h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

you've just dredged up a memory I'd long submerged of quiche-horror. The ever present smell of ripening cheese just detectable over the brusque sweaty, prepackaged-food -smell common to most processed food factories.

Pulp-mill sounds truly nasty! Also, that's the first actual quiche-back I've ever witnessed.

I hate the smell of baking bread and I won't go within a mile of yeast. Yeast is an invasive alien substance.

*waits for person who worked at a tanners*

Talking of bread ... I used to deliver bread in Notting Hill Gate and in the morning, after switching on the lights of the bakery, it was my job to kill as many cockroaches scurrying around on the floor!! Sounds funny, doesn't it? Like: No!!

Not really had a 'bad' job.

The most excruciating was runner-bean picking, in a really hot summer... 1980, I think...

Minimum wage of £34:00 pw, as then he didn't have to pay NI. 08:00 until 16:00 mon to fri. First three weeks were spent weeding as his ultra modern de-foliant hadn't worked. I left in the 'tomato plants' as I thought he was double cropping until I found out they were deadly nightshade... He was not best impressed.

I quit when it went over to piece-work... Couldn't keep up with the women!

Most infuriating was working for an 'Antique dealer' who spent his time converting chest of drawers into 'Antique' rolltop bureaus for the American market. I was paid £1:85 a day, and spent most of my 'Apprenticeship' gardening. I lasted a summer.

Most exhausting but educational? Working in a Greek-Cypriot restaurant during the Cypriot war of 1974... The stuff I learnt then. The radio was never off. Never ate anything because of the cockroaches...

I had sheltered holidays mainly, as I had a very secure job from 13, working in a school uniform and gent's outfitters, that I eventually took on fulltime from 20 until 24... Just (I did do other jobs in between...)

Not really worst job though... but none of them, apart from the retail work, would I consider pleasant, either from a work or pay aspect!

MMF

Part time cleaner in the Sargeant's mess at an army camp. The pubes in the urinals every morning.

And I had to sign The Official Secrets Act, believe it or not. Absolutely true. So I couldn't tell anyone anything about what I might come across in case it endangered national security.

In fact this post maybe illegal

I did three days this summer at a bank's head office stuffing envelopes. It was notifications on a new interest rate, along with a leaflet that was the perfect size to fold the letter around to fit in the envelope. Got very sore shoulders as we were doing about 1200 a day. Actually, we shot ourselves in the foot - we worked too fast and there wasn't enough work left, so we ended up working three days instead of four.

The only thing that made it tolerable was that we could bring MP3 players, so I made long playlists to get myself through the day.

Did a shift at a chicken processing plant.

Oh, I forgot my job tomato picking. I lasted one day at that.

1. Cleaning aircraft interiors between flights
Hours of boredom puntuated by short busts of frantic activity

2. Kitchen porter
Hours of boredom puntuated by short busts of frantic activity

3. Hired on as an admin assistant in a bathroom salesroom
Turned out the manager really wanted another salesperson but wasn't allowed one so I was hired for 1 job and expected by him to do another and I wouldn't have gone for the job if I'd known it involved sales as I lack any aptitude for sales

4. Answering calls for a 118 service
Trying to find a fast food place thats open at 3 AM for drunks with more money than sense can be trying. On the plus side it was 1 week on, 1 week off

Wow, I've been lucky... My worst job was saturday girl in a vegetarian/wholefood cafe attached to my school... washing up, serving middle class hippies their barleycup and wholemeal organic sosmix pasties with waldorf salad, explaining that yes the soup was home made but no, it wasnt fresh, it was frozen and heated fresh in the morning for the day and no, the butter wasnt bloody vegan... I got £20 a day I think... And I always ended up cleaning the loos at the end of the day cos the girl I worked with was our boss's daughter and she had him wrapped around her manipulative little finger!

Had the lead singer from suede in once though... Oh my exciting life! lol

I worked in the cafeteria at SHAPE for a few months. My job was, ostensible, washing dishes, but also seemed to include cleaning all the kitchen equipment (as this was a substantial establishment), one of the pieces of equipment was a giant cooking machine in which chilli was made in industrial quantities. The only way to clean it was to climb inside it and scrub.

That wasn't the worst of it, though. Chilli was on the menu every day, and needed to be prepared the day before. This involved peeling the onions, of which there were thousands (there was a machine for doing the actual chopping)...but even so, just peeling them was enough to bring on floods of tears.

RF

Ive cleaned up childrens sick and other "bodily spills", been assaulted, falsely reported to the police, but none of those things that happened were as sole destroying as when I started a job in a warehouse where my line manager was off on long term sick.

The pay was not great but I liked the work got it done in my own swet time, but always on time and had enough time to have a chat with other workers.

He came back and made my life hell. I think it was because Id showed he wasnt needed. It turned out he was the brother in law of one of the directors. He made me re-organise things that Id put into better order in his absence and reported me whenever I wasnt where he thought I should be. He deliberately omitted telling me things then reported me for not doing work I hadnt been told about. When i made a genuine mistake he'd go on about it for days.

Quitting that job was the second best thing that happened there. The best was skipping a days work and the next day telling him in the glibest manner I could that I'd had a one night stand, but faced with the choice of "coming here to look at your miserable face and staying in bed for more sex with a gorgeous woman what would you do"?

He did'nt report me for that for some reason.

Half a day in a slaughterhouse - I quit at lunchtime

A couple of months working in a fish factory. 12 hours from 4am spent tailing live prawns by hand, gutting fish and cooking cod roe.

