Worst job you ever had

[dogfish]

So let's hear em.

Mine was working in a fast food place when I was a kid, cleaning the fry vats once a month. The owner was also a little sadistic, and made us scrub the floors with pure bleach. I can still remember coughing from that, sucked big time, but I needed the money.

[surferman]

Dog walker as a teenager. I hated it! Picking up all that crap was not for me.

[bababooey]

When I was in high school, I worked the last summer for an excavating company. One time we were digging a hole near a sidewalk, and they didn't use the digging box, they said it wasn't that bad. My friend had the sides collapse on him. I climbed out in time, tried to pull him, but I couldn't. They ended up getting the fire and rescue people and digging him out. I stopped working for the guy after that, big OSHA investigation anyway. That was enough for me.

[CharlieTuna]

So let's hear em.

Mine was working in a fast food place when I was a kid, cleaning the fry vats once a month. The owner was also a little sadistic, and made us scrub the floors with pure bleach. I can still remember coughing from that, sucked big time, but I needed the money.

I worked fry vats when I was a kid too. Good motivation to keep going to school.

[skinner]

Had a job in a supermarket in high school. I was the stock boy/cleanup crew. One night an old lady walks through the aisle. She had an accident and left some nuggets behind. Guess who got to clean it up?

[nitestrikes]

I worked for a paving company one year. The boss was a mean SOB. He used to yell at us all the time to work faster. He didn't get a lot of repeat work. Got a lot of business as the cheapest, turnover was high. I had it after the summer.

[DarkSkies]

I had a cleaning service that got called on by the state for "specialty" jobs that no one else wanted. My people were honest, and we were trusted in areas where seniors had a history of being victimized. Some short recollections of "best of" moments--

1. Old lady living in senior housing, apt filled to the brim with junk, roaches, and rotten food. We had to convince her to stay downstairs in the lobby while we did the job, only way to work it. There were maggots, flies, and roaches everywhere. We ended up throwing 75% of her belongings in the dumpsters, too roach-infested to save. Even after spraying, there were literally thousands of roaches crawling on the walls of her apt, started streaming out into the hall, freaking the other residents out. (the lady had been scheduled for eviction that week.) This apt was a perfect setting for a Stephen King movie.

Then when whe returned to the apt, accused me and workers of "stealing" meat from her refrigerator. I explained the meat was maggot infested, but she didn't care/ I had to go to the supermarket and shop for $60 worth of groceries to replace what we "stole" from her.

2. Another old lady in senior housing, bad eyesight. Only had a few roaches, but she would not believe she had mice living in the apt until I brought her back in, and showed her 5 separate colonies of newborn mice living underneath her furniture. I crushed them with my boots when she left. She was one of the more appreciative ones. She and her daughter could not thank us enough for giving her a fresh start.



The best for last:

3. One lady living in a 2 fam house with 27 cats. Board of health called us in before her court date, complaints from the neighbors. I can not be descriptive enough in describing the smells coming from this house - you really had to be there. Suffice it to say, 2 of the 5 people I brought into the house to help me ran outside and puked in the backyard, couldn't handle it. So I promised the remaining ones double time, and a special bonus when done.

Even with the special suits, there were times when I just threw my work clothes away at the end of the day. Not one roach here, but there were these special "excrement bugs" that were everywhere, cat feces all over the first floor. It was the only house that I ever had to use a powerwasher to clean the walls and floors on the 1st floor. Can you imagine the damage that hot water does to walls and wood floors?

Worst part of the job was when I opened a closet upstairs, and found a bag with about 10 dead cat skeletal remains inside. When I asked her why she did this, she said "Well sometimes they die, and I am embarassed, and don't know what to do with them". We "rescued" about 5 newborn kittens from that house without her knowledge, and paid to have them taken in at shelters.

4. Were contacted by the Board of Health, and the state, to help a woman caring for her handicapped mother in a 1 fam, upper middle class area. Only problem noticable from the outside was the house was a little "unkempt", and smelled a little funny.

Once you got inside, you knew why. A split level, the whole living space in the living room and the kitchen was covered 2" thick in human feces. I have experience getting people to open up in these situations, so I got her to reveal to me that while caring for her mother, who was incontinent, she sometimes filled the crap bags a little "too much", and they broke before she would get them outside.

This was another case where workers puked when entering the house, and had to be promised double time and special bonuses if they would just help complete the job.

After that job was done, I had to promise: that's it - we are done with these types of jobs, no more.

[paco33]

^^^ So we take crap from our boss, and you had to shovel it? Actually, I worked in a stable for awhile. Shoveling crap isn't the best job in the world. And we didn't get put in TV like Mike Rowe.

