Best or Worst Job You've Ever Had?
This came up with my two sons last night. Sent me for
a stroll down memory lane.
Personal Worst: AFL-CIO steelworker, slagger, third turn
(graveyard shift), as a labor gang grunt, during three
summers, outside of 'hot and humid Philadelphia, PA,' in
135?F+ open hearth and blast furnace sheds (1/4 mile
long steel buildings). I was allowed to work double turns
(consecutive shifts) every three days for about $120, as I
recall. I remember driving home with tears running down
my cheeks because everything (and everything NEXT to
everything) hurt/ached so much!
... it's amazing whatcha'll do when you're 20 ... for a buck!
[:D]
a stroll down memory lane.
Personal Worst: AFL-CIO steelworker, slagger, third turn
(graveyard shift), as a labor gang grunt, during three
summers, outside of 'hot and humid Philadelphia, PA,' in
135?F+ open hearth and blast furnace sheds (1/4 mile
long steel buildings). I was allowed to work double turns
(consecutive shifts) every three days for about $120, as I
recall. I remember driving home with tears running down
my cheeks because everything (and everything NEXT to
everything) hurt/ached so much!
... it's amazing whatcha'll do when you're 20 ... for a buck!
[:D]
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Editted to say this was the worst. I'll have to think what would have been my best.
Worked in the "hole" at a livestock sale barn. This is the place directly off the scales where the cattle go after being shown to bidders. As they run into the pen I had to count them, might be 3-4, might be a lot of 30-40 head. Guys on horses on the outside of the pen would open the gates leading out of the pen whenever they were assigned a pen to go to. I had to shoo them out of the pen and then backpedal to close the gate behind them because another lot of cattle was coming off the scales. Did this from 9 am till midnight with only a 15 min lunch. Then at midnight had to go down the alleys to different pens to let cattle out and run them down the alleys to load the semi-trucks taking the cattle out. Did this until 3-4 am, couldn't even move to get out of bed the next day.0 -
Worst roofing and pouring concrete in 110- 120 degree weather.
Best running a gunshop.0 -
Best paying: US Army, Kuwait. Best overall: the one I'm on right now. 0 -
replacing a live 36"sewer line wearing hip boots WORST
blasting on a strip mione for coal BEST0 -
Best.....Falling old growth timber
Worst.....Every other one.
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Best Job: Being self employed
Worst Job: Being self employed
I have to agree with this.
I did work one summer off and on at hoeing sugar beets, too, and that comes in really close to the worst (my Dad- "The neighbor needs this done and you don't have anything to do so guess what?"). As as side note, the two mexicans who were working with my brother and me were working even slower than we were. They didn't want to do it either and chopped about as many sugar beets as they did weeds. So much for "jobs that American's won't do."
Other almost worst jobs would be hauling chickens and vaccinating mink. I can still smell it as I remember it after 20+ years.
One of the funnest jobs though was shoveling the snow off of rooftops, especially the barns with the high roofs.0 -
Best: US Army
Worst: Pulling grocery orders for stores in a distribution center.0 -
1 farm work, mainly mucking (chickens are the worst!)
2 garage/body work
3 U.S.A.F.
4 lead smelter
5 foundry- floor moulder/pourer
6 truck driver (straight truck 3 state)
7 tree trimmer clearing power lines(died on this job (clinicly))
8 security (K9 strike work)
9 maintenance, both apartment and industrial (current)
these are i think all since 3rd grade when i started working for the old man at the garage and of course home on the farm and various relatives farms, as well as concrete, frameing, electrical, roofing etc. that i do or did part time
best was #6 up till that last day, otherwise i guess the maintenance is
worst is a toss-up between smelter or pourer work could barely stand the constant heat0 -
Best job: Working offshore in the oilfield
Worst job: Worked a job putting anti freeze jugs into boxes off a assembly line. That sucked and was so damn boring.0 -
Worst. Pullin parts in a junkyard for $40/wk (m-f 7-6, sat 7-12, sun scrubbin the grease off)snakes,wasps,rats,rain,snow,mud,90+ degree heat,cuts,scrapes,bruises,broke fingers,pulling trannys out of a wreck lifted on a forklift or held up by a 4x4,embedded grease,I still remember the smell of that old grease!
Best. Purchasing agent. 2nd Easiest and most rewarding job I ever had.
(Easiest was outside sales. Wish I'd gotten into that when I was 20. But I had a distain for "suits"!)
Allen0 -
Worst job:
Cropduster. Flying over the potato fields spraying in an old Spad biplane and having half the chemicals blow back into the cockpit.
Best job:
US Army XO0 -
WORST: When I am unemployed.
BETTER: US Air Force (now retired)
BEST: Doing the $ame job when I was active duty with more $$$ [^][:p][}:)]0 -
Worst job: Telemarketer.
After looking for work out of college in a horrendous economy, I took what I could find. I was overqualified or underqualified for everything. So, to make ends meet, I took a job as a telemarketer.
You have no idea how joyous it is, looking forward to being yelled at, called every name in the book, etc., by people when you telephone them at home.