I needed work, so I went round every business in town until I got to the fish factories. I've always hated the smell of fish and I was fighting back the puke when I went in to speak to the owner. I can't describe the revulsion I felt every minute I was in there but when you've got a family to feed, you can cope with anything.

"when you've got a family to feed, you can cope with anything."

Except, it would seem, finishing your first day at the slaughterhouse?

The meat factory I worked in had a guy whose job it was to clean the slaughterhouse floor...

...at night...

During my tenure their they dismissed him as a vening machine in the room that passed as a tea room there did not give him his dinner - So he put his fist through it and got it anyway.

They had to rehire him a few days later. Apparently they had trouble finding anyone else prepared to do his job

My worst job was doing 12 hour shifts at the Readers Digest place in Swindon putting boxes together. What made it really bad was that it was a Saturday job so, you guessed it, I started work at 6am in a very loud warhouse/packing facility with a raging hangover.

To be fair Psycorps - I was young free & single at the time of the slaughterhouse job, with no responsibilities.

And I got another job the next day

It seems like a long time ago now and I count my blessings everyday that I dont work there anymore but I worked in a meat plant for about six months.

Some of the people were great to get to know and like some kind of sad badge collecting caravaner Ive kept little bits of their personalities and welded them onto my own.

There were quite a few bad things about the job. For a start the hole place was refrigerated. Not a problem for me but it meant you heard about half the staff maoning about the cold all the flaming time.

Then there ws the location I had to catch two buses to get there if one was late it meant a three mile walk the rest of the way to work as the option was to wait and get calod on only arrive about 5 mins early than I would walking I walked.

Id been taken on for the Christmas rush so I had to move meat that had been packaged in the cold part of the factory to the really cold part of the factory which was -11C

The place was in the middle of an area that has a hig concentration of BNP councillors so you can imagine what a bunch of red knecked knuckle draggers a few of the other workers were. The racist graffitti in the toilets didnt bother me too much but it was slightly worrying as a lot of the butchers carried round sheaths of very sharp knives.

Then I got laid off after Chirstmas but the peosnnel people said I was "lucky" that they could find me work on the cleaning crew. This meant switching to a night shift. The pay was better but the work was solitary for the most part. There is nothing at all fun about standing for hours on end in a chilled room being soaked by the fine mist of pressurised water that bounces back of the innner workings of a liver conveyor belt that hasnt been cleaned for a week. Doing that job does not equate with luck in my books.

The best thing that happened was that I put my back out trying to lift a heavy bag full of rubbush and they fired me.

I had worked there from late Autumn to early Spring. As Id worked in the chilled area where there were no windows then switched to night shifts it meant that Id either gone to and left work in the dark or worked nights and slept in the day. I cant say for certain but I think not seeing the sun all week for six months bummed me out more than the place itself.

Nurse's aide in a residential care facility. Not a nursing home in the traditional sense, because we had residents of all ages for a variety of reasons, most of them mental incapacities.

I realise there are people who have a calling for this kind of thing. One thing I learned in this job is that I'm definitely not one of them.

There were lots of things about this job I detested, but bathing paitents had to be my least favorite. One of our residents made a hobby of messing himself regularly because he knew the nurses aides would have to shower him and he liked being naked in front of them.

The other thing I hated was that when I started the job they said that overtime was occasionally required so they could meet staffing requirements on the midnight shift (I worked evenings). I was to expect to have to work a double on average once a week, occasionally twice, and never back to back. The night I quit I was in the middle of my fifth straight double.

All this and a paycheck too - I earned minimum wage, which at the time was $5.25.
I lasted 2 months.

For the most part I've had good jobs, but unfortunately they ended up going bad because people wanted me out - when I was the harder worker.

I worked at an accessories store for about a year and had to constantly change the layout of the store. Even though I'd follow the patten to the letter, they'd rearrange it because it was "wrong." I quit the day after the boss called me and rudely said I didn't follow the layout (I did), and had no regrets.

While I admit this is embarrassing to say, I got a slight laugh that when I came up to get my last paycheck, said boss was really friendly to me ... mostly because the store had gone downhill in their tidyness. It would've been better to just let me stay a few more weeks, resign and then go to college. But it was definitely a relief when I put in my notice with "Effective Immediately." I did that so I could get my pay and a pin I had earned (sales) with the store.

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Another job I didn't like was a waitressing job that I never got to start. I knew there was something going on when the wait staff manager said "Oh, well we were considering making you a hostess (as I had no waitstaff experience), but then decided we needed the waitstaff." Would've been all right with me, but there were three people who were hostesses who had that training and could've switched.

Never got to start because she didn't put me on the schedule, despite the fact all of us were supposed to help with the soft serve. She called the next day and was a bit vague to me on when I'd start, so I saw the writing on the wall and effectively walked out. The only downside was that they never paid me, and I spent $35 for licenses to serve. One plus, should something happen, I could still serve alcohol for another year, as that license (state of Texas) is good for two years.

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I think the only thing sad about the two jobs above is that the worst paying job I've had in recent years, which was be a Costumed Character/Escort at the Six Flags in San Antonio, is one of my favorite jobs. This was a job where you sweat it out in the Texas heat, clean up areas and dress up in a silly outfit for the parade for $7/hour. Admittedly though, the intangible benefits - having a life, getting to talk to people (I had worked graveyard before this job), and other issues were even more valuable than the money. Though the money paid the bills, which was also helpful.