Worst summer job you've ever had

[Very_Boring_Name]

I saw this question on Gawker and decided to ask it here. Mine was during my first year of university, I was a telemarketer. On my very first day a nice old lady who I had called told me that she would be happy to buy a subscription to the magazine, but she was blind and unable to read it, I was brought into my managers office and yelled at for letting her off the phone, instead of telling her that she could always get somebody else to read it to her.

People were also fired left and right for not meeting quotas. The "big" boss, who was two levels up from my manager, would walk around the office with his book of "pink slips" in his shirt pocket (getting a pink slip meant you were fired). It was solely to intimidate you. Oh, probably the best part was their dishonest "commission" policy. The idea was, you were paid an hourly wage, and then supposedly got "extra" at the end of each day for each subscription you sold. Well, the "extra" actually came from YOUR OWN PAYCHECK (they conveniently left this fact out when they hired you). So the only benefit you were getting was that you were getting part of your paycheck early, it wasn't actually a commission.

[kick-ass-bob]

1. Bojangles chicken preparer.

12 hours of banging my hands together while holding the chicken got old fast.


If there's not a better setup for a joke, I can't think of one :D

[madinmaryland]

7. 12 hours a day choking the chicken??

:D

[Odin2005]

29. OMG, ROFLMAO!!!

:rofl:

[kick-ass-bob]

34. Ba-dum. Crash!

Thank you, thank you very much.

It is very tiring XD

[Luciferous]

42. LOL

[cyberswede]

2. Detassseling corn sucked

Corn rash all over your forearms and hours in the humid Iowa heat - whee!

But I heard walking beans is even worse - I avoided that, thank goodness.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

16. My grandparents in DeKalb IL tried to talk my folks into having me do that one summer.

Glad now that never happened...

[Odin2005]

30. I did hay for a classmate's parents one summer. back-breaking, but good money for a teen.

[progressoid]

35. Detasseling corn is worse than walking beans.

I did both. Walking beans was a pleasure compared to detasseling.

[Luciferous]

43. Ha, my husband told me all about how bad it was detasseling corn.

He did it one summer when he was like 12. They actually had people at my daughter's school last month trying to get kids to sign up for detasseling.

[LuckyTheDog]

3. Picking green beans

$3 for every bushel.

[guitar man]

4. shoveling shit

Literally. I was working as a dishwasher at a restaraunt for 2.85 an hour trying to earn money to buy my first car. After about 3 weeks of that a guy told me about a gig I could get out at the stockyards that paid $5 an hour, cleaning out semi trailers that they hauled the livestock in. It was hot, hard, stinky and nasty but I was making more money than any high school kid I knew, the truck drivers tossed some pretty good tips in on top of what I was making hourly. Still, it made for some miserable 10-12 hour shifts :(

[MorningGlow]

5. Office temp jobs

Had a new assignment every couple of weeks, covering for receptionists who were on vacation. I never could figure out how the bosses could simultaneously treat me like a drooling moron (they'd always assume they had to "teach" how to use the copier) AND expect me to know everything on the first day, like automatically know everyone on their 60-member staff, as well as all their little quirks, foibles, and preferences.

Plus I had to spend the entire summer in NYLONS and high heels. And all these jobs were in downtown high rises, where the air conditioning was going full blast and the windows (when there were any) didn't open. I spent the entire summer freezing my ass off and deprived of sunlight. Whee. x(

[annonymous]

46. I did office temp work but rarely wore nylons or high heels

I started out doing what were known as box jobs where you boxed up old files to be sent to a microfiche vendor. It was hard on the back, arms and shoulders and boring as all get out. I was glad to get receptionist assignments just to do something different.

[Brickbat]

6. Mine were all pretty good -- inbound telemarketer, temporary proofreader, some light industrial work

through a temp agency. Of course, I can say they were all "pretty good" because I knew at the time that they were all temporary. I could walk out any day. They all paid well. The one I regret is when I found out the plant I was working at was union, and so I had been scabbing on the other guys. Which is probably why they shunned me. I've felt bad about that for years. I was pretty ignorant then.

[LynneSin]

8. Doing my brother's paper route for 3 weeks while he went to boyscout camp

I absolutely HATE newspaper print ink. And seriously, talk about shitty pay - I would get $1 a day for handling his paper route on the days he was at boyscout camp although I was allowed to keep any tips I got when I collected the one week (which really wasn't a whole lot more). But what really sucked was the ink, I just can't stand the smell and feel of it - I really don't want to touch the stuff.

To this day, I refuse to have a newspaper subscription - would rather just read everything online.

[pscot]

9. Chipping the plaster off swimming pools

in Wickenberg Arizona. On my knees with an air powered chipping hammer, in the bottom of a pool, 115 degrees, bathed in sweat and enveloped in a cloud of plaster dust. We worked a 10 hour shift. The pay was $10 per day. (Not per hour, per day.) No hearing protection and a wet bandanna for a dust mask.

