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# 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.
(I helped save b3ta! 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.
(I helped save b3ta! 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.
(I helped save b3ta! 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
(I helped save b3ta! 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...
(I helped save b3ta! 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.
(I helped save b3ta! 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"
(I helped save b3ta! butchbint, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 14:56, archived)
# yeah! Damn the man!
(I helped save b3ta! 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.
(I helped save b3ta! Mosschops, Mon 10 Nov 2003, 15:06, archived)
# hhaha
I misread that as bean flicking....
*hangs head*
(I helped save b3ta! 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
(I helped save b3ta! 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)