Referred to in Clerks as a “jizzmopper.”
Ohhhh…okay, you win! :eek:
Thankfully this didn’t come to pass, but in the last year of her life, my Mom became mostly bedridden and incontinent and had to wear adult diapers. We were contemplating keeping her at home (we had to place her in a care home) and began to discuss having to change her diaper and cleaning her up. I was willing to do it, but told my sisters “What if it’s the last one I ever see!”. They laughed and said “That’s your problem!”
MY first job out of school was working in a local butchers/bakers, great place, great people, great product but their proper “nose to tail” approach meant nothing was wasted. They had their own abattoir and that meant that someone had to wash the tripes, clean out the intestines, carry the cow heads, de-string the blood for the black pudding, shave the pigs, peel the boiled tongues…the list was endless.
To be fair, all those jobs had a “yuk” factor but it did impress on me how important it was not to waste a thing. (and honestly, the smell of freshly baking black pudding is a thing of beauty)
Where did you work, or was this where you lived?!?!?
I don’t think I was ever in Adult Video Warehouse, but the name is familiar. Didn’t they use to advertise in the local newspaper? Back in the days when such places along with strip clubs would always advertise in the Sports section for some reason.
I don’t recognize the name Backseat Betty’s. Was that one of the string of small bars behind Aaxtion? Not the big strip joint, which was owned by the same people who owned Aaxtion, but two or four small bars behind both.
A fellow student worked in the strip joint as some sort of gofer, and he recommended me for the job at Aaxtion. Occasionally some big-name porn star would be brought in for shows at the strip joint, and I often was picked to go help with their luggage at the airport. Since I was a student and rather clean-cut looking, I sort of stood apart from some of the sleazier employees – who were still good to work with but not to be trusted with the location in Waikiki where they housed the visiting stars. I was privy to that info.
Aaxtion has closed, a few years ago I hear. I guess Internet porn has driven these places out of business for the most part. The shop looks empty, and the strip club is now some sort of jazz club, but I’ve not looked inside.
Looking back at some less than enjoyable jobs I’ve had, I’d have to select the 3 nights I was the “night cleanup man” at a chain burger joint. My work hours were 10:30PM until 4:00AM, during which time I was supposed to clean the entire joint, a very involved set of tasks that covered the entire inside of the place. The fact that it was operated by teenagers and early-20s people only made the job more nearly impossible; those people knew there was an old guy (I was 27) coming in to clean and therefore they knew they didn’t need to take care of the messes they made, much less actually clean anything themselves. I won’t go into more particulars, except to say the place had to be steam cleaned, squeegeed, and dried before I left. Toughest $5.00 an hour I ever made.
(Repackaging hammer, sledge hammer, and ax handles from large boxes to smaller boxes in a hot, dirty, spider and scorpion infested warehouse on a railroad siding in Florence, Alabama, in July and August of 1970 was not a lot better, but it was better than that burger joint.)
I saw a guy who rehydrates fingers of long dead homeless people to grab prints for Identification.
Pretty morbid.
Both kinda:) I was living and working on the grounds of a large state institution. Now closed for reasons that include funding.
The grossly overloaded septic system leaking into the river was related to the fact that the (EPA) didn’t have anyone to fine or jail, other than the government.
Backseat Bettys was just down the street from Axxation Video @ 1687 Kapiolani. Here’s a link. It apparently was just a big adult video/bookstore. Maybe it wasn’t there when you were at Axxation. https://www.yelp.com/biz/backseat-bettys-honolulu It think it opened in the 80’s.
Yes, Adult Video Warehouse used to advertise in the newspaper along with other adult entertainment places. And yes, one of the papers used put the adult section in the sports section, I think below the game scores. The other one was on a page before or after the regular movie section. Yep, it’s still there, as Video Warehouse. I went there a couple times decades ago, and it went through several name changes. I used to notice it when going to Jelly’s which was in the warehouse complex behind Cutter Ford. It’s the big warehouse across the Hekaha St. from Cutter Ford. Here it is on Google Maps: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Cutter+Ford/@21.3849868,-157.9514929,3a,75y,120.3h,91.12t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sakhkHAZQPE6GSgf8kuEo9Q!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!4m12!1m6!3m5!1s0x7c006f55639bb2c3:0xaa15cc24453b8e47!2sCutter+Ford!8m2!3d21.3853404!4d-157.9521411!3m4!1s0x7c006f55639bb2c3:0xaa15cc24453b8e47!8m2!3d21.3853404!4d-157.9521411 Goodwill Aiea (facing Kamehameha Hwy) is part of that huge warehouse complex.
Changing adult diapers for the elderly, sick, infirm and other unable to use a normal toilet. My daughter works in a adult home and does this multiple times a day. There is no way in hell I could do that kind of work but someone has to do it.
