The worst job you've ever had?

[Deleted]

Mine was working in a tyre storage unit manually unloading 4x4 tyres out of containers or out of the back of trucks. The worst was rainy cold days. Hand blisters were a daily thing and you'd be soaked and freezing all day long. A lot of the tyres were ridiculously heavy and left me exhausted at the end of each day. All for a measly 6GBP/h.

What was your worst job?

[Colmadero]

Working in the Dominican Republic traveling a lot internally across the country. In any given week, I could travel from one point of the country to another for something as simple as troubleshooting a printer by turning it on/off because the Regional Manager was a fucking idiot.

All of this for about US$700-800 a month.

[Flarelaine]

Mine was offloading papers from printing presses onto pallets, at the speed of the press, in 12-hour shifts. No breaks either unless the foreman volunteered to take over for a bit while I sat in a corner panting (they usually did, though).

The upside is now I can always say "I've been through worse."

[Ghostpanther]

Mine was working in a tyre storage unit manually unloading 4x4 tyres out of containers or out of the back of trucks. The worst was rainy cold days. Hand blisters were a daily thing and you'd be soaked and freezing all day long. A lot of the tyres were ridiculously heavy and left me exhausted at the end of each day. All for a measly 6GBP/h.

What was your worst job?

Engine block blaster when I worked for Cummins Engine Company. Very dirty, hot. And you would be covered with metal shavings and block cleaning fluid and had to wait until I got home to take a shower. Second and third would be putting up hay bales in barns where the temp would be over 100 in the loft and picking peaches. Amazing how all that fuzz from them can make you miserable.

[Deleted]

Community manager in the video games industry is by FAR the worst job I ever had.

[CptEgo]

The worst job you can have is no job, trust me on that.

[Razorice]

The worst job you can have is no job, trust me on that.

I completely agree.
Better have some sort of a job rather than sitting on your ass jobless

[Eazy]

Community manager in the video games industry is by FAR the worst job I ever had.

Come back to WOW Ghostcrawler!

[Afrospinach]

Working for a company that made the bottles for softdrinks Auckland. 12 hours shifts, 4 days on, 4 days off, 4 nights on 4 days off. So they flip you twice every week.

The schedule was not the bad part though, nothing in the place worked the way it should. Every single machine had a nik-nak as to how to load the bottles onto the trolleys and the lifers there were too busy celebrating themselves to teach anyone. Then there was cleaning up all the oil under the machines, tonnes of plastic pellets and stuff would get mixed in and go soft, the whole place was sterile but it still managed to be foul. Then there was the other part of the job, quality control which is 'nuff said.

It actually could have been a decent place to work if the people there were not so disinterested and miserable.

4. The culture of the company was one of brutal honesty and assigning blame. Every time something went wrong we were required to note it in a log, then every Friday we had a meeting to go over all the things that went wrong and literally decide which one of us was to blame. We were also required to record three pieces of public feedback about co-workers every single day, and it was supposed to be about 50% positive 50% negative (we were rated on how tough we were, if you weren't tough enough you got dinged). These comments went onto a website where you could read what everyone wrote about every other person.

Yep, that is one of the worst things I have ever read lol. I am just sitting here wondering what their angle is.

[Machismo]

When I was about 13, my dad agreed to have me work for the guy. I got paid $3 an hour, and the work was miserable. He paid someone else to fell a bunch of timber down a canyon, and wanted it hauled up. They just cut it into rounds, but told him there was no fucking way they were going to haul it up the canyon. So, there I was, a kid weighing 80 pounds, rolling wood up a hill that weighed more than I did. The wheelbarrow he offered to let me use had a flat tire, so it was useless. After a week of it, he had the balls to complain that I was taking too many breaks, so I told him to try it. He couldn't even finish one, before he had to stop. I quit right there on the spot. I hate that guy to this day, and I was happy when I found out he died.

[Enthusiastic Steward]

One summer I worked as a temp and one of the jobs was a two week stint at a plastics factory. The machine I had to watch made eight identical parts which came out of the mold about every 90 seconds onto a conveyor belt. Part 7 was deformed, and rather than fixing the machine it was more cost effective to the company to simply have me pick up every Part 7 and throw it in a bin so the plastic could be re-melted. And that was all I did for eight hours a day.

Runner up would be the two months I spent as a door-to-door salesman for just some income while searching for a permanent job. It was awful, but I was able to quit after finding the best job I've had (essentially the job I have now, though I'm at a different company) so I can't complain too much.

[Deleted]

Haven't done too many jobs:

As a student:

- Worked in a supermarket for 10 years as a student. My mom was the owner, so it was kind of ok. Did basically everything, though I'd probably say that working in the fruit & vegetable section was the worst. Start working at 6am on a deadline to have everything prepped before opening hour at 8am, hauling extremely heavy boxes filled with melons, cauliflowers, bananas, whatever on pallets stacked way too high. I was exhausted by 9 and then I had to spend my remaining 5 hours in the drinks section (for lack of a better term in English, afaik) hauling heavy pallets once more. At the end of the day I was hurting all over and I had to do it all over again the next day. Then again, I've had some pretty fun times there.