I also thought what I was selling was a scam. The outfit used to be called United Consumers Club. It is now called DirectBuy. You might hear commercials by some of the talk radio folks for this service. Unless you're planning to buy a house full of furniture, you will never recover the cost of your membership dues. And, I never, ever recommend buying something where you must make a decision right then and there otherwise you're not allowed to join the club. That should be raising every red flag you've got.
My hours were from 4-10pm, Tuesday through Friday, and 10-6 on Saturday. Left me with no social life at all. At 21 years old, that's very harsh.
It got to the point where I couldn't even look at myself in the mirror.
A month into it, I quit. No job as backup. No notice given to employer. No idea where my next dollar was coming from. But, I just couldn't live that way anymore.0 -
Worse: Retail sales, followed closely by dishwasher
Best: Crisis intervention with "at risk" kids in the elementary school system. These were mostly kids with AD/HD or some other MH issue, or problems at home, the physically and/or sexually abused, things that precluded their ability to function in the classroom, putting them "at risk" for being labeled as having a "learning disability," thus making them more expensive to teach.
Loved the kids, most of them just needed someone to be happy to see them who didn't make them feel like a 'problem kid." The school system, on the other hand, was full of petty politics, something I don't do well.0 -
worst... been in a factory,& office , it was like an open prison..clock in/out what BS!!
best.... working ma a88 off to get where i am now...semi-retired, please my self boss!! & 40 [:p]0 -
quote:Originally posted by mond
worst... been in a factory,& office , it was like an open prison..clock in/out what BS!!
best.... working ma a88 off to get where i am now...semi-retired, please my self boss!! & 40 [:p]
I did factory work as well. Hated it, but it was a helluva lot better than telemarketing.0 -
Worst...lubing up the stallions for breeding
Best....unemployed0 -
Spaniel- I agree 100%. I did it for ONE day. I sold magazines (or tried to). They gave you a list of numbers, and you had to call every one. One set was for some business, and there were like one hundred numbers, all to the same business. I would call and get the same person over and over. My supervisor woudln't let me call a different set of numbers. I called one guy who showed me with mathematical precision why the deal we were offering was a bad deal (and I mean with real numbers, not just the "F.U. for calling me" stuff. I finally made a sale at the end of the day to some older lady, and I got the sense that she wasn't all there. My reward? Got to ring a Fing bell.
I never even picked up my pay for the day.
Self employment is likewise the worst and best job....0 -
Worst: FedEx package handler. Especially unloading the semi-trailers that transport packages from hub to terminal. You had to unload a package every three seconds, which sounds doable... except when you run into a series of 'incompatibles' which are generally very large, heavy, awkward packages that cannot be sent through the conveyor system. After about 30 minutes at that pace you are exhausted.
Best: Working as a paid intern for a large mail-order clothing company, doing web design for their website. Got paid very well to do something I enjoyed doing.0 -
quote:Originally posted by Gun_Poor
Worst...lubing up the stallions for breeding
Best....unemployed
hahaha!
I wonder if their's a stallion out there thinking about the best job he ever had. ..."his name was gun_poor...he put a lot love into his work".[:o)]
Ben0 -
WORST: I was a brand new Cadet, on my first ship, going off to sea, as a part of my U.S. Merchant Marine Academy Sea Year Training. I was chained to a malicious First Assistant Engineer, who Hated USMMA cadets for their "College Training", as he came up "through the Hawsepipe" by starting when he was young, and working years till he got to be an Officer, and resented that we would be Officers as soon as we graduated. He took it out on the cadets, and because we had to rely on his ratings of our work performance for a part of our grades, and he knew we would do anything to get a good rating (something he NEVER gave out)...This was in 1972, just after the U.S. Coast Guard had started requiring Sewage Processing Plants onboard all U.S. Vessels. They were poorly designed, and in the course of my first voyage on the SS M. M. DANT, I got to muck out the entire 6000 gallons of sewage from inside the unit, (while it was still in use) to find and remove whatever the problem was. This was while the ship was underway, in temps of over 120 degrees, and rough seas, bouncing and rolling and corkscrewing along - it was slippery and stinky inside the darn thing.
BEST: Chief Engineer on Research Vessel, under contract to the U.S. Navy, Way off the shipping lanes and making 2 Knots, just at Sunrise, strolling along the windward rail with a Cup of Coffee, collecting Flying Fish that had hit the house and fallen on the deck, to fry up and eat for breakfast. Fishing off the stern of the same ship, catching Tuna, Dolphin (the fish), and Shark, and eating them that evening or the next day.
BEST: Sailing as Ship's Engineering Officer on various Vessels to exotic ports of call all throughout the Pacific: Australia & Tasmania, New Zealand, Samoa, Tahiti, Fiji, Tonga, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Hong Kong, The Philippines, Hawaii, Alaska, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Chile, many of them many, many times.0 -
best and worst, escorting bad boys from germany to levenworth and other fine hotels no likkeee bringin to U.S. but really likkeee return trip always got layover in N.Y. sometimes LOndon or i would miss the plane ACCIDENTLY and sometimes it took two days to get me a hop back to Deutschland 0
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