Let's Hear Your Worst Job

Eric Patterson

Eric Patterson

Moderator
Staff member
June 1987 I got a summer job working at a cabinet shop. I thought it would be an awesome job as I wanted to learn more about woodworking. First day on the job the owner's son warned me "His bark is worse than his bite." A sign of things to come. The owner was a real piece of work. He was tall, wild curly hair, thick glasses, and SURLY! My god that man was ANGRY. He held a masters in math from Emory, and a PhD in nuclear physics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute. After working for him for a month I think I knew why he wasn't in his field. Nobody could stand working with him and the only way he could make a living was to be his own boss over intimidated employees he could abuse.

I had never done any real woodworking, and he knew it. I think he hired me because he was terribly short-staffed, and I mentioned in the interview I was majoring in math. His impatience with me for not knowing much about woodworking started after a couple days. He'd ask me to do something and with little experience I admittedly got things wrong. There was never a time to learn. It was get-it-right the first time or get an ass chewing. I was starting to get a bit shell shocked. He asked me to mill some wood for roll top desk slats and a little while later he came to check on my progress. There was a small knot in one of the staves so he slammed down a handful YELLING the quality was SHIT. Folks it was one tiny pinhole knot that easily could be culled from the stack. I felt terrible and frustrated. A few days later he asked me to rip a stack of white oak. Fearful of him and another ass chewing I wrote down the requested dimensions. Later he walked up with a tape measure and went ballistic yelling at me for getting the dimensions wrong. I showed him my notes and he got hotter. He looked at me with a disgusting glare and said "Every time you fuck up I want to knock the shit out of you!" That was it.

I had never quit anything in my life but wasn't going to let someone treat me like that. I talked to my dad about the situation, and he gave me good advice. He said don't be a no-show on Monday. The man needs to hear from you why you are quitting. You owe it to your coworkers.

Over the years I've run into folks who knew the owner. I am not alone in my opinion of him. I never met a person with good things to say about him. One person was a tenant of his in a building behind the cabinet shop. He told me his wife divorced him in their 80s. What took so long?

What's your story? I know you guys can top this.
 
I've been self employed for the past 40 years, so can't complain much about the boss. My wife and I have been married for 44 years now and the first few years were tough. I did get fired from my first job after we got married, I was a minister in a Christian Church in Fairbanks, AK. I lasted about 9 months and became the 13th minister in 10 years, so I really didn't take the blame on myself nor was I surprised. I told them they didn't need a preacher, they needed a referee.

That wasn't the worst job I've had, it was my second year of marriage and we had moved back to my home town in Kansas and went to work for a fur buyer. I was the skinner and flesher, putting up lots of fur for the owner, some pretty disgusting stuff, back when furs were high and it wasn't uncommon for people to bring in road kill. I had done that a few years before through college along with lots of trapping, but that was not the worst job.

When fur season ended the fur buyer who also had a farm and raised hogs kept me on as a farm hand. The worst job ever was pushing down the pig poop on the finishing floor of a confinement hog operation. Not only was it a job where I was knee deep in crap, the smell permeated every pore and every hair on my body. I had a mustache at the time and the smell never went away. I had a friend from Illinois come out to bear hunt the first year we moved to Idaho, he had a confinement hog operation too. I could smell him when he got off the plane, I can't imagine the poor folks who had to sit by him. Confinement hog work is the worst job I ever had.

The second worst was a year after the confinement hog operation, but still involved hogs. I moved to a farm near pittsfield Illinois. I worked rent off for the landowner about 30 hours a month. I was making most of my living carving various wildlife, so the self employment began. One of my jobs for the landowner was only once a year thank goodness. He raised registered Hampshire's and each year some of the hogs would fall short of what they needed to be for auction so we had to cut them and turn them into barrow hogs. Some were getting fairly sizable, enough it took two of us to hold them down for the cutter. Close contact with a screaming hog has to be one of the worst, most piercing sounds you can hear. Of course hearing protection never occurred to us back then and my ears are still ringing. Something that made it even worse is the dullness of the landowners knife, he wasn't cutting, he was sawing. After about 5 hogs, I told him to take a break and I'd run over to the house and get my little buck folding knife that has a castration blade on it and gave it to him. Needless to say he wasn't used to a fur skinner's sharp knife and nearly cut all the way through on the first try. That was a close second worst job I've ever had.

