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

I was feeling nostalgic and remember all the terrible jobs I've had in the past and thought it would be cool to hear of some more terrible jobs than mine.

Mine:

After working a few 60 hour weeks trying to fix the product the company had outsourced for the last 3 years I was feeling pretty burnout. It was s Fridays and I think I was on my 5th or 6th bugfix of the day. I asked the QA manager if it was ok if I went home early at 6.00pm an she said yes.

On Monday when I got back in at 8.00 I had a real stinker of an email saying "the devs" (i.e. me) shouldn't leave the system in a bad state and that even more overtime was on the card. He then pulled us all in a meeting and basically said that the code wasn't good enough and it was all our own fault. Totally ignoring that we were rewriting the mess that the outsourced contractors had gotten away with but no it was all the permies fault.

The software itself was a complete disaster and actual failed to calculate interest payments on millions of dollars worth of accounts on Xmas eve because the customer had booked > 1 million transactions on a single day.

The director who chewed me out was later demoted and after this you seen a real change in attitude were he was much less shouty.

After moving abroad with my girlfriend, I didn't initially speak the language. I needed a job so I applied for a job in my mother tongue. The job was calling construction site workers and conducting interviews with them about the drilling machines they use. Some of the questions I remember: "How many holes do you drill a day?", "how happy are you with your drill?", "what would you rather have: a drill that's lighter, or more reliable, or ...?". I needed to complete a full interview to get paid for it, which took a good 15 minutes at least. The people I called were on-site and busy with their things, and didn't really have the time to spare. Worst thing: the calls were made automatically, within 30 seconds of the last call, so you were constantly on the phone. I quit on the second day.

I was a substitute teacher for two school years. Remember how mean we all were to subs in school?

The really horrible thing wasn't the kids though, but that I was essentially a gig worker (this was before Uber was widespread so the term hadn't really taken off). I had no guaranteed hours. Instead, schools in the area would post to a website when they needed a sub. Those jobs would be put on the site and the first person to pick them up would get them. This meant usually a couple hours a night refreshing that page, waiting for jobs to trickle in, and pouncing on them. My only computer at the time was a crappy little 7-inch EeePC with the tiny tiny keys. I did end up automating some of the tedium but I still had to actually decide if the job was worth it -- some of the schools were so far away that it was barely worth it after figuring in gas money, and some classrooms were such disciplinary nightmares that it wasn't worth my sanity.

If I didn't get a gig the night before, I would need to wake up at 4:30am to do the same: shower, eat, get dressed, wait for the last minute jobs to show up, hope to snag one, then jump in the car and drive hopefully in time for first bell at about 7:15-7:45am (differed by school). Sometimes I would do all that, driving 45m to some rural school, only to find later on payday that they had cheaped out and not paid me for a prep hour, saving themselves pocket change in order to screw me out of 50 minutes of pay. With hustle, I could usually get work on school days, though probably every other week I'd have a day where there was no work (and therefore no pay). I had to wear a suit and tie every day as well (or else schools would complain to my company that I was unprofessional) even when I knew for a fact that the school had a more casual dress code, or did "jeans Friday", etc. When I was really desperate (if I'd had a few no-work days that pay period, for example), I would sit at the computer until lunch time hoping to pick up half-day gigs. Again, none of this time looking for jobs is compensated in any way.

It was a truly dystopian experience and is the reason I have never ordered DoorDash, Shipt, TaskRabbit, etc. and have only used Uber in dire situations where I can't take public transit and I don't have access to any vehicle or the ability to bum a ride from a friend. Treating employees this way (no guaranteed hours, unpaid scrambling for individual gigs, etc.) is simply evil.

i've had a few, but the worst? prob the one that was just bad enough but not so bad that i should have quit a lot earlier but didn't. :-/

i packed wiper blades for a half day on a college break.

i listened to a mcdonald's orientation in high school, i think.

i had a tech support job in foster city at a high tech sweat shop for a half day.

yeah, when i think back, there were actually a lot of them.

Call center in a cubicle farm to cold call people and ask their opinions on popular songs being played on the radio.

You'd play them samples of songs and ask them to rate them. Their responses were gathered for marketing research.

Some people really don't like getting cold calls (myself included) especially when you're male and asking to speak "Julie" who happens to be their wife.

Our time was so regulated if you were one minute late to work, returning from break, etc, mgmt would send you a message telling you to get your act together.

Red flag one was having to pass a spelling test as part of the job interview.