurants. After a day, we were promoted to working in a freezer at -20 degrees, dressed as an eskimo, while more new recruits tackled the cages. Being the only visible flesh, your nose and mouth froze as soon as you walked in to the freezer and then we would abuse the fries and burgers for half an hour before having an hours break.

More than half an hour resulted in frozen cheekbones.

Two mates of mine were assigned to stacking plastic trays from the bun machine. They used to hide in the stacks of plastic trays and literally smoke weed all night long with no interruptions. One of these guys had been there for 2 years and just smoked and walked round all the time. If you asked anyone what he did, they would say, "nothing he just walks round all night and smokes weed, but none of the managers ever ask."

I bet he is still there.

(jimbobaggins, Fri 14 Nov 2003, 22:18, archived)

did 3 weeks work experience

at the local opera house. pretty good really, but got given all the tedious jobs (what else are work experience kids for!?). worst example i can think of was having to go through four massive files of newspaper clippings relating to the theatre, measuring exactly how much space had been given in the article and entering it into a spreadsheet... along with scintillating details like whether or not there was a picture, and whereabouts in the paper the article had been.

also got the thrilling job of direct mail shots... writing something trying to make a show that wasn't selling sound really good. photocopying it 500+ times. printing 500+ labels from a database. sticking every label onto an envelope. folding every bit of paper. inserting 2 or 3 leaflets about upcoming productions. inserting them into envelopes. sealing envelopes. franking envelopes. repeat ad infinitum. monotony was broken on the last day when one of the stagehands came into to collect his wages, revealed it was his 19th birthday, and sat drinking beer and making up encouraging chants all day.

compared to most i've read, this is heaven in a bucket.

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kikilookeylikey, Fri 14 Nov 2003, 23:40, archived)

I measured old men's wee wee for work experience.

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whelkboy is old now, you see, Sat 15 Nov 2003, 1:58, archived)

I used to work as a waiter in a very expensive hotel

one of those high class places, that cost like £100 for a starter. The uniform was green and white (incase you were interested)

Anyway, I had been working there for a number of weeks, about 3-5 if i recall correctly, and hating every last minute of it. The customers alwasy used to talk down to you and acted as if they were royalty.

On my last day of work (you will see why shortly) i was serving organic tomato soup to a vegitarian lady. as i was about to serve it to her she asked me "what soup it this?" so i replied "Its organic tomato soup madam, made in the vegitarian kitchen" which i thought would have answered all her questions, insted she asked me "so there is no meat in it?". "No madam" i replied "the soup is made fresh in the vegitarian kitchen, none of the utentils involved in the process have had any contact with meat what so ever". "so there is no meat" she replied, so i reitterated my previous statement, being as polite as possible, but, yet again she asked me if it contained meat, so i told her, again, that it didn't, this went on for a while, and i was getting more and more worked up. So after the 8th time she asked i said "If you don't believe me madam, why not check for your self" and proceded to pour a ladle of soup into her lap.

I was promptly fired after that and told i wasnt allowed in the hotel again

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ChaosTime The Fucking Moon Lord, Sat 15 Nov 2003, 4:07, archived)

Body Parts...

For six months I had a lucrative job working at the very inefficient incinerator of a private hospital in Dublin.
The uniform was great...boiler suit, gas-mask, goggles and an optional headphone radio which helped me look like a radio-controlled alien (handy for scaring the local kids away, as I always looked like I was in the middle of a biological disaster zone).
Anyway, all sorts of stuff went into the flames...body parts, syringes, strange human waste...all properly packed in anonymous containers.
But, the one thing that still gets me, was when a Hiace van arrived up one morning, from another hospital, with some of their 'overflow'. A small man jumped out and proceeded to stack a few black binliners outside the incinerator. Tall and thin they were.
Not thinking, I grabbed the top of the first one and felt a nice little set of toes.....burnt them all, but never felt the same.

(Blue Monkey, Sat 15 Nov 2003, 14:42, archived)

Ghost Haunter

Well my worst job was a ghost haunter well i kind of thougt it was a joke until i saw 30 yen an hour then i had to it ended up having to run around a small room a million times until about 100 and say this is haunted and run out of the room

(useless3, Sun 16 Nov 2003, 0:21, archived)

...