The last 40 years I've spent working in my shop with a respirator and hearing protection, working with wood and listening to my ears ring.
 
Eric Patterson said:
June 1987 I got a summer job working at a cabinet shop. I thought it would be an awesome job as I wanted to learn more about woodworking. First day on the job the owner's son warned me "His bark is worse than his bite." A sign of things to come. The owner was a real piece of work. He was tall, wild curly hair, thick glasses, and SURLY! My god that man was ANGRY. He held a masters in math from Emory, and a PhD in nuclear physics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute. After working for him for a month I think I knew why he wasn't in his field. Nobody could stand working with him and the only way he could make a living was to be his own boss over intimidated employees he could abuse.

I had never done any real woodworking, and he knew it. I think he hired me because he was terribly short-staffed, and I mentioned in the interview I was majoring in math. His impatience with me for not knowing much about woodworking started after a couple days. He'd ask me to do something and with little experience I admittedly got things wrong. There was never a time to learn. It was get-it-right the first time or get an ass chewing. I was starting to get a bit shell shocked. He asked me to mill some wood for roll top desk slats and a little while later he came to check on my progress. There was a small knot in one of the staves so he slammed down a handful YELLING the quality was SHIT. Folks it was one tiny pinhole knot that easily could be culled from the stack. I felt terrible and frustrated. A few days later he asked me to rip a stack of white oak. Fearful of him and another ass chewing I wrote down the requested dimensions. Later he walked up with a tape measure and went ballistic yelling at me for getting the dimensions wrong. I showed him my notes and he got hotter. He looked at me with a disgusting glare and said "Every time you fuck up I want to knock the shit out of you!" That was it.

I had never quit anything in my life but wasn't going to let someone treat me like that. I talked to my dad about the situation, and he gave me good advice. He said don't be a no-show on Monday. The man needs to hear from you why you are quitting. You owe it to your coworkers.

Over the years I've run into folks who knew the owner. I am not alone in my opinion of him. I never met a person with good things to say about him. One person was a tenant of his in a building behind the cabinet shop. He told me his wife divorced him in their 80s. What took so long?

What's your story? I know you guys can top this.
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I worked two college summers in a steel foundry in my home town. 6 am to 2 pm. My first job was shoveling the 4-6" deep dirt between the rails in the yard. It was for 2 weeks, 8 hours a day. By the time I got to the end of the last rail, I had to go back to start again on the first. Next I got moved into the factory to fill in as necessary. I swept in between the grinders and they enjoyed showering me with sparks. A shirt would last a week if lucky with all the burn holes. Plus the overhead crane operator would bring big objects above and then blow his horn right on top of you scaring the crap out of you. One day my boss took me to replace the guy who was hoisting hot pieces out of the furnace. The guy walked by holding his arm that had been burnt from a hot piece. That was a very anxious day. Oh, and then there was the day a worker feel into the sand polisher tub and was ground to pieces.
Eventually I got put at one job. It was arranging the coupler knuckles on a rack so the grinders could finish them. I had been brought over multiple times to help the previous guy whenever he got behind. I never got behind and would sit down to rest. My boss came over and would chew me out for not working. I said I like to work fast and hard to stay ahead of the assembly line. He said his boss sees me sitting and thinks I'm not working hard enough. So, the next couple of days I purposely slowed down and held up the line but nothing was said to me. Lesson learned. I went to my boss and said I will keep ahead of the line, but I will go relax in the bathroom so your boss doesn't see me. You know where to find me if you need me. Problem solved.
Finally, my first month on the job none of the workers would talk to me. Wasn't sure why so I asked my boss. He said the workers don't know why I needed to work since my Grandfather was CEO and my father the plant doctor. They thought I didn't need any money and resented me for that. I told my boss that I had to earn my money and needed to work. I had a scholarship and needed to pay the rest of my expenses. After that I got to know a couple of of guys. From then on I became one of them and good friends with several.
So the hardest, scariest, most dangerous job I have ever had taught me valuable life long lessons.
 
