What was your worst, most vile,repugnant job?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ll do almost anything for money, sometimes just for the challenge.

When I was going to college, I used to get spot jobs from the Job Service. They liked me because I’d built up a reputation for completing any job, despite it’s unpleasantness. Upside of this is that I almost always had work.

One of my worst jobs was at an animal Bi-products place. The boss took me to this huge room with a boiler and what looked like miles of piping along the two story ceiling. Simple, paint everything metal, bright yellow. He showed me a two story step ladder, safety harness to attach to the piping after you packed that five gallon bucket of yellow paint up a two story ladder. Oh! and I almost forgot, another five gallon bucket of degreaser to clean with.

On top of the boiler and the piping was about five inches of congealed fat that had to first be removed. The best method I found was just sluicing your hand along the pipe while trying to avoid getting it all over you and the ladder. After getting the piping all squeeky clean you could paint it.

The ladder was just high enough that I had to stand on the top rung and all of the work was over head. I went home every night covered head to toe with unmentionably foul grease and the brightest yellow armpits you have ever seen.

Apparantly they had been through quite a few folks that didn’t last on that particular job and they were quite impressed with my diligence. The boss offered me a permanant full time job driving truck! Finally, a job more befitting of my talents!

They sent me to a farm to pick up a bloated cow carcass that had been there wayyy too long, the idea being that you’d winch the thing up into the back. I started by trying to pull it on by a leg which just parted company with the rest of the cow and worked my way through the rest of the limbs. Finally just ended up picking up the pieces and throwing most of it onto the truck.

Got back to the plant and left the truck in the parking lot and dejectedly left without any explaination. First job I ever quit.

2

This reminds me of when I worked at the St Louis zoo for a few weeks in the summer of 1994. Horrible job. We used to try to help the endangered species procreate. Horrible, terrible job.

You ever have to wear an ape suit and carry a bunch of bananas so you can try to artificially impregnate a female lowland gorilla with a turkey baster full of Donkey Kong’s spooge?

Sometimes I still wake up screaming.

Ok, anyway, seriously, the worst job I had was my first electrician’s job. Nowhere near as bad as dead cows, but I hated it all the same and left after 3 weeks. At the interview, they tell me overtime is voluntary, then question me when I only work 10 hours a day instead of 12. While working, although I told them at the interview I was trained to be an electrician, they wanted me to to mechanical work. Basically, they lied to me during the interview and either didn’t listen or didn’t care about what I said during the interview.

3

One year for extra Christmas money I was an elf. This was the most vile repugnant job ever!

First there was the outfit. Apparently elves dress like tramps. I had to wear a pair of shorts under my elf dress so that I could bend down without giving Santa a free show. Also, elf shoes are painful to wear. Try standing for eight hours in pointy shoes made of very thin rubber. Ouch!

Did you know that Elves get paid $3 less an hour then Santa? And the elf has to do all the work. All Santa has to do is sit in a chair. It is the elf who has to pass out candy canes, keep the kids in line, and take pictures. All while trying not to bend down or trip over her own pointy sore feet.

Meanwhile, even though the elf is doing all the work and getting less pay Santa gets all the credit! The kids were always excited to see Santa. No one ever appreciated how much work the elf was doing.

Maybe being an elf wasn’t too different from my job now.

4

What was your worst, most vile,repugnant job?

Always the one I’m working at.
Never had a job that didn’t get to me after a while, and I’d build it up in my mind to be the worst, so I could quit without feeling guilty.

5

How about I answer my most vile and repugnant duty, rather than occupation?

In Desert Storm, my MASH unit was stationed out in the middle of the desert, miles form anywhere. We had to take care of the latrine waste every day, which meant emptying out the catch barrels into a big pile, covering with fuel, and burning the waste. Of course, we couldn’t just light a match and leave, we had to stir all the shit with a big stick until it was burned. The worst part was carrying the barrels to the pit. The female latrines were far worse. All those maxi pads. Also, there was a bulemic in camp, because there was always piles of vomit in one of the barrels every morning.

