What's the worst or most unual job you ever 'ad

carrying on from the ego thread in General,

  • When I were a lad I had some rum uns. The worst though was working on a small Greek Island as a drain unblocker. You know back in the day when Greek toilet systems could only cope with objects that had been fully digested. The pay was crap (image) and it smelt.
  • One of the other lads had to follow the horse buggies around sweeping up the horse shit.
  • One of the girls had worked in a meat factory putting the fat (crackling) back onto joints of pork
there are some strange occupations around which should be covered on "What's my line"
«1

Comments

  • Worst job I ever had was PR for the Child Support Agency.  I walked out of that one and it was very highly paid... Death threats?... about 6 a day.

    Hardest physical was foundry worker, I did it for 2 years and had blisters on my blisters

  • I used to have a girlfriend whose Saturday job involved injecting the gelatine into pork pies.

    She used to smell reet lush.

  • BarklesBarkles ✭✭✭

    In my archaeologist days, I was the first into the cyst graves to check on the condition of the cofffins.

  • Part of a past job involved counting pigs. Imagine an ex WWII hangar - filled with hundreds upon hundreds of pigs - in pens of about 20 or so. I used to have to balance on the wooden walkway (what was left of it really cos pigs eat anything) trying to count them whilst the pigs behind were nibbling at my boots.

    You couldnt wash the smell off for days.
  • BarklesBarkles ✭✭✭
    You didn't see Rebecca Loos there, did you?image
  • I typed postcodes into a computer for royal mail. 8pm to 6am, 1000's per hour, fuled entirly by caffine and heavy metal.

    PL4

    PL4

    PL4

    BS7

    PL4

    PL6

    SW1A

    PL4

    PL4

    PL4

    PL4

    PL4

    PL4

  • WilkieWilkie ✭✭✭
    What's a cyst grave, Barkles?
  • BarklesBarkles ✭✭✭
    Usually a brick built chamber, sealed with heavy stone lid, containing one or more coffins, often lead-lined. Tended to be victorian type of thing and reused as family members needed space.... if an excavation neded to go down beneath one of these, the contents had to be examined, and if necessary removed and stored before reburial at a later date-- wherever possible they are not disturbed, but the condition stills needed to be checked .. I won't go into why..
  • Worst job - working for Toys R Us over a Christmas period whilst studying.

    I knew I wasn't going to last long when they gave me a large uniform (bright orange coverall) which covered all as I'm only 5 ft 2 and was only a size 8 at the time. It looked ridiculous.

    It was also the year that two women got arrested over a fight for the last Po doll. It was mental - people had camped out over night to be first in the queue, so when we turned up for work the atmosphere was already tense.

    The final straw for me was on the same day when I got a load of verbal from a customer as the till roll had run out and I had to wait for a supervisor to change it - the minions weren't allowed to.
  • I counted the number of pensioners on the Isle of Man one summer.
  • worked in incontinence wear for six months.  The delivery drivers would come in to collect the delivery sheets that had been produced.  the stories...  one old lady would put the pads in her slippers - one in her ahem (the correct place), so the slipper pads were for the overspill image.  She would answer the door in these padded slippers.  Senile... 

    I left cos I got *peed* off with the boss who was having an affair with my colleague and she kept b*ggering off and leaving me to do all the work whilst she spent hours in the bosses office checking his tie was straight.  image

  • Worked as a Lab Technician for the American company that made Scholl rough skin remover in 1985.  Channel 4 had a consumer programme called 4 What It's Worth and they got hold of the fact that what looks like dead skin flaking off is actually wax, which made up 55% of the ingredients.  Muggins here had to prove that it it did contain skin cells - by rubbing it in to 20 pairs of feet, catching what came off and analysing it.  The 20th pair of feet were particularly smelly and 'orrible, as was their ownerimage
  • I was no where near you in 1985 H.
  • I paid my way through college working as a night cashier at a petrol station. Worse moment was being robbed by a bunch of goons who kept on running at the door until they realised that they weren't likely to get in and that choosing a garage which was approximately 200yards from the nearest police station wasn't too clever.

