I washed pots and pans at a cafeteria. Scooping out all that glop with my hands.....yuck! Then they would make me take a lunch break. I would come back and the pots and pans would be stacked 9 feet high again, right after I had it all caught up. I didn't last too long at that glamourous job!

that tv show only tells half the story!!

you might try duct tape for your wort!

crime scene cleaner worst job period

Sacking Iron Oxide (rust). Done outside. Yje rust jammed up the bag sewing machine. had to spray oil on the belts to keep it running. It was about 90 degrees and all exposed skin turned to copper color and stayed that way through 3 showers. Think Fels Naptha or Octogon soap finally got it off.

Michael

Hmm...Working at Walmart...OR...Working for a commission only property rental company (complete sleaze ball owners)...OR working at the movie theater in the "popcorn room". Yup a 4x6 ft room with a popcorn machine (sizzling hot oil) and poor ventilation.

A fire alarm company located in a pickle-refridgerator converted into office space. The problem was that everyone was so disfunctional that it made everyday a little weird. One salesmen would get upset and throw stuff around his office. The secretary wouldn't answer phone calls for me and would scream alot. Another salesmen would suddenly fly off the handle at me for no reason. The shipper was a dead-head that was angry most of the time.

Very strange experience.

I forgot to mention...That the all the guys at the property rental job reads and talked about their subscriptions to "High Times" and other "herbalist" magazines. They also read a lot of 3X magazines to kill the time. I was only nineteen and scared to rock the boat. It also didn't help that the owners boyfriend/senior sales person would partake in these events.

My worst job was a produce delivery and sales job. The job itself wasn't bad. It was the lying boss. I was the one who looked bad because of his descisions and he was telling the customers, who I had direct contact with, that it was my fault. So I drove around with all these people angry with me about things I had no control over.

Thats why I went back to school but I still have nightmares about trying to make the routes. eck!

During my teen-age years I had the mis-fortune to work as a farm hand on my uncle's farm earning $$ for college. I cleaned out the horse stables/barns, helped bail hay, fought wheat field fires, drove a wheat combine, shoveled & trucked oats, and chopped weeds in cotton fields. yep.. "cotton choppin", as we called it, was the worst! 13 hours a day, 75 cents an hour.. mile long rows in 100++ degree summer weather. One day it hit 115 degrees & we 'knocked off early' that day before "heat stroke" set in. Later..Went to college & never looked back...
LarryD

Larry, other than the cotton-choppin', that was a normal day for me when I was growing up. Add in milking 32 holsteins twice a day and that ws my day. Only I didn't get paid as I worked for my Dad. I loved every minute of it and if I could, I would still be doing it, minus milking the cows. I hated that. Once I had a 1300 pound Holstein cow kicked me right in the chest when I was putting a milker on her. I got up madder than a wet hen, reared back and hit her as hard as I could with my fist and hit her right on the back shoulder. I broke my hand in 2 places. When I went to the house holding my hand, (had to finish the milking before I went up, of course) Dad asked me what happened. I said, "a cow kicked me." I never did tell him any different but I suspect he knew.

Big Mike

First thing I was told was where to stand and where not to stand (and not to try to milk any one uddered ones). Been tail whipped though.

got a special treat for you in the link below.

It isn't dirty but a tad violent.

Here is a link that might be useful: What's gonna happen at Invesco to the steelers

Now, that's not nice.:) I hope not.
Ever been tail whipped with a glob of fresh green manure on the bottom of the tail? That's interesting.

You guys tellin' 'bout yer youthful agricultural occupations reminds me of one that I can't really say was the worst ... just one of the most memorable.

A friend of mine, Dan Branton, lived on a cotton plantation south of Leland, Mississippi. His mother ran the operation while his dad did whatever rich, white planters do when their wives run the day-to-day operation.

Our job as 12 - 14 year olds was to stand inside the two-bale wagons hitched to a tractor that hauled the cotton from the fields over to the gin. This was in 1960 when most cotton was still harvested by hand, but a lot of planters were switchin' over to mechanical pickin'.

Ms. Branton sat on the tailgate of her black, '56 Chevy pickup and paid a penny to a penny and a half per pound out of a cigar box to the field hands who dragged six-foot long Croaker sacks along the rows pullin' cotton outta the bursted bolls in 100-degree heat, 90% humidity, sun-drenched, 12-hour work days. In a good day a good cotton picker could do 115 - 150 pounds max. ($1.15 - 2.25 per day). By comparison, a tractor driver/mechanical picker was paid $5.00 per day.

Like I was sayin', our job was to stand down inside the 2-bale waggons and empty the picked cotton outta the Croaker sacks after Joe, Ms. Branton's six-foot tall, muscular African-American assistant weighed the bags and slung'm up about 8 feet in the air and over the side of the red-painted, expanded metal sides of the wagon. Let me tell you, it takes a mighty lot of 125-pound sacks to fill a 2-bale wagon.

Now, when we found green bolls and dirt clods in the bottom of a Croaker sack, added in there to bolster the weight of the bag, we were supposed to holler out to Mrs. Branton "two pounds of green bolls" or "three pounds of dirt clods" or whatever, so she could deduct a few pennies from the payment to the offending picker. Joe would always glare at us when we did this because it generally deprived some young Black kid of a few cents, and since it was usually an adult who stuck those green bolls and dirt clods in the sack because a young person was not able to pick as many pounds as fast as an adult and because the heavy bags were so much harder for a small person to drag along.

