Everyone likes to talk about their “Dream Job”, but what about your Nightmare Job? A job that, if you were forced to do it for the rest of your life, would have you seriously contemplating suicide.
I think mine would be Elephant Shit Removal Specialist, or whatever they call the guys who have to follow the elephants in a parade and scoop up their massive expulsions of fecal matter. A close second would be telemarketer, or pretty much anything in sales.
Something involving filling out forms.
I’d rather shovel elephant shit.
Dealing with victims of abuse. Children whose lives have been shattered. Then having to navigate through the legal system to try and get some justice.
Wait a second…:dubious:
Window washer. I’m not good with heights.
Wow, I almost had a panic attack just thinking about it.
Telemarketer shouldn’t really count as that’s less of a job and more of a crime.
My worst would probably be consumer CSR, as you have to spend lots of time trying to help people who are angry at you for something you can’t fix. On the phone which is even worse. For added cherry on top it would be one where you only get a handful of calls a day but are not allowed to be idle in between or the boss will literally yell at you (I’ve had a job where that happened, at Burger King. Either helping a customer or scrubbing the counter. While he of course chit chatted with the other managers.)
Loach, you’re a better person than I will ever be. 
My unemployment ran out in January and I am STILL too scared to drive a schoolbus.
I want a nice job filling out forms! That’s my ideal!
My nightmare job is one where I have to “make it up as I go.” Where there isn’t any checklist, but where I have to re-invent the job every day. Sales would be a little like that, as I’d have to take a new approach with each new customer.
I’m not afraid of product development, or project development. I can happily create. I just hate the idea of having no idea what I’m doing, at all.
Back in 1999, my boss said to me, “You’re doing the Y2K audit.” Really mucked me up, because I didn’t know where to start. I had to invent the entire process from nothing. Didn’t get paid for it, either!
And that’s a task I would’ve enjoyed. Wanna switch jobs? 
Tunnel rat in Vietnam. The guys who went into elaborate underground tunnels built by the VC to clear them out, not having any idea where an ambush or booby trap might be.
Anything military. You need to leap at orders, accept and deliver abuse, be seriously physical, and take on the identity of whatever outfit you’re assigned to.
Anything requiring physical labor in high heat and humidity.
I just couldn’t do it. If I even attempt something physical when it’s 95 degrees out and 90% humidity I immediately get short of breath, heart rate rises, and I’m fatigued in a matter of minutes.
Completely opposite from doing physical labor on a 60 degree day with no humidity where I can go for 10 hours straight.
I already had it and quit it.
Here it is. the company made desktop calendar books. On a long table there are stacks of paper. A pile marked A, a pile marked B, a pile marked C…and so on.
My job was to walk around the table, taking one page from each pile until the book was complete, then do it again and again and again…
The nightmare job (well, task, really) that I did have was correcting the “bubbling” mistakes made by students on standardized tests. We had to correct their social security numbers, names, etc.
It was a good job to go to while stoned, but only for 2 days. My friend and I quit out of sheer boredom and joined all the other college kids at Dial America, which was a helluva lot better… I lasted there for about 2 months.
Anything that requires being on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Unless it involves having sex.
Hm, I do not deal well with being overly warm - I am perfectly comfortable in 60 F temperatures as long as I have my warm fluffy socks on. I prefer cool dim rooms so anything that has me out in the bright sun when I am hot and sweaty is right out. I did CSR and have the lovely experience of having to be polite while having foul invective and obscenities screamed at me or get fired. I hate it, it is a soul stealing horrible profession. I would prefer to not ever have to work at it in my life ever again. I hate working retail, again, soulstealing because sucktastic scammy asshat customers make life a living hell, and sucktastic management and corporate pointy hairs who can’t find their asses with both hands and a whore helping them make it a living hell.
[my absolute dream job would be to sit at home and process e-slushpiles for publishers. I would do it for minimum wage …and no medical. sigh]
Radio Shack, Assistant Manager.
I would agree when George W. Bush was Commander-in-Chief. I would not necessarily agree today.
I already had a nightmare job. I won’t tell you what it was. Ironically, though, it involved a supervisor worse than an Army sergeant. (If he was in the military, I would not be suprised.)
Roofer.
Inhuman temperature, back-breaking labor, hands destroyed by tar and the products used to remove the tar from skin, and numbingly repetitive until terror strikes.
That’s easy for me: worker at a kill animal shelter. Particularly one with lots of cats. I could not handle euthanizing healthy cats and dogs. The first time one of them gave me ‘the look’ I’d be trying to smuggle them out under my coat. If I couldn’t leave the job I don’t know what I’d do, but it wouldn’t be pretty.