What did you do at your WORST job?

[Taylortractornut]

I have 2 worst jobs. THe first wasnt bad it just got that way. My older brother Im closest with Went into business with his excavation service. I was 16 and I started helping him, I had run a backhoe alot and we did good. I learned alot and he was one to ride a butt good. I didnt mind that it set me up for later jobs and build character. When he got larger with about 10 peices of euipment he got a bad habit. If I messed up He would get after me, but if a crow was around especially owners or managers at one of the plants we worked for It would be unbearable. He would later apologize off to the side.


THe last year I worked for him we were doing a job and I was cleaning out the air filter on the dozer. HE was right there rushing me and reached down to get the wing nut from me. I dropped it in the hand off and the home owner and his former boss that was a loud mouth like that were both there. I got a chewing and my brother stuck his hoand out and demanded 10 bucks for a new filter. I gave it to him but it cost him. The rest of that month I worked for him I didnt check one thing out on the dozer. I just made the motions and went on. THat was a good motor lasted till I went back to school.

The necxt summer I worked for him He started that crap at the plant dad landfilled for. I walked off the job and hitched to the landfill and got on a scraper. He has since gotten better.


The worst job I worked at was Hydraulic analysis They make Gear Tek pumps and motors. I didnt want to go there but a man I knew worked there and gave them my number. I was out of Machinist college and I wanted to work in an open job shop 50 miles away. I had a friend that worked there but he fell asleep on the way home and was killed in the wreck. I didnt want to worry my mom and dad with it.

I went to hydraulic analysis After they promised to let me work in the manual machine shop and not full time CNC. I worked int he CNC room and never saw the manual manual shop. The owner told me that tey just told me they would let me do manual machine work just to get me there. He put me in the shop and other jobs but it was to have the manager ride me till I went back to the CNC. They ad 2 other college hires that were newly married and they had them by the short hairs. Alo had alot of older guys about to retire they treated like crap. One of the owners was a lady that had flower beds outside. SHe would make a trip through the shop and get workerd to do her gardening.

One person stepped on a flower by accident and she deducted 20 bucks from his check that week. The 3 of us college guys got picked to go to her lake house and landscape for the day. Got our checks that week and we didnt get that days pay. Because we were at her beautiful lake property. I quit after I made my pay up. I was inthe shop watching a crew running a backhoe and excavator and I walked out. I took a job as a labor for Huffman Inc building a treatment plant in Alabama. I thought it would be a bad job but it was one of the best. I loved every minute of that job and most of the folks I worked with. I saw a few of them today. I moved up from labor to operator in about a week and did most of the mechanic work there.

It went by fast with the folks I worked with 12 and 14 hour days seemed to fly by.

 

[aczlan]

It went by fast with the folks I worked with 12 and 14 hour days seemed to fly by.

How enjoyable your job is depends greatly on how your coworkers are... No two ways around it.

Aaron Z

 

[Depmandog]

I recall another horrible job I had for a grand total of two days. It was mid August in Missouri, one of the double hundred days ...100 degrees 100 percent humidity...ok not quite, but point made - miserable.

It was a Christmas Tree farm, and my job was spraying the trees with a green coloring mixture. The owner had a tractor pulling a several hundred gallon tank. The pump had two 1" hoses, probably 100' on each hose. I took one side, another dude had the far side. We were expected to sprint and stretch the hose as far as it would go, then spray 1/2 of the tree behind you, and 1/2 the tree in front of you...move 10' closer to the tractor and repeat. The 100' hose probably stretched into the stand to catch ten trees in. So when we made it back to the tractor path, i had sprayed 1/2 of 20 trees on my side, the other guy sprayed the same in his side.

We had to completely pull the hoses from the row, couldn't let it rub on any tree trunks - then he would pull forward ten feet and we would do it again.

Over and over, acre after acre. This liquid had some sort of food coloring in it. Stained skin like no other. The spray nozzles leaked, hoses leaked. By the end of the day I was sunburned, green from head to toe and dehydrated. Had that crap in my hair - soaked thru my clothes. My butt was green.

Of course the old guy driving the tractor was a sadist - yelling and cursing all day long. Faster, faster...heaven forbid you would miss a spot - that would ruin the deception...for these trees were basically brown before we started, and the prettiest dark green when we were done.

Now you know the rest of the story.

 

[terry.dinerman]

WOW - It is so hard to choose....!

I used to think my first job was the worst....at my dad's poultry slaughter-house...lugging 30gal buckets of soured guts and wet feathers to lift over my head into the dumpster, cleaning the muck out of the bottom of the scalding tank, unplugging the floor drains with a snake, more chicken poop than you can shake a scraper at...

...there was that "Unconscious Unknown" ambulance call to a small house out in the country one July, finding a months worth of newspapers and mail in the mailbox, the windows covered on the inside with condensation and flies...and having to go in anyway and assess the scene...