- Worked 1 summer at an amusement park with a live dolphin show. My task was to man the ticket register at the entrance during the morning and to check the dolphin show tickets prior to the show and run the gift shop after the show. It was fucking great. Amazing colleagues, really cool atmosphere, could sit in the top row to watch the show provided I got out 5min before the end, almost no one visiting the gift shop AND it had a super cool popcorn machine that I had to run. Good times, good times. On very calm days I could stroll around the park to keep an eye on things, because I was a tall and fit guy back then. They didn't really have park security.

Internships:

- I did one of my 2 internships in an executive search agency. Was pretty shitty, had to come in full formal attire because they only hired C-level executives. I had to screen candidates, proactively prospect them and follow up on admin tasks. It's not easy to do telephone interviews or unscripted screenings of CEO's for specialized industries as a 22 year old Master student. Atmosphere was really snobbish, didn't like it. Waste of time and propelled me out of a career in HR altogether.

- My other internship was at the HR department of the multinational I work for now. Was OK overall, colleagues were great, the work was a bit more boring and was never challenging. By then I already made up my mind that I wouldn't continue pursuing a career in HR so I kind of checked out mentally.

Real deal:

- Started as a business analyst for 1 year. Great times, good colleagues, extremely challenging work and high flexibility & autonomy.
- After 1 year I transitioned to a team leader function, more responsibilities came my way and I had to quickly develop my people management skills, but also was involved in managing several projects and negotiating with senior management and executives.
- After another 2 years I became the commercial manager here, taking over full responsibility for a team of 39 people, 7 direct reports, and 350 million euro turnover. Now I just work...a lot. Not really a lot to learn anymore and I'm in a sector that I don't particularly like.

[MatadorMedia]

My dad made me work with him in the carpentry business the summer after I graduated high school. It paid well but it was hard work and always dirty / sweaty, and I had no idea what I was doing most of the time. He just wanted to torture me into going to college. I got a part-time job indoors soon after and went to community college so I guess it worked.

[Independent voter]

I briefly had one of those factory jobs where humans were just part of the machine. My job was to fill a box with lids and push the box down the line on these rollers where the next person would do their thing. I did this for 8 hours a day, the pay was pretty good but I got soooo bored.

[Nutri]

I was very young and refused a dole so I took whatever job I could take. My dad always stated that if you're able to work you should never sit around the house living off of taxpayers money.

It's a tie between:

1) a job at a clothing company where I had to open incoming boxes, count the t-shirts in the box and close the box again.
2) a carton factory where I had to load sheets of carton into a machine that turned them into boxes. Pick up a stack, insert them into machine. All day.

I know people can name worse jobs but both where so mindbogglingly boring that I quit both after mere days and went on to something else. That something else might have been at a concrete factory where they made side-walk elements by hand. Some weighing up to 70kg's a piece. Pour concrete in a cast iron model, flip it, lift it with another guy and restart. Also wasn't great but after a few weeks of that I found something more suiting and slowly moved up via a few companies to the position I am in now.

[Deleted]

Retail. Nuff said.

The root of my deep hatred for mankind.

[Deleted]

Had a couple of awful jobs, the ones where you can't stand being unemployed and ones I knew I could love if the people were different! It's the positives that you take away from these experiences that's important (even if it's just sitting there in your new job, thinking meh. Could be worse.)

A Chef, in a famous Chef's restaurant
118 hours a week, pressure so high you could eat coal and shit out a diamond. The bullying atmosphere (I did ok, others were eviscerated) and the constant physical fights. I quit on Christmas eve after an enormous punch up over a complete misunderstanding and never went back. On the plus side, I learned to be a chef and learned that your body can do so much more than you think it can.

Labourer for a roofing company
Endlessly clumsy and hurting myself, my boss was an absolute dick and would routinely throw a hammer at me if I didn't do tasks correctly or quickly. I had to bump (carry up a ladder) 2 tonnes of slate regularly in small increments. But I learned you can outwit just about anyone if you try hard enough and if you can dodge a hammer, you can dodge a ball

Working in a "pawn" shop (cash converters for brits)
People often dying/ailing, selling their last valuable items to get some food and it being against policy to help in anyway (lots of scammers, some genuine)
Thieves, constantly.
Horrible, horrible money hungry company who gave 0 fucks about employment law.


P.S working with my friend's in Mcdonalds when I was 16 is one of the best most hilarious jobs I've ever had.

[Deleted]

I briefly had one of those factory jobs where humans were just part of the machine. My job was to fill a box with lids and push the box down the line on these rollers where the next person would do their thing. I did this for 8 hours a day, the pay was pretty good but I got soooo bored.

Would you say that doing this for a long time would make you...flip your lid...?

[Swolltitan]

My first job was at Chili's Grill and Bar. Not a bad gig, but it was when the Olympics came here to Atlanta, GA back in 96. I was hired as a bus boy, but ended up working as a dishwasher to get more $. Starting at 4:30-5pm, and working until 4am with soaked clothes (blue jeans and socks were always soaked). Needless to say, I had to always carry baby powder in the car with me just to make it too and from.

[LoLcano]

The worst job you can have is no job, trust me on that.

This. Also i was a one man IT department at a company for 2 year, it sucked ,workload was alot cause i had to install and do everything myself and pay was crap cause i didnt have much experience on my resume .