The worst jobs ever

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What do you think are the worst jobs ever?

I have a bunch of ideas, but I have one that wins out hands down over the ones I have in mind.

My best friend from high school went to live with her sister in St Louis back in the 80's. Her sister worked at this dirty book store where they had an area with dancers. You went in a room and sat in a chair and you were seperated from the dancer by a glass partition. You put quarters in the thing and she came out and danced for you until the time ran out. The dancers don't have the worst job. It was held by an old man. He had to come into the room where the guys had been and clean the glass and floor, etc with Windex and a rag. You know what he was cleaning.

I suppose the next worst job would have to be undertaker. Embalming somebody who has been dead for a while, or if you can't embalm them because they are that decomposed, then putting them in the casket. I imagine that's horrible!

What's your list?

Dishwasher and Nurse's Aide

I do know what he was cleaning but to be honest I wouldn't actually mind that job. Perhaps I am a little weird but unpleasent social situations bother me far more than unpleasent hygiene situations.

Therefore: worst job for me would be something like police officer I guess. I really admire people who are able to do such jobs that require such intense social interaction.

Anything dealing with the general public!

My personal worse job was bagging coal...I'd come home black from the soot and quit as soon as I could for fear of what it was doing to my lungs.

Prison guard and surgeon I think.

I mentioned it on another thread recently? But I know my uncle used to bury the John Doe's for the city. The city switched from a sack to a cardboard coffin (more respectful), but the coffins would fall apart if they got moist. So they basically just ended up picking up the bodies with a tractor and dumping them in the graves.

Other than that I once had a job where you'd have to pack a 350 degree oven full of 5x3 steel frames (probably 70 lbs), which you would heat to some 500 degree's. Then lift them above your head and drop them in powder coating with 2 hooks and repeat this step for all 300 frames, then reload the ovens.

I also had a job where I was on top of a concrete bridge, on top of a freeway, in 120f weather.

And working for Lowe's for a few weeks was a really horrible job.

But from what I've heard undertakers make good money, and generally can only work 6 months out of the year due to chemical exposure. There was a mildly morbid/interesting/comedy movie about a Japanese undertaker called "Departures", if you feel like watching a movie.

My choice would be a page position at the main library - not sure if it's still like this, but apparently it used to be that pages did nothing but shelve all day, and you had to stick to whatever section you were assigned. (for example, if I had Children's Fiction, I would only shelve items in that area)

My worst job ever was door to door meat salesman. They paid nothing unless we made a sale, their prices were horrible, their product only medium quality by supermarket standards, and we had to pay all expenses. If we went out and spent $20 in gas and made no money then we were out $20 for the day. There were days that happened.

Now to all this add in a typical Aspie going door to door. It was a huge thing to overcome and I had hoped by doing it for a while that would become easier but it never got any easier. I was desperate for cash at the time and willing to take any job. After 6 weeks I decided it was not worth the little money I was making and just stopped showing up.

@Kalika @Uprising:
to me those sound like ok jobs. Especially nice and quiet in the library

@Nim:
I would any one of those jobs if the pay was good. The way I am undertaker would probably be good job for me.

Try coupling sales with trying to sell a product that no one in their right mind would buy to begin with and it was up to you to use deception and manipulation tactics.

I don't know if I talked about it on here before since I've been away for a while, but back when I was unemployed in 2009 and in between semesters, I found an ad in the newspaper about a "financial advisor" position. Seeing that I was desperate and needed money, I decided to check out this job that the receptionist on the phone said "Seating is limited" for. I went there, I filled out an application, I was shown around and without any personal interview I was hired the day of. Being the sucker who I was trying to impress others, I decided to start on that day.

If you've ever received a phone call from some random number saying you're eligible for an interest rate reduction on your credit card, this was one of those companies. I wasn't working directly in sales; I was working in the department that was working with clients that already committed to the service. Basically the product we sold was a service to help people with a lot of credit card debt get their interest rates reduced, and we did this by calling up the clients' banks and asking to transfer the balance to a credit card with a lower interest rate. This is clearly something people can do by themselves, but we were charging anywhere from $680-$1,200 for this service. Yes, that is quite a sham, but we made that amount look very minuscule when comparing it to the tens of thousands of dollars they will save over the next 10-20 years in interest payments. When people tried to question this, we were supposed to say things like "well you can do your own taxes, but some people pay a CPA a lot of money to do their taxes for them", even though filing a tax return that would cost over $100 for someone else to do is far more complicated and time consuming than simply calling up your bank and asking them to just transfer your credit card balance to another card.

Maybe I was bad at sales and marketing to begin with, but the truth was I didn't have confidence in the product, which is paramount to closing any deal. I mean, I personally would not pay money for a service to lower the interest rates on my credit card, let alone from a telemarketing service with no credibility. I was only there for about a week before quitting. I only closed one deal the entire time I was there, and I never collected the $50 commission for it. It was a damn good thing I did quit when I did as well because the FTC raided the company and sued all of the corporate execs.

I'd LOVE any job with dead bodies...but I'm obviously in the minority.

Worst would be one listed on several 'worlds worst jobs' lists - unblocking pipes - people flush all sorts of rubbish down toilets like used tampons, sanitary pads, condoms, etc. which of course blocks pipes, and then you have all the food and fat from kitchens, and of course human waste...some poor guys have to climb down into the sewer to unblock this.

There's a show in the UK which I believe is called Filth Fighters which shows people doing jobs such as cleaning streets (including cleaning up vomit, urine and human 'droppings' after a Saturday night), unblocking people's drains (seen them literally standing in a shower of sh** and not bat an eyelash they're so used to it), rodent or bug extermination, or of course those who clean-up the mess left behind when someone dies and isn't found for a few days/weeks/months.

I'd rank call centres right up there - talking to people on he phone, dealing with customers, dealing with poor management, office politics...they're generally toxic environments to work in, especially if you'e on the spectrum. Army or any military would also be high on the list for me, because they are worked hard, bossed around, forced to go against any personal ethics/morals, not appreciated by their country, abused by some moronic members of the public, government cares little for their welfare, and of course they see some horrible things while risking their health/lives.

worst job for me would be anything related to medical dealing with blood etc .

Next would be prostitution its unbearable atleast for me. I saw in national geographic channel (taboo) how prostitutes enjoy their job and wouldnt trade it for anything else.

Being in the battlefield, killing anyone, even any bird or animal, taking life whether as a commando, police, etc is very tough for me.

Wiping Abu Hamza's behind?

Anything in food service in which the customers are allowed to get away with murder. Especially fast food chains like McDonald's, Burger King, Subway, etc. Even coffee places like Starbucks would be hell. People seem to take coffee and sandwiches extremely seriously. I also feel really bad for any waiters/waitresses who work in states where they are allowed to be paid below minimum wage.

Nope, they can work every day. You simply use universal precautions.

I would say some of the worse are being busy waiters working all day with minimum wage. The work very hard, have to work very fast, deal with annoying customers, having to accurately process and remember mulitple bit instructions, and get paid minimum wage.

The other kinds of jobs i think are bad is sales kind of positions. Your pay only gets determined on how much sales you get made and doesn't go into the account of trasportation costs ect... and you have to go out of your comfort zone to interact with tones of people, including rude ones, to try to convince them to buy something.