Dreadful Jobs

[Huguenot]

Reading the Sainsburys thread, I was struck by the impact that a sh*t job can have on your personality. As a complete social retard, I wondered whether these two real shockers had an impact on me:

Winder: Coomber Electronics made those really ugly tape recorders we used to have in school language classes. They were ugly to stop kids nicking them. For the same reason the power cable was attached permanently. This meant you had to wind the cable onto cable stays to stop it flopping round the box. I did that. Three months

Paint Shop Operative: Britax Vega make baby seats and indicator light internal surfaces. The plastic for the indicator light was black, but needed reflective chrome paint on it for maximum brightness. The paint smell really gave you a headache, but spraying it was quite skilled. The plastic formings would come in on a conveyor, but painters would then spray them by hand and put them on a piece of cardboard next to them to dry. After that someone needed to pick them off the cardboard with their right hand, transfer to their left hand, and put them in a box. When the box was full they got a new box. The last bit was the job I did. Three weeks.

Any other shocking jobs out there?

[woofmarkthedog]

Me....

Crispa Cress

Unpacking an articulated lorry full of the polystyrene "cress" salad trays, taking and stacking them into a cold room painted in " battleship grey " gloss. The blo*dy smell gave you a splitting headache after 10 minutes but the other weird thing is what trying to lift some thing so light & delicate does to your mind & body.

It was probably the worse form of torture for a petulant teenager possible & in all I lasted 3 days

"You'll regret leaving " the manager told me....Yeah, not as much as I regretted starting though.

Oh and that sqeeeeeeeeking noise

W**F

[brum]

Chipping by hand chisel inches-thick layers of dried tarmac from the floors of old British Gas vans, in preparation to turn them into 'caravanettes'. Add to that the searing heat of the summer of '76 - those vans were like furnaces. Six weeks.

Chipping by hammer paint from the superstructure of an ancient Royal Navy frigate in the middle of a freezing winter in Rosyth, Scotland, then re-painting with 'battleship grey' paint. ...At least the views over the Forth were nice. Two weeks.

[huncamunca]

All jobs are dreadful

[brum]

Not all. Just some.

[mockney piers]

El trabajo enoblece sn... err huncamunca.

[????]

Cleaning out fish refrigerators for 2 weeks...but it was in San Diego not Thurrock or Grimsby

[brum]

work produces virtue.... how true, Mr Piers.

[womanofdulwich]

I think if you have been a cleaner, chambermaid, shop assistant or waitress it can make you a considerate client/customer. OR- like my mum ( worked in a shoe shop for a while-bless her) you might get your revenge by getting every pair of shoes out in the shoe shop and go away buying nothing........... Oh the shame. I think that is why I end up buying shoes that don't quite fit.

[*Bob*]

Working mens club band.

Soft rock covers.

Rotheram, Barnsley, Doncaster..

[sophiesofa]

10 days in a fish and chip van at the southampton boat show. Fell over and landed in a bucket of fish. The mush peas heater thing exploded out the peas straight into my hair just as I was re-adjusting my lovely hat. Got my security pass (that was around my neck) in the deep fat fryer for 5mins. Had to throw away all my clothes after because of the smell and my car never really recovered from the smell of me after work. Lots of rich wankers moaning about the queues and treating us like imbeciles and I'm ashamed to admit that I did tell one that he was such a wanker that he was lucky I hadn't spat in his food!

Cleaning out the pic 'n mix in woolworths - full of dead flies!

Selling porn and diesel to lorry drivers on the M27.

Events waitressing when I turned up to a job and was presented with an anne summers mrs santa outfit that only just covered my bum.

Working at the student union and falling over in a pile of sick.

My list could go on forever.

[*Bob*]

Actually I quite enjoyed it.

Not everybody gets to see a full-on fight break-out between two women whilst playing the whistle solo on 'The Winds of Change'.

[????]

Is that what you bought your jumper for *Bob*?

[Jeremy]

Yeah, I think Bob's one sounds awesome.

Sounds better than what I have to endure every day.

[PeckhamRose]

Some of my jobs I do are the best, and I am lucky to be paidto do what I love,

but in the past

working in any of the jobs I've done dealing with The Public.

[david_carnell]

Sunglasses Factory

Unbeknownst to me, sunglasses do not come ready assembled from Next. Someone, somewhere, in a warehouse on the outskirts of Tolworth has to sit round a table with 10 middle aged Indian women (none of whom speak English) and press lenses into frames, fit arms to frames and put the whole lot (along with a soft cloth) into the box. That was me. My particular role was to apply the little sticker to the lens informing you of it's UVA/UVB filter status. For 10 hours a day. And get frisked on the way out to check you hadn't nicked a pair.

Two days.

[mockney piers]

Oops sorry brum. That was kind of tongue in cheek.

That was the slogan above the hideous cathedral outside of Madrid built by the defeated soldiers and political prisoners of the civil war as effectively slave labour.

It's the Spanish equivalent of 'work sets you free'.

Probably in poor taste, sorry.

Nothing too terrible, but working in an Classic MG spare parts supplier in Baldock, having the owner teaching me the finer points of sweepeing floors when I had a degree was certainly a lesson in humility, just get the job done and think of the deposit on a flat in London!!

[brum]

..a shady job indeed, DC...

[Santerme]

Working with my uncle back in the '76 Summer, taking up rubber flooring in a laundryroom, situated in a council housing estate, by curling the edge of the tiles with a blow torch and then prising them up with a shovel....

There was one tiny window in the place.

Seered into my memory that one.

[Santerme]

Oh, Turkey plucking on a farm, just after the throat slitty thing has happened....

[brum]

mockney piers Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Oops sorry brum. That was kind of tongue in

> cheek.

> That was the slogan above the hideous cathedral

> outside of Madrid built by the defeated soldiers

> and political prisoners as effectively slave

> labour.

> It's the Spanish equivalent of 'work sets you

> free'.

> Probably in poor taste, sorry.

>

No need to apologise... it was quite clever, actually (now you've explained it!)

[Peckhamgatecrasher]

tsk, tsk Hugenot!

[woofmarkthedog]

Checking

The old people in the morning at the nursing home my mum worked at

"Mrs Creasie's not moving & she gone all cold"

"Oh she's dead then" mum said

"Write a label out & I'll put on her toe"

I got a brown card tag with an elastic band on out of the admin drawer & handed to her

Actually that was a good dreadful job, specially as I got to attach the tag.

W**F

[brum]

Peckhamgatecrasher Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> tsk, tsk Hugenot!

Well remembered, PGC.

I think I prefer my first version of the story...

[Michael Palaeologus]

Chicken shifting - occasional summer job - transferring chickens at a battery farm from the rearing shed to the laying shed - by hand - 3 pairs of legs in each hand. The chickens were injected for fowl pest on the way, as was I. The horrors of chicken battery farms are so true.