Hardest job you've had?

wakka12

Retail and waiting jobs are hard, and extremely tiring. I worked many years in those kind of jobs during college, now I'm in a 'professional' job and its much easier, yet Im paid more,its much less demanding physically and mentally, people don't treat you like ****..I work much less hard than I did in those jobs tbh but still do as much as is expected in the job though
Bit unfair really

Every day of work in every job is tiring to some extent but the only job where Ive been nearly dead after a shift is waiting tables for 8 hours straight !

eviltwin

Working on a trauma helpline. I'd be fairly good at keeping boundaries and not letting stuff get to me but I ended up needing counselling after that job.

steve-collins

I've worked in fast food, as a postman in the mun, an apprentice plumber and a fireman/paramedic.

Apprentice plumber hands down the toughest . Hated it from the minute I joined. Working in the joy didn't help absolute dump. Also long hours and cold winters on the opposite side of the city which meant getting 2 buses at 6 in the morning all for 140 a week didn't help. ****ing slave labour.

Working 16 hours on a Dublin ambulance is mentally and physically draining especially with some of the people you have to deal with but I'd take it all day over apprentice plumbing.

NinjaTruncs

Picking stones in a field after the spuds have been harvested as a kid, we did it every year for for about two weeks. Turns out the field was over a quary so that job was never going to end.

the_pen_turner

iv had some terrible jobs
iv worked for a guy insulating attics. you would be rolling around in small spaces covered in itchy fiberglass sometimes in attics where rats have been or bees have a hive.

I worked for a guy where we would occasionally have to go out an jet some sewer lines with a power washer jetter. talk about a ****ty job

or redoing septic tanks and percolations .. only someone who has do that will know that smell


saying all that the worst job has to be being self employed and dealing with the public
listening to their ****e , looking for my money , putting up with their superiority complex's , dealing with all that stress and working really long hours for terrible money.
I would take minimum wage in MacDonald's any day and have a stress free day

punisher5112

Basically anything that deals with the public....


Job I'm in now is exactly that dealing with them and its mind numbing how utter stupid people really are.

Snotty

anewme wrote: »

Worked as a lounge girl. Aged 16 or so. Not able for it. No one should put up with it. Would sub my nieces rather than let them put up with this ****.

Being young and sticking it out builds a resilience that you would have carried all your life, you should be encouraging your nieces and every other job for the rest of their life will be a pleasure compared to hotel work.

I was 15 years old, 1986 and finished my last intercert exam at 4pm, started my first lounge boy job at 5pm, worked straight through to 4am and back the next day at 12pm through till 4am, I swore my feet were just going to fall off but you just kept going, worked in hotels all the way through college.
Now if the tea machine was broken in my floor at work and I had to walk to the next floor, there would be war.

con___manx1

punisher5112 wrote: »

Basically anything that deals with the public....


Job I'm in now is exactly that dealing with them and its mind numbing how utter stupid people really are.

I learned alot about people from working with the public in retail. I did it for a year when i was younger. I often felt like jumping over the counter and flooring a few customer's with a box.
I have alot of respect for people who work in retail as i know the utter idiots they have to deal with on a daily basis.

Nekarsulm

the_pen_turner wrote: »

iv had some terrible jobs


or redoing septic tanks and percolations .. only someone who has do that will know that smell

You never forget that peppery smell.��

Weeks grading spuds in a cold warehouse, endlessly watching them rolling past and your would be hypnotized. Pulling out the frosted and rotten ones, fingers falling off you, and for a bit of relief from that end of ghe job,pulling the sacks off the scales and wire tieing them and throwing them onto pallets.

eviltwin

It was a dedicated helpline for domestic violence victims so there would be a lot of stories of physical and sexual violence but strangely enough I could handle that, it was the psychological abuse that was really messed up - people having their pets killed, being locked in rooms without food and water for long periods of time, nasty stuff.

diomed

Digging potatoes and picking them.
Trying to stand up straight at the end of the day was impossible.

I-like-eggs,mmm

I’m surprised nobody has mentioned nursing. A highly stressful and demanding job. Thankless too. There’s too much to mention that I wouldn’t know where to start.

13+ hour shifts. Being treated like a slave. Abusive and aggressive patients including their families too. Having to wipe sh*tty arses all the time. Patients ripping off their colostomy bags and throwing them at you. Usually no time to take breaks. Worked to the bone. If we don’t document at least twice what we did, it’s considered not done which can get you in big trouble. There’s just so much...

I’d take being a kitchen porter over being a nurse.

PandaPoo

I-like-eggs,mmm wrote: »

I’d take being a kitchen porter over being a nurse.

Be a kitchen porter then it's not a who has it harder thread, just curious about the difficult jobs people have had. I included nurses in the OP, they definitely have it very hard.

I-like-eggs,mmm

PandaPoo wrote: »

Be a kitchen porter then it's not a who has it harder thread, just curious about the difficult jobs people have had. I included nurses in the OP, they definitely have it very hard.

Yeah I get that and sorry if it looked like I made it look like a “who has it harder” post. Didn’t mean to. Haven’t had my coffee yet so I’m not right!!

I did kitchen portering as a teen... wouldn’t go back to that either. The worst part wasn’t cleaning all the pots and dishes but how abusive the chefs were...

SusieBlue

Bar work, by a mile. Closely followed by retail. Bar work won because I would be dealing with the same f*ckwits in the bar as I would encounter by day in retail, but these people are 14382901083 times more annoying, rude, and stupid with copious amounts of drink in them.
Honest to god the amount of patience it took not to punch the lights out of these people was insane. I get chills thinking back to it.