    On another occasion I was repeated abused by a drunken twat who didn't seem to realise that we have microphones on the forecourts that pick up everything in the dead of the night. Not only did I gob over his sausage roll when I warmed it up for him but by the time I got back to the service hatch he had fallen over and pissed himself - lovely!

  • WilkieWilkie ✭✭✭
    Never abuse someone who's handling your food!
  • Barkles, you may be able to awnser a question or 2,

    I'll bounce up a genealogy thread 

  • working in the shipyards. Future father in law got me job as a labourer and boy was it tough and not to mention bl**dy dangerous. Thankfully only worked there for a month but it was the longest month I've ever done.

     Another was working as a temp data in-putter for pound stretcher which was roughly around this time very repetitive and under paid!

    Actually another one was me and my future missus running round as waiters at a work colleagues dinner party.... but it was nice to see how the other half lived!

  • A friend of mine ran a pub and asked me if I wanted a cleaning job for the weekend as her cleaner was away. Had to clean the toilets, its was terrible!! Never every again will I clean a pub toilet specially the mens!! How I didnt throw up I will never know!!
  • Pizza Man, if you get no answers from Barkles - I was/am a genealogist, drop me an email and I'll helpimage
  • Hi!

    I think the worst job i have done was working as a model for an art school back in Italy - it wasn't very well paid but still about 3x better paid than waitressing.

    The students weren't very good (to put it kindly) and when the tutor pointed out that they got some bits of my anatomy wrong the answer was always the same 'It's her fault! She moved!'. As if that would have made any difference!!

    As the students were so rubbish I had to hold poses for 30 minutes (standard time is 10/15) - try staying still for that length of time, it's really difficult and after about 10 minutes everything starts to ache.

    I  was studying for my PhD in art history at the time and was used to seeing really good works of art so it was kinda depressing to see so many rubbish sketches of myself.

    The job has also left me with the questionable ability of taking my kit off without any shame in any circumstance... as long as I get paid enoughimage 

    I have also worked as hairdressers' model and had to do catwalk - that is nowhere as glamorous as it seems!! 

  • I've said this one before, but it's totally true....

    I packed coloured tampons into boxes of 16 when I was a teenager. You had lilac, mint, pink and peach and for some reason they thought they would appeal to the younger market! (Funnily enough it never took off)image

    All the tampons were sterilised after packing in an autoclave-style oven, but the dishonest souls I worked with would nick ANYTHING not nailed down. It wasn't hard to spot the thieves walking around with fanny infections because they'd used nicked unsterilised tampax! image

    The same summer I packed smellies for K-Mart, into these baskets with straw on the bottom and then blue coloured shredded paper over the top of that to "bulk it up" and make the 3 mini bubble baths look "more" than they were. The straw and shredded paper used to go up your nose and into your mouth and we used to be able to sneeze blue snot! image

    I never worked in a factory again.....image

  • I worked for a repackaging company one summer.  The worst job I had to do there was pack individual sachets of jelly powder in boxes.  I would go home covered in pink powder and smelling (and tasting) of strawberry.
  • Nothing too dire for me, just 7 years as a nurse. There's chap at work whose job is to peel onions. All day. Every day. He's been doing it 3 years 

    Tom, looks liike you've entered my postcode (phnarrr!!)

  • Lawro wrote (see)
    Worst job - working for Toys R Us over a Christmas period whilst studying.

    Now that CAN'T be true.....

    There ARE no staff in Toys R Us.

    Everybody knows that! image

  • I worked as a face worker in a coal pit and black snot mixed with snuff was the order of the day in the showersimage
  • We could have made a snot collage! image
  • nicko - likewise - I worked one summer in a castings foundry where the moulds were made of black sand so there was black dust everywhere.........one week we had to work in the shot blast replacing the alloy protection panels on the walls. with extremely powerful lights you still couldn't see a frigging thing through all the dust. and I had one of the 50kg panels land on my head - cracked my safety helmet in 2 and gave me a frigging headache and neckache for the rest of the day. thank feck I was wearing the helmet or I'd be dead.....

    and yes - black snot and bogies all the time even under face masks
  • Have we no wringer outers for one armed window cleaners?

  • apparently the royals used to have people to wipe their arses
  • not the window cleaners arses the royal arsholes
Sign In or Register to comment.