Nothing like walking up to somebody's house at dinner time, having the whole family in the dining room window look at you walking up their driveway with utter disgust and knowing in about 10 seconds, someone is going to answer the door and you are the absolute last person in the world they want to talk to about anything much less try and sell something too.
Worse than Mcdonalds! (But I did it and made good money too and it got me through college and not a single college loan)
Worse job ever and you still didn't occupy anything?
Wash rack at a chicken feed factory at age 14.
I’ve had terrible jobs, but I have occupied lavatories on airplanes. Does that count?
How about standing in a concrete pit full of old car batteries and smashing them with a sledge hammer to recover the lead - while wearing a full set of rain gear and face shield. The pay? $1.60 per hour.
Bucking hay for $2 an hour lured me away since the farmer had a great swimming pond and fed us well.
Tossup. Hand loading trucks with cucumber baskets and corn crates at the King Farms packing house in Bucks county PA for a $1.00 an hour in 1963. Worked 12 hour days. Jack hammering slag out of soaking pits at the US Steel Fairless Works. Half hour in, half hour out because of the temperature. The other labor gang jobs were usually pretty bad also. Paid way better than the farm. Those were the most physically difficult. The worst job was every office job I ever had. After women got out of the typing pool in the 70s, office work became especially nightmarish.
Jack in the Box grave yard shift weekends after HS football games in the late 70s
Nursing home food dept - includes washing dried pea and beets puree off all the plates and silverware
newspaper deliver 3am 365 then off to a 10 hour job as a dad with two kids and going to college MULITPLE times throughout my ADULT life.
Mess crank for 5 months onboard a Fast Attack submarine - slept on a 4x8 sheet of plywood on top of Mk48 torpedos.
Now Sr. Program Manage for Fortune 500 company making 6 figures and finishing up a dual grad degree and grad certificat in IT Program Management.
so FU OWS!
A job is a job! If you want one bad enough you will do just about anything. In my early years I did many jobs that people today abhor. I frequently was working more than one job at a time.
At the age of 13 I worked for a family friend doing his office mailing for him each month. I got paid 1 cent per envelope ( about $50 per month). I had to address the envelopes (no computers back then, just a silk screen address printer to run each envelope through, and I had to type up the screen for each new person added to the mailing list or when a screen wore out), fold the newsletters, stuff and seal the envelopes, sort them for mailing by zipcode, fill out the paperwork for the post office and transport them to the post office.
I also did babysitting, taught Sunday school to 3,4, and 5 year olds, yard work, picked fruit and vegetables, house cleaning, worked as a motel maid, and at Taco Bell, and other restaurants, and as the office flunkie who had to do everything from making the coffee and taking things to the drycleaner to typing and filing. I also worked several door to door sales jobs getting paid on a 100% comission basis.
Those jobs got me through college, paid for two trips to the Carribbean and a trip to Europe, and helped me save up the downpayment on a condominium I bought at the age of 22 without any help from anyone.
I started a fulltime entry level job at a local bank at age 20 and worked my way up through the ranks to an AVP level department manager by the age of 35 while finishing up my college education part time at night. I became a full time housewife and stay at home mom at that stage of my life.
I did not take out any loans to pay for my college classes and did not get any financial support from anyone to achieve my goals. I went to a community college for my first two years of college and completed my associate degree, because it was cheaper and then transferred to a local university to complete my Bachelor’s degree.
Many college kids today, just aren’t willing to work several mimimum wage jobs to put themselves through school today like many of us did in our youth. They also want to have a large salary immediately after finishing college, when they have little or no work experience. Many are unwilling to start in an entry level job after finishing college, even though this is still quite commonplace even today. They don’t realize that employers want to check out their work ethic before they give them opportunities for advancement within their company.
Laundry room in a large nursing home in Niagara Falls NY 1981.Paid fairly well for the time $5.00 an hour but the job was horrible.
Eat Beef/Drink Milk!
Worse? Many fit that description, but here’s my worst:
Placing knife blade blanks on a tray that banged against an oven, moving them along about 10 inches per minute. They fell into a vat of crude oil.
Then I would manually remove the blades from the vat of hot crude oil and stack them neatly.
The room was over 100 degrees most of the time. The clanging was very loud. The furnace was louder. I always went home covered with crude oil and we had to eat lunch on the job because the furnace never stopped.