The job I have now. It pays the best, will likely be here until retirement.

Nursing is my current profession and I see it all, and just when I think I have seen it all, a human being finds a way of showing me otherwise. Deep down I love my job, its been torture since covid and covid was absolutely no fun, but every profession has its highs and its lows and that was nursing's low. My job now is the least labor intensive though, but makes me think the most. I think thats what I enjoy the most, every case is very different and no 2 people are the same. The younger generation wears me out with the entitled "always right" attitude and my biggest pet peeve is people that come in to get fixed, just so they can return to the streets to make the same mistake all over again. There should be rules against frequent fliers. Hell.... make too many claims on insurance and they just drop you... not in nursing lol.

My job before this, I worked for a gun range. We made a side company just for gun safes. I learned a lot and was borderline a locksmith for gun safes by the time I left. That was the most labor intensive job I had. Not only was I going to college full time, I was running that safe store full time and then any spare chance I had, I was delivering gun safes for the company. I got to the point, I could get 800-1100 lb gun safe in houses by myself. I could get 1500 lb safes into garages by myself. The heaviest I ever delivered was 3200 lbs in a living room of a home and I had to rent some special equipment to get it in. No matter what you have, the last 4-6" of final install is all brute muscle. It took 6 of us all counting to 3 and then push and it would move about half an inch. I got safes in places people couldnt imagine, and the last year I was there, I made an excel sheet to log my safe deliveries. 237 safes in a year were delivered and 156 of those were delivered by myself.
 
When I first moved back to Maine, while looking for full-time work I took a job a a long-term substitute biology teacher at a private high school. I had previously taught high school biology for 3 years at an all boys Catholic school, and was tagged to fill in for a woman who had a pregnancy complication and had to start her maternity leave months sooner than planned. I came in about a week before school started and had limited time to prepare, but high school biology is the same and I had some experience. I was completely unprepared for how different teaching high school in a co-ed school was to doing the same at all-boys school. Both of my classes had raging hormonal beginning-of-school budding romances, and I was completely unequipped to deal with them, and as a sub was totally without any support. Fortunately I was only there for about a month before I found a full-time job at another school that was a better fit.
 
Jeff Reardon said:
When I first moved back to Maine, while looking for full-time work I took a job a a long-term substitute biology teacher at a private high school. I had previously taught high school biology for 3 years at an all boys Catholic school, and was tagged to fill in for a woman who had a pregnancy complication and had to start her maternity leave months sooner than planned. I came in about a week before school started and had limited time to prepare, but high school biology is the same and I had some experience. I was completely unprepared for how different teaching high school in a co-ed school was to doing the same at all-boys school. Both of my classes had raging hormonal beginning-of-school budding romances, and I was completely unequipped to deal with them, and as a sub was totally without any support. Fortunately I was only there for about a month before I found a full-time job at another school that was a better fit.
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I was a hellion in high school. I had biology teacher that hated me as much as I hated him. One day I figured out he had two coffee cups. One had a ribbon and one did not. I started dabbling into chewing tobacco at that point in my life (think I was 16 or 17) and I realized one was his spitter. He walked out, I walked right up to the front of class and switched the ribbon. He came in, picked up the cup without the ribbon and swigged it back and it took about 2 seconds before he realized the shit he was in. He ran out, you could hear him throwing his guts up, walked back in with a rage on his face and started demanding answers on who switched the ribbon. Dead silence, it was a glorious awkward silence. I thought I was getting away with this one... UNTIL the kid who hated me the most was in the back of class and shyly says "Bill did". I just put my head down, started gathering my things. All I know was he was yelling at me, but I had no idea what he was saying. This teacher picked on me a lot, not even sure why, but we never had a good relationship throughout my entire time in high school.

