Working an injection molding machine as a temp for a couple weeks was definitely in my top 5. I got fired for wondering if the machine can inject molten plastic while the mold is open…apparently it can. At least I made a lot of $ that week. Litterally. My machine made the dollar sign button for some calculator.
Box factory is up there. Mostly involved wearing gloves in a dusty factory in July so I wouldn’t cut my hands to shreds cleaning up cardboard scraps.
Postage meter tester. Sit in this windowless room for 8 hours and run these blank envelopes through this postage meter. That lasted a day.
Plant nursury. Basically spending all day moving trees with those big balls of dirt at the bottom back and forth around the place.
Doesn’t count as a job because I left after the interview, but I experienced the exact same thing. I didn’t have to cold call, just shadow the sales guy while he sold garbage to small businesses up and down the Post Road in CT. The fat retard who was also there for a job really seemed to like it.
Not the worst job I ever had, but definitely the hardest. I thought it would be good to work a second job to help pay bills, so I applied at FedEx to work loading trucks. After a week’s training and a week as a helper it was now my turn to work alone loading a tractor trailer from bottom to top with boxes of various sizes and weight as they streamed in on a conveyor belt. You had to stack the packages like you were building a wall from top to bottom and from back to front. In addition, you had to scan the packages to make sure they were on the right truck. Some times the boxes would come at a rate where you could keep up, but a lot of times there would be a rush and there would be an avalanche of packages backed up to the point where they would be falling off the belt. The first night after getting off work I literally dreamed of boxes falling on me.
I know there are a lot of women who do this job, but I wasn’t one of them. I’m only 5’2" and the height of the truck was 8’, so I had to throw boxes to the top of the wall and hope they stayed. I finally had to tell the foreman I couldn’t do it any longer and they moved me to small packages. That wasn’t so bad, but I threw my shoulder out throwing a heavy bag of packages over a conveyor belt at the end of a shift. The female foreman looked like she wanted to slit my throat when I told her I had to quit. This lasted all of two weeks.
I had a job for a couple of months before I started college. I had to stuff vinyl records into their paper jackets and cardboard album covers. It was all done by hand, no machines. Only machines used were ones that made the vinyl record itself. Oh yeah, and the cryovac machine that was used to shrink wrap the albums.
It was “Sticky Fingers”…all the time and nothing more.
I spent a summer as a volunteer firefighter for the Forest Service in SC.
Most of the days were all about digging fire lines, which was brutal back breaking work that got boring after the first 30 seconds. Seriously - you know how you feel when you’re all sore and tired and can barely move? Imagine being like that for weeks straight!
After cutting enough fire lines we’d do controlled burns, which was even better. This meant donning up all the fire gear, nomex “hot pants” and carrying whatever super heavy fire tool we were assigned (I was usually the “bladder bag guy” - this is a 50lb+ bag of foamy watery goop that sits on your back with a gun to spray it), plus water/food and the emergency gear for most of the day.
In 92 deg weather, with a small forest fire going besides, it got to be a bit sweaty and tiring. I think I drank about 2 gallons of water easily on burn days. To top it off, as a volunteer I didn’t get paid for any of this misery either.
As for the good stuff, the “crew” that I was with was a great set of guys that generally got along together, joked around and made it fun. I still keep in touch with two of them.
In addition, I had a lot of trouble with dating as a young lad (I was 21 then) but after that it became easy - being extra buff, tan, and confident helped enormously.
When I worked as a TA for the local school system I was the preferred choice for temping in CDC classes. Mostly it was a joy because those kids are just so loving and the job is fun. But for a few days I had to work with teen students were were so horribly afflicted with physical and mental conditions I just couldn’t go back. It takes a very special person to stick with a class like that and the teacher was miserable too. The day consisted of getting the children off the bus and into the room, getting them set up on floor cushions, nurses came in with feeding tubes, adult diapers were changed, and then we just tried to find ways to stimulate them. Then back to their chairs and on to the bus. It seems simple enough, but it’s such a depressing thing to see such hopelessness. These kids were never going to be any better and all they were doing was existing. Several of them were terrified of being touched so it just made it all the harder to change them or feed the ones who were able to swallow, and some you had to watch out for because they’d bite.
I’ve had crappy jobs since then, like restoring fire damaged homes when I did construction, and the three hour stint cooking french fries in a Central Park. Nothing compares to that school job though.
I worked in greenhouse for 3 years. I loved it! Filling pots was a small part of the job and in retrospect not the best part, but I loved greenhouse work. Even loading and unloading the trucks wasn’t that bad. I actually did a bit of this last summer when I sold flowers and plants retail, seasonally. I love plants and flowers.
My worst, hands down, was delivering newspapers. Skulking around in quiet neighborhoods in the early AM hours, 7 days a week, for very little pay. I quit after 2 weeks. Hated it.
I worked in a record pressing plant, where I had to put record albums in their covers and paper jackets, by hand. It was a short stint while in college. It was mind numbing for 8 hours worth.
I got a free copy of “Sticky Fingers” out of it, without the cover, of course.
You know, it might not have been so bad if I’d built up the physical endurance for it. I think I pulled a 12 hour shift the first day. We didn’t have gloves so my hands and arms were all scraped up. When I got home I was more sore and exhausted than I’d ever been in my life. I went straight to bed (dirt and all) and had to get up around 5 the next morning to be back at the nursery at 6.
During the night, a cold front had blown through and it was like 20 degrees outside. I actually made the effort to drag my achy butt out of bed, shower, throw on many layers of crap clothes (I didn’t have a work coat) and start driving over there. I made it about half way there before I decided I really didn’t want to see that place ever again. Went home, told them I quit, and got a job at a grocery store a week later.
I’ll never forget when I was in sixth grade, there was a boy who didn’t know what he wanted to do. I didn’t really either, but he said “I don’t care what I do, as long as isn’t driving a cab or working at McDonald’s!” Wonder where he is now.
Wonder where he is now.