Stir and burn; stir and burn. Yuk.

6

I spent a summer working in a hospital pathology department. I will not recount the details of the autopsies, nor the clean up thereof, lest you faint and damage your keyboard.

Instead, I will share with you what I did when autopsies were slow and we were put to other gainful work.

One day, we were told that it was time to tidy up Room 6. Now, Room 6 was the repository of decades worth of surgical specimens and hadn’t been cleaned for as long.

There were walls with shelves, and each shelf had rows of containers - sort of like ice cream buckets, made of the same material. Our task was to open the buckets, dump the formaldehyde into drums, and deposit the ‘surprise’ into a human tissues disposal bag. Well, did we have surprises. We never knew what we’d find - a kidney, a breast, a fetus. Yes, lots of those.

And sometimes the formaldehyde had leaked out over the years. So, what we found was pudding. Pudding with an indescribale smell. To smell it was to gag. As certain as your next breath.

You asked. My worst job.

7

My AP U.S. History told me of a job of the Dustbowl days in Kansas. In the midst of a dust storm, someone would have to go into the cattle field and clean the dust and mucous out of the noses of all the poor cows, so they wouldn’t suffocate. She said that if I failed the class, this would be the only job I would be qualified to do. Luckily, I passed the class (made an A in fact) and was saved from the eternal torment of being a Bovine-Nasal Technician.

8

Agriculture.

One of my jobs was to work with a crew of brain dead young people keeping the high school grounds in order for the summer. It was one of my first jobs. I did not like the heat, the scent of cut grass still sends me running to this day, dumping old pots of dirt in the greenhouse was intellectually stimulating, stinky, dirty and hot. Then there was the squabble over the can cutter. (We used to cut the bottoms out of old cans, like oil ones, drain and stack for use as potting containers.) Mowing the football and baseball fields – another squabble over who got to drive the tractor, hand clearing thickets with hoes, machetes and shovels – a real test because the guy next to you had no regard for your safety when swinging back that sharp knife.

Then the inevitable arguments, threats and fights when the boss wasn’t around, which he rarely was. The thrilling and seemingly endless task of mowing the commons with small mowers – the big ones weren’t around then.

There was a marvelous machine called ‘The Gravely,’ that was a self propelled massive brush mower mainly used for clearing heavy brush with a toothed set of cutters and it could have other things attached. It was always ‘fun’ to give it to someone who didn’t know how to use it, who fires it up, engages the gears and then gets dragged around at a trot as the thing plowed over trees, buildings and rerouted small rivers.

That was enough for me of any future in agriculture. I fled that job for a better one of washing vehicles at a government office during weekends. It was just me. No one else was around. I got to drive the vehicles to the wash site and I didn’t have a license then, but the site was on the grounds.

My next worse job was construction. Pleasant guys, construction workers. (NOT!) Pleasant people, contractors are. (NOT!) After innumerable splinters, several falls, two stolen lunches, many scrapes, cuts and bruises plus two fights, I ended my career in the building industry. Besides, my coworkers had two interests only: beer and pussy – in that order. They either listened to loud country music or acid rock. I dislike both.

9

I wouldn’t be the winner here, but I remember being a dishwasher in a restaurant for a couple of months when I was in high school.

I was glad when I was fired.

“Dishpigs of the world, unite.”

10

Telemarketing.

I was good at it, but hated every minute of it.

The best: Selling Accidental Death & Dismemberment Insurance to JC Penny Credit Card holders!

Talk about a bummer of a topic…

Yer pal,
Satan - Commissioner, The Teeming Minions

*TIME ELAPSED SINCE I QUIT SMOKING:
Five months, three weeks, two days, 2 hours, 55 minutes and 27 seconds.
7044 cigarettes not smoked, saving $880.61.
Extra time with Drain Bead: 3 weeks, 3 days, 11 hours, 0 minutes.

*“I’m a big Genesis fan.”-David B. (Amen, brother!)

11

Public relations. Representing the asbestos lobby, among other fun interests. I lasted 2 months.

