The Worst Job you’ve ever had.

[Igor]

 

WARNING: NSFW. ?

[froggg]

Brazilian waxer. ?

[BarrowRam]

21 hours ago, Moist One said:

I've had 2 jobs which make me judder.
 

Job 1: Agency Work: Testing cheap Amstrad mini hifi systems at Betacom (both Alan Sugar companies) in the mid-90s just off Ascot Drive. The job involved unpacking Argos-bound hifi, setting it up then testing the functions. BUT, and this is the catch, I was only allowed to pick from the approved CDs, which, having about 2000 CDs at home, was very frustrating. Should have been a decent job, but when you've got to play, skip, rewind, skip back, record on cassette, play recording and rewind and replay the same song(s) over and over and over and over, you eventually crack, and I did, after about a week. Over 20years later, and I cannot hear the intro to that song without skipping the track of walking out of the room! And NO! Not telling you the song either.

Job 2: Agency Work again: did some "semi-skilled" metalwork at Ave Rail, on Bombardier site (then Adtranz? or ABB?) job involved grinding/smoothing weld and clamp marks off bits of metal before it goes for powder coating. I was in a booth alone, with a white paper-suit on (forensic style), dust mask, vibration white finger tape, gloves, goggles, ear-defenders, hood up etc. Didn't speak to a single person during the day, couldn't hear a thing over the extractor fan, it was just so soul-destroying.

I know what you mean about the grinding. I’ve worked in the shipyard for nearly 38 years and for about 20 of those years all I did was grind. Soul destroying.

[Rample]

Spent a short while as a changing room attendant in an upper class sports facility - literally cleaning/tidying up after grown men who think because they pay a monthly/annual fee they can behave like children and leave the place a tip.

[bx3]

I've done most poo jobs that are available. Worked with some good people but I'll detail the endearing memories A few jobs inbetween here and there but:

First out of school - Porter at the New Bath Hotel. Bizarre.

Army - Bizarre

In the offices on Dale Road at Tarmac. Worse job of the lot.

Enthovens - working on staging over giant cauldron's of molten lead throwing on sacks of chemicals eg caustic soda, and scraping off the impurities off the surface with a shovel with holes in it. Nasty. Lost my poo at my cnut of a boss and walked out. Criminal record followed, unfortunately.

Walked out of Enthovens to a prefab cement place directly over the road. Good blokes, including the boss.

Auction house - working for a right knob.

Builder's labourer. Sound work but not a great experience. Went from a good boss to a knob.

Undisclosed work in night club - Haha. Excellent.

Postman - shut up. Again, cnuty boss and even worse supervisor. Should have repeated my actions which saw me exit Enthovens.

Went and got a qualification and my first experience in a govt department. Absolute poo and stayed for years. Some of the people you have to work with. What a bunch of cnuts.

Moved to another govt department and hated it even more. Awful. More of the aforementioned.

Then I saw a meme which said " my only regret in life is that I didn't tell more people to fnck off". It resonated 100%.

I follow this to this day and at last have a fantastic occupation. It's only taken 35 years.

 

[Coneheadjohn]

4 hours ago, bx3 said:

I've done most poo jobs that are available. Worked with some good people but I'll detail the endearing memories A few jobs inbetween here and there but:

First out of school - Porter at the New Bath Hotel. Bizarre.

Army - Bizarre

In the offices on Dale Road at Tarmac. Worse job of the lot.

Enthovens - working on staging over giant cauldron's of molten lead throwing on sacks of chemicals eg caustic soda, and scraping off the impurities off the surface with a shovel with holes in it. Nasty. Lost my poo at my cnut of a boss and walked out. Criminal record followed, unfortunately.

Walked out of Enthovens to a prefab cement place directly over the road. Good blokes, including the boss.

Auction house - working for a right knob.

Builder's labourer. Sound work but not a great experience. Went from a good boss to a knob.

Undisclosed work in night club - Haha. Excellent.

Postman - shut up. Again, cnuty boss and even worse supervisor. Should have repeated my actions which saw me exit Enthovens.

Went and got a qualification and my first experience in a govt department. Absolute poo and stayed for years. Some of the people you have to work with. What a bunch of cnuts.

