What's The Worst Job You Ever Had?

Auntieflo

After all your stories, mine is very tame. To earn a bit of pin money, I applied to be a kitchen helper in our local infant school. Thought washing up would be OK. What I hadn't realised was the size and weight of the pots and pans. After nearly disappearing inside them, I lasted precisely one day.

It seems several of us had jobs where we only lasted one day. My one day wonder was working in a cushion factory. I was fortunate that I had the luxury of walking out. It would not have so easy for most of the people working there.

After all your stories, mine is very tame. To earn a bit of pin money, I applied to be a kitchen helper in our local infant school. Thought washing up would be OK. What I hadn't realised was the size and weight of the pots and pans. After nearly disappearing inside them, I lasted precisely one day.

Following A levels I moved to a city and did temp work, but got into trouble because I was a fast typist and motored through the day's work after a couple of hours. The typist I was filling in for deliberately spun the work out to last a day. What a waste of life. Being a temp was so tedious that it prompted me to become self-employed for the rest of my working life.

As a student I had a job in a small bottle top factory. I worked a machine that put the cardboard wads into the plastic tops. The height of excitement was when it jammed and one had to poke at it with a long nail file to unblock it
On the positive side the women who worked there were delightful. They took in turns to bring in home made cake and wouldn’t let us contribute to the tea fund

I've not had any particularly bad jobs, but my husband did run his own cleaning company and from time to time, I'd be called upon to lend a hand. We had to clean out one flat in which the occupant had died - he had been a hoarder and the place was filled with all kinds of rubbish almost from floor to ceiling. Another flat had been occupied for four years by four medical students and I've never seen such a pigsty in my entire life. I swear they hadn't cleaned the cooker once in those four years! The mess was unbelievable - used condoms lying around the bedrooms, mouse droppings everywhere etc etc.

My son worked in BHS as teenager. He found it a good plan not to annoy the permanent staff ( often older women) or he would find himself working in the underwear section.
A life lesson well learned.

My first job was actually a joy. Myself, my sister and our best friend ( whose uncle was the dairy farmer) delivered milk, filling in for the regular Milk Boys when they went on holiday. The joy was the horse drawn milk cart. If the milkman wanted a break we were allowed to drive the cart. It was an early start except on the saturdays when we knocked the doors and collected the milk money, usually with a good tip at every house.
My last job as administrator of a Voluntary Sector agency was the real horror story. The manager had lied about his qualifications to get the job - in fact I was better qualified than him, but he had the ear of the management Committee and was was adept at claiming credit for work that I had done. We had unemployed young people placed with us for training, whom he was expected to manage and support. again he took nothing to do with them - their support and training was left to me. The final straw was when he bought a Caravan and sited it at the Sea Side. Thereafter he left at lunch time every Friday, ostensibly to go to a joint meeting with our colleagues in the next town but when I phoned them with an urgent message for him they told me that there was not and never had been a Friday afternoon meet up.

Then my Husband reached retiral age and I discovered that he could claim a payment for me as a dependent relative if I stopped working. I promptly "retired" and lived Happy ever after"

Many years ago now I was divorced with a small child and struggling to make ends meet. A friend's partner ran a cafe at a local golf course and suggested I might like to work there cooking breakfasts on the weekend DS was with his father. It was a very early start but I was assured that, once breakfast was finished I could go home. What she forgot to tell me was that it was an All Day Breakfast - making it a very long working day!

maddyone

It has just occurred to me that we’re all describing the jobs British people don’t want to do which is often said. Obviously many jobs have changed since some of the jobs described here were completely normal, but many others have not, and there’ll be other mind numbing jobs available now. I think we were all lucky in that we didn’t have to do any of these awful jobs for very long, imagine having to do them for a lifetime. I imagine a life on benefits might be very much preferable to some of these jobs.

I had a numbingly, boring job for just two weeks. I had to file trolley loads of folders in numerical order. Some of the numbers were really long so I had to concentrate. The filing room was very long and very narrow and I was warned not to get caught in there by a certain male clerk as he was 'very handy'.

I found out that I was holiday relief for a woman who had being doing the job for nine years. I have no idea if she were British or not.

Like Germanshepherdsmum, I worked in a laundry in the school summer holiday at the age of 16. The hours were long, it was hot and steamy, but the pay was good for someone of my age. At first my job was to collect clean laundry and put it in the right place in large pigeonholes, tiring but not too unpleasant and the older women who were doing the same job took me under their wing and were lovely. They also included me in all their often very bawdy conversations - I learnt far more from them than in our very limited sex education class!! What finished me off was suddenly being switched to folding sheets. We worked in pairs doing this - a huge trolley of sheets wheeled out and placed between us, and we stood all day taking out sheets and folding them. Backbreaking and soul -destroying. The woman I was paired with had been doing the same job for years and was very skilled. I am tall and she was very small, so not an ideal pairing! She was also a deaf-mute (forgive me if that’s not the correct terminology) and she was so angry because I couldn’t get the hang of it and really slowed her down. She would shout at me in her own high-pitched, unintelligible way, poor soul. I don’t blame her, she was on piece work whereas I was still getting my usual weekly wage. I’m afraid I didn’t stay until the end of the holiday!

