My stepdad volunteered me once to go out into a field with a bunch of mexican guys and pick pumpkins all day. I made it through the day but I never went back, I had a newfound appreciation for illegal immigrants.
When I was in jr high, my dad got me a job cleaning and scrubbing the exterior of a DC-3. I got $100 bucks on day 1 and did not go back on day 2.
My brother owns liquor stores around the city, and he recently sold one of his stores without inventory, which meant we had to take all the bottles out of that store, and move them to another. It was basically just me and him doing the moving with a large U-Haul truck. It took us 5 14-hour days of basically non-stop labor to get all the bottles into boxes, load all the boxes into the truck, and drive the truck from Spring (where the store that got sold was located) down to League City (where the store that would receiving the bottles was located). After everything was said and done, it took us about 8 round trips of a U-Haul (Spring to League City is about 65 miles one way) that was filled to the brim with liquor bottles to get the job done. We calculated that we had moved about 4500 bottles of alcohol, with only 3 bottles that were broken in transit. I had completed 70 days of P90X training at that point in time, and I'm convinced that if I hadn't done that, there was no way I would have had the strength or stamina to pull off such an intense job.
Trading Gulf Coast gas during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita (Aug 24-Sept 24, 2005). It was an insane month.
Don't devalue the suckiness of this job. I saw the thread title and immediately thought of working a summer back in the early 80's for my uncle, who did roofing down in Texas City. Yeah a lot of the jobs mentioned in this thread suck, no doubt, but nothing, and I mean NOTHING can compare to doing roofing during the summer in southeast Texas. I don't even know how that job is LEGAL, it is helltastic.
Gizmondo, telling nearly 300 employees that the owners had scammed money and we had to shut down was emotionally painful. DD
If we are talking about unpaid work. Last year I spent a couple of days in Fargo helping to hold back the Red River. Shovelling wet sand into bags and then stacking them on levees. On top of that even though it was early April the temps were in the 20's and it was snowing. As bad when I volunteered for the Red Cross I had to go out on a few fire calls in the middle of the night with subzero temps. I didn't fight the fires but just showed up in the immediate aftermath and had to climb through a partial burnt house full of ash and nails sticking up from charred boards, still wet from the hoses but rapidly freezing. On top of that then having to talk to somebody who just lost their house, possesions and in some cases loved ones about filling out Red Cross and other paperwork.
Physically? Welding supply delivery driver. Summer heat in South Texas delivering welding gasses in cylinders 100 - 600 lbs. when full, 200 lb. sacks of flux, etc. through mud and gravel in a chemical plant while wearing a hardhat and a respirator. Mentally & Emotionally? I do that job still to this day... and no, I don't mean the Aflac job.
I worked home construction trying to fund my band at the time. What made it so tough was they were homes on the water. I used a huge sledge pounding massive wood pylons ( insert joke moes ) into what was basically the ocean floor, while in the water. That was pretty brutal. Why we didn't always use machines I will never know. I look back at it now and think what the hell
Props for that. I was on the other side of you guys in Galveston after Ike. I never appreciated a free meal as much as I did from Red Cross/Salvation army. And throwing out 99% of my belongings was hard work, too.
I worked for Texas Sterling Construction for about a month, several winters ago. We'd be breaking concrete on top of 30 ft bridges, diggging ditches, work 12 hour days. Completely back-breaking labor, and no one there spoke any English, except the foreman and I would only see him at lunch. Compared to what I do now(sit on my ass all day) there's no contest. After working there and many restaurants(waiting tables is the sh!tiest job in the country, no disrespect to servers, I just hated it) I too had a new-found respect for illegals.