Moved to another govt department and hated it even more. Awful. More of the aforementioned.

Then I saw a meme which said " my only regret in life is that I didn't tell more people to fnck off". It resonated 100%.

I follow this to this day and at last have a fantastic occupation. It's only taken 35 years.

 

Undisclosed work in a nightclub?

Care to disclose,it sounds interesting?

[Rample]

9 hours ago, bx3 said:

Went and got a qualification and my first experience in a govt department. Absolute poo and stayed for years. Some of the people you have to work with. What a bunch of cnuts.

Second that, I was seconded to local government for a while after they picked up a project my company had developed and the bureaucracy was ridiculous - literally having meetings to arrange meetings. And yes the people were all a bit weird, a definite almost uniform personality type that isn't a million miles away from trainspotters, but with a streak of something that meant you wouldn't be at all surprised if someone told you a few years later "remember such and such, they've just gone postal in Allestree and killed 8 people over a parking space."

Got out after a matter of months, thankfully my face didn't fit there anyway, which I guess is a positive in terms of my own personality.  Spent an absolute fortune each lunch time as I was so unhappy.

[bx3]

1 hour ago, Rample said:

Second that, I was seconded to local government for a while after they picked up a project my company had developed and the bureaucracy was ridiculous - literally having meetings to arrange meetings. And yes the people were all a bit weird, a definite almost uniform personality type that isn't a million miles away from trainspotters, but with a streak of something that meant you wouldn't be at all surprised if someone told you a few years later "remember such and such, they've just gone postal in Allestree and killed 8 people over a parking space."

Got out after a matter of months, thankfully my face didn't fit there anyway, which I guess is a positive in terms of my own personality.  Spent an absolute fortune each lunch time as I was so unhappy.

The meetings. Not the meetings. All sat around the big table with me trying to look like I fitted in. Meetings everyday day of every week with nothing moving forward. 

How about the birthdays and people leaving? Everybody has to stop work for an hour for some soul less boss to offer hollow platitides to a person we don't usually care about who grins like an idiot while we eat cake that cost two quid and gives the same old poo 'presents'. Absolutely soul destroying. In my big offices we sometimes had two of these at a time, often twice a week.

Shudderrrrrrrrrrrr...

[ketteringram]

22 hours ago, bx3 said:

I've done most poo jobs that are available. Worked with some good people but I'll detail the endearing memories A few jobs inbetween here and there but:

First out of school - Porter at the New Bath Hotel. Bizarre.

Army - Bizarre

In the offices on Dale Road at Tarmac. Worse job of the lot.

Enthovens - working on staging over giant cauldron's of molten lead throwing on sacks of chemicals eg caustic soda, and scraping off the impurities off the surface with a shovel with holes in it. Nasty. Lost my poo at my cnut of a boss and walked out. Criminal record followed, unfortunately.

Walked out of Enthovens to a prefab cement place directly over the road. Good blokes, including the boss.

Auction house - working for a right knob.

Builder's labourer. Sound work but not a great experience. Went from a good boss to a knob.

Undisclosed work in night club - Haha. Excellent.

Postman - shut up. Again, cnuty boss and even worse supervisor. Should have repeated my actions which saw me exit Enthovens.

Went and got a qualification and my first experience in a govt department. Absolute poo and stayed for years. Some of the people you have to work with. What a bunch of cnuts.

Moved to another govt department and hated it even more. Awful. More of the aforementioned.

Then I saw a meme which said " my only regret in life is that I didn't tell more people to fnck off". It resonated 100%.

I follow this to this day and at last have a fantastic occupation. It's only taken 35 years.

 

I'd like to hear more about the Enthovens job, and more about the nightclub one too! 

Oh, and more about the fantastic current one. 

[Steve How Hard?]

22 hours ago, bx3 said:

I've done most poo jobs that are available. Worked with some good people but I'll detail the endearing memories A few jobs inbetween here and there but:

First out of school - Porter at the New Bath Hotel. Bizarre.

Army - Bizarre

In the offices on Dale Road at Tarmac. Worse job of the lot.

Enthovens - working on staging over giant cauldron's of molten lead throwing on sacks of chemicals eg caustic soda, and scraping off the impurities off the surface with a shovel with holes in it. Nasty. Lost my poo at my cnut of a boss and walked out. Criminal record followed, unfortunately.