I worked in a care home for a short period .
The residents were lovely , but so sad and lonely.
I hated the callous attitude of the staff towards them .
After lunch , they spent the afternoon smoking , eating and drinking in the staff room - so they regarded their day as finished .
I'd spend the afternoon doing as many baths as I could
.
When I left to go home , the residents used to beg me to stay .

Delivering leaflets door to door. It was being pounced on by big dogs that did it, - I lasted one day only.

Cleaning! I've skivvied my soul to the cleaning cupboard many times over the years at M&S, including doing deep cleaning their bakery from 9pm-3am and bakery at other times, at 3 Tesco's, a builders yard, truck repair place, various shops, cafe's restaurants. window/conservatory builders.

I've done all kinds of weird and wacky hours, I absolutely hate cleaning, it bores me into a coma but it got me some wages coming in!

A couple holiday jobs when I was at school, firstly picking strawberries at Cheddar - when they were grown in the ground and not up on high staging as many are now. Hot and back breaking.
And second one was shelling hard boiled eggs at a pickling factory, for those big jars of them that you used to see in every pub/chippy.
Back in 70's did Peat stacking to earn a few extra pounds. The blocks of peat would be cut by machine and then someone would go along and pick them up and stack them to allow the air around to dry them out.

In the winter of discontent of 1978/79 I was a student, and went to help in the NHS industrial laundry. It was very hard, physical work, and quite distressing when stained items had to be cleaned, and personal items were found - I kept thinking of the poor people without their teeth, glasses and hearing aids. It left me physically exhausted at the end of each day too, it was the only time in my life when I could only work, eat and sleep. I doubt much has changed for the workers doing these roles 45 years later either, I always think of them when I see sheets and towels in hospitals or hotels.

It has just occurred to me that we’re all describing the jobs British people don’t want to do which is often said. Obviously many jobs have changed since some of the jobs described here were completely normal, but many others have not, and there’ll be other mind numbing jobs available now. I think we were all lucky in that we didn’t have to do any of these awful jobs for very long, imagine having to do them for a lifetime. I imagine a life on benefits might be very much preferable to some of these jobs.

I had a Saturday job at BHS back in the 70s when they still had a food department. The first task at 7:01 am was to collect four or five twenty pound blocks of vacuum sealed english cheddar of varying strengths and vintages. Some had been sealed five years previous. Cutting them open, removing the 'slime' and using a cheese cutter to renove saleable blocks and pieces was not in any sense a pleasurable exercise.

Just remembered when I worked as a chambermaid at the posh hotel we used to have a weird middleaged couple come to stay for several weeks in the summer. Apparently they did this every year.

They were extremely wealthy and owned gold shops in posh parts of London. They had matching Rolls Royce cars and always travelled separately. They had 2 bull terriers and they brought one each. Because they were such valued customers they got beautiful rooms overlooking the sea.

They were not supposed to leave the dogs in the rooms unattended but they did, so if we went in to clean and make the beds the dogs would be snarling and often wouldn’t let us in. They used to always have breakfast in their rooms and allowed the dogs to eat off their plates 🤮 and it was often kippers or smoked salmon so the room used to stink of dogs and fish. The man was not too bad but the woman had a vile temper and used to shout and swear at us for no reason.

Hospital cleaner. Every morning the floor of the Geriatric Ward was awash with random puddles of urine and the old ladies were contrite and most apologetic but clearly the nightstaff hadn't been attending to them!
Also, one particular Ward Sister was such a harridan and talked/snapped at the cleaning staff as if we were idiot scum.
I lasted 5 months before, after a particularly fraught shift, I simply walked away and never went back and didn't bother to explain. I'd had enough. And all for 3.55p an hour!

Working in a underwear factory and rubbing the sewing machine oil marks off the garments - using dry cleaning fluid. No gloves or anything. It's a wonder we didn't pass out.

Also tying small bows for the underskirts and bras. Useful now when it comes to wrapping presents at Christmas.

A council one! It was sooooo boring that I left soon after. It involved meeting people which I did like but it was very tedious and there was no support. I've had a number of interesting types of work before and after this one which I thoroughly enjoyed but this took the biscuit.

@Scribbles

Love your description of the seedy hotel and the men who thought they were god's gift. Ive stayed in hotels like that in some mid eastern countries where the rooms are cleaned by men. Never travel without a good old rubber door wedge and always unplug the phone at night.

Mostly I enjoyed teaching but grade 3D high school in the UK - used to dread it every week. They were shockers.

I had a Saturday job for a year aged 15 in the invoice dept of Peter Jones in Sloane Square. Only the dept was around the corner in a large victorian house. My job was addressing envelopes and collecting the paperwork from all the departments in the store.
I had a desk and a ledger where i copied everything out in my best handwriting.
I shared the office with several older ladies who typed and fed me with sweeties. They got very excited when my boyfriend met me once and were staring at him from the upstairs window. They teased me for evermore.
When I left after a year I had to ask what an invoice was! I didn't know i was sending out bills.

Summer holiday job, washing up in a department store restaurant kitchen. It was during my first uni summer vac and my folks had recently moved 100 miles from our former home. I knew nobody - it was the most miserable summer of my entire life. 🙁
And recently met dh - who’d promised to come and visit me - never did. Fortunately he’s made up for it since!

What with email and mobile phones now, I don’t suppose anybody would have to feel so horribly lonely and isolated, though I dare say some poor souls still do.