Lurkers' week - what's the worst job you've ever had?

I spent my first two weeks as a hotel management trainee in the dirty linen room of a very large London hotel. All the dirty bedding and towels came down chutes into the basement and I had to help the cheerful West Indian permanent staff sort everything and put into bundles to go to the laundry. The pile was always about 10 feet high and we never got it totally cleared! Most unhygienic!

Steaming fleas off animal fur in a fishing tackle unit, temp work for extra money

Urgh! This is a trip down memory lane! Aged 19, I went to work as a finance assistant/debt collector to a very sucessful building contractor. The office was in a spare bedroom at his beautiful, palatial house, which was set in its own grounds. On my first day I was told that I was not allowed to use any of toilets or bathrooms in the house and that if I needed the loo, I was to use the public toilets in a nearby garden centre. This meant leaving his house, walking about a quarter of a mile down his path, get out of the 8' high security gates, cross a busy A road, walk another quarter of a mile to the garden centre and then do the same trip back!

I lasted 2 days!

Working for a well-known window and door company. It involved going through the names in a telephone directory, ringing the person and reading a sales pitch from a script on a card. I lasted 2 days and left. I didn't sell a single thing and didn't try. When the person said "I'm not interested", I didn't try to persuade them otherwise

As a student, cleaning the gent's toilets in a social club at the weekends. ???

Sitting in the sub-basement of Selfridges from 9.00 - 5.00 writing the price of Christmas cards on the card and paper clipping an envelope on. It was the most mind-numbingly boring job I have ever done.

As it was the sub-basement there was no radio reception, s no music to ease our boredom and the job, being what it was, each on our stool at our workstation, it was difficult to work and talk at the same time. I stuck it out for 6 weeks.

Chewbacc.....I would have peed into his fancy wardrobe before I left the job.

Worst job was in a garden nursery, planting out seedlings, thirty to a box, sixpence wages for each box done.
The most boring job ( part time) ever, but easy.

As a cadet Nurse back in the early 1970s, we had to clean the surgical instruments and examination rooms after out patients Clinic each day, l hated Tuesdays, it was Colostomy clinic, and back in the days where Camra scopes and Scans had not been invented, we used to have to scrub the old fashioned metal tube type scopes after use and take them to pieces ready for boiling in the sterilizer. Most were.covered in Poo, and the smell was awful.

In order to be the calm voice of reason I was once seconded to a project where the staff were at each other's throats. [Gulp]

I was supposed to help bring some sort of resolution to the difficulties, but everyone was incredibly defensive, judgemental, unforgiving and often just downright nasty. Every day I turned up at work I was waiting for them to turn on me, which fortunately didn't happen, but my stress levels were through the roof.

It was the worst job I've ever done by far and I was very glad to return to my own project where my colleagues were warm, nurturing and kind. [Phew!]

The worst part of one Saturday job in a market cafe was having to clean the faggots and peas pot at the end of the day. The green thick gunge put me off ever eating faggots and peas, and the smell was awful.

The only faggots I've ever eaten are Brain's frozen ones and that is very occasionally. I've never eaten dried processed peas!

My first job entailed washing up and working in the kitchen at the Wimpy bar. I used to go home sweaty and stinking of chip fat.

I worked in a theatre and part of my job after concerts etc would be to help clear and clean dressing rooms.
On one occasion, a very famous singer and his band used the towels and soft furnishings as their toilet....the room looked like a "dirty protest" had taken place .

Factory work during summer holiday college break. I was stacking bingo cards for eight hours a day. Mind numbing. How I felt for the folk who were doing it full time.

Working in a school kitchen , doing the washing up.
The pans were huge and heavy. I lasted 2 days.

Working in a call centre which was - Have you had an accident in the last three years. And another campaign selling electric and gas and it was all cold calling. Soul destroying. It was an absolute joke of a company. The guy who was on the advert You buy one you get one free - He was a manager there. But the staff attrition was like a revolving door, 10 in and 10 out
Never again

One hot summer when I was fourteen, gathering eggs in a commercial egg farm.

It was a very hot muggy summer, and the large barn was noisy, hot and very smelly. Poor hens. After gathering the eggs, they had to be stacked into a cooler for transport. Afterwards, I rode my bike home, hot and smelly, hoping I wouldn't see any of my friends on the way home.

I came home in tears when the farmer told me they were switching from hourly wage to peace-work per dozen. When I worked it out, it would be less than minimum wage.
My mother called the farmer, gave him a piece of her mind about abusing child labour and quit for me.

In the mini skirt days I took a job as a 'personal secretary' to an author, at his house. He dictated while I typed his novels. They were disgusting soft porn. On the second day he told me what nice thighs I had. I never went back. ?

Picking potatoes on a peat bog. If you weren’t careful you could disappear into the bog. Back breaking and tedious!

Student job. Cleaning up the seasick puke on one of the cross channel car ferries. I had a large bucket, a double mop that opened, so that the vomit could be easily cleaned away and a not too strong a stomach.

I managed one crossing in each direction. It always intrigued me as to what job description the permanent staff put on their passports.

I did a placement in a chest hospital in the 60s, no disposable sputum cups then, I'm sure I don't need to be graphic.

Oh dear, all these bodily fluids jobs. Mine was in an operating theatre at a busy London hospital mopping up bits from the floor. I also had to wheel the trolley of specimen jars to the pathology lab. Yuck!

Lollipop lady. The kids were lovely. The drivers were lunatics who used me as target practise even though I had a pelican crossing to help me. I've seen people eating breakfast (cereal from a bowl, putting on make up, shaving and a host of other activities that you wouldn't think were possible when driving or feasible at 8.15am lol

My first job - working in the "gift" department of a cigarette factory (remember when you could collect coupons from packets of cigarettes). Every day was spent typing names and addresses on labels to go on the parcels!

Working as an Admin Assistant in a bakery - the job was fine, but the boss was a pain. I lasted 2 days then simply didn't go back.