me too, never again. i think i've developed some kind of phobia to washing dishes. don't like it, neither does my wife, therefore... yeah.... but somebody's gotta do it! ****
Ok well now I feel stupid for posting my pizza delivery thing :-/ Oh man this sounds very emotionally draining, despite you being fortunate enough not to be on the other side
You think your job is tough? Very interesting video on the slaves of Dubai... <script src="http://www.vbs.tv/vbs_player.js?width=480&height=270&ec=U3c25nOkNYCqF62XK2NOPEKWKtVvEL2b&st=VBS%20News&pl=http://www.vbs.tv/watch/vbs-news/the-slaves-of-dubai" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
Physically : Probably loading 2 or 3 delivery trucks at the same time for RPS by myself. Packages just flew down a conveyor belt and you had to place them on the right truck in the right spot on the truck. I always hated "coffee day" at some coffee shop on Bellaire because they'd order like 50-60 boxes of coffee. That was a hell of a workout especially since it was from 3am-7am and non-stop loading. I also worked for Walmart graveyard shift unloading 18 wheelers. They were too cheap to actually get any kind of conveyor belts, so they had rollers you threw together and you manually started pulling boxes off those 18 wheelers and shoving them down the rollers to people on the floor who put them on pallets to be taken out onto the floor to stock. I was always happy to see the back of the truck because I knew I could take a 10-15 minute break before I had to go help stock stuff on the floor. lol. Of course somebody would always put Barbie's gigantic Vette or a small box of weight plates at the back and I'd nearly kill myself with the last ounce of strength I had to put those on the roller and push them down. To this day, anytime I see a Roadway or Walmart truck, I think about those days I'd come home and my mom would ask me if I had just run through a warzone because my clothes looked like someone had dropped a grenade on me. Mentally : working as a pharmacy tech in a hospital dispensing meds, filling crash carts, and making IV's. Especially the first few times I watched someone die. I think it was 1990 or so when I saw a guy die for the first time. He was in ICU and had waved at me with whatever strength he had left in 2 fingers and smiled. Next day I watched a code blue in progress and he was no more. I still remember his name and what he looked like. That hits hard the first time you go through it. I also watched a nurse in the psychiatric unit there wither away due to complications from AIDS until he was gone, too. I also remember a husband going into a room where his wife was on dialysis and shooting her to put her out of her misery. I work in software development now and can't believe I make what I make to do the crap I do and how little I made back then to do the backbreaking and mentally taxing work I did then. Something's goofy about this world.
I worked at two 'All You Can Eat' restaurants while I was at uni. You'd think I learned after the first one. I got paid 7 Aussie dollars an hour, and had to clean up vomit once because I was the new guy.
My first job was as a kitchen-hand/dishwasher at a small backwoods country cafe. That was one hot, miserable, cramped kitchen and the work was murder on my back because everything was set so low to the ground. All of my coworkers were mostly illegal immigrants who hated me because I was a little anglo kid, and all of the non-illegal immigrants were bitter, nasty old hags (waitresses) who hated me because.... well... they were bitter, nasty old hags. That made things even worse. Oh, and the owner of the cafe had a mentally handicapped daughter who had a crush on me and would always get in the way of me doing my work, and I couldn't gripe her out because she'd get upset and my ass would be grass, but her delaying me constantly got me b****ed at by the kitchen crew.
Whoa, are you serious? He actually used a gun and shot her? Didn't he get arrested and sent to prison for that? You've got to tell us more of the story, DoD, don't leave us hanging like Almu or chow_yun_fat would! Compared to everyone else, I can't compete. I used to work at a grocery store in the summers while I was in college and having to take groceries out to people's cars in 100 degree weather sucked. But the worst part was working like 4 in the afternoon til midnight, especially if I was running a register. I would get home and be so tired but my feet ached so badly from being on my feet for such a long time that I couldn't fall asleep! And also there were times (although fortunately not too many of them), when as a bagger and things were running slow, they wanted you to do other things in the store like clean out the toilets in the bathroom. Thankfully, I only had to do that like once. Other than that job, I haven't had any really hard physically demanding jobs. I did work for over 2 years at a credit union as a teller and later as a loan officer and that job sucked as I wasn't getting paid hardly anything but had to work a a very demanding schedule - it was pretty much the epitome of a thankless job. However, I say that the hardest work/job I have had has been helping my wife raise my baby son along with our 9 soon to be 10 year old daughter.