So I went to see the headmaster, and as i walk in, she doesnt even lift her eyes away from the computer screen as she asks what I did that time. Before I fessed up, I asked first if it was a tobacco free campus. At that point I caught her attention and she stopped typing and looked me in my eyes and said "it is". All I had to do was say, well I was in biology class with that teacher, and she started to giggle. Before I could get any further, my basketball coach happened to be walking by and saw me in the office. He storms in, asking why I was in there, and I told him I might of played a prank that went too far on this teacher. Dumbfounded he looked at the headmaster and shes still kinda giggling to herself and naturally hes a bit confused now. So I just tell them both exactly what I did. They are dying laughing at this point, I still cannot figure out if I am in trouble so the only thing I do at this point is ask my coach if I can still come to basketball practice after school. All he says is behave the rest of the day and we will see you at practice.

I HAVE NO IDEA HOW ANYONE CAN BE A TEACHER! I deal with some people, but kids like me would ruin that career in a hurry. Bless the soul who is patient enough to deal with hellions like I was.
 
William Reinicke said:
I was a hellion in high school. I had biology teacher that hated me as much as I hated him. One day I figured out he had two coffee cups. One had a ribbon and one did not. I started dabbling into chewing tobacco at that point in my life (think I was 16 or 17) and I realized one was his spitter. He walked out, I walked right up to the front of class and switched the ribbon. He came in, picked up the cup without the ribbon and swigged it back and it took about 2 seconds before he realized the shit he was in. He ran out, you could hear him throwing his guts up, walked back in with a rage on his face and started demanding answers on who switched the ribbon. Dead silence, it was a glorious awkward silence. I thought I was getting away with this one... UNTIL the kid who hated me the most was in the back of class and shyly says "Bill did". I just put my head down, started gathering my things. All I know was he was yelling at me, but I had no idea what he was saying. This teacher picked on me a lot, not even sure why, but we never had a good relationship throughout my entire time in high school.

So I went to see the headmaster, and as i walk in, she doesnt even lift her eyes away from the computer screen as she asks what I did that time. Before I fessed up, I asked first if it was a tobacco free campus. At that point I caught her attention and she stopped typing and looked me in my eyes and said "it is". All I had to do was say, well I was in biology class with that teacher, and she started to giggle. Before I could get any further, my basketball coach happened to be walking by and saw me in the office. He storms in, asking why I was in there, and I told him I might of played a prank that went too far on this teacher. Dumbfounded he looked at the headmaster and shes still kinda giggling to herself and naturally hes a bit confused now. So I just tell them both exactly what I did. They are dying laughing at this point, I still cannot figure out if I am in trouble so the only thing I do at this point is ask my coach if I can still come to basketball practice after school. All he says is behave the rest of the day and we will see you at practice.

I HAVE NO IDEA HOW ANYONE CAN BE A TEACHER! I deal with some people, but kids like me would ruin that career in a hurry. Bless the soul who is patient enough to deal with hellions like I was.
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What a great story!
 
I've had a few crappy jobs, but the worst was a summer job with a scaffolding company. My girlfriend's stepdad (now my wife of 26 years) ran a scaffolding crew when I was in my late teens/early 20s. The first summer I worked for him was the hardest, most labor intensive job I've ever done.

I was inexperienced, so basically I was hired as a laborer. We travelled around Texas all summer erecting and dismantling scaffolding. You would go to a job site, put the scaffolding up, and then go to the next site. Once the construction company was done with the job, we would go back and tear it all down. The worst jobs we did was inside 100' tall boilers at power plants. Once the lining got so thin, they would go in and replace it. The entire interior of these massive boilers would have to be lined in scaffolding, from top to bottom, before the lining could be replaced.

The boilers had a 36" round manway.. the only way in or out. All of the scaffolding, poles, walkways, hardware, etc.. had to be brought in and out of those manways. They would back flatbed tractor trailers, one at a time, up to the manway. We would creat a long line of labors and start off loading. The material would come off the truck and pass from one person to the next, until an assembler grabbed it and assembled it. These off load assembly lines would last three to four 12hr-16hr days..non-stop passing of material from one person to the next. There were many days I would enter a boiler through the manway in the dark and not see daylight for a couple of days.

