Worst job you ever had

What's the worst day-to-day, dealing with people, employees/co-workers job you ever had? A truly soul-sucking experience that took years off your life.
Journalism... hahahaha. Anyway, no.

For me, restaurant management. God did it suck.
This was my first "real" job out college and away from home, on my own.
I had to attend Steak University for six weeks in Greer, South Carolina, followed by a 10-month stint at a couple of stores.
I worked 60-66 hours a week and managed/dealt with employees:
Who came in high on drugs or drunk. One cook came in tweeked out of her head. She was slobbering in the mashed potatoes she was mixing up before passing out.

Missed work because their husband/boyfriend worked them over too bad the night before.

Husband went on a crack binge, disappeared and couldn't get a sitter to make the shift.

Husband threatening to kick my ass because wife/waitress/new mom can't leave work to take care of crying child

And the customers were nearly as bad. Large parties of 20 people with kids coming in making a complete mess of the place and leave the wait staff a $1 tip.
Seeing people sneeze into the food and keep on moving.

Yours?

 

Pre-journalism these were my jobs...

Creative Croissants - (Actually, not a bad job for a 16-year-old.) We just drank coffee and hooked up our friends with free food and coffee. The owner didn't have a clue and always scheduled more of us to work than he needed.

I worked at a raft rental place for one summer. It was a ton of hard work, but I probably got the best tan I've ever had and was in the best shape of my life right before I left for college... Never a bad thing...

I worked at Macy's for a summer and over the holidays. That wasn't too bad. I worked in men's shoes. It was boring, but easy.

I delivered beer one summer. That was actually a really fun job. We had to start at 5 a.m., but we were done shortly after lunch and the driver I worked with gave me a ton of free beer that he was supposed to give out to the customers.

 

Never had the soul-sucking job that many have.

Pre-journalism days: First job (age 15) at KFC. Lasted one day. Just gross. Also washed dishes at Ramada. Got fired after refusing to wash dishes because the morning crew left us a pile of theirs.

One of the coolest jobs I had was at a land surveying company. I went out into the field and measured/marked plots. Some easy jobs in subdivisions; some really, really tough jobs on 200-acre pieces of land on the side of a mountain in 2-feet of snow. Got to carry a machete in the summer time, so that was awesome. Got a nice tan and kept in decent shape. Also took a lot of naps in the truck.

 

YMCA camp. 24/6, $37 a day. My actual workload was around 70 hours a week. This was 2-3 years ago, too, not in 1922 when $37 might have meant something.

Not just the money. Management was terrible, conditions were horrid (spiders, snakes, alligators, mosquitoes, torrential rain, plus the whole realm of kids), the responsibility was off the charts and the main colleague I ended up working with was certifiably insane and abusive to boot.

We allegedly got one hour off a day (not me) but it was mandatory to be spent in a dirty cabin on the property in case you were needed. Which you usually were.

 

Petersen Manufacturing. Worked there the summer after my senior year making trailer truck lights.
The positive: working and commuting 45 minutes with my best friend.
The worst: having to be at work at 7 am (much harder at 18 than 30) and getting your hands cut up and shit while making trailer truck lights with a bunch of high school dropouts.
It paid ok for some high school kids I guess and reinforced the whole idea that I was going to college do something with my life.

 

Killed trees. For a day.

It was for a lumber company and you walked around in the woods with this metal spike contraption that functioned as a poison syringe.

You found the tree that was marked. Then jammed the spike in three times as you walked around the tree.

You could do that about 10 times before you had to fill up the contraption again.

I didn't go back after the first day.

 

It always stuns me when anyone takes these jobs.

 

Dishwasher
UPS load/unload
UPS small sort
Small-town sports editor

 

1. They weren't up front about the money.
2. I made a commitment

But in the end, that experience qualified me to take one of the coolest jobs I've ever had, which was a cook at a resort ranch near Laramie. So yeah, it was hell on earth with mosquito bites for two months, but because of that I got an awesome gig for the next two.

And every turn I've made in my life, right or wrong, has led me to the position I'm in now. I LOVE what I am doing. And I'm already set for the next gig, which should happen in January and go until retirement.

So it sucked, yeah, but the payoff was worth it. Had I walked out the first day, I'd be somewhere else right now. And I cannot imagine a better work environment than I'm in right now.

 

First real job (senior year of high school after football season ended) was at a Winn-Dixie grocery store. Bagged groceries and collected used shopping carts from the parking lot, but those were the good parts.

Every day started with "blocking the shelves," i.e., pulling items into stacks at the front to make the shelves appear full. It was usually me and two other guys, and you always tried to pace yourself, because the guy who got done with his part first had to block the baby food. Ever try to stack baby food jars five high in 25 rows? Nearly impossible to do without breaking two or three. Very thin glass and very difficult to clean up.

We also had to re-stock the sugar at the end of every night, because it was perpetually low and the stock boys went home at 6 p.m. There was this tall, heavy sugar cart you had to bring out from the back and blindly wheel it up the aisle to the sugar. One time I hit an entire display of salsa and broke a half-dozen jars. Also very difficult to clean up.

In general, the customers were animals. They'd put stuff back on the shelf in the wrong place, knock stuff onto the floor and not pick it up. The worst of that was small fruit like grapes and cherries, which would inevitably get stepped on and smushed into the floor.

The store had no formal security, so we had to assist in subduing and detaining suspected shoplifters. One day — and I swear I am not making this up — a heavyset woman in a mumu tried to sneak out with a frozen turkey hidden between her thighs. It was like trying to tackle a buffalo.

And I still shudder thinking about cleaning the bathrooms. I'll leave that to your imagination.

One good thing I took from the experience is that to this day I ALWAYS return my grocery cart to the rack in the parking lot. I remember what a pain in the ass it was to retrieve those from between parked cars all over the lot.

 

My entire group of friends in high school tried to land a job at UPS. But it was either the 4 a.m. - 9 a.m. shift or the 6 p.m. - 11 p.m. shift. Neither of those were very attractive options. I know a guy who has been driving for UPS for like 20 years ago. Gets paid bank and all kinds of benefits. Just a great job. And he gets to wear shorts to work.

 

One winter break I worked three jobs. One was my regular job at Little Caesars (I wasn't an ass't manager at that point). Other two were a Sunday greeter at Waffle House, which meant taking names, helping bus tables, etc., and working at a Honeybaked Ham. Let me tell you, never work at a Honeybaked Ham over the holidays. The foil it's wrapped in, if you haven't had one, is basically industrial strength. My hands were cut to hell after each shift because a customer walks up, tells you what size they want, and you pull out a ham, unwrap it, and rotate it around so they can see the whole thing and if it looks good to them. If not, you get another one out.

But even that was cake compared to the hour they put me in the back to help while people went to lunch. Basically, I was at a table with a stack of that foil. A "roaster" would have a ham on a hook in a wall cave thing, sprinkle sugar on it, put a blowtorch to it for like 30 seconds, then carry it over to me with those nasty industrial gloves and set a fucking hot-ass ham on the foil. I then had to wrap it all up, both cutting AND burning my hands.

Don't work at Honeybaked Ham at the holidays.