[jonthepain]

worked as a plumber's apprentice. (he told me rule #1-don't bite your nails)
suffice it to say we got some pretty 'crappy' jobs

a customer called, he had just bought a restaurant that had been closed for 3 months. (The Newsroom in Somerville.) the utilites had been cut off. can we get everything going? sure.

walk in the back door and greeted by houseflies. not just a couple; thick with flies. open up the walk-in freezer and cooler. big mistake. you could not see into them, they were so thick with flies. literally solid flies. i don't think they had to fly they just had to walk around on each other in midair. it was scary.

well you can imagine the stench. they had been full of meat and fish and i don't know what all that had sat around for months with the power off.

so we cleaned it out. i barfed in my respirator a few times but still we hauled stuff out the back door.

my boss did not flinch whatsoever, nor did he wear a respirator. hell, he didn't even go green. what a man.

[DarkSkies]

my boss did not flinch whatsoever, nor did he wear a respirator. hell, he didn't even go green. what a man.

Jon, as I read that, I could definitely imagine the scene you were painting. Your old boss sounds like the kind of guy who could eat a fried egg sammich at an autopsy where the stomach contents were examined.

[jonthepain]

unfortunately my boss, who was also my best friend, died of alcoholism 5 yrs ago. I've written about him before in the bill w thread and the "who doesn't drink anymore" thread. He was an exceptional individual.

[lostatsea]

Not me, but I had a friend in high school who worked part time for a funeral director. The cash was good, they paid him $15 an hour. He quit after working there 6 months. He told me some things about the job, like how the director used to drain the bodies, and he had to help the guy with the pan and the instruments, Creepy crawlers, I wouldn't do that for twice the money.

[DarkSkies]

Turkey milking and other great jobs -

I hear the pay is good....
but no way would I do it.
Hat's off to the guys who can..


Finchaser is involved in the food business, he's got a lot of interesting stories. This is just one of them relating to the job of turkey milking.

What the heck is turkey milking?
Turkeys in captivity are prevented from breeding. They have to be kept apart or the hens will kill the toms.

So someone has to get out the juices from the tom to impregnate the hen with, hence the turkey milker job, a lucrative position where there are lots of job openings. I wonder why?



A first hand account from a blogsite:
[I have never done this, but saw an ad in a west virginia newspaper in the job section, looking to hire "Turkey Milkers".

Not being familiar with west va, or turkey culture, i asked my neighbor what a "Turkey Milker" did. As she explained it to me, a Tuurkey Milker picks up a 50-plus pound male turkey and stimulates it to ejaculation to collect sperm to inseminate female turkeys. I believed her, as her brother-in-law shortly was hired to perform this task. Sadly, he only lasted about a week....and that was at 15.00 an hour. Apparently his technique just ticked the turkeys off.]

[Turkeys used for breeding cannot mate naturally due to artificial growth rates. Male and female turkeys used for breeding are masturbated and artificially inseminated in order to obtain semen, which is driven into the female bird’s body. A “milker” at a ConAgra turkey breeding facility in Missouri described his job: “I have never done such hard, dirty, disgusting work in my life: 10 hours of pushing birds, grabbing birds, wrestling birds, jerking them upside down, pushing open their vents, dodging their panic-blown excrement and breathing the dust stirred up by terrified birds.”]

[DarkSkies]

I hear the pay is good....
but no way would I do it.
Hat's off to the guys who can..


Turkeys in captivity are prevented from breeding. They have to be kept apart or the hens will kill the toms.

Another great job with hardly any unemployment is the Turkey sexer. This is a lot less strenuous than turkey milking, as the only thing you have to do is decide the sexes of the newborn turkeys as they come down an assembly line.

However you have to be accurate, as one mistake will get a tom turkey killed if it is placed in with females.

From what I understand, the turkey sexing runs in the family, as generations of people "fall into" this type of job. Most are quite good at it or they would lose their jobs. And honestly, it does take some special skills to be able to determine the sex of a newborn turkey, as there are no distinguishing sexual charasteristics at that age.

So the next time you're at a party and the group is talking about fascinating or worst jobs, you can tell them about these!

[DarkSkies]

Finchaser as a turkey milker?

It seems I may have gotten the above story mixed up. This morning Speedy and I were talkin. He told me Finchaser allegedly "worked his way up" to the food broker job he now has. When he first started, he allegedly had the job as a turkey milker.

Couldn't find a "turkey milker video" so I'm posting this one where they artificially inseminate birds. What a great job!

[albiealert]

That's just plain nasty. I hope you guys are just kidding.

[dogfish]

Turkey milker hohoho!
Thats worse than cleaning the fry vats for sure.

[paco33]

You could jerk your gherkin or jerk the turkey?
Isn't that bestiality? I'll stick with jerking my gherkin.

[bababooey]

Isn't that bestiality?

Only if you enjoy it.

[finchaser]

That's just plain nasty. I hope you guys are just kidding.

He's just kidding about me but we do have turkey milkers in many of our plants and I'm not a broker either,Dark the bird man is delusional.