Lurkers' week - what's the worst job you've ever had?

When we were both at college (35 years ago), my partner and I did Ch****mas jobs sorting international mail at the Postal Sorting Office in St Paul’s, London.

I was put on ‘parcels’ and it was wretched. It was freezing cold and there were no seats, so you were standing in the icy cold for the whole, long shift. The permanent workers were often really careless with the parcels and seems to take pleasure in bending items like calendars which were labelled ‘please do not bend’.

It was a lousy job but because we were full time students, we didn’t pay tax on our earnings, so we stuck it out ...

I wanted to earn extra money for Christmas, it was an evening job in a bakery. Christmas puddings came along a conveyor belt and I had to put them in boxes. You weren't allowed to turn the belt off and of course I had piles of the puds on the floor because I wasn't quick enough. You also had to hold your hand up to go to the lou. I stood it for 6 weeks. How anyone can do the work all year round is beyond me.

I did a Christmas job in a cardboard factory with my neighbour, we had to strip the waste cardboard from pallets of cereal boxes that had been printed and cut out it was hard trying to separate the actual boxes from the waste bits then stack them ready for assembly my nails were all broken and torn my neighbour and I had a laugh but it was two weeks of tough work.

Fruit picking - blackcurrants.

As a student, working in a hospital developing the x-rays in the dark, during the most glorious sunny summer.

Doing admin. at a coach company - the typist chair only had two wheels and the other one was propped up on a telephone directory. I only lasted three days!

Working in the Christmas part of a garden centre, only a few years ago, removing the sale stickers from earlier in the year to replace with full price! The stock was held in portakabins outside and the soft toys smelt musty and damp, embarrassing and dispiriting.

As a student, working in a famous ballpoint pen factory putting the pens together. So boooooooring. I quit after two days but I must have been good at it because my bonus was amazing!

I had a holiday job working in a glass factory stacking decorated glasses on the kiln conveyor belt and taking off the other end. Very hot and boring work.

As a 16 year old I took a Saturday job in the local newsagent/post office. It was a hot summer and the owner spent the time in the garden sunning himself.

The till got full to over flowing with notes which I mentioned two or three times.

Finished my day and returned home and later that day got a phone call saying the till was short by - I can’t remember how much - but I do remember I was in a panic about it as he accused me of theft.

That was that I thought and waited in trepidation. The following Saturday I was at home minus my job when the phone rang and he demanded to know why I hadn’t turned up to work. I said because you said I’d stollen money so assumed you wouldn’t want me back. Oh he said, I found the money at the back of the drawer!

I didn’t return.

SNAP Tidyskatemum I took a job as linen keeper, not knowing what it was. The advert asked for sewing skills which I had, and I think I was the only applicant.
I soon found out why, as you will understand. I stuck it out and it did get easier (a little) but my boss was a bully and I was looked on as the lowest of the low, but I needed the money and there wasn't many openings for a middle aged ballet teacher.
The last straw came when management decided to ditch the laundry and buy an industrial washer and drier and a roller iron. It all but broke my back.
I did complain but I was shown a paragraph in my employment conditions that said "any reasonable request from management" which just about covered everything to do with dirty linen.
I walked out after 3 days but it was lovely to feel 'clean' again.

Working for Lloyds. I'd rather clean toilets or stack supermarket shelves (and have done). Totally immoral, valuing people by the level of their bank balance. Profiting from charging those who can least afford it.

Also worked as a cleaner and stacked supermarket shelves. I enjoyed shelf stacking. Physical and completly stress free. I lived seeing the shelves all tidy and aligned at the end of a shift.

Went for an interview as a cleaner at a well known hospital with my ‘work shoes’ in my bag as I knew I would get it and start straight away. They were always advertising.

They introduced me to the Head Cleaner on the excema ward there was only me and her, who put me to work vacuuming the skin flakes off the snooker table in the day room while she sat in the toilets having her tenth fag of the day. The rest of the time was spent cleaning all areas with a damp cloth to pick up the detritus. She couldn’t be bothered to follow the colour coded cloth rules and used a dry duster that just flicked the skin particles into the air.

I’d worked in kennels and seen cleaner practice.

The patients were lovely as I met them whilst making their cups of tea but she was terribly lazy. I lasted 2 days.

When he was still at school, my husband had a summer holiday job on a farm: castrating the piglets ?

While on Summer vacation from college, working on a toy factory conveyor belt putting tiny plastic ladders onto plastic fire engines. Forty gross a day. (Those were the days when we counted things in gross.) At least they had the radio on-“Workers Playtime,” yes, I’m that old.

Sodapop, as a cadet nurse in the mid 50's that was one of my jobs as well as using the autoclave for the metal bedpans where we had to make sure the door was properly secured or you ended up dressed in the contents.

When working on men's surgical one Christmas Day, I took a covered bedpan to be emptied and when I got in the sluice the chap had put a partly blown up green balloon in the bedpan and had bent it around the curve. At first I thought " oh God " then realised most of the patients had been in on the prank and I could hear the chaps laughing as I went back in the ward red-faced.

In actual fact, it wasn't a ward as we know them now, it was known as Hut 16, a disused, brick built Nissen structure as opposed to corrugated and I remember them being creepy places at night. I preferred the hospital wards and hated being sent to the huts. It was a hard job back then.

MOD typing pool. Bloomin awful.

Hello
Yes I was a Cadet Nurse, I has the very same experience but on Friday instead.

Correcting and cleaning up copy for a content agency. I got so sick of the poor quality copy I got that I resorted to a tool to run a first round grammar check. After that, I did two rounds of proofreading. This is something I am definitely avoiding, the next time I need to take up a freelance job.

Holiday job when a student - washing up in the kitchen of a department store cafe/restaurant. Plus it paid quite a bit less than the previous summer’s job, on the checkout at Sainsbury’s - a dream by comparison.

My DD had a job de-thorning Roses. That was for £1 per hour! No charge for the scratches she came home with!

I spent just one day doing leaflet deliveries door to door.
After being chased by dogs of various sizes, loud barking, and trying to bite my fingers in letter boxes, I just knew I wasn't going back the next day. I've always had huge sympathy for postmen ever since.

In the late eighties the mortgage rate tripled I got a job in a school as a cleaner. Cleaning the toilets was unpleasant the staff toilets were worse than the children’s.

As a teenager I had a Sunday job doing service washes in a launderette, which mostly comprised football kits from the local teams who’d played the day before. Not pleasant.

I would be hard pressed to quote an enjoyable job that's why they pay us