Worst non-journo job you've ever had

Working in a call center trying to sell health insurance for a company that offered bare-bones policies that covered virtually nothing. After two weeks, they called me in when I arrived and told me they'd have to fire me if I didn't sell something that day. Told them not to go to the trouble because I was quitting.

 

This surely doesn't measure up, but in high school, I was a bagger/utility man, making $3.35 an hour at a grocery store near my house.

The utility man part of it included using one of those huge industrial-press crushers to put cardboard in and smash into solid blocks. Only thing is, it was an adventure because the guard didn't work. One co-worker got his arm destroyed by it.

Another part of the job included picking through produce that had gone bad and salvaging what we could. For example, picking through a pallet of potatoes, tossing the ones that were rotten and infested with maggots, saving what we could to sell to unsuspecting shoppers. It took me 3 showers to get the smell of maggots off me following that shift.

 

When I was about to get divorced and desperately needed a steady gig, I took a job as a literary publicist. Basically spent most days calling TV shows, radio stations and newspapers trying to book appearances or get coverage for authors whose books we represented. It was basically cold call sales and it was soul-sucking work. I was making myself miserable. I quit to go back to full-time newspaper work as the sports editor of a weekly, making about $10K less than I was making as the publicist. It was worth it to take less money to regain my flagging self-confidence.

 

I stocked shelves overnight at a Kroger for a few months as a second job to pay for an engagement ring. They had a jingle for avocados from Mexico that played six times an hour. Once you've heard it 100 times, it makes you homicidal. And unlike the old days when it was a pretty relaxed job, the stores are so big and understaffed now that you have to almost run between the carts to get it all stocked in time.

 

Pre-paid funeral sales. No one was exactly dying for the product.

 

Long John Silver's. Quit before I had to learn to drain and clean the grease vats.

 

He got the right ones, baby. Uh-huh.

 

I can't top the Ray Charles heroin in the balls guy, nor a lot of others on this thread (how did I miss this the first time around?).

But worst non-journo job I ever had was working at a horse stable. Totally not into horses, I wouldn't say I'm deathly afraid of them, but I don't get close to them. Anyway, my job was to paint the fence around the property, and if you're not familiar with a racing horse stable, that's roughly 1,000 acres of wide open land with tons of fences around it. I'd paint from dawn until dusk, with an hour lunch break. I'd take that lunch break in one of the empty stables, because it had a fan and a TV (yes, a TV). Most days, I was so beat down from the sun that I'd eat in 15 minutes and then take a 45-minute nap. On days when it would rain, I'd go inside the stable and help wash the stables, wash the horses, rub the horses down (never get that smell out of your nose) and feed the horses. Even though I was afraid to be anywhere near the horses, I'd pray for rainy days because that part of the job beat the hell out of sitting in the sun painting a fence.

Redeeming parts of the job were being able to watch the prized horses get their runs in during the early mornings. I'm not a huge horse racing fan, but it's big where I grew up and I definitely appreciated the beauty and majesty of those animals. Watching them gallop around the track with a light fog still hanging over the track is an image I won't forget. Other perk of the job was getting paid in cash, every afternoon before I left.

 

That Quincy Jones link is a hell of a read.

 

Did a lot of part-time jobs, like detasseling (grew up in Iowa, where it's kind of a rite of passage), spraying beans (see previous job), dishwasher at a diner during high school, cook/dishwasher at Perkins and Pizza Hut during college, summer paint crew for my college, helped a guy who took family portraits for church directories one summer during college, tended bar and even worked the county's sledding hill one winter while working at a weekly paper in Iowa.
All had their pros and cons, but none were really that bad.
The only really bad job for me was selling halon fire extinguishers right after college. Didn't have a "real" full-time job after graduation, so I worked another summer on campus on the paint crew (40 hours per week), plus the job at Pizza Hut, and tried my hand at selling the halon extinguishers. I can't remember the name of the company, but they had a great product. However, it involved a lot of cold calls plus weekly meetings in Des Moines (I was staying in my college town about 45 minutes away) and I think I only sold one. The people were fine, but it didn't take me long to realize I wasn't a salesman.
I bolted when the weekly paper called me back to see if I was still interested. Their first choice for the job lasted less than a month because he couldn't hack the culture shock of a small town (the county seat where the paper was located had a population of about 2,200) while juggling a long-distance relationship.

 

Love this quote: "When I ask to use the bathroom, Jones replies, “I got 13—when you’re 84, you gotta take no chances.”)"

 

I was fired from Dominos Pizza when I was 16.