Posted on 09/07/2012 3:32:20 PM PDT by lbryce
Today's jobs report says the US added just 96,000 jobs in August, 34,000 less than expected. The unemployment rate fell to 8.1 percent from July's 8.3 percent, but that's only because people stopped looking for work, not because they found a job.
It's hard out there on the ragged edge of the economy, but take a look at GlobalPost's 7 worst jobs. Earning an honest buck has never been this hard.
Henry Ford probably didn’t have China’s Foxconn factories in mind when he created his famous assembly line outside Detroit in 1913.
Eighteen Foxconn employees attempted suicide there in 2010, highlighting the job's tedious nature and poor working conditions at the facilities. Remember these workers the next time you complain about your overbearing boss.
Speaking truth to power has always been an occupational hazard for journalists, and that's still true. But for a lot of newsmen and women, getting the word out has never been easier. (Thanks, Twitter!) Making money in the industry is the trick these days. (Thanks, Internet!)
And while UN-Arab envoy to Syria is an honorable and imperative job, it's not an enviable position. It comes with a rather demanding job description: cease sectarian violence, mediate a truce between rebel forces and Assad’s regime, and bring peace to war-torn Syria.
And then there is, yes, the elephant sperm collector.
But that's not all. There are terrible jobs all across the world. Here are GlobalPost's seven worst jobs in the world:
1. Foxconn factory worker: inShare182 A Chinese worker assembles electronic components at Foxconn's factory on May 26, 2010, in Shenzhen, China. Last year multiple reports revealed inhumane working conditions that cited, among many egregious practices, the installment of suicide-prevention nets and a no-suicide pledge employees were asked to take. See GlobalPost's series on Foxconn. (AFP/Getty Images).
2. Emergency Fukushima power plant technician:inShare182 Workers gather in radiation protection suites near Iwaki city in Fukushima, 40 kilometers south of the Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, on March 21, 2011. After a massive earthquake and tsunami hit Japan in 2011, the Daiichi plant reactors suffered a number of partial nuclear meltdowns. Workers evacuated, but technicians, fireman, soldiers and volunteers stayed behind to stabilize the reactors, risking lethal exposure to radiation. (Ken Shimizu AFP/Getty Images).
Hundreds of technicians, soldiers and fireman worked in shifts of 50 to prevent a nuclear meltdown. The media dubbed them the Fukushima 50.
3. Print Journalist: inShare182 An Iraqi journalist checks his lighter during a freedom of speech protest in Baghdad, Iraq, on Aug. 14, 2009. Reporting in countries like Iraq, Jordan, Turkmenistan, Syria, Iran, China and North Korea is dangerous and sometimes makes journalism a life-threatening occupation. But even if you work in an air-conditioned office in the US, Finland or England, it’s never been a worse time to be a print journalist, psychologically speaking. A study released in 2012 put print newspaper reporter in the number five slot for worst job of 2012, citing high stress and low hiring outlook. (Muhannad Fala'ah Getty Images).
4. Personal chef to North Korean dictator: inShare182 Late dictator Kim Jong Il’s personal chef from 1988 to 2001, Kenji Fujimoto (a pseudonym), shows an old picture of Kim Jong Un during a press conference in Seoul on Oct. 25, 2010. Fujimoto fled North Korea, leaving his wife and children, because he was suspected of spying on Dear Leader, according to his revelatory memoir, “I Was Kim Jon Il’s Cook.” Since then, he says, he's lived in constant fear. But in June this year, Fujimoto was invited by North Korea’s new leader, Kim Jong Un, to return for a two-week visit. Fujimoto took the trip and met Jong Un. He was told, "Your betrayal is now forgotten." (Jung Yeon-Je AFP/Getty Images).
5. South African platinum miner: inShare182 Police surround fallen miners after clashes near a platinum mine in Marikana, South Africa, on Aug. 16, 2012. Police killed 34 striking miners who'd armed themselves with machetes, sticks and metal rods. The Bench Marks Foundation recently published a study that, as Alex Duval Smith wrote for GlobalPost, paints “a grim picture of misery, death, poverty, illness and environmental pollution." The Lomin mine at Marikana experiences "high levels of fatalities," the report concluded, adding, "Residential conditions under which the company’s employees live are appalling." Sometimes 50 workers share a toilet. (AFP/Getty Images).
