Which is exactly why I’m in that career field.
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My worst job was the summer of my Junior year. I had learned the hard way the previous summer that summers in New Orleans are unbearable, but at this point I had no connection to my hometown of Birmingham, AL, which, yes, as you imagine, is the opposite of New Orleans in every way.
I lived with my parents who were fighting nonstop, and then I’d go into work at this restaurant which was actually quite a nice place to eat but they had these quasi-management positions for some of the wait staff, which amounted to them turning these employees into spies. So these worst than assistant manager types were always acting like your buddy, then squealing on you to the boss.
They had these crazy uniform requirements - all out of own pockets, of course. I had no money so I took the advice of the supposedly kindhearted quasi-manager lady (the one who had been telling customers it was her first day on the job for two years straight in order to get sympathy tips) - and bought a shirt that wasn’t all cotton but some poly blend, the horror. In the end I spent most of my money on uniforms, never made anything because I only got day shifts, and all of the other employees I couldn’t talk to because I was scared they’d narc on me about my subpar uniform.
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My worst job was working for a "ready-mix"concrete manufacturer. The hours went from long, to exceptionally long, especially over the weekends when it was easiest to do big pours. We’d start on a Friday night, ~2am, which was fun because the strip club down the street from [any of the concrete plants I worked at] would be letting out at the same time. Drunks, strippers, and drunk drivers don’t mix well with concrete trucks and/or concrete truck drivers that early in the morning.
The concrete plant and everything within its bounds was always covered in a fine sheen of cement dust that got everywhere, and if the personal vehicles of the drivers and managers failed to get hardening concrete splashed/dripped onto the vehicle body during the workday, that only meant the vehicles were targets for the scumbags hanging out at and around the strip club.
People scream on the jobsite in construction. All the time. It’s the standard for communication. And, many times, the person who can scream the loudest, or threaten people most effectively, is the person in charge. A corollary to that is that the person who likes to fight the most, or who is least able to take orders effectively, will be on that same jobsite, and these two (or more) people will inevitably come into conflict.
For a short while I worked in the research lab, designing new concrete mixes and testing them for compression strength, among other attributes, with an exceptionally heavy machine (something capable of smashing 18k psi concrete in ~12 inch cylinders:
Compression testing is fun the first day, then it’s just a really loud, really heavy, and really dirty task. Oh, and if you purchase a new testing machine, use a forklift to move it, instead of a hand truck, because it could fall on someone and separate their leg from their torso…which happened one of the few days I was out of the lab, thank dog.
80+ hour weeks were common–I never saw my family, all of my clothing was destroyed by the daily dusting (or more) of cement dust, and every day offered an excellent chance that someone would get hurt badly by the equipment or their coworkers. And the environmental effects of producing concrete is the shitstained cherry on top. Got into more fights, got out of more fights, stopped more fights, and saw more fights in that career than any other.
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That. Sounds. Like. Heaven.
Can I be your intern?
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That. Sounds. Awful.
Can I not work with concrete? (More than I do today?)
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In college one summer I got a job working on the school janitorial crew: Our supervisors and co-workers hated us, we hated them, and it was one long slog through class warfare all summer long. It got so bad half the crew used to just walk off the job and the rest of us would cover for them. I had a great time cleaning nicotine stains off the ceiling of the campus pub.
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Been there, done that. And they gave me the crappiest shifts. Sometimes I’d go in for 2 hours at 2 am.
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My worst job? No hard labor, no waste products, it was all pretty tame in that regard. But…
I worked in financial software. Contract regulation and reporting for CDOs, CLOs and other mortgage backed securities. You know, the things that ending up being re-branded “Toxic Assets” while I was working there.
I got regular panicked calls from clients and I was cussed out over the phone by a fund manager in New York for over half on hour straight at one point. And I was a software programmer. I have no clue how they got my number or why they were calling me. Everyone in the business was going crazy.
I got to see the whole economy slowly destroy itself in clear mathematical detail every day. I watched my coworkers get let go until I was the last programmer in the office. Because of that I worked hours so long that I had to Skype my wife and at the time baby daughter to see them. She started to call my wife’s computer “Daddy.” That’s when I was done.
I found out the day I quit that the only reason they kept me on so long was that I was the one they had paid the least salary.
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Lead? Could that play into this? Or does the job just attract belligerent assholes?