12

Zumba-just keep remembering:
Santa is the one who gets pissed on…:wink:

13

This is in no way close to the grossness factor of other posts. But it is my worst job and so I’ve decided to post it.

I worked maintanance for a 3 building office complex one summer during college. My duties included, among other things, scouting out and picking up trash on the five acre complex and varnishing the thousands upon thousands of doors in the buildings.

For the varnishing, they gave me a couple of rags, a bottle of cleaner and a bottle of varnish. Oh joy. I had a better idea. Using a sponge-mop, I poured the solutions on the mophead and scrubbed it across the doors. It worked just as well as manually applying the contents and I estimated it saved, at the very least, two days worth of time and labor. Their response? You ruined the mophead.

They didn’t seem to like the idea that I, a lowly janitor, could come up with novel ideas to problems that plagued them. We had a problem with people coming on the property and drinking beer, leaving the cans. 4th of July weekend approached and I said to my boss’s boss, the one who hired me, “what if we put up a few signs, telling people not to litter? After all, people will be picnicing on the property and leaving all sorts of things here this weekend.” And I’ll have to clean it up, I didn’t add. She seemed shocked at the idea. Then she recovered, polietely told me no, and I went on my way to enjoy the weekend.

Come Monday, my boss comes up to me. “What the hell did you do?”
“What?” I ask
“My boss yelled at me today about what you did on Friday.”
“What did I do?”
“You were going to put up signs around this complex! We don’t do that. Don’t ever put me in that situation again!”
“um…it was just a suggestion. She said no, and I left it at that.” Then, I decided to add, quite jokingly, “Perhaps in the future, I’ll remember not to think on the job.”
“yes,” he said in all seriousness. “That would be a good idea.”

My jaw dropped. I couldn’t believe I was hearing what I was hearing. But it was true. I shouldn’t be thinking. I couldn’t use my brain. I was the lowest man on the totem pole and I was expected to act that way. Joy came a few weeks later when I was fired from this job. I think I might have been reciting Mozart’s syphony in my head and they were afraid my free will was trying to escape again.

I wish to apologize for the length of the post. But it’s a story I wished to share. Hope you enjoyed.

14

I spent a brief time working in a hospital. I got to clean labor and delivery rooms. It was my job to put the placenta in a bag and take down to the incinerator.

15

I spent a summer working QA in a Kodiak, AK, salmon cannery (King Crab, to be specific) and it wasn’t nearly so bad as you might expect (in terms of grossness - 40 straight 16-hour days, with no weekends, was the worst thing I have ever experienced).

Part of my job was to make sure that the fish coming off the boats was still fresh enough to can. That involved grabbing random fish off the conveyor belt, splitting it open and spelling the insides of the fish. I can honestly say that after 3 months of this there probably is not a salmon organ I have not tasted.

Another gross sight, in a fascinating Stephen King sort of way, was seeing a crab boat come in and looking into the holds. 10,000 pounds of live king crabs crawling all over each other.

16

Busboy, Chili’s, Summer 1989.

The job by itself wasn’t that foul, but the foulest thing I ever had to do was climb into a 3/4 full restaraunt dumpster in the middle of July(in Houston), and search for a check that some other numb-nut had thrown away then blamed on me.

Not quite like Room 6 or cow carcasses I know, but for garden-variety jobs, it was pretty foul.

17

Unfortunatly, I never got to see Santa get pissed on. Maybe that would have made the job more fun.

18

Y’know, compared to all that has already been posted, my three month stint as a door-to-door vinyl siding salesman seems like a dream job.

However, compared to every other job I’ve held, it sucked. Wandering around in poor neighborhoods trying to sell vinyl wall coverings and windows in the middle of the recession of early '90, and no matter how good the product was, there was such an air of sleaze about the company that you always felt like you were ripping people off.

Then you’d finally make some good contacts, and the salespeople would screw up the sale or completely blow off the customer for some lead they had developed, so they could get the extra $50 for developing a good lead. Bastards.