Walked out of Enthovens to a prefab cement place directly over the road. Good blokes, including the boss.

Auction house - working for a right knob.

Builder's labourer. Sound work but not a great experience. Went from a good boss to a knob.

Undisclosed work in night club - Haha. Excellent.

Postman - shut up. Again, cnuty boss and even worse supervisor. Should have repeated my actions which saw me exit Enthovens.

Went and got a qualification and my first experience in a govt department. Absolute poo and stayed for years. Some of the people you have to work with. What a bunch of cnuts.

Moved to another govt department and hated it even more. Awful. More of the aforementioned.

Then I saw a meme which said " my only regret in life is that I didn't tell more people to fnck off". It resonated 100%.

I follow this to this day and at last have a fantastic occupation. It's only taken 35 years.

 

You seem to have encountered more cnuts than a gigalo. It is however a fact of life that there are a lot of these type of people about. It is one of my regrets in life that I haven't told more of these cretins what I thought of them.

[bx3]

19 minutes ago, Steve How Hard? said:

You seem to have encountered more cnuts than a gigalo. It is however a fact of life that there are a lot of these type of people about. It is one of my regrets in life that I haven't told more of these cretins what I thought of them.

Yes, more cnuts than a gigolo. I like that. There was a time a time when I started to think it was me, but then a Manager or Supervisor comes along that is totally normal, the clouds part, and the sun comes out again.

I realise that it goes against popular practice to call people out for what they are. Frowned upon. How unprofessional. I call bs on that. I now see many people regularly staring at their feet when the 'boss' enters personal space, and beyond.

There is a new rule never to tolerate anything that you wouldn't, if it were after five O'Clock, and on the other side of that boundary fence which marks the division between the street and the workplace.

[Parsnip]

I bummed around a lot in my 20's and in 2002 I was in Mooloolaba, Australia and got myself a caravan with a rented TV to watch the Japan World Cup.

To finance this I got a job painting a fishing boat that the owner was trying to sell. Every morning myself and the owner would swim out to the boat and spend a couple of hours scrubbing and painting this boat. The fishing boat had a little rowing boat chained to it but we never used it because it was only a 5 min swim and I enjoyed it. 

One day a prospective buyer was coming to view the boat and the owner told me to meet them there, swim out, get the rowing boat, and row the buyer out to it.

I met the buyer at the marina and told him that I was going to swim out and fetch the rowing boat - at which point he laughed, called me a crazy pomme and explained to me that the water was absolutely teeming with sharks, pointing out the many warning signs as evidence. He said he wouldn't enter that water for a million dollars - I'd been swimming it daily for $30.

 

[bx3]

10 minutes ago, Parsnip said:

I bummed around a lot in my 20's and in 2002 I was in Mooloolaba, Australia and got myself a caravan with a rented TV to watch the Japan World Cup.

To finance this I got a job painting a fishing boat that the owner was trying to sell. Every morning myself and the owner would swim out to the boat and spend a couple of hours scrubbing and painting this boat. The fishing boat had a little rowing boat chained to it but we never used it because it was only a 5 min swim and I enjoyed it. 

One day a prospective buyer was coming to view the boat and the owner told me to meet them there, swim out, get the rowing boat, and row the buyer out to it.

I met the buyer at the marina and told him that I was going to swim out and fetch the rowing boat - at which point he laughed, called me a crazy pomme and explained to me that the water was absolutely teeming with sharks, pointing out the many warning signs as evidence. He said he wouldn't enter that water for a million dollars - I'd been swimming it daily for $30.

 

You look like Frank Lampard.

[JoetheRam]

12 hours ago, bx3 said:

The meetings. Not the meetings. All sat around the big table with me trying to look like I fitted in. Meetings everyday day of every week with nothing moving forward. 

How about the birthdays and people leaving? Everybody has to stop work for an hour for some soul less boss to offer hollow platitides to a person we don't usually care about who grins like an idiot while we eat cake that cost two quid and gives the same old poo 'presents'. Absolutely soul destroying. In my big offices we sometimes had two of these at a time, often twice a week.

Shudderrrrrrrrrrrr...

Ha, as an employee of an extremely large public sector organisation I recognise this.