Well, one day Dan, his little brother, and I decided we were gonna make a little pocket change to spend down at the plantation store, so two of us at a time dragged a bag and picked cotton while the third stayed behind in the waggon in shifts. I guess we figured we could make more money pickin' than the 50 cents each Mrs. Branton was payin' us to shake out the bags. We started about 7 a.m., and about 11 a.m. we weighed in at 35 pounds and were all entirely exhausted ... last time we ever did that!

And after that, whenever we shook out Croaker sacks up in the cotton wagon we never hollered out nothin' 'bout green bolls or dirt clods ever again.

The next year I got a summer job at the Stoneville Experimental Station selfing and cross pollinating cotton and then pickin' only the tagged bolls for pure line and hybrid seed extraction ... that was a whole lot easier and more interesting. Besides, it paid 35 cents an hour!

Bill

Wearing checked slacks with a wide white belt, wing tip shoes, a yellow dress shirt and a wide flowery tie and a blue blazer all to sell used cars for a Chevrolet car dealership. All this for a small weekly wage plus commission. Ahh, I can laugh about it today, but then, I was embarassed for myself.

Bill, you should pick up the book A Painted House by John Grisham. With your cotton pickin' past, you'd enjoy it. It's told from the viewpoint of a seven year old boy in Eastern Arkansas on a cotton farm. Excellent reading.

Paul, yeesh. I'm certainly glad my boss never got into that kind of dress. I've sold Dodge's for 15 years and I currently have on Old Navy Khaki's, a green sport shirt, Old Navy Tech Vest and Eddie Bauer loafers. At least you got a weekly wage. I get to dress how I want but straight commission.

Mike, I sold cars for awhile for 2 different Ford dealers. The business practices of the 1st one made me smell fire and brimstone everytime I had the customer sign the papers. I still feel a twinge of guilt thinking about some of the people we ripped off. I lasted at that outfit exactly one month. I wore a suit every day rain or shine and pretty much outsold everybody else there. 12 sold my 1st and only month there. I still enjoy remembering the 3 I sold and delivered in one day. That was just plain fun.

The 2nd place was a bit underhanded but for the most part on the up and up. The other salespeople almost ran me out on a rail when I showed up in a suit. Apparently they went to great extremes to go 'casual' and they weren't going to let me dress like that! Unfortunately I would have had to stay for years to build a proper clientele. The guy who sat next to me made over a quarter million dollars that year. Excluding his bonus and the Rolex the owner gave him his 'take home' pay for the month of March was $46,000.00. I seen it myself. He made in one month what it took me 2 years to try to scrabble at selling cars.

I had a lot of fun, but they made us shovel off all the cars of snow in the winter and the straight commission was a bit unnerving when the mortgage is not on a sliding scale every month.

Duane

Duane, living in a small town with a limited market, if you're not straight forward on every deal, you're not there too long. I know guys in K.C. that make 6 figures every year. I've been to schools with them and I just flat don't fit in. I've only been married once, I like getting off work at 6:00 instead of 9:00, I'm not an alcoholic, and I care whether my customers return.

12 in your first month is pretty good. I did 6 my first month. 18 has been the top. But with a market area of 30,000 people instead of 2,000,000, I figure that's no too bad.
We clean the cars off, reearrange the lot, and whatever needs doing, we do. I figure it's just a little something different.
I mentioned once in my Sunday School class that if you really want to strengthen your faith, just work on straight commission for a couple years. :)

I hear ya Mike. Big difference between the smaller town and the anonymous big city and the tactics employed.

I was a low-key guy who was just not comfortable with the high pressure tactics. I would probably do fine in a dealership like yours. I had folks come and talk to me a half dozen times. I never pressured them. Then usually one day they walked in and said 'OK'..I'm ready to buy a car today. I felt good about that. After I left I was told a lot of people came back asking for me.

But you are right about the 9pm and weekend days. Man, 9pm 2 days a week and usually half of a saturday really puts a damper on any social/hobby life. There are dealerships here that are open til 9pm EVERY night and all day saturday. No way Jose'.

Duane

I used to be a volunteer EMT.

My partner and I were called the odd-squad because we always got the "weird stuff", either by luck of the draw or full moon. In the middle of a horrendous blizzard we had to drive for three hours to transport a patient to BingoLand aka Binghamton Psychiatric.

Have you ever watched South Park and noticed that instead of commenting the characters just blink once or twice? Spend three hours with someone blinking at you while you're trapped with them in a slow moving vehicle in a blizzard and your partner is up front driving and singing Hey Jude, You'll Make it Be-eh-eht-terrrrrr. At BingoLand, while my partner is doing the handover paperwork, I'm trying to keep Blinky in one room but he keeps getting up and walking through their maze of rooms and long empty halls. Somewhere, far off in this enormous hospital, you could could hear someone laughing like Renfield from Dracula, or someone screaming their brains out.

That was actually a typically good trip. Being a rural EMT sucks because you know everyone and when you can't save the kin of your neighbor they still thank you for trying. There's no anonymity, like being a EMT in a big city or a populated county, you can't hide from the hurt.

Mike and Duke: The most fun I had in my worst job was selling demos out from under the other salesmen who had ordered them specifically for themselves. It's been so long ago I don't remember sales figures, but I did win a trip to the Bahamas in a district sales contest. A month after the trip I left the sales business for good.

The one i have now!!!