6. UN-Arab League envoy to Syria: inShare182 Former UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan at his office at the United Nations offices on July 20, 2012. Annan was appointed to the position on Feb. 23, 2012. Some called it mission impossible. On Aug. 2, 2012, Annan resigned after repeated attempts to end human rights abuses and violence that has now displaced over 100,000 Syrians and killed about 25,000 people, according to activists. Yet, he still believes "Syria can still be saved from the worst calamity." His replacement , Lakhdar Brahimi, is less optimistic. Earlier this week, Brahimi said ending the civil war between Assad's government forces and Syrian rebels was "nearly impossible." (Fabrice Coffrini AFP/Getty Images).
7. Elephant sperm collector: inShare182 Meet Cuddles, an African Elephant living in Dubbo, Australia. (Mark Kolbe Getty Images).
Meet Thomas, his job, and... yes, there's video if you dare.
wouldn't take that Dirty Job!!!!
I think you meant Proctologist, not Neurologist.
I once saw a bugs bunny movie where Bugs had a job in a munitions factory testing bombs for duds. As each bomb would come by, bugs would hit it on the nose with a hammer. If it didn’t blow up it was a dud and bugs would mark it so.
That sounds like a pretty bad job to me. You typically would only get to test one bomb.
He has balls?
Darn, I missed Post #18, never mind.
So much for originality.
Adam Carolla and Jimmy Kimmel on the Man Show once interviewed the two finalists for the worst job in America. One was a scuba diver at sewage treatment plant. The other, who won, was a sperm collector at a turkey farm. He said the worst part was the way the Tom turkeys all quieted down when he walked into their coop.
Dirty Jobs: Season 4, Episode 13 Turkey Inseminator (12 May 2008)
What was wrong with them and the hens, that they could not do it the normal way? (Turkey stud farm?)
Some years ago a friend of mine, a delivery truck driver, had to make a run to one outside of Mendota, Illinois. He said the smell inside was so awful he dropped to his knees with the dry heaves within a few feet of stepping through the door. When he got back to his terminal, his boss took one whiff of him and sent him home early. He had to leave his clothes outside for several days before they were “presentable” enough to throw in the washer.
I had to go out with a rancher in Western Kansas and see his several dead cows. He had drug them away from everything else waiting for the National By Products truck to come get them.
The wind was blowing about 30mph toward the dead cows and I wasn’t expecting to smell anything. In fact I could not see how even an atom could get back to us as we would be thirty feet away from the cows and the wind blowing just how we wanted.
Well we got to maybe 40 feet and the smell just about overcame me. I still do not know how that smell could come back on us with the wind blowing so hard from us to the cows.
Domestic turkeys are unable to mate naturally because the birds are bred to have enormous breastmeat and cannot actually get close enough to each other to mate.
The breasts on the hybrid white turkey toms is so big he cannot mount a female and get his parts lined up right.
So humans have to “help”. Those big, broad-breasted turkeys are really over-bred freaks but everyone wants that kind of bird come Thanksgiving.
I remember after the Jonestown suicides and murders the U.S. Military sent their people whose job it was to handle bodies down there to recover the remains.
I remember seeing some of them interviewed and they all, every one of them said they just could not quit washing their hands. This was weeks after they returned.
One summer while stationed near Camp Zama, Japan, I got stuck in traffic. It was hot and my ‘64 VW had no AC. We were passing a chicken farm and got stuck behind a “benjo” (raw sewage) truck. The stench was unbearable, causing my pregnant wife to stick her head out the window and toss her cookies.
Still why can’t there be an ergonomically designed mechanical hen turkey that the big breasted toms can have all the whoopee they want with, and which collects the sperm as it operates. Why have humans involved all the time. Might have to show a new turkey once or twice how to use it and that would be it. No more gross-out turkey groping.
It should probably be observed in this context that Foxconn employs so many people that despite the widely reported suicides, the suicide rate for Foxconn employees is below that for the PRC as a whole.
Man it was dangerous; good money but dangerous machinery from the first baths to the splitters to the mixers. That was hard work for a teen. And yes, demoncrats should know just what hard work is. I don't think that Tannery is there anymore. But nothing in California is the same in the last 25 plus years.
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