Oh yeah, $1.65 an hour!
In this nasty scene, we groped for chickens legs as they stood, blind and helpless in the dim red light. As we grabbed three full grown chickens in each hand, they struggled and beat their wings in an attempt to get free. Rarely, as you lifted the struggling birds above your head to pass them to the person on the truck who put them in the cages, you could feel/hear a leg bone snap.
The chickens weighed about 8 pounds each, so even this scrawny farmboy’s muscles were soon burning and aching with the effort of lifting nearly 50 pounds of struggling chicken above my head to pass to the truck loader every minute or so.
The combination of brutally physical work in the debilitating heat and noxious conditions made this the worst job ever for me.
The beauty of these nasty jobs is that they teach you to want something better.
I hauled timbers inside the pipeline wearing a heavy shirt buttoned to the top, rubber gloves that reached to my elbows and head protection. My face was slathered with a heavy protective salve to help prevent creosote burns that didn't work all that well. Outdoor temperatures reached nearly 100F. daily, and at least 120 degrees inside where I was.
On the plus side the job paid very well for the time and the grub was good and plentiful. While I groused about the work I was glad to have it.
Basically, as a janitor at a SUBSIDIZED HOUSING PROJECT at age 16 to help my parents pay the mortgage because my father, while still employed, he didn’t get paid for a year because the company he worked for wasn’t making any money. He stuck with his company until it turned around in the early 80’s. My mother had a measly secretary’s salary. We never asked for welfare and never missed a payment on the house.
I enlisted in the Army at age 17, came back, paid for college with National Guard income and also paid my parents’ utilities while I lived in the house. I was “rich”! I have only taken loans to buy cars or homes. I have never carried a credit card balance.
I volunteered for Active Duty as often as I could and my civilian employer always supported me. I retired at age 39 and have stuck with my civilian employer through the Obama depression, taking a 20% paycut. I also run a second business which pays for the house which will be paid for in 5 years.
And when I pay off my house I’m going to buy a freakin’ sailboat whether the marxists like it or not.
Never had a job I didn’t like (guess I’m lucky):
Lawn Care (mowed lawns) (about the same years) $1-$2 a lawn
Bowling Score Keeper (10 through 16) about $4 a night - $60-$80 a month
Summer Hire Cal Div Forestry - Firefighter - 17 and 18 years old - $300 a month or so (HARD work)
Newspaper Mailroom and District Advisor - $2.50 to $4 an hour (1973 to 1976)
Night accountant at Coca Cola - $4 an hour plus deep discount on Coke product (1976 - 1977)
Air Force Weather 1977-97 - Career
Weather Observer in Galena, Alaska 97-2006 ($35 an hour plus room and board)
Pick up clerk/garden dept at Orchard Supply Hardware - $8 an hour (really loved this job but had to leave when wife became disabled)
Weather Observer in King Salmon, Alaska 2008 - 2010 ($30 an hour plus room and board
Current - Meteorological tech, National Weather Service, King Salmon Alaska - GS-10
Min. wage @ that time was 2.10/hr (1974-75) at that time I think. Oilfield trucks can get mighty dirty and they have many, many grease fittings!
My Worst Job
I was 16 years old. I was hired as a Bus-Boy for a steak house which was close to home in suburbia, Long Island. That doesn't sound so bad, you say...
Well, let me tell you. My hours were 4:30 pm till When-ever. The whenever was when the Russian owner told me I could go home. For starters, I would have to prepare to go to work. That meant I would come home from school and iron my outfit, which included a crisp white shirt, black dress pants, vest, and tie.
When I arrived at the restaurant I was second to lowest man on the totem pole. The only one lower was the Mexican (alien) dishwasher. He washed everything by hand. He didn't speak a lick of English.
My hourly rate was something far less than minimum wage. I was told the waiters would tip me at the end of the night. They would, but, I assure you, they gave me very little. They were all thieves. I had to fill the water for strangers and empty their ash trays.
Not so bad, you say? Well, I had to hear every complaint the stranger-customers had. It was my job to report back to the chef. The chef was a pot smoking nut job. He once told me to go down into the basement to get him a live lobster? When I didn't move fast enough he, literally, kicked me in the ass!