The first time we lived in Hawaii was from 1991-94, with the fall semester of 1993 my time at Aaxtion. Don’t recollect Backseat Betty’s at all.
Another Aaxtion story. I said it was my secret job. The only ones in my circle who knew were my girlfriend (who is now my wife) and the guy who recommended me. One time I was working when this other student came in. I didn’t know him too well, but we were nodding acquaintances. I pretended to be a customer inspecting the wares – and then he started making eyes at me! Very awkward. He finally went off into the booths to, um, make new friends, and the other guys working there sent me out on a food run, which was one of my normal duties. I took my time, and he was gone when I went back.
The worst job I could have had:
Many years ago, a friend called me up and said, “Hey, want to make $100 in a day?” I was in my early 20s, so sure, why not? The next morning, we went down to a club in Hollywood for a shoot. Belatedly, I learned I was to be a grip on a porn video directed by Gerard Damiano, of Deep Throat infamy. “Gerry” seemed like a nice guy; also a very sleazy one. When asked by the cameraman where the camera should go in one particular scene, Jerry responded like the master video director he was: “Wherever it’s supposed to go.”
None of the club scenes had any sex in them because it was (and remains) illegal to shoot that in LA County. Owing to the script, there were no women in the club scenes at all. The sex was to be shot a few days later in Ventura County. My friend advised me not to go; among other things, it is the grip’s responsibility to change the sheets. Ewww…
I collected my $100 for the day of mostly light labor, eating lunch and sitting around on “security.” I am proud to report that no equipment was stolen or harmed on my watch. Nor do I regret missing out on another $100 payday.
ETA: I never saw the finished product.
Working with elephants at the zoo is potentially the worst job I’ve ever seen:
One of my Facebook friends is a former co-worker who now does this in an Alzheimer’s unit. She went to CNA school after she was fired from the hospital after more than 30 years due to a loophole in the Family Leave Act - and guess which job she says is less stressful than making IVs in a hospital pharmacy, something she was very good at?
Yep, the nursing home job. 
Interestingly, she says she really enjoys her new job. I sure couldn’t do it, especially not for those wages.
On a lighter note, I get why the place in Honolulu was called “Aaxxxtion”. It’s so it would be first in the phone book. 
I had a job in an aluminum can factory running the D&I presses that make the cans. If the conveyor belt was broken down which happened daily I had to go below these giant presses and shovel up the shavings with water soluble oil and shavings raining down on me. I have done worse but not everyday for several months as I did here.
We used to buy condemned houses, fix them up and sell or rent them out. A lot of them had tenants that were so annoyed at being evicted that they would tell the place up. And every tenant thought they were the first to shit all over the place. I’ve clean up more shit in closets than you can image.
First real job I had was at a fish reduction plant that reduced fish scraps and recovered oils and meals. First day on the job I was handed a pair of boots and told to dig out “The Pit”. This was a concrete settling containment where the blood gutters ran into and the solids were retained. About 8 inches of black muck moving with maggots and a smell like no other. After about 20 minutes of this the training guys came back and said, “You still here? Get out of that stuff!” Apparently I passed my interview.
The place was featured in the first pilot episode of “Dirty Jobs”, Bat Cave Scavenger. The segments were about bat cave guano, special swamp mud for professional base balls, cleaning fish in a packing plant, and finally following the fish scraps to us where we turned the scraps into fish food for state and federal salmon and trout hatcheries. I was in management by then and did not participate in the pilot episode. No one had heard of Dirty Jobs yet and I thought it was a generally bad idea that would show us in a bad light.
But I was wrong and it turned out great. And Mike Rowe was just as nice in person as he seems to be on TV.
I’ve told the story a couple times here.
I worked in a poultry genetics lab. Such labs often do controlled breeding experiments. That requires a bit more than putting a rooster in a cage with a hen and playing some Barry White music to get them in the mood. It requires artificial insemination.
So what could be worse than spending an afternoon every week artificially inseminating hens?
Easy. Collecting from the roosters the afternoon before inseminating the hens is way worse.
I worked at an egg laying poultry ranch. The hens were on elevated level and their shit fell to a lower-level where we could run a skid-steer to clean it out. This was OK’ish since the skid-steer was covered. However, to get the hens out of their cages and into the rolling cages that went on a semi which was headed to Campbell’s soup, some of us had to be below handling the hens. We had tens of thousands of excited hens raining shit upon us.
I get horrible flashbacks when I watch Napoleon Dynamite. :eek:
Bus boy is worse. You have to clean up everybody’s mess, including people having played with candle wax from the candle on every table. And god-knows-what having been spilled all over. And no tips.
My worst job: Making die-cast aluminum bases for bronzed baby shoes. The entire factory was a health hazard with open flames and oil covering the floors. And about once a week someone had to be taken to the hospital for burns from molten aluminum.