What's the worst job you've had outside technology?

Telephone survey taker. Much less. In fact, I hated it worse than being a nighttime post-event arena janitor.

Most people assume you're a telemarketer if you call them to do a survey, so they hang up. By policy, anyone who hung up had to be called back because we officially assumed their phone line spontaneously glitched. Anybody who said they weren't interested and hung up before we clarified we were taking a survey had to be called back because we officially assumed they thought we were telemarketers. (They weren't called back right away, but put back in the hopper for future autodialing.) So I'm pretty sure my employer was evil. On top of that, one of our common survey techniques was to mail people a videotape with a terrible sitcom pilot on it, and then ask them about the ads we put on the videotape. On the initial setup call we act like we want them to review the sitcom, and they're like, "Sure, I like sitcoms!". I never saw the tape, but I was told the show itself was atrocious, and the technique was simply to get them to see the ad.

There were interesting parts (doing a survey for a bank, I spoke to a Texas millionaire who was more than happy to talk, in detail, about how much he hated Smith Barney, and made disparaging remarks about "yankee banks"; old lifelong female smokers whose gender I couldn't easily distinguish over the phone; drunk hockey fans upset at me for calling during the Stanley Cup Finals; being briefed on the proper pronunciation of California placenames for a political survey, and then listening to strong political opinions and suspicions of bias when in fact I knew little and cared less about the issue in the first place). I had fun using a pseudonym, met a girl at work, lost my virginity. As far as bad jobs go, it definitely had its good parts.

In any job where you have to deal with the public, you have a facade of fake niceness which overcomes you. You call everyone "sir" or "ma'am", talk calmly, try to sound like you're smiling. Well, I was working on Father's Day, and apparently some people get really pissed off about being called on Father's Day. Specifically this one guy, whose voice and tone and anger had exactly the right qualities--ironically, very similar to those of my own father--to instantly piss me off. He started cussing me out, and instantly the calmness and patience wore off, with just enough left of my facade of fake niceness left to vigorously shout into the headset "fuck you too, sir!" I was more or less fired on the spot for lacking the mellowness of my coworkers, who by and large smoked copious amounts of marijuana.

Epilogue: For the next couple weeks, I went into work with aforementioned girl every Friday to pick up my last paychecks. The managers seemed somewhat displeased about that.

Some time later, I got back in touch with the girl (who I had stopped seeing). The whole dialing system was routed through a computer, which also handled timekeeping and statistics and so forth, so if you took a break you'd log that on the computer. She told me someone found a bug in their computer system so you could actually take an indefinite paid break and no one would be the wiser. Shortly after that the call center went out of business.

In my early twenties I worked as an entry-level property agent (realtor) in Hong Kong for a small-time agency. No minimum wage system exists so I got paid about US$650 per month and had to work 6 full days (right up until 7pm on Saturday nights). Job involved wearing a suit running around showing flats, meeting clients in 35 degree C heat and 99% humidity (no joke). In the office I had to cold call property owners and large companies to pitch our services. At slow times I stood on the sidewalk handing out flyers for properties. All the while having to swallow my pride in huge amounts when dealing with rude and unreasonable clients.

I enjoyed this much less than my current job and feel stupid for having fallen for the con of potentially lucrative commissions that never happened. Live and Learn I guess.

Managed a fish market for a year. Was working 12 hour days cutting, smoking and preparing fish for customers. YOu'd get home and be so tired and used to the smell that you'd just go to sleep without a shower.

After a certain amount of sleep deprivation you start cutting yourself accidentally pretty often.

Every week we had to open up the counters and chop up the ice underneath because the drain was always clogged. The ice was usually yellow or red. We also had to periodically dump the giant bins of fish refuse and take out the trash to the street. We were pretty universally reviled because we stunk up the entire street.

If I did it now I probably would have gotten laid more, but I didn't then.

But I ate lobsters, blue marlin, and tuna with regularity. So it's not all bad (except that the fish contain potassium benzoate).

CNC operator in a machine shop. Dangerious, long hours, hot or freezing, and tons of pressure. The worst job of my life. I would go into the bathroom and silently cry. Now I study CS and programming all day. You could say that I like what I do now more, haha.

Industrial cleaning. Enjoyed it much less than what I do now.