[Taverner]

10. Fry Cook at the Krusty Krab

Seriously - I was a fry cook at Bob's Burger Express in Corvallis, OR

It was also the best summer job at the same time - I learned a lot about grease

[struggle4progress]

11. Gluing raised reflective dots on the highway

Ya walked behind an epoxy truck and the guy handed ya an epoxy smeared dot to put down. Yeah, there were reduced speed signs and there were orange cones to protect ya from the traffic lane but the bottom line was: yer head was at bumper level with cars zippin by at 60 a few feet away, and ya breathed exhaust fumes all day with full volume road noise

[murielm99]

12. Working as a cook at a summer camp.

It would have been hard, hard work, even if my boss had not been psycho. She was mean.

[tigereye]

54. what a cute kitty pic!

[HopeHoops]

13. Changing RV shit tanks and other maintenance on the damn things like sealing the seams on the roof..

... when it is like 100 degrees in the shade and you're in full sun (which is true in pretty much every KOA).

[nolabear]

14. Shoveling coal onto a conveyor belt in a coal mine.

I shit you not. I wasn't very far underground, but {{{{shiver}}}}. The belt carried the coal from below and some always fell off, so we shoveled it back on.

Needless to say I didn't last long.

[Auggie]

41. Morgan Spurlock did a 30 Days episode on that...

as a shoveler. Tough looking work.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

15. Road crew for my suburban town. Not because it was hard but...

...but because the regulars were so incredibly lazy and shiftless I was convinced we were all going to get caught goofing off and get fired so I quit after a week.
When I went back later for my check they asked me if I quit because the work was too hard for me and I told them no, I quit because I like to earn my pay.

[MilesColtrane]

17. Sandblasting the interior of a storage tank in the middle of summer

I was layered in protective gear, unsecured on top of a 25ft. scaffold, holding a blasting hose aimed at the ceiling for hours at a time. (and the temperature outside was in the mid nineties)

Second place goes to doing piece work at a machine shop buffing metal parts all day.

[applegrove]

18. I had a job as a busgirl at a restaurant. I was so shy and hoping to open up at 20.

One week later people from my high school started getting jobs there as waitresses. So much for my attempt at 'wide open spaces' and a chance to grow. I was put right back into my high school role of bimbo.

[LiberalEsto]

19. Scooping the dead goldfish out of the big tank

at W.T. Grant's department store in Pompton Lakes, NJ. 1969.

[MrScorpio]

20. Golf caddy at some rich white suburban golf course

The less said about it, the better.

[Vinee]

21. holy shit, I seriously didn't see this post and posted the exact same question

[Vinee]

22. a tomato processing plant

I worked in a tomato processing plant once as a young man. We made the Taco Bell hot sauces. My job involved standing in tomato skins up to my knees and reaching into a machine that peeled them and scooping out the tomato waste with my hands. I would leave the factory covered in tomato juice and reeking of rotten tomatoes. I think I made $6.50/hr. this was in 1991 maybe. I'm an RN now and have two honorable discharges from the Army btw. It took a job like that to straighten my ass out.

[Brickbat]

47. When he was in college, my FIL worked in both a slaughterhouse and a vegetable processing plant. He

said the vegetable plant was much, much worse than the slaughterhouse.

[Chan790]

23. Passivation and Wash Technician.

In a manufacturing plant that makes screws for every military subcontractor on the US DoD roster (as well as specialty manufacturing for a number of high-tolerance high-equipment-stress low-fail-acceptability industries...like oil-drilling, mining, deep-water equipment and space/satellites); they literally hold the patents on like half of all the different rivets, fasteners and screws used across the entire spectrum of military equipment and there is almost no piece of military tech that doesn't use something they exclusively manufacture. Anyways, my job consisted of washing 60lb pans of screws 10 hours a day in "climate-controlled" 125'F heat at 90% humidity in a 140decibel environment, spin-drying them and routing them to the correct department for processing (they get bathed between every manufacturing step.) This job sucked. Once a day I'd forget that my hands were dirty and I'd touch my face or my eyes or my mouth. I was required to keep a jug of water for hydration and by the end of the workday, it'd have a 1/4" skein of motor oil on the surface. The chemicals used to passivate and wash caused my skin to blister and fall off.

The best part? My mother's (at that time) the quality-control director of the company...so I spent all summer with a target on my back surrounded by former Marines (the unofficial HR motto was "We only hire our own kind. Semper Fi.") who viewed me as fair-game for revenge because she (Bad: a civilian. Worse: a woman.) makes their lives hell from her fancy office with her fancy desk and fancy clothes and engineering background and big paycheck and useless son.

[femmocrat]

24. Waitress in a restaurant at the shore.

I have great respect for waitstaff after that torture. Hard work and dangerous.

