Worst.Job.Ever.
- Thread starter TeeDee
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Having a bad day?
I've stacked shelves, swept floors, processed refunds for people who've obviously stolen the items. But the worst time I've has was as a well paid contractor when there's been hardly any work to get on with. I hate being bored at work!
I've stacked shelves, swept floors, processed refunds for people who've obviously stolen the items. But the worst time I've has was as a well paid contractor when there's been hardly any work to get on with. I hate being bored at work!
May 1966. I paid off my ship in the West India Dock London the day after the National Union of Seamans strike had begun. Wife and one young sprog, the money from my 5 months away on the Aussie run would not last, so I took the first job available.
Injection Mouldings...a Factory filled with cabinet like machines each with a sliding see-through door and a funnel shaped Hopper on top.
Slide door closed, press green button..wait three seconds..the steel moulds part, open door and 6 black plastic foot pedals for Rover cars all attached fall out. Close door press green button. Separate pedals place in box..open door...
The following day..Oh! Joy! open door and yellow plastic screwdriver handles fall out and did so for a couple of days.
I'm proud to say I made coloured Cowboys and Indians for Corn Flake boxes too and those rings they stick Babies dummies on..
I lasted 5 days, Monday to Friday. 12 hour shifts..and then went Scaffolding..
Injection Mouldings...a Factory filled with cabinet like machines each with a sliding see-through door and a funnel shaped Hopper on top.
Slide door closed, press green button..wait three seconds..the steel moulds part, open door and 6 black plastic foot pedals for Rover cars all attached fall out. Close door press green button. Separate pedals place in box..open door...
The following day..Oh! Joy! open door and yellow plastic screwdriver handles fall out and did so for a couple of days.
I'm proud to say I made coloured Cowboys and Indians for Corn Flake boxes too and those rings they stick Babies dummies on..
I lasted 5 days, Monday to Friday. 12 hour shifts..and then went Scaffolding..
I was given the job of re-accessing the boxes of human bones that had been dug up from Lesmahagow Priory twenty years earlier.....problem was that they had been stored in archival cardboard boxes in the basement of a local museum which had flooded. Those boxes had collapsed around the bones, soaked everything inside. The powers that be decided to bring in Industrial heater fans to dry everything off. ...bones included.
By the time I got the boxes in the basement of another local museum, they had collapsed and dried like papier mache around the bones.
These are human remains, even if they were nearly nine hundred years old, and they had to be treated with respect.
No rubber gloves, no body suits, no masks....not a lot of spare cash in local museums and not commonly available back then anyway, over thirty years ago.
Anyway, I had to open the boxes, remove the bones and repack them. The bones were crumbling to dust under my hands. The skulls seperated at the fontanelles, I stacked the pieces like broken bowls; the 'cap' came off the femurs, teeth were loose, ribs and vertebrae were crumbling and shattered. Tiny finger, hand, wrist and feet bones had to be painstakingly removed from the dust and cardboard.
It took me three weeks in total, and the whole time I worked I could smell the bone dust. I breathed in that dust, my hands and clothes were covered in it, and when my shift was over, I went outside and threw up in the shrubbery.
I have never, ever, been so glad to see a job finished.
By the time I got the boxes in the basement of another local museum, they had collapsed and dried like papier mache around the bones.
These are human remains, even if they were nearly nine hundred years old, and they had to be treated with respect.
No rubber gloves, no body suits, no masks....not a lot of spare cash in local museums and not commonly available back then anyway, over thirty years ago.
Anyway, I had to open the boxes, remove the bones and repack them. The bones were crumbling to dust under my hands. The skulls seperated at the fontanelles, I stacked the pieces like broken bowls; the 'cap' came off the femurs, teeth were loose, ribs and vertebrae were crumbling and shattered. Tiny finger, hand, wrist and feet bones had to be painstakingly removed from the dust and cardboard.
It took me three weeks in total, and the whole time I worked I could smell the bone dust. I breathed in that dust, my hands and clothes were covered in it, and when my shift was over, I went outside and threw up in the shrubbery.
I have never, ever, been so glad to see a job finished.
Computer Programmer/Operator in a commercial Bank in Brussels - my first ever real job. Boring, sterile, 5 shift system that screwed up social life and sleep patterns ... and I found that I hated computers despite having a huge pay cheque. I quit after 12 months and returned to Britain for a year out and to train in Outdoor Pursuits via an unpaid "apprenticeship". I did go back to another identicle job with another bank in Brussels for 6 months - but that was purely to get more cash together then quit and came back to live in Britain and work in Outdoor Persuits, never going back to computer work again. I do not even have a "Smart" phone now and limit what I do on my laptop.
I never earned much again either ....
I never earned much again either ....
Totally empathise.May 1966. I paid off my ship in the West India Dock London the day after the National Union of Seamans strike had begun. Wife and one young sprog, the money from my 5 months away on the Aussie run would not last, so I took the first job available.
Injection Mouldings...a Factory filled with cabinet like machines each with a sliding see-through door and a funnel shaped Hopper on top.
Slide door closed, press green button..wait three seconds..the steel moulds part, open door and 6 black plastic foot pedals for Rover cars all attached fall out. Close door press green button. Separate pedals place in box..open door...
The following day..Oh! Joy! open door and yellow plastic screwdriver handles fall out and did so for a couple of days.
I'm proud to say I made coloured Cowboys and Indians for Corn Flake boxes too and those rings they stick Babies dummies on..
I lasted 5 days, Monday to Friday. 12 hour shifts..and then went Scaffolding..
As a temp - it lasted two weeks - exactly the same job at a factory in Telford called Plastic Omnium making wheelie bins. A 90 second cycle. The work between closing up and extraction wasn’t enough to fill the time. Trying to slow yourself to make it fit was infuriating. Waiting a few seconds in every minute was worse.
12 hour night shifts. (I vastly prefer factory night shifts to day shifts in most cases.)
….. And I have had to look at my own Plastic Omnium wheelie bins every day since.
This is going to be a hard thread to “like”.
This is going to be a hard thread to “like”.
Did it teach you something? For the better ? For the worse?
Even if it taught you what you didn't like , that nudges you towards what ever you do enjoy.
Working for a mortgage lender in 2005. My job was quite important insofar as I was the one authorising funds releasing to borrowers buying a house, which for the person involved is a big deal. However it was very close to minimum wage, and working for a bank at that time was still very 'old school'.
If I was 1 minute late because the trains were late, I was in trouble. I could not start 5 minutes early so that I could leave 5 minutes early and catch my train home without having to wait an extra 2 hours for the next train. You'd get told off for talking to the person next to you 'too much', which was basically at all.
Staff 'perk' was you got 3 free hot drinks per day from an old style hot drinks vending machine. Think the worst tasting tea or coffee you've ever tasted, in a thin plastic cup. Only 3 though... this was a multi-billion pound bank, can't go crazy!
Job was incredibly repetitive, looking at the same documents day in and day out, using the same few screens of some 90s-era software day in day out, feeling like the most meaningless cog in a machine lubricated with turds and broken glass.
Managers were all the sort you'd expect (like GP receptionists) who are drunk on their tiny amount of power and liked to assert themselves in the most stupid ways.
It was hateful and soul destroying.
Close second is when I was teaching. Never again.
If I was 1 minute late because the trains were late, I was in trouble. I could not start 5 minutes early so that I could leave 5 minutes early and catch my train home without having to wait an extra 2 hours for the next train. You'd get told off for talking to the person next to you 'too much', which was basically at all.
Staff 'perk' was you got 3 free hot drinks per day from an old style hot drinks vending machine. Think the worst tasting tea or coffee you've ever tasted, in a thin plastic cup. Only 3 though... this was a multi-billion pound bank, can't go crazy!
Job was incredibly repetitive, looking at the same documents day in and day out, using the same few screens of some 90s-era software day in day out, feeling like the most meaningless cog in a machine lubricated with turds and broken glass.
Managers were all the sort you'd expect (like GP receptionists) who are drunk on their tiny amount of power and liked to assert themselves in the most stupid ways.
It was hateful and soul destroying.
Close second is when I was teaching. Never again.
Mmm... I have been very lucky it would seem. Even the least enjoyable times taught me something. Mind, most were very stressful 
Perhaps a sign, that's in central Australia...
///worse.jobs.ever
This is the what3words address for a 3 metre square location near Kintore, Northern Territory.
what3words.com
It taught me that I much prefer dealing with living people. I am happy to talk about and teach others about how our ancestors lived in the past, the richness of our culture, the work, development, the way society changes....but digging up graves, dealing with the remains....I'd rather not.
Did you at least get to take the cakes home as a perk of the job?
Not at all. In the earlier days of my own consultancy there were gaps in the work. I wasn’t desperately hard up but I had the self employed paranoia about work drying up. It did remind me that management dinosaurs still existed and it was my real (professional) job to make them extinct. I learned that by working night shifts, I would never see a General Manager, an HR Manager, or a Director.
I have watched people making the same simple weld on a spot welding machine two thousand times in a night shift.
I enjoy “In the factory” on TV. Some of those folk have done the same job on the line for fifteen years or more. We are all different.
johnnytheboy
Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Agriculture Fencing, the boss was such a nob, he was never there then came back and went nuts about things despite there was no instruction! The other guys were professional fencers and knew their stuff! He just wanted to be a bully, billy big time!
Legion. Always hungry, always knackered, always in pain in one form or another... But on the flip side... The one i feel the most pride about... now i'm not in it.
Broken nose 3 times, Broken ribs, dislocated knee, Shin Splints, Stress fractures, many scars....I mean...Chicks dig scars and glory lasts forever... but...
Hindsight's a biatch.
How did i cope... No choice... ya signed your name, gave up ya passport and had no choice but to get on with it. No one forced me to go there.
Why did i leave?... Did my 5 years.
Everything after that... No pain, no hunger... enough sleep. Easy street.
Knees are feeling it now though that i'm nearer 50 than 40. They remember, and seem to enjoy dropping a regular reminder.
Broken nose 3 times, Broken ribs, dislocated knee, Shin Splints, Stress fractures, many scars....I mean...Chicks dig scars and glory lasts forever... but...
Hindsight's a biatch.
How did i cope... No choice... ya signed your name, gave up ya passport and had no choice but to get on with it. No one forced me to go there.
Why did i leave?... Did my 5 years.
Everything after that... No pain, no hunger... enough sleep. Easy street.
Knees are feeling it now though that i'm nearer 50 than 40. They remember, and seem to enjoy dropping a regular reminder.
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De stoner . Taking the stones out of the pockets of stonewashed Levi 501. 12 hour hour night shifts with no breaks or dinner. The money was £10 an hour in 1987 so it was some wage if you could handle it. The staff turnover was phenomenal. spirit crushing x
Cleaned the compost toilets at a festival. £6.25 an hour. Found loadsa money underneath when we dismantled the toilet blocks. x
