What's the worst job you've had outside technology? | Hacker News Reader

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

11 pointswatmough26 comments

What's the 'worst' job you've had outside of technology, and did you enjoy it more or less than what you do now?

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.

Working at the Baskin Robbins in the mall that was the scene of Dawn of the Dead.

Much, much less.

Pay-wise, worst I ever had was my first job as a kitchen porter at a 'local' hotel. £1.60p/h and it was a 3 mile walk to get there (buses were once every 2 hours and 2hrs wages). I once did a 22hr shift with one half hour break when the other 2 KP's failed to show. Earned just over £20 after tax for that :) The minimum wage kicked in a year later and would nearly tripled my pay if I hadn't quit.

Worst otherwise: cardboard box production line. Worked on the gloriously named ZOR-D machine. It had a speed dial that went up to 21 but anything over 8 resulted in instant jamming. Of course the floor boss would always run over and turn it right up to prevent slacking. Cue 40 minutes unclogging machinery. Worst part though was washing your hands at breaks/end of day. You'd have thousands of tiny paper cuts and applying water would cause what we knew as 'involuntary fisting' (ooh er!). Your hands would clamp shut as the acids reacted.

I enjoyed both these jobs considerably less than my current work.

Lots of interesting posts, and not exactly what I expected, so I thought I'd chime in with mine.

The only three non-tech jobs I've ever done were working as a dishwasher in a small Scottish hotel, driving taxis in my hometown, and selling cars in Houston Texas.

The kitchen porter job was my first job out of school, and was great money for university, maybe a few hundred dollars a week equivalent, and it turned out to be a great way of getting exposed to parties, booze and the attractive young women also working in the hotel, who were picked mainly for their looks. I did wait tables on weekends, but my main task was washing dishes and silverware, and cleaning the kitchen one the rest of the staff had gone home.

Driving taxis in my hometown was also a fun job, but with long hours and the risk of finding yourself many miles from home at 2am on any given morning. Since cell phones weren't that commonplace in 1989 or so, and the radios were quite short-range, there was scope for improvisation on fares and passengers, so you could be your own little company for short periods. The worst aspect of this job was fending off drunks and making people who knew the 'boss' actually hand over money.

Most recently, and probably the worst job was selling cars in the Texas heat. Still a lot of fun at times, with some interesting customers, with the worst aspect being the fact that dealerships use your honest face as a wedge for their lies about, well, everything. Wasn't too upset to see the back of that job.

Thanks again for all the responses. :)

Stand in front of a giant injection moulding machine and wait for the clamp to open up and the finish product would drop into a box.

of course, it never did, because the air blowers were broken, so every 30sec I had to open and manually remove the product (I think it was miniature plastic tree) from the clamp and close it, otherwise it would close with the product in it. Repeat this all day. Thats when I decided I hate routines.

The boss was my grandfather, and I couldn't say no to the job.

I came to USA for my masters degree in Computer Engineering. Coming from a financially weak family, I had to work in my university's dining hall for my day to day expenses. There were variety of jobs in the Dining hall, one could be a Chef's assistant, a salad bar attendant, or cashier. The job I hated the most was that of dish washing, just because you don't have to use any brain, its a very mechanical job. Looking back at my career now, I think this is the worst job I ever had.

huh. I worked in a dining hall for a while, but only as cashier. I think I might have liked dishwasher, though, because my favorite non-programming jobs have all involved manual labor. Top 3: moving sound equipment, moving students' stuff in and out of temporary storage, and moving furniture into and out of dorms.

I am surprised with how you are surprised my _my_ preference. Well I guess its each man to his own.

Scraping bird poo from the inside of large outdoor bird cages. While the birds scream and flap from above, I wear a rain jacket and scrap the cement floors with a putty knife. This was my first job and lowest paying job when I was 10. It was also only 3-4 hours a week.

Obviously, I like what I do now more than that job. But I am not currently working in tech.

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.

I worked in a canteen kitchen at the dish-wash end. The diners would put their trays on a conveyer belt and we would scrape the leftovers into the waste disposal, sort the dishes, cutlery and glassware into their allotted crates which we then fed into the giant dishwasher. It was fast, frantic, filthy and hot work. Among the diners were bastards who made things difficult in interesting ways; I remember digging teaspoons out of elaborate mashed potato sculptures, and there was the time when some joker trapped a wasp in an upturned glass on their tray before handing it in to us.

I got on very well with my fellow workers there, though, many of whom did that for living, whereas I was just passing through, earning some cash as an undergraduate.

I actually worked on a garbage truck for a couple a years in my early 20s. And not in a unionized situation where the weight was regulated. Lovely weather in upstate New York with bitterly cold winter more than offset by sweltering summers.

Construction crew on a group building a golf course. One day my job was - literally - to walk around and pick up rocks and sticks and what-not. In the 98 degree heat and sweltering humidity of NC in the summertime... with no shade to be found. For not much more than minimum wage.

Outside of that, my dad was in the logging business when I was a kid, so I worked summers during high-school helping him cut down trees and load them onto a truck to haul to the paper mill. That was more being outside, doing hard physical labor, in NC, in the summertime. And I'm not even sure I got paid, now that I think about it... :-)

My first job was working in the Pear Sheds... growing up in an agricultural area, the factories that would sort the pears coming off of the orchards would often hire HS students during peak season. Thankfully since I was underage I only had to work 60 hours/week (10 hours/day, 6 days/week), standing since we couldn't sit down, staring at a convener belt of pears going by and throwing the blemished/bad ones onto two other convener belts. F'ing monotonous, 7am to 6pm.

I worked in a hospital's lab one summer. The three things I remember the most are counting sperm under the microscope (which smells really really bad), helping out with Pap smear analysis (which looks really really bad), and being the pee-on intern who, yep, gets first dibs in processing the urine samples as they come in (which smell really really bad).

Worst job? Yes and no. I went on to do a PhD in bacterial genetics.

Being an assistant in a winter coats shop during summer holidays. I was 13 and it was my first job. I was bored all day because we never got any customers - this was in a seaside town and you can imagine that people do not tend to go buy winter coats during summer while they are going home from the day at the beach :)

That sounds like a great business model.

Working retail at cvs. For a given 8 hour shift on a saturday, I figured most of these people are coming in to relieve some kind of sickness. I can only imagine how many things I was exposed to.

Thinking about the job now, perhaps I came out of it all with a stronger immune system.

Calling between 60 and 100 companies a day and asking why they haven't paid. I did that for three years while I saved up to go to college.

I'm a programmer so I'm unemployed and not doing anything now, apart from fiddling around with the Linux kernel which is much more interesting.

Summer job working in a supermarket as a teenager. I actually preferred working the cash register to stocking the aisles. At least at the cash register you can have a little fun & try to rig the total bill. Most stupid job ever: turning apples so the red side points up.

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

Although car manufacturing (in a GM factory) was up there with worst jobs, but it paid well. You think repetitive strain injury in desk jobs is bad? Try putting the same screw in a car for 10 hours, for months.

Sanding dry wall. Oh so much less.

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).

The only job I've had outside of technology, I worked two summers on a neighbor's farm, age 12 and 13. Half of the day I would shovel chicken manure, the other half I would "bail" hay and straw. This process consisted of standing in a rickety wooden trailer, guiding bails into neat stacks with a big metal hook. The bails were about 40-60 lbs depending on how wet they were, and they flew at your head around 30-40 mph. If you're lucky the tractor driver is paying attention to your pace. If not you're picking up bails that just hit you in the head a moment ago.

I love working in technology.

Warehouse stocking, nearly got pneumonia from working in a -20F freezer.

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