[tigereye]

55. oh my. I waitressed in small town diners, a Greek restau-

rant in the city, and was a grill cook at a bagel deli. But I suspect a vacation spot restaurant would be something else! However, you got to hang out at the beach on your hours off, I hope? :hi:

[UrbScotty]

25. Lasted three weeks at a pizza place.

They canned me because they said the deliveries took too long. Excuse me, but we promised them they'd get there in 30-45 minutes, and oftentimes I'd get them there in less than 30 minutes!

Well, the place was not the best place to work, so I was, in a sense, glad to not be stuck there anymore.

[csziggy]

26. Shoveling horse shit for no money

I was trading my labor for lessons - three hours of shoveling shit for one hour of lessons. At the time I thought it was a good deal but these days my back disagrees.

[lunatica]

27. Working in the basement magazine section of the Post Office

It was my first year of college. The smell of pulp and ink and that crappy oily stink of the glossy magazines was nauseating. To this day I can't stand that smell.

[Odin2005]

28. I was 15, assistant to the school janitor.

That SUCKED. This was an old school with no A/C, too. We had to have the whole school spotless by the start of classes in the fall.

Honorable mention: Working the buffet line at a local Mongolian grill. I had to quit because it gave me a nervous breakdown because there was just too many people.

[Kat45]

31. Assembly line work in a factory that made Playboy jigsaw puzzles.

(It made other puzzles as well, but was known for the Playboy puzzles.) Mind-numbing work.

[PassingFair]

33. Ha ha.

I would have been unable to stop myself
from stealing pertinent pieces, thereby
thwarting completion of said puzzles.

[retread]

32. Worked off a jail sentence for a youthful "indiscretion" shoveling out a de-gritter at a sewage

treatment plant. 90+ Florida heat, heavy rubber waders, standing waist deep in sewage shoveling crap!!

[Inchworm]

36. "housekeeping" at a hospital

Dead people in rooms.. birthing room clean-up.. incinerators..

I was 15 or 16

:puke:

[1gobluedem]

37. Cleaning college student apartments

I didn't do it very long; a friend's stepfather owned some rental property and needed help. It was backbreaking work, the students left them in horrible shape, and my friend was constantly dieting (she was diagnosed with anorexia not long after) and subsisted on Bazooka bubble gum and diet Faygo Rock and Rye. The combination of smells was horrible and I can't stand either to this day.

[Forkboy]

38. Unloading boxcars at an animal feed place.

Hell on earth, but I've never been in that kind of shape since.

[Philippine expat]

39. All mine were pretty good n/t

[Auggie]

40. Basic janitorial stuff

Cleaning toilets, mopping floors, etc.

[Lindsey]

44. Working as a waitress and I've even cleaned toilets and to me

that was better.....

[Auggie]

49. Never waited tables

I can respect how hard it is. Janitorial work was done at my own pace, and always alone, and I can see how that's better. But one summer I had three part-time jobs and one day a week -- Friday -- I had to do all three. The janitor bit was the last one I did. Got home at 1 am, dragging, even at age 17.

[trackfan]

45. The only summer job per se that I've had was sorting negatives at Drewry Photocolor

the summer after my first year in college. It paid $2.90 per hour, but I got an extra .10 per hour for working the swing shift.

[wysimdnwyg]

48. Does it count if it's in December?

I spent two whole days working for a pool company. The first day was spent breaking up the old concrete deck with a sledgehammer and hauling the pieces down the driveway in a wheelbarrow. Day two proved just as exciting as I got to dig a trench two feet deep around the perimeter of the pool. I didn't go back.

[bif]

50. Got a job at JC Penny's

I was supposed to be in the package pickup department, which would have been okay. It turned out to be this horrible job where you move piles of objects from the loading dock to the various departments. Every time you dropped off a load you had to go back and get another one. No breaks. Just constant motion. I quit the first day and I hated it so much I think I told them to keep my paycheck.

[oneshooter]

51. Patrolling the rice patties in the RVN.

[Moondog]

52. Orderly in maximum security psychiatric ward

for a metropolitan county hospital. In other words, hired muscle.

The best that I can say for it is that it was educational.

[tigereye]

53. cleaning toilets in a motel- lasted 2 days...

and a sweeper-ette at an amusement park (last 2 weeks with company-store type food and cold water showers, although the people I met there were really cool.)

[kwassa]

56. Roofer. Hot tar on a hot summers day. Raking stones in hot tar.

At least it was a flat roof. My own high school.

I lasted one day.

Various jobs in a local steel mill.

The worst was standing on top of still-warm ingot molds, 25 feet off the ground with a safety rope around my waist, blowing asbestos debris out of the molds with a high-pressure air siphon. The siphon pulverized the remains of the asbestos liners and blew it into the air all around me. I had to take breaks when my feet got too hot, right through steel shanked shoes.