Once the scaffolding started going up, the line of laborers would stand one above the other and pass material up and down, floor by floor, by hand. Once the job was complete, we did it all again in reverse.

It was terrible. My hands would swell so much that I couldn't get gloves on. My wrist would swell so bad, my hands looked like they grew directly out of my forearms.

I saw a lot of day labors show up on those jobs and not last til lunch. I never quit on a job.
 
First let me say my whole life I've envied those who had a passion and knew from the start what they wanted to do in life--be it a doctor, nurse, teacher, businessperson, wildlife biologist, pilot, farmer, etc... I've never known how I wanted my life to go.

I was a poor student in high school and college but got by with B averages. Sometimes I think I've worked every kind of job there is...farm hand bailing hay, garage man changing tires and oil, grocery bag boy, forklift driver in a warehouse, truck driver making deliveries and pickups, retail sales, fabricating parts in a machine shop, Warehouse stockboy unloading trucks and stocking shelves. Where I grew up, in the piedmont of North Carolina, the one job nobody wanted to do was to go to work in a textile mill.... Everyone called the workers, "Lintheads."

One summer in high school I worked on a garbage truck. It wasn't difficult, physically speaking, and it wasn't as dirty as one may think, but the driver would stop and visit with a dozen or so people each day, delaying our route so that what should have taken maybe 5 hours, took about 7. I'd come home fuming with the wasted time. I quit after 3 weeks. That was the worst job I ever had.

By 1981 I was 20 years old working as a forklift driver after high school and going to community college part-time. I loaded and unloaded Coca-Cola trucks in Gastonia, NC. In 1982 the plant operations were moved to Charlotte, NC and I was laid off. It was the best thing that ever happened to me.

I eventually went to college and on to grad school where I studied history and archaeology. I didn't become an archaeologist, but it is one of my avocations. It also led me to value learning new things ever since. I did eventually become a police officer by happenstance and found the skillsets very much the same, believe it or not. It was quite an eventful career, sometimes emotional, sometimes funny, sometimes dangerous. I saw everything from the proverbial "cat in the tree" to witnessing a lethal injection at central prison in Raleigh.

I'm now retired. I dabble in whatever comes to mind. Every day is a gift.
 
William Reinicke said:
I was a hellion in high school. I had biology teacher that hated me as much as I hated him. One day I figured out he had two coffee cups. One had a ribbon and one did not. I started dabbling into chewing tobacco at that point in my life (think I was 16 or 17) and I realized one was his spitter. He walked out, I walked right up to the front of class and switched the ribbon. He came in, picked up the cup without the ribbon and swigged it back and it took about 2 seconds before he realized the shit he was in. He ran out, you could hear him throwing his guts up, walked back in with a rage on his face and started demanding answers on who switched the ribbon. Dead silence, it was a glorious awkward silence. I thought I was getting away with this one... UNTIL the kid who hated me the most was in the back of class and shyly says "Bill did". I just put my head down, started gathering my things. All I know was he was yelling at me, but I had no idea what he was saying. This teacher picked on me a lot, not even sure why, but we never had a good relationship throughout my entire time in high school.

So I went to see the headmaster, and as i walk in, she doesnt even lift her eyes away from the computer screen as she asks what I did that time. Before I fessed up, I asked first if it was a tobacco free campus. At that point I caught her attention and she stopped typing and looked me in my eyes and said "it is". All I had to do was say, well I was in biology class with that teacher, and she started to giggle. Before I could get any further, my basketball coach happened to be walking by and saw me in the office. He storms in, asking why I was in there, and I told him I might of played a prank that went too far on this teacher. Dumbfounded he looked at the headmaster and shes still kinda giggling to herself and naturally hes a bit confused now. So I just tell them both exactly what I did. They are dying laughing at this point, I still cannot figure out if I am in trouble so the only thing I do at this point is ask my coach if I can still come to basketball practice after school. All he says is behave the rest of the day and we will see you at practice.

I HAVE NO IDEA HOW ANYONE CAN BE A TEACHER! I deal with some people, but kids like me would ruin that career in a hurry. Bless the soul who is patient enough to deal with hellions like I was.
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Funny. My senior year of high school me and a buddy decided it was a good idea to sneak outside for a dip, and were stupid enough to come back inside with the dip still in our mouths. Our French teacher intercepted us in the hall, and--pretending he did not notice we both had tobacco in our mouths--engaged us in chit-chat--in French--for a solid 10 minutes. We had to sit there swallowing tobacco juice the whole time, getting sicker and sicker. He finally took mercy on us and let us go, but my belly hurt all day.
 
Jeff Reardon said:
Funny. My senior year of high school me and a buddy decided it was a good idea to sneak outside for a dip, and were stupid enough to come back inside with the dip still in our mouths. Our French teacher intercepted us in the hall, and--pretending he did not notice we both had tobacco in our mouths--engaged us in chit-chat--in French--for a solid 10 minutes. We had to sit there swallowing tobacco juice the whole time, getting sicker and sicker. He finally took mercy on us and let us go, but my belly hurt all day.
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Hopefully you arent running around with wore out circles in your pant pockets today. I chewed for 18 years and have been without it for almost 2 years now. I would be lying if I said I didnt miss it here and there. I could easily go back to it, but I know I have it beat and the only time I ever crave it is when I am hunting or working in the shop. The hardest thing I have done in life is quit that habit though, and it was an act of god to give it up. It essentially took me waking up one morning and seeing all my skin on my lower gums just peel away when I brushed my teeth. That was it, I gave it up right then and there. Pretty sure I am still grumpy about the whole thing to this day, but I certainly know I am better for it.
 
Joe Friday, you have just a great story about your life right there, and I applaud you.

I am 66 and was self-employed as a manufacturers rep in the auto parts business for most of my adult life. It served me well and there is nothing like being on your own. For the last year I have worked as a regional manager for one of the suppliers I represented for over 20 years. It's a good gig at this stage of my life(I'm 66), it's not the least bit stressful, I have plenty of time to do what I want, and I don't have enough to do to retire.

My worst jobs were ones that I did when I had any time off from college. The best(worst) was the day after Thanksgiving one year. I had a friend whose dad was a GC, architect, and engineer. He always could use some labor, so when I had a chance to work a day I would call and ask if he needed any help, and he pretty much always did. So me and another friend go down to a job site in Paterson, NJ, the country's oldest industrial town, where he is building a small meat processing building. The structure was up but the floor hadn't been poured yet, and they needed a diagonal trench dug across it where the water line was going. I would guess at least 4 or 5 other buildings have been built on that plot of land in the previous 150-200 years, and there was more debris than soil. Chunks of brick, pieces of metal, concrete, and everything else you could think of. It was brutal, but Mr Evans paid us $8/hour, which was a darn good wage in 1977-78 for somebody 18-19 years old. We got it done that day. He couldn't believe it. I think the other workers in the building were amazed also. We made great money, at least twice the going rate, he got the trench dug and didn't have to get a ditch witch or something similar in to do it, and he could pour the floor Monday. I don't know if I ever worked that hard in such dismal conditions. I was tired and filthy and I am glad I have done jobs like that(I did several others just like it for the same guy). I am proudest of the worst jobs I ever did because I did them.
 
Eric Patterson said:
June 1987 I got a summer job working at a cabinet shop. I thought it would be an awesome job as I wanted to learn more about woodworking. First day on the job the owner's son warned me "His bark is worse than his bite." A sign of things to come. The owner was a real piece of work. He was tall, wild curly hair, thick glasses, and SURLY! My god that man was ANGRY. He held a masters in math from Emory, and a PhD in nuclear physics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute. After working for him for a month I think I knew why he wasn't in his field. Nobody could stand working with him and the only way he could make a living was to be his own boss over intimidated employees he could abuse.

I had never done any real woodworking, and he knew it. I think he hired me because he was terribly short-staffed, and I mentioned in the interview I was majoring in math. His impatience with me for not knowing much about woodworking started after a couple days. He'd ask me to do something and with little experience I admittedly got things wrong. There was never a time to learn. It was get-it-right the first time or get an ass chewing. I was starting to get a bit shell shocked. He asked me to mill some wood for roll top desk slats and a little while later he came to check on my progress. There was a small knot in one of the staves so he slammed down a handful YELLING the quality was SHIT. Folks it was one tiny pinhole knot that easily could be culled from the stack. I felt terrible and frustrated. A few days later he asked me to rip a stack of white oak. Fearful of him and another ass chewing I wrote down the requested dimensions. Later he walked up with a tape measure and went ballistic yelling at me for getting the dimensions wrong. I showed him my notes and he got hotter. He looked at me with a disgusting glare and said "Every time you fuck up I want to knock the shit out of you!" That was it.

I had never quit anything in my life but wasn't going to let someone treat me like that. I talked to my dad about the situation, and he gave me good advice. He said don't be a no-show on Monday. The man needs to hear from you why you are quitting. You owe it to your coworkers.

Over the years I've run into folks who knew the owner. I am not alone in my opinion of him. I never met a person with good things to say about him. One person was a tenant of his in a building behind the cabinet shop. He told me his wife divorced him in their 80s. What took so long?

What's your story? I know you guys can top this.
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My worst jobs are those with me as the boss - get worked like a slave.
 
Most high school jobs suck but my worst job was when I moved back to Illinois after 13 years in Arkansas. 1996 I was working a contingent job for a Green farm implement company. As all contingent jobs they are time limited, so I started looking for a full-time position. I was offered a position as a product designer for a company that designed and manufactured seating solutions for over the road semi-trucks and heavy equipment. The chief engineer was a high school classmates' brother. His brother had a reputation as a bully in school, but we graduated from the same trade school and after all it was 20 years since school, so things change right? I found out once a bully always a bully. Since I worked in a couple of companies that were suppliers in the automotive industry and worked closely with supply management, I introduced this new company to some new suppliers and were getting favorable quotes and well that was my first mistake. The boss had a list of suppliers that he put together over time and decided I was stepping on his toes, and I was getting noticed by upper management, so the bullying ensued. You see my boss was getting "Favors" when one of his suppliers were awarded a contract. My emails were getting nastier every day. My suppliers were not winning contracts even when the quotes were better and on time deliveries were met. My projects were getting revised at the whim of my boss and timelines were being scrutinized daily and micromanaged to a point it was getting ridicules. Within a year I'd had enough of the verbale abuse and belittling during meetings! I had a meeting with that Green company about another contingent job and they said they'd let me know. That was on a Friday. On Monday morning I was met at my desk with a rep from HR and a security guy with a box with my personal items from my desk. I wasn't allowed to touch the desk, telephone or computer and after the boss came in and chewed my ass out for looking for another job on company time. My dad had told me never burn a bridge because one day you'll need to look back at that bridge! Well since I knew that bridge wasn't going to offer anything for me in the future I burned that SOB to the water line. It of course didn't mean a hill of beans to the company or the boss, but I got some handshakes, and I felt good going out that door. You see I didn't use the phone for personal business, but I found out that the boss had access to everyone's voicemail. That Green company had called my business phone by accident and left a message to contact the hiring company for my new contingent placement.
 
I think I have two that classify as "worst" jobs. Although one was definitely my favorite and also least stressful I have ever had. Only "worst" because of sheer nastiness. But I only have fond memories and had great bosses. I spent the last year and half of my undergrad working in the veterinary research lab at the Catfish Health Department at MSU. The grad student I was working for was researching a DNA specific water based vaccine for the parasite that causes HamburgerGill.
Part of my job requirements was for me to wade / swim out in producer's ponds that had a turnover (ie die off) of their fish and find the area of mud where there larvae were active. Mud on the bottom was hard then you would feel the "soft" spot and have to dive under and get collection buckets of the mud so the larvae could later be isolated in the lab. Once the mud was secured then I would have to rummage through the dead fish and find the "freshest" to bring back to the lab and dissect / necropsy them and submit to the histopath lab. Spent a lot of time riding in the back of the truck on the way home lol...but again great bosses and all good memories.

Worst job I had though, one that still makes me shudder is my second job out of vet school. First one hadn't panned out and I unfortunately went out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Worked for the boss I had started cleaning kennels with in high school before I made it into high school. There were so many issues at that place I didn't see when I was younger but man a few years, some wisdom, and less naivety makes a big difference.
Literally 5 of the employees were either straight out of rehab or had MAJOR drug addiction issues. You can imagine the Jerry Springer circus that was that. Boss did a lot of underhanded business dealings as well and knowingly screwed my dad over on a hay bailer... which kind of was the beginning of the end of the working relationship.
Boss had borrowed my dad's BRAND NEW hay bailer and one of his "rehabbed" employees he was paying under the table got high on meth and burned the barn down in which our bailer was in. Also killed a couple of his horses. Well fast foward a year.. he never replaced our bailer and then he wanted to "sell" my dad one he had wheeled and dealed for... My dad reluctantly agreed to buy it, even though it needed extensive repairs (and we needed one).. but when the rubber met the road he refused to write us a bill of sale which only elevated tensions between us, as at that point I was the monkey in the middle.

About 6 months later I wound up having to have emergency back surgery (disc completely ruptured and left leg was 100% paralyzed and could barely use my right leg) , and less than 3 days out of the hospital he came to the house to "check on me" Informed me if I really cared about my job then I could at least come sit on my ass and diagnose Sh*%. I followed my Neurosurgeon's orders and stayed home for 4 weeks which pissed him off to no end.
The straw that broke the camel's back.. he was off with his mistress that particular morning.. I had seen all the rooms and had managed to complete 10 of the 15 surgeries we had scheduled for the day.by the time he got there at 2:00 pm... well because I went in the back room to eat my lunch in peace... I happened to over hear him telling my technician I was a Lazy Half-assin S.O.B. instead of finishing the surgeries.....and at that point I came completely unglued...going to leave what happened next to the imagination and it probably isn't far off from what you're expecting. "Conversation" ended with me telling him to "F *** off and shove the clinic up his ass as I slammed the door and walked out.

Still can't believe I stayed there as long as I did.
 
Capt Rich Geminski said:
Worked for a brick mason. Mixed morter and hauled brick. Lasted one day, told boss it wasn't for me, didn't even ask for a days pay, but he did.
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That is what I did in high school for my uncle and grandfather who were masons and did side jobs on the weekends.
 
Had plenty of worse jobs. Best job I had was when I was in graduate school and took a fill in job as a student loan officer at a school of nursing. 100 females, No men. I was single. They were lonely. When their payment was late they had to talk to me. Lots of offers in lieu of payment but never made good on it.

I was only there a couple of months until the lady in maternity came back to work. Never forget that job. Ever.
 
Capt Rich Geminski said:
Worked for a brick mason. Mixed morter and hauled brick. Lasted one day, told boss it wasn't for me, didn't even ask for a days pay, but he did.
Click to expand...
I worked for brick mason the summer I was married. I was in Virginia outside of DC for the summer. My wifes family was living there so that is where the wedding was to take place. Being a west coast boy the humididty was a new thing to me and it sucked! But knowing it was temperary, I and just dealt with it. Knock down this wall, put the wall parts in the dump truck. Dig this ditch, move the new bricks over here.....

Then after work I would go home to my inlaws and over the summer I built them a large deck and a retaining wall. Since nobody wanted to be out in the heat I would work away outside quietly avioding much of the wedding planning/discussions on topics I really did not care to much about. Occasionally someone would poke their head outside and say something like "How do blue flowers for the centerpieces sound to you?"
 
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