19

In descending order:

  1. I worked for a company who was contracted to clean the paint booths in a BMW factory. Car goes in, robots spray paint. Paint drops on “waterfall” under grates in floor. Turns into sludge in a giant tank in the basement. 2 x year, the crew had to climb in there and use giant vacuums to suck 6 months worth of chemically treated paint sludge out of the tanks. I did not actually perform this – my job was to document the process. That’s worse, as I had to endure the dirty looks from the crews who were actually getting dirty!
  2. Summer job after college: I inspected tiny little mufflers coming out of a 2000-degree oven. Had to make sure the braize melted all the way around the seams. I do not know what a heat exchanger is or why it needs a muffler, but that’s what they were for.
  3. Another college summer job: I was a Nurses’ Aide in a nursing home. In Ohio, where they are allergic to air conditioning and the uniforms are polyester. My job was to wipe asses, change poopy bedding, feed old people mushy foods and give them baths. It was filthy, difficult, very physical work. Greatest accomplishment: Making a 90-year-old man sit down to pee. (You try breaking 87 years of potty training!) Lesson Learned: Shit has a life of it’s own. You think you have cleaned every spot, but on your way home you find there’s still a tiny spot of poop on your elbow. (Hey! How did that get there?) Other Lessons Learned: Old People are whacked. Families never visit enough after they dump their relatives. And, no matter how much you scrub with alcohol and anti-bacterial soap, you cannot get the smell of poop out of your nose!
20

Ok, for rankness, this doesn’t do it, but for the combinations of negative tasks, it’s up there:
did 14 years of residential services, in a correction center for females. Among my fun tasks:

1 . preventing fights/ attempting to get participants away from each other.

  1. I was often the one who would have to give “bad news” to the residents “you can’t leave in the morning until after you see so-and so” (which always meant that they were in trouble or about to be arrested)

  2. Urine drops. I had to visually watch them pee into a cup, then watch as they poured it into the bottle, cap/seal, intitials etc. then they’d hand it(hopefully dry but not always ) back to me. Sometimes, as will happen, as you’re peeing, other stuff would come out…

  3. Packing up property. If some one left in a negative way (either by running off or by being arrested), I had to pack and inventory all of their belongings. ALL of them. I couldn’t just say “one box of really, disgustingly dirty clothing”. I also had to stick my hand into each pocket to make sure there wasn’t other stuff in their. “one used kleenex”…

  4. Purse searches. As another female, I’ve always had this strong sense of “ya don’t touch somebody’s purse” but, we’d have “purse search day” and everyone’s purse would be searched. I’d have to take the purse from them, dump it out and examine everything in there. yes, even papers. We weren’t just looking for evidence of drug abuse, but other types of infractions (such as evidence of money transactions etc.)

  5. Room checks. On an hourly basis you had to physically verify where everyone was. Including “in bed asleep” you had to actually see them. I got quite good at opening doors without making a sound.

  6. Pat down searches. Fun if it’s your SO, not nearly as enjoyable with a 32 year old junkie prostitute with a history of violence.

  7. Being there for all of these “ladies” morning noises. The hacking, coughing, farting, nose picking, nose blowing assorted wonderful sounds that you’re willing to put up with from your SO, but gads.

  8. Being “on call”. I spent 14 years of my life in terror of the phone ringing. I’d be called for everything from “the iron broke” (who cares?) to “my replacement hasn’t shown up, you have to” to “so and so is threatening me”.

  9. Some of the folk were really, well. Like the woman who watched as her boyfriend beat her 2 year old, then the b/f left. and she sat with her son for the next 8 hours watching him die by internal bleeding (he would have survived the beating had she sought medical help). I had known her son. She didn’t know this. Or the woman who shot her soon to be ex husband in an ambush (she shot him through her purse after calling him to meet her at a vacant parking lot). She complained that her ex-in laws “weren’t very supportive of her through this ordeal”. ‘but you killed thier son’ “well, he was being such a beast”.

Get the picture? and I earned anywhere from 2.35 to 10 per hour. Couldn’t pay me enough to do this today.