Meetings for the sake of it for half an hour or an hour when you could say what needs saying in five minutes.

And yes, the pointless birthday 'celebrations' for Deborah's 48th is my pet peeve. The week long ritual of sending round a card to sign to show how much you care, the collection -which has a secrecy level higher than most government's nuclear launch codes, the debate about what to buy... 

I like my job, but there's so much to office life that is plain weird and infuriating if you're actually trying to get things done.

[Jimbo Ram]

I was a security guard at the Barbican Centre in London in the late 80's. Did 12 12 hour shifts and that was enough.....

[eddie]

My last full-time job - basically an office clerk at Rolls Royce. I hated every minute of it.

[bx3]

16 hours ago, ketteringram said:

I'd like to hear more about the Enthovens job, and more about the nightclub one too! 

Oh, and more about the fantastic current one. 

Haha, Enthovens in Darley Dale. 12 hour shifts, four on three off, day and night. Always in full garb of white hd overalls, full mask, goggles, and hd gloves. Mmm... the heat (and the smell/fumes). Still, the giant molten cauldrons of bubbling chemical laden lead used to catch you unawares and spit always and often, and I still have the scars on my neck.

Weekly blood check to make sure that you're not going to die of lead poisoning any time soon. A full shower after every shift before you return to man kind.

If you weren't leaning over the molten lead cauldrons skimming the surface with the shovel with holes drilled through it you were on the ingot stacker at the end. Sit on your plastic seat. Count six ingots, press the button. Count six more ingots, press the button. Count six more ingots, press the button. Count six more ingots, press the button. Let them sail away on the conveyor to be banded. Count six ingots, press the button. Count six more ingots, press the button, etc etc. Really gave a man time to assess his place in the world.

Sometimes you would have to dig out seized or failed smelters of xx tons of the partly processed industrial batteries/car batteries/lead waste. Getting on the shovel (as it was known) was always one of the work life highlights. You did get to walk through the yard though and see the very, very large dozers and machinery scooping up xx tons of batteries at a time, and in to a chute to start the merry process. 

Anyway, it was here I met Sid. Sid was a great bloke. I think he was from Hathersage or ible. One of the outlying villages. Somewhere like that. He showed me a black and white photo in an article in the Derbyshire Times, of some guy in some weird country panning for gold in a stream. It was 1986. Nobody I knew in Cromford or Matlock had ever mentioned this country. All I knew about was Kylie Minogue doing the Locomation and an Opera House.

That was it, I made up my mind on the spot that I was going to get as far away from this poo hole as I could and I applied for something called a working holiday visa in Australia as this was as far away as I could get. Funnily enough, I thought that my parting gift to my boss may have jeapordised my visa, but no, all good. That didn't prevent Enthovens from sending a couple of cronies over to the prefab concrete place over the road where I had secured ongoing employment prior to my exit, to try to get me sacked due to my Enthoven parting antics. The prefab boss saw through it and welcomed me with open arms. His name was Barry. Cheers Barry.

I'm sure Enthoven's is a much brighter place 30 odd years on, full of OH and S and men in white suits with clipboards. You should see if you can get in some day. If masochism is your thing.

[Carl Sagan]

Commuting can make even the best jobs hell. I walked away from something a couple of years ago where the journey to and from work grew to around five hours and there was no need for me to be there more one day a week. I made millions of pounds for them every year, but they refused to let me work remotely so I told them to stuff it. 

One of the very first jobs I did was to test tampons for Boots at their Nottingham labs! Not as bad as it sounds... 

[ketteringram]

@bx3 outstanding stuff. I reckon there's a tv series in this. 

[bx3]

5 minutes ago, ketteringram said:

@bx3 outstanding stuff. I reckon there's a tv series in this. 

Sid was much older than me. A skinny, quirky guy who would flit around sporting a neat long beard, before hipsters were even a bubble. Sid often used to say "what's the answer?" as he would forelornly shake his head and look at the floor. He had the presence to say this whenever something unnatural happened at Enthovens, which was often. He showed me the picture in the Derbyshire Times with some of his unique excitement and his lovely big grin.

What's the answer? You helped me find the answer, Sid. You changed my life. In your memory I use your line to this day.