I used to have a job stealing punctuation from message boards.

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Beve The Spaniard broke off his horse's head, Sun 16 Nov 2003, 19:53, archived)

Answering timetable enquiries and making station announcements at British Rail.

Will the general public please board the next train at Platform 1 and watermelon off and stop calling me.

And collecting samples at a sewage works. That sucked too.

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winston_theramin, Sun 16 Nov 2003, 1:35, archived)

Market Research

OK, all the really bad stories have been told. My justification of my existence is in this post.

If a market researcher calls you at home, you MUST use the magic words "Don't Ever Call Me Again". If you just say "Jarrod? Um, he's not here... no, I don't know when he'll be back... um BYE!" (quick hangup) it gets marked as a REFUSAL - you won't be contacted for another three months, but you'll still be on their list and as soon as the three months are up, boom! More stupid questions about your satisfaction with a mid-level banking employee you've never seen and would run over if you ever did see them.

When you use the majick words, a *reputable* company will take you off their phone list. Unfortunately, if the company ISN'T reputable all you've got is the satisfaction of having yelled at some lowly deadshit such as your good self. But if it IS a reputable company at least you know you won't hear from them again.

Please don't do what I once did to a person who, funnily enough, would have worked at the same place I do now, and say "Paul? Yeah I'll just go get him...." then leave them on the phone for twenty or thirty minutes. I picked up the phone and could barely suppress the urge to say "ARE YOU STILL ON THE FUCKING LINE???!!!!" Seriously, if you don't want to talk to them, say "No" and hang up. Don't swear, don't argue, just say no and hang up. I get to type in "Refused" and both of us can get on with our lives.

The other thing is that the twunts who say "Yeah, get it over quickly, I've got things to do" are exactly the ones who then spend forty minutes telling you their fucking life story, opinions on everything from bank fees to what the US should do in Iraq, and if it was a face-to-face interview I bet they'd be getting out photos of their grandkids. Twunts.

(Emily Bruce-Dickinson http://jovialfellow.blogspot.com/, Sun 16 Nov 2003, 9:08, archived)

I've had a couple.........

Worked at the Great Yarmouth Pleasure Beach when I left school 4 money b4 college. Was working in a kitchen of one of their restaurants. All I had to do ALL day was load and unload the dishwasher. Not so bad I hear u say? The fact that the contents of the dishwasher were so hot I burnt my hands everytime I pulled something out cos I dint have the time to let them cool down. I used some gloves eventually but they just melted. I QUIT after about 2 months. They also put me in a pick and mix sweet stall which had precisely ONE customer in the whole of the 12 hours i was sittin in there. He only wanted change 4 his kid to go on some ride too. Eating all the pick and mix got me thru the day nicely tho.
I also worked in a food packing factory 4 a week one summer in order to get some beer money. I had to pack frozen beans. It wasn't so bad until I was told to take charge of the slicing machine. This involved sittin up on a metal platform with the machine making sure the green beans didn't get clogged up. It was a 12 hour shift and the machine dint get blocked once so I just sat there and endured the longest 12 hours of my entire life. On top of that, the platform was constantly vibrating violently. Oh, and I also worked at Homebase which says it all really. You really do get some muppets shopping in there. I've come to the conclusion that a MAJORITY of Great Yarmouth residents are dumb fucks.

(gdcoey, Sun 16 Nov 2003, 10:40, archived)

I was fired by KwikSave

for throwing a bag of sugar at a junior manager. zeppelin amateur moustache grower. Didn't really mean to hit him, but he narked me when I was up a ladder, and it was pretty difficult to miss.

Also got sacked from a milk factory for singing. The boss was called Tom and I kept singing 'Ground control to Major Tom' over and over like a silly turd. It was a noisy factory, but the boss said singing could endanger people's lives.

Silly cranberry.

(elmyrde, Sun 16 Nov 2003, 19:21, archived)

Well I don't have it yet, but I've handed in an application form at Currys

*I think I should make the point that I am 13 and only just allowed for a job (my mum wants to get rid of me early)

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Rev. Cleo still alive, Sun 16 Nov 2003, 22:11, archived)