Still not so bad? When the last diner left the building, it was my job to clean up. That meant every table (there were about 20 tables). I had to throw out the garbage into the dumpster. Now, here's the best part...I had to vacuum the entire diningg room!
Most times, I would get home by 4:00 am and have to go to school in a few hours. It was the job from hell!
Lastly, the owner had me do something strange every night that I didn't realize was extremely dangerous until after I quit... Can you guess what it was? I doubt it. Right before we would leave for the night (usually around 4:00 am, the obnoxious Ruskie would hand me his keys and have me go out into the dark to start his Mercedes. It seemed innocent enough to me until I thought about it about a year later.
P.S., I lasted at that dump for about two weeks. I quit and never looked back. I always felt that job was an eye opener for me and I have never forgotten the lessons learned from that experience.
Cleaning the bathrooms and scraping chewing gum off the dance floor of a waterfront disco (The Mad Hatter) in Boston for $2.00 an hour.
Bicycle Messenger (straight 50/50 commission)
Lead Singer and manager of a traditional Blues Band touring New England before Blues became popular again. (the Door and perhaps tips)
Cleaning people’s houses.
Trying to sell skin care products by giving people free facials, and then having them not buy anything.
Selling Timeshares in a Florida Resort that was 22MILES from the Beach!
After reading all entries (79 at the time) I can only kiss my hands that I never had anything NEAR as nasty as some.
My bona fides:
35c an hour in the late ‘40s as a 15-year-old stockboy in a local mom and pop grocery. $10-$15 a day shining shoes in NYC (15c and usually got a dime tip - let the good times roll!)
1951-54. USN submarine service for 3 years 8 months and 24 days (roughly). Think I got $50 a month hazardous duty pay and $360 bonus if I re-upped for another six years of b/s. I didn’t.
Stockboy at R.H. Macys while going to Linotype school - $35 a week to start, $54 a week after two years (HR guy pounds table to emphasize the wealth I’d be raking in. Thought then that if I was still at Macy’s in two years, I DESERVED to be making only $54). First introduction to a union (Garment Workers under Dave Dubinski- what a joke).
Linotype operator 1955-67. Started out at 95c an hour under a Colorado apprentice program that would pay me $2.00 an hour after six years. Once I came up to speed, I became a tramp printer and hit that figure in two years (1957) and thought I was rolling in dough. (I remember seeing a new 1958 Pontiac station wagon selling for $2,800 - a small fortune.) Loved the work but had to quit when I saw photo offset coming in.
Switched gears in 1967. Work the graveyard shift at a union print shop (only way to get a job in San Diego was to join the ITU - another joke) while going to a school to learn to be a computer programmer (whatever that was). On graduation I went from $4.50 an hour to $2.65 at the Camp Pendleton PX as a civilian employee. When I left them in 1980 I was knocking down $35,000 a year and again rolling in dough. (My 1600 sq ft house cost $30,500 - in California!)
Really hit my stride later on as a contractor and when I retired in 1990 was making 90K a year with only about half being taxable due to tax free per diem and a maxed out 401K. Loved that work too, so consider myself truly blessed all along the way.
I really feel for those who wrote - man was I lucky! (kisses hands again after posting)
I realize not everyone can do this, like my liberal brother, he had nothing saved for his only child to go to school.....but he did have money for a boat, truck, new cars and Disney trips.....
It was hard but it was worth it....
I think in reading (and posting my own experience) on here, it seems that everyone one here (at least those that post) are united in one aspect of life: work was not an option. I was very blessed to be raised by two hard-working parents, within the family of five, we have 7 graduate degrees, not to say that assures success, it’s just that work wasn’t an option, whether it was baling hay, working as a janitor, con ass at the park, it was expected as that’s what normal, responsible people do...
I have been very blessed, too, that now I have and have had for my entire career, very good opportunities, but if they were to go away, I’d work three jobs to simply make ends meet because that’s what we are supposed to do...
The incredible sense of entitlement those OWS people exhibit is what is going to backfire on them - most of us DON’T feel we’re entitled, we work for what we earn...and damn proud of it...
My oldest son just graduated college, and while he does have student loans, he has a fraction of what he would at that school as he earn athletic and academic scholarships...now, he’s applying to all the police academies he can...in the final round for a state trooper slot! I really hope he gets it as he is earning it...