Take this job and … Exploring the world’s absolute worst careers
Excerpt:
“The answer: Really, really bad.”
The No. 1 “worst job in science” the editors gave to the “flatus odour judge” – actually two of them who work for a Minneapolis gastroenterologist researcher and spend their days inhaling “episodes of flatulence” from 16 research subjects who are fed quantities of beans.
It was a big, poorly ventilated metal building that had five very large shredders and a couple ovens\furnases. You spent the whole day lugging truck tires onto a conveyer belt and rolling them into a shredder. From there the tiny bits-o-tire got thrown into the ovens to bake off whatever was on the tire and condition them somehow. After a day at work you reeked of burning tire and were covered in tiny bits of shredded rubber from head to foot except for where the mask was on your face. Occasionaly you would get some tires in from the southwest that had scorpions or tarantulas. Fun huh?
After working there during high school for a month I said I could do anything I wanted to for the rest of my life because I had already been to hell.
I’ve been most fortunate in my 51 years. I can’t really say I’ve had a worst job. because almost any job that pays the bills, puts food on the table, and clothes the kids can’t be all that bad.
Unless it’s telemarketing!!!
I dunno if this was all that bad, but I used to work in a winery. We would go into 40,000 gallon concrete square tanks via a ladder from above, with an airhose pumping hot summer air in at the top of the tank to keep us from suffocating from the gases let off by fermenting winegrape residue (skins and seeds). We had to shovel about 4 feet of the stuff (called pomace) into an auger with a trough than was shoved in a side door at the bottom. The gas burned our noses, especially from the red wine grapes, white was less so) and we just shoveled and shoveled for 12 hour shifts. The big tanks, 65,000 gallons took four men about six hours to empty.
I had lied about my age to get the job and had the satisfaction of seeing many “grown” men quit because the work was so hard. I was so sore each morning after that I had to pry my fingers open cause they were stuck in the shape of the shovel handle. I was so beat up that I refused to work on Sunday, and told my employers that I had to go to church (which was a lie). So they decided to try and force me to quit. They moved me outside to a concrete slab, where dump trucks emptied the same stuff we had been digging (it had come from other wineries). Then I had to shovel it into a larger auger and had the “shame” of tourist groups coming by and lookin’ at me working like a slave in the sun.
But I wouldn’t quit. They finally let me take occasional dumptruck loads of that same stuff than had gone through the distillery (they cooked white lightning out of the residue) and over to a waste pond. I had a couple of other jobs there and by the end of the “crush” (the harvest/process season for wine) they offered me a permanent job. I went to India instead with the money I had earned.
But I was making $8.65 an hour in 1973 so it seemed like fat city. But my rubber boots were always swirling with fruit flies and my Dad, who had loaned me one of his cars, was a bit peeved about my unwanted passengers.
The No. 1 “worst job in science” the editors gave to the “flatus odour judge” – actually two of them who work for a Minneapolis gastroenterologist researcher and spend their days inhaling “episodes of flatulence” from 16 research subjects who are fed quantities of beans.
Well, come on. We’re talking Minneapolis, after all, right? And wine-tasting has become so…tired.
My sneaking suspicion is that a “worst job” in this case is all in the eye -er, nose- of the beholder: let us recall the example of the rumored shoe salesman and his, um, predilections. Ew.
Turkeys aren’t so bad. Pity the poor guy who has to collect from a bull
My worst job? I worked in a billboard-poster printing outfit when I was in college, silkscreen printing sheets for billboards. The solvent used is pretty strong smelling, and marked “use only in a well-ventilated place”. So we worked in an open warehouse with big fans forcing (barely) enough air through. In Phoenix. In the summer. And no air conditioning. Hot, smelly, the solvent burns any skin it gets on, and god help you if it gets in your eyes or other sensitive areas.
By comparison, bucking hay in the summer sun or mucking out barns didn’t seem all that bad.
Oh, I dunno. Can you think of a better way to get on a bull’s good side and make him like you? (Sorry, I really shouldn’t have gone there, but DCrom started it!)
As for worst jobs, I spent the summer when I was 16 bussing tables at Shoney’s. Nothing my parents ever said to me could have been nearly as strong an incentive to get an education. Nothing against Shoney’s (well, not much anyway), but that was just nasty, horrible, disgusting work for which you got paid next to nothing, all while getting to feel like you were really at the very bottom of the pile. I swore I’d never do anything like that again, and I haven’t.
My brother sent me several pictures in an email entitled Quit Complaining About Your Job. In one of the pictures a woman was standing behind an elephant with a large plastic bag collecting elephant poop as it was falling from the elephant. I’m wondering if that was her full time job. Maybe she was an artist collecting stuff for her newest installation.
My worst job was in a fiberglass plant. They once had 12 people start work one day. 6 didn’t return from lunch. Only 2 showed up the following morning. Most people found the smell unbearable. I didn’t mind the smell so much, just the amount of glass in my skin, especially my eyes and nose (I was sanding light poles).
Week, I make wine at home in 6-gallon batches, and THAT bowls me over when I open the fermenter sometimes. I can’t imagine
cleaning out one of those vats.
Blowing insulation into attic spaces was no fun. You are covered with dust and filth and the mask never works right so you have the stuff up your nose and everywhere else too. I’d much rather shovel manure.
I never liked working high up on a ladder.
Digging deep holes in the ground, when water is seeping in.
Working in tight spaces shared by spiders and whatever else.
Anything involving snakes.
Best job? being a Company Commander in the Army…what fun!
When I was in college working a research job in western Nebraska, we caught rattle snakes on the side for a lab that made antivenin. $5 a snake, catch and release. I had a collecting permit at the time for herps. That was actually pretty fun as long as you do it safe.
One summer job I had when in highschool and living near a farming community was harvesting pickling cucumbers by hand for ten hours a day. Spending all your time on your hands and knees for hours on end.
The other was in the shake down room in the Ford foundry here in Windsor. This is the room the cyclinder blocks arrive at to have the sand casting shaken off of them after a thirty minute cool down run. The temperature of the blocks was still a cool 350-500 degrees. The job was to scrape away large chunks of sand and keep the blocks moving and hoist on to the line.
Doing all this, you were wearing fireproof coveralls, helment, face mask, steel spats on your boots and full bodied underwear, so the hot sand wouldn’t burn. Plus layered ear protection and heavy insulated cloves. A half hour in the hole, and a half hour out, eight hours a day,seven days a week.