Agricola

General dogsbody in a supermarket. When an 18 year old needs special shoes to keep their feet from falling to pieces, you know your in the wrong job!

Akrasia

I worked in a call center for an insurance company doing 'outbound declines'
My job was to call people all day long every day and tell them that their insurance claim has been declined and then wait for the love to roll in.

inforfun

Not so much a job as i didnt have a choice, since i have a penis, but my 14 months in the Dutch army were kind of hard.

Between the 2 weeks in -15 degrees with wind force 6 in Germany, a few marches of 40km, the absolute mind numbing stupidity of professional army personnel who didnt seem to understand why i wasn't highly motivated, even after explaining that i had to give up a job that paid me 2,5x what the army paid me for a lot less suffering.

Did like the shooting range though

Army_of_One

unloading frozen boxes of fish from factory ships in a port called Ijmuiden in holland.

The crew was very rough and we worked in the holds were the temp was -28 degrees. The pallets would sometimes hit the side of the hold and fall back in.Seriously dangerous.Quit after a polish lad got crushed when chains snapped lifting up the hold doors and he had thrown down a pallet before the doors were fully open.

road_high

Gunslinger92 wrote: »

Cleaning hotel rooms. Some people are just pure filth. My mom did the job for 20 odd years, I'll never fathom how she put up with it

I think some of my parents generation (I'm in my 30s) put up with some absolutely terrible jobs, pay and conditions.
Some of the stuff my parent did (farmers) would never be done now. They put up with it to feed us, I admire that.
Education and development of the economy has been a wonderful thing for many of us. My standard of living is much much higher than they ever had.

sligojoek

Cleaning bird sh1t out of cuckoo clocks.

Seriously, I did barwork for years and enjoyed it despite the late nights and dealing with drunken a$$holes.
The worst job was in an Italian chip shop in the early 80s. All the waste was stored in the cellar and had to be taken out every Sunday evening for collection Monday morning. 40 or 50 black bags of rotten food to be carried up 2 flights of stairs. Every second bag would bust an spill back down he steps.
Plus 1 on picking spuds and stones

donegaLroad

Preparing bases for mobile phone masts all over the country. Tough graft on top of a mountain in the middle of winter, but the money was good.

Shenshen

I've never done really physically demanding jobs, but I did have a few nasty ones. Cleaning in the local hospital would be right up there - basically all the stuff you get to clean up in hospitals, plus then some.
Though for me personally, the worst jobs were factory work. I used to work during vacation to finance my studies, and the factories were paying really well, they'd usually use students to cover holidays during the summer. But it just so mind-numbingly, undescribably, traumatisingly boring. The same motions, minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day... eventually, I'd resort to reading a long poem before shift started, and then kept my brain busy remembering it for the next 8 hours, bit by bit.
I still know "The Lady of Shallot" and "The Raven" by heart, plus a good many others.

pocketse

Worst job I ever had was retrieveing lobsters from Jane Mansfields bum

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_a_UKKvUcoE

LirW

Worked in a Cafe/bakery chain a few years back. I really needed a job, any job and ended up working for the same company my sister worked for.
The shop I was placed at was in a very fancy area and was just down the road of the company owner. The contract was bad, the hours were pretty bad but the worst things were the customers. I swear to god I were driving me insane.
The lady, that ran that particular shop was known for spoiling her customers rotten up to the point where they would only accept this very thing they'd always get from her. So there was this guy who wanted his eggs in this very particular way or he'd send it back. Or another guy who would only accept a certain consistency of the foam topping his cappuccino. I had to take abuse from upper class elderly people because I didn't put enough cream for the cake on their plate.

The company wasn't providing enough fresh fruit and veg and if we'd run out, we'd have to run to the shop and buy it from our own money (key ingredients, mind you!) or we have to use what's there and cut the moldy part off.
And to top all of that off, we'd have the bosses calling around a few times a day because we were just down the road and taking abuse from them because the cakes weren't aligned the way they wanted it on that particular day.

cantdecide

Cabin boy on a sailing lugger.

The work was hard and the hours were long and the treatment, sure it took some bearing. And I used to sleep standing on me feet and I'd dream about the shoals of herring.

rainbow kirby

Checkouts in Dunnes over Christmas. Absolute torture.

McGrath5

Working in retail over the Christmas period was generally soul destroying.

From working in Tesco and watching women fight over reduced bags of lettuce, to working in a phone shop watching grown men throw a tantrum because they will not be getting the latest iPhone for themselves.

Stonedpilot

Call centre work.
Worked fo one crazy place that was taking calls from mainly American
Elderly people who were being swindled with magazine expensive subscriptions. The magazines were bullshyte and so were the ebooks.
Nearly all calls were angry yanks and management hadnt a clue as they never saw the magazines and products. It was a total racket. Very draining soul crushing work as often in call centres managers cant relate as they dont take calls and to them its stats stats stats!. More calls for less money.

Banks are notorious for This as they are closing branches of left right and centre.
Call centres run all the major banks day to days working.

Tzardine

I worked in Iraq as a contractor from 2006-2008. In many ways it was the best job I ever had, but by god the hours were long.

I worked 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 9 weeks straight. Then you got three weeks off. It was mentally exhausting.

Its funny, now I am back home, I work 7 days on, 7 days off, just 11 hours a day. Some of the guys I work with complain that the 7 day stint is too long. :rolleyes: