Ask HN: Whats the worst job you've ever had?

I worked for a tent company (like where you rent big tents from). They had contracts all over central fl, mostly at Kennedy space center for events and what not. My job was to load and unload trucks full of 5 gallon buckets filled with concrete. That’s about all there was to it and it was awful.

The worst was at a company in Berkeley. I was the person who kept the "mini computer" up and running - backups, coding the billing system - pretty much everything.

I had a manager. Oh my fucking god. This nasty fucker, I don't think he ever showered, always had those huge perspiration wet spots under his underarms. He stunk like shit. I'm sure he never showered. And also, his mouth - fucking green teeth, I'm sure he never brushed his teeth and his breath stank.

The guy was a super loudmouth bully, and always expounding on philosophers, rather than working. And it really was his social manner that was way worse than his hygene, if you can believe that.

I remember one time we went to a cheap diner, and he was being his loudmouth self, and as this woman was sitting at another table for a while, she finished her lunch and got up and as she passed, she said words to the effect of: "I don't know how you can stand this guy, he is so obnoxious and gross. I'd quit if I worked with him." That's how bad he was - some random woman, who didn't even have a dog in the fight, said how nasty he was after listening to him for about 10 minutes.

The guy actually gave me an actual breakdown. Panic attacks, which are NOT fun if you don't know what they are and what is going on. They are not how they sound. Instead of panic attacks, it should be named "I'm going to fucking die in the next 10 minute attacks." I eventually quit. I should have listened to that woman and quit a lot sooner, but at that time, it was quite a bit more difficult to get a job in the tech field.

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The jobs I actually liked the best were in retail, waiting on customers. I know people abhor those jobs, but I like them. I like waiting on people, and making them happy and interacting with people. My favorite job of all time was McDonalds restaurant, if you can believe that. I think I should have stayed with them and tried to move up the ladder.

I also worked a manufacturing job for a summer job after high school and before going to college. That was great. All I did was these plastic butter tubs shot down this V-shaped chute. I would wait until about 50 of them had come down the shoot, and there was a mark on the chute that indicated that there were 50 of them there and stacked. I would then take 50 and put them in a box. When the box was full, I'd tape up the box and put it on a pallet, got another box from the stack of folded cardboard boxes, open it up and tape it up, then start the process of putting a stack 50 tubs at a time into that box. 12 hours per day for 3 days, 2 days of, 12 hours per day for 2 days, 3 days off kind of gig. You would think that job was horrible, and mind-numbing. But to me, it was zen. I would just zen out for 12 hours and I liked it. It wasn't boring, to me anyways. My boss was the guy on the printing machine. He was really weird, could barely talk in complete sentences but was cool. He sat next to the machine doing nothing, until the machine broke down, which was at least twice a day. He would then fix it, and I'd wait, and then back to the boxing. But nobody fucked with you. You were just there by yourself all day, which for a mild introvert, is pure heaven.