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The big year-end project for my school was a visit to Exchange City
"We offer a reenactment of a life-sized city that students “run” during their memorable experience with the Exchange City program. Students are assigned jobs and civic roles that they must carry out in order for the city to work."So, basically capitalist indoctrination & simulation. People were (un-ironically) assigned jobs and generated income, which they spent on goods that other kids produced at their jobs...thus completing the circle of American Life™. I was appointed the highest-paying job: Bank President. I worked non-stop for the entire day, hustling to ensure all deposits were correctly tallied, because the concluding ceremony was for me to announce which businesses paid off their loans and were
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If you keep turning the machine up with a mortor cube you can pop it.
Seriously, never forget that. I have before, and it just makes a person miserable.
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Wow, that makes me feel old. Used to be, working in a bank was the lowest paying job in the financial sector, and the most conservative (dictionary definition, not political). It wasn’t glamorous work, but it was SAFE.
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Ooh, that reminds me of a couple of gigs I suffered for a couple of days each…
One was to feed slabs of polystyrene into a machine that glued thin steel on each side, to make panels for refrigerated containers. So very fucking tedious; the time just dragged.
Even worse was the time I had to work my way through pallets of advertising material, putting an annoying bit of what was basically junk mail into a TV guide, one at a time. What a fucking loathsome endeavour that was, from any angle you look at it.
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I spent 3 months working full time as a nursing auxiliary. That same job is now known as a Healthcare Assistant or Nurses Aide. It’s basically all of the most basic personal care aspects of nursing with none of the good bits: Bed making, helping wash and dress, helping feed, assisting with the toilet etc. Not so awful, you think? 
The ward was a male psychogeriatric ward in an old Victorian psychiatric hospital, which it would be completely fair to describe as a classic loony bin. One of those places which would send you mad if you weren’t already and seemed to have that effect on longterm staff. “My” ward was full of doubly incontinent and very demented old men with the odd burned out schizophrenics who were too institutionalised for community care (although they all got kicked out under “Care in the Community” a few years later anyway) thrown in for good measure. The other wards nearby were similar and just as under staffed as we were. The Acute wards were about 200m away along several stone and tile corridors and a grassy quad. Being male, if the alarm went off I had to go running to help if any of the Acute psychiatric patients (ie. the young and fast burning schizophrenics) kicked off or tried to escape so that there were enough people around to jump on them without causing injury. Still not so bad?
Our ward used to go through cycles of constipation and diarrhoea, no matter how tidy and hygienic we tried to be. If they were constipated, then self-performed manual evacuations at the dinner table were the order of the day. The results often ended up on the walls and curtains. If diarrhoea, well it was a good thing we had plenty of changes of clothes and a spacious and easily cleaned shower stall. But there was one dreadful fortnight when virtually every patient had the runs. We had to resort to restraint commodes; hosing them off in the showers in batches; and dressing them all in easy-to-change pyjamas. One old guy even managed to up-end his restraint commode and tip liquid faeces all over himself and then smear the Charge Nurse and myself as we tried to tidy him. Meanwhile another blithely wandered down the main corridor trailing liquid shit for the others to walk in while we were otherwise engaged … It was pretty hideous. 
But you can cope with shit and that’s not too bad? There are other bodily fluids too … And blood, urine and vomit aren’t really that big a deal either … 
One old guy had been in there for years and had had a prefrontal leukotomy inflicted on him long years before, basically in revenge for assaulting a member of staff. He was thereafter too simple to survive outside, so he just wandered the ward gurning gormlessly. His only remaining joy in life was pleasuring himself, pretty much constantly. Woe betide if you happened to be in the firing line at climax and it was never him that had to tidy up the mess … 
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That’s brutal.
Many times, that. Some cases could be the aftereffects of lead, but mostly alpha male braying contests. A coworker, we called him “Blanca” b/c he was, IIRC, wearing all white for a year b/c of his religious beliefs (Santaria), drove an also-white Super Duty King Cab blah deblah ginormous truck with chrome smokestacks and truck ballz. Also had a horn on the level of trains that he would gleefully use while tailgating commuter vehicles on I-95. Such a colossal douchebag in practically every way imaginable. And there were many of him.
Combine that with the Florida heat, and I’m out.
Envelope-stuffing, I’m with you 100% on that. Probing the depths of tedium the world 'round.
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But the food is freakin’ awesome.
I did some training in Birmingham… about 7 ago, I guess? Since it was after I was married. Anyway. We did the Whistle-Stop Cafe one day, but mostly just… places. It was all awesome.
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Have you_ been_ to New Orleans? There is awesome Southern food you go to a special place for, and then there is amazing food in every little corner bar and grocery. That is New Orleans.
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First time I ever had frog legs and sweet tea was '99 in new Orleans. It was all fantastic.
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