What's The Worst Job You Ever Had?

Oh, it was awful. Collecting eggs in a chicken barn, in the heat of the summer when I was a teenager. It was tremendously hot, stinky and noisy. When the owner changed my pay rate from hourly to piecework, I almost cried. The think is, the time it took to go around the aisles was the same no matter how many dozens there were, so it was just a way to pay me less on some days. My mother called them to give them a piece of her mind... I think I was about 14 at the time. Plus I had to ride my bike to the farm, which was about 3 miles away.

the thing is... not the think!

One summer holiday when I was at school I took a job in a laundry. The conditions were awful, the heat indescribable. The worst part of it was that some of the workers were bussed in from the local mental hospital. They were bullied by some of the other workers, as was I. I could escape, they couldn’t.

I worked on the check out at a local supermarket whilst at college, it was grim! Half the prices had fallen off, you had to hold up the product and “can of beans, how much?” I got so bored with this I just made the prices up! I also worked in a bakery and a takeaway pizza place, both were very hot and I left alone quite often, some of the produce entered up in my tummy!

Grrrr “hold up the product and shout……”

Telesales for Anglian Windows, many years ago. Using a telephone directory, I had to ring numbers from certain pages, and try to persuade them to have replacement windows and/or doors. I had to read from a script. We were told to keep the 'phone in our hand at all times. I lasted about 3 hours, didn't sell a thing.

At school during the holidays. Pricking out seedlings in a greenhouse in a nursery. Hot, sweaty and mind numbingly boring.

At 16 working in a nursing home.
I took a commode out and the turd was so big I had to chop it up with the lid.
Sorry😱.

Clearing up the heads, tails and insides of eels on the live-eel stall at the end of the day in a pie and mash shop when I worked there on Saturdays as a young teenager! I once got bitten by a dismembered head that was still twitching - they have really sharp teeth

The first pub I worked in before Uni. They wanted the barmaids in close fitting teeshirts. I thought I could cope from behind the bar, but the customers leaning too far forward to pay and the wandering hands when I was clearing tables was too much. I managed better the next time.

Oh, and no rubber gloves - elf and safety was in its infancy in those days...

Sago, I just wasted a good mouthful of Sauvignon spluttering with laughter at your post!

The worst holiday job was waitressing at Points Holiday Camp.
The food was appalling. Some of the staff were ex-cons and very rough and aggressive. I was only 15 years old. I complained to the manager, he said If I didn't like it I could clear off. I felt sorry for the families staying there.

16 years old and the summer holiday after O levels and before college, I went to work at a firework factory. Little huts dotted around a large field. It was cold, dirty and cutting thick tubes of cardboard by hand , near impossible. But I stuck it .

AskAlice wins ...followed closely by Sago.
All of my unpleasant experiences pale into insignificance beside these.

Firstly, my first college vacation I worked on a conveyer belt at Lesney’s toy factory, putting 38 gross of plastic ladders on metal toy fire engines, daily.
Secondly, another vacation, I worked at a local cinema as an usherette. Thought I would see lots of the latest films. The Sound of Music was on for a season and I saw it 41 times
Still, better than Sago’s experience.

picking bad peas off of a conveyer belt of peas in a canning factory!

Hard to say, really. I was a supply teacher in secondary schools for many years, I wouldn’t want to go back to any of the schools I taught in. I was a temp in a tax office twice, the people were nice but the work was very dull - copying out people’s details from old filing cards to new ones.

I did a summer season in a very posh hotel as a chambermaid which would now be called a housekeeper I guess.

My friend and I started together and wore blue nylon tops.
We started work at 6.30 through till 2.30 then had to go back at 6.30 to turn the beds down. Most guests were in the restaurant then so we used to literally run along the corridors and into all the rooms as we could finish as soon as we were done.

The Head Housekeeper double checked all our work and was very particular. One time a guest must have had diarrhoea and there were pools of it all over the thick, gold carpet. I was like 🤮🤮🤮 and had to get my friend to clean it up.

We had dirty old men chatting us up, porno photos left laying around, dogs nearly attacking us in bedrooms, disgustingly filthy toilets, slimy face cloths, rude people and cigarettes stubbed out on leftover breakfast trays.

I had a summer job at an old people's home when I was seventeen, and I was working in one of the units for elderly men, most of whom had no family. The male staff were so unkind to the men, shouting at them and occasionally slapping them. This was in the sixties, hopefully it could never happen now.

Filing clerk in a bank. Filing all those cheques was so boring.
Catering assistant in a school kitchen.
The kitchen was in the village hall, it had no mains drainage and my last Friday job was to clean the outside drain. Up to my armpits in yucky food sludge was not pleasant, particularly in the snow!

Selling scratch type cards before the Lottery came in, I had to sit in a booth in our local shopping centre, it was deadly boring and I lasted 1 day.

Sago 🫢💩💩💩😱

A summer holiday job when I was 17 in a Clairol (hair dye) factory situated in a Nissan hut. The first and last time I ever clocked on! The regulars hated the students and I was given the job of screwing the caps onto the bottles as they shot past on a conveyor belt. The stench of ammonia was horrendous. I think I lasted 3 weeks.