...or one hot afternoon in Iraq, cleaning what was left of a civilian truck driver out of the burnt wreck of his truck....about 3 days after the IED killed him...I could almost fill a gallon zipper bag with him...

But after reflecting....I had a job in middle management for a small materials inspection company....I was a combination of Operations, Safety, Training and QA....doing the jobs of 4 people and dealing with the issues inherent in getting 120 or so technicians to all pull in the same direction plus having a phone or pager stuck to my head 24/7 made me a very angry and volatile fellow.

Definitely the worst job ever. Being "Right Sized" after a corporate merger (anyone over 40 was pretty much out) was like Atlas having the globe removed from his shoulders....and I swore to never wake up one more day to a job I did not love.

...getting canned from that fresh He-l was the best thing (next to meeting Precious Bride) that ever happend to me...

T

 

[Smiles007]

Shop Cop.
As an skinny, pimply Know nothing intern, I got sent out on the shop floor with a tie, a stopwatch and a clipboard to do "time-motion studies" of the UAW machinists.
They were not ammused.
It was a very valuable lesson for me:
I learned that I had no future in Industrial Engineering and that first impressions are important.

Haha! I did the same "time studies" as a pimply faced engineering intern on screw machine shop floor. no tie. no uaw....

 

[looch]

Green bean canning factory. Summer job, first day, escorted in and asked what shoe size. Got handed a pair of rubber boots with old, smushed green beans in the bottoms. Hair net, white coat, and out into the plant. There was a perpetual fog inside - steam from the canning operation.

My job was to monitor the can line - empty cans going by on a conveyor; green beans pouring out of the rotating "slicing" barrel onto a belt that lead into the "hooking" barrel. The beans would flow into this 2nd barrel, get hooked and travel up to the top and then drop into the cans that were traveling through it's center. I had 3 tasks: make sure the cans don't get jammed, make sure the spice throwers flowed properly, make sure the hooking barrel had the appropriate amount of beans in it. This last task was simple enough, or so I thought - if the barrel wasn't full enough, stop the can line. If it got too full, shove buckets under the outlet of the slicing barrel and remove excess beans from the line until there is a lull. A "lull" - ha, good one.

The first 20 minutes seemed to go by okay. I paid no mind to the other line operators who were busy hoarding buckets and I politely answered "yes" to anyone asking if I minded that they borrow some of my buckets.

Then the trucks started showing up - I could see them pulling into the yard through the open garage door at the other end of the plant. About 15 minutes later, my slicing barrel began to surge with a rather alarming amount of beans. I looked around and the other operators all had grins on their faces as I searched frantically for some buckets. It was like a Laverne and Shirley episode.

I somehow managed to make it through until lunch and then I realized another perk of my position - line operators take an extra 15 minutes to completely pressure wash the equipment before leaving the line for lunch break. I was soaked through.

I took an extra long lunch and handed in my boots.

 

[Iplayfarmer]

I've had a lot of good jobs. I can't say as I've ever really had a bad one, but my least favorite was my time as a sanitaiton manager for a food plant. I had already worked there for a few years and I had added QA, Research & Development, Food Safety, and Lab Manager to my acquired titles. They offered me a pretty nice raise to take on Sanitation, too.

The work was rough... Cold, wet, climbing in and out of large food processing machinery. But, the hours were the worst. I'd have to be in to the plant every 6 hours or so all through Saturday and Sunday. Then, I'd have to be there Monday to approve the startup. I'd supervise QA and the Labs throughout the week, then I'd be back in again on the weekend to manage the cleanup. I had direct reports working 24/7. I had to beg and dicker with other managers for every minute of down time to let my crews do their work. Then they threw in a Wednesday clean up, too. After a year of hoping it would get better, I walked in to HR and told them to take back the pay raise and get someone else to do sanitation.

They treated me right, though. I kept my full pay, and after a few months I ended up full time in the microbiology lab. In the lab it was quiet, air conditioned, well lit, and interesting. I worked 7 days a week, but I only worked 2 hours on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. I told everyone I worked 7 days a week with 3 day weekends. I loved that schedule.

 

[missingstexas]

Viet Nam, 1969. No matter how bad it gets and you think it can`t get any worse, believe me it can.

Thank you for your service. I can't imagine what you've been through for us.

 

[Garybake]

Viet Nam, 1969. No matter how bad it gets and you think it can`t get any worse, believe me it can.

Ecspecially when it is NOT voluntary or with a Welcome Home!
Thank You for a Stand Up Job!:thumbsup: Welcome Home! Glad you came home alive, I have friends on "The Wall"
Gary

 

[Sigarms]

Worked in a union shop doing simple data entry.

First and only last time I got my butt reamed out for sweeping the floor because I was absolutely bored and had nothing to do. They had so many rules that it was impossible to get anything done, and God forbid if you had pride in your work and tried your best, because then people thought you were trying to make them look bad.

Didn't surprise me to find out some years later the company went out of business.